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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79003 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          [Cover Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                                                        =OLAF STAPLEDON=
+
+                                                    =Last and First Men=
+
+                                    =A story of the near and far future=
+
+
+
+
+                          First published 1930
+
+
+
+
+         _Contents_
+
+
+
+         P R E F A C E                                               11
+
+         I N T R O D U C T I O N, by One of the Last Men             15
+
+         _The Chronicle_
+
+       I B A L K A N   E U R O P E
+            1  The European War and After                            21
+            2  The Anglo-French War                                  23
+            3  Europe after the Anglo-French War                     31
+            4  The Russo-German War                                  37
+
+      II E U R O P E ’ S   D O W N F A L L
+            1  Europe and America                                    42
+            2  The Origins of a Mystery                              46
+            3  Europe Murdered                                       51
+
+     III A M E R I C A   A N D   C H I N A
+            1  The Rivals                                            55
+            2  The Conflict                                          63
+            3  On an Island in the Pacific                           67
+
+      IV A N   A M E R I C A N I Z E D   P L A N E T
+            1  The Foundation of the First World State               75
+            2  The Dominance of Science                              78
+            3  Material Achievement                                  81
+            4  The Culture of the First World State                  84
+            5  Downfall                                              93
+
+       V T H E   F A L L   O F   T H E   F I R S T   M E N
+            1  The First Dark Age                                    98
+            2  The Rise of Patagonia                                102
+            3  The Cult of Youth                                    106
+            4  The Catastrophe                                      112
+
+      VI T R A N S I T I O N
+            1  The First Men at Bay                                 120
+            2  The Second Dark Age                                  129
+
+     VII T H E   R I S E   O F   T H E   S E C O N D   M E N
+            1  The Appearance of a New Species                      132
+            2  The Intercourse of Three Species                     138
+            3  The Zenith of the Second Men                         143
+
+    VIII T H E   M A R T I A N S
+            1  The First Martian Invasion                           151
+            2  Life on Mars                                         153
+            3  The Martian Mind                                     160
+            4  Delusions of the Martians                            164
+
+      IX E A R T H   A N D   M A R S
+            1  The Second Men at Bay                                169
+            2  The Ruin of Two Worlds                               176
+            3  The Third Dark Age                                   184
+
+       X T H E   T H I R D   M E N   I N   T H E   W I L D E R N E S S
+            1  The Third Human Species                              189
+            2  Digressions of the Third Men                         195
+            3  The Vital Art                                        200
+            4  Conflicting Policies                                 205
+
+      XI M A N   R E M A K E S   H I M S E L F
+            1  The First of the Great Brains                        209
+            2  The Tragedy of the Fourth Men                        214
+            3  The Fifth Men                                        221
+            4  The Culture of the Fifth Men                         225
+
+     XII T H E   L A S T   T E R R E S T R I A L S
+            1  The Cult of Evanescence                              233
+            2  Exploration of Time                                  238
+            3  Voyaging in Space                                    243
+            4  Preparing a New World                                249
+
+    XIII H U M A N I T Y   O N   V E N U S
+            1  Taking Root Again                                    255
+            2  The Flying Men                                       259
+            3  A Minor Astronomical Event                           269
+
+     XIV N E P T U N E
+            1  Bird’s-Eye View                                      273
+            2  Da Capo                                              275
+            3  Slow Conquest                                        279
+
+      XV T H E   L A S T   M E N
+            1  Introduction to the Last Human Species               284
+            2  Childhood and Maturity                               290
+            3  A Racial Awakening                                   294
+            4  Cosmology                                            304
+
+     XVI T H E   L A S T   O F   M A N
+            1  Sentence of Death                                    313
+            2  Behaviour of the Condemned                           315
+            3  Epilogue                                             321
+
+         _Diagrams_
+
+         T I M E   S C A L E   1                                     74
+         T I M E   S C A L E   2                                    133
+         T I M E   S C A L E   3                                    190
+         T I M E   S C A L E S   4   A N D   5                      285
+
+
+
+
+                               _Preface_
+
+
+This is a work of fiction. I have tried to invent a story which may seem
+a possible, or at least not wholly impossible, account of the future of
+man; and I have tried to make that story relevant to the change that is
+taking place today in man’s outlook.
+
+To romance of the future may seem to be indulgence in ungoverned
+speculation for the sake of the marvellous. Yet controlled imagination
+in this sphere can be a very valuable exercise for minds bewildered
+about the present and its potentialities. Today we should welcome, and
+even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race;
+not merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic
+possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize
+ourselves with the certainty that many of our most cherished ideals
+would seem puerile to more developed minds. To romance of the far
+future, then, is to attempt to see the human race in its cosmic setting,
+and to mould our hearts to entertain new values.
+
+But if such imaginative construction of possible futures is to be at all
+potent, our imagination must be strictly disciplined. We must endeavour
+not to go beyond the bounds of possibility set by the particular state
+of culture within which we live. The merely fantastic has only minor
+power. Not that we should seek actually to prophesy what will as a
+matter of fact occur; for in our present state such prophecy is
+certainly futile, save in the simplest matters. We are not set up as
+historians attempting to look ahead instead of backwards. We can only
+select a certain thread out of the tangle of many equally valid
+possibilities. But we must select with a purpose. The activity that we
+are undertaking is not science, but art; and the effect that it should
+have on the reader is the effect that art should have.
+
+Yet our aim is not merely to create aesthetically admirable fiction. We
+must achieve neither mere history, nor mere fiction, but myth. A true
+myth is one which, within the universe of a certain culture (living or
+dead), expresses richly, and often perhaps tragically, the highest
+admirations possible within that culture. A false myth is one which
+either violently transgresses the limits of credibility set by its own
+cultural matrix, or expresses admirations less developed than those of
+its culture’s best vision. This book can no more claim to be true myth
+than true prophecy. But it is an essay in myth creation.
+
+The kind of future which is here imagined, should not, I think, seem
+wholly fantastic, or at any rate not so fantastic as to be without
+significance, to modern western individuals who are familiar with the
+outlines of contemporary thought. Had I chosen matter in which there was
+nothing whatever of the fantastic, its very plausibility would have
+rendered it implausible. For one thing at least is almost certain about
+the future, namely, that very much of it will be such as we should call
+incredible. In one important respect, indeed, I may perhaps seem to have
+strayed into barren extravagance. I have supposed an inhabitant of the
+remote future to be communicating with us of today. I have pretended
+that he has the power of partially controlling the operations of minds
+now living, and that this book is the product of such influence. Yet
+even this fiction is perhaps not wholly excluded by our thought. I
+might, of course, easily have omitted it without more than superficial
+alteration of the theme. But its introduction was more than a
+convenience. Only by some such radical and bewildering device could I
+embody the possibility that there may be more in time’s nature than is
+revealed to us. Indeed, only by some such trick could I do justice to
+the conviction that our whole present mentality is but a confused and
+halting first experiment.
+
+If ever this book should happen to be discovered by some future
+individual, for instance by a member of the next generation sorting out
+the rubbish of his predecessors, it will certainly raise a smile; for
+very much is bound to happen of which no hint is yet discoverable. And
+indeed even in our generation circumstances may well change so
+unexpectedly and so radically that this book may very soon look
+ridiculous. But no matter. We of today must conceive our relation to the
+rest of the universe as best we can; and even if our images must seem
+fantastic to future men, they may none the less serve their purpose
+today.
+
+Some readers, taking my story to be an attempt at prophecy, may deem it
+unwarrantably pessimistic. But it is not prophecy; it is myth, or an
+essay in myth. We all desire the future to turn out more happily than I
+have figured it. In particular we desire our present civilization to
+advance steadily toward some kind of Utopia. The thought that it may
+decay and collapse, and that all its spiritual treasure may be lost
+irrevocably, is repugnant to us. Yet this must be faced as at least a
+possibility. And this kind of tragedy, the tragedy of a race, must, I
+think, be admitted in any adequate myth.
+
+And so, while gladly recognizing that in our time there are strong seeds
+of hope as well as of despair, I have imagined for aesthetic purposes
+that our race will destroy itself. There is today a very earnest
+movement for peace and international unity; and surely with good fortune
+and intelligent management it may triumph. Most earnestly we must hope
+that it will. But I have figured things out in this book in such a
+manner that this great movement fails. I suppose it incapable of
+preventing a succession of national wars; and I permit it only to
+achieve the goal of unity and peace after the mentality of the race has
+been undermined. May this not happen! May the League of Nations, or some
+more strictly cosmopolitan authority, win through before it is too late!
+Yet let us find room in our minds and in our hearts for the thought that
+the whole enterprise of our race may be after all but a minor and
+unsuccessful episode in a vaster drama, which also perhaps may be
+tragic.
+
+American readers, if ever there are any, may feel that their great
+nation is given a somewhat unattractive part in the story. I have
+imagined the triumph of the cruder sort of Americanism over all that is
+best and most promising in American culture. May this not occur in the
+real world! Americans themselves, however, admit the possibility of such
+an issue, and will, I hope, forgive me for emphasizing it, and using it
+as an early turning-point in the long drama of Man.
+
+Any attempt to conceive such a drama must take into account whatever
+contemporary science has to say about man’s own nature and his physical
+environment. I have tried to supplement my own slight knowledge of
+natural science by pestering my scientific friends. In particular, I
+have been very greatly helped by conversation with Professors P. G. H.
+Boswell, J. Johnstone, and J. Rice, of Liverpool. But they must not be
+held responsible for the many deliberate extravagances which, though
+they serve a purpose in the design, may jar upon the scientific ear.
+
+To Dr L. A. Reid I am much indebted for general comments, and to Mr E.
+V. Rieu for many very valuable suggestions. To Professor and Mrs L. C.
+Martin, who read the whole book in manuscript, I cannot properly express
+my gratitude for constant encouragement and criticism. To my wife’s
+devastating sanity I owe far more than she supposes.
+
+Before closing this preface I would remind the reader that throughout
+the following pages the speaker, the first person singular, is supposed
+to be, not the actual writer, but an individual living in the extremely
+distant future.
+
+                                                                   O. S.
+
+West Kirby
+_July 1930_
+
+
+
+
+                             _Introduction_
+
+                         By One of the Last Men
+
+
+This book has two authors, one contemporary with its readers, the other
+an inhabitant of an age which they would call the distant future. The
+brain that conceives and writes these sentences lives in the time of
+Einstein. Yet I, the true inspirer of this book, I who have begotten it
+upon that brain, I who influence that primitive being’s conception,
+inhabit an age which, for Einstein, lies in the very remote future.
+
+The actual writer thinks he is merely contriving a work of fiction.
+Though he seeks to tell a plausible story, he neither believes it
+himself, nor expects others to believe it. Yet the story is true. A
+being whom you would call a future man has seized the docile but
+scarcely adequate brain of your contemporary, and is trying to direct
+its familiar processes for an alien purpose. Thus a future epoch makes
+contact with your age. Listen patiently; for we who are the Last Men
+earnestly desire to communicate with you, who are members of the First
+Human Species. We can help you, and we need your help.
+
+You cannot believe it. Your acquaintance with time is very imperfect,
+and so your understanding of it is defeated. But no matter. Do not
+perplex yourselves about this truth, so difficult to you, so familiar to
+us of a later aeon. Do but entertain, merely as a fiction, the idea that
+the thought and will of individuals future to you may intrude, rarely
+and with difficulty, into the mental processes of some of your
+contemporaries. Pretend that you believe this, and that the following
+chronicle is an authentic message from the Last Men. Imagine the
+consequences of such a belief. Otherwise I cannot give life to the great
+history which it is my task to tell.
+
+When your writers romance of the future, they too easily imagine a
+progress toward some kind of Utopia, in which beings like themselves
+live in unmitigated bliss among circumstances perfectly suited to a
+fixed human nature. I shall not describe any such paradise. Instead, I
+shall record huge fluctuations of joy and woe, the results of changes
+not only in man’s environment but in his fluid nature. And I must tell
+how, in my own age, having at last achieved spiritual maturity and the
+philosophic mind, man is forced by an unexpected crisis to embark on an
+enterprise both repugnant and desperate.
+
+I invite you, then, to travel in imagination through the aeons that lie
+between your age and mine. I ask you to watch such a history of change,
+grief, hope, and unforeseen catastrophe, as has nowhere else occurred,
+within the girdle of the Milky Way. But first, it is well to contemplate
+for a few moments the mere magnitudes of cosmical events. For,
+compressed as it must necessarily be, the narrative that I have to tell
+may seem to present a sequence of adventures and disasters crowded
+together, with no intervening peace. But in fact man’s career has been
+less like a mountain torrent hurtling from rock to rock, than a great
+sluggish river, broken very seldom by rapids. Ages of quiescence, often
+of actual stagnation, filled with the monotonous problems and toils of
+countless almost identical lives, have been punctuated by rare moments
+of racial adventure. Nay, even these few seemingly rapid events
+themselves were in fact often long-drawn-out and tedious. They acquire a
+mere illusion of speed from the speed of the narrative.
+
+The receding depths of time and space, though they can indeed be
+haltingly conceived even by primitive minds, cannot be imaged save by
+beings of a more ample nature. A panorama of mountains appears to naïve
+vision almost as a flat picture, and the starry void is a roof pricked
+with light. Yet in reality, while the immediate terrain could be spanned
+in an hour’s walking, the sky-line of peaks holds within it plain beyond
+plain. Similarly with time. While the near past and the new future
+display within them depth beyond depth, time’s remote immensities are
+foreshortened into flatness. It is almost inconceivable to simple minds
+that man’s whole history should be but a moment in the life of the
+stars, and that remote events should embrace within themselves aeon upon
+aeon.
+
+In your day you have learnt to calculate something of the magnitudes of
+time and space. But to grasp my theme in its true proportions, it is
+necessary to do more than calculate. It is necessary to brood upon these
+magnitudes, to draw out the mind toward them, to feel the littleness of
+your here and now, and of the moment of civilization which you call
+history. You cannot hope to image, as we do, such vast proportions as
+one in a thousand million, because your sense-organs, and therefore your
+perceptions, are too coarse-grained to discriminate so small a fraction
+of their total field. But you may at least, by mere contemplation, grasp
+more constantly and firmly the significance of your calculations.
+
+Men of your day, when they look back into the history of their planet,
+remark not only the length of time but also the bewildering acceleration
+of life’s progress. Almost stationary in the earliest period of the
+earth’s career, in your moment it seems headlong. Mind in you, it is
+said, not merely stands higher than ever before in respect of
+percipience, knowledge, insight, delicacy of admiration, and sanity of
+will, but also it moves upward century by century ever more swiftly.
+What next? Surely, you think, there will come a time when there will be
+no further heights to conquer.
+
+This view is mistaken. You underestimate even the foothills that stand
+in front of you, and never suspect that far above them, hidden by cloud,
+rise precipices and snow-fields. The mental and spiritual advances
+which, in your day, mind in the solar system has still to attempt, are
+overwhelmingly more complex, more precarious and dangerous, than those
+which have already been achieved. And though in certain humble respects
+you have attained full development, the loftier potencies of the spirit
+in you have not yet even begun to put forth buds.
+
+Somehow, then, I must help you to feel not only the vastness of time and
+space, but also the vast diversity of mind’s possible modes. But this I
+can only hint to you, since so much lies wholly beyond the range of your
+imagination.
+
+Historians living in your day need grapple only with one moment of the
+flux of time. But I have to present in one book the essence not of
+centuries but of aeons. Clearly we cannot walk at leisure through such a
+tract, in which a million terrestrial years are but as a year is to your
+historians. We must fly. We must travel as you do in your aeroplanes,
+observing only the broad features of the continent. But since the flier
+sees nothing of the minute inhabitants below him, and since it is they
+who make history, we must also punctuate our flight with many descents,
+skimming as it were over the house-tops, and even alighting at critical
+points to speak face to face with individuals. And as the plane’s
+journey must begin with a slow ascent from the intricate pedestrian view
+to wider horizons, so we must begin with a somewhat close inspection of
+that little period which includes the culmination and collapse of your
+own primitive civilization.
+
+
+
+
+                       T H E   C H R O N I C L E
+
+
+
+
+                           I _Balkan Europe_
+
+
+                     1. THE EUROPEAN WAR AND AFTER
+
+Observe now your own epoch of history as it appears to the Last Men.
+
+Long before the human spirit awoke to clear cognizance of the world and
+itself, it sometimes stirred in its sleep, opened bewildered eyes, and
+slept again. One of these moments of precocious experience embraces the
+whole struggle of the First Men from savagery towards civilization.
+Within that moment, you stand almost in the very instant when the
+species attains its zenith. Scarcely at all beyond your own day is this
+early culture to be seen progressing, and already in your time the
+mentality of the race shows signs of decline.
+
+The first, and some would say the greatest, achievement of your own
+‘Western’ culture was the conceiving of two ideals of conduct, both
+essential to the spirit’s well-being. Socrates, delighting in the truth
+for its own sake and not merely for practical ends, glorified unbiased
+thinking, honesty of mind and speech. Jesus, delighting in the actual
+human persons around him, and in that flavour of divinity which, for
+him, pervaded the world, stood for unselfish love of neighbours and of
+God. Socrates woke to the ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to
+the ideal of passionate yet self-oblivious worship. Socrates urged
+intellectual integrity, Jesus integrity of will. Each, of course, though
+starting with a different emphasis, involved the other.
+
+Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain a degree of
+vitality and coherence of which the nervous system of the First Men was
+never really capable. For many centuries these twin stars enticed the
+more precociously human of human animals, in vain. And the failure to
+put these ideals in practice helped to engender in the race a cynical
+lassitude which was one cause of its decay.
+
+There were other causes. The peoples from whom sprang Socrates and Jesus
+were also among the first to conceive admiration for Fate. In Greek
+tragic art and Hebrew worship of divine law, as also in the Indian
+resignation, man experienced, at first very obscurely, that vision of an
+alien and supernal beauty, which was to exalt and perplex him again and
+again throughout his whole career. The conflict between this worship and
+the intransigent loyalty to Life, embattled against Death, proved
+insoluble. And though few individuals were ever clearly conscious of the
+issue, the first human species was again and again unwittingly hampered
+in its spiritual development by this supreme perplexity.
+
+While man was being whipped and enticed by these precocious experiences,
+the actual social constitution of his world kept changing so rapidly
+through increased mastery over physical energy, that his primitive
+nature could no longer cope with the complexity of his environment.
+Animals that were fashioned for hunting and fighting in the wild were
+suddenly called upon to be citizens, and moreover citizens of a
+world-community. At the same time they found themselves possessed of
+certain very dangerous powers which their petty minds were not fit to
+use. Man struggled; but, as you shall hear, he broke under the strain.
+
+The European War, called at the time the War to End War, was the first
+and least destructive of those world conflicts which display so
+tragically the incompetence of the First Men to control their own
+nature. At the outset a tangle of motives, some honourable and some
+disreputable, ignited a conflict for which both antagonists were all too
+well prepared, though neither seriously intended it. A real difference
+of temperament between Latin-France and Nordic Germany combined with a
+superficial rivalry between Germany and England, and a number of
+stupidly brutal gestures on the part of the German Government and
+military command, to divide the world into two camps; yet in such a
+manner that it is impossible to find any difference of principle between
+them. During the struggle each party was convinced that it alone stood
+for civilization. But in fact both succumbed now and again to impulses
+of sheer brutality, and both achieved acts not merely of heroism, but of
+generosity unusual among the First Men. For conduct which to clearer
+minds seems merely sane, was in those days to be performed only by rare
+vision and self-mastery.
+
+As the months of agony advanced, there was bred in the warring peoples a
+genuine and even passionate will for peace and a united world. Out of
+the conflict of the tribes arose, at least for a while, a spirit loftier
+than tribalism. But this fervour lacked as yet clear guidance, lacked
+even the courage of conviction. The peace which followed the European
+War is one of the most significant moments of ancient history; for it
+epitomizes both the dawning vision and the incurable blindness, both the
+impulse toward a higher loyalty and the compulsive tribalism of a race
+which was, after all, but superficially human.
+
+
+                        2. THE ANGLO-FRENCH WAR
+
+One brief but tragic incident, which occurred within a century after the
+European War, may be said to have sealed the fate of the First Men.
+During this century the will for peace and sanity was already becoming a
+serious factor in history. Save for a number of most untoward accidents,
+to be recorded in due course, the party of peace might have dominated
+Europe during its most dangerous period; and, through Europe, the world.
+With either a little less bad luck or a fraction more of vision and
+self-control at this critical time, there might never have occurred that
+aeon of darkness, in which the First Men were presently to be submerged.
+For had victory been gained before the general level of mentality had
+seriously begun to decline, the attainment of the world state might have
+been regarded, not as an end, but as the first step towards true
+civilization. But this was not to be.
+
+After the European War the defeated nation, formerly no less
+militaristic than the others, now became the most pacific, and a
+stronghold of enlightenment. Almost everywhere, indeed, there had
+occurred a profound change of heart, but chiefly in Germany. The victors
+on the other hand, in spite of their real craving to be human and
+generous, and to found a new world, were led partly by their own
+timidity, partly by their governors’ blind diplomacy, into all the vices
+against which they believed themselves to have been crusading. After a
+brief period in which they desperately affected amity for one another
+they began to indulge once more in physical conflicts. Of these
+conflicts, two must be observed.
+
+The first outbreak, and the less disastrous for Europe, was a short and
+grotesque struggle between France and Italy. Since the fall of ancient
+Rome, the Italians had excelled more in art and literature than in
+martial achievement. But the heroic liberation of Italy in the
+nineteenth Christian century had made Italians peculiarly sensitive to
+national prestige; and since among Western peoples national vigour was
+measured in terms of military glory, the Italians were fired, by their
+success against a rickety foreign domination, to vindicate themselves
+more thoroughly against the charge of mediocrity in warfare. After the
+European War, however, Italy passed through a phase of social disorder
+and self-distrust. Subsequently a flamboyant but sincere national party
+gained control of the State, and afforded the Italians a new
+self-respect, based on reform of the social services, and on
+militaristic policy. Trains became punctual, streets clean, morals
+puritanical. Aviation records were won for Italy. The young, dressed up
+and taught to play at soldiers with real fire-arms, were persuaded to
+regard themselves as saviours of the nation, encouraged to shed blood,
+and used to enforce the will of the Government. The whole movement was
+engineered chiefly by a man whose genius in action combined with his
+rhetoric and crudity of thought to make him a very successful dictator.
+Almost miraculously he drilled the Italian nation into efficiency. At
+the same time, with great emotional effect and incredible lack of humour
+he trumpeted Italy’s self-importance, and her will to ‘expand’. And
+since Italians were slow to learn the necessity of restricting their
+population, ‘expansion’ was a real need.
+
+Thus it came about that Italy, hungry for French territory in Africa,
+jealous of French leadership of the Latin races, indignant at the
+protection afforded to Italian ‘traitors’ in France, became increasingly
+prone to quarrel with the most assertive of her late allies. It was a
+frontier incident, a fancied ‘insult to the Italian flag’, which at last
+caused an unauthorized raid upon French territory by a small party of
+Italian militia. The raiders were captured, but French blood was shed.
+The consequent demand for apology and reparation was calm, but subtly
+offensive to Italian dignity. Italian patriots worked themselves into
+short-sighted fury. The Dictator, far from daring to apologize, was
+forced to require the release of the captive militia-men, and finally to
+declare war. After a single sharp engagement the relentless armies of
+France pressed into North Italy. Resistance, at first heroic, soon
+became chaotic. In consternation the Italians woke from their dream of
+military glory. The populace turned against the Dictator whom they
+themselves had forced to declare war. In a theatrical but gallant
+attempt to dominate the Roman mob, he failed, and was killed. The new
+government made a hasty peace, ceding to France a frontier territory
+which she had already annexed for ‘security’.
+
+Thenceforth Italians were less concerned to outshine the glory of
+Garibaldi than to emulate the greater glory of Dante, Giotto, and
+Galileo.
+
+France had now complete mastery of the continent of Europe; but having
+much to lose, she behaved arrogantly and nervously. It was not long
+before peace was once more disturbed.
+
+Scarcely had the last veterans of the European War ceased from wearying
+their juniors with reminiscence, when the long rivalry between France
+and England culminated in a dispute between their respective Governments
+over a case of sexual outrage said to have been committed by a French
+African soldier upon an Englishwoman. In this quarrel, the British
+Government happened to be definitely in the wrong, and was probably
+confused by its own sexual repressions. The outrage had never been
+committed. The facts which gave rise to the rumour were, that an idle
+and neurotic Englishwoman in the south of France, craving the embrace of
+a ‘cave man’, had seduced a Senegalese corporal in her own apartments.
+When, later, he had shown signs of boredom, she took revenge by
+declaring that he had attacked her indecently in the woods above the
+town. This rumour was such that the English were all too prone to savour
+and believe. At the same time, the magnates of the English Press could
+not resist this opportunity of trading upon the public’s sexuality,
+tribalism, and self-righteousness. There followed an epidemic of abuse,
+and occasional violence, against French subjects in England; and thus
+the party of fear and militarism in France was given the opportunity it
+had long sought. For the real cause of this war was connected with air
+power. France had persuaded the League of Nations (in one of its less
+intelligent moments) to restrict the size of military aeroplanes in such
+a manner that, while London lay within easy striking distance of the
+French coast, Paris could only with difficulty be touched by England.
+This state of affairs obviously could not last long. Britain was
+agitating more and more insistently for the removal of the restriction.
+On the other hand, there was an increasing demand for complete aerial
+disarmament in Europe; and so strong was the party of sanity in France,
+that the scheme would almost certainly have been accepted by the French
+Government. On both counts, therefore, the militarists of France were
+eager to strike while yet there was opportunity.
+
+In an instant, the whole fruit of this effort for disarmament was
+destroyed. That subtle difference of mentality which had ever made it
+impossible for these two nations to understand one another, was suddenly
+exaggerated by this provocative incident into an apparently insoluble
+discord. England reverted to her conviction that all Frenchmen were
+sensualists, while to France the English appeared, as often before, the
+most offensive of hypocrites. In vain did the saner minds in each
+country insist on the fundamental humanity of both. In vain did the
+chastened Germans seek to mediate. In vain did the League, which by now
+had very great prestige and authority, threaten both parties with
+expulsion, even with chastisement. Rumour got about in Paris that
+England, breaking all her international pledges, was now feverishly
+building giant planes which would wreck France from Calais to
+Marseilles. And indeed the rumour was not wholly a slander, for, when
+the struggle began, the British air force was found to have a range of
+intensive action far wider than was expected. Yet the actual outbreak of
+war took England by surprise. While the London papers were selling out
+upon the news that war was declared, enemy planes appeared over the
+city. In a couple of hours a third of London was in ruins, and half her
+population lay poisoned in the streets. One bomb, falling beside the
+British Museum, turned the whole of Bloomsbury into a crater, wherein
+fragments of mummies, statues, and manuscripts were mingled with the
+contents of shops, and morsels of salesmen and the intelligentsia. Thus
+in a moment was destroyed a large proportion of England’s most precious
+relics and most fertile brains.
+
+Then occurred one of those microscopic, yet supremely potent incidents
+which sometimes mould the course of events for centuries. During the
+bombardment a special meeting of the British Cabinet was held in a
+cellar in Downing Street. The party in power at the time was
+progressive, mildly pacifist, and timorously cosmopolitan. It had got
+itself involved in the French quarrel quite unintentionally. At this
+Cabinet meeting an idealistic member urged upon his colleagues the need
+for a supreme gesture of heroism and generosity on the part of Britain.
+Raising his voice with difficulty above the bark of English guns and the
+volcanic crash of French bombs, he suggested sending by radio the
+following message. ‘From the people of England to the people of France.
+Catastrophe has fallen on us at your hands. In this hour of agony, all
+hate and anger have left us. Our eyes are opened. No longer can we think
+of ourselves as merely English, and you as merely French; all of us are,
+before all else, civilized beings. Do not imagine that we are defeated,
+and that this message is a cry for mercy. Our armament is intact, and
+our resources still very great. Yet, because of the revelation which has
+come to us today, we will not fight. No plane, no ship, no soldier of
+Britain shall commit any further act of hostility. Do what you will. It
+would be better even that a great people should be destroyed than that
+the whole race should be thrown into turmoil. But you will not strike
+again. As our own eyes have been opened by agony, yours now will be
+opened by our act of brotherhood. The spirit of France and the spirit of
+England differ. They differ deeply; but only as the eye differs from the
+hand. Without you, we should be barbarians. And without us, even the
+bright spirit of France would be but half expressed. For the spirit of
+France lives again in our culture and in our very speech; and the spirit
+of England is that which strikes from you your most distinctive
+brilliance.’
+
+At no earlier stage of man’s history could such a message have been
+considered seriously by any government. Had it been suggested during the
+previous war, its author would have been ridiculed, execrated, perhaps
+even murdered. But since those days much had happened. Increased
+communication, increased cultural intercourse, and a prolonged vigorous
+campaign for cosmopolitanism, had changed the mentality of Europe. Even
+so, when, after a brief discussion, the Government ordered this unique
+message to be sent, its members were awed by their own act. As one of
+them expressed it, they were uncertain whether it was the devil or the
+deity that had possessed them, but possessed they certainly were.
+
+That night the people of London (those who were left) experienced an
+exaltation of spirit. Disorganization of the city’s life, overwhelming
+physical suffering and compassion, the consciousness of an unprecedented
+spiritual act in which each individual felt himself to have somehow
+participated—these influences combined to produce, even in the bustle
+and confusion of a wrecked metropolis, a certain restrained fervour, and
+a deep peace of mind, wholly unfamiliar to Londoners.
+
+Meanwhile the undamaged North knew not whether to regard the
+Government’s sudden pacificism as a piece of cowardice or as a superbly
+courageous gesture. Very soon, however, they began to make a virtue of
+necessity, and incline to the latter view. Paris itself was divided by
+the message into a vocal party of triumph and a silent party of
+bewilderment. But as the hours advanced, and the former urged a policy
+of aggression, the latter found voice for the cry, ‘_Vive l’Angleterre,
+vive l’humanité_’. And so strong by now was the will for cosmopolitanism
+that the upshot would almost certainly have been a triumph of sanity,
+had there not occurred in England an accident which tilted the whole
+precarious course of events in the opposite direction.
+
+The bombardment had occurred on a Friday night. On Saturday the
+repercussions of England’s great message were echoing throughout the
+nations. That evening, as a wet and foggy day was achieving its pallid
+sunset, a French plane was seen over the western outskirts of London. It
+gradually descended, and was regarded by onlookers as a messenger of
+peace. Lower and lower it came. Something was seen to part from it and
+fall. In a few seconds an immense explosion occurred in the
+neighbourhood of a great school and a royal palace. There was hideous
+destruction in the school. The palace escaped. But, chief disaster for
+the cause of peace, a beautiful and extravagantly popular young princess
+was caught by the explosion. Her body, obscenely mutilated, but still
+recognizable to every student of the illustrated papers, was impaled
+upon some high park-railings beside the main thoroughfare towards the
+city. Immediately after the explosion the enemy plane crashed, burst
+into flame, and was destroyed with its occupants.
+
+A moment’s cool thinking would have convinced all onlookers that this
+disaster was an accident, that the plane was a belated straggler in
+distress, and no messenger of hate. But, confronted with the mangled
+bodies of schoolboys, and harrowed by cries of agony and terror, the
+populace was in no state for ratiocination. Moreover there was the
+princess, an overwhelmingly potent sexual symbol and emblem of
+tribalism, slaughtered and exposed before the eyes of her adorers.
+
+The news was flashed over the country, and distorted of course in such a
+manner as to admit no doubt that this act was the crowning devilry of
+sexual fiends beyond the Channel. In an hour the mood of London was
+changed, and the whole population of England succumbed to a paroxysm of
+primitive hate far more extravagant than any that had occurred even in
+the war against Germany. The British air force, all too well equipped
+and prepared, was ordered to Paris.
+
+Meanwhile in France the militaristic government had fallen, and the
+party of peace was now in control. While the streets were still thronged
+by its vociferous supporters, the first bomb fell. By Monday morning
+Paris was obliterated. There followed a few days of strife between the
+opposing armaments, and of butchery committed upon the civilian
+populations. In spite of French gallantry, the superior organization,
+mechanical efficiency, and more cautious courage of the British Air
+Force soon made it impossible for a French plane to leave the ground.
+But if France was broken, England was too crippled to pursue her
+advantage. Every city of the two countries was completely disorganized.
+Famine, riot, looting, and above all the rapidly accelerating and quite
+uncontrollable spread of disease, disintegrated both States, and brought
+war to a standstill.
+
+Indeed, not only did hostilities cease, but also both nations were too
+shattered even to continue hating one another. The energies of each were
+for a while wholly occupied in trying to prevent complete annihilation
+by famine and pestilence. In the work of reconstruction they had to
+depend very largely on help from outside. The management of each country
+was taken over, for the time, by the League of Nations.
+
+It is significant to compare the mood of Europe at this time with that
+which followed the European War. Formerly, though there had been a real
+effort toward unity, hate and suspicion continued to find expression in
+national policies. There was much wrangling about indemnities,
+reparations, securities; and the division of the whole continent into
+two hostile camps persisted, though by then it was purely artificial and
+sentimental. But after the Anglo-French war, a very different mood
+prevailed. There was no mention of reparations, no possibility of
+seeking security by alliances. Patriotism simply faded out, for the
+time, under the influence of extreme disaster. The two enemy peoples
+cooperated with the League in the work of reconstructing not only each
+one itself, but each one the other. This change of heart was due partly
+to the temporary collapse of the whole national organization, partly to
+the speedy dominance of each nation by pacifist and anti-nationalist
+Labour, partly to the fact that the League was powerful enough to
+inquire into and publish the whole story of the origins of the war, and
+expose each combatant to itself and to the world in a sorry light.
+
+We have now observed in some detail the incident which stands out in
+man’s history as perhaps the most dramatic example of petty cause and
+mighty effect. For consider. Through some miscalculation, or a mere
+defect in his instruments, a French airman went astray, and came to
+grief in London after the sending of the peace message. Had this not
+happened, England and France would not have been wrecked. And, had the
+war been nipped at the outset, as it almost was, the party of sanity
+throughout the world would have been very greatly strengthened; the
+precarious will to unity would have gained the conviction which it
+lacked, would have dominated man not merely during the terrified
+revulsion after each spasm of national strife, but as a permanent policy
+based on mutual trust. Indeed so delicately balanced were man’s
+primitive and developed impulses at this time, that, but for this
+trivial accident, the movement which was started by England’s peace
+message might have proceeded steadily and rapidly toward the unification
+of the race. It might, that is, have attained its goal, before, instead
+of after, the period of mental deterioration, which in fact resulted
+from a long epidemic of wars. And so the first Dark Age might never have
+occurred.
+
+
+                  3. EUROPE AFTER THE ANGLO-FRENCH WAR
+
+A subtle change now began to affect the whole mental climate of the
+planet. This is remarkable, since, viewed for instance from America or
+China, this war was, after all, but a petty disturbance, scarcely more
+than a brawl between quarrelsome statelets, an episode in the decline of
+a senile civilization. Expressed in dollars, the damage was not
+impressive to the wealthy West and the potentially wealthy East. The
+British Empire, indeed, that unique banyan tree of peoples, was
+henceforward less effective in world diplomacy; but since the bond that
+held it together was by now wholly a bond of sentiment, the Empire was
+not disintegrated by the misfortune of its parent trunk. Indeed, a
+common fear of American economic imperialism was already helping the
+colonies to remain loyal.
+
+Yet this petty brawl was in fact an irreparable and far-reaching
+disaster. For in spite of those differences of temperament which had
+forced the English and French into conflict, they had cooperated, though
+often unwittingly, in tempering and clarifying the mentality of Europe.
+Though their faults played a great part in wrecking Western
+civilization, the virtues from which these vices sprang were needed for
+the salvation of a world prone to uncritical romance. In spite of the
+inveterate blindness and meanness of France in international policy, and
+the even more disastrous timidity of England, their influence on culture
+had been salutary, and was at this moment sorely needed. For, poles
+asunder in tastes and ideals, these two peoples were yet alike in being
+on the whole more sceptical, and in their finest individuals more
+capable of dispassionate yet creative intelligence than any other
+Western people. This very character produced their distinctive faults,
+namely, in the English a caution that amounted often to moral cowardice,
+and in the French a certain myopic complacency and cunning, which
+masqueraded as realism. Within each nation there was, of course, great
+variety. English minds were of many types. But most were to some extent
+distinctively English; and hence the special character of England’s
+influence in the world. Relatively detached, sceptical, cautious,
+practical, more tolerant than others, because more complacent and less
+prone to fervour, the typical Englishman was capable both of generosity
+and of spite, both of heroism and of timorous or cynical abandonment of
+ends proclaimed as vital to the race. French and English alike might sin
+against humanity, but in different manners. The French sinned blindly,
+through a strange inability to regard France dispassionately. The
+English sinned through faintheartedness, and with open eyes. Among all
+nations they excelled in the union of common sense and vision. But also
+among all nations they were most ready to betray their visions in the
+name of commonsense. Hence their reputation for perfidy.
+
+Differences of national character and patriotic sentiment were not the
+most fundamental distinctions between men at this time. Although in each
+nation a common tradition or cultural environment imposed a certain
+uniformity on all its members, yet in each nation every mental type was
+present, though in different proportions. The most significant of all
+cultural differences between men, namely, the difference between the
+tribalists and the cosmopolitans, traversed the national boundaries. For
+throughout the world something like a new, cosmopolitan ‘nation’ with a
+new all-embracing patriotism was beginning to appear. In every land
+there was by now a salting of awakened minds who, whatever their
+temperament and politics and formal faith, were at one in respect of
+their allegiance to humanity as a race or as an adventuring spirit.
+Unfortunately this new loyalty was still entangled with old prejudices.
+In some minds the defence of the human spirit was sincerely identified
+with the defence of a particular nation, conceived as the home of all
+enlightenment. In others, social injustice kindled a militant
+proletarian loyalty, which, though at heart cosmopolitan, infected alike
+its champions and its enemies with sectarian passions.
+
+Another sentiment, less definite and conscious than cosmopolitanism,
+also played some part in the minds of men, namely loyalty toward the
+dispassionate intelligence and perplexed admiration of the world which
+was beginning to be revealed, a world august, immense, subtle, in which,
+seemingly, man was doomed to play a part minute but tragic. In many
+races there had, no doubt, long existed some fidelity toward the
+dispassionate intelligence. But it was England and France that excelled
+in this respect. On the other hand, even in these two nations there was
+much that was opposed to this allegiance. These, like all peoples of the
+age, were liable to bouts of insane emotionalism. Indeed the French
+mind, in general so clear-sighted, so realistic, so contemptuous of
+ambiguity and mist, so detached in all its final valuations, was yet so
+obsessed with the idea ‘France’ as to be wholly incapable of generosity
+in international affairs. But it was France, with England, that had
+chiefly inspired the intellectual integrity which was the rarest and
+brightest thread of Western culture, not only within the territories of
+these two nations, but throughout Europe and America. In the seventeenth
+and eighteenth Christian centuries, the French and English had
+conceived, more clearly than other peoples, an interest in the objective
+world for its own sake, had founded physical science, and had fashioned
+out of scepticism the most brilliantly constructive of mental
+instruments. At a later stage it was largely the French and English who,
+by means of this instrument, had revealed man and the physical universe
+in something like their true proportions; and it was chiefly the elect
+of these two peoples that had been able to exult in this bracing
+discovery.
+
+With the eclipse of France and England this great tradition of
+dispassionate cognizance began to wane. Europe was now led by Germany.
+And the Germans, in spite of their practical genius, their scholarly
+contributions to history, their brilliant science and austere
+philosophy, were at heart romantic. This inclination was both their
+strength and their weakness. Thereby they had been inspired to their
+finest art and their most profound metaphysical speculation. But thereby
+they were also often rendered un-self-critical and pompous. More eager
+than other Western minds to solve the mystery of existence, less
+sceptical of the power of human reason, and therefore more inclined to
+ignore or argue away recalcitrant facts, the Germans were courageous
+systematizes. In this direction they had achieved great things. Without
+them, European thought would have been chaotic. But their passion for
+order and for a systematic reality behind the disorderly appearances,
+rendered their reasoning all too often biased. Upon shifty foundations
+they balanced ingenious ladders to reach the stars. Thus, without
+constant ribald criticism from across the Rhine and the North Sea, the
+Teutonic soul could not achieve full self-expression. A vague uneasiness
+about its own sentimentalism and lack of detachment did indeed persuade
+this great people to assert its virility now and again by ludicrous acts
+of brutality, and to compensate for its dream life by ceaseless
+hard-driven and brilliantly successful commerce; but what was needed was
+a far more radical self-criticism.
+
+Beyond Germany, Russia. Here was a people whose genius needed, even more
+than that of the Germans, discipline under the critical intelligence.
+Since the Bolshevik revolution, there had risen in the scattered towns
+of this immense tract of corn and forest, and still more in the
+metropolis, an original mode of art and thought, in which were blended a
+passion for iconoclasm, a vivid sensuousness, and yet also a very
+remarkable and essentially mystical or intuitive power of detachment
+from all private cravings. America and Western Europe were interested
+first in the individual human life, and only secondarily in the social
+whole. For these peoples loyalty involved a reluctant self-sacrifice,
+and the ideal was ever a person, excelling in prowess of various kinds.
+Society was but the necessary matrix of this jewel. But the Russians,
+whether by an innate gift, or through the influence of age-long
+political tyranny, religious devotion, and a truly social revolution,
+were prone to self-contemptuous interest in groups, prone, indeed, to a
+spontaneous worship of whatever was conceived as loftier than the
+individual man whether society, or God, or the blind forces of nature.
+Western Europe could reach by way of the intellect a precise conception
+of man’s littleness and irrelevance when regarded as an alien among the
+stars; could even glimpse from this standpoint the cosmic theme in which
+all human striving is but one contributory factor. But the Russian mind,
+whether orthodox or Tolstoyan or fanatically materialist, could attain
+much the same conviction intuitively, by direct perception, instead of
+after an arduous intellectual pilgrimage; and, reaching it, could
+rejoice in it. But because of this independence of intellect, the
+experience was confused, erratic, frequently misinterpreted; and its
+effect on conduct was rather explosive than directive. Great indeed was
+the need that the West and East of Europe should strengthen and temper
+one another.
+
+After the Bolshevik revolution a new element appeared in Russian
+culture, and one which had not been known before in any modern state.
+The old regime was displaced by a real proletarian government, which,
+though an oligarchy, and sometimes bloody and fanatical, abolished the
+old tyranny of class, and encouraged the humblest citizen to be proud of
+his partnership in the great community. Still more important, the native
+Russian disposition not to take material possessions very seriously
+cooperated with the political revolution, and brought about such a
+freedom from the snobbery of wealth as was quite foreign to the West.
+Attention which elsewhere was absorbed in the amassing or display of
+money was in Russia largely devoted either to spontaneous instinctive
+enjoyments or to cultural activity.
+
+In fact, it was among the Russian townsfolk, less cramped by tradition
+than other city-dwellers, that the spirit of the First Men was beginning
+to achieve a fresh and sincere readjustment to the facts of its changing
+world. And from the townsfolk something of the new way of life was
+spreading even to the peasants; while in the depths of Asia a hardy and
+ever-growing population looked increasingly to Russia, not only for
+machinery, but for ideas. There were times when it seemed that Russia
+might transform the almost universal autumn of the race into a new
+spring.
+
+After the Bolshevik revolution the new Russia had been boycotted by the
+West, and had therefore passed through a stage of self-conscious
+extravagance. Communism and naïve materialism became the dogmas of a new
+crusading atheist church. All criticism was suppressed, even more
+rigorously than was the opposite criticism in other countries; and
+Russians were taught to think of themselves as saviours of mankind.
+Later, however, as economic isolation began to hamper the Bolshevik
+state, the new culture was mellowed and broadened. Bit by bit, economic
+intercourse with the West was restored, and with it cultural intercourse
+increased. The intuitive mystical detachment of Russia began to define
+itself, and so consolidate itself, in terms of the intellectual
+detachment of the best thought of the West. Iconoclasm was harnessed.
+The life of the senses and of impulse was tempered by a new critical
+movement. Fanatical materialism, whose fire had been derived from a
+misinterpreted, but intense, mystical intuition of dispassionate
+Reality, began to assimilate itself to the far more rational stoicism
+which was the rare flower of the West. At the same time, through
+intercourse with peasant culture and with the peoples of Asia, the new
+Russia began to grasp in one unifying act of apprehension both the grave
+disillusion of France and England and the ecstasy of the East.
+
+The harmonizing of these two moods was now the chief spiritual need of
+mankind. Failure to integrate them into an all-dominant sentiment could
+not but lead to racial insanity. And so in due course it befell.
+Meanwhile this task of integration was coming to seem more and more
+urgent to the best minds of Russia, and might have been finally
+accomplished had they been longer illumined by the cold light of the
+West.
+
+But this was not to be. The intellectual confidence of France and
+England, already shaken through progressive economic eclipse at the
+hands of America and Germany, was now undermined. For many decades
+England had watched these newcomers capture her markets. The loss had
+smothered her with a swarm of domestic problems, such as could never be
+solved save by drastic surgery; and this was a course which demanded
+more courage and energy than was possible to a people without hope. Then
+came the war with France, and harrowing disintegration. No delirium
+seized her, such as occurred in France; yet her whole mentality was
+changed, and her sobering influence in Europe was lessened.
+
+As for France, her cultural life was now grievously reduced. It might,
+indeed, have recovered from the final blow, had it not already been
+slowly poisoned by gluttonous nationalism. For love of France was the
+undoing of the French. They prized the truly admirable spirit of France
+so extravagantly that they regarded all other nations as barbarians.
+
+Thus it befell that in Russia the doctrines of communism and
+materialism, products of German systematists, survived uncriticized. On
+the other hand, the practice of communism was gradually undermined. For
+the Russian state came increasingly under the influence of Western, and
+especially American, finance. The materialism of the official creed also
+became a farce, for it was foreign to the Russian mind. Thus between
+practice and theory there was, in both respects, a profound
+inconsistency. What was once a vital and promising culture became
+insincere.
+
+
+                        4. THE RUSSO-GERMAN WAR
+
+The discrepancy between communist theory and individualist practice in
+Russia was one cause of the next disaster which befell Europe. Between
+Russia and Germany there should have been close partnership, based on
+interchange of machinery and corn. But the theory of communism stood in
+the way, and in a strange manner. Russian industrial organization had
+proved impossible without American capital; and little by little this
+influence had transformed the communistic system. From the Baltic to the
+Himalayas and the Bering Straits, pasture, timberlands, machine-tilled
+corn-lands, oil-fields, and a spreading rash of industrial towns, were
+increasingly dependent on American finance and organization. Yet not
+America but the far less individualistic Germany had become in the
+Russian mind the symbol of capitalism. Self-righteous hate of Germany
+compensated Russia for her own betrayal of the communistic ideal. This
+perverse antagonism was encouraged by the Americans; who, strong in
+their own individualism and prosperity, and by now contemptuously
+tolerant of Russian doctrines, were concerned only to keep Russian
+finance to themselves. In truth, of course, it was America that had
+helped Russia’s self-betrayal; and it was the spirit of America that was
+most alien to the Russian spirit. But American wealth was by now
+indispensable to Russia; so the hate due to America had to be borne
+vicariously by Germany.
+
+The Germans, for their part, were aggrieved that the Americans had
+ousted them from a most profitable field of enterprise, and in
+particular from the exploitation of Russian Asiatic oil. The economic
+life of the human race had for some time been based on coal, but
+latterly oil had been found a far more convenient source of power, and
+as the oil store of the planet was much smaller than its coal store, and
+the expenditure of oil had of course been wholly uncontrolled and
+wasteful, a shortage was already being felt. Thus the national ownership
+of the remaining oil-fields had become a main factor in politics and a
+fertile source of wars. America, having used up most of her own
+supplies, was now anxious to compete with the still prolific sources
+under Chinese control, by forestalling Germany in Russia. No wonder the
+Germans were aggrieved. But the fault was their own. In the days when
+Russian communism had been seeking to convert the world, Germany had
+taken over England’s leadership of individualistic Europe. While greedy
+for trade with Russia, she had been at the same time frightened of
+contamination by Russian social doctrine, the more so because communism
+had at first made some headway among the German workers. Later, even
+when sane industrial reorganization in Germany had deprived communism of
+its appeal to the workers, and thus had rendered it impotent, the habit
+of anti-communist vituperation persisted.
+
+Thus the peace of Europe was in constant danger from the bickerings of
+two peoples who differed rather in ideals than in practice. For the one,
+in theory communistic, had been forced to delegate many of the
+community’s rights to enterprising individuals; while the other, in
+theory organized on a basis of private business, was becoming ever more
+socialized.
+
+Neither party desired war. Neither was interested in military glory, for
+militarism as an end was no longer reputable. Neither was professedly
+nationalistic, for nationalism, though still potent, was no longer
+vaunted. Each claimed to stand for internationalism and peace, but
+accused the other of narrow patriotism. Thus Europe, though more pacific
+than ever before, was doomed to war.
+
+Like most wars, the Anglo-French War had increased the desire for peace,
+yet made peace less secure. Distrust, not merely the old distrust of
+nation for nation, but a devastating distrust of human nature, gripped
+men like the dread of insanity. Individuals who thought of themselves as
+wholehearted Europeans, feared that at any moment they might succumb to
+some ridiculous epidemic of patriotism, and participate in the further
+crippling of Europe.
+
+This dread was one cause of the formation of a European Confederacy, in
+which all the nations of Europe, save Russia, surrendered their
+sovereignty to a common authority and actually pooled their armaments.
+Ostensibly the motive of this act was peace; but America interpreted it
+as directed against herself, and withdrew from the League of Nations.
+China, the ‘natural enemy’ of America, remained within the League,
+hoping to use it against her rival.
+
+From without, indeed, the Confederacy at first appeared as a close-knit
+whole: but from within it was known to be insecure, and in every serious
+crisis it broke. There is no need to follow the many minor wars of this
+period, though their cumulative effect was serious, both economically
+and psychologically. Europe did at last, however, become something like
+a single nation in sentiment, though this unity was brought about less
+by a common loyalty than by a common fear of America.
+
+Final consolidation was the fruit of the Russo-German War, the cause of
+which was partly economic and partly sentimental. All the peoples of
+Europe had long watched with horror the financial conquest of Russia by
+the United States, and they dreaded that they also must presently
+succumb to the same tyrant. To attack Russia, it was thought, would be
+to wound America in her only vulnerable spot. But the actual occasion of
+the war was sentimental. Half a century after the Anglo-French War, a
+second-rate German author published a typically German book of the baser
+sort. For as each nation had its characteristic virtues, so also each
+was prone to characteristic follies. This book was one of those
+brilliant but extravagant works in which the whole diversity of
+existence is interpreted under a single formula, with extreme detail and
+plausibility, yet with amazing _naïvéte_. Highly astute within its own
+artificial universe, it was none the less in wider regard quite
+uncritical. In two large volumes the author claimed that the cosmos was
+a dualism in which a heroic and obviously Nordic spirit ruled by divine
+right over an un-self-disciplined, yet servile and obviously Slavonic
+spirit. The whole of history, and of evolution, was interpreted on this
+principle; and of the contemporary world it was said that the Slavonic
+element was poisoning Europe. One phrase in particular caused fury in
+Moscow, ‘the anthropoid face of the Russian subman’.
+
+Moscow demanded apology and suppression of the book. Berlin regretted
+the insult but with its tongue in its cheek; and insisted on the freedom
+of the press. Followed a crescendo of radio hate, and war.
+
+The details of this war do not matter to one intent upon the history of
+mind in the Solar System, but its result was important. Moscow,
+Leningrad and Berlin were shattered from the air. The whole West of
+Russia was flooded with the latest and deadliest poison gas, so that not
+only was all animal and vegetable life destroyed, but also the soil
+between the Black Sea and the Baltic was rendered infertile and
+uninhabitable for many years. Within a week the war was over, for the
+reason that the combatants were separated by an immense territory in
+which life could not exist. But the effects of the war were lasting. The
+Germans had set going a process which they could not stop. Whiffs of the
+poison continued to be blown by fickle winds into every country of
+Europe and Western Asia. It was spring-time; but save in the Atlantic
+coast-lands the spring flowers shrivelled in the bud, and every young
+leaf had a withered rim. Humanity also suffered; though, save in the
+regions near the seat of war, it was in general only the children and
+the old people who suffered greatly. The poison spread across the
+Continent in huge blown tresses, broad as principalities, swinging with
+each change of wind. And wherever it strayed, young eyes, throats, and
+lungs were blighted like the leaves.
+
+America, after much debate, had at last decided to defend her interests
+in Russia by a punitive expedition against Europe. China began to
+mobilize her forces. But long before America was ready to strike, news
+of the widespread poisoning changed her policy. Instead of punishment,
+help was given. This was a fine gesture of good will. But also, as was
+observed in Europe, instead of being costly, it was profitable; for
+inevitably it brought more of Europe under American financial control.
+
+The upshot of the Russo-German war, then, was that Europe was unified in
+sentiment by hatred of America, and that European mentality definitely
+deteriorated. This was due in part to the emotional influence of the war
+itself, partly to the socially damaging effects of the poison. A
+proportion of the rising generation had been rendered sickly for life.
+During the thirty years which intervened before the Euro-American war,
+Europe was burdened with an exceptional weight of invalids. First-class
+intelligence was on the whole rarer than before, and was more strictly
+concentrated on the practical work of reconstruction.
+
+Even more disastrous for the human race was the fact that the recent
+Russian cultural enterprise of harmonizing Western intellectualism and
+Eastern mysticism was now wrecked.
+
+
+
+
+                         II _Europe’s Downfall_
+
+
+                         1. EUROPE AND AMERICA
+
+Over the heads of the European tribes two mightier peoples regarded each
+other with increasing dislike. Well might they; for the one cherished
+the most ancient and refined of all surviving cultures, while the other,
+youngest and most self-confident of the great nations, proclaimed her
+novel spirit as the spirit of the future.
+
+In the Far East, China, already half American, though largely Russian
+and wholly Eastern, patiently improved her rice lands, pushed forward
+her railways, organized her industries, and spoke fair to all the world.
+Long ago, during her attainment of unity and independence, China had
+learnt much from militant Bolshevism. And after the collapse of the
+Russian state it was in the East that Russian culture continued to live.
+Its mysticism influenced India. Its social ideal influenced China. Not
+indeed that China took over the theory, still less the practice of
+communism; but she learnt to entrust herself increasingly to a vigorous,
+devoted, and despotic party, and to feel in terms of the social whole
+rather than individualistically. Yet she was honeycombed with
+individualism, and in spite of her rulers she had precipitated a
+submerged and desperate class of wage-slaves.
+
+In the Far West, the United States of America openly claimed to be
+custodians of the whole planet. Universally feared and envied,
+universally respected for their enterprise, yet for their complacency
+very widely despised, the Americans were rapidly changing the whole
+character of man’s existence. By this time every human being throughout
+the planet made use of American products, and there was no region where
+American capital did not support local labour. Moreover the American
+press, gramophone, radio, cinematograph, and televisor ceaselessly
+drenched the planet with American thought. Year by year the ether
+reverberated with echoes of New York’s pleasures and the religious
+fervours of the Middle West. What wonder, then, that America, even while
+she was despised, irresistibly moulded the whole human race. This,
+perhaps, would not have mattered, had America been able to give of her
+very rare best. But inevitably only her worst could be propagated. Only
+the most vulgar traits of that potentially great people could get
+through into the minds of foreigners by means of these crude
+instruments. And so, by the floods of poison issuing from this people’s
+baser members, the whole world, and with it the nobler parts of America
+herself, were irrevocably corrupted.
+
+For the best of America was too weak to withstand the worst. Americans
+had indeed contributed amply to human thought. They had helped to
+emancipate philosophy from ancient fetters. They had served science by
+lavish and rigorous research. In astronomy, favoured by their costly
+instruments and clear atmosphere, they had done much to reveal the
+dispositions of the stars and galaxies. In literature, though often they
+behaved as barbarians, they had also conceived new modes of expression,
+and moods of thought not easily appreciated in Europe. They had also
+created a new and brilliant architecture. And their genius for
+organization worked upon a scale that was scarcely conceivable, let
+alone practicable, to other peoples. In fact their best minds faced old
+problems of theory and of valuation with a fresh innocence and courage,
+so that fogs of superstition were cleared away wherever these choice
+Americans were present. But these best were after all a minority in a
+huge wilderness of opinionated self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly, an
+outworn religious dogma was championed with the intolerant optimism of
+youth. For this was essentially a race of bright, but arrested,
+adolescents. Something lacked which should have enabled them to grow up.
+One who looks back across the aeons to this remote people can see their
+fate already woven of their circumstance and their disposition, and can
+appreciate the grim jest that these, who seemed to themselves gifted to
+rejuvenate the planet, should have plunged it, inevitably, through
+spiritual desolation into senility and age-long night.
+
+Inevitably. Yet here was a people of unique promise, gifted innately
+beyond all other peoples. Here was a race brewed of all the races, and
+mentally more effervescent than any. Here were intermingled Anglo-Saxon
+stubbornness, Teutonic genius for detail and systematization, Italian
+gaiety, the intense fire of Spain, and the more mobile Celtic flame.
+Here also was the sensitive and stormy Slav, a youth-giving Negroid
+infusion, a faint but subtly stimulating trace of the Red Man, and in
+the West a sprinkling of the Mongol. Mutual intolerance no doubt
+isolated these diverse stocks to some degree; yet the whole was
+increasingly one people, proud of its individuality, of its success, of
+its idealistic mission in the world, proud also of its optimistic and
+anthropocentric view of the universe. What might not this energy have
+achieved, had it been more critically controlled, had it been forced to
+attend to life’s more forbidding aspects! Direct tragic experience might
+perhaps have opened the hearts of this people. Intercourse with a more
+mature culture might have refined their intelligence. But the very
+success which had intoxicated them rendered them also too complacent to
+learn from less prosperous competitors.
+
+Yet there was a moment when this insularity promised to wane. So long as
+England was a serious economic rival, America inevitably regarded her
+with suspicion. But when England was seen to be definitely in economic
+decline, yet culturally still at her zenith, America conceived a more
+generous interest in the last and severest phase of English thought.
+Eminent Americans themselves began to whisper that perhaps their
+unrivalled prosperity was not after all good evidence either of their
+own spiritual greatness or of the moral rectitude of the universe. A
+minute but persistent school of writers began to affirm that America
+lacked self-criticism, was incapable of seeing the joke against herself,
+was in fact wholly devoid of that detachment and resignation which was
+the finest, though of course the rarest mood of latter-day England. This
+movement might well have infused throughout the American people that
+which was needed to temper their barbarian egotism, and open their ears
+once more to the silence beyond man’s strident sphere. Once more, for
+only latterly had they been seriously deafened by the din of their own
+material success. And indeed, scattered over the continent throughout
+this whole period, many shrinking islands of true culture contrived to
+keep their heads above the rising tide of vulgarity and superstition.
+These it was that had looked to Europe for help, and were attempting a
+rally when England and France blundered into that orgy of emotionalism
+and murder which exterminated so many of their best minds and
+permanently weakened their cultural influence.
+
+Subsequently it was Germany that spoke for Europe. And Germany was too
+serious an economic rival for America to be open to her influence.
+Moreover German criticism, though often emphatic, was too heavily
+pedantic, too little ironical, to pierce the hide of American
+complacency. Thus it was that America sank further and further into
+Americanism. Vast wealth and industry, and also brilliant invention,
+were concentrated upon puerile ends. In particular the whole of American
+life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that
+phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last
+phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who
+remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves
+with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by
+identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their
+American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their
+government. Those who achieved power were satisfied so long as they
+could merely retain it, and advertise it uncritically in the
+conventionally self-assertive manner.
+
+It was almost inevitable that when Europe had recovered from the
+Russo-German disaster she should come to blows with America; for she had
+long chafed under the saddle of American finance, and the daily life of
+Europeans had become more and more cramped by the presence of a
+widespread and contemptuous foreign ‘aristocracy’ of American business
+men. Germany alone was comparatively free from this domination, for
+Germany was herself still a great economic power. But in Germany, no
+less than elsewhere, there was constant friction with the Americans.
+
+Of course neither Europe nor America desired war. Each was well aware
+that war would mean the end of business prosperity, and for Europe very
+possibly the end of all things; for it was known that man’s power of
+destruction had recently increased, and that if war were waged
+relentlessly, the stronger side might exterminate the other. But
+inevitably an ‘incident’ at last occurred which roused blind rage on
+each side of the Atlantic. A murder in South Italy, a few ill-considered
+remarks in the European Press, offensive retaliation in the American
+Press accompanied by the lynching of an Italian in the Middle West, an
+uncontrollable massacre of American citizens in Rome, the despatch of an
+American air fleet to occupy Italy, interception by the European air
+fleet, and war was in existence before ever it had been declared. This
+aerial action resulted, perhaps unfortunately for Europe, in a momentary
+check to the American advance. The enemy was put on his mettle, and
+prepared a crushing blow.
+
+
+                      2. THE ORIGINS OF A MYSTERY
+
+While the Americans were mobilizing their whole armament there occurred
+the really interesting event of the war. It so happened that an
+international society of scientific workers was meeting in England at
+Plymouth, and a young Chinese physicist had expressed his desire to make
+a report to a select committee. As he had been experimenting to find
+means for the utilization of subatomic energy by the annihilation of
+matter, it was with some excitement that, according to instruction, the
+forty international representatives travelled to the north coast of
+Devon and met upon the bare headland called Hartland Point.
+
+It was a bright morning after rain. Eleven miles to the north-west, the
+cliffs of Lundy Island displayed their markings with unusual detail.
+Sea-birds wheeled about the heads of the party as they seated themselves
+on their raincoats in a cluster upon the rabbit-cropped turf.
+
+They were a remarkable company, each one of them a unique person, yet
+characterized to some extent by his particular national type. And all
+were distinctively ‘scientists’ of the period. Formerly this would have
+implied a rather uncritical leaning towards materialism, and an
+affectation of cynicism; but by now it was fashionable to profess an
+equally uncritical belief that all natural phenomena were manifestations
+of the cosmic mind. In both periods, when a man passed beyond the sphere
+of his own serious scientific work he chose his beliefs irresponsibly,
+according to his taste, much as he chose his recreation or his food.
+
+Of the individuals present we may single out one or two for notice. The
+German, an anthropologist, and a product of the long-established cult of
+physical and mental health, sought to display in his own athletic person
+the characters proper to Nordic man. The Frenchman, an old but still
+sparkling psychologist, whose queer hobby was the collecting of weapons,
+ancient and modern, regarded the proceedings with kindly cynicism. The
+Englishman, one of the few remaining intellectuals of his race,
+compensated for the severe study of physics by a scarcely less devoted
+research into the history of English expletives and slang, delighting to
+treat his colleagues to the fruits of his toil. The West African
+president of the Society was a biologist, famous for his interbreeding
+of man and ape.
+
+When all were settled, the President explained the purpose of the
+meeting. The utilization of subatomic energy had indeed been achieved,
+and they were to be given a demonstration.
+
+The young Mongol stood up, and produced from a case an instrument rather
+like the old-fashioned rifle. Displaying this object, he spoke as
+follows, with that quaintly stilted formality which had once been
+characteristic of all educated Chinese. ‘Before describing the details
+of my rather delicate process, I will illustrate its importance by
+showing what can be done with the finished product. Not only can I
+initiate the annihilation of matter, but also I can do so at a distance
+and in a precise direction. Moreover, I can inhibit the process. As a
+means of destruction, my instrument is perfect. As a source of power for
+the constructive work of mankind, it has unlimited potentiality.
+Gentlemen, this is a great moment in the history of Man. I am about to
+render into the hands of organized intelligence the means to stop for
+ever man’s internecine brawls. Henceforth this great Society, of which
+you are the _élite_, will beneficently rule the planet. With this little
+instrument you will stop the ridiculous war; and with another, which I
+shall soon perfect, you will dispense unlimited industrial power
+wherever you consider it needed. Gentlemen, with the aid of this handy
+instrument which I have the honour to demonstrate, you are about to
+become absolute masters of this planet.’
+
+Here the representative of England muttered an archaism whose
+significance was known only to himself, ‘Gawd ’elp us!’ In the minds of
+some of those foreigners who were not physicists this quaint expression
+was taken to be a technical word having some connexion with the new
+source of energy.
+
+The Mongol continued. Turning towards Lundy, he said, ‘That island is no
+longer inhabited, and as it is something of a danger to shipping, I will
+remove it.’ So saying he aimed his instrument at the distant cliff, but
+continued speaking. ‘This trigger will stimulate the ultimate positive
+and negative charges which constitute the atoms at a certain point on
+the rock-face to annihilate each other. These stimulated atoms will
+infect their neighbours, and so on indefinitely. This second trigger,
+however, will stop the actual annihilation. Were I to refrain from using
+it, the process would indeed continue indefinitely, perhaps until the
+whole of the planet had disintegrated.’
+
+There was an anxious movement among the spectators, but the young man
+took careful aim, and pressed the two triggers in quick succession. No
+sound from the instrument. No visible effect upon the smiling face of
+the island. Laughter began to gurgle from the Englishman, but ceased.
+For a dazzling point of light appeared on the remote cliff. It increased
+in size and brilliance, till all eyes were blinded in the effort to
+continue watching. It lit up the under parts of the clouds and blotted
+out the sun-cast shadows of gorse bushes beside the spectators. The
+whole end of the island facing the mainland was now an intolerable
+scorching sun. Presently, however, its fury was veiled in clouds of
+steam from the boiling sea. Then suddenly the whole island, three miles
+of solid granite, leapt asunder; so that a covey of great rocks soared
+heavenwards, and beneath them swelled more slowly a gigantic mushroom of
+steam and debris. Then the sound arrived. All hands were clapped to
+ears, while eyes still strained to watch the bay, pocked white with the
+hail of rocks. Meanwhile a great wall of sea advanced from the centre of
+turmoil. This was seen to engulf a coasting vessel, and pass on towards
+Bideford and Barnstaple.
+
+The spectators leaped to their feet and clamoured, while the young
+author of this fury watched the spectacle with exultation, and some
+surprise at the magnitude of these mere after-effects of his process.
+
+The meeting was now adjourned to a neighbouring chapel to hear the
+report of the research. As the representatives were filing through the
+door it was observed that the steam and smoke had cleared, and that open
+sea extended where had been Lundy. Within the chapel, the great Bible
+was decorously removed and the windows thrown open, to dispel somewhat
+the odour of sanctity. For though the early and spiritual
+interpretations of relativity and the quantum theory had by now
+accustomed men of science to pay their respects to the religions, many
+of them were still liable to a certain asphyxia when they were actually
+within the precincts of sanctity. When the scientists had settled
+themselves upon the archaic and unyielding benches, the President
+explained that the chapel authorities had kindly permitted this meeting
+because they realized that, since men of science had gradually
+discovered the spiritual foundation of physics, science and religion
+must henceforth be close allies. Moreover the purpose of this meeting
+was to discuss one of those supreme mysteries which it was the glory of
+science to discover and religion to transfigure. The President then
+complimented the young dispenser of power upon his triumph, and called
+upon him to address the meeting.
+
+At this point, however, the aged representative of France intervened,
+and was granted a hearing. Born almost a hundred and forty years
+earlier, and preserved more by native intensity of spirit than by the
+artifices of the regenerator, this ancient seemed to speak out of a
+remote and wiser epoch. For in a declining civilization it is often the
+old who see furthest and see with youngest eyes. He concluded a rather
+long, rhetorical, yet closely reasoned speech as follows: ‘No doubt we
+are the intelligence of the planet; and because of our consecration to
+our calling, no doubt we are comparatively honest. But alas, even we are
+human. We make little mistakes now and then, and commit little
+indiscretions. The possession of such power as is offered us would not
+bring peace. On the contrary it would perpetuate our national hates. It
+would throw the world into confusion. It would undermine our own
+integrity, and turn us into tyrants. Moreover it would ruin science.
+And—well, when at last through some little error the world got blown
+up, the disaster would not be regrettable. I know that Europe is almost
+certainly about to be destroyed by those vigorous but rather spoilt
+children across the Atlantic. But distressing as this must be, the
+alternative is far worse. No, Sir! Your very wonderful toy would be a
+gift for developed minds; but for us, who are still barbarians—no, it
+must not be. And so, with deep regret I beg you to destroy your
+handiwork, and, if it were possible, your memory of your marvellous
+research. But above all breathe no word of your process to us, or to any
+man.’
+
+The German then protested that to refuse would be cowardly. He briefly
+described his vision of a world organized under organized science, and
+inspired by a scientifically organized religious dogma. ‘Surely,’ he
+said, ‘to refuse were to refuse the gift of God, of that God whose
+presence in the humblest quantum we have so recently and so surprisingly
+revealed.’ Other speakers followed, for and against; but it soon grew
+clear that wisdom would prevail. Men of science were by now definitely
+cosmopolitan in sentiment. Indeed so far were they from nationalism,
+that on this occasion the representative of America had urged acceptance
+of the weapon, although it would be used against his own countrymen.
+
+Finally, however, and actually by a unanimous vote, the meeting, while
+recording its deep respect for the Chinese scientists, requested, nay
+ordered, that the instrument and all account of it should be destroyed.
+
+The young man rose, drew his handiwork from its case, and fingered it.
+So long did he remain thus standing in silence with eyes fixed on the
+instrument, that the meeting became restless. At last, however, he
+spoke. ‘I shall abide by the decision of the meeting. Well, it is hard
+to destroy the fruit of ten years’ work, and such fruit, too. I expected
+to have the gratitude of mankind; but instead I am an outcast.’ Once
+more he paused. Gazing out of the window, he now drew from his pocket a
+field-glass, and studied the western sky. ‘Yes, they are American.
+Gentlemen, the American air fleet approaches.’
+
+The company leapt to its feet and crowded to the windows. High in the
+west a sparse line of dots stretched indefinitely into the north and the
+south. Said the Englishman, ‘For God’s sake use your damned tool once
+more, or England’s done. They must have smashed our fellows over the
+Atlantic.’
+
+The Chinese scientist turned his eyes on the President. There was a
+general cry of ‘Stop them’. Only the Frenchman protested. The
+representative of the United States raised his voice and said, ‘They are
+my people, I have friends up there in the sky. My own boy is probably
+there. But they’re mad. They want to do something hideous. They’re in
+the lynching mood. Stop them.’ The Mongol still gazed at the President,
+who nodded. The Frenchman broke down in senile tears. Then the young
+man, leaning upon the window sill, took careful aim at each black dot in
+turn. One by one, each became a blinding star, then vanished. In the
+chapel, a long silence. Then whispers; and glances at the Chinese
+scientist, expressive of anxiety and dislike.
+
+There followed a hurried ceremony in a neighbouring field. A fire was
+lit. The instrument and the no less murderous manuscript were burnt. And
+then the grave young Mongol, having insisted on shaking hands all round,
+said, ‘With my secret alive in me, I must not live. Some day a more
+worthy race will rediscover it, but today I am a danger to the planet.
+And so I, who have foolishly ignored that I live among savages, help
+myself now by the ancient wisdom to pass hence.’ So saying, he fell
+dead.
+
+
+                           3. EUROPE MURDERED
+
+Rumour spread by voice and radio throughout the world. An island had
+been mysteriously exploded. The American fleet had been mysteriously
+annihilated in the air. And in the neighbourhood where these events had
+occurred, distinguished scientists were gathered in conference. The
+European Government sought out the unknown saviour of Europe, to thank
+him, and secure his process for their own use. The President of the
+scientific society gave an account of the meeting and the unanimous
+vote. He and his colleagues were promptly arrested, and ‘pressure’,
+first moral and then physical, was brought to bear on them to make them
+disclose the secret; for the world was convinced that they really knew
+it, and were holding it back for their own purposes.
+
+Meanwhile it was learnt that the American air commander, after he had
+defeated the European fleet, had been instructed merely to ‘demonstrate’
+above England while peace was negotiated. For in America, big business
+had threatened the government with boycott if unnecessary violence were
+committed in Europe. Big business was by now very largely international
+in sentiment, and it was realized that the destruction of Europe would
+inevitably unhinge American finance. But the unprecedented disaster to
+the victorious fleet roused the Americans to blind hate, and the peace
+party was submerged. Thus it turned out that the Chinese scientist’s one
+hostile act had not saved England, but doomed her.
+
+For some days Europeans lived in panic dread, knowing not what horror
+might at any moment descend on them. No wonder, then, that the
+Government resorted to torture in order to extract the secret from the
+scientists. No wonder that out of the forty individuals concerned, one,
+the Englishman, saved himself by deceit. He promised to do his best to
+’remember’ the intricate process. Under strict supervision, he used his
+own knowledge of physics to experiment in search of the Chinese trick.
+Fortunately, however, he was on the wrong scent. And indeed he knew it.
+For though his first motive was mere self-preservation, later he
+conceived the policy of indefinitely preventing the dangerous discovery
+by directing research along a blind alley. And so his treason, by
+seeming to give the authority of a most eminent physicist to a wholly
+barren line of research, saved this undisciplined and scarcely human
+race from destroying its planet.
+
+The American people, sometimes tender even to excess, were now
+collectively insane with hate of the English and of all Europeans. With
+cold efficiency they flooded Europe with the latest and deadliest of
+gases, till all the peoples were poisoned in their cities like rats in
+their holes. The gas employed was such that its potency would cease
+within three days. It was therefore possible for an American sanitary
+force to take charge of each metropolis within a week after the attack.
+Of those who first descended into the great silence of the murdered
+cities, many were unhinged by the overwhelming presence of dead
+populations. The gas had operated first upon the ground level, but,
+rising like a tide, it had engulfed the top stories, the spires, the
+hills. Thus, while in the streets lay thousands who had been overcome by
+the first waves of poison, every roof and pinnacle bore the bodies of
+those who had struggled upwards in the vain hope of escaping beyond the
+highest reach of the tide. When the invaders arrived they beheld on
+every height prostrate and contorted figures.
+
+Thus Europe died. All centres of intellectual life were blotted out, and
+of the agricultural regions only the uplands and mountains were
+untouched. The spirit of Europe lived henceforth only in a piece-meal
+and dislocated manner in the minds of Americans, Chinese, Indians, and
+the rest.
+
+There were indeed the British Colonies, but they were by now far less
+European than American. The war had, of course, disintegrated the
+British Empire. Canada sided with the United States. South Africa and
+India declared their neutrality at the outbreak of war. Australia, not
+through cowardice, but through conflict of loyalties, was soon reduced
+to neutrality. The New Zealanders took to their mountains and maintained
+an insane but heroic resistance for a year. A simple and gallant folk,
+they had almost no conception of the European spirit, yet obscurely and
+in spite of their Americanization they were loyal to it, or at least to
+that symbol of one aspect of Europeanism, ‘England’. Indeed so
+extravagantly loyal were they, or so innately dogged and opinionated,
+that when further resistance became impossible, many of them, both men
+and women, killed themselves rather than submit.
+
+But the most lasting agony of this war was suffered, not by the
+defeated, but by the victors. For when their passion had cooled the
+Americans could not easily disguise from themselves that they had
+committed murder. They were not at heart a brutal folk, but rather a
+kindly. They liked to think of the world as a place of innocent
+pleasure-seeking, and of themselves as the main purveyors of delight.
+Yet they had been somehow drawn into this fantastic crime; and
+henceforth an all-pervading sense of collective guilt warped the
+American mind. They had ever been vainglorious and intolerant; but now
+these qualities in them became extravagant even to insanity. Both as
+individuals and collectively, they became increasingly frightened of
+criticism, increasingly prone to blame and hate, increasingly
+self-righteous, increasingly hostile to the critical intelligence,
+increasingly superstitious.
+
+Thus was this once noble people singled out by the gods to be cursed,
+and the minister of curses.
+
+
+
+
+                        III _America and China_
+
+
+                             1. THE RIVALS
+
+After the eclipse of Europe, the allegiance of men gradually
+crystallized into two great national or racial sentiments, the American
+and the Chinese. Little by little all other patriotisms became mere
+local variants of one or other of these two major loyalties. At first,
+indeed, there were many internecine conflicts. A detailed history of
+this period would describe how North America, repeating the welding
+process of the ancient ‘American Civil War’, incorporated within itself
+the already Americanized Latins of South America; and how Japan, once
+the bully of young China, was so crippled by social revolutions that she
+fell a prey to American Imperialism; and how this bondage turned her
+violently Chinese in sentiment, so that finally she freed herself by an
+heroic war of independence, and joined the Asian Confederacy, under
+Chinese leadership.
+
+A full history would also tell of the vicissitudes of the League of
+Nations. Although never a cosmopolitan government, but an association of
+national governments, each concerned mainly for its own sovereignty,
+this great organization had gradually gained a very real prestige and
+authority over all its members. And in spite of its many shortcomings,
+most of which were involved in its fundamental constitution, it was
+invaluable as the great concrete focusing point of the growing loyalty
+toward humanity. At first its existence had been precarious; and indeed
+it had only preserved itself by an extreme caution, amounting almost to
+servility towards the ‘great powers’. Little by little, however, it had
+gained moral authority to such an extent that no single power, even the
+mightiest, dared openly and in cold blood either to disobey the will of
+the League or reject the findings of the High Court. But, since human
+loyalty was still in the main national rather than cosmopolitan,
+situations were all too frequent in which a nation would lose its head,
+run amok, throw its pledges to the winds, and plunge into fear-inspired
+aggression. Such a situation had produced the Anglo-French war. At other
+times the nations would burst apart into two great camps, and the League
+would be temporarily forgotten in their disunion. This happened in the
+Russo-German War, which was possible only because America favoured
+Russia and China favoured Germany. After the destruction of Europe, the
+world had for a while consisted of the League on one side and America on
+the other. But the League was dominated by China, and no longer stood
+for cosmopolitanism. This being so, those whose loyalty was genuinely
+human worked hard to bring America once more into the fold, and at last
+succeeded.
+
+In spite of the League’s failure to prevent the ‘great’ wars, it worked
+admirably in preventing all the minor conflicts which had once been a
+chronic disease of the race. Latterly, indeed, the world’s peace was
+absolutely secure, save when the League itself was almost equally
+divided. Unfortunately, with the rise of America and China, this kind of
+situation became more and more common. During the war of North and South
+America an attempt was made to recreate the League as a Cosmopolitan
+Sovereignty, controlling the pooled armaments of all nations. But,
+though the cosmopolitan will was strong, tribalism was stronger. The
+upshot was that, over the Japanese question, the League definitely split
+into two Leagues, each claiming to inherit universal sovereignty from
+the old League, but each in reality dominated by a kind of supernational
+sentiment, the one American, the other Chinese.
+
+This occurred within a century after the eclipse of Europe. The second
+century completed the process of crystallization into two systems,
+political and mental. On the one hand was the wealthy and close-knit
+American Continental Federation, with its poor relations, South Africa,
+Australia, New Zealand, the bedridden remains of Western Europe, and
+part of the soulless body that was Russia. On the other hand were Asia
+and Africa. In fact the ancient distinction between East and West had
+now become the basis of political sentiment and organization.
+
+Within each system there were of course real differences of culture, of
+which the chief was the difference between the Chinese and Indian
+mentalities. The Chinese were interested in appearances, in the sensory,
+the urbane, the practical; while the Indians inclined to seek behind
+appearances for some ultimate reality, of which this life, they said,
+was but a passing aspect. Thus the average Indian never took to heart
+the practical social problem in all its seriousness. The ideal of
+perfecting this world was never an all-absorbing interest to him; since
+he had been taught to believe that this world was mere shadow. There
+was, indeed, a time when China had mentally less in common with India
+than with the West, but fear of America had drawn the two great Eastern
+peoples together. They agreed at least in earnest hate of that strange
+blend of the commercial traveller, the missionary, and the barbarian
+conqueror, which was the American abroad.
+
+China, owing to her relative weakness and the irritation caused by the
+tentacles of American industry within her, was at this time more
+nationalistic than her rival. America, indeed, professed to have
+outgrown nationalism, and to stand for political and cultural world
+unity. But she conceived this unity as a unity under American
+organization; and by culture she meant Americanism. This kind of
+cosmopolitanism was regarded by Asia and Africa without sympathy. In
+China a concerted effort had been made to purge the foreign element from
+her culture. Its success, however, was only superficial. Pigtails and
+chopsticks had once more come into vogue among the leisured, and the
+study of Chinese classics was once more compulsory in all schools. Yet
+the manner of life of the average man remained American. Not only did he
+use American cutlery, shoes, gramophones, domestic labour-saving
+devices, but also his alphabet was European, his vocabulary was
+permeated by American slang, his newspapers and radio were American in
+manner, though anti-American in politics. He saw daily on his domestic
+television screen every phase of American private life and every
+American public event. Instead of opium and joss sticks, he affected
+cigarettes and chewing gum.
+
+His thought also was largely a Mongolian variant of American thought.
+For instance, since his was a non-metaphysical mind, but since also some
+kind of metaphysics is unavoidable, he accepted the naïvely
+materialistic metaphysics which had been popularized by the earliest
+Behaviourists. In this view the only reality was physical energy, and
+the mind was but the system of the body’s movements in response to
+stimulus. Behaviourism had formerly played a great part in purging the
+best Western minds of superstition; and indeed at one time it was the
+chief growing point of thought.
+
+This early, pregnant, though extravagant, doctrine it was that had been
+absorbed by China. But in its native land Behaviourism had gradually
+been infected by the popular demand for comfortable ideas, and had
+finally changed into a curious kind of spiritism, according to which,
+though the ultimate reality was indeed physical energy, this energy was
+identified with the divine spirit. The most dramatic feature of American
+thought in this period was the merging of Behaviourism and
+Fundamentalism, a belated and degenerate mode of Christianity.
+Behaviourism itself, indeed, had been originally a kind of inverted
+puritan faith, according to which intellectual salvation involved
+acceptance of a crude materialistic dogma, chiefly because it was
+repugnant to the self-righteous, and unintelligible to intellectuals of
+the earlier schools. The older Puritans trampled down all fleshly
+impulses; these newer Puritans trampled no less self-righteously upon
+the spiritual cravings. But in the increasingly spiritistic inclination
+of physics itself, Behaviourism and Fundamentalism had found a meeting
+place. Since the ultimate stuff of the physical universe was now said to
+be multitudinous and arbitrary ‘quanta’ of the activity of ‘spirits’,
+how easy was it for the materialistic and the spiritistic to agree! At
+heart, indeed, they were never far apart in mood, though opposed in
+doctrine. The real cleavage was between the truly spiritual view on the
+one hand, and the spiritistic and materialistic on the other. Thus the
+most materialistic of Christian sects and the most doctrinaire of
+scientific sects were not long in finding a formula to express their
+unity, their denial of all those finer capacities which had emerged to
+be the spirit of man.
+
+These two faiths were at one in their respect for crude physical
+movement. And here lay the deepest difference between the American and
+the Chinese minds. For the former, activity, any sort of activity, was
+an end in itself; for the latter, activity was but a progress toward the
+true end, which was rest, and peace of mind. Action was to be undertaken
+only when equilibrium was disturbed. And in this respect China was at
+one with India. Both preferred contemplation to action.
+
+Thus in China and India the passion for wealth was less potent than in
+America. Wealth was the power to set things and people in motion; and in
+America, therefore, wealth came to be frankly regarded as the breath of
+God, the divine spirit immanent in man. God was the supreme Boss, the
+universal Employer. His wisdom was conceived as a stupendous efficiency,
+his love as munificence towards his employees. The parable of the
+talents was made the corner-stone of education; and to be wealthy,
+therefore, was to be respected as one of God’s chief agents. The typical
+American man of big business was one who, in the midst of a show of
+luxury, was at heart ascetic. He valued his splendour only because it
+advertised to all men that he was of the elect. The typical Chinese
+wealthy man was one who savoured his luxury with a delicate and
+lingering palate, and was seldom tempted to sacrifice it to the barren
+lust of power.
+
+On the other hand, since American culture was wholly concerned with the
+values of the individual life, it was more sensitive than the Chinese
+with regard to the well-being of humble individuals. Therefore
+industrial conditions were far better under American than under Chinese
+capitalism. And in China both kinds of capitalism existed side by side.
+There were American factories in which the Chinese operatives thrived on
+the American system, and there were Chinese factories in which the
+operatives were by comparison abject wage-slaves. The fact that many
+Chinese industrial workers could not afford to keep a motor-car, let
+alone an aeroplane, was a source of much self-righteous indignation
+amongst American employers. And the fact that this fact did not cause a
+revolution in China, and that Chinese employers were able to procure
+plenty of labour in spite of the better conditions in American
+factories, was a source of perplexity. But in truth what the average
+Chinese worker wanted was not symbolical self-assertion through the
+control of privately owned machines, but security of life, and
+irresponsible leisure. In the earlier phase of ‘modern’ China there had
+indeed been serious explosions of class hatred. Almost every one of the
+great Chinese industrial centres had, at some point in its career,
+massacred its employers, and declared itself an independent communist
+city-state. But communism was alien to China, and none of these
+experiments was permanently successful. Latterly, when the rule of the
+Nationalist Party had become secure, and the worst industrial evils had
+been abolished, class feeling had given place to a patriotic loathing of
+American interference and American hustle, and those who worked under
+American employers were often called traitors.
+
+The Nationalist Party was not, indeed, the soul of China; but it was, so
+to speak, the central nervous system, within which the soul presided as
+a controlling principle. The Party was an intensely practical yet
+idealistic organization, half civil service, half religious order,
+though violently opposed to every kind of religion. Modelled originally
+on the Bolshevik Party of Russia, it had also drawn inspiration from the
+native and literary civil service of old China, and even from the
+tradition of administrative integrity which had been the best, the sole,
+contribution of British Imperialism to the East. Thus, by a route of its
+own, the Party had approached the ideal of the Platonic governors. In
+order to be admitted to the Party, it was necessary to do two things, to
+pass a very strict written examination on Western and Chinese social
+theory, and to come through a five years apprenticeship in actual
+administrative work. Outside the Party, China was still extremely
+corrupt; for peculation and nepotism were not censured, so long as they
+were kept decently hidden. But the Party set a brilliant example of
+self-oblivious devotion; and this unheard-of honesty was one source of
+its power. It was universally recognized that the party man was
+genuinely interested in social rather than private matters; and
+consequently he was trusted. The supreme object of his loyalty was not
+the Party, but China, not indeed the mass of Chinese individuals, whom
+he regarded with almost the same nonchalance as he regarded himself, but
+the corporate unity and culture of the race.
+
+The whole executive power in China was now in the hands of members of
+the Party, and the final legislative authority was the Assembly of Party
+Delegates. Between these two institutions stood the President. Sometimes
+no more than chairman of the Executive Committee, this individual was
+now and then almost a dictator, combining in himself the attributes of
+Prime Minister, Emperor, and Pope. For the head of the Party was the
+head of the state; and like the ancient emperors, he became the
+symbolical object of ancestor worship.
+
+The Party’s policy was dominated by the Chinese respect for culture.
+Just as Western states had been all too often organized under the will
+for military prestige, so the new China was organized under the will for
+prestige of culture. For this end the American state was reviled as the
+supreme example of barbarian vulgarity; and so patriotism was drawn in
+to strengthen the cultural policy of the Party. It was boasted that,
+while indeed in America every man and woman might hope to fight a way to
+material wealth, in China every intelligent person could actually enjoy
+the cultural wealth of the race. The economic policy of the party was
+based on the principle of affording to all workers security of
+livelihood and full educational opportunity. (In American eyes, however,
+the livelihood thus secured was scarcely fit for beasts, and the
+education provided was out of date and irreligious.) The party took good
+care to gather into itself all the best of every social class, and also
+to encourage in the unintelligent masses a respect for learning, and the
+illusion that they themselves shared to some extent in the national
+culture.
+
+But in truth this culture, which the common people so venerated in their
+superiors and mimicked in their own lives, was scarcely less superficial
+than the cult of power against which it was pitted. For it was almost
+wholly a cult of social rectitude and textual learning; not so much of
+the merely literary learning which had obsessed ancient China, as of the
+vast corpus of contemporary scientific dogma, and above all of pure
+mathematics. In old days the candidate for office had to show minute but
+uncritical knowledge of classical writers; now he had to give proof of a
+no less barren agility in describing the established formulae of
+physics, biology, psychology, and more particularly of economics and
+social theory. And though never encouraged to puzzle over the
+philosophical basis of mathematics, he was expected to be familiar with
+the intricacy of at least one branch of that vast game of skill. So
+great was the mass of information forced upon the student, that he had
+no time to think of the mutual implications of the various branches of
+his knowledge.
+
+Yet there was a soul in China. And in this elusive soul of China the one
+hope of the First Men now lay. Scattered throughout the Party was a
+minority of original minds, who were its source of inspiration and the
+growing point of the human spirit in this period. Well aware of man’s
+littleness, these thinkers regarded him none the less as the crown of
+the universe. On the basis of a positivistic and rather perfunctory
+metaphysic, they built a social ideal and a theory of art. Indeed, in
+the practice and appreciation of art they saw man’s highest achievement.
+Pessimistic about the remote future of the race, and contemptuous of
+American evangelism, they accepted as the end of living the creation of
+an intricately unified pattern of human lives set in a fair environment.
+Society, the supreme work of art (so they put it), is a delicate and
+perishable texture of human intercourse. They even entertained the
+possibility that in the last resort, not only the individual’s life, but
+the whole career of the race, might be tragic, and should be valued
+according to the standards of tragic art. Contrasting their own spirit
+with that of the Americans, one of them had said, ‘America, a backward
+youth in a play-room equipped with luxury and electric power, pretends
+that his mechanical toy moves the world. China, a gentleman walking in
+his garden in the evening, admires the fragrance and the order all the
+more because in the air is the first nip of winter, and in his ear
+rumour of the irresistible barbarian.’
+
+In this attitude there was something admirable, and sorely needed at the
+time; but also there was a fatal deficiency. In its best exponents it
+rose to a detached yet fervent salutation of existence, but all too
+easily degenerated into a supine complacency, and a cult of social
+etiquette. In fact it was ever in danger of corruption through the
+inveterate Chinese habit of caring only for appearances. In some
+respects the spirit of America and the spirit of China were
+complementary, since the one was restless and the other bland, the one
+zealous and the other dispassionate, the one religious, the other
+artistic, the one superficially mystical or at least romantic, the other
+classical and rationalistic, though too easy-going for prolonged
+rigorous thought. Had they cooperated, these two mentalities might have
+achieved much. On the other hand, in both there was an identical and
+all-important lack. Neither of them was disturbed and enlightened by
+that insatiable lust for the truth, that passion for the free exercise
+of critical intelligence, the gruelling hunt for reality, which had been
+the glory of Europe and even of the earlier America, but now was no
+longer anywhere among the First Men. And, consequent on this lack,
+another disability crippled them. Both were by now without that
+irreverent wit which individuals of an earlier generation had loved to
+exercise upon one another and on themselves, and even on their most
+sacred values.
+
+In spite of this weakness, with good luck they might have triumphed.
+But, as I shall tell, the spirit of America undermined the integrity of
+China, and thereby destroyed its one chance of salvation. There befell,
+in fact, one of those disasters, half inevitable and half accidental,
+which periodically descended on the First Men, as though by the express
+will of some divinity who cared more for the excellence of his dramatic
+creation than for the sentient puppets which he had conceived for its
+enacting.
+
+
+                            2. THE CONFLICT
+
+After the Euro-American War there occurred first a century of minor
+national conflicts, and then a century of strained peace, during which
+America and China became more and more irksome to each other. At the
+close of this period the great mass of men were in theory far more
+cosmopolitan than nationalist, yet the inveterate tribal spirit lurked
+within each mind and was ever ready to take possession. The planet was
+now a delicately organized economic unit, and big business in all lands
+was emphatically contemptuous of patriotism. Indeed the whole adult
+generation of the period was consciously and without reserve
+internationalist and pacifist. Yet this logically unassailable
+conviction was undermined by a biological craving for adventurous
+living. Prolonged peace and improved social conditions had greatly
+reduced the danger and hardship of life, and there was no socially
+harmless substitute to take the place of war in exercising the primitive
+courage and anger of animals fashioned for the wild. Consciously men
+desired peace, unconsciously they still needed some such gallantry as
+war afforded. And this repressed combative disposition ever and again
+expressed itself in explosions of irrational tribalism.
+
+Inevitably a serious conflict at last occurred. As usual the cause was
+both economic and sentimental. The economic cause was the demand for
+fuel. A century earlier a very serious oil famine had so sobered the
+race that the League of Nations had been able to impose a system of
+cosmopolitan control upon the existing oil-fields, and even the coal
+fields. It had also imposed strict regulations as to the use of these
+invaluable materials. Oil in particular was only to be used for
+enterprises in which no other source of power would serve. The
+cosmopolitan control of fuel was perhaps the supreme achievement of the
+League, and it remained a fixed policy of the race long after the League
+had been superseded. Yet, by a choice irony of fate, this quite
+unusually sane policy contributed largely to the downfall of
+civilization. By means of it, as will later transpire, the end of coal
+was postponed into the period when the intelligence of the race was so
+deteriorated that it could no longer cope with such a crisis. Instead of
+adjusting itself to the novel situation, it simply collapsed.
+
+But at the time with which we are at present dealing, means had recently
+been found of profitably working the huge deposits of fuel in
+Antarctica. This vast supply unfortunately lay technically beyond the
+jurisdiction of the World Fuel Control Board. America was first in the
+field, and saw in Antarctic fuel a means for her advancement, and for
+her self-imposed duty of Americanizing the planet. China, fearful of
+Americanization, demanded that the new sources should be brought under
+the jurisdiction of the Board. For some years feeling had become
+increasingly violent on this point, and both peoples had by now relapsed
+into the crude old nationalistic mood. War began to seem almost
+inevitable.
+
+The actual occasion of conflict, however, was, as usual, an accident. A
+scandal was brought to light about child labour in certain Indian
+factories. Boys and girls under twelve were being badly sweated, and in
+their abject state their only adventure was precocious sex. The American
+Government protested, and in terms which assumed that America was the
+guardian of the world’s morals. India immediately held up the reform
+which she had begun to impose, and replied to America as to a busy-body.
+America threatened an expedition to set things right, ‘backed by the
+approval of all the morally sensitive races of the earth’. China now
+intervened to keep the peace between her rival and her partner, and
+undertook to see that the evil should be abolished, if America would
+withdraw her extravagant slanders against the Eastern conscience. But it
+was too late. An American bank in China was raided, and its manager’s
+severed head was kicked along the street. The tribes of men had once
+more smelled blood. War was declared by the West upon the East.
+
+Of the combatants, Asia, with North Africa, formed geographically the
+more compact system, but America and her dependents were economically
+more organized. At the outbreak of war neither side had any appreciable
+armament, for war had long ago been ‘outlawed’. This fact, however, made
+little difference; since the warfare of the period could be carried on
+with great effect simply by the vast swarms of civil aircraft, loaded
+with poison, high explosives, disease microbes, and the still more
+lethal ‘hypo-biological’ organisms, which contemporary science sometimes
+regarded as the simplest living matter, sometimes as the most complex
+molecules.
+
+The struggle began with violence, slackened, and dragged on for a
+quarter of a century. At the close of this period, Africa was mostly in
+the hands of America. But Egypt was an uninhabitable no-man’s land, for
+the South Africans had very successfully poisoned the sources of the
+Nile. Europe was under Chinese military rule. This was enforced by
+armies of sturdy Central-Asians, who were already beginning to wonder
+why they did not make themselves masters of China also. The Chinese
+language, with European alphabet, was taught in all schools. In England,
+however, there were no schools, and no population; for early in the war,
+an American air-base had been established in Ireland, and England had
+been repeatedly devastated. Airmen passing over what had been London,
+could still make out the lines of Oxford Street and the Strand among the
+green and grey tangle of ruins. Wild nature, once so jealously preserved
+in national ‘beauty spots’ against the incursion of urban civilization,
+now rioted over the whole island. At the other side of the world, the
+Japanese islands had been similarly devastated in the vain American
+effort to establish there an air-base from which to reach the heart of
+the enemy. So far, however, neither China nor America had been very
+seriously damaged; but recently the American biologists had devised a
+new malignant germ, more infectious and irresistible than anything
+hitherto known. Its work was to disintegrate the highest levels of the
+nervous system, and therefore to render all who were even slightly
+affected incapable of intelligent action; while a severe attack caused
+paralysis and finally death. With this weapon the American military had
+already turned one Chinese city into a bedlam; and wandering bacilli had
+got into the brains of several high officials throughout the province,
+rendering their behaviour incoherent. It was becoming the fashion to
+attribute all one’s blunders to a touch of the new microbe. Hitherto no
+effective means of resisting spread of this plague had been discovered.
+And as in the early stages of the disease the patient became restlessly
+active, undertaking interminable and objectless journeys on the
+flimsiest pretexts, it seemed probable that the ‘American madness’ would
+spread throughout China.
+
+On the whole, then, the military advantage lay definitely with the
+Americans; but economically they were perhaps the more damaged, for
+their higher standard of prosperity depended largely on foreign
+investment and foreign trade. Throughout the American continent there
+was now real poverty and serious symptoms of class war, not indeed
+between private workers and employers, but between workers and the
+autocratic military governing caste which inevitably war had created.
+Big business had at first succumbed to the patriotic fever, but had soon
+remembered that war is folly and ruinous to trade. Indeed, upon both
+sides the fervour of nationalism had lasted only a couple of years,
+after which the lust of adventure had given place to mere dread of the
+enemy. For on each side the populace had been nursed into the belief
+that its foe was diabolic. When a quarter of a century had passed since
+there had been free intercourse between the two peoples, the real mental
+difference which had always existed between them appeared to many almost
+as a difference of biological species. Thus in America the Church
+preached that no Chinaman had a soul. Satan, it was said, had tampered
+with evolution of the Chinese race when first it had emerged from the
+prehuman animal. He had contrived that it should be cunning, but wholly
+without tenderness. He had induced in it an insatiable sensuality, and
+wilful blindness towards the divine, towards that superbly masterful
+energy-for-energy’s sake which was the glory of America. Just as in a
+prehistoric era the young race of mammals had swept away the sluggish,
+brutish and demoded reptiles, so now, it was said, young soulful America
+was destined to rid the planet of the reptilian Mongol. In China, on the
+other hand, the official view was that the Americans were a typical case
+of biological retrogression. Like all parasitic organisms, they had
+thriven by specializing in one low-grade mode of behaviour at the
+expense of their higher nature; and now, ‘tape-worms of the planet’,
+they were starving out the higher capacities of the human race by their
+frantic acquisitiveness.
+
+Such were the official doctrines. But the strain of war had latterly
+produced on each side a grave distrust of its own government, and an
+emphatic will for peace at any price. The governments hated the peace
+party even more than each other, since their existence now depended on
+war. They even went so far as to inform one another of the clandestine
+operations of the pacifists, discovered by their own secret service in
+enemy territory.
+
+Thus when at last big business and the workers on each side of the
+Pacific had determined to stop the war by concerted action, it was very
+difficult for their representatives to meet.
+
+
+                     3. ON AN ISLAND IN THE PACIFIC
+
+Save for the governments, the whole human race now earnestly desired
+peace; but opinion in America was balanced between the will merely to
+effect an economic and political unification of the world, and a
+fanatical craving to impose American culture on the East. In China also
+there was a balance of the purely commercial readiness to sacrifice
+ideals for the sake of peace and prosperity, and the will to preserve
+Chinese culture. The two individuals who were to meet in secret for the
+negotiation of peace were typical of their respective races; in both of
+them the commercial and cultural motives were present, though the
+commercial was by now most often dominant.
+
+It was in the twenty-sixth year of the war that two seaplanes converged
+by night from the East and West upon an island in the Pacific, and
+settled on a secluded inlet. The moon, destined in another age to
+smother this whole equatorial region with her shattered body, now merely
+besparkled the waves. From each plane a traveller emerged, and rowed
+himself ashore in a rubber coracle. The two men met upon the beach, and
+shook hands, the one with ceremony, the other with a slightly forced
+brotherliness. Already the sun peered over the wall of the sea, shouting
+his brilliance and his heat. The Chinese, taking off his air-helmet,
+uncoiled his pigtail with a certain emphasis, stripped off his heavy
+coverings, and revealed a sky-blue silk pyjama suit, embroidered with
+golden dragons. The other, glancing with scarcely veiled dislike at this
+finery, flung off his wraps and displayed the decent grey coat and
+breeches with which the American business men of this period
+unconsciously symbolized their reversion to Puritanism. Smoking the
+Chinese envoy’s cigarettes, the two sat down to re-arrange the planet.
+
+The conversation was amicable, and proceeded without hitch; for there
+was agreement about the practical measures to be adopted. The government
+in each country was to be overthrown at once. Both representatives were
+confident that this could be done if it could be attempted
+simultaneously on each side of the Pacific; for in both countries
+finance and the people could be trusted. In place of the national
+governments, a World Finance Directorate was to be created. This was to
+be composed of the leading commercial and industrial magnates of the
+world, along with representatives of the workers’ organizations. The
+American representative should be the first president of the
+Directorate, and the Chinese the first vice-president. The Directorate
+was to manage the whole economic reorganization of the world. In
+particular, industrial conditions in the East were to be brought into
+line with those of America, while on the other hand the American
+monopoly of Antarctica was to be abolished. That rich and almost virgin
+land was to be subjected to the control of the Directorate.
+
+Occasionally during the conversation reference was made to the great
+cultural difference between the East and West; but both the negotiants
+seemed anxious to believe that this was only a minor matter which need
+not be allowed to trouble a business discussion.
+
+At this point occurred one of those incidents which, minute in
+themselves, have disproportionately great effects. The unstable nature
+of the First Men made them peculiarly liable to suffer from such
+accidents, and especially so in their decline.
+
+The talk was interrupted by the appearance of a human figure swimming
+round a promontory into the little bay. In the shallows she arose, and
+walked out of the water towards the creators of the World State. A
+bronze young smiling woman, completely nude, with breasts heaving after
+her long swim, she stood before them, hesitating. The relation between
+the two men was instantly changed, though neither was at first aware of
+it.
+
+‘Delicious daughter of Ocean,’ said the Chinese, in that somewhat
+archaic and deliberately un-American English which the Asians now
+affected in communication with foreigners, ‘what is there that these two
+despicable land animals can do for you? For my friend, I cannot answer,
+but I at least am henceforth your slave.’ His eyes roamed caressingly,
+yet as it were with perfect politeness, all over her body. And she, with
+that added grace which haloes women when they feel the kiss of an
+admiring gaze, pressed the sea from her hair and stood at the point of
+speech.
+
+But the American protested, ‘Whoever you are, please do not interrupt
+us. We are really very busy discussing a matter of great importance, and
+we have no time to spare. Please go. Your nudity is offensive to one
+accustomed to civilized manners. In a modern country you would not be
+allowed to bathe without a costume. We are growing very sensitive on
+this point.’
+
+A distressful but enhancing blush spread under the wet bronze, and the
+intruder made as if to go. But the Chinese cried, ‘Stay! We have almost
+finished our business talk. Refresh us with your presence. Bring the
+realities back into our discussion by permitting us to contemplate for a
+while the perfect vase line of your waist and thigh. Who are you? Of
+what race are you? My anthropological studies fail to place you. Your
+skin is fairer than is native here, though rich with sun. Your breasts
+are Grecian. Your lips are chiselled with a memory of Egypt. Your hair,
+night though it was, is drying with a most bewildering hint of gold. And
+your eyes, let me observe them. Long, subtle, as my countrywomen’s,
+unfathomable as the mind of India, they yet reveal themselves to your
+new slave as not wholly black, but violet as the zenith before dawn.
+Indeed this exquisite unity of incompatibles conquers both my heart and
+my understanding.’
+
+During this harangue her composure was restored, though she glanced now
+and then at the American, who kept ever removing his gaze from her.
+
+She answered in much the same diction as the other; but, surprisingly,
+with an old-time English accent, ‘I am certainly a mongrel. You might
+call me, not daughter of Ocean, but daughter of Man; for wanderers of
+every race have scattered their seed on this island. My body, I know,
+betrays its diverse ancestry in a rather queer blend of characters. My
+mind is perhaps unusual too, for I have never left this island. And
+though it is actually less than a quarter of a century since I was born,
+a past century has perhaps had more meaning for me than the obscure
+events of today. A hermit taught me. Two hundred years ago he lived
+actively in Europe; but towards the end of his long life he retreated to
+this island. As an old man he loved me. And day by day he gave me
+insight into the great spirit of the past; but of this age he gave me
+nothing. Now that he is dead, I struggle to familiarize myself with the
+present, but I continue to see everything from the angle of another age.
+And so,’ (turning to the American) ‘if I have offended against modern
+customs, it is because my insular mind has never been taught to regard
+nakedness as indecent. I am very ignorant, truly a savage. If only I
+could gain experience of your great world! If ever this war ends, I must
+travel.’
+
+‘Delectable,’ said the Chinese, ‘exquisitely proportioned, exquisitely
+civilized savage! Come with me for a holiday in modern China. There you
+can bathe without a costume, so long as you are beautiful.’
+
+She ignored this invitation, and seemed to have fallen into a reverie.
+Then absently she continued, ‘Perhaps I should not suffer from this
+restlessness, this craving to experience the world, if only I were to
+experience motherhood instead. Many of the islanders from time to time
+have enriched me with their embraces. But with none of them could I
+permit myself to conceive. They are dear; but not one of them is at
+heart more than a child.’
+
+The American became restless. But again the Mongol intervened, with
+lowered and deepened voice. ‘I,’ he said, ‘I, the Vice-President of the
+World Finance Directorate, shall be honoured to afford you the
+opportunity of motherhood.’
+
+She regarded him gravely, then smiled as on a child who asks more than
+it is reasonable to give. But the American rose hastily. Addressing the
+silken Mongol, he said, ‘You probably know that the American Government
+is in the act of sending a second poison fleet to turn your whole
+population insane, more insane than you are already. You cannot defend
+yourselves against this new weapon; and if I am to save you, I must not
+trifle any longer. Nor must you, for we must act simultaneously. We have
+settled all that matters for the moment. But before I leave, I must say
+that your behaviour towards this woman has very forcibly reminded me
+that there is something wrong with the Chinese way of thought and life.
+In my anxiety for peace, I overlooked my duty in this respect. I now
+give you notice that when the Directorate is established, we Americans
+must induce you to reform these abuses, for the world’s sake and your
+own.’
+
+The Chinese rose and answered, ‘This matter must be settled locally. We
+do not expect you to accept our standards, so do not you expect us to
+accept yours.’ He moved towards the woman, smiling. And the smile
+outraged the American.
+
+We need not follow the wrangle which now ensued between the two
+representatives, each of whom, though in a manner cosmopolitan in
+sentiment, was heartily contemptuous of the other’s values. Suffice it
+that the American became increasingly earnest and dictatorial, the other
+increasingly careless and ironical. Finally the American raised his
+voice and presented an ultimatum. ‘Our treaty of world-union,’ he said,
+‘will remain unsigned unless you add a clause promising drastic reforms,
+which, as a matter of fact, my colleagues had already proposed as a
+condition of cooperation. I had decided to withhold them, in case they
+should wreck our treaty; but now I see they are essential. You must
+educate your people out of their lascivious and idle ways, and give them
+modern scientific religion. Teachers in your schools and universities
+must pledge themselves to the modern fundamentalized physics, and
+behaviourism, and must enforce worship of the Divine Mover. The change
+will be difficult, but we will help you. You will need a strong order of
+Inquisitors, responsible to the Directorate. They will see also to the
+reform of your people’s sexual frivolity in which you squander so much
+of the Divine Energy. Unless you agree to this, I cannot stop the war.
+The law of God must be kept, and those who know it must enforce it.’
+
+The woman interrupted him. ‘Tell me, what is this “God” of yours? The
+Europeans worshipped love, not energy. What do you mean by energy? Is it
+merely to make engines go fast, and to agitate the ether?’
+
+He answered flatly, as if repeating a lesson, ‘God is the all-pervading
+spirit of movement which seeks to actualize itself wherever it is
+latent. God has appointed the great American people to mechanize the
+universe.’ He paused, contemplating the clean lines of his sea-plane.
+Then he continued with emphasis, ‘But come! Time is precious. Either you
+work for God, or we trample you out of God’s way.’
+
+The woman approached him, saying, ‘There is certainly something great in
+this enthusiasm. But somehow, though my heart says you are right, my
+head is doubting still. There must be a mistake somewhere.’
+
+‘Mistake!’ he laughed, overhanging her with his mask of power. ‘When a
+man’s soul is action, how can he be mistaken that action is divine? I
+have served the great God, Energy, all my life, from garage boy to World
+President. Has not the whole American people proved its faith by its
+success?’
+
+With rapture, but still in perplexity, she gazed at him. ‘There’s
+something terribly wrong-headed about you Americans,’ she said, ‘but
+certainly you are great.’ She looked him in the eyes. Then suddenly she
+laid a hand on him, and said with conviction, ‘Being what you are, you
+are probably right. Anyhow you are a man, a real man. Take me. Be the
+father of my boy. Take me to the dangerous cities of America to work
+with you.’
+
+The President was surprised with sudden hunger for her body, and she saw
+it; but he turned to the Vice-President and said, ‘She has seen where
+the truth lies. And you? War, or cooperation in God’s work?’
+
+‘The death of our bodies, or the death of our minds,’ said the Chinese,
+but with a bitterness that lacked conviction; for he was no fanatic.
+‘Well, since the soul is only the harmoniousness of the body’s
+behaviour, and since, in spite of this little dispute, we are agreed
+that the coordination of activity is the chief need of the planet today,
+and since in respect of our differences of temperament this lady has
+judged in favour of America, and moreover since, if there is any virtue
+in our Asian way of life, it will not succumb to a little propaganda,
+but rather will be strengthened by opposition—since all these matters
+are so, I accept your terms. But it would be undignified in China to let
+this great change be imposed upon her externally. You must give me time
+to form in Asia a native and spontaneous party of Energists, who will
+themselves propagate your gospel, and perhaps give it an elegance which,
+if I may say so, it has not yet. Even this we will do to secure the
+cosmopolitan control of Antarctica.’
+
+Thereupon the treaty was signed; but a new and secret codicil was drawn
+up and signed also, and both were witnessed by the Daughter of Man, in a
+clear, round, old-fashioned script.
+
+Then, taking a hand of each, she said, ‘And so at last the world is
+united. For how long, I wonder. I seem to hear my old master’s voice
+scolding, as though I had been rather stupid. But he failed me, and I
+have chosen a new master, Master of the World.’
+
+She released the hand of the Asian, and made as if to draw the American
+away with her. And he, though he was a strict monogamist with a better
+half waiting for him in New York, longed to crush her sun-clad body to
+his Puritan cloth. She drew him away among the palm trees.
+
+The Vice-President of the World sat down once more, lit a cigarette, and
+meditated, smiling.
+
+[Illustration: Time Scale 1]
+
+
+
+
+                      IV _An Americanized Planet_
+
+
+               1. THE FOUNDATION OF THE FIRST WORLD STATE
+
+We have now reached that point in the history of the First Men when,
+some three hundred and eighty terrestrial years after the European War,
+the goal of world unity was at last achieved—not, however, before the
+mind of the race had been seriously crippled.
+
+There is no need to recount in detail the transition from rival national
+sovereignties to unitary control by the World Financial Directorate.
+Suffice it that by concerted action in America and China the military
+governments found themselves hamstrung by the passive resistance of
+cosmopolitan big business. In China this process was almost
+instantaneous and bloodless; in America there was serious disorder for a
+few weeks, while the bewildered government attempted to reduce its
+rebels by martial law. But the population was by now eager for peace;
+and, although a few business magnates were shot, and a crowd of workers
+here and there mown down, the opposition was irresistible. Very soon the
+governing clique collapsed.
+
+The new order consisted of a vast system akin to guild socialism, yet at
+bottom individualistic. Each industry was in theory democratically
+governed by all its members, but in practice was controlled by its
+dominant individuals. Coordination of all industries was effected by a
+World Industrial Council, whereon the leaders of each industry discussed
+the affairs of the planet as a whole. The status of each industry on the
+Council was determined partly by its economic power in the world, partly
+by public esteem. For already the activities of men were beginning to be
+regarded as either ‘noble’ or ‘ignoble’; and the noble were not
+necessarily the most powerful economically. Thus upon the Council
+appeared an inner ring of noble ‘industries,’ which were, in approximate
+order of prestige, Finance, Flying, Engineering, Surface Locomotion,
+Chemical Industry, and Professional Athletics. But the real seat of
+power was not the Council, not even the inner ring of the Council, but
+the Financial Directorate. This consisted of a dozen millionaires, with
+the American President and the Chinese Vice-President at their head.
+
+Within this august committee internal dissensions were inevitable.
+Shortly after the system had been inaugurated the Vice-President sought
+to overthrow the President by publishing his connexion with the coloured
+woman who now styled herself the Daughter of Man. This piece of scandal
+was expected to enrage the virtuous American public against their hero.
+But by a stroke of genius the President saved both himself and the unity
+of the world. Far from denying the charge, he gloried in it. In that
+moment of sexual triumph, he said, a great truth had been revealed to
+him. Without this daring sacrifice of his private purity, he would never
+have been really fit to be President of the World; he would have
+remained simply an American. In this lady’s veins flowed the blood of
+all races, and in her mind all cultures mingled. His union with her,
+confirmed by many subsequent visits, had taught him to enter into the
+spirit of the East, and had given him a broad human sympathy such as his
+high office demanded. As a private individual, he insisted, he remained
+a monogamist with a wife in New York; and, as a private individual, he
+had sinned, and must suffer for ever the pangs of conscience. But as
+President of the World, it was incumbent upon him to espouse the World.
+And since nothing could be said to be real without a physical basis,
+this spiritual union had to be embodied and symbolized by his physical
+union with the Daughter of Man. In tones of grave emotion he described
+through the microphone how, in the presence of that mystical woman, he
+had suddenly triumphed over his private moral scruples; and how, in a
+sudden access of the divine energy, he had consummated his marriage with
+the World in the shade of a banana tree.
+
+The lovely form of the Daughter of Man (decently clad) was transmitted
+by television to every receiver in the world. Her face, blended of Asia
+and the West, became a most potent symbol of human unity. Every man on
+the planet became in imagination her lover. Every woman identified
+herself with this supreme woman.
+
+Undoubtedly there was some truth in the plea that the Daughter of Man
+had enlarged the President’s mind, for his policy had been unexpectedly
+tactful towards the East. Often he had moderated the American demand for
+the immediate Americanization of China. Often he had persuaded the
+Chinese to welcome some policy which at first they had regarded with
+suspicion.
+
+The President’s explanation of his conduct enhanced his prestige both in
+American and Asia. America was hypnotized by the romantic religiosity of
+the story. Very soon it became fashionable to be a strict monogamist
+with one domestic wife, and one ‘symbolical’ wife in the East, or in
+another town, or a neighbouring street, or with several such in various
+localities. In China the cold tolerance with which the President was at
+first treated was warmed by this incident into something like affection.
+And it was partly through his tact, or the influence of his symbolical
+wife, that the speeding up of China’s Americanization was effected
+without disorder.
+
+For some months after the foundation of the World State, China had been
+wholly occupied in coping with the plague of insanity, called ‘the
+American madness,’ with which her former enemy had poisoned her. The
+coast region of North China had been completely disorganized. Industry,
+agriculture, transport, were at a standstill. Huge mobs, demented and
+starving, staggered about the country devouring every kind of vegetable
+matter and wrangling over the flesh of their own dead. It was long
+before the disease was brought under control; and indeed for years
+afterwards an occasional outbreak would occur, and cause panic
+throughout the land.
+
+To some of the more old-fashioned Chinese it appeared as though the
+whole population had been mildly affected by the germ; for throughout
+China a new sect, apparently a spontaneous native growth, calling
+themselves Energists, began to preach a new interpretation of Buddhism
+in terms of the sanctity of action. And, strange to say, this gospel
+throve to such an extent that in a few years the whole educational
+system was captured by its adherents, though not without a struggle with
+the reactionary members of the older universities. Curiously enough,
+however, in spite of this general acceptance of the New Way, in spite of
+the fact that the young of China were now taught to admire movement in
+all its forms, in spite of a much increased wage-scale, which put all
+workers in possession of private mechanical locomotion, the masses of
+China continued at heart to regard action as a mere means towards rest.
+And when at last a native physicist pointed out that the supreme
+expression of energy was the tense balance of forces within the atom,
+the Chinese applied the doctrine to themselves, and claimed that in them
+quiescence was the perfect balance of mighty forces. Thus did the East
+contribute to the religion of this age. The worship of activity was made
+to include the worship of inactivity. And both were founded on the
+principles of natural science.
+
+
+                      2. THE DOMINANCE OF SCIENCE
+
+Science now held a position of unique honour among the First Men. This
+was not so much because it was in this field that the race long ago
+during its high noon had thought most rigorously, nor because it was
+through science that men had gained some insight into the nature of the
+physical world, but rather because the application of scientific
+principles had revolutionized their material circumstances. The once
+fluid doctrines of science had by now begun to crystallize into a fixed
+and intricate dogma; but inventive scientific intelligence still
+exercised itself brilliantly in improving the technique of industry, and
+thus completely dominated the imagination of a race in which the pure
+intellectual curiosity had waned. The scientist was regarded as an
+embodiment, not merely of knowledge, but of power; and no legends of the
+potency of science seemed too fantastic to be believed.
+
+A century after the founding of the first World State a rumour began to
+be heard in China about the supreme secret of scientific religion, the
+awful mystery of Gordelpus, by means of which it should be possible to
+utilize the energy locked up in the opposition of proton and electron.
+Long ago discovered by a Chinese physicist and saint, this invaluable
+knowledge was now reputed to have been preserved ever since among the
+_élite_ of science, and to be ready for publication as soon as the world
+seemed fit to possess it. The new sect of Energists claimed that the
+young Discoverer was himself an incarnation of Buddha, and that, since
+the world was still unfit for the supreme revelation, he had entrusted
+his secret to the Scientists. On the side of Christianity a very similar
+legend was concerned with the same individual. The Regenerate Christian
+Brotherhood, by now overwhelmingly the most powerful of the Western
+Churches, regarded the Discoverer as the Son of God, who, in this his
+Second Coming, had proposed to bring about the millennium by publishing
+the secret of divine power; but, finding the peoples still unable to put
+in practice even the more primitive gospel of love which was announced
+at his First Coming, he had suffered martyrdom for man’s sake, and had
+entrusted his secret to the Scientists.
+
+The scientific workers of the world had long ago organized themselves as
+a close corporation. Entrance to the International College of Science
+was to be obtained only by examination and the payment of high fees.
+Membership conferred the title of ‘Scientist,’ and the right to perform
+experiments. It was also an essential qualification for many lucrative
+posts. Moreover, there were said to be certain technical secrets which
+members were pledged not to reveal. Rumour had it that in at least one
+case of minor blabbing the traitor had shortly afterwards mysteriously
+died.
+
+Science itself, the actual corpus of natural knowledge, had by now
+become so complex that only a tiny fraction of it could be mastered by
+one brain. Thus students of one branch of science knew practically
+nothing of the work of others in kindred branches Especially was this
+the case with the huge science called Subatomic Physics. Within this
+were contained a dozen studies, any one of which was as complex as the
+whole of the physics of the Nineteenth Christian Century. This growing
+complexity had rendered students in one field ever more reluctant to
+criticize, or even to try to understand, the principles of other fields.
+Each petty department, jealous of its own preserves, was meticulously
+respectful of the preserves of others. In an earlier period the sciences
+had been coordinated and criticized philosophically by their own leaders
+and by the technical philosophers. But philosophy, as a rigorous
+technical discipline, no longer existed. There was, of course, a vague
+framework of ideas, or assumptions, based on science, and common to all
+men, a popular pseudo-science, constructed by the journalists from
+striking phrases current among scientists. But actual scientific workers
+prided themselves on the rejection of this ramshackle structure, even
+while they themselves were unwittingly assuming it. And each insisted
+that his own special subject must inevitably remain unintelligible even
+to most of his brother scientists.
+
+Under these circumstances, when rumour declared that the mystery of
+Gordelpus was known to the physicists, each department of subatomic
+physics was both reluctant to deny the charge explicitly in its own
+case, and ready to believe that some other department really did possess
+the secret. Consequently, the conduct of the scientists as a body
+strengthened the general belief that they knew and would not tell.
+
+About two centuries after the formation of the first World State, the
+President of the World declared that the time was ripe for a formal
+union of science and religion, and called a conference of the leaders of
+these two great disciplines. Upon that island in the Pacific which had
+become the Mecca of cosmopolitan sentiment, and was by now one vast
+many-storied and cloud-capped Temple of Peace, the heads of Buddhism,
+Mohammedanism, Hinduism, the Regenerate Christian Brotherhood, and the
+Modern Catholic Church in South America, agreed that their differences
+were but differences of expression. One and all were worshippers of the
+Divine Energy, whether expressed in activity, or in tense stillness. One
+and all recognized the saintly Discoverer as either the last and
+greatest of the prophets or an actual incarnation of divine Movement.
+And these two concepts were easily shown, in the light of modern
+science, to be identical.
+
+In an earlier age it had been the custom to single out heresy and
+extirpate it with fire and sword. But now the craving for uniformity was
+fulfilled by explaining away differences, amid universal applause.
+
+When the Conference had registered the unity of the religions, it went
+on to establish the unity of religion and science. All knew, said the
+President, that some of the scientists were in possession of the supreme
+secret, though, wisely, they would not definitely admit it. It was time,
+then, that the organizations of Science and Religion should be merged,
+for the better guidance of men. He, therefore, called upon the
+International College of Science to nominate from amongst themselves a
+select body, which should be sanctified by the Church, and called the
+Sacred Order of Scientists. These custodians of the supreme secret were
+to be kept at public expense. They were to devote themselves wholly to
+the service of science, and in particular to research into the most
+scientific manner of worshipping the Divine Gordelpus.
+
+Of the scientists present, some few looked distinctly uncomfortable, but
+the majority scarcely concealed their delight under dignified and
+thoughtful hesitation. Amongst the priests also two expressions were
+visible; but on the whole it was felt that the Church must gain by thus
+gathering into herself the unique prestige of science. And so it was
+that the Order was founded which was destined to become the dominant
+force in human affairs until the downfall of the first world
+civilization.
+
+
+                        3. MATERIAL ACHIEVEMENT
+
+Save for occasional minor local conflicts, easily quelled by the World
+Police, the race was now a single social unit for some four thousand
+years. During the first of these millennia material progress at least
+was rapid, but subsequently there was little change until the final
+disintegration. The whole energy of man was concentrated on maintaining
+at a constant pitch the furious routine of his civilization, until,
+after another three thousand years of lavish expenditure, certain
+essential sources of power were suddenly exhausted. Nowhere was there
+the mental agility to cope with this novel crisis. The whole social
+order collapsed.
+
+We may pass over the earlier stages of this fantastic civilization, and
+examine it as it stood before the fatal change began to be felt.
+
+The material circumstances of the race at this time would have amazed
+all its predecessors, even those who were in the true sense far more
+civilized beings. But to us, the Last Men, there is an extreme pathos
+and even comicality, not only in this most thorough confusion of
+material development with civilization, but also in the actual paucity
+of the vaunted material development itself, compared with that of our
+own society.
+
+All the continents, indeed, were by now minutely artificialized. Save
+for the many wild reserves which were cherished as museums and
+playgrounds, not a square mile of territory was left in a natural state.
+Nor was there any longer a distinction between agricultural and
+industrial areas. All the continents were urbanized, not of course in
+the manner of the congested industrial cities of an earlier age, but
+none the less urbanized. Industry and agriculture interpenetrated
+everywhere. This was possible partly through the great development of
+aerial communication, partly through a no less remarkable improvement of
+architecture. Great advances in artificial materials had enabled the
+erection of buildings in the form of slender pylons which, rising often
+to a height of three miles, or even more, and founded a quarter of a
+mile beneath the ground, might yet occupy a ground plan of less than
+half a mile across. In section these structures were often cruciform;
+and on each floor, the centre of the long-armed cross consisted of an
+aerial landing, providing direct access from the air for the dwarf
+private aeroplanes which were by now essential to the life of every
+adult. These gigantic pillars of architecture, prophetic of the still
+mightier structures of an age to come, were scattered over every
+continent in varying density. Very rarely were they permitted to
+approach one another by a distance less than their height; on the other
+hand, save in the arctic, they were very seldom separated by more than
+twenty miles. The general appearance of every country was thus rather
+like an open forest of lopped tree-trunks, gigantic in stature. Clouds
+often encircled the middle heights of these artificial peaks, or blotted
+out all but the lower stories. Dwellers in the summits were familiar
+with the spectacle of a dazzling ocean of cloud, dotted on all sides
+with steep islands of architecture. Such was the altitude of the upper
+floors that it was sometimes necessary to maintain in them, not merely
+artificial heating, but artificial air pressure and oxygen supply.
+
+Between these columns of habitation and industry, the land was
+everywhere green or brown with the seasonal variations of agriculture,
+park, and wild reserve. Broad grey thoroughfares for heavy freight
+traffic netted every continent; but lighter transport and the passenger
+services were wholly aerial. Over all the more populous districts the
+air was ever aswarm with planes up to a height of five miles, where the
+giant air-liners plied between the continents.
+
+The enterprise of an already distant past had brought every land under
+civilization. The Sahara was a lake district, crowded with sun-proud
+holiday resorts. The arctic islands of Canada, ingeniously warmed by
+directed tropical currents, were the homes of vigorous northerners. The
+coasts of Antarctica, thawed in the same manner, were permanently
+inhabited by those engaged in exploiting the mineral wealth of the
+hinterland.
+
+Much of the power needed to keep this civilization in being was drawn
+from the buried remains of prehistoric vegetation, in the form of coal.
+Although after the foundation of the World State the fuel of Antarctica
+had been very carefully husbanded, the new supply of oil had given out
+in less than three centuries, and men were forced to drive their
+aeroplanes by electricity generated from coal. It soon became evident,
+however that even the unexpectedly rich coal-fields of Antarctica would
+not last for ever. The cessation of oil had taught men a much needed
+lesson, had made them feel the reality of the power problem. At the same
+time the cosmopolitan spirit, which was learning to regard the whole
+race as compatriots, was also beginning to take a broader view
+temporally, and to see things with the eyes of remote generations.
+During the first and sanest thousand years of the World State, there was
+a widespread determination not to incur the blame of the future by
+wasting power. Thus not only was there serious economy (the first
+large-scale cosmopolitan enterprise), but also efforts were made to
+utilize more permanent sources of power. Wind was used extensively. On
+every building swarms of windmills generated electricity, and every
+mountain range was similarly decorated, while every considerable fall of
+water forced its way through turbines. More important still was the
+utilization of power derived from volcanos and from borings into the
+subterranean heat. This, it had been hoped, would solve the whole
+problem of power, once and for all. But even in the earlier and more
+intelligent period of the World State inventive genius was not what it
+had been, and no really satisfactory method was found. Consequently at
+no stage of this civilization did volcanic sources do more than
+supplement the amazingly rich coal seams of Antarctica. In this region
+coal was preserved at far greater depth than elsewhere, because, by some
+accident, the earth’s central heat was not here fierce enough (as it was
+elsewhere) to turn the deeper beds into graphite. Another possible
+source of power was known to exist in the ocean tides; but the use of
+this was forbidden by the S.O.S. because, since tidal motion was so
+obviously astronomical in origin, it had come to be regarded as sacred.
+
+Perhaps the greatest physical achievement of the First World State in
+its earlier and more vital phase had been in preventive medicine. Though
+the biological sciences had long ago become stereotyped in respect of
+fundamental theories, they continued to produce many practical benefits.
+No longer did men and women have to dread for themselves or those dear
+to them such afflictions as cancer, tuberculosis, angina pectoris, the
+rheumatic diseases, and the terrible disorders of the nervous system. No
+longer were there sudden microbic devastations. No longer was
+child-birth an ordeal, and womanhood itself a source of suffering. There
+were no more chronic invalids, no more life-long cripples. Only senility
+remained; and even this could be repeatedly alleviated by physiological
+rejuvenation. The removal of all these ancient sources of weakness and
+misery, which formerly had lamed the race and haunted so many
+individuals either with definite terrors or vague and scarcely conscious
+despond, brought about now a pervading buoyancy and optimism impossible
+to earlier peoples.
+
+
+                4. THE CULTURE OF THE FIRST WORLD STATE
+
+Such was the physical achievement of this civilization. Nothing half so
+artificial and intricate and prosperous had ever before existed. An
+earlier age, indeed, had held before itself some such ideal as this; but
+its nationalistic mania prevented it from attaining the necessary
+economic unity. This latter-day civilization, however, had wholly
+outgrown nationalism, and had spent many centuries of peace in
+consolidating itself. But to what end? The terrors of destitution and
+ill-health having been abolished, man’s spirit was freed from a
+crippling burden, and might have dared great adventures. But
+unfortunately his intelligence had by now seriously declined. And so
+this age, far more than the notorious ‘nineteenth century’, was the
+great age of barren complacency.
+
+Every individual was a well-fed and physically healthy human animal. He
+was also economically independent. His working day was never more than
+six hours, often only four. He enjoyed a fair share of the products of
+industry; and in his long holidays he was free to wander in his own
+aeroplane all over the planet. With good luck he might find himself
+rich, even for those days, at forty; and if fortune had not favoured
+him, he might yet expect affluence before he was eighty, when he could
+still look forward to a century of active life.
+
+But in spite of this material prosperity he was a slave. His work and
+his leisure consisted of feverish activity, punctuated by moments of
+listless idleness which he regarded as both sinful and unpleasant.
+Unless he was one of the furiously successful minority, he was apt to be
+haunted by moments of brooding, too formless to be called meditation,
+and of yearning, too blind to be called desire. For he and all his
+contemporaries were ruled by certain ideas which prevented them from
+living a fully human life.
+
+Of these ideas one was the ideal of progress. For the individual, the
+goal imposed by his religious teaching was continuous advance in
+aeronautical prowess, legal sexual freedom, and millionaireship. For the
+race also the ideal was progress, and progress of the same unintelligent
+type. Ever more brilliant and extensive aviation, ever more extensive
+legal sexual intercourse, ever more gigantic manufacture and
+consumption, were to be coordinated in an ever more intricately
+organized social system. For the last three thousand years, indeed,
+progress even of this rude kind had been minute; but this was a source
+of pride rather than of regret. It implied that the goal was already
+almost attained, the perfection which should justify the release of the
+secret of divine power, and the inauguration of an era of incomparably
+mightier activity.
+
+For the all-pervading idea which tyrannized over the race was the
+fanatical worship of movement. Gordelpus, the Prime Mover, demanded of
+his human embodiments swift and intricate activity, and the individual’s
+prospect of eternal life depended on the fulfilment of this obligation.
+Curiously, though science had long ago destroyed the belief in personal
+immortality as an intrinsic attribute of man, a complementary belief had
+grown up to the effect that those who justified themselves in action
+were preserved eternally, by special miracle, in the swift spirit of
+Gordelpus. Thus from childhood to death the individual’s conduct was
+determined by the obligation to produce as much motion as possible,
+whether by his own muscular activity or by the control of natural
+forces. In the hierarchy of industry three occupations were honoured
+almost as much as the Sacred Order of Scientists, namely flying,
+dancing, and athletics. Every one practised all three of these crafts to
+some extent, for they were imposed by religion; but the professional
+fliers and aeronautical engineers, and the professional dancers and
+athletes, were a privileged class.
+
+Several causes had raised flying to a position of unique honour. As a
+means of communication it was of extreme practical importance; and as
+the swiftest locomotion it constituted the supreme act of worship. The
+accident that the form of the aeroplane was reminiscent of the main
+symbol of the ancient Christian religion lent flying an additional
+mystical significance. For though the spirit of Christianity was lost,
+many of its symbols had been preserved in the new faith. A more
+important source of the dominance of flying was that, since warfare had
+long ceased to exist, aviation of a gratuitously dangerous kind was the
+main outlet for the innate adventurousness of the human animal. Young
+men and women risked their lives fervently for the glory of Gordelpus
+and their own salvation, while their seniors took vicarious satisfaction
+in this endless festival of youthful prowess. Indeed, apart from the
+thrills of devotional aerial acrobatics, it is unlikely that the race
+would so long have preserved its peace and its unity. On each of the
+frequent Days of Sacred Flight special rituals of communal and solo
+aviation were performed at every religious centre. On these occasions
+the whole sky would be intricately patterned with thousands of planes,
+wheeling, tumbling, soaring, plunging, in perfect order and at various
+altitudes, the dance at one level being subtly complementary to the
+dance at others. It was as though the spontaneous evolutions of many
+distinct flocks of redshank and dunlin were multiplied a thousandfold in
+complexity, and subordinated to a single ever-developing terpsichorean
+theme. Then suddenly the whole would burst asunder to the horizon,
+leaving the sky open for the quartets, duets, and solos of the most
+brilliant stars of flight. At night also, regiments of planes bearing
+coloured lights would inscribe on the zenith ever-changing and
+symbolical patterns of fire. Besides these aerial dances, there had
+existed for eight hundred years a custom of spelling out periodically in
+a dense flight of planes six thousand miles long the sacred rubrics of
+the gospel of Gordelpus, so that the living word might be visible to
+other planets.
+
+In the life of every individual, flying played a great part. Immediately
+after birth he was taken up by a priestess of flight and dropped,
+clinging to a parachute, to be deftly caught upon the wings of his
+father’s plane. This ritual served as a substitute for contraception
+(forbidden as an interference with the divine energy); for since in many
+infants the old simian grasping-instinct was atrophied, a large
+proportion of the new-born let go and were smashed upon the paternal
+wings. At adolescence the individual (male or female) took charge of a
+plane for the first time, and his life was subsequently punctuated by
+severe aeronautical tests. From middle-age onwards, namely as a
+centenarian, when he could no longer hope to rise in the hierarchy of
+active flight, he continued to fly daily for practical purposes.
+
+The two other forms of ritual activity, dancing and athletics, were
+scarcely less important. Nor were they confined wholly to the ground.
+For certain rites were celebrated by dances upon the wings of a plane in
+mid air.
+
+Dancing was especially associated with the Negro race, which occupied a
+very peculiar position in the world at this time. As a matter of fact
+the great colour distinctions of mankind were now beginning to fade.
+Increased aerial communication had caused the black, brown, yellow and
+white stocks so to mingle that everywhere there was by now a large
+majority of the racially indistinguishable. Nowhere was there any great
+number of persons of marked racial character. But each of the ancient
+types was liable to crop up now and again in isolated individuals,
+especially in its ancient homeland. These ‘throw-backs’ were customarily
+treated in special and historically appropriate manners. Thus, for
+instance, it was to ‘sports’ of definite Negro character that the most
+sacred dancing was entrusted.
+
+In the days of the nations, the descendants of emancipated African
+slaves in North America had greatly influenced the artistic and
+religious life of the white population, and had inspired a cult of
+negroid dancing which survived till the end of the First Men. This was
+partly due to the sexual and primitive character of Negro dancing,
+sorely needed in a nation ridden by sexual taboos. But it had also a
+deeper source. The American nation had acquired its slaves by capture,
+and had long continued to spurn their descendants. Later it
+unconsciously compensated for its guilt by a cult of the Negro spirit.
+Thus when American culture dominated the planet, the pure Negroes became
+a sacred cast. Forbidden many of the rights of citizenship, they were
+regarded as the private servants of Gordelpus. They were both sacred and
+outcast. This dual role was epitomized in an extravagant ritual which
+took place once a year in each of the great national parks. A white
+woman and Negro, both chosen for their prowess in dance, performed a
+long and symbolical ballet, which culminated in a ritual act of sexual
+violation, performed in full view of the maddened spectators. This over,
+the Negro knifed his victim, and fled through the forest pursued by an
+exultant mob. If he reached sanctuary, he became a peculiarly sacred
+object for the rest of his life. But if he was caught, he was torn to
+pieces, or drenched with inflammable spirit and burned. Such was the
+superstition of the First Men at this time that the participants in this
+ceremony were seldom reluctant; for it was firmly believed that both
+were assured of eternal life in Gordelpus. In America this Sacred
+Lynching was the most popular of all festivals; for it was both sexual
+and bloody, and afforded a fierce joy to the masses whose sex-life was
+restricted and secret. In India and Africa the violator was always an
+‘Englishman,’ when such a rare creature could be found. In China the
+whole character of the ceremony was altered; for the violation became a
+kiss, and the murder a touch with a fan.
+
+One other race, the Jews, were treated with a similar combination of
+honour and contempt, but for very different reasons. In ancient days
+their general intelligence, and in particular their financial talent,
+had cooperated with their homelessness to make them outcasts; and now,
+in the decline of the First Men, they retained the fiction, if not
+strictly the fact, of racial integrity. They were still outcasts, though
+indispensable and powerful. Almost the only kind of intelligent activity
+which the First Men could still respect was financial operation, whether
+private or cosmopolitan. The Jews had made themselves invaluable in the
+financial organization of the world state, having far outstripped the
+other races because they alone had preserved a furtive respect for pure
+intelligence. And so, long after intelligence had come to be regarded as
+disreputable in ordinary men and women, it was expected of the Jews. In
+them it was called satanic cunning, and they were held to be embodiments
+of the powers of evil, harnessed in the service of Gordelpus. Thus in
+time the Jews had made something like ‘a corner’ in intelligence. This
+precious commodity they used largely for their own purposes; for two
+thousand years of persecution had long ago rendered them permanently
+tribalistic, subconsciously if not consciously. Thus when they had
+gained control of the few remaining operations which demanded
+originality rather than routine, they used this advantage chiefly to
+strengthen their own position in the world. For, though relatively
+bright, they had suffered much of the general coarsening and limitation
+which had beset the whole world. Though capable to some extent of
+criticizing the practical means by which ends should be realized, they
+were by now wholly incapable of criticizing the major ends which had
+dominated their race for thousands of years. In them intelligence had
+become utterly subservient to tribalism. There was thus some excuse for
+the universal hate and even physical repulsion with which they were
+regarded; for they alone had failed to make the one great advance, from
+tribalism to a cosmopolitanism which in other races was no longer merely
+theoretical. There was good reason also for the respect which they
+received, since they retained and used somewhat ruthlessly a certain
+degree of the most distinctively human attribute, intelligence.
+
+In primitive times the intelligence and sanity of the race had been
+preserved by the inability of its unwholesome members to survive. When
+humanitarianism came into vogue, and the unsound were tended at public
+expense, this natural selection ceased. And since these unfortunates
+were incapable alike of prudence and of social responsibility, they
+procreated without restraint, and threatened to infect the whole species
+with their rottenness. During the zenith of Western Civilization,
+therefore, the subnormal were sterilized. But the latter-day worshippers
+of Gordelpus regarded both sterilization and contraception as a wicked
+interference with the divine potency. Consequently the only restriction
+on population was the suspension of the new-born from aeroplanes, a
+process which, though it eliminated weaklings, favoured among healthy
+infants rather the primitive than the highly developed. Thus the
+intelligence of the race steadily declined. And no one regretted it.
+
+The general revulsion from intelligence was a corollary of the adoration
+of instinct, and this in turn was an aspect of the worship of activity.
+Since the unconscious source of human vigour was the divine energy,
+spontaneous impulse must so far as possible never be thwarted. Reasoning
+was indeed permitted to the individual within the sphere of his official
+work, but never beyond. And not even specialists might indulge in
+reasoning and experiment without obtaining a licence for the particular
+research. The licence was expensive, and was only granted if the goal in
+view could be shown to be an increase of world activity. In old times
+certain persons of morbid curiosity had dared to criticize the
+time-honoured methods of doing things, and had suggested ‘better’
+methods not convenient to the Sacred Order of Scientists. This had to be
+stopped. By the fourth millennium of the World State the operations of
+civilization had become so intricately stereotyped that novel situations
+of a major order never occurred.
+
+One kind of intellectual pursuit in addition to finance was, indeed,
+honoured, namely mathematical calculation. All ritual movements, all the
+motions of industrial machinery, all observable natural phenomena, had
+to be minutely described in mathematical formulae. The records were
+filed in the sacred archives of the S.O.S. And there they remained. This
+vast enterprise of mathematical description was the main work of the
+scientists, and was said to be the only means by which the evanescent
+thing, movement, could be passed into the eternal being of Gordelpus.
+
+The cult of instinct did not result simply in a life of ungoverned
+impulse. Far from it. For the fundamental instinct, it was said, was the
+instinct to worship Gordelpus in action, and this should rule all the
+other instincts. Of these, the most important and sacred was the sexual
+impulse, which the First Men had ever tended to regard as both divine
+and obscene. Sex, therefore, was now very strictly controlled. Reference
+to sexuality, save by circumlocution, was forbidden by law. Persons who
+remarked on the obvious sexual significance of the religious dances were
+severely punished. No sexual activity and no sex knowledge were
+permitted to the individual until he had won his (or her) wings. Much
+information, of a distorted and perverted nature could, indeed, be
+gained meanwhile by observation of the religious writings and practices;
+but officially these sacred matters were all given a metaphysical, not a
+sexual interpretation. And though legal maturity, the Wing-Winning,
+might occur as early as the age of fifteen, sometimes it was not
+attained till forty. If at that age the individual still failed in the
+test, he or she was forbidden sexual intercourse and information for
+ever.
+
+In China and India this extravagant sexual taboo was somewhat mitigated.
+Many easy-going persons had come to feel that the imparting of sex
+knowledge to the ‘immature’ was only wrong when the medium of
+communication was the sacred American language. They therefore made use
+of the local patois. Similarly, sexual activity of the ‘immature’ was
+permissible so long as it was performed solely in the wild reserves, and
+without American speech. These subterfuges, however, were condemned by
+the orthodox, even in Asia.
+
+When a man had won his wings, he was formally initiated into the mystery
+of sex and all its ‘biologico-religious’ significance. He was also
+allowed to take a ‘domestic wife,’ and after a much more severe aviation
+test, any number of ‘symbolical’ wives. Similarly with the woman. These
+two kinds of partnership differed greatly. The ‘domestic’ husband and
+wife appeared in public together, and their union was indissoluble. The
+‘symbolic’ union, on the other hand, could be dissolved by either party.
+Also it was too sacred ever to be revealed, or even mentioned, in
+public.
+
+A very large number of persons never passed the test which sanctioned
+sexuality. These either remained virgin, or indulged in sexual relations
+which were not only illegal but sacrilegious. The successful, on the
+other hand, were apt to consummate sexually every casual acquaintance.
+
+Under these circumstances it was natural that there should exist among
+the sexually submerged part of the population certain secret cults which
+sought escape from harsh reality into worlds of fantasy. Of these
+illicit sects, two were most widespread. One was a perversion of the
+ancient Christian faith in a God of Love. All love, it was said, is
+sexual; therefore in worship, private or public, the individual must
+seek a direct sexual relation with God. Hence arose a grossly phallic
+cult, very contemptible to those more fortunate persons who had no need
+of it.
+
+The other great heresy was derived partly from the energy of repressed
+intellective impulses, and was practised by persons of natural
+curiosity, who nevertheless, shared the universal paucity of
+intelligence. These pathetic devotees of intellect were inspired by
+Socrates. That great primitive had insisted that clear thought is
+impossible without clear definition of terms, and that without clear
+thinking man misses fullness of being. These his last disciples were
+scarcely less fervent admirers of truth than their master, yet they
+missed his spirit completely. Only by knowing the truth, they said, can
+the individual attain immortality; only by defining can he know the
+truth. Therefore, meeting together in secret, and in constant danger of
+arrest for illicit intellection, they disputed endlessly about the
+definition of things. But the things which they were concerned to define
+were not the basic concepts of human thought; for these, they affirmed,
+had been settled once for all by Socrates and his immediate followers.
+Therefore, accepting these as true, and grossly misunderstanding them,
+the ultimate Socratics undertook to define all the processes of the
+world state and the ritual of the established religion, all the emotions
+of men and women, all the shapes of noses, mouths, buildings, mountains,
+clouds, and in fact the whole superficies of their world. Thus they
+believed that they emancipated themselves from the philistinism of their
+age, and secured comradeship with Socrates in the hereafter.
+
+
+                              5. DOWNFALL
+
+The collapse of this first world-civilization was due to the sudden
+failure of the supplies of coal. All the original fields had been sapped
+centuries earlier, and it should have been obvious that those more
+recently discovered could not last for ever. For some thousands of years
+the main supply had come from Antarctica. So prolific was this continent
+that latterly a superstition had arisen in the clouded minds of the
+world-citizens that it was in some mysterious manner inexhaustible. Thus
+when at last, in spite of strict censorship, the news began to leak out
+that even the deepest possible borings had failed to reveal further
+vegetable deposits of any kind, the world was at first incredulous.
+
+The sane policy would have been to abolish the huge expense of power on
+ritual flying, which used more of the community’s resources than the
+whole of productive industry. But to believers in Gordelpus such a
+course was almost unthinkable. Moreover it would have undermined the
+flying aristocracy. This powerful class now declared that the time had
+come for the release of the secret of divine power, and called on the
+S.O.S. to inaugurate the new era. Vociferous agitation in all lands put
+the scientists in an awkward plight. They gained time by declaring that,
+though the moment of revelation was approaching, it had not yet arrived;
+for they had received a divine intimation that this failure of coal was
+imposed as a supreme test of man’s faith. The service of Gordelpus in
+ritual flight must be rather increased than reduced. Spending a bare
+minimum of its power on secular matters, the race must concentrate upon
+religion. When Gordelpus had evidence of their devotion and trust, he
+would permit the scientists to save them.
+
+Such was the prestige of science that at first this explanation was
+universally accepted. The ritual flights were maintained. All luxury
+trades were abolished, and even vital services were reduced to a
+minimum. Workers thus thrown out of employment were turned over to
+agricultural labour; for it was felt that the use of mechanical power in
+mere tillage must be as soon as possible abolished. These changes
+demanded far more organizing ability than was left in the race.
+Confusion was widespread, save here and there where serious organization
+was attempted by certain Jews.
+
+The first result of this great movement of economy and self-denial was
+to cause something of a spiritual awakening among many who had formerly
+lived a life of bored ease. This was augmented by the widespread sense
+of crisis and impending marvels. Religion, which, in spite of its
+universal authority in this age, had become a matter of ritual rather
+than of inward experience, began to stir in many hearts—not indeed as a
+moment of true worship, but rather as a vague awe, not unmixed with
+self-importance.
+
+But as the novelty of this enthusiasm dwindled, and life became
+increasingly uncomfortable, even the most zealous began to notice with
+horror that in moments of inactivity they were prone to doubts too
+shocking to confess. And as the situation worsened, even a life of
+ceaseless action could not suppress these wicked fantasies.
+
+For the race was now entering upon an unprecedented psychological
+crisis, brought about by the impact of the economic disaster upon a
+permanently unwholesome mentality. Each individual, it must be
+remembered, had once been a questioning child, but had been taught to
+shun curiosity as the breath of Satan. Consequently the whole race was
+suffering from a kind of inverted repression, a repression of the
+intellective impulses. The sudden economic change, which affected all
+classes throughout the planet, thrust into the focus of attention a
+shocking curiosity, an obsessive scepticism, which had hitherto been
+buried in the deepest recesses of the mind.
+
+It is not easy to conceive the strange mental disorder that now
+afflicted the whole race, symbolizing itself in some cases by fits of
+actual physical vertigo. After centuries of prosperity, of routine, of
+orthodoxy, men were suddenly possessed by a doubt which they regarded as
+diabolical. No one said a word of it; but in each man’s own mind the
+fiend raised a whispering head, and each was haunted by the troubled
+eyes of his fellows. Indeed the whole changed circumstances of his life
+jibed at his credulity.
+
+Earlier in the career of the race, this world crisis might have served
+to wake men into sanity. Under the first pressure of distress they might
+have abandoned the extravagances of their culture. But by now the
+ancient way of life was too deeply rooted. Consequently, we observe the
+fantastic spectacle of a world engaged, devotedly and even heroically,
+on squandering its resources in vast aeronautical displays, not through
+single-minded faith in their rightness and efficacy, but solely in a
+kind of desperate automatism. Like those little rodents whose migration
+became barred by an encroachment of the sea, so that annually they
+drowned themselves in thousands, the First Men helplessly continued in
+their ritualistic behaviour; but unlike the lemmings, they were human
+enough to be at the same time oppressed by unbelief, an unbelief which,
+moreover, they dared not recognize.
+
+Meanwhile the scientists were earnestly and secretly delving in the
+ancient literature of their science, in hope of discovering the
+forgotten talisman. They undertook also clandestine experiments, but
+upon a false trail laid by the wily English contemporary of the
+Discoverer. The main results were, that several researchers were
+poisoned or electrocuted, and a great college was blown up. This event
+impressed the populace, who supposed the accident to be due to an
+over-daring exercise of the divine potency. The misunderstanding
+inspired the desperate scientists to rig further impressive ‘miracles’,
+and moreover to use them to dispel the increasing restlessness of hungry
+industrial workers. Thus when a deputation arrived outside the offices
+of Cosmopolitan Agriculture to demand more flour for industrialists
+Gordelpus miraculously blew up the ground on which they stood, and flung
+their bodies among the onlookers. When the agriculturists of China
+struck to obtain a reasonable allowance of electric power for their
+tillage, Gordelpus affected them with an evil atmosphere, so that they
+choked and died in thousands. Stimulated in this manner by direct divine
+intervention, the doubting and disloyal elements of the world-population
+recovered their faith and their docility. And so the world jogged on for
+a while, as nearly as possible as it had done for the last four thousand
+years, save for a general increase of hunger and ill-health.
+
+But inevitably, as the conditions of life became more and more severe,
+docility gave place to desperation. Daring spirits began publicly to
+question the wisdom, and even the piety, of so vast an expenditure of
+power upon ritual flight, when prime necessities such as food and
+clothing were becoming so scarce. Did not this helpless devotion merely
+ridicule them in the divine eyes? God helps him who helps himself.
+Already the death-rate had risen alarmingly. Emaciated and ragged
+persons were beginning to beg in public places. In certain districts
+whole populations were starving, and the Directorate did nothing for
+them. Yet, elsewhere, harvests were being wasted for lack of power to
+reap them. In all lands an angry clamour arose for the inauguration of
+the new era.
+
+The scientists were by now panic-stricken. Nothing had come of their
+researches, and it was evident that in future all wind- and water-power
+must be devoted to the primary industries. Even so, there was starvation
+ahead for many. The President of the Physical Society suggested to the
+Directorate that ritual flying should at once be reduced by half, as a
+compromise with Gordelpus. Immediately the hideous truth, which few
+hitherto had dared to admit even to themselves, was blurted out upon the
+ether by a prominent Jew: the whole hoary legend of the divine secret
+was a lie, else why were the physicists temporizing? Dismay and rage
+spread over the planet. Everywhere the people rose against the
+scientists, and against the governing authority which they controlled.
+Massacres and measures of retaliation soon developed into civil wars.
+China and India declared themselves free national states, but could not
+achieve internal unity. In America, ever a stronghold of science and
+religion, the Government maintained its authority for a while; but as
+its seat became less secure, its methods became more ruthless. Finally
+it made the mistake of using not merely poison gas, but microbes; and
+such was the decayed state of medical science that no one could invent a
+means of restraining their ravages. The whole American continent
+succumbed to a plague of pulmonary and nervous diseases. The ancient
+‘American Madness’, which long ago had been used against China, now
+devastated America. The great stations of water-power and wind-power
+were wrecked by lunatic mobs who sought vengeance upon anything
+associated with authority. Whole populations vanished in an orgy of
+cannibalism.
+
+In Asia and Africa, some semblance of order was maintained for a while.
+Presently, however, the American Madness spread to these continents
+also, and very soon all living traces of their civilization vanished.
+
+Only in the most naturally fertile areas of the world could the diseased
+remnant of a population now scrape a living from the soil. Elsewhere,
+utter desolation. With easy strides the jungle came back into its own.
+
+
+
+
+                     V _The Fall of the First Men_
+
+
+                         1. THE FIRST DARK AGE
+
+We have reached a period in man’s history rather less than five thousand
+years after the life of Newton. In this chapter we must cover about one
+hundred and fifteen thousand years, and in the next chapter another ten
+million years. That will bring us to a point as remotely future from the
+First World State as the earliest anthropoids were remotely past. During
+the first tenth of the first million years after the fall of the World
+State, during a hundred thousand years, man remained in complete
+eclipse. Not till the close of this span, which we will call the First
+Dark Age, did he struggle once more from savagery through barbarism into
+civilization. And then his renaissance was relatively brief. From its
+earliest beginnings to its end, it covered only fifteen thousand years;
+and in its final agony the planet was so seriously damaged that mind lay
+henceforth in deep slumber for ten more millions of years. This was the
+Second Dark Age. Such is the field which we must observe in this and the
+following chapter.
+
+It might have been expected that, after the downfall of the First World
+State, recovery would have occurred within a few generations. Historians
+have, indeed, often puzzled over the cause of this surprisingly complete
+and lasting degradation. Innate human nature was roughly the same
+immediately after as immediately before the crisis; yet minds that had
+easily maintained a world-civilization in being, proved quite incapable
+of building a new order on the ruins of the old. Far from recovering,
+man’s estate rapidly deteriorated till it had sunk into abject savagery.
+
+Many causes contributed to this result, some relatively superficial and
+temporary, some profound and lasting. It is as though Fate, directing
+events toward an allotted end, had availed herself of many diverse
+instruments, none of which would have sufficed alone, though all worked
+together irresistibly in the same sense. The immediate cause of the
+helplessness of the race during the actual crisis of the World State was
+of course the vast epidemic of insanity and still more widespread
+deterioration of intelligence, which resulted from the use of microbes.
+This momentary seizure made it impossible for man to check his downfall
+during its earliest and least unmanageable stage. Later, when the
+epidemic was spent, even though civilization was already in ruins, a
+concerted effort of devotion might yet have rebuilt it on a more modest
+plan. But among the First Men only a minority had ever been capable of
+wholehearted devotion. The great majority were by nature too much
+obsessed by private impulses. And in this black period, such was the
+depth of disillusion and fatigue that even normal resolution was
+impossible. Not only man’s social structure but the structure of the
+universe itself, it seemed, had failed. The only reaction was supine
+despair. Four thousand years of routine had deprived human nature of all
+its suppleness. To expect these beings to refashion their whole
+behaviour, were scarcely less unreasonable than to expect ants, when
+their nest was flooded, to assume the habits of water beetles.
+
+But a far more profound and lasting cause doomed the First Men to lie
+prone for a long while, once they had fallen. A subtle physiological
+change, which it is tempting to call ‘general senescence of the
+species’, was undermining the human body and mind. The chemical
+equilibrium of each individual was becoming more unstable, so that,
+little by little, man’s unique gift of prolonged youth was being lost.
+Far more rapidly than of old, his tissues failed to compensate for the
+wear and tear of living. This disaster was by no means inevitable; but
+it was brought on by influences peculiar to the make-up of the species,
+and aggravated artificially. For during some thousands of years man had
+been living at too high a pressure in a biologically unnatural
+environment, and had found no means of compensating his nature for the
+strain thus put upon it.
+
+Conceive, then, that after the fall of the First World State, the
+generations slid rapidly through dusk into night. To inhabit those
+centuries was to live in the conviction of universal decay, and under
+the legend of a mighty past. The population was derived almost wholly
+from the agriculturists of the old order, and since agriculture had been
+considered a sluggish and base occupation, fit only for sluggish
+natures, the planet was now peopled with yokels. Deprived of power,
+machinery, and chemical fertilizers, these bumpkins were hard put to it
+to keep themselves alive. And indeed only a tenth of their number
+survived the great disaster. The second generation knew civilization
+only as a legend. Their days were filled with ceaseless tillage, and in
+banding together to fight marauders. Women became once more sexual and
+domestic chattels. The family, or tribe of families, became the largest
+social whole. Endless brawls and feuds sprang up between valley and
+valley, and between the tillers and the brigand swarms. Small military
+tyrants rose and fell; but no permanent unity of control could be
+maintained over a wide region. There was no surplus wealth to spend on
+such luxuries as governments and trained armies.
+
+Thus without appreciable change the millennia dragged on in squalid
+drudgery. For these latter-day barbarians were hampered by living in a
+used planet. Not only were coal and oil no more, but almost no mineral
+wealth of any kind remained within reach of their feeble instruments and
+wits. In particular the minor metals, needed for so many of the
+multifarious activities of developed material civilization, had long ago
+disappeared from the more accessible depths of the earth’s crust.
+Tillage moreover was hampered by the fact that iron itself, which was no
+longer to be had without mechanical mining, was now inaccessible. Men
+had been forced to resort once more to stone implements, as their first
+human ancestors had done. But they lacked both the skill and the
+persistence of the ancients. Not for them the delicate flaking of the
+Paleoliths nor the smooth symmetry of the Neoliths. Their tools were but
+broken pebbles, chipped improvements upon natural stones. On almost
+every one they engraved the same pathetic symbol, the Swastika or cross,
+which had been used by the First Men as a sacred emblem throughout their
+existence, though with varying significance. In this instance it had
+originally been the figure of an aeroplane diving to destruction, and
+had been used by the rebels to symbolize the downfall of Gordelpus and
+the State. But subsequent generations reinterpreted the emblem as the
+sign manual of a divine ancestor, and as a memento of the golden age
+from which they were destined to decline for ever, or until the gods
+should intervene. Almost one might say that in its persistent use of
+this symbol the first human species unwittingly epitomized its own dual
+and self-thwarting nature.
+
+The idea of irresistible decay obsessed the race at this time. The
+generation which brought about the downfall of the World State oppressed
+its juniors with stories of past amenities and marvels, and hugged to
+itself the knowledge that the young men had not the wit to rebuild such
+complexity. Generation by generation, as the circumstances of actual
+life became more squalid, the legend of past glory became more
+extravagant. The whole mass of scientific knowledge was rapidly lost,
+save for a few shreds which were of practical service even in savage
+life. Fragments of the old culture were indeed preserved in the tangle
+of folk lore that meshed the globe, but they were distorted beyond
+recognition. Thus there was a widespread belief that the world had begun
+as fire, and that life had evolved out of the fire. After the apes had
+appeared, evolution ceased (so it was said), until divine spirits came
+down and possessed the female apes, thereby generating human beings.
+Thus had arisen the golden age of the divine ancestors. But
+unfortunately after a while the beast in man had triumphed over the god,
+so that progress had given place to age-long decay. And indeed decay was
+now unavoidable, until such time as the gods should see fit to come down
+to cohabit with women and fire the race once more. This faith in the
+second coming of the gods persisted here and there throughout the First
+Dark Age, and consoled men for their vague conviction of degeneracy.
+
+Even at the close of the First Dark Age the ruins of the ancient
+residential pylons still characterized every landscape, often with an
+effect of senile domination over the hovels of latter-day savages. For
+the living races dwelt beneath these relics like puny grandchildren
+playing around the feet of their fathers’ once mightier fathers. So well
+had the past built, and with such durable materials, that even after a
+hundred millennia the ruins were still recognizably artifacts. Though
+for the most part they were of course by now little more than pyramids
+of debris overgrown with grass and brushwood, most of them retained some
+stretch of standing wall, and here and there a favoured specimen still
+reared from its rubble-encumbered base a hundred foot or so of cliff,
+punctured with windows. Fantastic legends now clustered round these
+relics. In one myth the men of old had made for themselves huge palaces
+which could fly. For a thousand years (an aeon to these savages) men had
+dwelt in unity, and in reverence of the gods; but at last they had
+become puffed up with their own glory, and had undertaken to fly to the
+sun and moon and the field of stars, to oust the gods from their bright
+home. But the gods sowed discord among them, so that they fell
+a-fighting one another in the upper air, and their swift palaces crashed
+down to the earth in thousands, to be monuments of man’s folly for ever
+after. In yet another saga it was the men themselves who were winged.
+They inhabited dovecots of masonry, with summits overtopping the stars
+and outraging the gods; who therefore destroyed them. Thus in one form
+or another, this theme of the downfall of the mighty fliers of old
+tyrannized over these abject peoples. Their crude tillage, their
+hunting, their defence against the reviving carnivora, were hampered at
+every turn by fear of offending the gods by any innovation.
+
+
+                        2. THE RISE OF PATAGONIA
+
+As the centuries piled up, the human species had inevitably diverged
+once more into many races in the various geographical areas. And each
+race consisted of a swarm of tribes, each ignorant of all but its
+immediate neighbours. After many millennia this vast diversification of
+stocks and cultures made it possible for fresh biological transfusions
+and revivifications to occur. At last, after many racial copulations, a
+people arose in whom the ancient dignity of humanity was somewhat
+restored. Once more there was a real distinction between the progressive
+and the backward regions, between ‘primitive’ and relatively enlightened
+cultures.
+
+This rebirth occurred in the Southern Hemisphere. Complex climatic
+changes had rendered the southern part of South America a fit nursery
+for civilization. Further, an immense warping of the earth’s crust to
+the east and south of Patagonia had turned what was once a relatively
+shallow region of the ocean into a vast new land connecting America with
+Antarctica by way of the former Falkland Islands and South Georgia, and
+stretching thence east and north-east into the heart of the Atlantic.
+
+It happened also that in South America the racial conditions were more
+favourable than elsewhere. After the fall of the First World State the
+European element in this region had dwindled, and the ancient ‘Indian’
+and Peruvian stock had come into dominance. Many thousands of years
+earlier, this race had achieved a primitive civilization of its own.
+After its ruin at the hands of the Spaniards, it had seemed a broken and
+negligible thing; yet it had ever kept itself curiously aloof in spirit
+from its conquerors. Though the two stocks had mingled inextricably,
+there remained ever in the remoter parts of this continent a way of life
+which was foreign to the dominant Americanism. Superficially
+Americanized, it remained fundamentally ‘Indian’ and unintelligible to
+the rest of the world. Throughout the former civilization this spirit
+had lain dormant like a seed in winter; but with the return of barbarism
+it had sprouted, and quietly spread in all directions. From the
+interaction of this ancient primitive culture and the many other racial
+elements left over in the continent from the old cosmopolitan
+civilization, civil life was to begin once more. Thus in a manner the
+Incas were at last to triumph over their conquerors.
+
+Various causes, then, combined in South America, and especially in the
+new and virgin plains of Patagonia, to bring the First Dark Age to an
+end. The great theme of mind began to repeat itself. But in a minor key.
+For a grave disability hampered the Patagonians. They began to grow old
+before their adolescence was completed. In the days of Einstein, an
+individual’s youth lasted some twenty-five years, and under the World
+State it had been artificially doubled. After the downfall of
+civilization the increasing natural brevity of the individual life was
+no longer concealed by artifice, and at the end of the First Dark Age a
+boy of fifteen was already settling into middle-age. Patagonian
+civilization at its height afforded considerable ease and security of
+life, and enabled man to live to seventy or even eighty; but the period
+of sensitive and supple youth remained at the very best little more than
+a decade and a half. Thus the truly young were never able to contribute
+to culture before they were already at heart middle-aged. At fifteen
+their bones were definitely becoming brittle, their hair grizzled, their
+faces lined. Their joints and muscles were stiffening, their brains were
+no longer quick to learn new adjustments, their fervour was evaporating.
+
+It may seem strange that under these circumstances any kind of
+civilization could be achieved by the race, that any generation should
+ever have been able to do more than learn the tricks of its elders. Yet
+in fact, though progress was never swift, it was steady. For though
+these beings lacked much of the vigour of youth, they were compensated
+somewhat by escaping much of youth’s fevers and distractions. The First
+Men, in fact, were now a race whose wild oats had been sown; and though
+their youthful escapades had somewhat crippled them, they had now the
+advantage of sobriety and singleness of purpose. Though doomed by
+lassitude, and a certain fear of extravagance, to fall short of the
+highest achievements of their predecessors, they avoided much of the
+wasteful incoherence and mental conflict which had tortured the earlier
+civilization at its height, though not in its decline. Moreover, because
+their animal nature was somewhat subdued, the Patagonians were more
+capable of dispassionate cognition, and more inclined toward
+intellectualism. They were a people in whom rational behaviour was less
+often subverted by passion, though more liable to fail through mere
+indolence or faintheartedness. Though they found detachment relatively
+easy, theirs was the detachment of mere lassitude, not the leap from the
+prison of life’s cravings into a more spacious world.
+
+One source of the special character of the Patagonian mind was that in
+it the sexual impulses was relatively weak. Many obscure causes had
+helped to temper that lavish sexuality in respect of which the first
+human species differed from all other animals, even the continuously
+sexual apes. These causes were diverse, but they combined to produce in
+the last phase of the life of the species a general curtailment of
+excess energy. In the Dark Ages the severity of the struggle for
+existence had thrust the sexual interest back almost into the
+subordinate place which it occupies in the animal mind. Coitus became a
+luxury only occasionally desired, while self-preservation had become
+once more an urgent and ever-present necessity. When at last life began
+to be easier, sexuality remained in partial eclipse, for the forces of
+racial ‘senescence’ were at work. Thus the Patagonian culture differed
+in mood from all the earlier cultures of the First Men. Hitherto it had
+been the clash of sexuality and social taboo that had generated half the
+fervour and half the delusions of the race. The excess energy of a
+victorious species, directed by circumstance into the great river of
+sex, and damned by social convention, had been canalized for a thousand
+labours. And though often it would break loose and lay all waste before
+it, in the main it had been turned to good account. At all times indeed,
+it had been prone to escape in all directions and carve out channels for
+itself, as a lopped tree stump sends forth not one but a score of
+shoots. Hence the richness, diversity, incoherence, violent and
+uncomprehended cravings and enthusiasms, of the earlier peoples. In the
+Patagonians there was no such luxuriance. That they were not highly
+sexual was not in itself a weakness. What mattered was that the springs
+of energy which formerly happened to flood into the channel of sex were
+themselves impoverished.
+
+Conceive, then, a small and curiously sober people established east of
+the ancient Bahia Blanca, and advancing century by century over the
+plains and up the valleys. In time it reached and encircled the heights
+which were once the island of South Georgia, while to the north and west
+it spread into the Brazilian highlands and over the Andes. Definitely of
+higher type than any of their neighbours, definitely more vigorous and
+acute, the Patagonians were without serious rivals. And since by
+temperament they were peaceable and conciliatory, their cultural
+progress was little delayed, either by military imperialism or internal
+strife. Like their predecessors in the northern hemisphere, they passed
+through phases of disruption and union, retrogression and regeneration;
+but their career was on the whole more steadily progressive, and less
+dramatic, than anything that had occurred before. Earlier peoples had
+leapt from barbarism to civil life and collapsed again within a thousand
+years. The slow march of the Patagonians took ten times as long to pass
+from a tribal to a civic organization.
+
+Eventually they comprised a vast and highly organized community of
+autonomous provinces, whose political and cultural centre lay upon the
+new coast north-east of the ancient Falkland Islands, while its
+barbarian outskirts included much of Brazil and Peru. The absence of
+serious strife between the various parts of this ‘empire’ was due partly
+to an innately pacific disposition, partly to a genius for organization.
+These influences were strengthened by a curiously potent tradition of
+cosmopolitanism, or human unity, which had been born in the agony of
+disunion before the days of the World State, and was so burnt into men’s
+hearts that it survived as an element of myth even through the Dark Age.
+So powerful was this tradition, that even when the sailing ships of
+Patagonia had founded colonies in remote Africa and Australia, these new
+communities remained at heart one with the mother country. Even when the
+almost Nordic culture of the new and temperate Antarctic coasts had
+outshone the ancient centre, the political harmony of the race was never
+in danger.
+
+
+                          3. THE CULT OF YOUTH
+
+The Patagonians passed through all the spiritual phases that earlier
+races had experienced, but in a distinctive manner. They had their
+primitive tribal religion, derived from the dark past, and based on the
+fear of natural forces. They had their monotheistic impersonation of
+Power as a vindictive Creator. Their most adored racial hero was a
+god-man who abolished the old religion of fear. They had their phases,
+also, of devout ritual and their phases of rationalism, and again their
+phases of empirical curiosity.
+
+Most significant for the historian who would understand their special
+mentality is the theme of the god-man; so curiously did it resemble, yet
+differ from, similar themes in earlier cultures of the first human
+species. He was conceived as eternally adolescent, and as mystically the
+son of all men and women. Far from being the Elder Brother, he was the
+Favourite Child; and indeed he epitomises that youthful energy and
+enthusiasm which the race now guessed was slipping away from it. Though
+the sexual interest of this people was weak, the parental interest was
+curiously strong. But the worship of the Favourite Son was not merely
+parental; it expressed also both the individual’s craving for his own
+lost youth, and his obscure sense that the race itself was senescent.
+
+It was believed that the prophet had actually lived a century as a fresh
+adolescent. He was designated the Boy who Refused to Grow up. And this
+vigour of will was possible to him, it was said, because in him the
+feeble vitality of the race was concentrated many millionfold. For he
+was the fruit of all parental passion that ever was and would be; and as
+such he was divine. Primarily he was the Son of Man, but also he was
+God. For God, in this religion, was no prime Creator but the fruit of
+man’s endeavour. The Creator was brute power, which had quite
+inadvertently begotten a being nobler than itself. God, the adorable,
+was the eternal outcome of man’s labour in time, the eternally realized
+promise of what man himself should become. Yet though this cult was
+based on the will for a young-hearted future, it was also overhung by a
+dread, almost at times a certainty, that in fact such a future would
+never be, that the race was doomed to grow old and die, that spirit
+could never conquer the corruptible flesh, but must fade and vanish.
+Only by taking to heart the message of the Divine Boy, it was said,
+could man hope to escape this doom.
+
+Such was the legend. It is instructive to examine the reality. The
+actual individual, in whom this myth of the Favourite Son was founded,
+was indeed remarkable. Born of shepherd parents among the Southern
+Andes, he had first become famous as the leader of a romantic ‘youth
+movement’; and it was this early stage of his career that won him
+followers. He urged the young to set an example to the old, to live
+their own life undaunted by conventions, to enjoy, to work hard but
+briefly, to be loyal comrades. Above all, he preached the religious duty
+of remaining young in spirit. No one, he said, need grow old, if he
+willed earnestly not to do so, if he would but keep his soul from
+falling asleep, his heart open to all rejuvenating influences and shut
+to every breath of senility. The delight of soul in soul, he said, was
+the great rejuvenator; it re-created both lover and beloved. If
+Patagonians would only appreciate each other’s beauty without jealousy,
+the race would grow young again. And the mission of his ever-increasing
+Band of Youth was nothing less than the rejuvenation of man.
+
+The propagation of this attractive gospel was favoured by a seeming
+miracle. The prophet turned out to be biologically unique among
+Patagonians. When many of his coevals were showing signs of senescence,
+he remained physically young. Also he possessed a sexual vigour which to
+the Patagonians seemed miraculous. And since sexual taboo was unknown,
+he exercised himself so heartily in love-making, that he had paramours
+in every village, and presently his offspring were numbered in hundreds.
+In this respect his followers strove hard to live up to him, though with
+small success. But it was not only physically that the prophet remained
+young. He preserved also a strikingly youthful agility of mind. His
+sexual prodigality, though startling to his contemporaries, was in him a
+temperate overflow of surplus energy. Far from exhausting him, it
+refreshed him. Presently, however, this exuberance gave place to a more
+sober life of work and meditation. It was in this period that he began
+to differentiate himself mentally from his fellows. For at twenty-five,
+when most Patagonians were deeply settled into a mental groove, he was
+still battling with successive waves of ideas, and striking out into the
+unknown. Not till he was forty, and still physically in earliest prime,
+did he gather his strength and deliver himself of his mature gospel.
+This, his considered view of existence, turned out to be almost
+unintelligible to Patagonians. Though in a sense it was an expression of
+their own culture, it was an expression upon a plane of vitality to
+which very few of them could ever reach.
+
+The climax came when, during a ceremony in the supreme temple of the
+capital city, while the worshippers were all prostrated before the
+hideous image of the Creator, the ageless prophet strode up to the
+altar, regarded first the congregation and then the god, burst into a
+hearty peal of laughter, slapped the image resoundingly, and cried,
+‘Ugly, I salute you! Not as almighty, but as the greatest of all jokers.
+To have such a face, and yet to be admired for it! To be so empty, and
+yet so feared!’ Instantly there was hubbub. But such was the young
+iconoclast’s god-like radiance, confidence, unexpectedness, and such his
+reputation as the miraculous Boy, that when he turned upon the crowd,
+they fell silent, and listened to his scolding.
+
+‘Fools!’ he cried. ‘Senile infants! If God really likes your adulation,
+and all this hugger-mugger, it is because he enjoys the joke against
+you, and against himself, too. You are too serious, yet not serious
+enough; too solemn, and all for puerile ends. You are so eager for life,
+that you cannot live. You cherish your youth so much that it flies from
+you. When I was a boy, I said, “Let us keep young”; and you applauded,
+and went about hugging your toys and refusing to grow up. What I said
+was not bad for a boy, but it was not enough. Now I am a man; and I say,
+“For God’s sake, grow up!” Of course we must keep young; but it is
+useless to keep young if we do not also grow up, and never stop growing
+up. To keep young, surely, is just to keep supple and keen; and to grow
+up is not at all a mere sinking into stiffness and into disillusion, but
+a rising into ever finer skill in all the actions of the game of living.
+There is something else, too, which is a part of growing up—to see that
+life is really, after all, a game; a terribly serious game, no doubt,
+but none the less a game. When we play a game, as it should be played,
+we strain every muscle to win; but all the while we are less for winning
+than for the game. And we play the better for it. When barbarians play
+against a Patagonian team, they forget that it is a game, and go mad for
+victory. And then how we despise them! If they find themselves losing,
+they turn savage; if winning, blatant. Either way, the game is murdered,
+and they cannot see that they are slaughtering a lovely thing. How they
+pester and curse the umpire, too! I have done that myself, of course,
+before now; not in games but in life. I have actually cursed the umpire
+of life. Better so, anyhow, than to insult him with presents, in the
+hope of being favoured; which is what you are doing here, with your
+salaams and your vows. I never did that. I merely hated him. Then later
+I learned to laugh at him, or rather at the thing you set up in his
+place. But now at last I see him clearly, and laugh with him, at myself,
+for having missed the spirit of the game. But as for you! Coming here to
+fawn and whine and cadge favours of the umpire!’
+
+At this point the people rushed toward him to seize him. But he checked
+them with a young laugh that made them love while they hated. He spoke
+again.
+
+‘I want to tell you how I came to learn my lesson. I have a queer love
+for clambering about the high mountains; and once when I was up among
+the snow-fields and precipices of Aconcagua, I was caught in a blizzard.
+Perhaps some of you may know what storms can be like in the mountains.
+The air became a hurtling flood of snow. I was swallowed up and carried
+away. After many hours of floundering, I fell into a snow-drift. I tried
+to rise, but fell again and again, till my head was buried. The thought
+of death enraged me, for there was still so much that I wanted to do. I
+struggled frantically, vainly. Then suddenly—how can I put it?—I saw
+the game that I was losing, and it was good. Good, no less to lose than
+to win. For it was the game, now, not victory, that mattered. Hitherto I
+had been blindfold, and a slave to victory; suddenly I was free, and
+with sight. For now I saw myself, and all of us, through the eyes of the
+umpire. It was as though a play-actor were to see the whole play, with
+his own part in it, through the author’s eyes, from the auditorium. Here
+was I, acting the part of a rather fine man who had come to grief
+through his own carelessness before his work was done. For me, a
+character in the play, the situation was hideous; yet for me, the
+spectator, it had become excellent within a wider excellence. I saw that
+it was equally so with all of us, and with all the worlds. For I seemed
+to see a thousand worlds taking part with us in the great show. And I
+saw everything through the calm eyes, the exultant, almost derisive, yet
+not unkindly, eyes of the playwright.
+
+‘Well, it had seemed that my exit had come; but no, there was still a
+cue for me. Somehow I was so strengthened by this new view of things
+that I struggled out of the snow-drift. And here I am once more. But I
+am a new man. My spirit is free. While I was a boy, I said, “Grow more
+alive”; but in those days I never guessed that there was an aliveness
+far intenser than youth’s flicker, a kind of still incandescence. Is
+there no one here who knows what I mean? No one who at least _desires_
+this keener living? The first step is to outgrow this adulation of life
+itself, and this cadging obsequiousness toward Power. Come! Put it away!
+Break the ridiculous image in your hearts, as I now smash this idol.’
+
+So saying he picked up a great candlestick and shattered the image. Once
+more there was an uproar, and the temple authorities had him arrested.
+Not long afterwards he was tried for sacrilege and executed. For this
+final extravagance was but the climax of many indiscretions, and those
+in power were glad to have so obvious a pretext for extinguishing this
+brilliant but dangerous lunatic.
+
+But the cult of the Divine Boy had already become very popular, for the
+earlier teaching of the prophet expressed the fundamental craving of the
+Patagonians. Even his last and perplexing message was accepted by his
+followers, though without real understanding. Emphasis was laid upon the
+act of iconoclasm, rather than upon the spirit of his exhortation.
+
+Century by century the new religion, for such it was, spread over the
+civilized world. And the race seemed to have been spiritually
+rejuvenated to some extent by widespread fervour. Physically also a
+certain rejuvenation took place; for before his death this unique
+biological ‘sport’, or throw-back to an earlier vitality, produced some
+thousands of sons and daughters; and they in turn propagated the good
+seed far and wide. Undoubtedly it was this new strain that brought about
+the golden age of Patagonia, greatly improving the material conditions
+of the race, carrying civilization into the northern continents, and
+attacking problems of science and philosophy with renewed ardour.
+
+But the revival was not permanent. The descendants of the prophet prided
+themselves too much on violent living. Physically, sexually, mentally,
+they over-reached themselves and became enfeebled. Moreover, little by
+little the potent strain was diluted and overwhelmed by intercourse with
+the greater volume of the innately ‘senile’; so that, after a few
+centuries, the race returned to its middle-aged mood. At the same time
+the vision of the Divine Boy was gradually distorted. At first it had
+been youth’s ideal of what youth should be, a pattern woven of fanatical
+loyalty, irresponsible gaiety, comradeship, physical gusto, and not a
+little pure devilry. But insensibly it became a pattern of that which
+was expected of youth by sad maturity. The violent young hero was
+sentimentalized into the senior’s vision of childhood, naïve and docile.
+All that had been violent was forgotten; and what was left became a
+whimsical and appealing stimulus to the parental impulses. At the same
+time this phantom was credited with all the sobriety and caution which
+are so easily appreciated by the middle-aged.
+
+Inevitably this distorted image of youth became an incubus upon the
+actual young men and women of the race. It was held up as the model of
+social virtue; but it was a model to which they could never conform
+without doing violence to their best nature, since it was not any longer
+an expression of youth at all. Just as, in an earlier age, woman had
+been idealized and at the same time hobbled, so now youth.
+
+Some few, indeed, throughout the history of Patagonia, attained a
+clearer vision of the prophet. Fewer still were able to enter into the
+spirit of his final message, in which his enduring youthfulness raised
+him to a maturity alien to Patagonia. For the tragedy of this people was
+not so much their ‘senescence’ as their arrested growth. Feeling
+themselves old, they yearned to be young again. But, through fixed
+immaturity of mind, they could never recognize that the true, though
+unlooked-for, fulfilment of youth’s passionate craving is not the mere
+achievement of the ends of youth itself, but an advance into a more
+awake and far-seeing vitality.
+
+
+                           4. THE CATASTROPHE
+
+It was in these latter days that the Patagonians discovered the
+civilization that had preceded them. In rejecting the ancient religion
+of fear, they had abandoned also the legend of a remote magnificence,
+and had come to regard themselves as pioneers of the mind. In the new
+continent which was their homeland there were, of course, no relics of
+the ancient order; and the ruins that besprinkled the older regions had
+been explained as mere freaks of nature. But latterly, with the advance
+of natural knowledge, archaeologists had reconstructed something of the
+forgotten world. And the crisis came when, in the basement of a
+shattered pylon in China, they found a store of metal plates
+(constructed of an immensely durable artificial element), on which were
+embossed crowded lines of writing. These objects were, in fact, blocks
+from which books were printed a thousand centuries earlier. Other
+deposits were soon discovered, and bit by bit the dead language was
+deciphered. Within three centuries the outline of the ancient culture
+was laid bare; and presently the whole history of man’s rise and ruin
+fell upon this latter-day civilization with crushing effect, as though
+an ancient pylon were to have fallen on a village of wigwams at its
+foot. The pioneers discovered that all the ground which they had so
+painfully won from the wild had been conquered long ago, and lost; that
+on the material side their glory was nothing beside the glory of the
+past; and that in the sphere of mind they had established only a few
+scattered settlements where formerly was an empire. The Patagonian
+system of natural knowledge had been scarcely further advanced than that
+of pre-Newtonian Europe. They had done little more than conceive the
+scientific spirit and unlearn a few superstitions. And now suddenly they
+came into a vast inheritance of thought.
+
+This in itself was a gravely disturbing experience for a people of
+strong intellectual interest. But even more overwhelming was the
+discovery, borne in on them in the course of their research, that the
+past had been not only brilliant but crazy, and that in the long run the
+crazy element had completely triumphed. For the Patagonian mind was by
+now too sane and empirical to accept the ancient knowledge without
+testing it. The findings of the archaeologists were handed over to the
+physicists and other scientists, and the firm thought and valuation of
+Europe and America at their zenith were soon distinguished from the
+degenerate products of the World State.
+
+The upshot of this impact with a more developed civilization was
+dramatic and tragic. It divided the Patagonians into loyalists and
+rebels, into those who clung to the view that the new learning was a
+satanic lie, and those who faced the facts. To the former party the
+facts were thoroughly depressing; the latter, though overawed, found in
+them a compelling majesty, and also a hope. That the earth was a mote
+among the starclouds was the least subversive of the new doctrines, for
+the Patagonians had already abandoned the geocentric view. What was so
+distressing to the reactionaries was the theory that an earlier race had
+long ago possessed and spent the vitality that they themselves so
+craved. The party of progress, on the other hand, urged that this vast
+new knowledge must be used; and that, thus equipped, Patagonia might
+compensate for lack of youthfulness by superior sanity.
+
+This divergence of will resulted in a physical conflict such as had
+never before occurred in the Patagonian world. Something like
+nationalism emerged. The more vigorous Antarctic coasts became modern,
+while Patagonia itself clung to the older culture. There were several
+wars, but as physics and chemistry advanced in Antarctica, the
+Southerners were able to devise engines of war which the Northerners
+could not resist. In a couple of centuries the new ‘culture’ had
+triumphed. The world was once more unified.
+
+Hitherto Patagonian civilization had been of a medieval type. Under the
+influence of physics and chemistry it began to change. Wind- and
+water-power began to be used for the generation of electricity. Vast
+mining operations were undertaken in search of the metals and other
+minerals which no longer occurred at easy depths. Architecture began to
+make use of steel. Electrically driven aeroplanes were made, but without
+real success. And this failure was symptomatic; for the Patagonians were
+not sufficiently foolhardy to master aviation, even had their planes
+been more efficient. They themselves naturally attributed their failure
+wholly to lack of a convenient source of power, such as the ancient
+petrol. Indeed this lack of oil and coal hampered them at every turn.
+Volcanic power, of course, was available; but, never having been really
+mastered by the more resourceful ancients, it defeated the Patagonians
+completely.
+
+As a matter of fact, in wind and water they had all that was needed. The
+resources of the whole planet were available, and the world-population
+was less than a hundred million. With this source alone they could
+never, indeed, have competed in luxury with the earlier World State, but
+they might well have achieved something like Utopia.
+
+But this was not to be. Industrialism, though accompanied by only a slow
+increase of population, produced in time most of the social discords
+which had almost ruined their predecessors. To them it appeared that all
+their troubles would be solved if only their material power were far
+ampler. The strong and scarcely rational conviction was a symptom of
+their ruling obsession, the craving for increased vitality.
+
+Under these circumstances it was natural that one event and one strand
+of ancient history should fascinate them. The secret of limitless
+material power had once been known and lost. Why should not Patagonians
+rediscover it, and use it, with their superior sanity, to bring heaven
+on earth? The ancients, no doubt, did well to forego this dangerous
+source of power; but the Patagonians, level-headed and single-minded,
+need have no fear. Some, indeed, considered it less important to seek
+power than to find a means of checking biological senescence; but,
+unfortunately, though physical science had advanced so rapidly, the more
+subtle biological sciences had remained backward, largely because among
+the ancients themselves little more had been done than to prepare their
+way. Thus it happened that the most brilliant minds of Patagonia,
+fascinated by the prize at stake, concentrated upon the problem of
+matter. The state encouraged this research by founding and endowing
+laboratories whose avowed end was this sole work.
+
+The problem was difficult, and the Patagonian scientists, though
+intelligent, were somewhat lacking in grit. Only after some five hundred
+years of intermittent research was the secret discovered, or partially
+so. It was found possible, by means of a huge initial expenditure of
+energy, to annihilate the positive and negative electric charges in one
+not very common kind of atom. But this limitation mattered not at all;
+the human race now possessed an inexhaustible source of power which
+could be easily manipulated and easily controlled. But though
+controllable, the new gift was not fool-proof; and there was no
+guarantee that those who used it might not use it foolishly, or
+inadvertently let it get out of hand.
+
+Unfortunately, at the time when the new source of energy was discovered,
+the Patagonians were more divided than of old. Industrialism, combined
+with the innate docility of the race, had gradually brought about a
+class cleavage more extreme even than that of the ancient world, though
+a cleavage of a curiously different kind. The strongly parental
+disposition of the average Patagonian prevented the dominant class from
+such brutal exploitation as had formerly occurred. Save during the first
+century of industrialism, there was no serious physical suffering among
+the proletariat. A paternal government saw to it that all Patagonians
+were at least properly fed and clothed, that all had ample leisure and
+opportunities of amusement. At the same time they saw to it also that
+the populace became more and more regimented. As in the First World
+State, civil authority was once more in the hands of a small group of
+masters of industry, but with a difference. Formerly the dominant motive
+of big business had been an almost mystical passion for the creation of
+activity; now the ruling minority regarded themselves as standing
+towards the populace _in loco parentis_, and aimed at creating ‘a
+young-hearted people, simple, gay, vigorous, and loyal’. Their ideal of
+the state was something between a preparatory school under a sympathetic
+but strict adult staff, and a joint-stock company, in which the
+shareholders retained only one function, to delegate their powers
+thankfully to a set of brilliant directors.
+
+That the system had worked so well and survived so long was due not only
+to innate Patagonian docility, but also to the principle by which the
+governing class recruited itself. One lesson at least had been learnt
+from the bad example of the earlier civilization, namely respect for
+intelligence. By a system of careful testing the brightest children were
+selected from all classes and trained to be governors. Even the children
+of the governors themselves were subjected to the same examination, and
+only those who qualified were sent to the ‘schools for young governors’.
+Some corruption no doubt existed, but in the main this system worked.
+The children thus selected were very carefully trained in theory and
+practice, as organizers, scientists, priests, and logicians.
+
+The less brilliant children of the race were educated very differently
+from the young governors. It was impressed on them that they were less
+able than the others. They were taught to respect the governors as
+superior beings, who were called upon to serve the community in
+specially skilled and arduous work, simply because of their ability. It
+would not be true to say that the less intelligent were educated merely
+to be slaves; rather they were expected to be the docile, diligent, and
+happy sons and daughters of the fatherland. They were taught to be loyal
+and optimistic. They were given vocational training for their various
+occupations, and encouraged to use their intelligence as much as
+possible upon the plane suited to it; but the affairs of the state and
+the problems of religion and theoretical science were strictly
+forbidden. The official doctrine of the beauty of youth was fundamental
+in their education. They were taught all the conventional virtues of
+youth, and in particular modesty and simplicity. As a class they were
+extremely healthy, for physical training was a very important part of
+education in Patagonia. Moreover, the universal practice of sun-bathing,
+which was a religious rite, was especially encouraged among the
+proletariat, as it was believed to keep the body ‘young’ and the mind
+placid. The leisure of the governed class was devoted mostly to
+athletics and other sport, physical and mental. Music and other forms of
+art were also practised, for these were considered fit occupations for
+juveniles. The government exercised a censorship over artistic products,
+but it was seldom enforced; for the common folk of Patagonia were mostly
+too phlegmatic and too busy to conceive anything but the most obvious
+and respectable art. They were fully occupied with work and pleasure.
+They suffered no sexual restraints. Their impersonal interests were
+satisfied with the official religion of youth-worship and loyalty to the
+community. This placid condition lasted for some four hundred years
+after the first century of industrialism. But as time passed the mental
+difference between the two classes increased. Superior intelligence
+became rarer and rarer among the proletariat; the governors were
+recruited more and more from their own offspring, until finally they
+became an hereditary caste. The gulf widened. The governors began to
+lose all mental contact with the governed. They made a mistake which
+could never have been committed had their psychology kept pace with
+their other sciences. Ever confronted with the workers’ lack of
+intelligence, they came to treat them more and more as children, and
+forgot that, though simple, they were grown men and women who needed to
+feel themselves as free partners in a great human enterprise. Formerly
+this illusion of responsibility had been sedulously encouraged. But as
+the gulf widened the proletarians were treated rather as infants than as
+adolescents, rather as well-cared-for domestic animals than as human
+beings. Their lives became more and more minutely, though benevolently,
+systematized for them. At the same time less care was taken to educate
+them up to an understanding and appreciation of the common human
+enterprise. Under these circumstances the temper of the people changed.
+Though their material condition was better than had ever been known
+before, save under the first World State, they became listless,
+discontented, mischievous, ungrateful to their superiors.
+
+Such was the state of affairs when the new source of energy was
+discovered. The world-community consisted of two very different
+elements, first a small, highly intellectual caste, passionately devoted
+to the state and to the advancement of culture amongst themselves; and,
+second, a much more numerous population of rather obtuse, physically
+well-cared-for, and spiritually starved industrialists. A serious clash
+between the two classes had already occurred over the use of a certain
+drug, favoured by the people for the bliss it produced, forbidden by the
+governors for its evil after-effects. The drug was abolished; but the
+motive was misinterpreted by the proletariat. This incident brought to
+the surface a hate that had for long been gathering strength in the
+popular mind, though unwittingly.
+
+When rumour got afoot that in future mechanical power would be
+unlimited, the people expected a millennium. Every one would have his
+own limitless source of energy. Work would cease. Pleasure would be
+increased to infinity. Unfortunately the first use made of the new power
+was extensive mining at unheard-of depths in search of metals and other
+minerals which had long ago ceased to be available near the surface.
+This involved difficult and dangerous work for the miners. There were
+casualties. Riots occurred. The new power was used upon the rioters with
+murderous effect, the governors declaring that, though their paternal
+hearts bled for their foolish children, this chastisement was necessary
+to prevent worse evils. The workers were urged to face their troubles
+with that detachment which the Divine Boy had preached in his final
+phase; but this advice was greeted with the derision which it deserved.
+Further strikes, riots, assassinations. The proletariat had scarcely
+more power against their masters than sheep against the shepherd, for
+they had not the brains for large-scale organization. But it was through
+one of these pathetically futile rebellions that Patagonia was at last
+destroyed.
+
+A petty dispute had occurred in one of the new mines. The management
+refused to allow miners to teach their trade to their sons; for
+vocational education, it was said, should be carried on professionally.
+Indignation against this interference with parental authority caused a
+sudden flash of the old rage. A power unit was seized, and after a bout
+of insane monkeying with the machinery, the mischief-makers
+inadvertently got things into such a state that at last the awful djinn
+of physical energy was able to wrench off his fetters and rage over the
+planet. The first explosion was enough to blow up the mountain range
+above the mine. In those mountains were huge tracts of the critical
+element, and these were detonated by rays from the initial explosion.
+This sufficed to set in action still more remote tracts of the element.
+An incandescent hurricane spread over the whole of Patagonia,
+reinforcing itself with fresh atomic fury wherever it went. It raged
+along the line of the Andes and the Rockies, scorching both continents
+with its heat. It undermined and blew up the Bering Straits, spread like
+a brood of gigantic fiery serpents into Asia, Europe, and Africa.
+Martians, already watching the earth as a cat a bird beyond its spring,
+noted that the brilliance of the neighbour planet was suddenly enhanced.
+Presently the oceans began to boil here and there with submarine
+commotion. Tidal waves mangled the coasts and floundered up the valleys.
+But in time the general sea level sank considerably through evaporation
+and the opening of chasms in the ocean floor. All volcanic regions
+became fantastically active. The polar caps began to melt, but prevented
+the arctic regions from being calcined like the rest of the planet. The
+atmosphere was a continuous dense cloud of moisture, fumes, and dust,
+churned in ceaseless hurricanes. As the fury of the electro-magnetic
+collapse proceeded, the surface temperature of the planet steadily
+increased, till only in the Arctic and a few favoured corners of the
+sub-Arctic could life persist.
+
+Patagonia’s death agony was brief. In Africa and Europe a few remote
+settlements escaped the actual track of the eruptions, but succumbed in
+a few weeks to hurricanes of steam. Of the two hundred million members
+of the human race, all were burnt or roasted or suffocated within three
+months—all but thirty-five, who happened to be in the neighbourhood of
+the North Pole.
+
+
+
+
+                            VI _Transition_
+
+
+                        1. THE FIRST MEN AT BAY
+
+By one of those rare tricks of fortune, which are as often favourable as
+hostile to humanity, an Arctic exploration ship had recently been
+embedded in the pack-ice for a long drift across the Polar sea. She was
+provisioned for four years, and when the catastrophe occurred she had
+already been at sea for six months. She was a sailing vessel; the
+expedition had been launched before it was practicable to make use of
+the new source of power. The crew consisted of twenty-eight men and
+seven women. Individuals of an earlier and more sexual race,
+proportioned thus, in such close proximity and isolation, would almost
+certainly have fallen foul of one another sooner or later. But to
+Patagonians the arrangement was not intolerable. Besides managing the
+whole domestic side of the expedition, the seven women were able to
+provide moderate sexual delight for all, for in this people the female
+sexuality was much less reduced than the male. There were, indeed,
+occasional jealousies and feuds in the little community, but these were
+subordinated to a strong _esprit de corps_. The whole company had, of
+course, been very carefully chosen for comradeship, loyalty, and health,
+as well as for technical skill. All claimed descent from the Divine Boy.
+All were of the governing class. One quaint expression of the strongly
+parental Patagonian temperament was that a pair of diminutive pet
+monkeys was taken with the expedition.
+
+The crew’s first intimation of the catastrophe was a furious hot wind
+that melted the surface of the ice. The sky turned black. The Arctic
+summer became a weird and sultry night, torn by fantastic thunderstorms.
+Rain crashed on the ship’s deck in a continuous waterfall. Clouds of
+pungent smoke and dust irritated the eyes and nose. Submarine
+earthquakes buckled the pack-ice.
+
+A year after the explosion, the ship was labouring in tempestuous and
+berg-strewn water near the Pole. The bewildered little company now began
+to feel its way south; but, as they proceeded, the air became more
+fiercely hot and pungent, storms more savage. Another twelve months were
+spent in beating about the Polar sea, ever and again retreating north
+from the impossible southern weather. But at length conditions improved
+slightly, and with great difficulty these few survivors of the human
+race approached their original objective in Norway, to find that the
+lowlands were a scorched and lifeless desert, while on the heights the
+valley vegetation was already struggling to establish itself, in patches
+of sickly green. Their base town had been flattened by a hurricane, and
+the skeletons of its population still lay in the streets. They coasted
+further south. Everywhere the same desolation. Hoping that the
+disturbance might be merely local, they headed round the British Isles
+and doubled back on France. But France turned out to be an appalling
+chaos of volcanoes. With a change of wind, the sea around them was
+infuriated with falling debris, often red hot. Miraculously they got
+away and fled north again. After creeping along the Siberian coast they
+were at last able to find a tolerable resting-place at the mouth of one
+of the great rivers. The ship was brought to anchor, and the crew
+rested. They were a diminished company, for six men and two women had
+been lost on the voyage.
+
+Conditions even here must recently have been far more severe, since much
+of the vegetation had been scorched, and dead animals were frequent. But
+evidently the first fury of the vast explosion was now abating.
+
+By this time the voyagers were beginning to realize the truth. They
+remembered the half jocular prophecies that the new power would sooner
+or later wreck the planet, prophecies which had evidently been all too
+well founded. There had been a world-wide disaster; and they themselves
+had been saved only by their remoteness and the Arctic ice from a fate
+that had probably overwhelmed all their fellow-men.
+
+So desperate was the outlook for a handful of exhausted persons on a
+devastated planet, that some urged suicide. All dallied with the idea,
+save a woman, who had unexpectedly become pregnant. In her the strong
+parental disposition of her race was now awakened, and she implored the
+party to make a fight for the sake of her child. Reminded that the baby
+would only be born into a life of hardship, she reiterated with more
+persistence than reason, ‘My baby must live’.
+
+The men shrugged their shoulders. But as their tired bodies recovered
+after the recent struggle, they began to realize the solemnity of their
+position. It was one of the biologists who expressed a thought which was
+already present to all. There was at least a chance of survival, and if
+ever men and women had a sacred duty, surely these had. For they were
+now the sole trustees of the human spirit. At whatever cost of toil and
+misery they must people the earth again.
+
+This common purpose now began to exalt them, and brought them all into a
+rare intimacy. ‘We are ordinary folk,’ said the biologist, ‘but somehow
+we must become great.’ And they were, indeed, in a manner made great by
+their unique position. In generous minds a common purpose and common
+suffering breed a deep passion of comradeship, expressed perhaps not in
+words but in acts of devotion. These, in their loneliness and their
+sense of obligation, experienced not only comradeship, but a vivid
+communion with one another as instruments of a sacred cause.
+
+The party now began to build a settlement beside the river. Though the
+whole area had, of course, been devastated, vegetation had soon revived,
+from roots and seeds, buried or wind-borne. The countryside was now
+green with those plants that had been able to adjust themselves to the
+new climate. Animals had suffered far more seriously. Save for the
+Arctic fox, a few small rodents, and one herd of reindeer, none were
+left but the dwellers in the actual Arctic seas, the Polar bear, various
+cetaceans, and seals. Of fish there were plenty. Birds in great numbers
+had crowded out of the south, and had died off in thousands through lack
+of food, but certain species were already adjusting themselves to the
+new environment. Indeed, the whole remaining fauna and flora of the
+planet was passing through a phase of rapid and very painful
+readjustment. Many well-established species had wholly failed to get a
+footing in the new world, while certain hitherto insignificant types
+were able to forge ahead.
+
+The party found it possible to grow maize and even rice from seed
+brought from a ruined store in Norway. But the great heat, frequent
+torrential rain, and lack of sunlight made agriculture laborious and
+precarious. Moreover, the atmosphere had become seriously impure, and
+the human organism had not yet succeeded in adapting itself.
+Consequently the party were permanently tired and liable to disease.
+
+The pregnant woman had died in child-birth, but her baby lived. It
+became the party’s most sacred object, for it kindled in every mind the
+strong parental disposition so characteristic of Patagonians.
+
+Little by little the numbers of the settlement were reduced by sickness,
+hurricanes, and volcanic gases. But in time they achieved a kind of
+equilibrium with their environment, and even a certain strenuous amenity
+of life. As their prosperity increased, however, their unity diminished.
+Differences of temperament began to be dangerous. Among the men two
+leaders had emerged, or rather one leader and a critic. The original
+head of the expedition had proved quite incapable of dealing with the
+new situation, and had at last committed suicide. The company had then
+chosen the second navigating officer as their chief and had chosen him
+unanimously. The other born leader of the party was a junior biologist,
+a man of very different type. The relations of these two did much to
+determine the future history of man, and are worthy of study in
+themselves; but here we can only glance at them. In all times of stress
+the navigator’s authority was absolute, for everything depended on his
+initiative and heroic example. But in less arduous periods, murmurs
+arose against him for exacting discipline when discipline seemed
+unnecessary. Between him and the young biologist there grew up a strange
+blend of hostility and affection; for the latter, though critical, loved
+and admired the other, and declared that the survival of the party
+depended on this one man’s practical genius.
+
+Three years after their landing, the community, though reduced in
+numbers and in vitality, was well established in a routine of hunting,
+agriculture, and building. Three fairly healthy infants rejoiced and
+exasperated their elders. With security, the navigator’s genius for
+action found less scope, while the knowledge of the scientists became
+more valuable. Plant and poultry-breeding were beyond the range of the
+heroic leader, and in prospecting for minerals he was equally helpless.
+Inevitably as time passed he and the other navigators grew restless and
+irritable; and at last, when the leader decreed that the party should
+take to the ship and explore for better land, a serious dispute
+occurred. All the sea-farers applauded; but the scientists, partly
+through clearer understanding of the calamity that had befallen the
+planet, partly through repugnance at the hardship involved, refused to
+go.
+
+Violent emotions were aroused; but both sides restrained themselves
+through well-tried mutual respect and loyalty to the community. Then
+suddenly sexual passion set a light to the tinder. The woman who, by
+general consent, had come to be queen of the settlement, and was
+regarded as sacred to the leader, asserted her independence by sleeping
+with one of the scientists. The leader surprised them, and in sudden
+rage killed the young man. The little community at once fell into two
+armed factions, and more blood was shed. Very soon, however, the folly
+and sacrilege of this brawl became evident to these few survivors of a
+civilized race, and after a parley a grave decision was made.
+
+The company was to be divided. One party, consisting of five men and two
+women, under the young biologist, was to remain in the settlement. The
+leader himself, with the remaining nine men and two women, was to
+navigate the ship toward Europe, in search of a better land. They
+promised to send word, if possible, during the following year.
+
+With this decision taken the two parties once more became amicable. All
+worked to equip the pioneers. When at last it was the time of departure,
+there was a solemn leave-taking. Every one was relieved at the cessation
+of a painful incompatibility; but more poignant than relief was the
+distressed affection of those who had so long been comrades in a sacred
+enterprise.
+
+It was a parting even more momentous than was supposed. For from this
+act arose at length two distinct human species.
+
+Those who stayed behind heard no more of the wanderers, and finally
+concluded that they had come to grief. But in fact they were driven west
+and south-west past Iceland, now a cluster of volcanoes, to Labrador. On
+this voyage through fantastic storms and oceanic convulsions they lost
+nearly half their number, and were at last unable to work the ship. When
+finally they were wrecked on a rocky coast, only the carpenter’s mate,
+two women, and the pair of monkeys succeeded in clambering ashore.
+
+These found themselves in a climate far more sultry than Siberia; but
+like Siberia, Labrador contained uplands of luxuriant vegetation. The
+man and his two women had at first great difficulty in finding food, but
+in time they adapted themselves to a diet of berries and roots. As the
+years passed, however, the climate undermined their mentality, and their
+descendants sank into abject savagery, finally degenerating into a type
+that was human only in respect of its ancestry.
+
+The little Siberian settlement was now hard-pressed but single-minded.
+Calculation had convinced the scientists that the planet would not
+return to its normal state for some millions of years; for though the
+first and superficial fury of the disaster had already ceased, the
+immense pent-up energy of the central explosions would take millions of
+years to leak out through volcanic vents. The leader of the party, by
+rare luck a man of genius, conceived their situation thus. For millions
+of years the planet would be uninhabitable save for a fringe of Siberian
+coast. The human race was doomed for ages to a very restricted and
+uncongenial environment. All that could be hoped for was the persistence
+of a mere remnant of civilized humanity, which should be able to lie
+dormant until a more favourable epoch. With this end in view the party
+must propagate itself, and make some possibility of cultured life for
+its offspring. Above all it must record in some permanent form as much
+as it could remember of Patagonian culture. ‘We are the germ,’ he said.
+‘We must play for safety, mark time, preserve man’s inheritance. The
+chances against us are almost overwhelming, but just possibly we shall
+win through.’
+
+And so in fact they did. Several times almost exterminated at the
+outset, these few harassed individuals preserved their spark of
+humanity. A close inspection of their lives would reveal an intense
+personal drama; for, in spite of the sacred purpose which united them,
+almost as muscles in one limb, they were individuals of different
+temperaments. The children, moreover, caused jealousy between their
+parentally hungry elders. There was ever a subdued, and sometimes an
+open, rivalry to gain the affection of these young things, these few and
+precious buds on the human stem. Also there was sharp disagreement about
+their education. For though all the elders adored them simply for their
+childishness, one at least, the visionary leader of the party, thought
+of them chiefly as potential vessels of the human spirit, to be moulded
+strictly for their great function. In this perpetual subdued antagonism
+of aims and temperaments the little society lived from day to day, much
+as a limb functions in the antagonism of its muscles.
+
+The adults of the party devoted much of their leisure during the long
+winters to the heroic labour of recording the outline of man’s whole
+knowledge. This task was very dear to the leader, but the others often
+grew weary of it. To each person a certain sphere of culture was
+assigned; and after he or she had thought out a section and scribbled it
+down on slate, it was submitted to the company for criticism, and
+finally engraved deeply on tablets of hard stone. Many thousands of such
+tablets were produced in the course of years, and were stored in a cave
+which was carefully prepared for them. Thus was recorded something of
+the history of the earth and of man, the outlines of physics, chemistry,
+biology, psychology, and geometry. Each scribe set down also in some
+detail a summary of his own special study, and added a personal
+manifesto of his own views about existence. Much ingenuity was spent in
+devising a vast pictorial dictionary and grammar, with which, it was
+hoped, the remote future might interpret the whole library.
+
+Years passed while this immense registration of human thought was still
+in progress. The founders of the settlement grew feebler while the
+eldest of the next generation were still adolescent. Of the two women,
+one had died and the other was almost a cripple, both martyrs to the
+task of motherhood. A youth, an infant boy, and four girls of various
+ages—on these the future of man now depended. Unfortunately these
+precious beings had suffered from their very preciousness. Their
+education had been bungled. They had been both pampered and oppressed.
+Nothing was thought too good for them, but they were overwhelmed with
+cherishing and teaching. Thus they came to hold the elders at arm’s
+length, and to weary of the ideals imposed on them. Brought into a
+ruined world without their own consent, they refused to accept the
+crushing obligation toward an improbable future. Hunting, and the daily
+struggle of a pioneering age, afforded their spirits full exercise in
+courage, mutual loyalty, and interest in one another’s personality. They
+would live for the present only, and for the tangible reality, not for a
+culture which they knew only by hearsay. In particular, they loathed the
+hardship of engraving endless verbiage upon granitic slabs.
+
+The crisis came when the eldest girl had crossed the threshold of
+physical maturity. The leader told her that it was her duty to begin
+bearing children at once, and ordered her to have intercourse with her
+half-brother, his own son. Having herself assisted at the last birth,
+which had destroyed her mother, she refused; and when pressed she
+dropped her graving tool and fled. This was the first serious act of
+rebellion. In a few years the older generation was deposed from
+authority. A new way of life, more active, more dangerous, zestful, and
+careless, resulted in a lowering of the community’s standard of comfort
+and organization, but also in greater health and vitality. Experiments
+in plant and stock-breeding were neglected, buildings went out of
+repair; but great feats of hunting and exploration were undertaken.
+Leisure was given over to games of hazard and calculation, to dancing,
+singing, and romantic story-telling. Music and romance, indeed, were now
+the main expression of the finer nature of these beings, and became the
+vehicles of obscure religious experience. The intellectualism of the
+elders was ridiculed. What could their poor sciences tell of reality, of
+the many-faced, never-for-a-moment-the-same, superbly inconsequent, and
+ever-living Real? Man’s intelligence was all right for hunting and
+tillage in the world of common sense; but if he rode it further afield,
+he would find himself in a desert, and his soul would starve. Let him
+live as nature prompted. Let him keep the young god in his heart alive.
+Let him give free play to the struggling, irrational, dark vitality that
+sought to realize itself in him not as logic but as beauty.
+
+The tablets were now engraved only by the aged.
+
+But one day, after the infant boy had reached the early Patagonian
+adolescence, his curiosity was roused by the tail-like hind limbs of a
+seal. The old people timidly encouraged him. He made other biological
+observations, and was led on to envisage the whole drama of life on the
+planet, and to conceive loyalty to the cause which they had served.
+
+Meanwhile, sexual and parental nature had triumphed where schooling had
+failed. The young things inevitably fell in love with each other, and in
+time several infants appeared.
+
+Thus, generation by generation, the little settlement maintained itself
+with varying success, varying zestfulness, and varying loyalty toward
+the future. With changing conditions the population fluctuated, sinking
+as low as two men and one woman, but increasing gradually up to a few
+thousand, the limit set by the food capacity of their strip of coast. In
+the long run, though circumstances did not prevent material survival,
+they made for mental decline. For the Siberian coast remained a tropical
+land, bounded on the south by a forest of volcanoes; and consequently in
+the long run the generations declined in mental vigour and subtlety.
+This result was perhaps due in part to too intensive inbreeding; but
+this factor had also one good effect. Though mental vigour waned,
+certain desirable characteristics were consolidated. The founders of the
+group represented the best remaining stock of the first human species.
+They had been chosen for their hardihood and courage, their native
+loyalty, their strong cognitive interest. Consequently, in spite of
+phases of depression, the race not only survived but retained its
+curiosity and its group feeling. Even while the ability of men
+decreased, their will to understand, and their sense of racial unity,
+remained. Though their conception of man and the universe gradually sank
+into crude myth, they preserved a strong unreasoning loyalty towards the
+future, and toward the now sacred stone library which was rapidly
+becoming unintelligible to them. For thousands and even millions of
+years, after the species had materially changed its nature, there
+remained a vague admiration for mental prowess, a confused tradition of
+a noble past, and pathetic loyalty toward a still nobler future. Above
+all, internecine strife was so rare that it served only to strengthen
+the clear will to preserve the unity and harmony of the race.
+
+
+                         2. THE SECOND DARK AGE
+
+We must now pass rapidly over the Second Dark Age, observing merely
+those influences which were to affect the future of humanity.
+
+Century by century the pent energy of the vast explosion dispersed
+itself; but not till many hundred thousand years had passed did the
+swarms of upstart volcanoes begin to die, and not till after millions of
+years did the bulk of the planet become once more a possible home for
+life.
+
+During this period many changes took place. The atmosphere became
+clearer, purer, and less turbulent. With the fall of temperature, frost
+and snow appeared occasionally in the Arctic regions, and in due course
+the Polar caps were formed again. Meanwhile, ordinary geological
+processes, augmented by the strains to which the planet was subjected by
+increased internal pressure, began to change the continents. South
+America mostly collapsed into the hollows blasted beneath it, but a new
+land rose to join Brazil with West Africa. The East Indies and Australia
+became a continuous continent. The huge mass of Tibet sank deeply into
+its disturbed foundations, lunged West, and buckled Afghanistan into a
+range of peaks nearly forty thousand feet above the sea. Europe sank
+under the Atlantic. Rivers writhed shiftingly hither and thither upon
+the continents, like tortured worms. New alluvial areas were formed. New
+strata were laid upon one another under new oceans. New animals and
+plants developed from the few surviving Arctic species, and spread south
+through Asia and America. In the new forests and grasslands appeared
+various specialized descendants of the reindeer, and swarms of rodents.
+Upon these preyed the large and small descendants of the Arctic fox, of
+which one species, a gigantic wolf-like creature, rapidly became the
+‘King of Beasts’ in the new order, and remained so, until it was ousted
+by the more slowly-modified offspring of the polar bears. A certain
+genus of seals, reverting to the ancient terrestrial habit, had
+developed a slender snake-like body and an almost swift, and very
+serpentine, mode of locomotion among the coastal sand-dunes. There it
+was wont to stalk its rodent prey, and even follow them into their
+burrows. Everywhere there were birds. Many of the places left vacant by
+the destruction of the ancient fauna were now filled by birds which had
+discarded flight and developed pedestrian habits. Insects, almost
+exterminated by the great conflagration, had afterwards increased so
+rapidly, and had refashioned their types with such versatility, that
+they soon reached almost to their ancient profusion. Even more rapid was
+the establishment of the new micro-organisms. In general, among all the
+beasts and plants of the earth there was a great change of habit, and a
+consequent overlaying of old body-forms with new forms adapted to a new
+way of life.
+
+The two human settlements had fared very differently. That of Labrador,
+oppressed by a more sweltering climate, and unsupported by the Siberian
+will to preserve human culture, sank into animality; but ultimately it
+peopled the whole West with swarming tribes. The human beings in Asia
+remained a mere handful throughout the ten million years of the Second
+Dark Age. An incursion of the sea cut them off from the south. The old
+Taimyr Peninsula, where their settlements clustered, became the northern
+promontory of an island whose coasts were the ancient valley-edges of
+the Yenessi, the Lower Tunguska, and the Lena. As the climate became
+less oppressive, the families spread towards the southern coast of the
+island, but there the sea checked them. Temperate conditions enabled
+them to regain a certain degree of culture. But they had no longer the
+capacity to profit much from the new clemency of nature, for the
+previous ages of tropical conditions had undermined them. Moreover,
+towards the end of the ten million years of the Second Dark Age, the
+Arctic climate spread south into their island. The crops failed, the
+rodents that formed their chief cattle dwindled, their few herds of deer
+faded out through lack of food. Little by little this scanty human race
+degenerated into a mere remnant of Arctic savages. And so they remained
+for a million years. Psychologically they were so crippled that they had
+almost completely lost the power of innovation. When their sacred
+quarries in the hills were covered with ice, they had not the wit to use
+stone from the valleys, but were reduced to making implements of bone.
+Their language degenerated into a few grunts to signify important acts,
+and a more complex system of emotional expressions. For emotionally
+these creatures still preserved a certain refinement. Moreover, though
+they had almost wholly lost the power of intelligent innovation, their
+instinctive responses were often such as a more enlightened intelligence
+would justify. They were strongly social, deeply respectful of the
+individual human life, deeply parental, and often terribly earnest in
+their religion.
+
+Not till long after the rest of the planet was once more covered with
+life, not till nearly ten million years after the Patagonian disaster,
+did a group of these savages, adrift on an iceberg, get blown southward
+across the sea to the mainland of Asia. Luckily, for Arctic conditions
+were increasing, and in time the islanders were extinguished.
+
+The survivors settled in the new land and spread, century by century,
+into the heart of Asia. Their increase was very slow for they were an
+infertile and inflexible race. But conditions were now extremely
+favourable. The climate was temperate; for Russia and Europe were now a
+shallow sea warmed by currents from the Atlantic. There were no
+dangerous animals save the small grey bears, an offshoot from the polar
+species, and the large wolf-like foxes. Various kinds of rodents and
+deer provided meat in plenty. There were birds of all sizes and habits.
+Timber, fruit, wild grains, and other nourishing plants throve on the
+well-watered volcanic soil. The prolonged eruptions, moreover, had once
+more enriched the upper layers of the rocky crust with metals.
+
+A few hundred thousand years in this new world sufficed for the human
+species to increase from a handful of individuals to a swarm of races.
+It was in the conflict and interfusion of these races, and also through
+the absorption of certain chemicals from the new volcanic soil, that
+humanity at last recovered its vitality.
+
+
+
+
+                    VII _The Rise of the Second Men_
+
+
+                   1. THE APPEARANCE OF A NEW SPECIES
+
+It was some ten million years after the Patagonian disaster that the
+first elements of a new human species appeared, in an epidemic of
+biological variations, many of which were extremely valuable. Upon this
+raw material the new and stimulating environment worked for some hundred
+thousand years until at last there appeared the Second Man.
+
+Though of greater stature and more roomy cranium, these beings were not
+wholly unlike their predecessors in general proportions. Their heads,
+indeed, were large even for their bodies, and their necks massive. Their
+hands were huge, but finely moulded. Their almost titanic size entailed
+a seemingly excessive strength of support; their legs were stouter, even
+proportionately, than the legs of the earlier species. Their feet had
+lost the separate toes, and, by a strengthening and growing together of
+the internal bones, had become more efficient instruments of locomotion.
+During the Siberian exile the First Men had acquired a thick hairy
+covering, and most races of the Second Man retained something of this
+blonde hirsute appearance throughout their career. Their eyes were
+large, and often jade green, their features firm as carved granite, yet
+mobile and lucent. Of the second human species one might say that Nature
+had at last repeated and far excelled the noble but unfortunate type
+which she had achieved once, long ago, with the first species, in
+certain prehistoric cave-dwelling hunters and artists.
+
+[Illustration: Time Scale 2]
+
+Inwardly the Second Men differed from the earlier species in that they
+had shed most of those primitive relics which had hampered the First Men
+more than was realized. Not only were they free of appendix, tonsils,
+and other useless excrescences, but also their whole structure was more
+firmly knit into unity. Their chemical organization was such that their
+tissues were kept in better repair. Their teeth, though proportionately
+small and few, were almost completely immune from caries. Such was their
+glandular equipment that puberty did not begin till twenty; and not till
+they were fifty did they reach maturity. At about one hundred and ninety
+their powers began to fail, and after a few years of contemplative
+retirement they almost invariably died before true senility could begin.
+It was as though, when a man’s work was finished, and he had meditated
+in peace upon his whole career, there were nothing further to hold his
+attention and prevent him from falling asleep. Mothers carried the
+foetus for three years, suckled the infant for five years, and were
+sterile during this period and for another seven years. Their
+climacteric was reached at about a hundred and sixty. Architecturally
+massive like their mates, they would have seemed to the First Men very
+formidable titanesses; but even those early half-human beings would have
+admired the women of the second species both for their superb vitality
+and for their brilliantly human expression.
+
+In temperament the Second Men were curiously different from the earlier
+species. The same factors were present, but in different proportions,
+and in far greater subordination to the considered will of the
+individual. Sexual vigour had returned. But sexual interest was
+strangely altered. Around the ancient core of delight in physical and
+mental contact with the opposite sex there now appeared a kind of
+innately sublimated, and no less poignant, appreciation of the unique
+physical and mental forms of all kinds of live things. It is difficult
+for less ample natures to imagine this expansion of the innate sexual
+interest; for to them it is not apparent that the lusty admiration which
+at first directs itself solely on the opposite sex is the appropriate
+attitude to all the beauties of flesh and spirit in beast and bird and
+plant. Parental interest also was strong in the new species, but it too
+was universalized. It had become a strong innate interest in, and a
+devotion to, all beings that were conceived as in need of help. In the
+earlier species this passionate spontaneous altruism occurred only in
+exceptional persons. In the new species, however, all normal men and
+women experienced altruism as a passion. And yet at the same time
+primitive parenthood had become tempered to a less possessive and more
+objective love, which among the First Men was less common than they
+themselves were pleased to believe. Assertiveness had also greatly
+changed. Formerly very much of a man’s energy had been devoted to the
+assertion of himself as a private individual over against other
+individuals; and very much of his generosity had been at bottom selfish.
+But in the Second Men this competitive self-assertion, this championship
+of the most intimately known animal against all others, was greatly
+tempered. Formerly the major enterprises of society would never have
+been carried through had they not been able to annex to themselves the
+egoism of their champions. But in the Second Men the parts were
+reversed. Few individuals could ever trouble to exert themselves to the
+last ounce for merely private ends, save when those ends borrowed
+interest or import from some public enterprise. It was only his vision
+of a world-wide community of persons, and of his own function therein,
+that could rouse the fighting spirit in a man. Thus it was inwardly,
+rather than in outward physical characters, that the Second Men differed
+from the First. And in nothing did they differ more than in their native
+aptitude for cosmopolitanism. They had their tribes and nations. War was
+not quite unknown amongst them. But even in primitive times a man’s most
+serious loyalty was directed toward the race as a whole; and wars were
+so hampered by impulses of kindliness towards the enemy that they were
+apt to degenerate into rather violent athletic contests, leading to an
+orgy of fraternization.
+
+It would not be true to say that the strongest interest of these beings
+was social. They were never prone to exalt the abstraction called the
+state, or the nation, or even the world-commonwealth. For their most
+characteristic factor was not mere gregariousness but something novel,
+namely an innate interest in personality, both in the actual diversity
+of persons and in the ideal of personal development. They had a
+remarkable power of vividly intuiting their fellows as unique persons
+with special needs. Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from
+an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another. Not even
+lovers, and scarcely even the geniuses with special insight into
+personality, ever had anything like accurate vision of one another. But
+the Second Men, more intensely and accurately self-conscious, were also
+more intensely and accurately conscious of one another. This they
+achieved by no unique faculty, but solely by a more ready interest in
+each other, a finer insight, and a more active imagination.
+
+They had also a remarkable innate interest in the higher kinds of mental
+activity, or rather in the subtle objects of these activities. Even
+children were instinctively inclined towards a genuinely aesthetic
+interest in their world and their own behaviour, and also towards
+scientific inquiry and generalization. Small boys, for instance, would
+delight in collecting not merely such things as eggs or crystals, but
+mathematical formulae expressive of the different shapes of eggs and
+crystals, or of the innumerable rhythms of shells, fronds, leaflets,
+grass-nodes. And there was a wealth of traditional fairy-stories whose
+appeal was grounded in philosophical puzzles. Little children delighted
+to hear how the poor things called Illusions were banished from the
+Country of the Real, how one-dimensional Mr Line woke up in a
+two-dimensional world, and how a brave young tune slew cacophonous
+beasts and won a melodious bride in that strange country where the
+landscape is all of sound and all living things are music. The First Men
+had attained to interest in science, mathematics, philosophy, only after
+arduous schooling, but in the Second Men there was a natural propensity
+for these activities, no less vigorous than the primitive instincts.
+Not, of course, that they were absolved from learning; but they had the
+same zest and facility in these matters as their predecessors had
+enjoyed only in humbler spheres.
+
+In the earlier species, indeed, the nervous system had maintained only a
+very precarious unity, and was all too liable to derangement by the
+rebellion of one of its subordinate parts. But in the second species the
+highest centres maintained an almost absolute harmony among the lower.
+Thus the moral conflict between momentary impulse and considered will,
+and again between private and public interest, played a very subordinate
+part among the Second Men.
+
+In actual cognitive powers, also, this favoured species far outstripped
+its predecessor. For instance, vision had greatly developed. The Second
+Men distinguished in the spectrum a new primary colour between green and
+blue; and beyond blue they saw, not a reddish blue, but again a new
+primary colour, which faded with increasing ruddiness far into the old
+ultra-violet. These two new primary colours were complementary to one
+another. At the other end of the spectrum they saw the infra-red as a
+peculiar purple. Further, owing to the very great size of their retinae,
+and the multiplication of rods and cones, they discriminated much
+smaller fractions of their field of vision.
+
+Improved discrimination combined with a wonderful fertility of mental
+imagery to produce a greatly increased power of insight into the
+character of novel situations. Whereas among the First Men, native
+intelligence had increased only up to the age of fourteen, among the
+Second Men it progressed up to forty. Thus an average adult was capable
+of immediate insight into problems which even the most brilliant of the
+First Men could only solve by prolonged reasoning. This superb clarity
+of mind enabled the second species to avoid most of those age-long
+confusions and superstitions which had crippled its predecessor. And
+along with great intelligence went a remarkable flexibility of will. In
+fact the Second Men were far more able than the First to break habits
+that were seen to be no longer justified.
+
+To sum the matter, circumstance had thrown up a very noble species.
+Essentially it was of the same type as the earlier species, but it had
+undergone extensive improvements. Much that the First Men could only
+achieve by long schooling and self-discipline the Second Men performed
+with effortless fluency and delight. In particular, two capacities which
+for the First Men had been unattainable ideals were now realized in
+every normal individual, namely the power of wholly dispassionate
+cognition, and the power of loving one’s neighbour as oneself, without
+reservation. Indeed, in this respect the Second Men might be called
+‘Natural Christians’, so readily and constantly did they love one
+another in the manner of Jesus, and infuse their whole social policy
+with loving-kindness. Early in their career they conceived the religion
+of love, and they were possessed by it again and again, in diverse
+forms, until their end. On the other hand, their gift of dispassionate
+cognition helped them to pass speedily to the admiration of fate. And
+being by nature rigorous thinkers, they were peculiarly liable to be
+disturbed by the conflict between their religion of love and their
+loyalty to fate.
+
+Well might it seem that the stage was now set for a triumphant and rapid
+progress of the human spirit. But though the second human species
+constituted a real improvement on the first, it lacked certain faculties
+without which the next great mental advance could not be made.
+
+Moreover its very excellence involved one novel defect from which the
+First Men were almost wholly free. In the lives of humble individuals
+there are many occasions when nothing but an heroic effort can wrest
+their private fortunates from stagnation or decline, and set them
+pioneering in new spheres. Among the First Men this effort was often
+called forth by passionate regard for self. And it was upon the tidal
+wave of innumerable egoisms, blindly surging in one direction, that the
+first species was carried forward. But, to repeat, in the Second Men
+self-regard was never an over-mastering motive. Only at the call of
+social loyalty or personal love would a man spur himself to desperate
+efforts. Whenever the stake appeared to be mere private advancement, he
+was apt to prefer peace to enterprise, the delights of sport,
+companionship, art or intellect, to the slavery of self-regard. And so
+in the long run, though the Second Men were fortunate in their almost
+complete immunity from the lust of power and personal ostentation (which
+cursed the earlier species with industrialism and militarism), and
+though they enjoyed long ages of idyllic peace, often upon a high
+cultural plane, their progress towards full self-conscious mastery of
+the planet was curiously slow.
+
+
+                  2. THE INTERCOURSE OF THREE SPECIES
+
+In a few thousand years the new species filled the region from
+Afghanistan to the China Sea, overran India, and penetrated far into the
+new Australasian continent. Its advance was less military than cultural.
+The remaining tribes of the First Men, with whom the new species could
+not normally interbreed, were unable to live up to the higher culture
+that flooded round them and over them. They faded out.
+
+For some further thousands of years the Second Men remained as noble
+savages, then passed rapidly through the pastoral into the agricultural
+stage. In this era they sent an expedition across the new and gigantic
+Hindu Kush to explore Africa. Here it was that they came upon the
+subhuman descendants of the ship’s crew that had sailed from Siberia
+millions of years earlier. These animals had spread south through
+America and across the new Atlantic Isthmus into Africa.
+
+Dwarfed almost to the knees of the superior species, bent so that as
+often as not they used their arms as aids to locomotion, flat-headed and
+curiously long-snouted, these creatures were by now more baboon-like
+than human. Yet in the wild state they maintained a very complicated
+organization into castes, based on the sense of smell. Their powers of
+scent, indeed, had developed at the expense of their intelligence.
+Certain odours, which had become sacred through their very
+repulsiveness, were given off only by individuals having certain
+diseases. Such individuals were treated with respect by their fellows;
+and though, in fact, they were debilitated by their disease, they were
+so feared that no healthy individual dared resist them. The
+characteristic odours were themselves graded in nobility, so that those
+individuals who bore only the less repulsive perfume, owed respect to
+those in whom a widespread rotting of the body occasioned the most
+nauseating stench. These plagues had the special effect of stimulating
+reproductive activity; and this fact was one cause both of the respect
+felt for them, and of the immense fertility of the species, such a
+fertility that, in spite of plagues and obtuseness, it had flooded two
+continents. For though the plagues were fatal, they were slow to
+develop. Further, though individuals far advanced in disease were often
+incapable of feeding themselves, they profited by the devotion of the
+healthy, who were well-pleased if they also became infected.
+
+But the most startling fact about these creatures was that many of them
+had become enslaved to another species. When the Second Men had
+penetrated further into Africa they came to a forest region where
+companies of diminutive monkeys resisted their intrusion. It was soon
+evident that any interference with the imbecile and passive subhumans in
+this district was resented by the monkeys. And as the latter made use of
+a primitive kind of bow and poisoned arrows, their opposition was
+seriously inconvenient to the invaders. The use of weapons and other
+tools, and a remarkable coordination in warfare, made it clear that in
+intelligence this simian species had far outstripped all creatures save
+man. Indeed, the Second Men were now face to face with the only
+terrestrial species which ever evolved so far as to compete with man in
+versatility and practical shrewdness.
+
+As the invaders advanced, the monkeys were seen to round up whole flocks
+of the submen and drive them out of reach. It was noticed also that
+these domesticated submen were wholly free from the diseases that
+infected their wild kinsfolk, who on this account greatly despised the
+healthy drudges. Later it transpired that the submen were trained as
+beasts of burden by the monkeys and that their flesh was a much relished
+article of diet. An arboreal city of woven branches was discovered, and
+was apparently in course of construction, for the submen were dragging
+timber and hauling it aloft, goaded by the boneheaded spears of the
+monkeys. It was evident also that the authority of the monkeys was
+maintained less by force than by intimidation. They anointed themselves
+with the juice of a rare aromatic plant, which struck terror into their
+poor cattle, and reduced them to abject docility.
+
+Now the invaders were only a handful of pioneers. They had come over the
+mountains in search of metals, which had been brought to the earth’s
+surface during the volcanic era. An amiable race, they felt no hostility
+toward the monkeys, but rather amusement at their habits and ingenuity.
+But the monkeys resented the mere presence of these mightier beings;
+and, presently collecting in the tree-tops in thousands, they
+annihilated the party with their poisoned arrows. One man alone escaped
+into Asia. In a couple of years he returned, with a host. Yet this was
+no punitive expedition, for the bland Second Men were strangely lacking
+in resentment. Establishing themselves on the outskirts of the forest
+region, they contrived to communicate and barter with the little people
+of the trees, so that after a while they were allowed to enter the
+territory unmolested, and begin their great metallurgical survey.
+
+A close study of the relations of these very different intelligences
+would be enlightening, but we have no time for it. Within their own
+sphere the monkeys showed perhaps a quicker wit than the men; but only
+within very narrow limits did their intelligence work at all. They were
+deft at finding new means for the better satisfaction of their
+appetites. But they wholly lacked self-criticism. Upon a normal outfit
+of instinctive needs they had developed many acquired, traditional
+cravings, most of which were fantastic and harmful. The Second Men, on
+the other hand, though often momentarily outwitted by the monkeys, were
+in the long run incomparably more able and more sane.
+
+The difference between the two species is seen clearly in their reaction
+to metals. The Second Men sought metal solely for the carrying on of an
+already well-advanced civilization. But the monkeys, when for the first
+time they saw the bright ingots, were fascinated. They had already begun
+to hate the invaders for their native superiority and their material
+wealth; and now this jealousy combined with primitive acquisitiveness to
+make the slabs of copper and tin become in their eyes symbols of power.
+In order to remain unmolested in their work, the invaders had paid a
+toll of the wares of their own country, of baskets, pottery, and various
+specially designed miniature tools. But at the sight of the crude metal,
+the monkeys demanded a share of this noblest product of their own land.
+This was readily granted, since it did away with the need of bringing
+goods from Asia. But the monkeys had no real use for metal. They merely
+hoarded it, and became increasingly avaricious. No one had respect among
+them who did not laboriously carry a great ingot about with him wherever
+he went. And after a while it came to be considered actually indecent to
+be seen without a slab of metal. In conversation between the sexes this
+symbol of refinement was always held so as to conceal the genitals.
+
+The more metal the monkeys acquired the more they craved. Blood was
+often shed in disputes over the possession of hoards. But this
+internecine strife gave place at length to a concerted movement to
+prevent the whole export of metal from their land. Some even suggested
+that the ingots in their possession should be used for making more
+effective weapons, with which to expel the invaders. This policy was
+rejected, not merely because there were none who could work up the crude
+metal, but because it was generally agreed that to put such a sacred
+material to any kind of service would be base.
+
+The will to be rid of the invader was augmented by a dispute about the
+submen. These abject beings were treated very harshly by their masters.
+Not only were they overworked, but also they were tortured in cold
+blood, not precisely through lust in cruelty, but through a queer sense
+of humour, or delight in the incongruous. For instance, it afforded the
+monkeys a strangely innocent and extravagant pleasure to compel these
+cattle to carry on their work in an erect posture, which was by now
+quite unnatural to them, or to eat their own excrement or even their own
+young. If ever these tortures roused some exceptional subman to rebel,
+the monkeys flared into contemptuous rage at such a lack of humour, so
+incapable were they of realizing the subjective processes of others. To
+one another they could, indeed, be kindly and generous; but even among
+themselves the imp of humour would sometimes run riot. In any matter in
+which an individual was misunderstood by his fellows, he was sure to be
+gleefully baited, and often harried to death. But in the main it was
+only the slave-species that suffered.
+
+The invaders were outraged by this cruel imbecility, and ventured to
+protest. To the monkeys the protest was unintelligible. What were cattle
+for, but to be used in the service of superior beings? Evidently, the
+monkeys thought, the invaders were after all lacking in the finer
+capacities of mind, since they failed to appreciate the beauty of the
+fantastic.
+
+This and other causes of friction finally led the monkeys to conceive a
+means of freeing themselves for ever. The Second Men had proved to be
+terribly liable to the diseases of their wretched subhuman kinsfolk.
+Only by very rigorous quarantine had they stamped out the epidemic that
+had revealed this fact. Now partly for revenge, but partly also through
+malicious delight in the topsy-turvy, the monkeys determined to make use
+of this human weakness. There was a certain nut, very palatable to both
+men and monkeys, which grew in a remote part of the country. The monkeys
+had already begun to barter this nut for extra metal; and the pioneering
+Second Men were arranging to send caravans laden with nuts into their
+own country. In this situation the monkeys found their opportunity. They
+carefully infected large quantities of nuts with the plagues rampant
+among those herds of submen which had not been domesticated. Very soon
+caravans of infected nuts were scattered over Asia. The effect upon a
+race wholly fresh to these microbes was disastrous. Not only were the
+pioneering settlements wiped out, but the bulk of the species also. The
+submen themselves had become adjusted to the microbes, and even
+reproduced more rapidly because of them. Not so the more delicately
+organized species. They died off like autumn leaves. Civilization fell
+to pieces. In a few generations Asia was peopled only by a handful of
+scattered savages, all diseased and mostly crippled.
+
+But in spite of this disaster the species remained potentially the same.
+Within a few centuries it had thrown off the infection and had begun
+once more the ascent towards civilization. After another thousand years,
+pioneers again crossed the mountain and entered Africa. They met with no
+opposition. The precarious flicker of simian intelligence had long ago
+ceased. The monkeys had so burdened their bodies with metal and their
+minds with the obsession of metal, that at length the herds of subhuman
+cattle were able to rebel and devour their masters.
+
+
+                    3. THE ZENITH OF THE SECOND MEN
+
+For nearly a quarter of a million years the Second Men passed through
+successive phases of prosperity and decline. Their advance to developed
+culture was not nearly so steady and triumphal as might have been
+expected from a race of such brilliance. As with individuals, so with
+species, accidents are all too likely to defeat even the most cautious
+expectations. For instance, the Second Men were for a long time
+seriously hampered by a ‘glacial epoch’ which at its height imposed
+Arctic conditions even as far south as India. Little by little the
+encroaching ice crowded their tribes into the extremity of that
+peninsula, and reduced their culture to the level of the Esquimaux. In
+time, of course, they recovered, but only to suffer other scourges, of
+which the most devastating were epidemics of bacteria. The more recently
+developed and highly organized tissues of this species were peculiarly
+susceptible to disease, and not once but many times a promising
+barbarian culture or ‘medieval’ civilization was wiped out by plagues.
+
+But of all the natural disasters which befell the Second Men, the worst
+was due to a spontaneous change in their own physical constitution. Just
+as the fangs of the ancient sabre-toothed tiger had finally grown so
+large that the beast could not eat, so the brain of the second human
+species threatened to outgrow the rest of its body. In a cranium that
+was originally roomy enough, this rare product of nature was now
+increasingly cramped; while a circulatory system, that was formerly
+quite adequate, was becoming more and more liable to fail in pumping
+blood through so cramped a structure. These two causes at last began to
+take serious effect. Congenital imbecility became increasingly common,
+along with all manner of acquired mental diseases. For some thousands of
+years the race remained in a most precarious condition, now almost dying
+out, now rapidly attaining an extravagant kind of culture in some region
+where physical nature happened to be peculiarly favourable. One of these
+precarious flashes of spirit occurred in the Yang-tze valley as a sudden
+and brief effulgence of city states peopled by neurotics, geniuses and
+imbeciles. The lasting upshot of this civilization was a brilliant
+literature of despair, dominated by a sense of the difference between
+the actual and the potential in man and the universe. Later, when the
+race had attained its noontide glory, it was wont to brood upon this
+tragic voice from the past in order to remind itself of the underlying
+horror of existence.
+
+Meanwhile, brains became more and more overgrown, and the race more and
+more disorganized. There is no doubt that it would have gone the way of
+the sabre-toothed tiger, simply through the fatal direction of its own
+physiological evolution, had not a more stable variety of this second
+human species at last appeared. It was in North America, into which, by
+way of Africa, the Second Men had long ago spread, that the
+roomier-skulled and stronger-hearted type first occurred. By great good
+fortune this new variety proved to be a dominant Mendelian character.
+And as it interbred freely with the older variety, a superbly healthy
+race soon peopled America. The species was saved.
+
+But another hundred thousand years were to pass before the Second Men
+could reach their zenith. I must not dwell on this movement of the human
+symphony, though it is one of great richness. Inevitably many themes are
+now repeated from the career of the earlier species, but with special
+features, and transposed, so to speak, from the minor to the major key.
+Once more primitive cultures succeed one another, or pass into
+civilization, barbarian or ‘medieval’; and in turn these fall or are
+transformed. Twice, indeed, the planet became the home of a single
+world-wide community which endured for many thousands of years, until
+misfortune wrecked it. The collapse is not altogether surprising, for
+unlike the earlier species, the Second Men had no coal and oil. In both
+these early world societies of the Second Men there was a complete lack
+of mechanical power. Consequently, though world-wide and intricate, they
+were in a manner ‘medieval’. In every continent intensive and highly
+skilled agriculture crept from the valleys up the mountain sides and
+over the irrigated deserts. In the rambling garden-cities each citizen
+took his share of drudgery, practised also some fine handicraft, and yet
+had leisure for gaiety and contemplation. Intercourse within and between
+the five great continental communities had to be maintained by coaches,
+caravans, and sailing ships. Sail, indeed, now came back into its own,
+and far surpassed its previous achievements. On every sea, fleets of
+great populous red-sailed clippers, wooden, with carved poops and prows,
+but with the sleek flanks of the dolphin, carried the produce of every
+land, and the many travellers who delighted to spend a sabbatical year
+among foreigners.
+
+So much, in the fullness of time, could be achieved, even without
+mechanical power, by a species gifted with high intelligence and immune
+from anti-social self-regard. But inevitably there came an end. A virus,
+whose subtle derangement of the glandular system was never suspected by
+a race still innocent of physiology, propagated throughout the world a
+mysterious fatigue. Century by century, agriculture withdrew from the
+hills and deserts, craftsmanship deteriorated, thought became
+stereotyped. And the vast lethargy produced a vast despond. At length
+the nations lost touch with one another, forgot one another, forgot
+their culture, crumbled into savage tribes. Once more Earth slept.
+
+Many thousand years later, long after the disease was spent, several
+great peoples developed in isolation. When at last they made contact,
+they were so alien that in each there had to occur a difficult cultural
+revolution, not unaccompanied by bloodshed, before the world could once
+more feel as one. But this second world-order endured only a few
+centuries, for profound subconscious differences now made it impossible
+for the races to keep whole-heartedly loyal to each other. Religion
+finally severed the unity which all willed but none could trust. An
+heroic nation of monotheists sought to impose its faith on a vaguely
+pantheist world. For the first and last time the Second Men stumbled
+into a world-wide civil war; and just because the war was religious it
+developed a brutality hitherto unknown. With crude artillery, but with
+fanaticism, the two groups of citizen armies harried one another. The
+fields were laid waste, the cities burned, the rivers, and finally the
+winds, were poisoned. Long after that pitch of horror had been passed,
+at which an inferior species would have lost heart, these heroic madmen
+continued to organize destruction. And when at last the inevitable
+breakdown came, it was the more complete. In a sensitive species the
+devastating enlightenment which at last began to invade every mind, the
+overwhelming sense of treason against the human spirit, the tragic
+comicality of the whole struggle, sapped all energy. Not for thousands
+of years did the Second Men achieve once more a world-community. But
+they had learnt their lesson.
+
+The third and most enduring civilization of the Second Men repeated the
+glorified medievalism of the first, and passed beyond it into a phase of
+brilliant natural science. Chemical fertilizers increased the crops, and
+therefore the world-population. Wind- and water-power was converted into
+electricity to supplement human and animal labour. At length, after many
+failures, it became possible to use volcanic and subterranean energy to
+drive dynamos. In a few years the whole physical character of
+civilization was transformed. Yet in this headlong passage into
+industrialism the Second Men escaped the errors of ancient Europe,
+America, and Patagonia. This was due partly to their greater gift of
+sympathy, which, save during the one great aberration of the religious
+war, made them all in a very vivid manner members one of another. But
+partly also it was due to their combination of a practical commonsense
+that was more than British, with a more than Russian immunity from the
+glamour of wealth, and a passion for the life of the mind that even
+Greece had never known. Mining and manufacture, even with plentiful
+electric power, were occupations scarcely less arduous than of old; but
+since each individual was implicated by vivid sympathy in the lives of
+all persons within his ken, there was little or no obsession with
+private economic power. The will to avoid industrial evils was
+effective, because sincere.
+
+At its height, the culture of the Second Men was dominated by respect
+for the individual human personality. Yet contemporary individuals were
+regarded both as end and as means, as a stage towards far ampler
+individuals in the remote future. For, although they themselves were
+more long-lived than their predecessors, the Second Men were oppressed
+by the brevity of human life, and the pettiness of the individual’s
+achievement in comparison with the infinity round about him which
+awaited apprehension and admiration. Therefore they were determined to
+produce a race endowed with much greater natural longevity. Again,
+though they participated in one another far more than their
+predecessors, they themselves were dogged by despair at the distortion
+and error which spoiled every mind’s apprehension of others. Like their
+predecessors, they had passed through all the more naïve phases of
+self-consciousness and other-consciousness, and through idealizations of
+various modes of personality. They had admired the barbarian hero, the
+romantical, the sensitive-subtle, the bluff and hearty, the decadent,
+the bland, the severe. And they had concluded that each person, while
+being himself an expression of some one mode of personality, should seek
+to be also sensitive to every other mode. They even conceived that the
+ideal community should be knit into one mind by each unique individual’s
+direct telepathic apprehension of the experience of all his fellows. And
+the fact that this ideal seemed utterly unattainable wove through their
+whole culture a thread of darkness, a yearning for spiritual union, a
+horror of loneliness, which never seriously troubled their far more
+insulated predecessors.
+
+This craving for union influenced the sexual life of the species. In the
+first place, so closely was the mental related to the physiological in
+their composition, that when there was no true union of minds, the
+sexual act failed to give conception. Casual sexual relations thus came
+to be regarded very differently from those which expressed a deeper
+intimacy. They were treated as a delightful embroidery on life,
+affording opportunity of much elegance, light-hearted tenderness,
+banter, and of course physical inebriation; but they were deemed to
+signify nothing more than the delight of friend in friend. Where there
+was a marriage of minds, but then only during the actual passion of
+communion, sexual intercourse almost always resulted in conception.
+Under these circumstances, intimate persons had often to practise
+contraception, but acquaintances never. And one of the most beneficial
+inventions of the psychologists was a technique of auto-suggestion,
+which, at will, either facilitated conception, or prevented it, surely,
+harmlessly, and without inaesthetic accompaniments.
+
+The sexual morality of the Second Men passed through all the phases
+known to the First Men; but by the time that they had established a
+single world-culture it had a form not known before. Not only were both
+men and women encouraged to have as much casual sexual intercourse as
+they needed for their enrichment, but also, on the higher plane of
+spiritual union, strict monogamy was deprecated. For in sexual union of
+this higher kind they saw a symbol of that communion of minds which they
+longed to make universal. Thus the most precious gift that a lover could
+bring to the beloved was not virginity but sexual experience. The union,
+it was felt, was the more pregnant the more each party could contribute
+from previous sexual and spiritual intimacy with others. Yet, though as
+a principle monogamy was not applauded, the higher kind of union would
+in practice sometimes result in a life-long partnership. But since the
+average life was so much longer than among the First Men, such
+fortuitously perennial unions were often deliberately interrupted for a
+while, by a change of partners, and then restored with their vitality
+renewed. Sometimes, on the other hand, a group of persons of both sexes
+would maintain a composite and permanent marriage together. Sometimes
+such a group would exchange a member, or members, with another group, or
+disperse itself completely among other groups, to come together again
+years afterwards with enriched experience. In one form or another, this
+‘marriage of groups’ was much prized, as an extension of the vivid
+sexual participation into an ampler sphere. Among the First Men the
+brevity of life made these novel forms of union impossible; for
+obviously no sexual, and no spiritual, relation can be developed with
+any richness in less than thirty years of close intimacy. It would be
+interesting to examine the social institutions of the Second Men at
+their zenith; but we have not time to spare for this subject, nor even
+for the brilliant intellectual achievements in which the species so far
+outstripped its predecessor. Obviously any account of the natural
+science and the philosophy of the Second Men would be unintelligible to
+readers of this book. Suffice it that they avoided the errors which had
+led the First Men into false abstraction, and into metaphysical theories
+which were at once sophisticated and naïve.
+
+Not until after they had passed beyond the best work of the First Men in
+science and philosophy did the Second Men discover the remains of the
+great stone library in Siberia. A party of engineers happened upon it
+while they were preparing to sink a shaft for subterranean energy. The
+tablets were broken, disordered, weathered. Little by little, however,
+they were reconstructed and interpreted, with the aid of the pictorial
+dictionary. The finds were of extreme interest to the Second Men, but
+not in the manner which the Siberian party had intended, not as a store
+of scientific and philosophic truth, but as a vivid historical document.
+The view of the universe which the tablets recorded was both too naïve
+and too artificial; but the insight which they afforded into the mind of
+the earlier species was invaluable. So little of the old world had
+survived the volcanic epoch that the Second Men had failed hitherto to
+get a clear picture of their predecessors.
+
+One item alone in this archaeological treasure had more than historical
+interest. The biologist leader of the little party in Siberia had
+recorded much of the sacred text of the Life of the Divine Boy. At the
+end of the record came the prophet’s last words, which had so baffled
+Patagonia. This theme was full of meaning for the Second Men, as indeed
+it would have been even for the First Men in their prime. But whereas
+for the First Men the dispassionate ecstasy which the Boy had preached
+was rather an ideal than a fact of experience, the Second Men recognized
+in the prophet’s words an intuition familiar to themselves. Long ago the
+tortured geniuses of the Yang-tze cities had expressed this same
+intuition. Subsequently also it had often been experienced by the more
+healthy generations, but always with a certain shame. For it had become
+associated with morbid mentality. But now with growing conviction that
+it was wholesome, the Second Men had begun to grope for a wholesome
+expression of it. In the life and the last words of the remote apostle
+of youth they found an expression which was not wholly inadequate. The
+species was presently to be in sore need of this gospel.
+
+The world-community reached at length a certain relative perfection and
+equilibrium. There was a long summer of social harmony, prosperity, and
+cultural embellishment. Almost all that could be done by mind in the
+stage to which it had then reached seemed to have been done. Generations
+of long-lived, eager, and mutually delightful beings succeeded one
+another. There was a widespread feeling that the time had come for man
+to gather all his strength for a flight into some new sphere of
+mentality. The present type of human being, it was recognized, was but a
+rough and incoherent natural product. It was time for man to take
+control of himself and remake himself upon a nobler pattern. With this
+end in view, two great works were set afoot, research into the ideal of
+human nature, and research into practical means of remaking human
+nature. Individuals in all lands, living their private lives, delighting
+in each other, keeping the tissue of society alive and vigorous, were
+deeply moved by the thought that their world-community was at last
+engaged upon this heroic task.
+
+But elsewhere in the solar system life of a very different kind was
+seeking, in its own strange manner, ends incomprehensible to man, yet at
+bottom identical with his own ends. And presently the two were to come
+together, not in cooperation.
+
+
+
+
+                          VIII _The Martians_
+
+
+                     1. THE FIRST MARTIAN INVASION
+
+Upon the foothills of the new and titanic mountains that were once the
+Hindu Kush, were many holiday centres, whence the young men and women of
+Asia were wont to seek Alpine dangers and hardships for their souls’
+refreshment. It was in this district, and shortly after a summer dawn,
+that the Martians were first seen by men. Early walkers noticed that the
+sky had an unaccountably greenish tinge, and that the climbing sun,
+though free from cloud, was wan. Observers were presently surprised to
+see the green concentrate itself into a thousand tiny cloudlets, with
+clear blue between. Field-glasses revealed within each fleck of green
+some faint hint of a ruddy nucleus, and shifting strands of an infra-red
+colour, which would have been invisible to the earlier human race. These
+extraordinary specks of cloud were all of about the same size, the
+largest of them appearing smaller than the moon’s disc; but in form they
+varied greatly, and were seen to be changing their shapes more rapidly
+than the natural cirrus which they slightly resembled. In fact, though
+there was much that was cloud-like in their form and motion, there was
+also something definite about them, both in their features and
+behaviour, which suggested life. Indeed they were strongly reminiscent
+of primitive amoeboid organisms seen through a microscope.
+
+The whole sky was strewn with them, here and there in concentrations of
+unbroken green, elsewhere more sparsely. And they were observed to be
+moving. A general drift of the whole celestial population was setting
+toward one of the snowy peaks that dominated the landscape. Presently
+the foremost individuals reached the mountain’s crest, and were seen to
+be creeping down the rock-face with a very slow amoeboid action.
+
+Meanwhile a couple of aeroplanes, electrically driven, had climbed the
+sky to investigate the strange phenomenon at close quarters. They passed
+among the drifting cloudlets, and actually through many of them, without
+hindrance, and almost without being obscured from view.
+
+On the mountain a vast swarm of the cloudlets was collecting, and
+creeping down the precipices and snow-fields into a high glacier valley.
+At a certain point, where the glacier dropped steeply to a lower level,
+the advance guard slowed down and stopped, while hosts of their fellows
+continued to pack in on them from behind. In half an hour the whole sky
+was once more clear, save for normal clouds; but upon the glacier lay
+what might almost have been an exceptionally dark solid-looking
+thundercloud, save for its green tinge and seething motion. For some
+minutes this strange object was seen to concentrate itself into a
+somewhat smaller bulk and become darker. Then it moved forward again,
+and passed over the cliffy end of the glacier into the pine-clad valley.
+An intervening ridge now hid it from its first observers.
+
+Lower down the valley there was a village. Many of the inhabitants, when
+they saw the mysterious dense fume advancing upon them, took to their
+mechanical vehicles and fled; but some waited out of curiosity. They
+were swallowed up in a murky olive-brown fog, shot here and there with
+queer shimmering streaks of a ruddier tint. Presently there was complete
+darkness. Artificial lights were blotted out almost at arm’s length.
+Breathing became difficult. Throats and lungs were irritated. Every one
+was seized with a violent attack of sneezing and coughing. The cloud
+streamed through the village, and seemed to exercise irregular pressures
+upon objects, not always in the general direction of movement but
+sometimes in the opposite direction, as though it were getting a
+purchase upon human bodies and walls, and actually elbowing its way
+along. Within a few minutes the fog lightened; and presently it left the
+village behind it, save for a few strands and whiffs of its smoke-like
+substance, which had become entangled in side-streets and isolated. Very
+soon, however, these seemed to get themselves clear and hurry to
+overtake the main body.
+
+When the gasping villagers had somewhat recovered, they sent a radio
+message to the little town lower down the valley, urging temporary
+evacuation. The message was not broadcast, but transmitted on a slender
+beam of rays. It so happened that the beam had to be directed through
+the noxious matter itself. While the message was being given, the
+cloud’s progress ceased, and its outlines became vague and ragged.
+Fragments of it actually drifted away on the wind and dissipated
+themselves. Almost as soon as the message was completed, the cloud began
+to define itself again, and lay for a quarter of an hour at rest. A
+dozen bold young men from the town now approached the dark mass out of
+curiosity. No sooner did they come face to face with it, round a bend in
+the valley, than the cloud rapidly contracted, till it was no bigger
+than a house. Looking now something between a dense, opaque fume and an
+actual jelly, it lay still until the party had ventured within a few
+yards. Evidently their courage failed, for they were seen to turn. But
+before they had retreated three paces, a long proboscis shot out of the
+main mass with the speed of a chameleon’s tongue, and enveloped them.
+Slowly it withdrew; but the young men had been gathered in with it. The
+cloud, or jelly, churned itself violently for some seconds, then ejected
+the bodies in a single chewed lump.
+
+The murderous thing now elbowed itself along the road towards the town,
+leaned against the first house, crushed it, and proceeded to wander
+hither and thither, pushing everything down before it, as though it were
+a lava-stream. The inhabitants took to their heels, but several were
+licked up and slaughtered.
+
+Powerful beam radiation was now poured into the cloud from all the
+neighbouring installations. Its destructive activity slackened, and once
+more it began to disintegrate and expand. Presently it streamed upwards
+as a huge column of smoke; and, at a great altitude, it dissipated
+itself again into a swarm of the original green cloudlets, noticeably
+reduced in numbers. These again faded into a uniform greenish tinge,
+which gradually vanished.
+
+Thus ended the first invasion of the Earth from Mars.
+
+
+                            2. LIFE ON MARS
+
+Our concern is with humanity, and with the Martians only in relation to
+men. But in order to understand the tragic intercourse of the two
+planets, it is necessary to glance at conditions on Mars, and conceive
+something of those fantastically different yet fundamentally similar
+beings, who were now seeking to possess man’s home.
+
+To describe the biology, psychology, and history of a whole world in a
+few pages is as difficult as it would be to give the Martians themselves
+in the same compass a true idea of man. Encyclopaedias, libraries, would
+be needed in either case. Yet, somehow, I must contrive to suggest the
+alien sufferings and delights, and the many aeons of struggle, which
+went to the making of these strange non-human intelligences, in some
+ways so inferior yet in others definitely superior to the human species
+which they encountered.
+
+Mars was a world whose mass was about one-tenth that of the earth.
+Gravity therefore had played a less tyrannical part in Martian than in
+terrestrial history. The weakness of Martian gravity combined with the
+paucity of the planet’s air envelope to make the general atmospheric
+pressure far lighter than on earth. Oxygen was far less plentiful. Water
+also was comparatively rare. There were no oceans or seas, but only
+shallow lakes and marshes, many of which dried up in summer. The climate
+of the planet was in general very dry, and yet very cold. Being without
+cloud, it was perennially bright with the feeble rays of a distant sun.
+
+Earlier in the history of Mars, when there were more air, more water,
+and a higher temperature from internal heat, life had appeared in the
+coastal waters of the seas, and evolution had proceeded in much the same
+manner as on earth. Primitive life was differentiated into the
+fundamental animal and vegetable types. Multicellular structures
+appeared, and specialized themselves in diverse manners to suit diverse
+environments. A great variety of plant forms clothed the lands, often
+with forests of gigantic and slender-stemmed plumes. Mollusc-like and
+insect-like animals crept or swam, or shot themselves hither and thither
+in fantastic jumps. Huge spidery creatures of a type not wholly unlike
+crustaceans, or gigantic grasshoppers, bounded after their prey, and
+developed a versatility and cunning which enabled them to dominate the
+planet almost as, at a much later date, early man was to dominate the
+terrestrial wild.
+
+But meanwhile a rapid loss of atmosphere, and especially of
+water-vapour, was changing Martian conditions beyond the limits of
+adaptability of this early fauna and flora. At the same time a very
+different kind of vital organization was beginning to profit by the
+change. On Mars, as on the Earth, life had arisen from one of many
+‘subvital’ forms. The new type of life on Mars evolved from another of
+these subvital kinds of molecular organization, one which had hitherto
+failed to evolve at all, and had played an insignificant part, save
+occasionally as a rare virus in the respiratory organs of animals. These
+fundamental subvital units of organization were ultra-microscopic, and
+indeed far smaller than the terrestrial bacteria, or even the
+terrestrial viruses. They originally occurred in the marshy ponds, which
+dried up every spring, and became depressions of baked mud and dust.
+Certain of their species, borne into the air upon dust-particles,
+developed an extremely dry habit of life. They maintained themselves by
+absorbing chemicals from the wind-borne dust, and a very slight amount
+of moisture from the air. Also they absorbed sunlight by a
+photosynthesis almost identical with that of the plants.
+
+To this extent they were similar to the other living things, but they
+had also certain capacities which the other stock had lost at the very
+outset of its evolutionary career. Terrestrial organisms, and Martian
+organisms of the terrestrial type, maintained themselves as vital
+unities by means of nervous systems, or other forms of material contact
+between parts. In the most developed forms, an immensely complicated
+neural ‘telephone’ system connected every part of the body with a vast
+central exchange, the brain. Thus on the earth a single organism was
+without exception a continuous system of matter, which maintained a
+certain constancy of form. But from the distinctively Martian subvital
+unit there evolved at length a very different kind of complex organism,
+in which material contact of parts was not necessary either to
+coordination of behaviour or unity of consciousness. These ends were
+achieved upon a very different physical basis. The ultra-microscopic
+subvital members were sensitive to all kinds of ethereal vibrations,
+directly sensitive, in a manner impossible to terrestrial life; and they
+could also initiate vibrations. Upon this basis Martian life developed
+at length the capacity of maintaining vital organization as a single
+conscious individual without continuity of living matter. Thus the
+typical Martian organism was a cloudlet, a group of free-moving members
+dominated by a ‘group-mind’. But in one species individuality came to
+inhere, for certain purposes, not in distinct cloudlets only, but in a
+great fluid system of cloudlets. Such was the single-minded Martian host
+which invaded the Earth.
+
+The Martian organism depended, so to speak, not on ‘telephone’ wires,
+but on an immense crowd of mobile ‘wireless stations’, transmitting and
+receiving different wave-lengths according to their function. The
+radiation of a single unit was of course very feeble; but a great system
+of units could maintain contact with its wandering parts over a
+considerable distance.
+
+One other important characteristic distinguished the dominant form of
+life on Mars. Just as a cell, in the terrestrial form of life, has often
+the power of altering its shape (whence the whole mechanism of muscular
+activity), so in the Martian form the free-floating ultra-microscopic
+unit might be specialized for generating around itself a magnetic field,
+and so either repelling or attracting its neighbours. Thus a system of
+materially disconnected units had a certain cohesion. Its consistency
+was something between a smoke-cloud and a very tenuous jelly. It had a
+definite though ever-changing contour and resistant surface. By massed
+mutual repulsions of its constituent units it could exercise pressure on
+surrounding objects; and in its most concentrated form the Martian
+cloud-jelly could bring to bear immense forces which could also be
+controlled for very delicate manipulation. Magnetic forces were also
+responsible for the mollusc-like motion of the cloud as a whole over the
+ground, and again for the transport of lifeless material and living
+units from region to region within the cloud.
+
+The magnetic field of repulsion and attraction generated by a subvital
+unit was much more restricted than its field of ‘wireless’
+communication. Similarly with organized systems of units. Thus each of
+the cloudlets which the Second Men saw in their sky was an independent
+motor unit; but also it was in a kind of ‘telepathic’ communication with
+all its fellows. Indeed in every public enterprise, such as the
+terrestrial campaigns, almost perfect unity of consciousness was
+maintained within the limits of a huge field of radiation. Yet only when
+the whole population concentrated itself into a small and relatively
+dense cloud-jelly, did it become a single magnetic motor unit. The
+Martians, it should be noted, had three possible forms, or formations,
+namely: first, an ‘open order’ of independent and very tenuous cloudlets
+in ‘telepathic’ communication, and often in strict unity as a
+group-mind; second, a more concentrated and less vulnerable corporate
+cloud; and third, an extremely concentrated and formidable cloud-jelly.
+
+Save for these very remarkable characteristics, there was no really
+fundamental difference between the distinctively Martian and the
+distinctively terrestrial forms of life. The chemical basis of the
+former was somewhat more complicated than that of the latter; and
+selenium played a part in it, to which nothing corresponded in
+terrestrial life. The Martian organism, moreover, was unique in that it
+fulfilled within itself the functions of both animal and vegetable. But,
+save for these peculiarities, the two types of life were biochemically
+much the same. Both needed material from the ground, both needed
+sunlight. Each lived in the chemical changes occurring in its own
+‘flesh’. Each, of course, tended to maintain itself as an organic unity.
+There was a certain difference, indeed, in respect of reproduction; for
+the Martian subvital units retained the power of growth and subdivision.
+Thus the birth of a Martian cloud arose from the subdivision of myriads
+of units within the parent cloud, followed by their ejection as a new
+individual. And, as the units were highly specialized for different
+functions, representatives of many types had to pass into the new cloud.
+
+In the earliest stages of evolution on Mars the units had become
+independent of each other as soon as they parted in reproduction. But
+later the hitherto useless and rudimentary power of emitting radiation
+was specialized, so that, after reproduction, free individuals came to
+maintain radiant contact with one another, and to behave with
+ever-increasing coordination. Still later, these organized groups
+themselves maintained radiant contact with groups of their offspring,
+thus constituting larger individuals with specialized members. With each
+advance in complexity the sphere of radiant influence increased; until,
+at the zenith of Martian evolution, the whole planet (save for the
+remaining animal and vegetable representatives of the other and
+unsuccessful kind of life) constituted sometimes a single biological and
+psychological individual. But this occurred as a rule only in respect of
+matters which concerned the species as a whole. At most times the
+Martian individual was a cloudlet, such as those which first astonished
+the Second Men. But in great public crises each cloudlet would suddenly
+wake up to find himself the mind of the whole race, sensing through many
+individuals, and interpreting his sensations in the light of the
+experience of the whole race.
+
+The life which dominated Mars was thus something between an extremely
+well-disciplined army of specialized units, and a body possessed by one
+mind. Like an army, it could take any form without destroying its
+organic unity. Like an army it was sometimes a crowd of free-wandering
+units, yet at other times also it disposed itself in very special orders
+to fulfil special functions. Like an army it was composed of free,
+experiencing individuals who voluntarily submitted themselves to
+discipline. On the other hand, unlike an army, it woke occasionally into
+unified consciousness.
+
+The same fluctuation between individuality and multiplicity which
+characterized the race as a whole, characterized also each of the
+cloudlets themselves. Each was sometimes an individual, sometimes a
+swarm of more primitive individuals. But while the race rather seldom
+rose to full individuality, the cloudlets declined from it only in very
+special circumstances. Each cloudlet was an organization of specialized
+groups formed of minor specialized groups, which in turn were composed
+of the fundamental specialized varieties of subvital units. Each
+free-roving group of free-roving units constituted a special organ,
+fulfilling some particular function in the whole. Thus some were
+specialized for attraction and repulsion, some for chemical operations,
+some for storing the sun’s energy, some for emitting radiation, some for
+absorbing and storing water, some for special sensitivities, such as
+awareness of mechanical pressure and vibration, or temperature changes,
+or light rays. Others again were specialized to fulfil the function of
+the brain of man; but in a peculiar manner. The whole volume of the
+cloudlet vibrated with innumerable ‘wireless’ messages in very many
+wave-lengths from the different ‘organs’. It was the function of the
+‘brain’ units to receive, and correlate, and interpret these messages in
+the light of past experience, and to initiate responses in the
+wave-lengths appropriate to the organs concerned.
+
+All these subvital units, save a few types that were too highly
+specialized, were capable of independent life as air-borne bacteria or
+viruses. And whenever they lost touch with the radiation of the whole
+system, they continued to live their own simple lives until they were
+once more controlled. All were free-floating units, but normally they
+were under the influence of the cloudlet’s system of electro-magnetic
+fields, and were directed hither and thither for their special
+functions. And under this influence some of them might be held rigidly
+in position in relation to one another. Such was the case of the organs
+of sight. In early stages of evolution, some of the units had
+specialized for carrying minute globules of water. Later, much larger
+droplets were carried, millions of units holding between them a still
+microscopic globule of life’s most precious fluid. Ultimately this
+function was turned to good account in vision. Aqueous lenses as large
+as the eye of an ox were supported by a scaffolding of units; while, at
+focal length from the lens, a rigid retina of units was held in
+position. Thus the Martian could produce eyes of every variety whenever
+he wanted them, and telescopes and microscopes too. This production and
+manipulation of visual organs was of course largely subconscious, like
+the focusing mechanism in man. But latterly the Martians had greatly
+increased their conscious control of physiological processes; and it was
+this achievement which facilitated their remarkable optical triumphs.
+
+One other physiological function we must note before considering the
+Martian psychology. The fully evolved, but as yet uncivilized, Martian
+had long ago ceased to depend for his chemicals on wind-borne volcanic
+dust. Instead, he rested at night on the ground, like a knee-high mist
+on terrestrial meadows, and projected specialized tubular groups of
+units into the soil, like rootlets. Part of the day also had to be
+occupied in this manner. Somewhat later this process was supplemented by
+devouring the declining plant-life of the planet. But the final
+civilized Martians had greatly improved their methods of exploiting the
+ground and the sunlight, both by mechanical means and by artificial
+specialization of their own organs. Even so, however, as their
+activities increased, these vegetable functions became an ever more
+serious problem for them. They practised agriculture; but only a very
+small area of the arid planet could be induced to bear. It was
+terrestrial water and terrestrial vegetation that finally determined
+them to make the great voyage.
+
+
+                          3. THE MARTIAN MIND
+
+The Martian mind was of a very different type from the terrestrial,
+different, yet at bottom identical. In so strange a body, the mind was
+inevitably equipped with alien cravings, and alien manners of
+apprehending its environment. And with so different a history, it was
+confused by prejudices very unlike those of man. Yet it was none the
+less mind, concerned in the last resort with the maintenance and
+advancement of life, and the exercise of vital capacities. Fundamentally
+the Martian was like all other living beings, in that he delighted in
+the free working of his body and his mind. Yet superficially, he was as
+unlike man in mind as in body.
+
+The most distinctive feature of the Martian, compared with man, was that
+his individuality was both far more liable to disruption, and at the
+same time immeasurably more capable of direct participation in the minds
+of other individuals. The human mind in its solid body maintained its
+unity and its dominance over its members in all normal circumstances.
+Only in disease was man liable to mental or physical dissociation. On
+the other hand, he was incapable of direct contact with other
+individuals, and the emergence of a ‘super-mind’ in a group of
+individuals was quite impossible. The Martian cloudlet, however, though
+he fell to pieces physically, and also mentally, far more readily than a
+man, might also at any moment wake up to be the intelligent mind of his
+race, might begin to perceive with the sense-organs of all other
+individuals, and experience thoughts and desires which were, so to
+speak, the resultant of all individual thoughts and desires upon some
+matter of general interest. But unfortunately, as I shall tell, the
+common mind of the Martians never woke into any order of mentality
+higher than that of the individual.
+
+These differences between the Martian and the human psyche entailed
+characteristic advantages and disadvantages. The Martian, immune from
+man’s inveterate selfishness and spiritual isolation from his fellows,
+lacked the mental coherence, the concentrated attention and far-reaching
+analysis and synthesis, and again the vivid self-consciousness and
+relentless self-criticism, which even the First Men, at their best, had
+attained in some degree, and which in the Second Men were still more
+developed. The Martians, moreover, were hampered by being almost
+identical in character. They possessed perfect harmony; but only through
+being almost wholly in temperamental unison. They were all hobbled by
+their sameness to one another. They were without that rich diversity of
+personal character, which enabled the human spirit to cover so wide a
+field of mentality. This infinite variety of human nature entailed,
+indeed, endless wasteful and cruel personal conflicts in the first, and
+even to some extent in the second, species of man; but also it enabled
+every individual of developed sympathy to enrich his spirit by
+intercourse with individuals whose temperament, thought, and ideals
+differed from his own. And while the Martians were little troubled by
+internecine strife and the passion of hate, they were also almost wholly
+devoid of the passion of love. The Martians individual could admire, and
+be utterly faithful to, the object of his loyalty; but his admiration
+was given, not to concrete and uniquely charactered persons of the same
+order as himself, but at best to the vaguely conceived ‘spirit of the
+race’. Individuals like himself he regarded merely as instruments or
+organs of the ‘super-mind’.
+
+This would not have been amiss, had the mind of the race, into which he
+so frequently awoke under the influence of the general radiation, been
+indeed a mind of higher rank than his own. But it was not. It was but a
+pooling of the percipience and thought and will of the cloudlets. Thus
+it was that the superb loyalty of the Martians was squandered upon
+something which was not greater than themselves in mental calibre, but
+only in mere bulk.
+
+The Martian cloudlet, like the human animal, had a complex instinctive
+nature. By night and day, respectively, he was impelled to perform the
+vegetative functions of absorbing chemicals from the ground and energy
+from the sunlight. Air and water he also craved, though he dealt with
+them, of course, in his own manner. He had also his own characteristic
+instinctive impulses to move his ‘body’, both for locomotion and
+manipulation. Martian civilization provided an outlet for these
+cravings, both in the practice of agriculture and in intricate and
+wonderfully beautiful cloud-dances and gymnastics. For these perfectly
+supple beings rejoiced in executing aerial evolutions, flinging out wild
+rhythmical streamers, intertwining with one another in spirals,
+concentrating into opaque spheres, cubes, cones, and all sorts of
+fantastical volumes. Many of these movements and shapes had intense
+emotional significance for them in relation to the operations of their
+life, and were executed with a religious fervour and solemnity.
+
+The Martian had also his impulses of fear and pugnacity. In the remote
+past these had often been directed against hostile members of his own
+species; but since the race had become unified, they found exercise only
+upon other types of life and upon inanimate nature. Instinctive
+gregariousness was, of course, extremely developed in the Martian at the
+expense of instinctive self-assertion. Sexuality the Martian had not;
+there were not partners in reproduction. But his impulse to merge
+physically and mentally with other individuals, and wake up as the
+super-mind, had in it much that was characteristic of sex in man.
+Parental impulses, of a kind, he knew; but they were scarcely worthy of
+the name. He cared only to eject excessive living matter from his
+system, and to keep _en rapport_ with the new individual thus formed, as
+he would with any other individual. He knew no more of the human
+devotion to children as budding personalities than of the subtle
+intercourse of male and female temperaments. By the time of the first
+invasion, however, reproduction had been greatly restricted; for the
+planet was fully populated, and each individual cloudlet was potentially
+immortal. Among the Martians there was no ‘natural death’, no
+spontaneous death through mere senility. Normally the cloudlet’s members
+kept themselves in repair indefinitely by the reproduction of their
+constituent units. Diseases, indeed, were often fatal. And chief among
+them was a plague, corresponding to terrestrial cancer, in which the
+subvital units lost their sensitivity to radiation, so that they
+proceeded to live as primitive organisms and reproduce without
+restraint. As they also became parasitic on the unaffected units, the
+cloudlet inevitably died.
+
+Like the higher kinds of terrestrial mammal, the Martians had strong
+impulses of curiosity. Having also many practical needs to fulfil as a
+result of their civilization, and being extremely well equipped by
+nature for physical experiment and microscopy, they had gone far in the
+natural sciences. In physics, astronomy, chemistry, and even in the
+chemistry of life, man had nothing to teach them.
+
+The vast corpus of Martian knowledge had taken many thousands of years
+to grow. All its stages, and its current achievements, were recorded on
+immense scrolls of paper made from vegetable pulp, and stored in
+libraries of stone. For the Martians, curiously enough, had become great
+masons, and had covered much of their planet with buildings of feathery
+and toppling design, such as would have been quite impossible on earth.
+They had no need of buildings for habitation, save in the arctic
+regions; but as workshops, granaries, and store rooms of all sorts,
+buildings had become very necessary to the Martians. Moreover these
+extremely tenuous creatures took a peculiar joy in manipulating solids.
+Even their most utilitarian architecture blossomed with a sort of gothic
+or arabesque ornateness and fantasy, wherein the ethereal seemed to
+torture the substance of solid rock into its own likeness.
+
+At the time of the invasion, the Martians were still advancing
+intellectually; and, indeed, it was through an achievement in
+theoretical physics that they were able to leave their planet. They had
+long known that minute particles at the upper limit of the atmosphere
+might be borne into space by the pressure of the sun’s rays at dawn and
+sunset. And at length they discovered how to use this pressure as the
+wind is used in sailing. Dissipating themselves into their
+ultra-microscopic units, they contrived to get a purchase on the
+gravitational fields of the solar system, as a boat’s keel and rudder
+get a purchase on the water. Thus they were able to tack across to the
+earth as an armada of ultra-microscopic vessels. Arrived in the
+terrestrial sky, they re-formed themselves as cloudlets, swam through
+the dense air to the alpine summit, and climbed downwards, as a swimmer
+may climb down a ladder under water.
+
+This achievement involved very intricate calculations and chemical
+inventions, especially for the preservation of life in transit and on an
+alien planet. It could never have been done save by beings with
+far-reaching and accurate knowledge of the physical world. But though in
+respect of ‘natural knowledge’ the Martians were so well advanced, they
+were extremely backward in all those spheres which may be called
+‘spiritual knowledge’. They had little understanding of their own
+mentality, and less of the place of mind in the cosmos. Though in a
+sense a highly intelligent species, they were at the same time wholly
+lacking in philosophical interest. They scarcely conceived, still less
+tackled, the problems which even the First Men had faced so often,
+though so vainly. For the Martians there was no mystery in the
+distinction between reality and appearance or in the relation of the one
+and the many, or in the status of good and evil. Nor were they ever
+critical of their own ideals. They aimed whole-heartedly at the
+advancement of the Martian super-individual. But what should constitute
+individuality, and its advancement, they never seriously considered. And
+the idea that they were under obligation also towards beings not
+included in the Martian system of radiation, proved wholly beyond them.
+For, though so clever, they were the most naïve of self-deceivers, and
+had no insight to see what it is that is truly desirable.
+
+
+                      4. DELUSIONS OF THE MARTIANS
+
+To understand how the Martians tricked themselves, and how they were
+finally undone by their own insane will, we must glance at their
+history.
+
+The civilized Martians constituted the sole remaining variety of a
+species. That species itself, in the remote past, had competed with, and
+exterminated, many other species of the same general type. Aided by the
+changing climate, it had also exterminated almost all the species of the
+more terrestrial kind of fauna, and had thereby much reduced the
+vegetation which it was subsequently to need and foster so carefully.
+This victory of the species had been due partly to its versatility and
+intelligence, partly to a remarkable zest in ferocity, partly to its
+unique powers of radiation and sensitivity to radiation, which enabled
+it to act with a coordination impossible even to the most gregarious of
+animals. But, as with other species in biological history, the capacity
+by which it triumphed became at length a source of weakness. When the
+species reached a stage corresponding to primitive human culture, one of
+its races, achieving a still higher degree of radiant intercourse and
+physical unity, was able to behave as a single vital unit; and so it
+succeeded in exterminating all its rivals. Racial conflict had persisted
+for many thousands of years, but as soon as the favoured race had
+developed this almost absolute solidarity of will, its victory was
+sweeping, and was clinched by joyous massacre of the enemy.
+
+But ever afterwards the Martians suffered from the psychological effects
+of their victory at the close of the epoch of racial wars. The extreme
+brutality with which the other races had been exterminated conflicted
+with the generous impulses which civilization had begun to foster, and
+left a scar upon the conscience of the victors. In self-defence they
+persuaded themselves that since they were so much more admirable than
+the rest, the extermination was actually a sacred duty. And their unique
+value, they said, consisted in their unique radiational development.
+Hence arose a gravely insincere tradition and culture, which finally
+ruined the species. They had long believed that the physical basis of
+consciousness must necessarily be a system of units directly sensitive
+to ethereal vibrations, and that organisms dependent on the physical
+contact of their parts were too gross to have any experience whatever.
+After the age of the racial massacres they sought to persuade themselves
+that the excellence, or ethical worth, of any organism depended upon the
+degree of complexity and unity of its radiation. Century by century they
+strengthened their faith in this vulgar doctrine, and developed also a
+system of quite irrational delusions and obsessions based upon an
+obsessive and passionate lust in radiation.
+
+It would take too long to tell of all these subsidiary fantasies, and of
+the ingenious ways in which they were reconciled with the main body of
+sane knowledge. But one at least must be mentioned, because of the part
+it played in the struggle with man. The Martians knew, of course, that
+‘solid matter’ was solid by virtue of the interlocking of the minute
+electro-magnetic systems called atoms. Now rigidity had for them
+somewhat the same significance and prestige that air, breath, spirit,
+had for early man. It was in the quasi-solid form that Martians were
+physically most potent; and the maintenance of this form was exhausting
+and difficult. These facts combined in the Martian consciousness with
+the knowledge that rigidity was after all the outcome of interlocked
+electro-magnetic systems. Rigidity was thus endowed with a peculiar
+sanctity. The superstition was gradually consolidated, by a series of
+psychological accidents, into a fanatical admiration of all very rigid
+materials, but especially of hard crystals, and above all of diamonds.
+For diamonds were extravagantly resistant; and at the same time, as the
+Martians themselves put it, diamonds were superb jugglers with the
+ethereal radiation called light. Every diamond was therefore a supreme
+embodiment of the tense energy and eternal equilibrium of the cosmos,
+and must be treated with reverence. In Mars, all known diamonds were
+exposed to sunlight on the pinnacles of sacred buildings; and the
+thought that on the neighbour planet might be diamonds which were not
+properly treated, was one motive of the invasion.
+
+Thus did the Martian mind, unwittingly side-tracked from its true
+development, fall sick, and strive ever more fanatically towards mere
+phantoms of its goal. In the early stages of the disorder, radiation was
+merely regarded as an infallible _sign_ of mentality, and radiative
+complexity was taken as an infallible _measure_, merely, of spiritual
+worth. But little by little, radiation and mentality failed to be
+distinguished, and radiative organization was actually mistaken for
+spiritual worth.
+
+In this obsession the Martians resembled somewhat the First Men during
+their degenerate phase of servitude to the idea of movement; but with a
+difference. For the Martian intelligence was still active, though its
+products were severely censored in the name of the ‘spirit of the race’.
+Every Martian was a case of dual personality. Not merely was he
+sometimes a private consciousness, sometimes the consciousness of the
+race, but further, even as a private individual he was in a manner
+divided against himself. Though his practical allegiance to the
+super-individual was absolute, so that he condemned or ignored all
+thoughts and impulses that could not be assimilated to the public
+consciousness, he did in fact have such thoughts and impulses, as it
+were in the deepest recesses of his being. He very seldom noticed that
+he was having them, and whenever he did notice it, he was shocked and
+terrified; yet he did have them. They constituted an intermittent,
+sometimes almost a continuous, critical commentary on all his more
+reputable experience.
+
+This was the great tragedy of the spirit on Mars. The Martians were in
+many ways extremely well equipped for mental progress and for true
+spiritual adventure, but through a trick of fortune which had persuaded
+them to prize above all else unity and uniformity, they were driven to
+thwart their own struggling spirits at every turn.
+
+Far from being superior to the private mind, the public mind which
+obsessed every Martian was in many ways actually inferior. It had come
+into dominance in a crisis which demanded severe military coordination;
+and though, since that remote age, it had made great intellectual
+progress, it remained at heart a military mind. Its disposition was
+something between that of a field-marshal and the God of the ancient
+Hebrews. A certain English philosopher once described and praised the
+fictitious corporate personality of the state, and named it ‘Leviathan’.
+The Martian super-individual was Leviathan endowed with consciousness.
+In this consciousness there was nothing but what was easily assimilated
+and in accord with tradition. Thus the public mind was always
+intellectually and culturally behind the times. Only in respect of
+practical social organization did it keep abreast of its own
+individuals. Intellectual progress had always been initiated by private
+individuals, and had only penetrated the public mind when the mass of
+individuals had been privately infected by intercourse with the
+pioneers. The public consciousness itself initiated progress only in the
+sphere of social, military, and economic organization.
+
+The novel circumstances which were encountered on the earth put the
+mentality of the Martians to a supreme test. For the unique enterprise
+of tackling a new world demanded the extremes of both public and private
+activity, and so led to agonizing conflicts within each private mind.
+For, while the undertaking was essentially social and even military, and
+necessitated very strict coordination and unity of action, the extreme
+novelty of the new environment demanded all the resources of the
+untrammelled private consciousness. Moreover the Martians encountered
+much on the earth which made nonsense of their fundamental assumptions.
+And in their brightest moment of private consciousness they sometimes
+recognized this fact.
+
+
+
+
+                          IX _Earth and Mars_
+
+
+                        1. THE SECOND MEN AT BAY
+
+Such were the beings that invaded the earth when the Second Men were
+gathering their strength for a great venture in artificial evolution.
+The motives of the invasion were both economic and religious. The
+Martians sought water and vegetable matter; but they came also in a
+crusading spirit, to ‘liberate’ the terrestrial diamonds.
+
+Conditions on the earth were very unfavourable to the invaders.
+Excessive gravitation troubled them less than might have been expected.
+Only in their most concentrated form did they find it oppressive. More
+harmful was the density of the terrestrial atmosphere, which constricted
+the tenuous animate cloudlets very painfully, hindering their vital
+processes, and deadening all their movements. In their native atmosphere
+they swam hither and thither with ease and considerable speed; but the
+treacly air of the earth hampered them as a bird’s wings are hampered
+under water. Moreover, owing to their extreme buoyancy as individual
+cloudlets, they were scarcely able to dive down so far as the
+mountain-tops. Excessive oxygen was also a source of distress; it tended
+to put them into a violent fever, which they had only been able to guard
+against very imperfectly. Even more damaging was the excessive moisture
+of the atmosphere, both through its solvent effect upon certain factors
+in the subvital units, and because heavy rain interfered with the
+physiological processes of the cloudlets and washed many of their
+materials to the ground.
+
+The invaders had also to cope with the tissue of ‘radio’ messages that
+constantly enveloped the planet, and tended to interfere with their own
+organic systems of radiation. They were prepared for this to some
+extent; but ‘beam wireless’ at close range surprised, bewildered,
+tortured, and finally routed them; so that they fled back to Mars,
+leaving many of their number disintegrated in the terrestrial air.
+
+But the pioneering army (or individual, for throughout the adventure it
+maintained unity of consciousness) had much to report at home. As was
+expected, there was rich vegetation, and water was even too abundant.
+There were solid animals, of the type of the prehistoric Martian fauna,
+but mostly two-legged and erect. Experiment had shown that these
+creatures died when they were pulled to pieces, and that though the
+sun’s rays affected them by setting up chemical action in their visual
+organs, they had no really direct sensitivity to radiation. Obviously,
+therefore, they must be unconscious. On the other hand, the terrestrial
+atmosphere was permanently alive with radiation of a violent and
+incoherent type. It was still uncertain whether these crude ethereal
+agitations were natural phenomena, mere careless offshoots of the cosmic
+mind, or whether they were emitted by a terrestrial organism. There was
+reason to suppose this last to be the case, and that the solid organisms
+were used by some hidden terrestrial intelligence as instruments; for
+there were buildings, and many of the bipeds were found within the
+buildings. Moreover, the sudden violent concentration of beam radiation
+upon the Martian cloud suggested purposeful and hostile behaviour.
+Punitive action had therefore been taken, and many buildings and bipeds
+had been destroyed. The physical basis of such a terrestrial
+intelligence was still to be discovered. It was certainly not in the
+terrestrial clouds, for these had turned out to be insensitive to
+radiation. Anyhow, it was obviously an intelligence of very low order,
+for its radiation was scarcely at all systematic, and was indeed
+excessively crude. One or two unfortunate diamonds had been found in a
+building. There was no sign that they were properly venerated.
+
+The Terrestrials, on their side, were left in complete bewilderment by
+the extraordinary events of that day. Some had jokingly suggested that
+since the strange substance had behaved in a manner obviously
+vindictive, it must have been alive and conscious; but no one took the
+suggestion seriously. Clearly, however, the thing had been dissipated by
+beam radiation. That at least was an important piece of practical
+knowledge. But theoretical knowledge about the real nature of the
+clouds, and their place in the order of the universe, was for the
+present wholly lacking. To a race of strong cognitive interest and
+splendid scientific achievement, this ignorance was violently
+disturbing. It seemed to shake the foundations of the great structure of
+knowledge. Many frankly hoped, in spite of the loss of life in the first
+invasion, that there would soon be another opportunity for studying
+these amazing objects, which were not quite gaseous and not quite solid,
+not (apparently) organic, yet capable of behaving in a manner suggestive
+of life. An opportunity was soon afforded.
+
+Some years after the first invasion, the Martians appeared again, and in
+far greater force. This time, moreover, they were almost immune from
+man’s offensive radiation. Operating simultaneously from all the alpine
+regions of the earth, they began to dry up the great rivers at their
+sources; and, venturing further afield, they spread over jungle and
+agricultural land, and stripped off every leaf. Valley after valley was
+devastated as though by endless swarms of locusts, so that in whole
+countries there was not a green blade left. The booty was carried off to
+Mars. Myriads of the subvital units, specialized for transport of water
+and food materials, were loaded each with a few molecules of the
+treasure, and dispatched to the home planet. The traffic continued
+indefinitely. Meanwhile the main body of the Martians proceeded to
+explore and loot. They were irresistible. For the absorption of water
+and leafage, they spread over the countryside as an impalpable mist
+which man had no means to dispel. For the destruction of civilization,
+they became armies of gigantic cloud-jellies, far bigger than the brute
+which had formed itself during the earlier invasion. Cities were knocked
+down and flattened, human beings masticated into pulp. Man tried weapon
+after weapon in vain.
+
+Presently the Martians discovered the sources of terrestrial radiation
+in the innumerable wireless transmitting stations. Here at last was the
+physical basis of the terrestrial intelligence! But what a lowly
+creature! What a caricature of life! Obviously in respect of complexity
+and delicacy of organization these wretched immobile systems of glass,
+metal, and vegetable compounds were not to be compared with the Martian
+cloud. Their only feat seemed to be that they had managed to get control
+of the unconscious bipeds who tended them.
+
+In the course of their explorations the Martians also discovered a few
+more diamonds. The second human species had outgrown the barbaric lust
+for jewellery; but they recognized the beauty of gems and precious
+metals, and used them as badges of office. Unfortunately, the Martians,
+in sacking a town, came upon a woman who was wearing a large diamond
+between her breasts; for she was mayor of the town, and in charge of the
+evacuation. That the sacred stone should be used thus, apparently for
+the mere identification of cattle, shocked the invaders even more than
+the discovery of fragments of diamonds in certain cutting-instruments.
+The war now began to be waged with all the heroism and brutality of a
+crusade. Long after a rich booty of water and vegetable matter had been
+secured, long after the Terrestrials had developed an effective means of
+attack, and were slaughtering the Martian clouds with high-tension
+electricity in the form of artificial lightning flashes, the misguided
+fanatics stayed on to rescue the diamonds and carry them away to the
+mountain-tops, where, years afterwards, climbers discovered them,
+arranged along the rock-edges in glittering files, like sea-bird’s eggs.
+Thither the dying remnant of the Martian host had transported them with
+its last strength, scorning to save itself before the diamonds were
+borne into the pure mountain air, to be lodged with dignity. When the
+Second Men learned of this great hoard of diamonds, they began to be
+seriously persuaded that they had been dealing, not with a freak of
+physical nature, nor yet (as some said) with swarms of bacteria, but
+with organisms of a higher order. For how could the jewels have been
+singled out, freed from their metallic settings, and so carefully
+regimented on the rocks, save by conscious purpose? The murderous clouds
+must have had at least the pilfering mentality of jackdaws, since
+evidently they had been fascinated by the treasure. But the very action
+which revealed their consciousness suggested also that they were no more
+intelligent than the merely instinctive animals. There was no
+opportunity of correcting this error, since all the clouds had been
+destroyed.
+
+The struggle had lasted only a few months. Its material effects on Man
+were serious but not insurmountable. Its immediate psychological effect
+was invigorating. The Second Men had long been accustomed to a security
+and prosperity that were almost utopian. Suddenly they were overwhelmed
+by a calamity which was quite unintelligible in terms of their own
+systematic knowledge. Their predecessors, in such a situation, would
+have behaved with their own characteristic vacillation between the human
+and the subhuman. They would have contracted a fever of romantic
+loyalty, and have performed many random acts of secretly self-regarding
+self-sacrifice. They would have sought profit out of the public
+disaster, and howled at all who were more fortunate than themselves.
+They would have cursed their gods, and looked for more useful ones. But
+also, in an incoherent manner, they would sometimes have behaved
+reasonably, and would even have risen now and again to the standards of
+the Second Men. Wholly unused to large-scale human bloodshed, these more
+developed beings suffered an agony of pity for their mangled fellows.
+But they said nothing about their pity, and scarcely noticed their own
+generous grief; for they were busy with the work of rescue. Suddenly
+confronted with the need of extreme loyalty and courage, they exulted in
+complying, and experienced that added keenness of spirit which comes
+when danger is well faced. But it did not occur to them that they were
+bearing themselves heroically; for they thought they were merely
+behaving reasonably, showing commonsense. And if any one failed in a
+tight place, they did not call him coward, but gave him a drug to clear
+his head; or, if that failed, they put him under a doctor. No doubt,
+among the First Men such a policy would not have been justified, for
+these bewildered beings had not the clear and commanding vision which
+kept all sane members of the second species constant in loyalty.
+
+The immediate psychological effect of the disaster was that it afforded
+this very noble race healthful exercise for its great reserves of
+loyalty and heroism. Quite apart from this immediate invigoration,
+however, the first agony, and those many others which were to follow,
+influenced the Second Men for good and ill in a train of effects which
+may be called spiritual. They had long known very well that the universe
+was one in which there could be not only private but also great public
+tragedies; and their philosophy did not seek to conceal this fact.
+Private tragedy they were able to face with a bland fortitude, and even
+an ecstasy of acceptance, such as the earlier species had but rarely
+attained. Public tragedy, even world-tragedy, they declared should be
+faced in the same spirit. But to know world-tragedy in the abstract, is
+very different from the direct acquaintance with it. And now the Second
+Men, even while they held their attention earnestly fixed upon the
+practical work of defence, were determined to absorb this tragedy into
+the very depths of their being, to scrutinize it fearlessly, savour it,
+digest it, so that its fierce potency should henceforth be added to
+them. Therefore they did not curse their gods, nor supplicate them. They
+said to themselves, ‘Thus, and thus, and thus, is the world. Seeing the
+depth we shall see also the height; and we shall praise both.’
+
+But their schooling was yet scarcely begun. The Martian invaders were
+all dead, but their subvital units were dispersed over the planet as a
+virulent ultra-microscopic dust. For, though as members of the living
+cloud they could enter the human body without doing permanent harm, now
+that they were freed from their functions within the higher organic
+system, they became a predatory virus. Breathed into man’s lungs, they
+soon adapted themselves to the new environment, and threw his tissues
+into disorder. Each cell that they entered overthrew its own
+constitution, like a state which the enemy has successfully infected
+with lethal propaganda through a mere handful of agents. Thus, though
+man was temporarily victor over the Martian super-individual, his own
+vital units were poisoned and destroyed by the subvital remains of his
+dead enemy. A race whose physique had been as Utopian as its body
+politic, was reduced to timid invalidity. And it was left in possession
+of a devastated planet. The loss of water proved negligible; but the
+destruction of vegetation in all the war areas produced for a while a
+world famine such as the Second Men had never known. And the material
+fabric of civilization had been so broken that many decades would have
+to be spent in rebuilding it.
+
+But the physical damage proved far less serious than the physiological.
+Earnest research discovered, indeed, a means of checking the infection;
+and, after a few years of rigorous purging the atmosphere and man’s
+flesh were clean once more. But the generations that had been stricken
+never recovered; their tissues had been too seriously corroded. Little
+by little, of course, there arose a fresh population of undamaged men
+and women. But it was a small population; for the fertility of the
+stricken had been much reduced. Thus the earth was now occupied by a
+small number of healthy persons below middle-age and a very large number
+of ageing invalids. For many years these cripples had contrived to carry
+on the work of the world in spite of their frailty, but gradually they
+began to fail both in endurance and competence. For they were rapidly
+losing their grip on life, and sinking into a long-drawn-out senility,
+from which the Second Men had never before suffered; and at the same
+time the young, forced to take up work for which they were not equipped,
+committed all manner of blunders and crudities of which their elders
+would never have been guilty. But such was the general standard of
+mentality in the second human species, that what might have been an
+occasion for recrimination produced an unparalleled example of human
+loyalty at its best. The stricken generations decided almost unanimously
+that whenever an individual was declared by his generation to have
+outlived his competence, he should commit suicide. The younger
+generations, partly through affection, partly through dread of their own
+incompetence, were at first earnestly opposed to this policy. ‘Our
+elders’, one young man said, ‘may have declined in vigour, but they are
+still beloved, and still wise. We dare not carry on without them.’ But
+the elders maintained their point. Many members of the rising generation
+were no longer juveniles. And, if the body politic was to survive the
+economic crisis, it must now ruthlessly cut out all its damaged tissues.
+Accordingly the decision was carried out. One by one, as occasion
+demanded, the stricken ‘chose the peace of annihilation,’ leaving a
+scanty, inexperienced, but vigorous, population to rebuild what had been
+destroyed.
+
+Four centuries passed, and then again the Martian clouds appeared in the
+sky. Once more devastation and slaughter. Once more a complete failure
+of the two mentalities to conceive one another. Once more the Martians
+were destroyed. Once more the pulmonary plague, the slow purging, a
+crippled population, and generous suicide.
+
+Again, and again they appeared, at irregular intervals for fifty
+thousand years. On each occasion the Martians came irresistibly
+fortified against whatever weapon humanity had last used against them.
+And so, by degrees, men began to recognize that the enemy was no merely
+instinctive brute, but intelligent. They therefore made attempts to get
+in touch with these alien minds, and make overtures for a peaceful
+settlement. But since obviously the negotiations had to be performed by
+human beings, and since the Martians always regarded human beings as the
+mere cattle of the terrestrial intelligence, the envoys were always
+either ignored or destroyed.
+
+During each invasion the Martians contrived to dispatch a considerable
+bulk of water to Mars. And every time, not satisfied with this material
+gain, they stayed too long crusading, until man had found a weapon to
+circumvent their new defences; and then they were routed. After each
+invasion man’s recovery was slower and less complete, while Mars, in
+spite of the loss of a large proportion of its population, was in the
+long run invigorated with the extra water.
+
+
+                       2. THE RUIN OF TWO WORLDS
+
+Rather more than fifty thousand years after their first appearance, the
+Martians secured a permanent footing on the Antarctic tableland and
+overran Australasia and South Africa. For many centuries they remained
+in possession of a large part of the earth’s surface, practising a kind
+of agriculture, studying terrestrial conditions, and spending much
+energy on the ‘liberation’ of diamonds.
+
+During the considerable period before their settlement their mentality
+had scarcely changed; but actual habitation of the earth now began to
+undermine their self-complacency and their unity. It was borne in upon
+certain exploring Martians that the terrestrial bipeds, though
+insensitive to radiation, were actually the intelligences of the planet.
+At first this fact was studiously shunned, but little by little it
+gripped the attention of all terrestrial Martians. At the same time they
+began to realize that the whole work of research into terrestrial
+conditions, and even the social construction of their colony, depended,
+not on the public mind, but on private individuals, acting in their
+private capacity. The colonial super-individual inspired only the
+diamond crusade, and the attempt to extirpate the terrestrial
+intelligence, or radiation. These various novel acts of insight woke the
+Martian colonists from an age-long dream. They saw that their revered
+super-individual was scarcely more than the least common measure of
+themselves, a bundle of atavistic fantasies and cravings, knit into one
+mind and gifted with a certain practical cunning. A rapid and
+bewildering spiritual renascence now came over the whole Martian colony.
+The central doctrine of it was that what was valuable in the Martian
+species was not radiation but mentality. These two utterly different
+things had been confused, and even identified, since the dawn of Martian
+civilization. At last they were clearly distinguished. A fumbling but
+sincere study of mind now began; and distinction was even made between
+the humbler and loftier mental activities.
+
+There is no telling whither this renascence might have led, had it run
+its course. Possibly in time the Martians might have recognized worth
+even in minds other than Martian minds. But such a leap was at first far
+beyond them. Though they now understood that human animals were
+conscious and intelligent, they regarded them with no sympathy, rather
+indeed, with increased hostility. They still rendered allegiance to the
+Martian race, or brotherhood, just because it was in a sense one flesh,
+and, indeed, one mind. For they were concerned not to abolish but to
+recreate the public mind of the colony, and even that of Mars itself.
+
+But the colonial public mind still largely dominated them in their more
+somnolent periods, and actually sent some of those who, in their private
+phases, were revolutionaries across to Mars for help against the
+revolutionary movement. The home planet was quite untouched by the new
+ideas. Its citizens cooperated whole-heartedly in an attempt to bring
+the colonists to their senses. But in vain. The colonial public mind
+itself changed its character as the centuries passed, until it became
+seriously alienated from Martian orthodoxy. Presently, indeed, it began
+to undergo a very strange and thorough metamorphosis, from which,
+conceivably, it might have emerged as the noblest inhabitant of the
+solar system. Little by little it fell into a kind of hypnotic trance.
+That is to say, it ceased to possess the attention of its private
+members, yet remained as a unity of their subconscious, or unnoticed
+mentality. Radiational unity of the colony was maintained, but only in
+this subconscious manner; and it was at that depth that the great
+metamorphosis began to take place under the fertilizing influence of the
+new ideas; which, so to speak, were generated in the tempest of the
+fully conscious mental revolution, and kept on spreading down into the
+oceanic depth of the subconsciousness. Such a condition was likely to
+produce in time the emergence of a qualitatively new and finer
+mentality, and to waken at last into a fully conscious super-individual
+of higher order than its own members. But meanwhile this trance of the
+public consciousness incapacitated the colony for that prompt and
+coordinated action which had been the most successful faculty of Martian
+life. The public mind of the home planet easily destroyed its disorderly
+offspring, and set about re-colonizing the earth.
+
+Several times during the next three hundred thousand years this process
+repeated itself. The changeless and terribly efficient super-individual
+of Mars extirpated its own offspring on the earth, before it could
+emerge from the chrysalis. And the tragedy might have been repeated
+indefinitely, but for certain changes that took place in humanity.
+
+The first few centuries after the foundation of the Martian colony had
+been spent in ceaseless war. But at last, with terribly reduced
+resources, the Second Men had reconciled themselves to the fact that
+they must live in the same world with their mysterious enemy. Moreover,
+constant observation of the Martians began to restore somewhat man’s
+shattered self-confidence. For during the fifty thousand years before
+the Martian colony was founded his opinion of himself had been
+undermined. He had formerly been used to regarding himself as the sun’s
+ablest child. Then suddenly a stupendous new phenomenon had defeated his
+intelligence. Slowly he had learned that he was at grips with a
+determined and versatile rival, and that this rival hailed from a
+despised planet. Slowly he had been forced to suspect that he himself
+was outclassed, outshone, by a race whose very physique was
+incomprehensible to man. But after the Martians had established a
+permanent colony, human scientists began to discover the real
+physiological nature of the Martian organism, and were comforted to find
+that it did not make nonsense of human science. Man also learned that
+the Martians, though very able in certain spheres, were not really of a
+high mental type. These discoveries restored human self-confidence. Man
+settled down to make the best of the situation. Impassable barriers of
+high-power electric current were devised to keep the Martians out of
+human territory, and men began patiently to rebuild their ruined homes
+as best they could. At first there was little respite from the crusading
+zeal of the Martians, but in the second millennium this began to abate,
+and the two races left one another alone, save for occasional revivals
+of Martian fervour. Human civilization was at last reconstructed and
+consolidated, though upon a modest scale. Once more, though interrupted
+now and again by decades of agony, human beings lived in peace and
+relative prosperity. Life was somewhat harder than formerly, and the
+physique of the race was definitely less reliable than of old; but men
+and women still enjoyed conditions which most nations of the earlier
+species would have envied. The age of ceaseless personal sacrifice in
+service of the stricken community had ended at last. Once more a
+wonderful diversity of untrammelled personalities was put forth. Once
+more the minds of men and women were devoted without hindrance to the
+joy of skilled work, and all the subtleties of personal intercourse.
+Once more the passionate interest in one’s fellows, which had for so
+long been hushed under the all-dominating public calamity, refreshed and
+enlarged the mind. Once more there was music, sweet, and
+backward-hearkening towards a golden past. Once more a wealth of
+literature, and of the visual arts. Once more intellectual exploration
+into the nature of the physical world and the potentiality of mind. And
+once more the religious experience, which had for so long been coarsened
+and obscured by all the violent distractions and inevitable
+self-deceptions of war, seemed to be refining itself under the influence
+of reawakened culture.
+
+In such circumstances the earlier and less sensitive human species might
+well have prospered indefinitely. Not so the Second Men. For their very
+refinement of sensibility made them incapable of shunning an
+ever-present conviction that in spite of all their prosperity they were
+undermined. Though superficially they seemed to be making a slow but
+heroic recovery they were at the same time suffering from a still slower
+and far more profound spiritual decline. Generation succeeded
+generation. Society became almost perfected, within its limited
+territory and its limitations of material wealth. The capacities of
+personality were developed with extreme subtlety and richness. At last
+the race proposed to itself once more its ancient project of remaking
+human nature upon a loftier plane. But somehow it had no longer the
+courage and self-respect for such work. And so, though there was much
+talk, nothing was done. Epoch succeeded epoch, and everything human
+remained apparently the same. Like a twig that has been broken but not
+broken off, man settled down to retain his life and culture, but could
+make no progress.
+
+It is almost impossible to describe in a few words the subtle malady of
+the spirit that was undermining the Second Men. To say that they were
+suffering from an inferiority complex, would not be wholly false, but it
+would be a misleading vulgarization of the truth. To say that they had
+lost faith, both in themselves and in the universe, would be almost as
+inadequate. Crudely stated, their trouble was that, as a species, they
+had attempted a certain spiritual feat beyond the scope of their
+still-primitive nature. Spiritually they had over-reached themselves,
+broken every muscle (so to speak) and incapacitated themselves for any
+further effort. For they had determined to see their own racial tragedy
+as a thing of beauty, and they had failed. It was the obscure sense of
+this defeat that had poisoned them. For, being in many respects a very
+noble species, they could not simply turn their backs upon their failure
+and pursue the old way of life with the accustomed zest and
+thoroughness.
+
+During the earliest Martian raids, the spiritual leaders of humanity had
+preached that the disaster must be an occasion for a supreme religious
+experience. While striving mightily to save their civilization, men must
+yet (so it was said) learn not merely to endure, but to admire, even the
+sternest issue. ‘Thus and thus is the world. Seeing the depth, we shall
+see also the height, and praise both.’ The whole population had accepted
+this advice. At first they had seemed to succeed. Many noble literary
+expressions were given forth, which seemed to define and elaborate, and
+even actually to create in men’s hearts, this supreme experience. But as
+the centuries passed and the disasters were repeated, men began to fear
+that their forefathers had deceived themselves. Those remote generations
+had earnestly longed to feel the racial tragedy as a factor in the
+cosmic beauty; and at last they had persuaded themselves that this
+experience had actually befallen them. But their descendants were slowly
+coming to suspect that no such experience had ever occurred, that it
+would never occur to any man, and that there was in fact no such cosmic
+beauty to be experienced. The First Men would probably, in such a
+situation, have swung violently either into spiritual nihilism, or else
+into some comforting religious myth. At any rate, they were of too
+coarse-grained a nature to be ruined by a trouble so impalpable. Not so
+the Second Men. For they realized all too clearly that they were faced
+with the supreme crux of existence. And so, age after age the
+generations clung desperately to the hope that, if only they could
+endure a little longer, the light would break in on them. Even after the
+Martian colony had been three times established and destroyed by the
+orthodox race in Mars, the supreme preoccupation of the human species
+was with this religious crux. But afterwards, and very gradually, they
+lost heart. For it was borne in on them that either they themselves were
+by nature too obtuse to perceive this ultimate excellence of things (an
+excellence which they had strong reason to believe in intellectually,
+although they could not actually experience it), or the human race had
+utterly deceived itself, and the course of cosmic events after all was
+not significant, but a meaningless rigmarole.
+
+It was this dilemma that poisoned them. Had they been still physically
+in their prime, they might have found fortitude to accept it, and
+proceed to the patient exfoliation of such very real excellences as they
+were still capable of creating. But they had lost the vitality which
+alone could perform such acts of spiritual abnegation. All the wealth of
+personality, all the intricacies of personal relationship, all the
+complex enterprise of a very great community, all art, all intellectual
+research, had lost their savour. It is remarkable that a purely
+religious disaster should have warped even the delight of lovers in one
+another’s bodies, actually taken the flavour out of food, and drawn a
+veil between the sunbather and the sun. But individuals of this species,
+unlike their predecessors, were so closely integrated, that none of
+their functions could remain healthy while the highest was disordered.
+Moreover, the general slight failure of physique, which was the legacy
+of age-long war, had resulted in a recurrence of those shattering brain
+disorders which had dogged the earliest races of their species. The very
+horror of the prospect of racial insanity increased their aberration
+from reasonableness. Little by little, shocking perversions of desire
+began to terrify them. Masochistic and sadistic orgies alternated with
+phases of extravagant and ghastly revelry. Acts of treason against the
+community, hitherto almost unknown, at last necessitated a strict police
+system. Local groups organized predatory raids against one another.
+Nations appeared, and all the phobias that make up nationalism.
+
+The Martian colonists, when they observed man’s disorganization,
+prepared, at the instigation of the home planet, a very great offensive.
+It so happened that at this time the colony was going through its phase
+of enlightenment, which had always hitherto been followed sooner or
+later by chastisement from Mars. Many individuals were at the moment
+actually toying with the idea of seeking harmony with man, rather than
+war. But the public mind of Mars, outraged by this treason, sought to
+overwhelm it by instituting a new crusade. Man’s disunion offered a
+great opportunity.
+
+The first attack produced a remarkable change in the human race. Their
+madness seemed suddenly to leave them. Within a few weeks the national
+governments had surrendered their sovereignty to a central authority.
+Disorders, debauchery, perversions, wholly ceased. The treachery and
+self-seeking and corruption, which had by now been customary for many
+centuries, suddenly gave place to universal and perfect devotion to the
+social cause. The species was apparently once more in its right mind.
+Everywhere, in spite of the war’s horrors, there was gay brotherliness,
+combined with a heroism, which clothed itself in an odd extravagance of
+jocularity.
+
+The war went ill for man. The general mood changed to cold resolution.
+And still victory was with the Martians. Under the influence of the huge
+fanatical armies which were poured in from the home planet, the
+colonists had shed their tentative pacifism, and sought to vindicate
+their loyalty by ruthlessness. In reply the human race deserted its
+sanity, and succumbed to an uncontrollable lust for destruction. It was
+at this stage that a human bacteriologist announced that he had bred a
+virus of peculiar deadliness and transmissibility, with which it would
+be possible to infect the enemy, but at the cost of annihilating also
+the human race. It is significant of the insane condition of the human
+population at this time that, when these facts were announced and
+broadcast, there was no discussion of the desirability of using this
+weapon. It was immediately put in action, the whole human race
+applauding.
+
+Within a few months the Martian colony had vanished, their home planet
+itself had received the infection, and its population was already aware
+that nothing could save it. Man’s constitution was tougher than that of
+the animate clouds, and he appeared to be doomed to a somewhat more
+lingering death. He made no effort to save himself, either from the
+disease which he himself had propagated, or from the pulmonary plague
+which was caused by the disintegrated substance of the dead Martian
+colony. All the public processes of civilization began to fall to
+pieces; for the community was paralysed by disillusion, and by the
+expectation of death. Like a bee-hive that has no queen, the whole
+population of the earth sank into apathy. Men and women stayed in their
+homes, idling, eating whatever food they could procure, sleeping far
+into the mornings, and, when at last they rose, listlessly avoiding one
+another. Only the children could still be gay, and even they were
+oppressed by their elders’ gloom. Meanwhile the disease was spreading.
+Household after household was stricken, and was left unaided by its
+neighbours. But the pain in each individual’s flesh was strangely numbed
+by his more poignant distress in the spiritual defeat of the race. For
+such was the high development of this species, that even physical agony
+could not distract it from the racial failure. No one wanted to save
+himself; and each knew that his neighbours desired not his aid. Only the
+children, when the disease crippled them, were plunged into agony and
+terror. Tenderly, yet listlessly, their elders would then give them the
+last sleep. Meanwhile the unburied dead spread corruption among the
+dying. Cities fell still and silent. The corn was not harvested.
+
+
+                         3. THE THIRD DARK AGE
+
+So contagious and so lethal was the new bacterium, that its authors
+expected the human race to be wiped out as completely as the Martian
+colony. Each dying remnant of humanity, isolated from its fellows by the
+breakdown of communications, imagined its own last moments to be the
+last of man. But by accident, almost one might say by miracle, a spark
+of human life was once more preserved, to hand on the sacred fire. A
+certain stock or strain of the race, promiscuously scattered throughout
+the continents, proved less susceptible than the majority. And, as the
+bacterium was less vigorous in a hot climate, a few of these favoured
+individuals, who happened to be in the tropical jungle, recovered from
+the infection. And of these few a minority recovered also from the
+pulmonary plague which, as usual, was propagated from the dead Martians.
+
+It might have been expected that from this human germ a new civilized
+community would have soon arisen. With such brilliant beings as the
+Second Men, surely a few generations, or at the most a few thousand
+years, should have sufficed to make up the lost ground.
+
+But no. Once more it was in a manner the very excellence of the species
+that prevented its recovery, and flung the spirit of Earth into a trance
+which lasted longer than the whole previous career of mammals. Again and
+again, some thirty million times, the seasons were repeated; and
+throughout this period man remained as fixed in bodily and mental
+character as, formerly, the platypus. Members of the earlier human
+species must find it difficult to understand this prolonged impotence of
+a race far more developed than themselves. For here apparently were both
+the requisites of progressive culture, namely a world rich and
+unpossessed, and a race exceptionally able. Yet nothing was done.
+
+When the plagues, and all the immense consequent putrefactions, had
+worked themselves off, the few isolated groups of human survivors
+settled down to an increasingly indolent tropical life. The fruits of
+past learning were not imparted to the young, who therefore grew up in
+extreme ignorance of almost everything beyond their immediate
+experience. At the same time the elder generation cowed their juniors
+with vague suggestions of racial defeat and universal futility. This
+would not have mattered, had the young themselves been normal; they
+would have reacted with fervent optimism. But they themselves were now
+by nature incapable of any enthusiasm. For, in a species in which the
+lower functions were so strictly disciplined under the higher, the
+long-drawn-out spiritual disaster had actually begun to take effect upon
+the germ-plasm; so that individuals were doomed before birth to
+lassitude, and to mentality in a minor key. The First Men, long ago, had
+fallen into a kind of racial senility through a combination of vulgar
+errors and indulgences. But the second species, like a boy whose mind
+has been too soon burdened with grave experience, lived henceforth in a
+sleep-walk.
+
+As the generations passed, all the lore of civilization was shed, save
+the routine of tropical agriculture and hunting. Not that intelligence
+itself had waned. Not that the race had sunk into mere savagery.
+Lassitude did not prevent it from readjusting itself to suit its new
+circumstances. These sleep-walkers soon invented convenient ways of
+making, in the home and by hand, much that had hitherto been made in
+factories and by mechanical power. Almost without mental effort they
+designed and fashioned tolerable instruments out of wood and flint and
+bone. But though still intelligent, they had become by disposition,
+supine, indifferent. They would exert themselves only under the pressure
+of urgent primitive need. No man seemed capable of putting forth the
+full energy of a man. Even suffering had lost its poignancy. And no ends
+seemed worth pursuing that could not be realized speedily. The sting had
+gone out of experience. The soul was calloused against every goad. Men
+and women worked and played, loved and suffered; but always in a kind of
+rapt absent-mindedness. It was as though they were ever trying to
+remember something important which escaped them. The affairs of daily
+life seemed too trivial to be taken seriously. Yet that other, and
+supremely important thing, which alone deserved consideration, was so
+obscure that no one had any idea what it was. Nor indeed was anyone
+aware of this hypnotic subjection, any more than a sleeper is aware of
+being asleep.
+
+The minimum of necessary work was performed, and there was even a
+certain dreamy zest in the performance, but nothing which would entail
+extra toil ever seemed worth while. And so, when adjustment to the new
+circumstances of the world had been achieved, complete stagnation set
+in. Practical intelligence was easily able to cope with a slowly
+changing environment, and even with sudden natural upheavals such as
+floods, earthquakes, and disease epidemics. Man remained in a sense
+master of his world, but he had no idea what to do with his mastery. It
+was everywhere assumed that the sane end of living was to spend as many
+days as possible in indolence, lying in the shade. Unfortunately human
+beings had, of course, many needs which were irksome if not appeased,
+and so a good deal of hard work had to be done. Hunger and thirst had to
+be satisfied. Other individuals beside oneself had to be cared for,
+since man was cursed with sympathy and with a sentiment for the welfare
+of his group. The only fully rational behaviour, it was thought, would
+be general suicide, but irrational impulses made this impossible.
+Beatific drugs offered a temporary heaven. But, far as the Second Men
+had fallen, they were still too clear-sighted to forget that such
+beatitude is outweighed by subsequent misery.
+
+Century by century, epoch by epoch, man glided on in this seemingly
+precarious, yet actually unshakable equilibrium. Nothing that happened
+to him could disturb his easy dominance over the beasts and over
+physical nature; nothing could shock him out of his racial sleep.
+Long-drawn-out climatic changes made desert, jungle, and grass-land
+fluctuate like the clouds. As the years advanced by millions, ordinary
+geological processes, greatly accentuated by the immense strains set up
+by the Patagonian upheaval, remodelled the surface of the planet.
+Continents were submerged, or lifted out of the sea, till presently
+there was little of the old configuration. And along with these
+geological changes went changes in the fauna and flora. The bacterium
+which had almost exterminated man had also wrought havoc amongst other
+mammals. Once more the planet had to be re-stocked, this time from the
+few surviving tropical species. Once more there was a great remaking of
+old types, only less revolutionary than that which had followed the
+Patagonian disaster. And since the human race remained minute, through
+the effects of its spiritual fatigue, other species were favoured.
+Especially the ruminants and the large carnivora increased and
+diversified themselves into many habits and forms.
+
+But the most remarkable of all the biological trains of events in this
+period was the history of the Martian subvital units that had been
+disseminated by the slaughter of the Martian colony, and had then
+tormented men and animals with pulmonary diseases. As the ages passed,
+certain species of mammals so readjusted themselves that the Martian
+virus became not only harmless but necessary to their well-being. A
+relationship which was originally that of parasite and host became in
+time a true symbiosis, a cooperative partnership, in which the
+terrestrial animals gained something of the unique attributes of the
+vanished Martian organisms. The time was to come when Man himself should
+look with envy on these creatures, and finally make use of the Martian
+‘virus’ for his own enrichment.
+
+But meanwhile, and for many million years, almost all kinds of life were
+on the move, save Man. Like a ship-wrecked sailor, he lay exhausted and
+asleep on his raft, long after the storm had abated.
+
+But his stagnation was not absolute. Imperceptibly, he was drifting on
+the oceanic currents of life, and in a direction far out of his original
+course. Little by little, his habit was becoming simpler, less
+artificial, more animal. Agriculture faded out, since it was no longer
+necessary in the luxuriant garden where man lived. Weapons of defence
+and of the chase became more precisely adapted to their restricted
+purposes, but at the same time less diversified and more stereotyped.
+Speech almost vanished; for there was no novelty left in experience.
+Familiar facts and familiar emotions were conveyed increasingly by
+gestures which were mostly unwitting. Physically, the species had
+changed little. Though the natural period of life was greatly reduced,
+this was due less to physiological change than to a strange and fatal
+increase of absent-mindedness in middle-age. The individual gradually
+ceased to react to his environment; so that even if he escaped a violent
+death, he died of starvation.
+
+Yet in spite of this great change, the species remained essentially
+human. There was no bestialization, such as had formerly produced a race
+of submen. These tranced remnants of the second human species were not
+beasts but innocents, simples, children of nature, perfectly adjusted to
+their simple life. In many ways their state was idyllic and enviable.
+But such was their dimmed mentality that they were never clearly aware
+even of the blessings they had, still less, of course, of the loftier
+experiences which had kindled and tortured their ancestors.
+
+
+
+
+                  X _The Third Men in the Wilderness_
+
+
+                       1. THE THIRD HUMAN SPECIES
+
+We have now followed man’s career during some forty million years. The
+whole period to be covered by this chronicle is about two thousand
+million. In this chapter, and the next, therefore, we must accomplish a
+swift flight at great altitude over a tract of time more than three
+times as long as that which we have hitherto observed. This great
+expanse is no desert, but a continent teeming with variegated life, and
+many successive and very diverse civilizations. The myriads of human
+beings who inhabit it far outnumber the First and Second Men combined.
+And the content of each one of these lives is a universe, rich and
+poignant as that of any reader of this book.
+
+In spite of the great diversity of this span of man’s history, it is a
+single movement within the whole symphony, just as the careers of the
+First and of the Second Men are each a single movement. Not only is it a
+period dominated by a single natural human species and the artificial
+human species into which the natural species at length transformed
+itself; but, also, in spite of innumerable digressions, a single theme,
+a single mood of the human will, informs the whole duration. For now at
+last man’s main energy is devoted to remaking his own physical and
+mental nature. Throughout the rise and fall of many successive cultures
+this purpose is progressively clarifying itself, and expressing itself
+in many tragic and even devastating experiments; until, towards the
+close of this immense period, it seems almost to achieve its end.
+
+When the Second Men had remained in their strange racial trance for
+about thirty million years, the obscure forces that make for advancement
+began to stir in them once more. This reawakening was favoured by
+geological accident. An incursion of the sea gradually isolated some of
+their number in an island continent, which was once part of the North
+Atlantic ocean-bed. The climate of this island gradually cooled from
+sub-tropical to temperate and sub-arctic. The vast change of conditions
+caused in the imprisoned race a subtle chemical re-arrangement of the
+germ-plasm, such that there ensued an epidemic of biological variation.
+Many new types appeared, but in the long run one, more vigorous and
+better adapted than the rest, crowded out all competitors and slowly
+consolidated itself as a new species, the Third Men.
+
+[Illustration: Time Scale 3]
+
+Scarcely more than half the stature of their predecessors, these beings
+were proportionately slight and lithe. Their skin was of a sunny brown,
+covered with a luminous halo of red-gold hairs, which on the head became
+a russet mop. Their golden eyes, reminiscent of the snake, were more
+enigmatic than profound. Their faces were compact as cat’s muzzles,
+their lips full, but subtle at the corners. Their ears, objects of
+personal pride and of sexual admiration, were extremely variable both in
+individuals and races. These surprising organs, which would have seemed
+merely ludicrous to the First Men, were expressive both of temperament
+and passing mood. They were immense, delicately involuted, of a silken
+texture, and very mobile. They gave an almost bat-like character to the
+otherwise somewhat feline heads. But the most distinctive feature of the
+Third Men was their great lean hands, on which were six versatile
+fingers, six antennae of living steel.
+
+Unlike their predecessors, the Third Men were short-lived. They had a
+brief childhood and a brief maturity, followed (in the natural course)
+by a decade of senility, and death at about sixty. But such was their
+abhorrence of decrepitude, that they seldom allowed themselves to grow
+old. They preferred to kill themselves when their mental and physical
+agility began to decline. Thus, save in exceptional epochs of their
+history, very few lived to be fifty.
+
+But though in some respects the third human species fell short of the
+high standard of its predecessor, especially in certain of the finer
+mental capacities, it was by no means simply degenerate. The admirable
+sensory equipment of the second species was retained, and even improved.
+Vision was no less ample and precise and colourful. Touch was far more
+discriminate, especially in the delicately pointed sixth finger-tip.
+Hearing was so developed that a man could run through wooded country
+blindfold without colliding with the trees. Moreover the great range of
+sounds and rhythms had acquired an extremely subtle gamut of emotional
+significance. Music was therefore one of the main preoccupations of the
+civilizations of this species.
+
+Mentally the Third Men were indeed very unlike their predecessors. Their
+intelligence was in some ways no less agile; but it was more cunning
+than intellectual, more practical than theoretical. They were interested
+more in the world of sense-experience than in the world of abstract
+reason, and again far more in living things than in the lifeless. They
+excelled in certain kinds of art, and indeed also in some fields of
+science. But they were led into science more through practical,
+aesthetic, or religious needs than through intellectual curiosity. In
+mathematics, for instance (helped greatly by the duo-decimal system,
+which resulted from their having twelve fingers), they became wonderful
+calculators; yet they never had the curiosity to inquire into the
+essential nature of number. Nor, in physics, were they ever led to
+discover the more obscure properties of space. They were, indeed,
+strangely devoid of curiosity. Hence, though sometimes capable of a
+penetrating mystical intuition, they never seriously disciplined
+themselves under philosophy, nor tried to relate their mystical
+intuitions with the rest of their experience.
+
+In their primitive phases the Third Men were keen hunters; but also,
+owing to their strong parental impulses, they were much addicted to
+making pets of captured animals. Throughout their career they displayed
+what earlier races would have called an uncanny sympathy with, and
+understanding of, all kinds of animals and plants. This intuitive
+insight into the nature of living things, and this untiring interest in
+the diversity of vital behaviour, constituted the dominating impulse
+throughout the whole career of the third human species. At the outset
+they excelled not only as hunters but as herdsmen and domesticators. By
+nature they were very apt in every kind of manipulation, but especially
+in the manipulation of living things. As a species they were also
+greatly addicted to play of all kinds, but especially to manipulative
+play, and above all to the playful manipulation of organisms. From the
+first they performed great feats of riding on the moose-like deer which
+they had domesticated. They tamed also a certain gregarious coursing
+beast. The pedigree of this great leonine wolf led, through the tropical
+survivors of the Martian plague, back to those descendants of the arctic
+fox which had over-run the world after the Patagonian disaster. This
+animal the Third Men trained not only to help them in shepherding and in
+the chase, but also to play intricate hunting games. Between this hound
+and its master or mistress there frequently arose a very special
+relation, a kind of psychical symbiosis, a dumb intuitive mutual
+insight, a genuine love, based on economic cooperation, but strongly
+toned also, in a manner peculiar to the third human species, with
+religious symbolism and frankly sexual intimacy.
+
+As herdsmen and shepherds the Third Men very early practised selective
+breeding; and increasingly they became absorbed in the perfecting and
+enriching of all types of animals and plants. It was the boast of every
+local chieftain not only that the men of his tribe were more manly and
+the women more beautiful than all others, but also that the bears in his
+territory were the noblest and most bear-like of all bears, that the
+birds built more perfect nests and were more skilful fliers and singers
+than birds elsewhere. And so on, through all the animal and vegetable
+races.
+
+This biological control was achieved at first by simple breeding
+experiments, but later and increasingly by crude physiological
+manipulation of the young animal, the foetus and (later, still) the
+germ-plasm. Hence arose a perennial conflict, which often caused wars of
+a truly religious bitterness, between the tender-hearted, who shrank
+from the infliction of pain, and the passionately manipulative, who
+willed to create at whatever cost. This conflict, indeed, was waged not
+only between individuals but within each mind; for all were innately
+hunters and manipulators, but also all had intuitive sympathy even with
+the quarry which they tormented. The trouble was increased by a strain
+of sheer cruelty which occurred even in the most tender-hearted. This
+sadism was at bottom an expression of an almost mystical reverence for
+sensory experience. Physical pain, being the most intense of all sensed
+qualities, was apt to be thought the most excellent. It might be
+expected that this would lead rather to self-torture than to cruelty.
+Sometimes it did. But in general those who could not appreciate pain in
+their own flesh were yet able to persuade themselves that in inflicting
+pain on lower animals they were creating vivid psychic reality, and
+therefore high excellence. It was just the intense reality of pain, they
+said, that made it intolerable to men and animals. Seen with the
+detachment of the divine mind, it appeared in its true beauty. And even
+man, they declared, could appreciate its excellence when it occurred not
+in men but in animals.
+
+Though the Third Men lacked interest in systematic thought, their minds
+were often concerned with matters outside the fields of private and
+social economy. They experienced not only aesthetic but mystical
+cravings. And though they were without any appreciation of those finer
+beauties of human personality, which their predecessors had admired as
+the highest attainment of life on the planet, the Third Men themselves,
+in their own way, sought to make the best of human nature, and indeed of
+animal nature. Man they regarded in two aspects. In the first place he
+was the noblest of all animals, gifted with unique aptitudes. He was, as
+was sometimes said, God’s chief work of art. But secondly, since his
+special virtues were his insight into the nature of all living things
+and his manipulative capacity, he was himself God’s eye and God’s hand.
+These convictions were expressed over and over again in the religions of
+the Third Men by the image of the deity as a composite animal, with
+wings of the albatross, jaws of the great wolf-fox, feet of the deer,
+and so on. For the human element was represented in this deity by the
+hands, the eyes, and the sexual organs of man. And between the divine
+hands lay the world, with all its diverse population. Often the world
+was represented as being the fruit of God’s primitive potency, but also
+as in process of being drastically altered and tortured into perfection
+by the hands.
+
+Most of the cultures of the Third Men were dominated by this obscure
+worship of Life as an all-pervading spirit, expressing itself in myriad
+diverse individuals. And at the same time the intuitive loyalty to
+living things and to a vaguely conceived life-force was often
+complicated by sadism. For in the first place it was recognized, of
+course, that what is valued by higher beings may be intolerable to
+lower; and, as has been said, pain itself was thought to be a superior
+excellence of this kind. And again in a second manner sadism expressed
+itself. The worship of Life, as agent or subject, was complemented by
+worship of environment, as object to life’s subjectivity, as that which
+remains ever foreign to life, thwarting its enterprises, torturing it,
+yet making it possible, and, by its very resistance, goading it into
+nobler expressions. Pain, it was said, was the most vivid apprehension
+of the sacred and universal Object.
+
+The thought of the third human species was never systematic. But in some
+such manner as the foregoing it strove to rationalize its obscure
+intuition of the beauty which includes at once Life’s victory and
+defeat.
+
+
+                    2. DIGRESSIONS OF THE THIRD MEN
+
+Such, in brief, was the physical and mental nature of the third human
+species. In spite of innumerable distractions, the spirit of the Third
+Men kept on returning to follow up the thread of biological interest
+through a thousand variegated cultures. Again and again folk after folk
+would clamber out of savagery and barbarism into relative enlightenment;
+and mostly, though not always, the main theme of this enlightenment was
+some special mood either of biological creativeness or of sadism, or of
+both. To a man born into such a society, no dominant characteristic
+would be apparent. He would be impressed rather by the many-sidedness of
+human activities in his time. He would note a wealth of personal
+intercourse, of social organization and industrial invention, of art and
+speculation, all set in that universal matrix, the private struggle to
+preserve or express the self. Yet the historian may often see in a
+society, over and above this multifarious proliferation, some one
+controlling theme.
+
+Again and again, then, at intervals of a few thousand or a few hundred
+thousand years, man’s whim was imposed upon the fauna and flora of the
+earth, and at length directed to the task of remaking man himself. Again
+and again, through a diversity of causes, the effort collapsed, and the
+species sank once more into chaos. Sometimes indeed there was an
+interlude of culture in some quite different key. Once, early in the
+history of the species, and before its nature had become fixed, there
+occurred a non-industrial civilization of a genuinely intellectual kind,
+almost like that of Greece. Sometimes, but not often, the third human
+species fooled itself into an extravagantly industrial world
+civilization, in the manner of the Americanized First Men. In general
+its interest was too much concerned with other matters to become
+entangled with mechanical devices. But on three occasions at least it
+succumbed. Of these civilizations one derived its main power from wind
+and falling water, one from the tides, one from the earth’s internal
+heat. The first, saved from the worst evils of industrialism by the
+limitations of its power, lasted some hundred thousand years in barren
+equilibrium, until it was destroyed by an obscure bacterium. The second
+was fortunately brief; but its fifty thousand years of unbridled waste
+of tidal energy was enough to interfere appreciably with the orbit of
+the moon. This world-order collapsed at length in a series of industrial
+wars. The third endured a quarter of a million years as a brilliantly
+sane and efficient world organization. Throughout most of its existence
+there was almost complete social harmony with scarcely as much internal
+strife as occurs in a bee-hive. But once more civilization came at
+length to grief, this time through the misguided effort to breed special
+human types for specialized industrial pursuits.
+
+Industrialism, however, was never more than a digression, a lengthy and
+disastrous irrelevance in the life of this species. There were other
+digressions. There were for instance cultures, enduring sometimes for
+several thousand years, which were predominantly musical. This could
+never have occurred among the First Men; but, as was said, the third
+species was peculiarly developed in hearing, and in emotional
+sensitivity to sound and rhythm. Consequently, just as the First Men at
+their height were led into the wilderness by an irrational obsession
+with mechanical contrivances, just as the Third Men themselves were many
+times undone by their own interest in biological control, so, now and
+again, it was their musical gift that hypnotized them.
+
+Of these predominantly musical cultures the most remarkable was one in
+which music and religion combined to form a tyranny no less rigid than
+that of religion and science in the remote past. It is worth while to
+dwell on one of these episodes for a few moments.
+
+The Third Men were very subject to a craving for personal immortality.
+Their lives were brief, their love of life intense. It seemed to them a
+tragic flaw in the nature of existence that the melody of the individual
+life must either fade into a dreary senility or be cut short, never to
+be repeated. Now, music had a special significance for this race. So
+intense was their experience of it, that they were ready to regard it as
+in some manner the underlying reality of all things. In leisure hours,
+snatched from a toilful and often tragic life, groups of peasants would
+seek to conjure about them by song or pipe or viol a universe more
+beautiful, more real, than that of daily labour. Concentrating their
+sensitive hearing upon the inexhaustible diversity of tone and rhythm,
+they would seem to themselves to be possessed by the living presence of
+music, and to be transported thereby into a lovelier world. No wonder
+they believed that every melody was a spirit, leading a life of its own
+within the universe of music. No wonder they imagined that a symphony or
+chorus was itself a single spirit inhering in all its members. No wonder
+it seemed to them that when men and women listened to great music, the
+barriers of their individuality were broken down, so that they became
+one soul through communion with the music.
+
+The prophet was born in a highland village where the native faith in
+music was intense, though quite unformulated. In time he learnt to raise
+his peasant audiences to the most extravagant joy and the most delicious
+sorrow. Then at last he began to think, and to expound his thoughts with
+the authority of a great bard. Easily he persuaded men that music was
+the reality, and all else illusion, that the living spirit of the
+universe was pure music, and that each individual animal and man, though
+he had a body that must die and vanish for ever, had also a soul that
+was music and eternal. A melody, he said, is the most fleeting of
+things. It happens and ceases. The great silence devours it, and
+seemingly annihilates it. Passage is essential to its being. Yet though
+for a melody, to halt is to die a violent death, all music, the prophet
+affirmed, has also eternal life. After silence it may occur again, with
+all its freshness and aliveness. Time cannot age it; for its home is in
+a country outside time. And that country, thus the young musician
+earnestly preached, is also the homeland of every man and woman, nay of
+every living thing that has any gift of music. Those who seek
+immortality, must strive to waken their tranced souls into melody and
+harmony. And according to their degree of musical originality and
+proficiency will be their standing in the eternal life.
+
+The doctrine, and the impassioned melodies of the prophet, spread like
+fire. Instrumental and vocal music sounded from every pasture and corn
+plot. The government tried to suppress it, partly because it was thought
+to interfere with agricultural productivity, largely because its
+passionate significance reverberated even in the hearts of courtly
+ladies, and threatened to undo the refinement of centuries. Nay, the
+social order itself began to crumble. For many began openly to declare
+that what mattered was not aristocratic birth, nor even proficiency in
+the time-honoured musical forms (so much prized by the leisured), but
+the gift of spontaneous emotional expression in rhythm and harmony.
+Persecution strengthened the new faith with a glorious company of
+martyrs who, it was affirmed, sang triumphantly even in the flames.
+
+One day the sacred monarch himself, hitherto a prisoner within the
+conventions, declared half sincerely, half by policy, that he was
+converted to his people’s faith. Bureaucracy gave place to an
+enlightened dictatorship, the monarch assumed the title of Supreme
+Melody, and the whole social order was refashioned, more to the taste of
+the peasants. The subtle prince, backed by the crusading zeal of his
+people, and favoured by the rapid spontaneous spread of the faith in all
+lands, conquered the whole world, and founded the universal Church of
+Harmony. The prophet himself, meanwhile, dismayed by his own too facile
+success, had retired into the mountains to perfect his art under the
+influence of their great quiet, or the music of wind, thunder, and
+waterfall. Presently, however, the silence of the fells was shattered by
+the blare of military bands and ecclesiastical choirs, which the emperor
+had sent to salute him and conduct him to the metropolis. He was
+secured, though not without a scrimmage, and lodged in the High Temple
+of Music. There he was kept a prisoner, dubbed God’s Big Noise, and used
+by the world-government as an oracle needing interpretation. In a few
+years the official music of the temple, and of deputations from all over
+the world, drove him into raving madness; in which state he was the more
+useful to the authorities.
+
+Thus was founded the Holy Empire of Music, which gave order and purpose
+to the species for a thousand years. The sayings of the prophet,
+interpreted by a series of able rulers, became the foundation of a great
+system of law which gradually supplanted all local codes by virtue of
+its divine authority. Its root was madness; but its final expression was
+intricate commonsense, decorated with harmless and precious flowers of
+folly. Throughout, the individual was wisely, but tacitly, regarded as a
+biological organism having definite needs or rights and definite social
+obligations; but the language in which this principle was expressed and
+elaborated was a jargon based on the fiction that every human being was
+a melody, demanding completion within a greater musical theme of
+society.
+
+Toward the close of this millennium of order a schism occurred among the
+devout. A new and fervent sect declared that the true spirit of the
+musical religion had been stifled by ecclesiasticism. The founder of the
+religion had preached salvation by individual musical experience, by an
+intensely emotional communion with the Divine Music. But little by
+little, so it was said, the church had lost sight of this central truth,
+and had substituted a barren interest in the objective forms and
+principles of melody and counterpoint. Salvation, in the official view,
+was not to be had by subjective experience, but by keeping the rules of
+an obscure musical technique. And what was this technique? Instead of
+making the social order a practical expression of the divine law of
+music, churchmen and statesmen had misinterpreted these divine laws to
+suit mere social convenience, until the true spirit of music had been
+lost. Meanwhile on the other side a counter-revival took place. The
+self-centred and soul-saving mood of the rebels was ridiculed. Men were
+urged to care rather for the divine and exquisitely ordered forms of
+music itself than for their own emotion.
+
+It was amongst the rebel peoples that the biological interest of the
+race, hitherto subordinate, came into its own. Mating, at least among
+the more devout sort of women, began to be influenced by the desire to
+have children who should be of outstanding musical brilliance and
+sensitivity. Biological sciences were rudimentary, but the general
+principle of selective breeding was known. Within a century this policy
+of breeding for music, or breeding ‘soul’, developed from a private
+idiosyncrasy into a racial obsession. It was so far successful that
+after a while a new type became common, and thrived upon the approbation
+and devotion of ordinary persons. These new beings were indeed
+extravagantly sensitive to music, so much so that the song of a skylark
+caused them serious torture by its banality, and in response to any
+human music of the kind which they approved, they invariably fell into a
+trance. Under the stimulus of music which was not to their taste they
+were apt to run amok and murder the performers.
+
+We need not pause to trace the stages by which an infatuated race
+gradually submitted itself to the whims of these creatures of human
+folly, until for a brief period they became the tyrannical ruling caste
+of a musical theocracy. Nor need we observe how they reduced society to
+chaos; and how at length an age of confusion and murder brought mankind
+once more to its senses, but also into so bitter a disillusionment that
+the effort to re-orientate the whole direction of its endeavour lacked
+determination. Civilization fell to pieces and was not rebuilt till
+after the race had lain fallow for some thousands of years.
+
+So ended perhaps the most pathetic of racial delusions. Born of a
+genuine and potent aesthetic experience, it retained a certain crazy
+nobility even to the end.
+
+Many scores of other cultures occurred, separated often by long ages of
+barbarism, but they must be ignored in this brief chronicle. The great
+majority of them were mainly biological in spirit. Thus one was
+dominated by an obsessive interest in flight, and therefore in birds,
+another by the concept of metabolism, several by sexual creativity, and
+very many by some general but mostly unenlightened policy of eugenics.
+All these we must pass over, so that we may descend to watch the
+greatest of all the races of the third species torture itself into a new
+form.
+
+
+                            3. THE VITAL ART
+
+It was after an unusually long period of eclipse that the spirit of the
+third human species attained its greatest brilliance. We need not watch
+the stages by which this enlightenment was reached. Suffice it that the
+upshot was a very remarkable civilization, if such a word can be applied
+to an order in which agglomerations of architecture were unknown,
+clothing was used only when needed for warmth, and such industrial
+development as occurred was wholly subordinated to other activities.
+
+Early in the history of this culture the requirements of hunting and
+agriculture, and the spontaneous impulse to manipulate live things, gave
+rise to a primitive but serviceable system of biological knowledge. Not
+until the culture had unified the whole planet, did biology itself give
+rise to chemistry and physics. At the same time a well-controlled
+industrialism, based first on wind and water, and later on subterranean
+heat, afforded the race all the material luxuries it desired, and much
+leisure from the business of keeping itself in existence. Had there not
+already existed a more powerful and all-dominating interest,
+industrialism itself would probably have hypnotized the race, as it had
+so many others. But in this race the interest in live things, which
+characterized the whole species, was dominant before industrialism
+began. Egotism among the Third Men could not be satisfied by the
+exercise of economic power, nor by the mere ostentation of wealth. Not
+that the race was immune from egotism. On the contrary, it had lost
+almost all that spontaneous altruism which had distinguished the Second
+Men. But in most periods the only kind of personal ostentation which
+appealed to the Third Men was directly connected with the primitive
+interest in ‘pecunia’. To own many and noble beasts, whether they were
+economically productive or not, was ever the mark of respectability. The
+vulgar, indeed, were content with mere numbers, or at most with the
+convential virtues of the recognized breeds. But the more refined
+pursued, and flaunted, certain very exact principles of aesthetic
+excellence in their control of living forms.
+
+In fact, as the race gained biological insight, it developed a very
+remarkable new art, which we may call ‘plastic vital art’. This was to
+become the chief vehicle of expression of the new culture. It was
+practised universally, and with religious fervour; for it was very
+closely connected with the belief in a life-god. The canons of this art,
+and the precepts of this religion, fluctuated from age to age, but in
+general certain basic principles were accepted. Or rather, though there
+was almost always universal agreement that the practice of vital art was
+the supreme goal, and should not be treated in a utilitarian spirit,
+there were two conflicting sets of principles which were favoured by
+opposed sects. One mode of vital art sought to evoke the full
+potentiality of each natural type as a harmonious and perfected nature,
+or to produce new types equally harmonious. The other prided itself on
+producing monsters. Sometimes a single capacity was developed at the
+expense of the harmony and welfare of the organism as a whole. Thus a
+bird was produced which could fly faster than any other bird; but it
+could neither reproduce nor even feed, and therefore had to be
+maintained artificially. Sometimes, on the other hand, certain
+characters incompatible in nature were forced upon a single organism,
+and maintained in precarious and torturing equilibrium. To give
+examples, one much-talked-of feat was the production of a carnivorous
+mammal in which the fore-limbs had assumed the structure of a bird’s
+wings, complete with feathers. This creature could not fly, since its
+body was wrongly proportioned. Its only mode of locomotion was a
+staggering run with outstretched wings. Other examples of monstrosity
+were an eagle with twin heads, and a deer in which, with incredible
+ingenuity, the artists had induced the tail to develop as a head, with
+brain, sense-organs, and jaws. In this monstrous art, interest in living
+things was infected with sadism through the preoccupation with fate,
+especially internal fate, as the divinity that shapes our ends. In its
+more vulgar forms, of course, it was a crude expression of egotistical
+lust in power.
+
+This _motif_ of the monstrous and the self-discrepant was less prominent
+than the other, the _motif_ of harmonious perfection; but at all times
+it was apt to exercise at least a subconscious influence. The supreme
+aim of the dominant, perfection-seeking movement was to embellish the
+planet with a very diverse fauna and flora, with the human race as at
+once the crown and the instrument of terrestrial life. Each species, and
+each variety, was to have its place and fulfil its part in the great
+cycle of living types. Each was to be internally perfected to its
+function. It must have no harmful relics of a past manner of life; and
+its capacities must be in true accord with one another. But, to repeat,
+the supreme aim was not concerned merely with individual types, but with
+the whole vital economy of the planet. Thus, though there were to be
+types of every order from the most humble bacterium up to man, it was
+contrary to the canon of orthodox sacred art that any type should thrive
+by the destruction of a type higher than itself. In the sadistic mode of
+the art, however, a peculiarly exquisite tragic beauty was said to
+inhere in situations in which a lowly type exterminated a higher. There
+were occasions in the history of the race when the two sects indulged in
+bloody conflict because the sadists kept devising parasites to undermine
+the noble products of the orthodox.
+
+Of those who practised vital art, and all did so to some extent, a few,
+though they deliberately rejected the orthodox principles, gained
+notoriety and even fame by their grotesques; while others, less
+fortunate, were ready to accept ostracism and even martyrdom, declaring
+that what they had produced was a significant symbol of the universal
+tragedy of vital nature. The great majority, however, accepted the
+sacred canon. They had therefore to choose one or other of certain
+recognized modes of expression. For instance, they might seek to enhance
+some extant type of organism, both by perfecting its capacities and by
+eliminating from it all that was harmful or useless. Or else, a more
+original and precarious work, they might set about creating a new type
+to fill a niche in the world, which had not yet been occupied. For this
+end they would select a suitable organism, and seek to remake it upon a
+new plan, striving to produce a creature of perfectly harmonious nature
+precisely adapted to the new way of life. In this kind of work sundry
+strict aesthetic principles must be observed. Thus it was considered bad
+art to reduce a higher type to a lower, or in any manner to waste the
+capacities of a type. And further, since the true end of art was not the
+production of individual types, but the production of a world-wide and
+perfectly systematic fauna and flora, it was inadmissible to harm even
+accidentally any type higher than that which it was intended to produce.
+For the practice of orthodox vital art was regarded as a cooperative
+enterprise. The ultimate artist, under God, was mankind as a whole; the
+ultimate work of art must be an ever more subtle garment of living forms
+for the adornment of the planet, and the delight of the supreme Artist,
+in relation to whom man was both creature and instrument.
+
+Little was achieved, of course, until the applied biological sciences
+had advanced far beyond the high-water mark attained long ago during the
+career of the Second Men. Much more was needed than the rule-of-thumb
+principles of earlier breeders. It took this brightest of all the races
+of the third species many thousands of years of research to discover the
+more delicate principles of heredity, and to devise a technique by which
+the actual hereditary factors in the germ could be manipulated. It was
+this increasing penetration of biology itself that opened up the deeper
+regions of chemistry and physics. And owing to this historical sequence
+the latter sciences were conceived in a biological manner, with the
+electron as the basic organism, and the cosmos as an organic whole.
+
+Imagine, then, a planet organized almost as a vast system of botanical
+and zoological gardens, or wild parks, interspersed with agriculture and
+industry. In every great centre of communications occurred annual and
+monthly shows. The latest creations were put through their paces, judged
+by the high priests of vital art, awarded distinctions, and consecrated
+with religious ceremony. At these shows some of the exhibits would be
+utilitarian, others purely aesthetic. There might be improved grains,
+vegetables, cattle, some exceptionally intelligent or sturdy variety of
+herdsman’s dog, or a new micro-organism with some special function in
+agriculture or in human digestion. But also there would be the latest
+achievements in pure vital art. Great sleek-limbed, hornless, racing
+deer, birds or mammals adapted to some hitherto unfulfilled role, bears
+intended to outclass all existing varieties in the struggle for
+existence, ants with specialized organs and instincts, improvements in
+the relations of parasite and host, so as to make a true symbiosis in
+which the host profited by the parasite. And so on. And everywhere there
+would be the little unclad ruddy faun-like beings who had created these
+marvels. Shy forest-dwelling folk of Gurkha physique would stand beside
+their antelopes, vultures, or new great cat-like prowlers. A grave young
+woman might cause a stir by entering the grounds followed by several
+gigantic bears. Crowds would perhaps press round to examine the
+creatures’ teeth or limbs, and she might scold the meddlers away from
+her patient flock. For the normal relation between man and beast at this
+time was one of perfect amity, rising, sometimes, in the case of
+domesticated animals, to an exquisite, almost painful, mutual adoration.
+Even the wild beasts never troubled to avoid man, still less to attack
+him, save in the special circumstances of the hunt and the sacred
+gladiatorial show.
+
+These last need special notice. The powers of combat in beasts were
+admired no less than other powers. Men and women alike experienced a
+savage joy, almost an ecstasy, in the spectacle of mortal combat.
+Consequently there were formal occasions when different kinds of beasts
+were enraged against one another and allowed to fight to the death. Not
+only so, but also there were sacred contests between beast and man,
+between man and man, between woman and woman, and, most surprising to
+the readers of this book, between woman and man. For in this species,
+woman in her prime was not physically weaker than her partner.
+
+
+                        4. CONFLICTING POLICIES
+
+Almost from the first, vital art had been applied to some extent to man
+himself, though with hesitation. Certain great improvements had been
+effected, but only improvements about which there could be no two
+opinions. The many diseases and abnormalities left over from past
+civilizations were patiently abolished, and various more fundamental
+defects were remedied. For instance, teeth, digestion, glandular
+equipment, and the circulatory system were greatly improved. Extreme
+good health and considerable physical beauty became universal.
+Child-bearing was made a painless and health-giving process. Senility
+was postponed. The standard of practical intelligence was appreciably
+raised. These reforms were made possible by a vast concerted effort of
+research and experiment supported by the world-community. But private
+enterprise was also effective, for the relation between the sexes was
+much more consciously dominated by the thought of offspring than among
+the First Men. Every individual knew the characteristics of his or her
+hereditary composition, and knew what kinds of offspring were to be
+expected from intercourse of different hereditary types. Thus in
+courtship the young man was not content to persuade his beloved that his
+mind was destined by nature to afford her mind joyful completion; he
+sought also to persuade her that with his help she might bear children
+of a peculiar excellence. Consequently there was at all times going on a
+process of selective breeding towards the conventionally ideal type. In
+certain respects the ideal remained constant for many thousands of
+years. It included health, cat-like agility, manipulative dexterity,
+musical sensitivity, refined perception of rightness and wrongness in
+the sphere of vital art, and an intuitive practical judgement in all the
+affairs of life. Longevity, and the abolition of senility, were also
+sought, and partially attained. Waves of fashion sometimes directed
+sexual selection toward prowess in combat, or some special type of
+facial expression or vocal powers. But these fleeting whims were
+negligible. Only the permanently desired characters were actually
+intensified by private selective breeding.
+
+But at length there came a time when more ambitious aims were
+entertained. The world-community was now a highly organized theocratic
+hierarchy, strictly but on the whole benevolently ruled by a supreme
+council of vital priests and biologists. Each individual, down to the
+humblest agricultural worker, had his special niche in society, allotted
+him by the supreme council or its delegates, according to his known
+heredity and the needs of society. This system, of course, sometimes led
+to abuse, but mostly it worked without serious friction. Such was the
+precision of biological knowledge that each person’s mental calibre and
+special aptitudes were known beyond dispute, and rebellion against his
+lot in society would have been rebellion against his own heredity. This
+fact was universally known, and accepted without regret. A man had
+enough scope for emulation and triumph among his peers, without
+indulging in vague attempts to transcend his own nature, by rising into
+a superior hierarchical order. This state of affairs would have been
+impossible had there not been universal faith in the religion of life
+and the truth of biological science. Also it would have been impossible
+had not all normal persons been active practitioners of the sacred vital
+art, upon a plane suited to their capacity. Every individual adult of
+the rather scanty world-population regarded himself or herself as a
+creative artist, in however humble a sphere. And in general he, or she,
+was so fascinated by the work, that he was well content to leave social
+organization and control to those who were fitted for it. Moreover, at
+the back of every mind was the conception of society itself as an
+organism of specialized members. The strong sentiment for organized
+humanity tended, in this race, to master even its strong egotistical
+impulses, though not without a struggle.
+
+It was such a society, almost unbelievable to the First Men, that now
+set about remaking human nature. Unfortunately there were conflicting
+views about the goal. The orthodox desired only to continue the work
+that had for long been on foot; though they proposed greater enterprise
+and coordination. They would perfect man’s body, but upon its present
+plan; they would perfect his mind, but without seeking to introduce
+anything new in essence. His physique, percipience, memory,
+intelligence, and emotional nature should be improved almost beyond
+recognition; but they must, it was said, remain essentially what they
+had always been.
+
+A second party, however, finally persuaded orthodox opinion to amplify
+itself in one important respect. As has already been said, the Third Men
+were prone to phases of preoccupation with the ancient craving for
+personal immortality. This craving had often been strong among the First
+Men; and even the Second Men, in spite of their great gift of
+detachment, had sometimes allowed their admiration for human personality
+to persuade them that souls must live for ever. The short-lived and
+untheoretical Third Men, with their passion for living things of all
+kinds, and all the diversity of vital behaviour, conceived immortality
+in a variety of manners. In their final culture they imagined that at
+death all living things whom the Life God approved passed into another
+world, much like the familiar world, but happier. There they were said
+to live in the presence of the deity, serving him in untrammelled vital
+creativeness of sundry kinds.
+
+Now it was believed that communication might occur between the two
+worlds, and that the highest type of terrestrial life was that which
+communicated most effectively, and further that the time had now arrived
+for much fuller revelation of the life to come. It was therefore
+proposed to breed highly specialized communicants whose office should be
+to guide this world by means of advice from the other. As among the
+First Men, this communication with the unseen world was believed to take
+place in the mediumistic trance. The new enterprise, then, was to breed
+extremely sensitive mediums, and to increase the mediumistic powers of
+the average individual.
+
+There was yet another party, whose aim was very different. Man, they
+said, is a very noble organism. We have dealt with other organisms so as
+to enhance in each its noblest attributes. It is time to do the same
+with man. What is most distinctive in man is intelligent manipulation,
+brain and hand. Now hand is really outclassed by modern mechanisms, but
+brain will never be outclassed. Therefore we must breed strictly for
+brain, for intelligent coordination of behaviour. All the organic
+functions which can be performed by machinery, must be relegated to
+machinery, so that the whole vitality of the organism may be devoted to
+brain-building and brain-working. We must produce an organism which
+shall be no mere bundle of relics left over from its primitive ancestors
+and precariously ruled by a glimmer of intelligence. We must produce a
+man who is nothing but man. When we have done this we can, if we like,
+ask him to find out the truth about immortality. And also, we can safely
+surrender to him the control of all human affairs.
+
+The governing caste were strongly opposed to this policy. They declared
+that, if it succeeded, it would only produce a most inharmonious being
+whose nature would violate all the principles of vital aesthetics. Man,
+they said, was essentially an animal, though uniquely gifted. His whole
+nature must be developed, not one faculty at the expense of others. In
+arguing thus, they were probably influenced partly by the fear of losing
+their authority; but their arguments were cogent, and the majority of
+the community agreed with them. Nevertheless a small group of the
+governors themselves were determined to carry through the enterprise in
+secret.
+
+There was no need of secrecy in breeding communicants. The world state
+encouraged this policy and even set up institutions for its pursuit.
+
+
+
+
+                        XI _Man Remakes Himself_
+
+
+                    1. THE FIRST OF THE GREAT BRAINS
+
+Those who sought to produce a super-brain embarked upon a great
+enterprise of research and experiment in a remote corner of the planet.
+It is unnecessary to tell in detail how they fared. Working first in
+secret, they later strove to persuade the world to approve of their
+scheme, but only succeeded in dividing mankind into two parties. The
+body politic was torn asunder. There were religious wars. But after a
+few centuries of intermittent bloodshed the two sects, those who sought
+to produce communicants and those who sought the super-brain, settled
+down in different regions to pursue their respective aims unmolested. In
+time each developed into a kind of nation, united by a religious faith
+and crusading spirit. There was little cultural intercourse between the
+two.
+
+Those who desired to produce the super-brain employed four methods,
+namely selective breeding, manipulation of the hereditary factors in
+germ cells (cultivated in the laboratory), manipulation of the
+fertilized ovum (cultivated also in the laboratory), and manipulation of
+the growing body. At first they produced innumerable tragic abortions.
+These we need not observe. But at length, several thousand years after
+the earliest experiments, something was produced which seemed to promise
+success. A human ovum had been carefully selected, fertilized in the
+laboratory, and largely reorganized by artificial means. By inhibiting
+the growth of the embryo’s body, and the lower organs of the brain
+itself, and at the same time greatly stimulating the growth of the
+cerebral hemispheres, the dauntless experimenters succeeded at last in
+creating an organism which consisted of a brain twelve feet across, and
+a body most of which was reduced to a mere vestige upon the
+under-surface of the brain. The only parts of the body which were
+allowed to attain the natural size were the arms and hands. These sinewy
+organs of manipulation were induced to key themselves at the shoulders
+into the solid masonry which formed the creature’s house. Thus they were
+able to get a purchase for their work. The hands were the normal
+six-fingered hands of the Third Men, very greatly enlarged and improved.
+The fantastic organism was generated and matured in a building designed
+to house both it and the complicated machinery which was necessary to
+keep it alive. A self-regulating pump, electrically driven, served it as
+a heart. A chemical factory poured the necessary materials into its
+blood and removed waste products, thus taking the place of digestive
+organs and the normal battery of glands. Its lungs consisted of a great
+room full of oxidizing tubes, through which a constant wind was driven
+by an electric fan. The same fan forced air through the artificial
+organs of speech. These organs were so constructed that the natural
+nerve-fibres, issuing from the speech centres of the brain, could
+stimulate appropriate electrical controls so as to produce sounds
+identical with those which they would have produced from a living throat
+and mouth. The sensory equipment of this trunkless brain was a blend of
+the natural and the artificial. The optic nerves were induced to grow
+out along two flexible probosces, five feet long, each of which bore a
+huge eye at the end. But by a very ingenious alteration of the structure
+of the eye, the natural lens could be moved aside at will, so that the
+retina could be applied to any of a great diversity of optical
+instruments. The ears also could be projected upon stalks, and were so
+arranged that the actual nerve endings could be brought into contact
+with artificial resonators of various kinds, or could listen directly to
+the microscopic rhythms of the most minute organisms. Scent and taste
+were developed as a chemical sense, which could distinguish almost all
+compounds and elements by their flavour. Pressure, warmth, and cold were
+detected only by the fingers, but there with great subtlety. Sensory
+pain was to have been eliminated from the organism altogether; but this
+end was not achieved.
+
+The creature was successfully launched upon life, and was actually kept
+alive for four years. But though at first all went well, in his second
+year the unfortunate child, if such he may be called, began to suffer
+severe pain, and to show symptoms of mental derangement. In spite of all
+that his devoted foster-parents could do, he gradually sank into
+insanity and died. He had succumbed to his own brain weight and to
+certain failures in the chemical regulation of his blood.
+
+We may overlook the next four hundred years, during which sundry vain
+attempts were made to repeat the great experiment more successfully. Let
+us pass on to the first true individual of the fourth human species. He
+was produced in the same artificial manner as his forerunners, and was
+designed upon the same general plan. His mechanical and chemical
+machinery, however, was far more efficient; and his makers expected
+that, owing to careful adjustments of the mechanisms of growth and
+decay, he would prove to be immortal. His general plan, also, was
+changed in one important respect. His makers built a large circular
+‘brain turret’ which they divided with many partitions, radiating from a
+central space, and covered everywhere with pigeon-holes. By a technique
+which took centuries to develop, they induced the cells of the growing
+embryonic brain to spread outwards, not as normal hemispheres of
+convolutions, but into the pigeon-holes which had been prepared for
+them. Thus the artificial ‘cranium’ had to be a roomy turret of
+ferro-concrete some forty feet in diameter. A door and a passage led
+from the outer world into the centre of the turret, and thence other
+passages radiated between tiers of little cupboards. Innumerable tubes
+of glass, metal, and a kind of vulcanite conveyed blood and chemicals
+over the whole system. Electric radiators preserved an even warmth in
+every cupboard, and throughout the innumerable carefully protected
+channels of the nerve fibres. Thermometers, dials, pressure gauges,
+indicators of all sorts, informed the attendants of every physical
+change in this strange half-natural, half-artificial system, this
+preposterous factory of mind.
+
+Eight years after its inception the organism had filled its brain room,
+and attained the mentality of a new-born infant. His advance to maturity
+seemed to his foster-parents dishearteningly slow. Not till almost at
+the end of his fifth decade could he be said to have reached the mental
+standard of a bright adolescent. But there was no real reason for
+disappointment. Within another decade this pioneer of the Fourth Men had
+learned all that the Third Men could teach him, and had also seen that a
+great part of their wisdom was folly. In manual dexterity he could
+already vie with the best; but though manipulation afforded him intense
+delight, he used his hands almost wholly in service of his tireless
+curiosity. In fact, it was evident that curiosity was his main
+characteristic. He was a huge bump of curiosity equipped with most
+cunning hands. A department of state had been created to look after his
+nurture and education. An army of learned persons was kept in readiness
+to answer his impatient questions and assist him in his own scientific
+experiments. Now that he had attained maturity these unfortunate pundits
+found themselves hopelessly outclassed, and reduced to mere clerks,
+bottle-washers, and errand-boys. Hundreds of his servants were for ever
+scurrying into every corner of the planet to seek information and
+specimens; and the significance of their errands was by now often quite
+beyond the range of their own intelligence. They were careful, however,
+not to let their ignorance appear to the public. On the contrary, they
+succeeded in gaining much prestige from the mere mysteriousness of their
+errands.
+
+The great brain was wholly lacking in all normal instinctive responses,
+save curiosity and constructiveness. Instinctive fear he knew not,
+though of course he was capable of cold caution in any circumstances
+which threatened to damage him and hinder his passionate research. Anger
+he knew not, but only an adamantine firmness in the face of opposition.
+Normal hunger and thirst he knew not, but only an experience of
+faintness when his blood was not properly supplied with nutriment. Sex
+was wholly absent from his mentality. Instinctive tenderness and
+instinctive group-feeling were not possible to him, for he was without
+the bowels of mercy. The heroic devotion of his most intimate servants
+called forth no gratitude, but only cold approval.
+
+At first he interested himself not at all in the affairs of the society
+which maintained him, served his every whim, and adored him. But in time
+he began to take pleasure in suggesting brilliant solutions of all the
+current problems of social organization. His advice was increasingly
+sought and accepted. He became autocrat of the state. His own
+intelligence and complete detachment combined with the people’s
+superstitious reverence to establish him far more securely than any
+ordinary tyrant. He cared nothing for the petty troubles of his people,
+but he was determined to be served by a harmonious, healthy, and potent
+race. And as relaxation from the more serious excitement of research in
+physics and astronomy, the study of human nature was not without
+attractions. It may seem strange that one so completely devoid of human
+sympathy could have the tact to govern a race of the emotional Third
+Men. But he had built up for himself a very accurate behaviouristic
+psychology; and like the skilful master of animals, he knew unerringly
+how much could be expected of his people, even though their emotions
+were almost wholly foreign to him. Thus, for instance, while he
+thoroughly despised their admiration of animals and plants, and their
+religion of life, he soon learned not to seem hostile to these
+obsessions, but rather to use them for his own ends. He himself was
+interested in animals only as material for experiments. In this respect
+his people readily helped him, partly because he assured them that his
+goal was the further improvement of all types, partly because they were
+fascinated by his complete disregard, in his experimentation, of the
+common techniques for preventing pain. The orgy of vicarious suffering
+awakened in his people the long-suppressed lust in cruelty which, in
+spite of their intuitive insight into animal nature, was so strong a
+factor in the third human species.
+
+Little by little the great brain probed the material universe and the
+universe of mentality. He mastered the principles of biological
+evolution, and constructed for his own delight a detailed history of
+life on earth. He learned, by marvellous archaeological technique, the
+story of all the earlier human peoples, and of the Martian episode,
+matters which had remained hidden from the Third Men. He discovered the
+principles of relativity and the quantum theory, the nature of the atom
+as a complex system of wave trains. He measured the cosmos; and with his
+delicate instruments he counted the planetary systems in much of the
+remote universe. He casually solved, to his own satisfaction at least,
+the ancient problems of good and evil, of mind and its object, of the
+one and the many, and of truth and error. He created many new
+departments of state for the purpose of recording his discoveries in an
+artificial language which he devised for the purpose. Each department
+consisted of many colleges of carefully bred and educated specialists
+who could understand the subject of their own department to some extent.
+But the coordination of all, and true insight into each, lay with the
+great brain alone.
+
+
+                    2. THE TRAGEDY OF THE FOURTH MEN
+
+When some three thousand years had passed since his beginning, the
+unique individual determined to create others of his kind. Not that he
+suffered from loneliness. Not that he yearned for love, or even for
+intellectual companionship. But solely for the undertaking of more
+profound research, he needed the cooperation of beings of his own mental
+stature. He therefore designed, and had built in various regions of the
+planet, turrets and factories like his own, though greatly improved.
+Into each he sent, by his servants, a cell of his own vestigial body,
+and directed how it should be cultivated so as to produce a new
+individual. At the same time he caused far-reaching operations to be
+performed upon himself, so that he should be remade upon a more ample
+plan. Of the new capacities which he inculcated in himself and his
+progeny the most important was direct sensitivity to radiation. This was
+achieved by incorporating in each brain-tissue a specially bred strain
+of Martian parasites. These henceforth were to live in the great brain
+as integral members of each one of its cells. Each brain was also
+equipped with a powerful wireless transmitting apparatus. Thus should
+the widely scattered sessile population maintain direct ‘telepathic’
+contact with one another.
+
+The undertaking was successfully accomplished. Some ten thousand of
+these new individuals, each specialized for his particular locality and
+office, now constituted the Fourth Men. On the highest mountains were
+super-astronomers with vast observatories, whose instruments were partly
+artificial, partly natural excrescences of their own brains. In the very
+entrails of the planet others, specially adapted to heat, studied the
+subterranean forces, and were kept in ‘telepathic’ union with the
+astronomers. In the tropics, in the Arctic, in the forests, the deserts,
+and on the ocean floor, the Fourth Men indulged their immense curiosity;
+and in the homeland, around the father of the race, a group of great
+buildings housed a hundred individuals. In the service of this
+world-wide population, those races of Third Men which had originally
+cooperated to produce the new human species tilled the land, tended the
+cattle, manufactured the immense material requisites of the new
+civilization, and satisfied their spirits with an ever more stereotyped
+ritual of their vital art. This degradation of the whole race to a
+menial position had occurred slowly, imperceptibly. But the result was
+none the less irksome. Occasionally there were sparks of rebellion, but
+they always failed to kindle serious trouble; for the prestige and
+persuasiveness of the Fourth Men were irresistible.
+
+At length, however, a crisis occurred. For some three thousand years the
+Fourth Men had pursued their research with constant success, but
+latterly progress had been slow. It was becoming increasingly difficult
+to devise new lines of research. True, there was still much detail to be
+filled in, even in their knowledge of their own planet, and very much in
+their knowledge of the stars. But there was no prospect of opening up
+entirely new fields which might throw some light on the essential nature
+of things. Indeed, it began to dawn on them that they had scarcely
+plumbed a surface ripple of the ocean of mystery. Their knowledge seemed
+to them perfectly systematic, yet wholly enigmatic. They had a growing
+sense that though in a manner they knew almost everything, they really
+knew nothing.
+
+The normal mind, when it experiences intellectual frustration, can seek
+recreation in companionship, or physical exercise, or art. But for the
+Fourth Men there was no such escape. These activities were impossible
+and meaningless to them. The Great Brains were whole-heartedly
+interested in the objective world, but solely as a vast stimulus to
+intellection, never for its own sake. They admired only the intellective
+process itself and the interpretative formulae and principles which it
+devised. They cared no more for men and women than for material in a
+test-tube, no more for one another than for mechanical calculators. Nay,
+of each one of them it might almost be said that he cared ever for
+himself solely as an instrument of knowing. Many of the species had
+actually sacrificed their sanity, even in some cases their lives, to the
+obsessive lust of intellection.
+
+As the sense of frustration became more and more oppressive, the Fourth
+Men suffered more and more from the onesidedness of their nature. Though
+so completely dispassionate while their intellectual life proceeded
+smoothly, now that it was thwarted they began to be confused by foolish
+whims and cravings which they disguised from themselves under a cloak of
+excuses. Sessile and incapable of affection, they continually witnessed
+the free movement, the group life, the love-making of their menials.
+Such activities became an offence to them, and filled them with a cold
+jealousy, which it was altogether beneath their dignity to notice. The
+affairs of the serf-population began to be conducted by their masters
+with less than the accustomed justice. Serious grievances arose.
+
+The climax occurred in connexion with a great revival of research,
+which, it was said, would break down the impalpable barriers and set
+knowledge in progress again. The Great Brains were to be multiplied a
+thousandfold, and the resources of the whole planet were to be devoted
+far more strictly than before to the crusade of intellection. The menial
+Third Men would therefore have to put up with more work and less
+pleasure. Formerly they would willingly have accepted this fate for the
+glory of serving the superhuman brains. But the days of their blind
+devotion were past. It was murmured among them that the great experiment
+of their forefathers had proved a great disaster, and that the Fourth
+Men, the Great Brains, in spite of their devilish cunning, were mere
+abortions.
+
+Matters came to a head when the tyrants announced that all useless
+animals must be slaughtered, since their upkeep was too great an
+economic burden upon the world-community. The vital art, moreover, was
+to be practised in future only by the Great Brains themselves. This
+announcement threw the Third Men into violent excitement, and divided
+them into two parties. Many of those whose lives were spent in direct
+service of the Great Brains favoured implicit obedience, though even
+these were deeply distressed. The majority, on the other hand,
+absolutely refused to permit the impious slaughter, or even to surrender
+their privileges as vital artists. For, they said, to kill off the fauna
+of the planet would be to violate the fair form of the universe by
+blotting out many of its most beautiful features. It would be an outrage
+to the Life God, and he would surely avenge it. They therefore urged
+that the time was come for all true human beings to stand together and
+depose the tyrants. And this, they pointed out, could easily be done. It
+was only necessary to cut a few electric cables, connecting the Great
+Brains with the subterranean generating stations. The electric pumps
+would then cease to supply the brain-turrets with aerated blood. Or, in
+the few cases in which the Great Brains were so located that they could
+control their own source of power in wind or water, it was necessary
+merely to refrain from transporting food to their digestion
+laboratories.
+
+The personal attendants of the Great Brains shrank from such action; for
+their whole lives had been devoted, proudly and even in a manner
+lovingly, to service of the revered beings. But the agriculturists
+determined to withhold supplies. The Great Brains, therefore, armed
+their servitors with a diversity of ingenious weapons. Immense
+destruction was done; but since the rebels were decimated, there were
+not enough hands to work the fields. Some of the Great Brains, and many
+of their servants, actually died of starvation. And as hardship
+increased, the servants themselves began to drift over to the rebels. It
+now seemed certain to the Third Men that the Great Brains would very
+soon be impotent, and the plant once more under the control of natural
+beings. But the tyrants were not to be so easily defeated. Already for
+some centuries they had been secretly experimenting with a means of
+gaining a far more thorough dominion over the natural species. At the
+eleventh hour they succeeded.
+
+In this undertaking they had been favoured by the results which a
+section of the natural species itself had produced long ago in the
+effort to breed specialized communicants to keep in touch with the
+unseen world. That sect, or theocratic nation, which had striven for
+many centuries toward this goal, had finally attained what they regarded
+as success. There came into existence an hereditary caste of
+communicants. Now, though these beings were subject to mediumistic
+trances in which they apparently conversed with denizens of the other
+world and received instructions about the ordering of matters
+terrestrial, they were in fact merely abnormally suggestible. Trained
+from childhood in the lore of the unseen world, their minds, during the
+trance, were amazingly fertile in developing fantasies based on that
+lore. Left to themselves, they were merely folk who were abnormally
+lacking in initiative and intelligence. Indeed, so naïve were they, and
+so sluggish, that they were mentally more like cattle than human beings.
+Yet under the influence of suggestion they became both intelligent and
+vigorous. Their intelligence, however, operating strictly in service of
+the suggestion, was wholly incapable of criticizing the suggestion
+itself.
+
+There is no need to revert to the downfall of this theocratic society,
+beyond saying that, since both private and public affairs were regulated
+by reference to the sayings of the communicants, inevitably the state
+fell into chaos. The other community of the Third Men, that which was
+engaged upon breeding the Great Brains, gradually dominated the whole
+planet. The mediumistic stock, however, remained in existence, and was
+treated with a half-contemptuous reverence. The mediums were still
+generally regarded as in some manner specially gifted with the divine
+spirit, but they were now thought to be too holy for their sayings to
+have any relation to mundane affairs.
+
+It was by means of this mediumistic stock that the Great Brains had
+intended to consolidate their position. Their earlier efforts may be
+passed over. But in the end they produced a race of living and even
+intelligent machines whose will they could control absolutely, even at a
+great distance. For the new variety of Third Men was ‘telepathically’
+united with its masters. Martian units had been incorporated in its
+nervous system.
+
+At the last moment the Great Brains were able to put into the field an
+army of these perfect slaves, which they equipped with the most
+efficient lethal weapons. The remnant of original servants discovered
+too late that they had been helping to produce their supplanters. They
+joined the rebels, only to share in the general destruction. In a few
+months all the Third Men, save the new docile variety, were destroyed;
+except for a few specimens which were preserved in cages for
+experimental purposes. And in a few years every type of animal that was
+not known to be directly or indirectly necessary to human life had been
+exterminated. None were preserved even as specimens, for the Great
+Brains had already studied them through and through.
+
+But though the Great Brains were now absolute possessors of the Earth,
+they were after all no nearer their goal than before. The actual
+struggle with the natural species had provided them with an aim; but now
+that the struggle was over, they began to be obsessed once more with
+their intellectual failure. With painful clarity they realized that, in
+spite of their vast weight of neural tissue, in spite of their immense
+knowledge and cunning, they were practically no nearer the ultimate
+truth than their predecessors had been. Both were infinitely far from
+it.
+
+For the Fourth Men, the Great Brains, there was no possible life but the
+life of intellect; and the life of intellect had become barren.
+Evidently something more than mere bulk of brain was needed for the
+solving of the deeper intellectual problems. They must, therefore,
+somehow create a new brain-quality, or organic formation of brain,
+capable of a mode of vision or insight impossible in their present
+state. They must learn somehow to remake their own brain-tissues upon a
+new plan. With this aim, and partly through unwitting jealousy of the
+natural and more balanced species which had created them, they began to
+use their captive specimens of that species for a great new enterprise
+of research into the nature of human brain-tissue. It was hoped thus to
+find some hint of the direction in which the new evolutionary leap
+should take place. The unfortunate specimens were therefore submitted to
+a thousand ingenious physiological and psychological tortures. Some were
+kept alive with their brains spread out permanently on a laboratory
+table, for microscopic observation during their diverse psychological
+reactions. Others were put into fantastic states of mental abnormality.
+Others were maintained in perfect health of body and mind, only to be
+felled at last by some ingeniously contrived tragic experience. New
+types were produced which, it was hoped, might show evidence of
+emergence into a qualitatively higher mode of mentality; but in fact
+they succeeded only in ranging through the whole gamut of insanity.
+
+The research continued for some thousands of years, but gradually
+slackened, so utterly barren did it prove to be. As this frustration
+became more and more evident, a change began to come over the minds of
+the Fourth Men.
+
+They knew, of course, that the natural species valued many things and
+activities which they themselves did not appreciate at all. Hitherto
+this had seemed a symptom merely of the low mental development of the
+natural species. But the behaviour of the unfortunate specimens upon
+whom they had been experimenting had gradually given the Fourth Men a
+greater insight into the likings and admirations of the natural species,
+so that they had learned to distinguish between those desires which were
+fundamental and those merely accidental cravings which clear thinking
+would have dismissed. In fact, they came to see that certain activities
+and certain objects were appreciated by these beings with the same
+clear-sighted conviction as they themselves appreciated knowledge. For
+instance, the natural human beings valued one another, and were
+sometimes capable of sacrificing themselves for the sake of others. They
+also valued love itself. And again they valued very seriously their
+artistic activities; and the activities of their bodies and of animal
+bodies appeared to them to have intrinsic excellence.
+
+Little by little the Fourth Men began to realize that what was wrong
+with themselves was not merely their intellectual limitation, but, far
+more seriously, the limitation of their insight into values. And this
+weakness, they saw, was the result, not of paucity of intellective
+brain, but of paucity of body and lower brain tissues. This defect they
+could not remedy. It was obviously impossible to remake themselves so
+radically that they should become of a more normal type. Should they
+concentrate their efforts upon the production of new individuals more
+harmonious than themselves? Such a work, it might be supposed, would
+have seemed unattractive to them. But no. They argued thus. ‘It is our
+nature to care most for knowing. Full knowledge is to be attained only
+by minds both more penetrating and more broadly based than ours. Let us,
+therefore, waste no more time in seeking to achieve the goal in
+ourselves. Let us seek rather to produce a kind of being, free from our
+limitations, in whom we may attain the goal of perfect knowledge
+vicariously. The producing of such a being will exercise all our powers,
+and will afford the highest kind of fulfilment possible to us. To
+refrain from this work would be irrational.’
+
+Thus it came about that the artificial Fourth Men began to work in a new
+spirit upon the surviving specimens of the Third Men to produce their
+own supplanters.
+
+
+                            3. THE FIFTH MEN
+
+The plan of the proposed new human being was worked out in great detail
+before any attempt was made to produce an actual individual. Essentially
+he was to be a normal human organism, with all the bodily functions of
+the natural type; but he was to be perfected through and through. Care
+must be taken to give him the greatest possible bulk of brain compatible
+with such a general plan, but no more. Very carefully his creators
+calculated the dimensions and internal proportions which their creature
+must have. His brain could not be nearly as large as their own, since he
+would have to carry it about with him, and maintain it with his own
+physiological machinery. On the other hand, if it was to be at all
+larger than the natural brain, the rest of the organism must be
+proportionately sturdy. Like the Second Men, the new species must be
+titanic. Indeed, it must be such as to dwarf even those natural giants.
+The body, however, must not be so huge as to be seriously hampered by
+its own weight, and by the necessity of having bones so massive as to be
+unmanageable.
+
+In working out the general proportions of the new man, his makers took
+into account the possibility of devising more efficient bone and muscle.
+After some centuries of patient experiment they did actually invent a
+means of inducing in germ cells a tendency toward far stronger
+bone-tissues and far more powerful muscle. At the same time they devised
+nerve-tissues more highly specialized for their particular functions.
+And in the new brain, so minute compared with their own, smallness was
+to be compensated for by efficiency of design, both in the individual
+cells and in their organization.
+
+Further, it was found possible to economize somewhat in bulk and vital
+energy by improvements in the digestive system. Certain new models of
+micro-organisms were produced, which, living symbiotically in the human
+gut, should render the whole process of digestion easier, more rapid,
+and less erratic.
+
+Special attention was given to the system of self-repair in all tissues,
+especially in those which had hitherto been the earliest to wear out.
+And at the same time the mechanism regulating growth and general
+senescence was so designed that the new man should reach maturity at the
+age of two hundred years, and should remain in full vigour for at least
+three thousand years, when, with the first serious symptom of decay, his
+heart should suddenly cease functioning. There had been some dispute
+whether the new being should be endowed with perennial life, like his
+makers. But in the end it had been decided that, since he was intended
+only as a transitional type, it would be safer to allow him only a
+finite, though a prolonged lifetime. There must be no possibility that
+he should be tempted to regard himself as life’s final expression.
+
+In sensory equipment, the new man was to have all the advantages of the
+Second and Third Men, and, in addition a still wider range and finer
+discrimination in every sense organ. More important was the
+incorporation of Martian units in the new model of germ cell. As the
+organism developed, these should propagate themselves and congregate in
+the cells of the brain, so that every brain area might be sensitive to
+ethereal vibrations, and the whole might emit a strong system of
+radiation. But care was taken so that this ‘telepathic’ faculty of the
+new species should remain subordinate. There must be no danger that the
+individual should become a mere resonator of the herd.
+
+Long drawn out chemical research enabled the Fourth Men to design also
+far-reaching improvements in the secretions of the new man, so that he
+should maintain both a perfect physiological equilibrium, and a
+well-balanced temperament. For they were determined that though he
+should experience all the range of emotional life, his passions should
+not run into disastrous excess; nor should he be prone to some one
+emotion in season and out of season. It was necessary also to revise in
+great detail the whole system of natural reflexes, abolishing some,
+modifying others, and again strengthening others. All the more complex,
+‘instinctive’ responses, which had persisted in man since the days of
+Pithecanthropus Erectus, had also to be meticulously revised, both in
+respect of the form of the activity and the objects upon which they
+should be instinctively directed. Anger, fear, curiosity, humour,
+tenderness, egoism, sexual passion, and sociality must all be possible,
+but never uncontrollable. In fact, as with the Second Men, but more
+emphatically, the new type was to have an innate aptitude for, and
+inclination toward, all those higher activities and objects which, in
+the First Men, were only achieved after laborious discipline. Thus,
+while the design included self-regard, it also involved a disposition to
+prize the self chiefly as a social and intellectual being, rather than
+as a primeval savage. And while it included strong sociality, the group
+upon which instinctive interest was to be primarily directed was to be
+nothing less than the organized community of all minds. And again, while
+it included vigorous primitive sexuality and parenthood, it provided
+also those innate ‘sublimations’ which had occurred in the second
+species; for instance, the native aptitude for altruistic love of
+individual spirits of every kind, and for art and religion. Only by a
+miracle of pure intellectual skill could the cold-natured Great Brains,
+who were themselves doomed never to have actual experience of such
+activities, contrive, merely by study of the Third Men, to see their
+importance, and to design an organism splendidly capable of them. It was
+much as though a blind race, after studying physics, should invent
+organs of sight.
+
+It was recognized, of course, that in a race in which the average
+life-span should be counted in thousands of years, procreation must be
+very rare. Yet it was also recognized that, for full development of
+mind, not only sexual intercourse but parenthood was necessary in both
+sexes. This difficulty was overcome partly by designing a very prolonged
+infancy and childhood; which, necessary in themselves for the proper
+mental and physical growth of these complicated organisms, provided also
+a longer exercise of parenthood for the mature. At the same time the
+actual process of child-birth was designed to be as easy as among the
+Third Men. And it was expected that with its greatly improved
+physiological organization the infant would not need that anxious and
+absorbing care which had so seriously hobbled most mothers among the
+earlier races.
+
+The mere sketching out of these preliminary specifications of an
+improved human being involved many centuries of research and calculation
+which taxed even the ingenuity of the Great Brains. Then followed a
+lengthy period of tentative experiment in the actual production of such
+a type. For some thousands of years little was done but to show that
+many promising lines of attack were after all barren. And several times
+during this period the whole work was held up by disagreements among the
+Great Brains themselves as to the policy to be adopted. Once, indeed,
+they took to violence, one party attacking the other with chemicals,
+microbes, and armies of human automata.
+
+In short it was only after many failures, and after many barren epochs
+during which, for a variety of reasons, the enterprise was neglected,
+that the Fourth Men did at length fashion two individuals almost
+precisely of the type they had originally designed. These were produced
+from a single fertilized ovum, in laboratory conditions. Identical
+twins, but of opposite sexes, they became the Adam and Eve of a new and
+glorious human species, the Fifth Men.
+
+It may fittingly be said of the Fifth Men that they were the first to
+attain true human proportions of body and mind. On the average they were
+more than twice as tall as the First Men, and much taller than the
+Second Men. Their lower limbs had therefore to be extremely massive
+compared with the torso which they had to support. Thus, upon the ample
+pedestal of their feet, they stood like columns of masonry. Yet though
+their proportions were in a manner elephantine, there was a remarkable
+precision and even delicacy in the volumes that composed them. Their
+great arms and shoulders, dwarfed somewhat by their still mightier legs,
+were instruments not only of power but also of fine adjustment. Their
+hands also were fashioned both for power and for minute control; for,
+while the thumb and forefinger constituted a formidable vice, the
+delicate sixth finger had been induced to divide its tip into two
+Lilliputian fingers and a corresponding thumb. The contours of the limbs
+were sharply visible, for the body bore no hair, save for a close, thick
+skullcap which, in the original stock, was of ruddy brown. The
+well-marked eyebrows, when drawn down, shaded the sensitive eyes from
+the sun. Elsewhere there was no need of hair, for the brown skin had
+been so ingeniously contrived that it maintained an even temperature
+alike in tropical and sub-Arctic climates, with no aid either from hair
+or clothes. Compared with the great body, the head was not large, though
+the brain-capacity was twice that of the Second Men. In the original
+pair of individuals the immense eyes were of a deep violet, the features
+strongly moulded and mobile. These facial characters had not been
+specially designed, for they seemed unimportant to the Fourth Men; but
+the play of biological forces resulted in a face not unlike that of the
+Second Men, though with an added and indescribable expression which no
+human face had hitherto attained.
+
+How from this pair of individuals the new population gradually arose;
+how at first it was earnestly fostered by its creators; how it
+subsequently asserted its independence and took control of its own
+destiny; how the Great Brains failed piteously to understand and
+sympathize with the mentality of their creatures, and tried to tyrannize
+over them; how for a while the planet was divided into two mutually
+intolerant communities, and was at last drenched with man’s blood, until
+the human automata were exterminated, the Great Brains starved or blown
+to pieces, and the Fifth Men themselves decimated; how, as a result of
+these events, a dense fog of barbarism settled once more upon the
+planet, so that the Fifth Men, like so many other races, had after all
+to start rebuilding civilization and culture from its very foundations;
+how all these things befell we must not in detail observe.
+
+
+                    4. THE CULTURE OF THE FIFTH MEN
+
+It is not possible to recount the stages by which the Fifth Men advanced
+toward their greatest civilization and culture; for it is that fully
+developed culture itself which concerns us. And even of their highest
+achievement, which persisted for so many millions of years, I can say
+but little, not merely because I must hasten to the end of my story, but
+also because so much of that achievement lies wholly beyond the
+comprehension of those for whom this book is intended. For I have at
+last reached that period in the history of man when he first began to
+reorganize his whole mentality to cope with matters whose very existence
+had been hitherto almost completely hidden from him. The old aims
+persist, and are progressively realized as never before; but also they
+become increasingly subordinate to the requirements of new aims which
+are more and more insistently forced upon him by his deepening
+experience. Just as the interests and ideals of the First Men lie beyond
+the grasp of their ape contemporaries, so the interests and ideals of
+the Fifth Men in their full development lie beyond the grasp of the
+First Men. On the other hand, just as, in the life of primitive man,
+there is much which would be meaningful even to the ape, so in the life
+of the Fifth Men much remains which is meaningful even to the First Men.
+
+Conceive a world-society developed materially far beyond the wildest
+dreams of America. Unlimited power, derived partly from the artificial
+disintegration of atoms, partly from the actual annihilation of matter
+through the union of electrons and protons to form radiation, completely
+abolished the whole grotesque burden of drudgery which hitherto had
+seemed the inescapable price of civilization, nay of life itself. The
+vast economic routine of the world-community was carried on by the mere
+touching of appropriate buttons. Transport, mining, manufacture, and
+even agriculture, were performed in this manner. And indeed in most
+cases the systematic coordination of these activities was itself the
+work of self-regulating machinery. Thus, not only was there no longer
+need for any human beings to spend their lives in unskilled monotonous
+labour, but further, much that earlier races would have regarded as
+highly skilled though stereotyped work was now carried on by machinery.
+Only the pioneering of industry, the endless exhilarating research,
+invention, design, and reorganization, which is incurred by an
+ever-changing society, still engaged the minds of men and women. And
+though this work was of course immense, it could not occupy the whole
+attention of a great world-community. Thus very much of the energy of
+the race was free to occupy itself with other no less difficult and
+exacting matters, or to seek recreation in its many admirable sports and
+arts. Materially every individual was a multi-millionaire, in that he
+had at his beck and call a great diversity of powerful mechanisms; but
+also he was a penniless friar, for he had no vestige of economic control
+over any other human being. He could fly through the upper air to the
+ends of the earth in an hour, or hang idle among the clouds all day
+long. His flying machine was no cumbersome aeroplane, but either a
+wingless aerial boat, or a mere suit of overalls in which he could
+disport himself with the freedom of a bird. Not only in the air, but in
+the sea also, he was free. He could stroll about the ocean bed, or
+gambol with the deep-sea fishes. And for habitation he could make his
+home, as he willed, either in a shack in the wilderness or in one of the
+great pylons which dwarfed the architecture even of the American age. He
+could possess this huge palace in loneliness and fill it with his
+possessions, to be automatically cared for without human service; or he
+could join with others and create a hive of social life. All these
+amenities he took for granted as the savage takes for granted the air
+which he breathes. And because they were as universally available as
+air, no one craved them in excess, and no one grudged another the use of
+them.
+
+Yet the population of the earth was now very numerous. Some ten thousand
+million persons had their homes in the snow-capped pylons which covered
+the continents with an open forest of architecture. Between these great
+obelisks lay corn-land, park, and wilderness. For there were very many
+areas of hill-country and forest which were preserved as playgrounds.
+And indeed one whole continent, stretching from the Tropical to the
+Arctic, was kept as nearly as possible in its natural state. This region
+was chosen mainly for its mountains; for since most of the Alpine tracts
+had by now been worn into insignificance by water and frost, mountains
+were much prized. Into this Wild Continent individuals of all ages
+repaired to spend many years at a time in living the life of primitive
+man without any aid whatever for civilization. For it was recognized
+that a highly sophisticated race, devoted almost wholly to art and
+science, must take special measures to preserve its contact with the
+primitive. Thus in the Wild Continent was to be found at any time a
+sparse population of ‘savages’, armed with flint and bone, or more
+rarely with iron, which they or their friends had wrested from the
+earth. These voluntary primitives were intent chiefly upon hunting and
+simple agriculture. Their scanty leisure was devoted to art, and
+meditation, and to savouring fully all the primeval human values. Indeed
+it was a hard life and a dangerous one that these intellectuals
+periodically imposed on themselves. And though of course they had zest
+in it, they often dreaded its hardship and the uncertainty that they
+would ever return from it. For the danger was very real. The Fifth Men
+had compensated for the Fourth Men’s foolish destruction of the animals
+by creating a whole system of new types, which they set at large in the
+Wild Continent; and some of these creatures were extremely formidable
+carnivora, which man himself, armed only with primitive weapons, had
+very good reason to fear. In the Wild Continent there was inevitably a
+high death-rate. Many promising lives were tragically cut short. But it
+was recognized that from the point of view of the race this sacrifice
+was worth while, for the spiritual effects of the institution of
+periodic savagery were very real. Beings whose natural span was three
+thousand years, given over almost wholly to civilized pursuits, were
+greatly invigorated and enlightened by an occasional decade in the wild.
+
+The culture of the Fifth Men was influenced in many respects by their
+‘telepathic’ communication with one another. The obvious advantages of
+this capacity were now secured without its dangers. Each individual
+could isolate himself at will from the radiation of his fellows, either
+wholly or in respect of particular elements of his mental process; and
+thus he was in no danger of losing his individuality. But, on the other
+hand, he was immeasurably more able to participate in the experience of
+others than were beings for whom the only possible communication was
+symbolic. The result was that, though conflict of wills was still
+possible, it was far more easily resolved by mutual understanding than
+had ever been the case in earlier species. Thus there were no lasting
+and no radical conflicts, either of thought or desire. It was
+universally recognized that every discrepancy of opinion and of aim
+could be abolished by telepathic discussion. Sometimes the process would
+be easy and rapid; sometimes it could not be achieved without a patient
+and detailed ‘laying of mind to mind’, so as to bring to light the point
+where the difference originated.
+
+One result of the general ‘telepathic’ facility of the species was that
+speech was no longer necessary. It was still preserved and prized, but
+only as a medium of art, not as a means of communication. Thinking, of
+course, was still carried on largely by means of words; but in
+communication there was no more need actually to speak the words than in
+thinking in private. Written language remained essential for the
+recording and storing of thought. Both language and the written
+expression of it had become far more complex and accurate than they had
+ever been, more faithful instruments for the expression and creation of
+thought and emotion.
+
+‘Telepathy’ combined with longevity and the extremely subtle
+brain-structure of the species to afford each individual an immense
+number of intimate friendships, and some slight acquaintance actually
+with the whole race. This, I fear, must seem incredible to my readers,
+unless they can be persuaded to regard it as a symptom of the high
+mental development of the species. However that may be, it is a fact
+that each person was aware of every other, at least as a face, or a
+name, or the holder of a certain office. It is impossible to exaggerate
+the effects of this facility of personal intercourse. It meant that the
+species constituted at any moment, if not strictly a community of
+friends, at least a vast club or college. Further, since each individual
+saw his own mind reflected, as it were, in very many other minds, and
+since there was great variety of psychological types, the upshot in each
+individual was a very accurate self-consciousness.
+
+In the Martians, ‘telepathic’ intercourse had resulted in a true
+group-mind, a single psychical process embodied in the electro-magnetic
+radiation of the whole race; but this group-mind was inferior in calibre
+to the individual minds. All that was distinctive of an individual at
+his best failed to contribute to the group-mind. But in the fifth human
+species ‘telepathy’ was only a means of intercourse between individuals;
+there was no true group-mind. On the other hand, telepathic intercourse
+occurred even on the highest planes of experience. It was by
+‘telepathic’ intercourse in respect of art, science, philosophy, and the
+appreciation of personalities, that the public mind, or rather the
+public culture, of the Fifth Men had being. With the Martians,
+‘telepathic’ union took place chiefly by elimination of the differences
+between individuals; with the Fifth Men ‘telepathic’ communication was,
+as it were, a kind of spiritual multiplication of mental diversity, by
+which each mind was enriched with the wealth of ten thousand million.
+Consequently each individual was, in a very real sense, the cultured
+mind of the species; but there were as many such minds as there were
+individuals. There was no additional racial mind over and above the
+minds of the individuals. Each individual himself was a conscious centre
+which participated in, and contributed to, the experience of all other
+centres.
+
+This state of affairs would not have been possible had not the
+world-community been able to direct so much of its interest and energy
+into the higher mental activities. The whole structure of society was
+fashioned in relation to its best culture. It is almost impossible to
+give even an inkling of the nature and aims of this culture, and to make
+it believable that a huge population should have spent scores of
+millions of years not wholly, not even chiefly, on industrial
+advancement, but almost entirely on art, science, and philosophy,
+without ever repeating itself or falling into ennui I can only point out
+that, the higher a mind’s development, the more it discovers in the
+universe to occupy it.
+
+Needless to say, the Fifth Men had early mastered all those paradoxes of
+physical science which had so perplexed the First Men. Needless to say,
+they had a very complete knowledge of the geography of the cosmos and of
+the atom. But again and again the very foundations of their science were
+shattered by some new discovery, so that they had patiently to
+reconstruct the whole upon an entirely new plan. At length, however,
+with the clear formulation of the principles of psycho-physics, in which
+the older psychology and the older physics were held, so to speak, in
+chemical combination, they seemed to have built upon the rock. In this
+science, the fundamental concepts of psychology were given a physical
+meaning, and the fundamental concepts of physics were stated in a
+psychological manner. Further, the most fundamental relations of the
+physical universe were found to be of the same nature as the fundamental
+principles of art. But, and herein lay mystery and horror even for the
+Fifth Men, there was no shred of evidence that this aesthetically
+admirable cosmos was the work of a conscious artist, nor yet that any
+mind would ever develop so greatly as to be able to appreciate the Whole
+in all its detail and unity.
+
+Since art seemed to the Fifth Men to be in some sense basic to the
+cosmos, they were naturally very much preoccupied with artistic
+creation. Consequently, all those who were not social or economic
+organizers, or scientific researchers, or pure philosophers, were by
+profession creative artists or handicraftsmen. That is to say, they were
+engaged on the production of material objects of various kinds, whose
+form should be aesthetically significant to the receiver. In some cases
+the material object was a pattern of spoken words, in others pure music,
+in others moving coloured shapes, in others a complex of steel cubes and
+bars, in others some translation of the human figure into a particular
+medium, and so on. But also the aesthetic impulse expressed itself in
+the production, by hand, of innumerable common utensils, indulging
+sometimes in lavish decoration, trusting at other times to the beauty of
+function. Every medium of art that had ever been employed was employed
+by the Fifth Men, and innumerable new vehicles were also used. They
+prized on the whole more highly those kinds of art which were not
+static, but involved time as well as space, for as a race they were
+peculiarly fascinated by time.
+
+These innumerable artists held that they were doing something of great
+importance. The cosmos was to be regarded as an aesthetic unity in four
+dimensions, and of inconceivable complexity. Human works of pure art
+were thought of as instruments through which man might behold and admire
+some aspect of the cosmic beauty. They were said to focus together
+features of the cosmos too vast and elusive for man otherwise to
+apprehend their form. The work of art was sometimes likened to a
+compendious mathematical formula expressive of some immense and
+apparently chaotic field of facts. But in the case of art, it was said,
+the unity which the artistic object elicited was one in which factors of
+vital nature and of mind itself were essential members.
+
+The race thus deemed itself to be engaged upon a great enterprise both
+of discovery and creation in which each individual was both an
+originator of some unique contribution, and an appraiser of all.
+
+Now, as the years advanced in millions and in decades of millions, it
+began to be noticed that the movement of world-culture was in a manner
+spiral. There would be an age during which the interest of the race was
+directed almost wholly upon certain tracts or aspects of existence; and
+then, after perhaps a hundred thousand years, these would seem to have
+been fully cultivated, and would be left fallow. During the next epoch
+attention would be in the main directed to other spheres, and then
+afterwards to yet others, and again others. But at length a return would
+be made to the fields that had been deserted, and it would be discovered
+that they could now miraculously bear a millionfold the former crop.
+Thus, in both science and art man kept recurring again and again to the
+ancient themes, to work over them once more in meticulous detail and
+strike from them new truth and new beauty, such as, in the earlier
+epoch, he could never have conceived. Thus it was that, though science
+gathered to itself unfalteringly an ever wider and more detailed view of
+existence, it periodically discovered some revolutionary general
+principle in terms of which its whole content had to be given a new
+significance. And in art there would appear in one age works
+superficially almost identical with works of another age, yet to the
+discerning eye incomparably more significant. Similarly, in respect of
+human personality itself, those men and women who lived at the close of
+the aeon of the Fifth Men could often discover in the remote beginning
+of their own race beings curiously like themselves, yet, as it were,
+expressed in fewer dimensions than their own many-dimensional natures.
+As a map is like the mountainous land, or the picture like the
+landscape, or indeed as the point and the circle are like the sphere,
+so, and only so, the earlier Fifth Men resembled the flower of the
+species.
+
+Such statements would be in a manner true of any period of steady
+cultural progress. But in the present instance they have a peculiar
+significance which I must now somehow contrive to suggest.
+
+
+
+
+                      XII _The Last Terrestrials_
+
+
+                       1. THE CULT OF EVANESCENCE
+
+The Fifth Men had not been endowed with that potential immortality which
+their makers themselves possessed. And from the fact that they were
+mortal and yet long-lived, their culture drew its chief brilliance and
+poignancy. Beings for whom the natural span was three thousand years,
+and ultimately as much as fifty thousand, were peculiarly troubled by
+the prospect of death, and by the loss of those dear to them. The more
+ephemeral kind of spirit, that comes into being and then almost
+immediately ceases, before it has entered at all deeply into
+consciousness of itself, can face its end with a courage that is half
+unwitting. Even its smart in the loss of other beings with whom it has
+been intimate is but a vague and dream-like suffering. For the ephemeral
+spirit has no time to grow fully awake, or fully intimate with another,
+before it must lose its beloved, and itself once more fade into
+unconsciousness. But with the long-lived yet not immortal Fifth Men the
+case was different. Gathering to themselves experience of the cosmos,
+acquiring an ever more precise and vivid insight and appreciation, they
+knew that very soon all this wealth of the soul must cease to be. And in
+love, though they might be fully intimate not merely with one but with
+very many persons, the death of one of these dear spirits seemed an
+irrevocable tragedy, an utter annihilation of the most resplendent kind
+of glory, an impoverishment of the cosmos for evermore.
+
+In their brief primitive phase, the Fifth Men, like so many other races,
+sought to console themselves by unreasoning faith in a life after death.
+They conceived, for instance, that at death terrestrial beings embarked
+upon a career continuous with earthly life, but far more ample, either
+in some remote planetary system, or in some wholly distinct orb of
+space-time. But though such theories were never disproved in the
+primitive era, they gradually began to seem not merely improbable but
+ignoble. For it came to be recognized that the resplendent glories of
+personality, even in that degree of beauty which now for the first time
+was attained, were not after all the extreme of glory. It was seen with
+pain, but also with exultation, that even love’s demand that the beloved
+should have immortal life is a betrayal of man’s paramount allegiance.
+And little by little it became evident that those who used great gifts,
+and even genius, to establish the truth of the after life, or to seek
+contact with their beloved dead, suffered from a strange blindness, an
+obtuseness of the spirit. Though the love which had misled them was
+itself a very lovely thing, yet they were misled. Like children,
+searching for lost toys, they wandered. Like adolescents seeking to
+recapture delight in the things of childhood, they shunned those more
+difficult admirations which are proper to the grown mind.
+
+And so it became a constant aim of the Fifth Men to school themselves to
+admire chiefly even in the very crisis of bereavement, not persons, but
+that great music of innumerable personal lives, which is the life of the
+race. And quite early in their career they discovered an unexpected
+beauty in the very fact that the individual must die. So that, when they
+had actually come into possession of the means to make themselves
+immortal, they refrained, choosing rather merely to increase the
+life-span of succeeding generations to fifty thousand years. Such a
+period seemed to be demanded for the full exercise of human capacity;
+but immortality, they held, would lead to spiritual disaster.
+
+Now as their science advanced they saw that there had been a time,
+before the stars were formed, when there was no possible footing for
+minds in the cosmos; and that there would come a time when mentality
+would be driven out of existence. Earlier human species had not needed
+to trouble about mind’s ultimate fate; but for the long-lived Fifth Men
+the end, though remote, did not seem infinitely distant. The prospect
+distressed them. They had schooled themselves to live not for the
+individual but for the race; and now the life of the race itself was
+seen to be a mere instant between the endless void of the past and the
+endless void of the future. Nothing within their ken was more worthy of
+admiration than the organized progressive mentality of mankind; and the
+conviction that this most admired thing must soon cease filled many of
+their less ample minds with horror and indignation. But in time the
+Fifth Men, like the Second Men long before them, came to suspect that
+even in this tragic brevity of mind’s course there was a quality of
+beauty, more difficult than the familiar beauty, but also more
+exquisite. Even thus imprisoned in an instant, the spirit of man might
+yet plumb the whole extent of space, and also the whole past and the
+whole future; and so, from behind his prison bars, he might render the
+universe that intelligent worship which, they felt, it demanded of him.
+Better so, they said, than that he should fret himself with puny efforts
+to escape. He is dignified by his very weakness, and the cosmos by its
+very indifference to him.
+
+For aeons they remained in this faith. And they schooled their hearts to
+acquiesce in it, saying, if it is so, it is best, and somehow we must
+learn to see that it is best. But what they meant by ‘best’ was not what
+their predecessors would have meant. They did not, for instance, deceive
+themselves by pretending that after all they themselves actually
+preferred life to be evanescent. On the contrary, they continued to long
+that it might be otherwise. But having discovered, both behind the
+physical order and behind the desires of minds, a fundamental principle
+whose essence was aesthetic, they were faithful to the conviction that
+whatever was fact must somehow in the universal view be fitting, right,
+beautiful, integral to the form of the cosmos. And so they accepted as
+right a state of affairs which in their own hearts they still felt
+grievously wrong.
+
+This conviction of the irrevocability of the past and of the evanescence
+of mind induced in them a great tenderness for all beings that had lived
+and ceased. Deeming themselves to be near the crest of life’s
+achievement, blessed also with longevity and philosophic detachment,
+they were often smitten with pity for those humbler, briefer, and less
+free spirits whose lot had fallen in the past. Moreover, themselves
+extremely complex, subtle, conscious, they conceived a generous
+admiration for all simple minds, for the early men, and for the beasts.
+Very strongly they condemned the action of their predecessors in
+destroying so many joyous and delectable creatures. Earnestly they
+sought to reconstruct in imagination all those beings that blind
+intellectualism had murdered. Earnestly they delved in the near and the
+remote past so as to recover as much as possible of the history of life
+on the planet. With meticulous love they would figure out the life
+stories of extinct types, such as the brontosaurus, the hippopotamus,
+the chimpanzee, the Englishman, the American, as also of the still
+extant amoeba. And while they could not but relish the comicality of
+these remote beings, their amusement was the outgrowth of affectionate
+insight into simple natures, and was but the obverse of their
+recognition that the primitive is essentially tragic, because blind. And
+so, while they saw that the main work of man must have regard to the
+future, they felt that he owed also a duty toward the past. He must
+preserve it in his own mind, if not actually in life at least in being.
+In the future lay glory, joy, brilliance of the spirit. The future
+needed service, not pity, not piety; but in the past lay darkness,
+confusion, waste, and all the cramped primitive minds, bewildered,
+torturing one another in their stupidity, yet one and all in some unique
+manner beautiful.
+
+The reconstruction of the past, not merely as abstract history but with
+the intimacy of the novel, thus became one of the main preoccupations of
+the Fifth Men. Many devoted themselves to this work, each individual
+specializing very minutely in some particular episode of human or animal
+history, and transmitting his work into the culture of the race. Thus
+increasingly the individual felt himself to be a single flicker between
+the teeming gulf of the never-more and the boundless void of the
+not-yet. Himself a member of a very noble and fortunate race, his zest
+in existence was tempered, deepened, by a sense of the presence, the
+ghostly presence, of the myriad less fortunate beings in the past.
+Sometimes, and especially in epochs when the contemporary world seemed
+most satisfactory and promising, this piety toward the primitive and the
+past became the dominant activity of the race, giving rise to
+alternating phases of rebellion against the tyrannical nature of the
+cosmos, and faith that in the universal view, after all, this horror
+must be right. In this latter mood it was held that the very
+irrevocability of the past dignified all past existence, and dignified
+the cosmos, as a work of tragic art is dignified by the irrevocability
+of disaster. It was this mood of acquiescence and faith which in the end
+became the characteristic attitude of the Fifth Men for many millions of
+years.
+
+But a bewildering discovery was in store for the Fifth Men, a discovery
+which was to change their whole attitude toward existence. Certain
+obscure biological facts began to make them suspect, on purely empirical
+grounds, that past events were not after all simply non-existent, that
+though no longer existent in the temporal manner, they had eternal
+existence in some other manner. The effect of this increasing suspicion
+about the past was that a once harmonious race was divided for a while
+into two parties, those who insisted that the formal beauty of the
+universe demanded the tragic evanescence of all things, and those who
+determined to show that living minds could actually reach back into past
+events in all their pastness.
+
+The readers of this book are not in a position to realize the poignancy
+of the conflict which now threatened to wreck humanity. They cannot
+approach it from the point of view of a race whose culture had consisted
+of an age-long schooling in admiration of an ever-vanishing cosmos. To
+the orthodox it seemed that the new view was iconoclastic, impertinent,
+vulgar. Their opponents, on the other hand, insisted that the matter
+must be decided dispassionately, according to the evidence. They were
+also able to point out that this devotion to evanescence was after all
+but the outcome of the conviction that the cosmos must be supremely
+noble. No one, it was said, really had direct vision of evanescence as
+in itself an excellence. So heartfelt was the dispute that the orthodox
+party actually broke off all ‘telepathic’ communication with the rebels,
+and even went so far as to plan their destruction. There can be no doubt
+that if violence had actually been used the human race would have
+succumbed; for in a species of such high mental development internecine
+war would have been a gross violation of its nature. It would never have
+been able to live down so shameful a spiritual disaster. Fortunately,
+however, at the eleventh hour, commonsense prevailed. The iconoclasts
+were permitted to carry on their research, and the whole race awaited
+the result.
+
+
+                         2. EXPLORATION OF TIME
+
+This first attack upon the nature of time involved an immense
+cooperative work, both theoretical and practical. It was from biology
+that the first hint had come that the past persisted. And it would be
+necessary to restate the whole of biology and the physical sciences in
+terms of the new idea. On the practical side it was necessary to
+undertake a great campaign of experiment, physiological and
+psychological. We cannot stay to watch this work. Millions of years
+passed by. Sometimes, for thousands of years at a spell, temporal
+research was the main preoccupation of the race; sometimes it was thrust
+into the background, or completely ignored, during epochs which were
+dominated by other interests. Age after age passed, and always the
+effort of man in this sphere remained barren. Then at last there was a
+real success.
+
+A child had been selected from among those produced by an age-long
+breeding enterprise, directed towards the mastery of time. From infancy
+this child’s brain had been very carefully controlled physiologically.
+Psychologically also he had been subjected to a severe treatment, that
+he might be properly schooled for his strange task. In the presence of
+several scientists and historians he was put into a kind of trance, and
+brought out of it again, half an hour later. He was then asked to give
+an account ‘telepathically’ of his experiences during the trance.
+Unfortunately he was now so shattered that his evidence was almost
+unintelligible. After some months of rest he was questioned again, and
+was able to describe a curious episode which turned out to be a
+terrifying incident in the girlhood of his dead mother. He seemed to
+have seen the incident through her eyes, and to have been aware of all
+her thoughts. This alone proved nothing, for he might have received the
+information from some living mind. Once more, therefore, and in spite of
+his entreaties, he was put into the peculiar trance. On waking he told a
+rambling story of ‘little red people living in a squat white tower’. It
+was clear that he was referring to the Great Brains and their
+attendants. But once more, this proved nothing; and before the account
+was finished the child died.
+
+Another child was chosen, but was not put to the test until late in
+adolescence. After an hour of the trance, he woke and became terribly
+agitated, but forced himself to describe an episode which the historians
+assigned to the age of the Martian invasions. The importance of this
+incident lay in his account of a certain house with a carved granite
+portico, situated at the head of a waterfall in a mountain valley. He
+said he had found himself to be an old woman, and that he, or she, was
+being hurriedly helped out of the house by the other inmates. They
+watched a formless monster creep down the valley, destroy their house,
+and mangle two persons who failed to get away in time. Now this house
+was not at all typical of the Second Men, but must have expressed the
+whim of some freakish individual. From evidence derived from the boy
+himself, it proved possible to locate the valley with reference to a
+former mountain, known to history. No valley survived in that spot; but
+deep excavations revealed the ancient slopes, the fault that had
+occasioned the waterfall, and the broken pillars.
+
+This and many similar incidents confirmed the Fifth Men in their new
+view of time. There followed an age in which the technique of direct
+inspection of the past was gradually improved, but not without tragedy.
+In the early stages it was found impossible to keep the ‘medium’ alive
+for more than a few weeks after his venture into the past. The
+experience seemed to set up a progressive mental disintegration which
+produced first insanity, then paralysis, and, within a few months,
+death. This difficulty was at last overcome. By one means and another a
+type of brain was produced capable of undergoing the strain of
+supra-temporal experience without fatal results. An increasingly large
+proportion of the rising generation had now direct access to the past,
+and were engaged upon a great re-statement of history in relation to
+their first-hand experience; but their excursions into the past were
+uncontrollable. They could not go where they wanted to go, but only
+where fate flung them. Nor could they go of their own will, but only
+through a very complicated technique, and with the cooperation of
+experts. After a time the process was made much easier, in fact, too
+easy. The unfortunate medium might slip so easily into the trance that
+his days were eaten up by the past. He might suddenly fall to the
+ground, and lie rapt, inert, dependent on artificial feeding, for weeks,
+months, even for years. Or a dozen times in the same day he might be
+flung into a dozen different epochs of history. Or, still more
+distressing, his experience of past events might not keep pace with the
+actual rhythm of those events themselves. Thus he might behold the
+events of a month, or even a lifetime, fantastically accelerated so as
+to occupy a trance of no more than a day’s duration. Or, worse, he might
+find himself sliding backwards down the vista of the hours and
+experiencing events in an order the reverse of the natural order. Even
+the magnificent brains of the Fifth Men could not stand this. The result
+was maniacal behaviour, followed by death. Another trouble also beset
+these first experimenters. Supra-temporal experience proved to be like a
+dangerous and habit-forming drug. Those who ventured into the past might
+become so intoxicated that they would try to spend every moment of their
+natural lives in roaming among past events. Thus gradually they would
+lose touch with the present, live in absentminded brooding, fail to
+react normally to their environment, turn socially worthless, and often
+come actually to physical disaster through inability to look after
+themselves.
+
+Many more thousands of years passed before these difficulties and
+dangers were overcome. At length, however, the technique of
+supra-temporal experience was so perfected that every individual could
+at will practise it with safety, and could, within limits, project his
+vision into any locality of space-time which he desired to inspect. It
+was only possible, however, to see past events through the mind of some
+past organism, no longer living. And in practice only human minds, and
+to some extent the minds of the higher mammals, could be entered. The
+explorer retained throughout his adventure his own personality and
+system of memory. While experiencing the past individual’s perceptions,
+memories, thoughts, desires, and in fact the whole process and content
+of the past mind, the explorer continued to be himself, and to react in
+terms of his own character, now condemning, now sympathizing, now
+critically enjoying the spectacle.
+
+The task of explaining the mechanism of this new faculty occupied the
+scientists and philosophers of the species for a very long period. The
+final account, of course, cannot be presented save by parable; for it
+was found necessary to recast many fundamental concepts in order to
+interpret the facts coherently. The only hint that I can give of the
+explanation is in saying, metaphorically of course, that the living
+brain had access to the past, not by way of some mysterious kind of
+racial memory, nor by some equally impossible journey up the stream of
+time, but by a partial awakening, as it were, into eternity, and into
+inspection of a minute tract of space-time through some temporal mind in
+the past, as though through an optical instrument. In the early
+experiments the fantastic speeding, slowing, and reversal of the
+temporal process resulted from disorderly inspection. As a reader may
+either skim the pages of a book, or read at a comfortable pace, or dwell
+upon one word, or spell the sentence backwards, so, unintentionally, the
+novice in eternity might read or misread the mind that was presented to
+him.
+
+This new mode of experience, it should be noted, was the activity of
+living brains, though brains of a novel kind. Hence what was to be
+discovered ‘through the medium of eternity’ was limited by the
+particular exploring brain’s capacity of understanding what was
+presented to it. And, further, though the actual supra-temporal contact
+with past events occupied no time in the brain’s natural life, the
+assimilating of that moment of vision, the reduction of it to normal
+temporal memory in the normal brain structures, took time, and had to be
+done during the period of the trance. To expect the neural structure to
+record the experience instantaneously would be to expect a complicated
+machine to effect a complicated readjustment without a process of
+readjusting.
+
+The new access to the past had, of course, far-reaching effects upon the
+culture of the Fifth Men. Not only did it give them an incomparably more
+accurate knowledge of past events, and insight into the motives of
+historical personages, and into large-scale cultural movements, but also
+it effected a subtle change in their estimate of the importance of
+things. Though intellectually they had, of course, realized both the
+vastness and the richness of the past, now they realized it with an
+overwhelming vividness. Matters that had been known hitherto only
+historically, schematically, were now available to be lived through by
+intimate acquaintance. The only limit to such acquaintance was set by
+the limitations of the explorer’s own brain-capacity. Consequently the
+remote past came to enter into a man and shape his mind in a manner in
+which only the recent past, through memory, had shaped him hitherto.
+Even before the new kind of experience was first acquired, this race had
+been, as was said, peculiarly under the spell of the past; but now it
+was infinitely more so. Hitherto the Fifth Men had been like
+stay-at-home folk who had read minutely of foreign parts, but had never
+travelled; now they had become travellers experienced in all the
+continents of human time. The presences that had hitherto been ghostly
+were now presences of flesh and blood seen in broad daylight. And so the
+moving instant called the present appeared no longer as the only, and
+infinitesimal, real, but as the growing surface of an everlasting tree
+of existence. It was now the past that seemed most real, while the
+future still seemed void, and the present merely the impalpable
+becomingness of the indestructible past.
+
+The discovery that past events were after all persistent, and
+accessible, was of course for the Fifth Men a source of deep joy; but
+also it caused them a new distress. While the past was thought of as a
+mere gulf of non-existence, the inconceivably great pain, misery,
+baseness, that had fallen into that gulf, could be dismissed as done
+with; and the will could be concentrated wholly on preventing such
+horrors from occurring in the future. But now, along with past joy, past
+distress was found to be everlasting. And those who, in the course of
+their voyaging in the past, encountered regions of eternal agony, came
+back distraught. It was easy to remind these harrowed explorers that if
+pain was eternal, so also was joy. Those who had endured travel in the
+tragic past were apt to dismiss such assurances with contempt, affirming
+that all the delights of the whole population of time could not
+compensate for the agony of one tortured individual. And anyhow, they
+declared, it was obvious that there had been no preponderance of joy
+over pain. Indeed, save in the modern age, pain had been overwhelmingly
+in excess.
+
+So seriously did these convictions prey upon the minds of the Fifth Men,
+that in spite of their own almost perfect social order, in which
+suffering had actually to be sought out as a tonic, they fell into
+despair. At all times, in all pursuits, the presence of the tragic past
+haunted them, poisoning their lives, sapping their strength. Lovers were
+ashamed of the delight in one another. As in the far-off days of sexual
+taboo, guilt crept between them, and held their spirits apart even while
+their bodies were united.
+
+
+                          3. VOYAGING IN SPACE
+
+It was while they were struggling in the grip of this vast social
+melancholy, and anxiously craving some new vision by which to
+reinterpret or transcend the agony of the past, that the Fifth Men were
+confronted with a most unexpected physical crisis. It was discovered
+that something queer was happening to the moon; in fact, that the orbit
+of the satellite was narrowing in upon the earth in a manner contrary to
+all the calculations of the scientists.
+
+The Fifth Men had long ago fashioned for themselves an all-embracing and
+minutely coherent system of natural sciences, every factor in which had
+been put to the test a thousand times and had never been shaken.
+Imagine, then, their bewilderment at this extraordinary discovery. In
+ages when science was still fragmentary, a subversive discovery entailed
+merely a reorganization of some one department of science; but by now,
+such was the coherence of knowledge, that any minute discrepancy of fact
+and theory must throw man into a state of complete intellectual vertigo.
+
+The evolution of the lunar orbit had, of course, been studied from time
+immemorial. Even the First Men had learned that the moon must first
+withdraw from and subsequently once more approach the earth, till it
+should reach a critical proximity and begin to break up into a swarm of
+fragments like the rings of Saturn. This view had been very thoroughly
+confirmed by the Fifth Men themselves. The satellite should have
+continued to withdraw for yet many hundreds of millions of years; but in
+fact it was now observed that not only had the withdrawal ceased, but a
+comparatively rapid approach had begun.
+
+Observations and calculations were repeated, and ingenious theoretical
+explanations were suggested; but the truth remained completely hidden.
+It was left to a future and more brilliant species to discover the
+connexion between a planet’s gravitation and its cultural development.
+Meanwhile, the Fifth Men knew only that the distance between the earth
+and the moon was becoming smaller with ever-increasing rapidity.
+
+This discovery was a tonic to a melancholy race. Men turned from the
+tragic past to the bewildering present and the uncertain future.
+
+For it was evident that, if the present acceleration of approach were to
+be maintained, the moon would enter the critical zone and disintegrate
+in less than ten million years; and, further, that the fragments would
+not maintain themselves as a ring, but would soon crash upon the earth.
+Heat generated by their impact would make the surface of the earth
+impossible as the home of life. A short-lived and short-sighted species
+might well have considered ten million years as equivalent to eternity.
+Not so the Fifth Men. Thinking primarily in terms of the race, they
+recognized at once that their whole social policy must now be dominated
+by this future catastrophe. Some there were indeed who at first refused
+to take the matter seriously, saying that there was no reason to believe
+that the moon’s odd behaviour would continue indefinitely. But as the
+years advanced, this view became increasingly improbable. Some of those
+who had spent much of their lives in exploration of the past now sought
+to explore the future also, hoping to prove that human civilization
+would always be discoverable on the earth in no matter how remote a
+future. But the attempt to unveil the future by direct inspection failed
+completely. It was surmised, erroneously, that future events, unlike
+past events, must be strictly non-existent until their creation by the
+advancing present.
+
+Clearly humanity must leave its native planet. Research was therefore
+concentrated on the possibility of flight through empty space, and the
+suitability of neighbouring worlds. The only alternatives were Mars and
+Venus. The former was by now without water and without atmosphere. The
+latter had a dense moist atmosphere, but one which lacked oxygen. The
+surface of Venus, moreover, was known to be almost completely covered
+with a shallow ocean. Further the planet was so hot by day that, even at
+the poles, man in his present state would scarcely survive.
+
+It did not take the Fifth Men many centuries to devise a tolerable means
+of voyaging in interplanetary space. Immense rockets were constructed,
+the motive power of which was derived from the annihilation of matter.
+The vehicle was propelled simply by the terrific pressure of radiation
+thus produced. ‘Fuel’ for a voyage of many months, or even years, could,
+of course, easily be carried, since the annihilation of a minute amount
+of matter produced a vast wealth of energy. Moreover, when once the
+vessel had emerged from the earth’s atmosphere, and had attained full
+speed, she would, of course, maintain it without the use of power from
+the rocket apparatus. The task of rendering the ‘ether-ship’ properly
+manageable and decently habitable proved difficult, but not
+insurmountable. The first vessel to take the ether was a cigar-shaped
+hull some three thousand feet long, and built of metals whose artificial
+atoms were incomparably more rigid than anything hitherto known.
+Batteries of ‘rocket’ apparatus at various points on the hull enabled
+the ship not only to travel forward, but to reverse, turn in any
+direction, or side-step. Windows of an artificial transparent element,
+scarcely less strong than the metal of the hull, enabled the voyagers to
+look around them. Within there was ample accommodation for a hundred
+persons and their provisions for three years. Air for the same period
+was manufactured in transit from protons and electrons stored under
+pressure comparable to that in the interior of a star. Heat was, of
+course, provided by the annihilation of matter. Powerful refrigeration
+would permit the vessel to approach the sun almost to the orbit of
+Mercury. An ‘artificial gravity’ system, based on the properties of the
+electro-magnetic field, could be turned on and regulated at will, so as
+to maintain a more or less normal environment for the human organism.
+
+This pioneer ship was manned with a navigating crew and a company of
+scientists, and was successfully dispatched upon a trial trip. The
+intention was to approach close to the surface of the moon, possibly to
+circumnavigate it at an altitude of ten thousand feet, and to return
+without landing. For many days those on earth received radio messages
+from the vessel’s powerful installation, reporting that all was going
+well. But suddenly the messages ceased, and no more was ever heard of
+the vessel. Almost at the moment of the last message, telescopes had
+revealed a sudden flash of light at a point on the vessel’s course. It
+was therefore surmised that she had collided with a meteor and fused
+with the heat of the impact.
+
+Other vessels were built and dispatched on trial voyages. Many failed to
+return. Some got out of control, and reported that they were heading for
+outer space or plunging towards the sun, their hopeless messages
+continuing until the last of the crew succumbed to suffocation. Other
+vessels returned successfully, but with crews haggard and distraught
+from long confinement in bad atmosphere. One, venturing to land on the
+moon, broke her back, so that the air rushed out of her, and her people
+died. After her last message was received, she was detected from the
+earth, as an added speck on the stippled surface of a lunar ‘sea’.
+
+As time passed, however, accidents became rarer; indeed, so rare that
+trips in the void began to be a popular form of amusement. Literature of
+the period reverberates with the novelty of such experiences, with the
+sense that man had at last learned true flight, and acquired the freedom
+of the solar system. Writers dwelt upon the shock of seeing, as the
+vessel soared and accelerated, the landscape dwindle to a mere
+illuminated disc or crescent, surrounded by constellations. They
+remarked also the awful remoteness and mystery which travellers
+experienced on these early voyages, with dazzling sunlight on one side
+of the vessel and dazzlingly bespangled night on the other. They
+described how the intense sun spread his corona against a black and
+star-crowded sky. They expatiated also on the overwhelming interest of
+approaching another planet; of inspecting from the sky the still visible
+remains of Martian civilization; of groping through the cloud banks of
+Venus to discover islands in her almost coastless ocean; of daring an
+approach to Mercury, till the heat became insupportable in spite of the
+best refrigerating mechanism; of feeling a way across the belt of the
+asteroids and onwards toward Jupiter, till shortage of air and
+provisions forced a return.
+
+But though the mere navigation of space was thus easily accomplished,
+the major task was still untouched. It was necessary either to remake
+man’s nature to suit another planet, or to modify conditions upon
+another planet to suit man’s nature. The former alternative was
+repugnant to the Fifth Men. Obviously it would entail an almost complete
+refashioning of the human organism. No existing individual could
+possibly be so altered as to live in the present conditions of Mars or
+Venus. And it would probably prove impossible to create a new being,
+adapted to these conditions, without sacrificing the brilliant and
+harmonious constitution of the extant species.
+
+On the other hand, Mars could not be made habitable without first being
+stocked, with air and water; and such an undertaking seemed impossible.
+There was nothing for it, then, but to attack Venus. The polar surfaces
+of that planet, shielded by impenetrable depths of cloud, proved after
+all not unendurably hot. Subsequent generations might perhaps be
+modified so as to withstand even the sub-arctic and ‘temperate’
+climates. Oxygen was plentiful, but it was all tied up in chemical
+combination. Inevitably so, since oxygen combines very readily, and on
+Venus there was no vegetable life to exhale the free gas and replenish
+the ever-vanishing supply. It was necessary, then, to equip Venus with
+an appropriate vegetation, which in the course of ages should render the
+planet’s atmosphere hospitable to man. The chemical and physical
+conditions on Venus had therefore to be studied in great detail, so that
+it might be possible to design a kind of life which would have a chance
+of flourishing. This research had to be carried out from within the
+ether-ships, or with gas helmets, since no human being could live in the
+natural atmosphere of the planet.
+
+We must not dwell upon the age of heroic research and adventure which
+now began. Observations of the lunar orbit were showing that ten million
+years was too long an estimate of the future habitability of the earth;
+and it was soon realized that Venus could not be made ready soon enough
+unless some more rapid change was set on foot. It was therefore decided
+to split up some of the ocean of the planet into hydrogen and oxygen by
+a vast process of electrolysis. This would have been a more difficult
+task, had not the ocean been relatively free from salt, owing to the
+fact that there was so little dry land to be denuded of salts by rain
+and river. The oxygen thus formed by electrolysis would be allowed to
+mix with the atmosphere. The hydrogen had to be got rid of somehow, and
+an ingenious method was devised by which it should be ejected beyond the
+limits of the atmosphere at so great a speed that it would never return.
+Once sufficient free oxygen had been produced, the new vegetation would
+replenish the loss due to oxidation. This work was duly set on foot.
+Great automatic electrolysing stations were founded on several of the
+islands; and biological research produced at length a whole flora of
+specialized vegetable types to cover the land surface of the planet. It
+was hoped that in less than a million years Venus would be fit to
+receive the human race, and the race fit to live on Venus.
+
+Meanwhile a careful survey of the planet had been undertaken. Its land
+surface, scarcely more than a thousandth that of the earth, consisted of
+an unevenly distributed archipelago of mountainous islands. The planet
+had evidently not long ago been through a mountain-forming era, for
+soundings proved its whole surface to be extravagantly corrugated. The
+ocean was subject to terrific storms and currents; for since the planet
+took several weeks to rotate, there was a great difference of
+temperature and atmospheric pressure between the almost Arctic
+hemisphere of night and the sweltering hemisphere of day. So great was
+the evaporation, that open sky was almost never visible from any part of
+the planet’s surface; and indeed the average daytime weather was a
+succession of thick fogs and fantastic thunderstorms. Rain in the
+evening was a continuous torrent. Yet before night was over the waves
+clattered with fragments of ice.
+
+Man looked upon his future home with loathing, and on his birthplace
+with an affection which became passionate. With its blue sky, its
+incomparable starry nights, its temperate and varied continents, its
+ample spaces of agriculture, wilderness, and park, its well-known beasts
+and plants, and all the material fabric of the most enduring of
+terrestrial civilizations, it seemed to the men and women who were
+planning flight almost a living thing imploring them not to desert it.
+They looked often with hate at the quiet moon, now visibly larger than
+the moon of history. They revised again and again their astronomical and
+physical theories, hoping for some flaw which should render the moon’s
+observed behaviour less mysterious, less terrifying. But they found
+nothing. It was as though a fiend out of some ancient myth had come to
+life in the modern world, to interfere with the laws of nature for man’s
+undoing.
+
+
+                        4. PREPARING A NEW WORLD
+
+Another trouble now occurred. Several electrolysis stations on Venus
+were wrecked, apparently by submarine eruption. Also, a number of
+ether-ships, engaged in surveying the ocean, mysteriously exploded. The
+explanation was found when one of these vessels, though damaged, was
+able to return to the earth. The commander reported that, when the
+sounding line was drawn up, a large spherical object was seen to be
+attached to it. Closer inspection showed that this object was fastened
+to the sounding apparatus by a hook, and was indeed unmistakably
+artificial, a structure of small metal plates riveted together. While
+preparations were being made to bring the object within the ship, it
+happened to bump against the hull, and then it exploded.
+
+Evidently there must be intelligent life somewhere in the ocean of
+Venus. Evidently the marine Venerians resented the steady depletion of
+their aqueous world, and were determined to stop it. The terrestrials
+had assumed that water in which no free oxygen was dissolved could not
+support life. But observation soon revealed that in this world-wide
+ocean there were many living species, some sessile, others
+free-swimming, some microscopic, others as large as whales. The basis of
+life in these creatures lay not in photosynthesis and chemical
+combination, but in the controlled disintegration of radio-active atoms.
+Venus was particularly rich in these atoms, and still contained certain
+elements which had long ago ceased to exist on the earth. The oceanic
+fauna subsisted in the destruction of minute quantities of radio-active
+atoms throughout its tissues.
+
+Several of the Venerian species had attained considerable mastery over
+their physical environment, and were able to destroy one another very
+competently with various mechanical contrivances. Many types were indeed
+definitely intelligent and versatile within certain limits. And of these
+intelligent types, one had come to dominate all the others by virtue of
+its superior intelligence, and had constructed a genuine civilization on
+the basis of radio-active power. These most developed of all the
+Venerian creatures were beings of about the size and shape of a
+swordfish. They had three manipulative organs, normally sheathed within
+the long ‘sword’, but capable of extension beyond its point, as three
+branched muscular tentacles. They swam with a curious screw-like motion
+of their bodies and triple tails. Three fins enabled them to steer. They
+had also organs of phosphorescence, vision, touch, and something
+analogous to hearing. They appeared to reproduce asexually, laying eggs
+in the ooze of the ocean bed. They had no need of nutrition in the
+ordinary sense; but in infancy they seemed to gather enough radio-active
+matter to keep them alive for many years. Each individual, when his
+stock was running out and he began to be feeble, was either destroyed by
+his juniors or buried in a radio-active mine, to rise from this living
+death in a few months completely rejuvenated.
+
+At the bottom of the Venerian ocean these creatures thronged in cities
+of proliferated coral-like buildings, equipped with many complex
+articles, which must have constituted the necessities and luxuries of
+their civilization. So much was ascertained by the Terrestrials in the
+course of their submarine exploration. But the mental life of the
+Venerians remained hidden. It was clear, indeed, that like all living
+things, they were concerned with self-maintenance and the exercise of
+their capacities; but of the nature of these capacities little was
+discoverable. Clearly they used some kind of symbolic language, based on
+mechanical vibrations set up in the water by the snapping claws of their
+tentacles. But their more complex activities were quite unintelligible.
+All that could be recorded with certainty was that they were much
+addicted to warfare, even to warfare between groups of one species; and
+that even in the stress of military disaster they maintained a feverish
+production of material articles of all sorts, which they proceeded to
+destroy and neglect.
+
+One activity was observed which was peculiarly mysterious. At certain
+seasons three individuals, suddenly developing unusual luminosity, would
+approach one another with rhythmic swayings and tremors, and would then
+rise on their tails and press their bodies together. Sometimes at this
+stage an excited crowd would collect, whirling around the three like
+driven snow. The chief performers would now furiously tear one another
+to pieces with their crab-like pincers, till nothing was left but
+tangled shreds of flesh, the great swords, and the still twitching
+claws. The Terrestrials, observing these matters with difficulty, at
+first suspected some kind of sexual intercourse; but no reproduction was
+ever traced to this source. Possibly the behaviour had once served a
+biological end, and had now become a useless ritual. Possibly it was a
+kind of voluntary religious sacrifice. More probably it was of a quite
+different nature, unintelligible to the human mind.
+
+As man’s activities on Venus became more extensive, the Venerians became
+more energetic in seeking to destroy him. They could not come out of the
+ocean to grapple with him, for they were deep-sea organisms. Deprived of
+oceanic pressure, they would have burst. But they contrived to hurl high
+explosives into the centres of the islands, or to undermine them from
+tunnels. The work of electrolysis was thus very seriously hampered. And
+as all efforts to parley with the Venerians failed completely, it was
+impossible to effect a compromise. The Fifth Men were thus faced with a
+grave moral problem. What right had man to interfere in a world already
+possessed by beings who were obviously intelligent, even though their
+mental life was incomprehensible to man? Long ago man himself had
+suffered at the hands of Martian invaders, who doubtless regarded
+themselves as more noble than the human race. And now man was committing
+a similar crime. On the other hand, either the migration to Venus must
+go forward, or humanity must be destroyed; for it seemed quite certain
+by now that the moon would fall, and at no very distant date. And though
+man’s understanding of the Venerians was so incomplete, what he did know
+of them strongly suggested that they were definitely inferior to himself
+in mental range. This judgement might, of course, be mistaken; the
+Venerians might after all be so superior to man that man could not get
+an inkling of their superiority. But this argument would apply equally
+to jelly-fish and micro-organisms. Judgement had to be passed according
+to the evidence available. So far as man could judge at all in the
+matter, he was definitely the higher type.
+
+There was another fact to be taken into account. The life of the
+Venerian organism depended on the existence of radio-active atoms. Since
+those atoms are subject to disintegration, they must become rarer. Venus
+was far better supplied than the earth in this respect, but there must
+inevitably come a time when there would be no more radio-active matter
+in Venus. Now submarine research showed that the Venerian fauna had once
+been much more extensive, and that the increasing difficulty of
+procuring radio-active matter was already the great limiting factor of
+civilization. Thus the Venerians were doomed, and man would merely
+hasten their destruction.
+
+It was hoped, of course, that in colonizing Venus mankind would be able
+to accommodate itself without seriously interfering with the native
+population. But this proved impossible for two reasons. In the first
+place, the natives seemed determined to destroy the invader even if they
+should destroy themselves in the process. Titanic explosions were
+engineered, which caused the invaders serious damage, but also strewed
+the ocean surface with thousands of dead Venerians. Secondly, it was
+found that, as electrolysis poured more and more free oxygen into the
+atmosphere, the ocean absorbed some of the potent element back into
+itself by solution; and this dissolved oxygen had a disastrous effect
+upon the oceanic organisms. Their tissues began to oxidize. They were
+burnt up, internally and externally, by a slow fire. Man dared not stop
+the process of electrolysis until the atmosphere had become as rich in
+oxygen as his native air. Long before this state was reached, it was
+already clear that the Venerians were beginning to feel the effects of
+the poison, and that in a few thousand years, at most, they would be
+exterminated. It was therefore determined to put them out of their
+misery as quickly as possible. Men could by now walk abroad on the
+islands of Venus, and indeed the first settlements were already being
+founded. They were thus able to build a fleet of powerful submarine
+vessels to scour the ocean and destroy the whole native fauna.
+
+This vast slaughter influenced the mind of the fifth human species in
+two opposite directions, now flinging it into despair, now rousing it to
+grave elation. For on the one hand the horror of the slaughter produced
+a haunting guiltiness in all men’s minds, an unreasoning disgust with
+humanity for having been driven to murder in order to save itself. And
+this guiltiness combined with the purely intellectual loss of
+self-confidence which had been produced by the failure of science to
+account for the moon’s approach. It reawakened, also, that other quite
+irrational sense of guilt which had been bred of sympathy with the
+everlasting distress of the past. Together, these three influences
+tended toward racial neurosis.
+
+On the other hand a very different mood sometimes sprang from the same
+three sources. After all, the failure of science was a challenge to be
+gladly accepted; it opened up a wealth of possibilities hitherto
+unimagined. Even the unalterable distress of the past constituted a
+challenge; for in some strange manner the present and future, it was
+said, must transfigure the past. As for the murder of Venerian life, it
+was, indeed, terrible, but right. It had been committed without hate;
+indeed, rather in love. For as the navy proceeded with its relentless
+work, it had gathered much insight into the life of the natives, and had
+learned to admire, even in a sense to love, while it killed. This mood,
+of inexorable yet not ruthless will, intensified the spiritual
+sensibility of the species, refined, so to speak, its spiritual hearing,
+and revealed to it tones and themes in the universal music which were
+hitherto obscure.
+
+Which of these two moods, despair or courage, would triumph? All
+depended on the skill of the species to maintain a high degree of
+vitality in untoward circumstances.
+
+Man now busied himself in preparing his new home. Many kinds of plant
+life, derived from the terrestrial stock, but bred for the Venerian
+environment, now began to swarm on the islands and in the sea. For so
+restricted was the land surface, that great areas of ocean had to be
+given over to specially designed marine plants, which now formed immense
+floating continents of vegetable matter. On the least torrid islands
+appeared habitable pylons, forming an architectural forest, with
+vegetation on every acre of free ground. Even so, it would be impossible
+for Venus ever to support the huge population of the earth. Steps had
+therefore been taken to ensure that the birth-rate should fall far short
+of the death-rate; so that, when the time should come, the race might
+emigrate without leaving any living members behind. No more than a
+hundred million, it was reckoned, could live tolerably on Venus. The
+population had therefore to be reduced to a hundredth of its former
+size. And since, in the terrestrial community, with its vast social and
+cultural activity, every individual had fulfilled some definite function
+in society, it was obvious that the new community must be not merely
+small but mentally impoverished. Hitherto, each individual had been
+enriched by intercourse with a far more intricate and diverse social
+environment that would be possible on Venus.
+
+Such was the prospect when at length it was judged advisable to leave
+the earth to its fate. The moon was now so huge that it periodically
+turned day into night, and night into a ghastly day. Prodigious tides
+and distressful weather conditions had already spoilt the amenities of
+the earth, and done great damage to the fabric of civilization. And so
+at length humanity reluctantly took flight. Some centuries passed before
+the migration was completed, before Venus had received, not only the
+whole remaining human population, but also representatives of many other
+species of organisms, and all the most precious treasure of man’s
+culture.
+
+
+
+
+                        XIII _Humanity on Venus_
+
+
+                          1. TAKING ROOT AGAIN
+
+Man’s sojourn on Venus lasted somewhat longer than his whole career on
+the Earth. From the days of Pithecanthropus to the final evacuation of
+his native planet he passed, as we have seen, through a bewildering
+diversity of form and circumstance. On Venus, though the human type was
+somewhat more constant biologically, it was scarcely less variegated in
+culture.
+
+To give an account of this period, even on the minute scale that has
+been adopted hitherto, would entail another volume. I can only sketch
+its bare outline. The sapling, humanity, transplanted into foreign soil,
+withers at first almost to the root, slowly readjusts itself, grows into
+strength and a certain permanence of form, burgeons, season by season,
+with leaf and flower of many successive civilizations and cultures,
+sleeps winter by winter, through many ages of reduced vitality, but at
+length (to force the metaphor), avoids this recurrent defeat by
+attaining an evergreen constitution and a continuous efflorescence. Then
+once more, through the whim of Fate, it is plucked up by the roots and
+cast upon another world.
+
+The first human settlers on Venus knew well that life would be a sorry
+business. They had done their best to alter the planet to suit human
+nature, but they could not make Venus into another Earth. The land
+surface was minute. The climate was almost unendurable. The extreme
+difference of temperature between the protracted day and night produced
+incredible storms, rain like a thousand contiguous waterfalls,
+terrifying electrical disturbances, and fogs in which a man could not
+see his own feet. To make matters worse, the oxygen supply was as yet
+barely enough to render the air breathable. Worse still, the liberated
+hydrogen was not always successfully ejected from the atmosphere. It
+would sometimes mingle with the air to form an explosive mixture, and
+sooner or later there would occur a vast atmospheric flash. Recurrent
+disasters of this sort destroyed the architecture and the human
+inhabitants of many islands, and further reduced the oxygen supply. In
+time, however, the increasing vegetation made it possible to put an end
+to the dangerous process of electrolysis.
+
+Meanwhile, these atmospheric explosions crippled the race so seriously
+that it was unable to cope with a more mysterious trouble which beset it
+some time after the migration. A new and inexplicable decay of the
+digestive organs, which first occurred as a rare disease, threatened
+within a few centuries to destroy mankind. The physical effects of this
+plague were scarcely more disastrous than the psychological effects of
+the complete failure to master it; for, what with the mystery of the
+moon’s vagaries and the deep-seated, unreasoning sense of guilt produced
+by the extermination of the Venerians, man’s self-confidence was already
+seriously shaken, and his highly organized mentality began to show
+symptoms of derangement. The new plague was, indeed, finally traced to
+something in the Venerian water, and was supposed to be due to certain
+molecular groupings, formerly rare, but subsequently fostered by the
+presence of terrestrial organic matter in the ocean. No cure was
+discovered.
+
+And now another plague seized upon the enfeebled race. Human tissues had
+never perfectly assimilated the Martian units which were the means of
+‘telepathic’ communication. The universal ill-health now favoured a kind
+of ‘cancer’ of the nervous system, which was due to the ungoverned
+proliferation of these units. The harrowing results of this disease may
+be left unmentioned. Century by century it increased; and even those who
+did not actually contract the sickness lived in constant terror of
+madness.
+
+These troubles were aggravated by the devastating heat. The hope that,
+as the generations passed, human nature would adapt itself even to the
+more sultry regions, seemed to be unfounded. Far otherwise, within a
+thousand years the once-populous arctic and antarctic islands were
+almost deserted. Out of each hundred of the great pylons, scarcely more
+than two were inhabited, and these only by a few plague-stricken and
+broken-spirited human relics. These alone were left to turn their
+telescopes upon the earth and watch the unexpectedly delayed bombardment
+of their native world by the fragments of the moon.
+
+Population decreased still further. Each brief generation was slightly
+less well developed than its parents. Intelligence declined. Education
+became superficial and restricted. Contact with the past was no longer
+possible. Art lost its significance, and philosophy its dominion over
+the minds of men. Even applied science began to be too difficult.
+Unskilled control of the subatomic sources of power led to a number of
+disasters, which finally gave rise to a superstition that all ‘tampering
+with nature’ was wicked, and all the ancient wisdom a snare of Man’s
+Enemy. Books, instruments, all the treasures of human culture, were
+therefore burnt. Only the perdurable buildings resisted destruction. Of
+the incomparable world-order of the Fifth Men nothing was left but a few
+island tribes cut off from one another by the ocean, and from the rest
+of space-time by the depths of their own ignorance.
+
+After many thousands of years human nature did begin to adapt itself to
+the climate and to the poisoned water without which life was impossible.
+At the same time a new variety of the fifth species now began to appear,
+in which the Martian units were not included. Thus at last the race
+regained a certain mental stability, at the expense of its faculty of
+‘telepathy’, which man was not to regain until almost the last phase of
+his career. Meanwhile, though he had recovered somewhat from the effects
+of an alien world, the glory that had been was no more. Let us therefore
+hurry through the ages that passed before noteworthy events again
+occurred.
+
+In early days on Venus men had gathered their foodstuff from the great
+floating islands of vegetable matter which had been artificially
+produced before the migration. But as the oceans became populous with
+modifications of the terrestrial fauna, the human tribes turned more and
+more to fishing. Under the influence of its marine environment, one
+branch of the species assumed such an aquatic habit that in time it
+actually began to develop biological adaptations for marine life. It is
+perhaps surprising that man was still capable of spontaneous variation;
+but the fifth human species was artificial, and had always been prone to
+epidemics of mutation. After some millions of years of variation and
+selection there appeared a very successful species of seal-like submen.
+The whole body was moulded to stream-lines. The lung capacity was
+greatly developed. The spine had elongated, and increased in
+flexibility. The legs were shrunken, grown together, and flattened into
+a horizontal rudder. The arms also were diminutive and fin-like, though
+they still retained the manipulative forefinger and thumb. The head had
+sunk into the body and looked forward in the direction of swimming.
+Strong carnivorous teeth, emphatic gregariousness, and a new, almost
+human, cunning in the chase, combined, to make these seal-men lords of
+the ocean. And so they remained for many million years, until a more
+human race, annoyed at their piscatorial successes, harpooned them out
+of existence.
+
+For another branch of the degenerated fifth species had retained a more
+terrestrial habit and the ancient human form. Sadly reduced in stature
+and in brain, these abject beings were so unlike the original invaders
+that they are rightly considered a new species, and may therefore be
+called the Sixth Men. Age after age they gained a precarious livelihood
+by grubbing roots upon the forest-clad islands, trapping the innumerable
+birds, and catching fish in the tidal inlets with ground bait. Not
+infrequently they devoured, or were devoured by, their seal-like
+relatives. So restricted and constant was the environment of these human
+remnants, that they remained biologically and culturally stagnant for
+some millions of years.
+
+At length, however, geological events afforded man’s nature once more
+the opportunity of change. A mighty warping of the planet’s crust
+produced an island almost as large as Australia. In time this was
+peopled, and from the clash of tribes a new and versatile race emerged.
+Once more there was methodical tillage, craftsmanship, complex social
+organization, and adventure in the realm of thought.
+
+During the next two hundred million years all the main phases of man’s
+life on earth were many times repeated on Venus with characteristic
+differences. Theocratic empires; free and intellectualistic island
+cities; insecure overlordships of feudal archipelagos; rivalries of high
+priest and emperor; religious feuds over the interpretation of sacred
+scriptures; recurrent fluctuations of thought from naïve animism,
+through polytheism, conflicting monotheisms, and all the desperate
+‘isms’ by which mind seeks to blur the severe outline of truth;
+recurrent fashions of comfort-seeking fantasy and cold intelligence;
+social disorders through the misuse of volcanic or wind-power in
+industry; business empires and pseudo-communistic empires—all these
+forms flitted over the changing substance of mankind again and again, as
+in an enduring hearth-fire there appear and vanish the infinitely
+diverse forms of flame and smoke. But all the while the brief spirits,
+in whose massed configurations these forms inhered, were intent chiefly
+on the primitive needs of food, shelter, companionship, crowd-lust,
+love-making, the two-edged relationship of parent and child, the
+exercise of muscle and intelligence in facile sport. Very seldom, only
+in rare moments of clarity, only after ages of misapprehension, did a
+few of them, here and there, now and again, begin to have the deeper
+insight into the world’s nature and man’s. And no sooner had this
+precious insight begun to propagate itself, than it would be blotted out
+by some small or great disaster, by epidemic disease, by the spontaneous
+disruption of society, by an access of racial imbecility, by a prolonged
+bombardment of meteorites, or by the mere cowardice and vertigo that
+dared not look down the precipice of the fact.
+
+
+                           2. THE FLYING MEN
+
+We need not dwell upon these multitudinous reiterations of culture, but
+must glance for a moment at the last phase of this sixth human species,
+so that we may pass on to the artificial species which it produced.
+
+Throughout their career the Sixth Men had often been fascinated by the
+idea of flight. The bird was again and again their most sacred symbol.
+Their monotheism was apt to be worship not of a god-man, but of a
+god-bird, conceived now as the divine sea eagle, winged with power, now
+as the giant swift, winged with mercy, now as a disembodied spirit of
+air, and once as the bird-god that became man to endow the human race
+with flight, physical and spiritual.
+
+It was inevitable that flight should obsess man on Venus, for the planet
+afforded but a cramping home for groundlings; and the riotous
+efflorescence of avian species shamed man’s pedestrian habit. When in
+due course the Sixth Men attained knowledge and power comparable to that
+of the First Men at their height, they invented flying machines of
+various types. Many times, indeed, mechanical flight was rediscovered
+and lost again with the downfall of civilization. But at its best it was
+regarded only as a makeshift. And when at length, with the advance of
+the biological sciences, the Sixth Men were in a position to influence
+the human organism itself, they determined to produce a true flying man.
+Many civilizations strove vainly for this result, sometimes
+half-heartedly, sometimes with religious earnestness. Finally the most
+enduring and brilliant of all the civilizations of the Sixth Men
+actually attained the goal.
+
+The Seventh Men were pigmies, scarcely heavier than the largest of
+terrestrial flying birds. Through and through they were organized for
+flight. A leathery membrane spread from the foot to the tip of the
+immensely elongated and strengthened ‘middle finger’. The three ‘outer’
+fingers, equally elongated, served as ribs to the membrane; while the
+index, and thumb remained free for manipulation. The body assumed the
+stream-lines of a bird, and was covered with a deep quilt of feathery
+wool. This, and the silken down of the flight-membranes, varied greatly
+from individual to individual in colouring and texture. On the ground
+the Seventh Men walked much as other human beings, for the
+flight-membranes were folded close to the legs and body, and hung from
+the arms like exaggerated sleeves. In flight the legs were held extended
+as a flattened tail, with the feet locked together by the big toes. The
+breastbone was greatly developed as a keel, and as a base for the
+muscles of flight. The other bones were hollow, for lightness, and their
+internal surfaces were utilized as supplementary lungs. For, like the
+birds, these flying men had to maintain a high rate of oxidation. A
+state which others would regard as fever was normal to them.
+
+Their brains were given ample tracts for the organization of prowess in
+flight. In fact, it was found possible to equip the species with a
+system of reflexes for aerial balance, and a true, though artificial,
+instinctive aptitude for flight, and interest in flight. Compared with
+their makers their brain volume was of necessity small, but their whole
+neural system was very carefully organized. Also it matured rapidly, and
+was extremely facile in the acquirement of new modes of activity. This
+was very desirable; for the individual’s natural life period was but
+fifty years, and in most cases it was deliberately cut short by some
+impossible feat at about forty, or whenever the symptoms of old age
+began to be felt.
+
+Of all human species these bat-like Flying Men, the Seventh Men, were
+probably the most carefree. Gifted with harmonious physique and gay
+temperament, they came into a social heritage well adapted to their
+nature. There was no occasion for them, as there had often been for some
+others, to regard the world as fundamentally hostile to life, or
+themselves as essentially deformed. Of quick intelligence in respect of
+daily personal affairs and social organization, they were untroubled by
+the insatiable lust of understanding. Not that they were an
+unintellectual race, for they soon formulated a beautifully systematic
+account of experience. They clearly perceived, however, that the perfect
+sphere of their thought was but a bubble adrift in chaos. Yet it was an
+elegant bubble. And the system was true, in its own gay and frankly
+insincere manner, true as significant metaphor, not literally true. What
+more, it was asked, could be expected of human intellect? Adolescents
+were encouraged to study the ancient problems of philosophy, for no
+reason but to convince themselves of the futility of probing beyond the
+limits of the orthodox system. ‘Prick the bubble of thought at any
+point’, it was said, ‘and you shatter the whole of it. And since thought
+is one of the necessities of human life, it must be preserved.’
+
+Natural science was taken over from the earlier species with
+half-contemptuous gratitude, as a necessary means of sane adjustment to
+the environment. Its practical applications were valued as the ground of
+the social order; but as the millennia advanced, and society approached
+that remarkable perfection and stability which was to endure for many
+million years, scientific inventiveness became less and less needful,
+and science itself was relegated to the infant schools. History also was
+given in outline during childhood, and subsequently ignored.
+
+This curiously sincere intellectual insincerity was due to the fact that
+the Seventh Men were chiefly concerned with matters other than abstract
+thought. It is difficult to give to members of the first human species
+an inkling of the great preoccupation of these Flying Men. To say that
+it was flight would be true, yet far less than the truth. To say that
+they sought to live dangerously and vividly, to crowd as much experience
+as possible into each moment, would again be a caricature of the truth.
+On the physical plane, indeed, ‘the universe of flight’, with all the
+variety of peril and skill afforded by a tempestuous atmosphere, was
+every individual’s chief medium of self-expression. Yet it was not
+flight itself, but the spiritual aspect of flight which obsessed the
+species.
+
+In the air and on the ground the Seventh Men were different beings.
+Whenever they exercised themselves in flight they suffered a remarkable
+change of spirit. Much of their time had to be spent on the ground,
+since most of the work upon which civilization rested was impossible in
+the air. Moreover, life in the air was life at high pressure, and
+necessitated spells of recuperation on the ground. In their pedestrian
+phase the Seventh Men were sober folk, mildly bored, yet in the main
+cheerful, humorously impatient of the drabness and irk of pedestrian
+affairs, but ever supported by memory and anticipation of the vivid life
+of the air. Often they were tired, after the strain of that other life,
+but seldom were they despondent or lazy. Indeed, in the routine of
+agriculture and industry they were industrious as the wingless ants. Yet
+they worked in a strange mood of attentive absent-mindedness; for their
+hearts were ever in the air. So long as they could have frequent periods
+of aviation, they remained bland even on the ground. But if for any
+reason such as illness they were confined to the ground for a long
+period, they pined, developed acute melancholia, and died. Their makers
+had so contrived them that with the onset of any very great pain or
+misery their hearts should stop. Thus they were to avoid all serious
+distress. But, in fact, this merciful device worked only on the ground.
+In the air they assumed a very different and more heroic nature, which
+their makers had not foreseen, though indeed it was a natural
+consequence of their design.
+
+In the air the flying man’s heart beat more powerfully. His temperature
+rose. His sensation became more vivid and more discriminate, his
+intelligence more agile and penetrating. He experienced a more intense
+pleasure or pain in all that happened to him. It would not be true to
+say that he became more emotional; rather the reverse, if by
+emotionality is meant enslavement to the emotions. For the most
+remarkable feature of the aerial phase was that this enhanced power of
+appreciation was dispassionate. So long as the individual was in the
+air, whether in lonely struggle with the storm, or in the ceremonial
+ballet with sky-darkening hosts of his fellows; whether in the ecstatic
+love dance with a sexual partner, or in solitary and meditative
+circlings far above the world; whether his enterprise was fortunate, or
+he found himself dismembered by the hurricane, and crashing to death;
+always the gay and the tragic fortunes of his own person were regarded
+equally with detached aesthetic delight. Even when his dearest companion
+was mutilated or destroyed by some aerial disaster, he exulted; though
+also he would give his own life in the hope of effecting a rescue. But
+very soon after he had returned to the ground he would be overwhelmed
+with grief, would strive vainly to recapture the lost vision, and would
+perhaps die of heart failure.
+
+Even when, as happened occasionally in the wild climate of Venus, a
+whole aerial population was destroyed by some world-wide atmospheric
+tumult, the few broken survivors, so long as they could remain in the
+air, exulted. And actually while at length they sank exhausted towards
+the ground, towards certain disillusionment and death, they laughed
+inwardly. Yet an hour after they had alighted, their constitution would
+be changed, their vision lost. They would remember only the horror of
+the disaster, and the memory would kill them.
+
+No wonder the Seventh Men grudged every moment that was passed on the
+ground. While they were in the air, of course, the prospect of a
+pedestrian interlude, or indeed of endless pedestrianism, though in a
+manner repugnant, would be accepted with unswerving gaiety; but while
+they were on the ground, they grudged bitterly to be there. Early in the
+career of the species the proportion of aerial to terrestrial hours was
+increased by a biological invention. A minute food-plant was produced
+which spent the winter rooted in the ground, and the summer adrift in
+the sunlit upper air, engaged solely in photosynthesis. Henceforth the
+populations of the Flying Men were able to browse upon the bright
+pastures of the sky, like swallows. As the ages passed, material
+civilization became more and more simplified. Needs which could not be
+satisfied without terrestrial labour tended to be outgrown. Manufactured
+articles became increasingly rare. Books were no longer written or read.
+In the main, indeed, they were no longer necessary; but to some extent
+their place was taken by verbal tradition and discussion, in the upper
+air. Of the arts, music, spoken lyric and epic verse, and the supreme
+art of winged dance, were constantly practised. The rest vanished. Many
+of the sciences inevitably faded into tradition; yet the true scientific
+spirit was preserved in a very exact meteorology, a sufficient biology,
+and a human psychology surpassed only by the second and fifth species at
+their height. None of these sciences, however, was taken very seriously,
+save in its practical applications. For instance, psychology explained
+the ecstasy of flight very neatly as a febrile and ‘irrational’
+beatitude. But no one was disconcerted by this theory; for every one,
+while on the wing, felt it to be merely an amusing half-truth.
+
+The social order of the Seventh Men was in essence neither utilitarian,
+nor humanistic, nor religious, but aesthetic. Every act and every
+institution were to be justified as contributing to the perfect form of
+the community. Even social prosperity was conceived as merely the medium
+in which beauty should be embodied, the beauty, namely, of vivid
+individual lives harmoniously related. Yet not only for the individual,
+but even for the race itself (so the wise insisted), death on the wing
+was more excellent than prolonged life on the ground. Better, far
+better, would be racial suicide than a future of pedestrianism. Yet
+though both the individual and the race were conceived as instrumental
+to objective beauty, there was nothing religious, in any ordinary sense,
+in this conviction. The Seventh Men were completely without interest in
+the universal and the unseen. The beauty which they sought to create was
+ephemeral and very largely sensuous. And they were well content that it
+should be so. Personal immortality, said a dying sage, would be as
+tedious as an endless song. Equally so with the race. The lovely flame,
+of which we all are members, must die, he said, must die; for without
+death she would fall short of beauty.
+
+For close on a hundred million terrestrial years this aerial society
+endured with little change. On many of the islands throughout this
+period stood even yet a number of the ancient pylons, though repaired
+almost beyond recognition. In these nests the men and women of the
+seventh species slept through the long Venerian nights, crowded like
+roosting swallows. By day the same great towers were sparsely peopled
+with those who were serving their turn in industry, while in the fields
+and on the sea others laboured. But most were in the air. Many would be
+skimming the ocean, to plunge, gannet-like, for fish. Many, circling
+over land or sea, would now and again stoop like hawks upon the wildfowl
+which formed the chief meat of the species. Others, forty or fifty
+thousand feet above the waves, where even the plentiful atmosphere of
+Venus was scarcely capable of supporting them, would be soaring,
+circling, sweeping, for pure joy of flight. Others, in the calm and
+sunshine of high altitudes, would be hanging effortless upon some steady
+up-current of air for meditation and the rapture of mere percipience.
+Not a few love-intoxicated pairs would be entwining their courses in
+aerial patterns, in spires, cascades, and true-love knots of flight,
+presently to embrace and drop ten thousand feet in bodily union. Some
+would be driving hither and thither through the green mists of vegetable
+particles, gathering the manna in their open mouths. Companies, circling
+together, would be discussing matters social or aesthetic; others would
+be singing together, or listening to recitative epic verse. Thousands,
+gathering in the sky like migratory birds, would perform massed
+convolutions, reminiscent of the vast mechanical aerial choreography of
+the First World State, but more vital and expressive, as a bird’s flight
+is more vital than the flight of any machine. And all the while there
+would be some, solitary or in companies, who, either in the pursuit of
+fish and wildfowl, or out of pure devilment, pitted their strength and
+skill against the hurricane, often tragically, but never without zest,
+and laughter of the spirit.
+
+It may seem to some incredible that the culture of the Seventh Men
+should have lasted so long. Surely it must either have decayed through
+mere monotony and stagnation or have advanced into richer experience.
+But no. Generation succeeded generation, and each was too short-lived to
+outlast its young delight and discover boredom. Moreover, so perfect was
+the adjustment of these beings to their world, that even if they had
+lived for centuries they would have felt no need of change. Flight
+provided them with intense physical exhilaration, and with the physical
+basis of a genuine and ecstatic, though limited, spiritual experience.
+In this their supreme attainment they rejoiced not only in the diversity
+of flight itself, but also in the perceived beauties of their variegated
+world, and most of all, perhaps, in the thousand lyric and epic ventures
+of human intercourse in an aerial community.
+
+The end of this seemingly everlasting elysium was nevertheless involved
+in the very nature of the species. In the first place, as the ages
+lengthened into aeons, the generations preserved less and less of the
+ancient scientific lore. For it became insignificant to them. The aerial
+community had no need of it. This loss of mere information did not
+matter so long as their condition remained unaltered; but in due course
+biological changes began to undermine them. The species had always been
+prone to a certain biological instability. A proportion of infants,
+varying with circumstances, had always been misshapen; and the deformity
+had generally been such as to make flight impossible. The normal infant
+was able to fly early in its second year. If some accident prevented it
+from doing so, it invariably fell into a decline and died before its
+third year was passed. But many of the deformed types, being the result
+of a partial reversion to the pedestrian nature, were able to live on
+indefinitely without flight. According to a merciful custom these
+cripples had always to be destroyed. But at length, owing to the gradual
+exhaustion of a certain marine salt essential to the high-strung nature
+of the Seventh Men, infants were more often deformed than true to type.
+The world-population declined so seriously that the organized aerial
+life of the community could no longer be carried on according to the
+time-honoured aesthetic principles. No one knew how to check this racial
+decay, but many felt that with greater biological knowledge it might be
+avoided. A disastrous policy was now adopted. It was decided to spare a
+carefully selected proportion of the deformed infants, those namely
+which, though doomed to pedestrianism, were likely to develop high
+intelligence. Thus it was hoped to raise a specialized group of persons
+whose work should be biological research untrammelled by the
+intoxication of flight.
+
+The brilliant cripples that resulted from this policy looked at
+existence from a new angle. Deprived of the supreme experience for which
+their fellows lived, envious of a bliss which they knew only by report,
+yet contemptuous of the naïve mentality which cared for nothing (it
+seemed) but physical exercise, love-making, the beauty of nature, and
+the elegances of society, these flightless intelligences sought
+satisfaction almost wholly in the life of research and scientific
+control. At the best, however, they were a tortured and resentful race.
+For their natures were fashioned for the aerial life which they could
+not lead. Although they received from the winged folk just treatment and
+a certain compassionate respect, they writhed under this kindness,
+locked their hearts against all the orthodox values, and sought out new
+ideals. Within a few centuries they had rehabilitated the life of
+intellect, and, with the power that knowledge gives, they had made
+themselves masters of the world. The amiable fliers were surprised,
+perplexed, even pained; and yet withal amused. Even when it became
+evident that the pedestrians were determined to create a new world-order
+in which there would be no place for the beauties of natural flight, the
+fliers were only distressed while they were on the ground.
+
+The islands were becoming crowded with machinery and flightless
+industrialists. In the air itself the winged folk found themselves
+outstripped by the base but effective instruments of mechanical flight.
+Wings became a laughing stock, and the life of natural flight was
+condemned as a barren luxury. It was ordained that in future every flier
+must serve the pedestrian world-order, or starve. And as the cultivation
+of wind-borne plants had been abandoned, and fishing and fowling rights
+were strictly controlled, this law was no empty form. At first it was
+impossible for the fliers to work on the ground for long hours, day
+after day, without incurring serious ill-health and an early death. But
+the pedestrian physiologists invented a drug which preserved the poor
+wage-slaves in something like physical health, and actually prolonged
+their life. No drug, however, could restore their spirit, for their
+normal aerial habit was reduced to a few tired hours of recreation once
+a week. Meanwhile, breeding experiments were undertaken to produce a
+wholly wingless large-brained type. And finally a law was enacted by
+which all winged infants must be either mutilated or destroyed. At this
+point the fliers made an heroic but ineffectual bid for power. They
+attacked the pedestrian population from the air. In reply the enemy rode
+them down in his great aeroplanes and blew them to pieces with high
+explosive.
+
+The fighting squadrons of the natural fliers were finally driven to the
+ground in a remote and barren island. Thither the whole flying
+population, a mere remnant of its former strength, fled out of every
+civilized archipelago in search of freedom: the whole population—save
+the sick, who committed suicide, and all infants that could not yet fly.
+These were stifled by their mothers or next-of-kin, in obedience to a
+decree of the leaders. About a million men, women and children, some of
+whom were scarcely old enough for the prolonged flight, now gathered on
+the rocks, regardless that there was not food in the neighbourhood for a
+great company.
+
+Their leaders, conferring together, saw clearly that the day of Flying
+Man was done, and that it would be more fitting for a high-souled race
+to die at once than to drag on in subjection to contemptuous masters.
+They therefore ordered the population to take part in an act of racial
+suicide that should at least make death a noble gesture of freedom. The
+people received the message while they were resting on the stony
+moorland. A wail of sorrow broke from them. It was checked by the
+speaker, who bade them strive to see, even on the ground, the beauty of
+the thing that was to be done. They could not see it; but they knew that
+if they had the strength to take wing again they would see it clearly,
+almost as soon as their tired muscles bore them aloft. There was no time
+to waste, for many were already faint with hunger, and anxious lest they
+should fail to rise. At the appointed signal the whole population rose
+into the air with a deep roar of wings. Sorrow was left behind. Even the
+children, when their mothers explained what was to be done, accepted
+their fate with zest; though, had they learned of it on the ground, they
+would have been terror-stricken. The company now flew steadily West,
+forming themselves into a double file many miles long. The cone of a
+volcano appeared over the horizon, and rose as they approached. The
+leaders pressed on towards its ruddy smoke plume; and unflinchingly,
+couple by couple, the whole multitude darted into its fiery breath and
+vanished. So ended the career of Flying Man.
+
+
+                     3. A MINOR ASTRONOMICAL EVENT
+
+The flightless yet still half avian race that now possessed the planet
+settled down to construct a society based on industry and science. After
+many vicissitudes of fortune and of aim, they produced a new human
+species, the Eighth Men. These long-headed and substantial folk were
+designed to be strictly pedestrian, physically and mentally. Apt for
+manipulation, calculation, and invention, they very soon turned Venus
+into an engineer’s paradise. With power drawn from the planet’s central
+heat, their huge electric ships bored steadily through the perennial
+monsoons and hurricanes, which also their aircraft treated with
+contempt. Islands were joined by tunnels and by millipede bridges. Every
+inch of land served some industrial or agricultural end. So successfully
+did the generations amass wealth that their rival races and rival castes
+were able to indulge, every few centuries, in vast revelries of mutual
+slaughter and material destruction without, as a rule, impoverishing
+their descendants. And so insensitive had man become that these orgies
+shamed him not at all. Indeed, only by the ardours of physical violence
+could this most philistine species wrench itself for a while out of its
+complacency. Strife, which to nobler beings would have been a grave
+spiritual disaster, was for these a tonic, almost a religious exercise.
+These cathartic paroxysms, it should be observed, were but the rare and
+brief crises which automatically punctuated ages of stolid peace. At no
+time did they threaten the existence of the species; seldom did they
+even destroy its civilization.
+
+It was after a lengthy period of peace and scientific advancement that
+the Eighth Men made a startling astronomical discovery. Ever since the
+First Men had learned that in the life of every star there comes a
+critical moment when the great orb collapses, shrinking to a minute,
+dense grain with feeble radiation, man had periodically suspected that
+the sun was about to undergo this change, and become a typical ‘White
+Dwarf’. The Eighth Men detected sure signs of the catastrophe, and
+predicted its date. Twenty thousand years they gave themselves before
+the change should begin. In another fifty thousand years, they guessed,
+Venus would probably be frozen and uninhabitable. The only hope was to
+migrate to Mercury during the great change, when that planet was already
+ceasing to be intolerably hot. It was necessary then to give Mercury an
+atmosphere, and to breed a new species which should be capable of
+adapting itself finally to a world of extreme cold.
+
+This desperate operation was already on foot when a new astronomical
+discovery rendered it futile. Astronomers detected, some distance from
+the solar system, a volume of non-luminous gas. Calculation showed that
+this object and the sun were approaching one another at a tangent, and
+that they would collide. Further calculation revealed the probable
+results of this event. The sun would flare up and expand prodigiously.
+Life would be quite impossible on any of the planets save, just
+possibly, Uranus, and more probably Neptune. The three planets beyond
+Neptune would escape roasting, but were unsuitable for other reasons.
+The two outermost would remain glacial, and, moreover, lay beyond the
+range of the imperfect ether-ships of the Eighth Men. The innermost was
+practically a bald globe of iron, devoid not merely of atmosphere and
+water, but also of the normal covering of rock. Neptune alone might be
+able to support life; but how could even Neptune be populated? Not only
+was its atmosphere very unsuitable, and its gravitational pull such as
+to make man’s body an intolerable burden, but also up to the time of the
+collision it would remain excessively cold. Not till after the collision
+could it support any kind of life known to man.
+
+How these difficulties were overcome I have no time to tell, though the
+story of man’s attack upon his final home is well worthy of recording.
+Nor can I tell in detail of the conflict of policy which now occurred.
+Some, realizing that the Eighth Men themselves could never live on
+Neptune, advocated an orgy of pleasure-living till the end. But at
+length the race excelled itself in an almost unanimous resolve to devote
+its remaining centuries to the production of a human being capable of
+carrying the torch of mentality into a new world.
+
+Ether-vessels were able to reach that remote world and set up chemical
+changes for the improvement of the atmosphere. It was also possible, by
+means of the lately rediscovered process of automatic annihilation of
+matter, to produce a constant supply of energy for the warming of an
+area where life might hope to survive until the sun should be
+rejuvenated.
+
+When at last the time for migration was approaching, a specially
+designed vegetation was shipped to Neptune and established in the warm
+area to fit it for man’s use. Animals, it was decided, would be
+unnecessary. Subsequently a specially designed human species, the Ninth
+Men, was transported to man’s new home. The giant Eighth Men could not
+themselves inhabit Neptune. The trouble was not merely that they could
+scarcely support their own weight, let alone walk, but that the
+atmospheric pressure on Neptune was unendurable. For the great planet
+bore a gaseous envelope thousands of miles deep. The solid globe was
+scarcely more than the yolk of a huge egg. The mass of the air itself
+combined with the mass of the solid to produce a gravitational pressure
+greater than that upon the Venerian ocean floor. The Eighth Men,
+therefore, dared not emerge from their ether-ships to tread the surface
+of the planet save for brief spells in steel diving suits. For them
+there was nothing else to do but to return to the archipelagos of Venus,
+and make the best of life until the end. They were not spared for long.
+A few centuries after the settlement of Neptune had been completed by
+transferring thither all the most precious material relics of humanity,
+the great planet itself narrowly missed collision with the dark stranger
+from space. Uranus and Jupiter were at the time well out of its track.
+Not so Saturn, which, a few years after Neptune’s escape, was engulfed
+with all its rings and satellites. The sudden incandescence which
+resulted from this minor collision was but a prelude. The huge foreigner
+rushed on. Like a finger poked into a spider’s web, it tangled up the
+planetary orbits. Having devoured its way through the asteroids, it
+missed Mars, caught Earth and Venus in its blazing hair, and leapt at
+the sun. Henceforth the centre of the solar system was a star nearly as
+wide as the old orbit of Mercury and the system was transformed.
+
+
+
+
+                             XIV _Neptune_
+
+
+                           1. BIRD’S-EYE VIEW
+
+I have told man’s story up to a point about half-way from his origin to
+his annihilation. Behind lies the vast span which includes the whole
+Terrestrial and Venerian ages, with all their slow fluctuations of
+darkness and enlightenment. Ahead lies the Neptunian age, equally long,
+equally tragic perhaps, but more diverse, and in its last phase
+incomparably more brilliant. It would not be profitable to recount the
+history of man on Neptune on the scale of the preceding chronicle. Very
+much of it would be incomprehensible to terrestrials, and much of it
+repeats again and again, in the many Neptunian modes, themes that we
+have already observed in the Terrestrial or the Venerian movements of
+the human symphony. To appreciate fully the range and subtlety of the
+great living epic, we ought, no doubt, to dwell on its every movement
+with the same faithful care. But this is impossible to any human mind.
+We can but attend to significant phrases, here and there, and hope to
+capture some fragmentary hint of its vast intricate form. And for the
+readers of this book, who are themselves tremors in the opening bars of
+the music, it is best that I should dwell chiefly on things near to
+them, even at the cost of ignoring much that is in fact greater.
+
+Before continuing our long flight let us look around us. Hitherto we
+have passed over time’s fields at a fairly low altitude, making many
+detailed observations. Now we shall travel at a greater height and with
+speed of a new order. We must therefore orientate ourselves within the
+wider horizon that opens around us; we must consider things from the
+astronomical rather than the human point of view. I said that we were
+half-way from man’s beginning to his end. Looking back to that remote
+beginning we see that the span of time which includes the whole career
+of the First Men from Pithecanthropus to the Patagonian disaster is an
+unanalysable point. Even the preceding and much longer period between
+the first mammal and the first man, some twenty-five millions of
+terrestrial years, seems now inconsiderable. The whole of it, together
+with the age of the First Men, may be said to lie half-way between the
+formation of the planets, two thousand million years earlier, and their
+final destruction, two thousand million years later. Taking a still
+wider view, we see that this aeon of four thousand million years is
+itself no more than a moment in comparison with the sun’s age. And
+before the birth of the suns the stuff of this galaxy had already
+endured for aeons as a nebula. Yet even these aeons look brief in
+relation to the passage of time before the myriad great nebulae
+themselves, the future galaxies, condensed out of the all-pervading mist
+in the beginning. Thus the whole duration of humanity, with its many
+sequent species and its incessant downpour of generations, is but a
+flash in the lifetime of the cosmos.
+
+Spatially, also, man is inconceivably minute. If in imagination we
+reduce this galaxy of ours to the size of an ancient terrestrial
+principality, we must suppose it adrift in the void with millions of
+other such principalities, very remote from one another. On the same
+scale the all-embracing cosmos would bulk as a sphere whose diameter was
+some twenty times greater than that of the lunar orbit in your day; and
+somewhere within the little wandering asteroid-like principality which
+is our own universe, the solar system would be an ultra-microscopic
+point, the greatest planet incomparably smaller.
+
+We have watched the fortunes of eight successive human species for a
+thousand million years, the first half of that flicker which is the
+duration of man. Ten more species now succeed one another, or are
+contemporary, on the plains of Neptune. We, the Last Men, are the
+Eighteenth Men. Of the eight pre-Neptunian species, some, as we have
+seen, remained always primitive; many achieved at least a confused and
+fleeting civilization, and one, the brilliant Fifth, was already
+wakening into true humanity when misfortune crushed it. The ten
+Neptunian species show an even greater diversity. They range from the
+instinctive animal to modes of consciousness never before attained. The
+definitely subhuman degenerate types are confined mostly to the first
+six hundred million years of man’s sojourn on Neptune. During the
+earlier half of this long phase of preparation, man, at first almost
+crushed out of existence by a hostile environment, gradually peopled the
+huge north; but with beasts, not men. For man, as man, no longer
+existed. During the latter half of the preparatory six hundred million
+years, the human spirit gradually awoke again, to undergo the
+fluctuating advance and decline characteristic of the pre-Neptunian
+ages. But subsequently, in the last four hundred million years of his
+career on Neptune, man has made an almost steady progress toward full
+spiritual maturity.
+
+Let us now look rather more closely at these three great epochs of man’s
+history.
+
+
+                               2. DA CAPO
+
+It was in desperate haste that the last Venerian men had designed and
+fashioned the new species for the colonization of Neptune. The mere
+remoteness of the great planet, moreover, had prevented its nature from
+being explored at all thoroughly, and so the new human organism was but
+partially adapted to its destined environment. Inevitably it was a dwarf
+type, limited in size by the necessity of resisting an excessive
+gravitation. Its brain was so cramped that everything but the bare
+essentials of humanity had to be omitted from it. Even so, the Ninth Men
+were too delicately organized to withstand the ferocity of natural
+forces on Neptune. This ferocity the designers had seriously
+underestimated; and so they were content merely to produce a miniature
+copy of their own type. They should have planned a hardy brute, lustily
+procreative, cunning in the struggle for physical existence, but above
+all tough, prolific, and so insensitive as to be scarcely worthy of the
+name man. They should have trusted that if once this crude seed could
+take root, natural forces themselves would in time conjure from it
+something more human. Instead, they produced a race cursed with the
+inevitable fragility of miniatures, and designed for a civilized
+environment which feeble spirits could not possibly maintain in a
+tumultuous world. For it so happened that the still youthful giant,
+Neptune, was slowly entering one of his phases of crustal shrinkage, and
+therefore of earthquake and eruption. Thus the frail colonists found
+themselves increasingly in danger of being swallowed in sudden fiery
+crevasses or buried under volcanic dust. Moreover, their squat
+buildings, when not actually being trampled by lava streams, or warped
+and cracked by their shifting foundations, were liable to be demolished
+by the battering-ram thrust of a turbulent and massive atmosphere.
+Further, the atmosphere’s unwholesome composition killed all possibility
+of cheerfulness and courage in a race whose nature was doomed to be,
+even in favourable circumstances, neurotic.
+
+Fortunately this agony could not last indefinitely. Little by little,
+civilization crumbled into savagery, the torturing vision of better
+things was lost, man’s consciousness was narrowed and coarsened into
+brute-consciousness. By good luck the brute precariously survived.
+
+Long after the Ninth Men had fallen from man’s estate, nature herself,
+in her own slow and blundering manner, succeeded where man had failed.
+The brute descendants of this human species became at length well
+adapted to their world. In time there arose a wealth of subhuman forms
+in the many kinds of environment afforded by the lands and seas of
+Neptune. None of them penetrated far towards the Equator, for the
+swollen sun had rendered the tropics at this time far too hot to support
+life of any kind. Even at the pole the protracted summer put a great
+strain on all but the most hardy creatures.
+
+Neptune’s year was at this time about one hundred and sixty-five times
+the length of the old terrestrial year. The slow seasonal change had an
+important effect on life’s own rhythms. All but the most ephemeral
+organisms tended to live through at least one complete year, and the
+higher mammals survived longer. At a much later stage this natural
+longevity was to play a great and beneficial part in the revival of man.
+But, on the other hand, the increasing sluggishness of individual
+growth, the length of immaturity in each generation, retarded the
+natural evolutionary process on Neptune, so that compared with the
+Terrestrial and Venerian epochs the biological story now moves at a
+snail’s pace.
+
+After the fall of the Ninth Men the subhuman creatures had one and all
+adopted a quadruped habit, the better to cope with gravity. At first
+they had indulged merely in occasional support from their knuckles, but
+in time many species of true quadrupeds had appeared. In several of the
+running types the fingers, like the toes, had grown together, and a hoof
+had developed, not on the old finger-tips, which were bent back and
+atrophied, but on the knuckles.
+
+Two hundred millions years after the solar collision innumerable species
+of subhuman grazers with long sheep-like muzzles, ample molars, and
+almost ruminant digestive systems, were competing with one another on
+the polar continent. Upon these preyed the subhuman carnivora, of whom
+some were built for speed in the chase, others for stalking and a sudden
+spring. But since jumping was no easy matter on Neptune, the cat-like
+types were all minute. They preyed upon man’s more rabbit-like and
+rat-like descendants, or on the carrion of the larger mammals, or on the
+lusty worms and beetles. These had sprung originally from vermin which
+had been transported accidentally from Venus. For of all the ancient
+Venerian fauna only man himself, a few insects and other invertebrates,
+and many kinds of micro-organisms, succeeded in colonizing Neptune. Of
+plants, many types had been artificially bred for the new world, and
+from these eventually arose a host of grasses, flowering plants,
+thick-trunked bushes, and novel sea-weeds. On this marine flora fed
+certain highly developed marine worms; and of these last, some in time
+became vertebrate, predatory, swift, and fish-like. On these in turn
+man’s own marine descendants preyed, whether as subhuman seals, or still
+more specialized subhuman porpoises. Perhaps most remarkable of these
+developments of the ancient human stock was that which led, through a
+small insectivorous bat-like glider, to a great diversity of true flying
+mammals, scarcely larger than humming birds, but in some cases agile as
+swallows.
+
+Nowhere did the typical human form survive. There were only beasts,
+fitted by structure and instinct to some niche or other of their
+infinitely diverse and roomy world.
+
+Certain strange vestiges of human mentality did indeed persist here and
+there, even as, in the fore-limbs of most species, there still remained
+buried the relics of man’s once cunning fingers. For instance, there
+were certain grazers which in times of hardship would meet together and
+give tongue in cacophonous ululation; or, sitting on their haunches with
+fore-limbs pressed together, they would listen by the hour to the howls
+of some leader, responding intermittently with groans and whimpers, and
+working themselves at last into foaming madness. And there were
+carnivora which, in the midst of the spring-time fervour, would suddenly
+cease from love-making, fighting, and the daily routine of hunting, to
+sit alone in some high place day after day, night after night, watching,
+waiting; until at last hunger forced them into action.
+
+Now in the fullness of time, about three hundred million terrestrial
+years after the solar collision, a certain minute, hairless, rabbit-like
+creature, scampering on the polar grasslands, found itself greatly
+persecuted by a swift hound from the south. The subhuman rabbit was
+relatively unspecialized, and had no effective means of defence or
+flight. It was almost exterminated. A few individuals, however, saved
+themselves by taking to the dense and thick-trunked scrub, whither the
+hound could not follow them. Here they had to change their diet and
+manner of life, deserting grass for roots, berries, and even worms and
+beetles. Their fore-limbs were now increasingly used for digging and
+climbing, and eventually for weaving nests of stick and straw. In this
+species the fingers had never grown together. Internally the fore-paw
+was like a minute clenched fist from the elongated and exposed knuckles
+of which separate toes protruded. And now the knuckles elongated
+themselves still further, becoming in time a new set of fingers. Within
+the palm of the new little monkey-hand there still remained traces of
+man’s ancient fingers, bent in upon themselves.
+
+As of old, manipulation gave rise to clearer percipience. And this, in
+conjunction with the necessity of frequent experiments in diet, hunting,
+and defence, produced at length a real versatility of behaviour and
+suppleness of mind. The rabbit throve, adopted an almost upright gait,
+continued to increase in stature and in brain. Yet, just as the new hand
+was not merely a resurrection of the old hand, so the new regions of the
+brain were no mere revival of the atrophied human cerebrum, but a new
+organ, which overlaid and swallowed up that ancient relic. The
+creature’s mind, therefore, was in many respects a new mind, though
+moulded to the same great basic needs. Like his forerunners, of course,
+he craved food, love, glory, companionship. In pursuit of these ends he
+devised weapons and traps, and built wicker villages. He held pow-wows.
+He became the Tenth Men.
+
+
+                            3. SLOW CONQUEST
+
+For a million terrestrial years these long-armed hairless beings were
+spreading their wicker huts and bone implements over the great northern
+continents, and for many more millions they remained in possession
+without making further cultural progress; for evolution, both biological
+and cultural, was indeed slow on Neptune. At last the Tenth Men were
+attacked by a micro-organism and demolished. From their ruins several
+primitive human species developed, and remained isolated in remote
+territories for millions of decades, until at length chance or
+enterprise brought them into contact. One of these early species,
+crouched and tusked, was persistently trapped for its ivory by an abler
+type, till it was exterminated. Another, long of muzzle and large of
+base, habitually squatted on its haunches like the kangaroo. Shortly
+after this industrious and social species had discovered the use of the
+wheel, a more primitive but more war-like type crashed into it like a
+tidal wave and overwhelmed it. Erect, but literally almost as broad as
+they were tall, these chunkish and bloody-minded savages spread over the
+whole arctic and sub-arctic region and spent some millions of years in
+monotonous reiteration of progress and decline; until at last a slow
+decay of their germ-plasm almost ended man’s career. But after an aeon
+of darkness, there appeared another thick-set, but larger brained,
+species. This, for the first time on Neptune, conceived the religion of
+love, and all those spiritual cravings and agonies which had flickered
+in man so often and so vainly upon Earth and Venus. There appeared again
+feudal empires, militant nations, economic class wars, and, not once but
+often, a world-state covering the whole northern hemisphere. These men
+it was that first crossed the equator in artificially cooled electric
+ships, and explored the huge south. No life of any kind was discovered
+in the southern hemisphere; for even in that age no living matter could
+have crossed the roasting tropics without artificial refrigeration.
+Indeed, it was only because the sun’s temporary revival had already
+passed its zenith that even man, with all his ingenuity, could endure a
+long tropical voyage.
+
+Like the First Men and so many other natural human types, these
+Fourteenth Men were imperfectly human. Like the First Men, they
+conceived ideals of conduct which their imperfectly organized nervous
+systems could never attain and seldom approach. Unlike the First Men,
+they survived with but minor biological changes for three hundred
+million years. But even so long a period did not enable them to
+transcend their imperfect spiritual nature. Again and again and again
+they passed from savagery to world-civilization and back to savagery.
+They were captive within their own nature, as a bird in a cage. And as a
+caged bird may fumble with nest-building materials and periodically
+destroy the fruit of its aimless toil, so these cramped beings destroyed
+their civilizations.
+
+At length, however, this second phase of Neptunian history, this era of
+fluctuation, was brought to an end. At the close of the six hundred
+million years after the first settlement of the planet, unaided nature
+produced, in the Fifteenth human species, that highest form of natural
+man which she had produced only once before, in the Second species. And
+this time no Martians interfered. We must not stay to watch the struggle
+of this greatheaded man to overcome his one serious handicap, excessive
+weight of cranium and unwieldy proportions of body. Suffice it that
+after a long-drawn-out immaturity, including one great mechanized war
+between the northern and southern hemispheres, the Fifteenth Men outgrew
+the ailments and fantasies of youth, and consolidated themselves as a
+single world-community. This civilization was based economically on
+volcanic power, and spiritually on devotion to the fulfilment of human
+capacity. It was this species which, for the first time on Neptune,
+conceived, as an enduring racial purpose, the will to remake human
+nature upon an ampler scale.
+
+Henceforth in spite of many disasters, such as another period of
+earthquake and eruption, sudden climatic changes, innumerable plagues
+and biological aberrations, human progress was relatively steady. It was
+not by any means swift and sure. There were still to be ages, often
+longer than the whole career of the First Men, in which the human spirit
+would rest from its pioneering to consolidate its conquests, or would
+actually stray into the wilderness. But never again, seemingly, was it
+to be routed and crushed into mere animality.
+
+In tracing man’s final advance to full humanity we can observe only the
+broadest features of a whole astronomical era. But in fact it is an era
+crowded with many thousands of long-lived generations. Myriads of
+individuals, each one unique, live out their lives in rapt intercourse
+with one another, contribute their heart’s pulses to the universal
+music, and presently vanish, giving place to others. All this age-long
+sequence of private living, which is the actual tissue of humanity’s
+flesh, I cannot describe. I can only trace, as it were, the disembodied
+form of its growth.
+
+The Fifteenth Men first set themselves to abolish five great evils,
+namely, disease, suffocating toil, senility, misunderstanding, and
+ill-will. The story of their devotion, their many disastrous
+experiments, and ultimate triumph, cannot here be told. Nor can I
+recount how they learned and used the secret of deriving power from the
+annihilation of matter, nor how they invented ether-ships for the
+exploration of neighbouring planets, nor how, after ages of experiments,
+they designed and produced a new species, the Sixteenth, to supersede
+themselves.
+
+The new type was analogous to the ancient Fifth, which had colonized
+Venus. Artificial rigid atoms had been introduced into its bone-tissues,
+so that it might support great stature and an ample brain; in which,
+moreover, an exceptionally fine-grained cellular structure permitted a
+new complexity of organization. ‘Telepathy’, also, was once more
+achieved, not by means of the Martian units, which had long ago become
+extinct, but by the synthesis of new molecular groups of a similar type.
+Partly through the immense increase of mutual understanding, which
+resulted from ‘telepathic’ rapport, partly through improved coordination
+of the nervous system, the ancient evil of selfishness was entirely and
+finally abolished from the normal human being. Egoistic impulses,
+whenever they refused to be subordinated, were henceforth classed as
+symptoms of insanity. The sensory powers of the new species were, of
+course, greatly improved; and it was even given a pair of eyes in the
+back of the head. Henceforth man was to have a circular instead of a
+semi-circular field of vision. And such was the general intelligence of
+the new race that many problems formerly deemed insoluble were now
+solved in a single flash of insight.
+
+Of the great practical uses to which the Sixteenth Men put their powers,
+one only need be mentioned as an example. They gained control of the
+movement of their planet. Early in their career they were able, with the
+unlimited energy at their disposal, to direct it into a wider orbit, so
+that its average climate became more temperate, and snow occasionally
+covered the polar regions. But as the ages advanced, and the sun became
+steadily less ferocious, it became necessary to reverse this process and
+shift the planet gradually nearer to the sun.
+
+When they had possessed their world for nearly fifty million years, the
+Sixteenth Men, like the Fifth before them, learned to enter into past
+minds. For them this was a more exciting adventure than for their
+forerunners, since they were still ignorant of Terrestrial and Venerian
+history. Like their forerunners, so dismayed were they at the huge
+volume of eternal misery in the past, that for a while, in spite of
+their own great blessings and spontaneous gaiety, existence seemed a
+mockery. But in time they came to regard the past’s misery as a
+challenge. They told themselves that the past was calling to them for
+help, and that somehow they must prepare a great ‘crusade to liberate
+the past’. How this was to be done, they could not conceive; but they
+were determined to bear in mind this quixotic aim in the great
+enterprise which had by now become the chief concern of the race, namely
+the creation of a human type of an altogether higher order.
+
+It had become clear that man had by now advanced in understanding and
+creativeness as far as was possible to the individual human brain acting
+in physical isolation. Yet the Sixteenth Men were oppressed by their own
+impotence. Though in philosophy they had delved further than had ever
+been possible, yet even at their deepest they found only the shifting
+sands of mystery. In particular they were haunted by three ancient
+problems, two of which were purely intellectual, namely the mystery of
+time and the mystery of mind’s relation to the world. Their third
+problem was the need somehow to reconcile their confirmed loyalty to
+life, which they conceived as embattled against death, with their
+ever-strengthening impulse to rise above the battle and admire it
+dispassionately.
+
+Age after age the races of the Sixteenth Men blossomed with culture
+after culture. The movement of thought ranged again and again through
+all the possible modes of the spirit, ever discovering new significance
+in ancient themes. Yet throughout this epoch the three great problems
+remained unsolved, perplexing the individual and vitiating the policy of
+the race.
+
+Forced thus at length to choose between spiritual stagnation and a
+perilous leap in the dark, the Sixteenth Men determined to set about
+devising a type of brain which, by means of the mental fusion of many
+individuals, might waken into an altogether new mode of consciousness.
+Thus, it was hoped, man might gain insight into the very heart of
+existence, whether finally to admire or loathe. And thus the racial
+purpose, which had been so much confused by philosophical ignorance,
+might at last become clear.
+
+Of the hundred million years which passed before the Sixteenth Men
+produced the new human type, I must not pause to tell. They thought they
+had achieved their hearts’ desire; but in fact the glorious beings which
+they had produced were tortured by subtle imperfections beyond their
+makers’ comprehension. Consequently, no sooner had these Seventeenth Men
+peopled the world and attained full cultural stature, than they also
+bent all their strength to the production of a new type, essentially
+like their own, but perfected. Thus after a brief career of a few
+hundred thousand years, crowded with splendour and agony, the
+Seventeenth gave place to the Eighteenth, and, as it turns out, the
+Last, human species. Since all the earlier cultures find their
+fulfilment in the world of the Last Men, I pass over them to enlarge
+somewhat upon our modern age.
+
+
+
+
+                           XV _The Last Men_
+
+
+               1. INTRODUCTION TO THE LAST HUMAN SPECIES
+
+If one of the First Men could enter the world of the Last Men, he would
+find many things familiar and much that would seem strangely distorted
+and perverse. But nearly everything that is most distinctive of the last
+human species would escape him. Unless he were to be told that behind
+all the obvious and imposing features of civilization, behind all the
+social organization and personal intercourse of a great community, lay a
+whole other world of spiritual culture, round about him, yet beyond his
+ken, he would no more suspect its existence than a cat in London
+suspects the existence of finance or literature.
+
+[Illustration: Time Scales 4 and 5]
+
+Among the familiar things that he would encounter would be creatures
+recognizably human yet in his view grotesque. While he himself laboured
+under the weight of his own body, these giants would be easily striding.
+He would consider them very sturdy, often thick-set, folk, but he would
+be compelled to allow them grace of movement and even beauty of
+proportion. The longer he stayed with them the more beauty he would see
+in them, and the less complacently would he regard his own type. Some of
+these fantastic men and women he would find covered with fur, hirsute,
+or mole-velvet, revealing the underlying muscles. Others would display
+bronze, yellow, or ruddy skin, and yet others a translucent ashgreen,
+warmed by the underflowing blood. As a species, though we are all human,
+we are extremely variable in body and mind, so variable that
+superficially we seem to be not one species but many. Some characters,
+of course, are common to all of us. The traveller might perhaps be
+surprised by the large yet sensitive hands which are universal, both in
+men and women. In all of us the outermost finger bears at its tip three
+minute organs of manipulation, rather similar to those which were first
+devised for the Fifth Men. These excrescences would doubtless revolt our
+visitor. The pair of occipital eyes, too, would shock him; so would the
+upward-looking astronomical eye on the crown, which is peculiar to the
+Last Men. This organ was so cunningly designed that, when fully
+extended, about a hand-breadth from its bony case, it reveals the
+heavens in as much detail as your smaller astronomical telescopes. Apart
+from such special features as these, there is nothing definitely novel
+about us; though every limb, every contour, shows unmistakably that much
+has happened since the days of the First Men. We are both more human and
+more animal. The primitive explorer might be more readily impressed by
+our animality than our humanity, so much of our humanity would lie
+beyond his grasp. He would perhaps at first regard us as a degraded
+type. He would call us faun-like, and in particular cases, ape-like,
+bear-like, ox-like, marsupial, or elephantine. Yet our general
+proportions are definitely human in the ancient manner. Where gravity is
+not insurmountable, the erect biped form is bound to be most serviceable
+to intelligent land animals; and so, after long wanderings, man has
+returned to his old shape. Moreover, if our observer were himself at all
+sensitive to facial expression, he would come to recognize in every one
+of our innumerable physiognomic types an indescribable but distinctively
+human look, the visible sign of that inward and spiritual grace which is
+not wholly absent from his own species. He would perhaps say, ‘These men
+that are beasts are surely gods also’. He would be reminded of those old
+Egyptian deities with animal heads. But in us the animal and the human
+interpenetrate in every feature, in every curve of the body, and with
+infinite variety. He would observe in us, together with hints of the
+long-extinct Mongol, Negro, Nordic, and Semitic, many outlandish
+features and expressions, deriving from the subhuman period on Neptune,
+or from Venus. He would see in every limb unfamiliar contours of muscle,
+sinew, or bone, which were acquired long after the First Men had
+vanished. Besides the familiar eye-colours, he would discover orbs of
+topaz, emerald, amethyst, and ruby, and a thousand varieties of these.
+But in all of us he would see also, if he had discernment, a facial
+expression and bodily gesture peculiar to our own species, a certain
+luminous, yet pungent and ironical significance, which we miss almost
+wholly in the earlier human faces.
+
+The traveller would recognize among us unmistakable sexual features,
+both of general proportions and special organs. But it would take him
+long to discover that some of the most striking bodily and facial
+differences were due to differentiation of the two ancient sexes into
+many sub-sexes. Full sexual experience involves for us a complicated
+relationship between individuals of all these types. Of the extremely
+important sexual groups I shall speak again.
+
+Our visitor would notice, by the way, that, though all persons on
+Neptune go habitually nude, save for a pouch or ruck-sack, clothing,
+often brightly coloured, and made of diverse lustrous or homely tissues
+unknown before our time, is worn for special purposes.
+
+He would notice also, scattered about the green countryside, many
+buildings, mostly of one storey; for there is plenty of room on Neptune
+even for the million million of the Last Men. Here and there, however,
+we have great architectural pylons, cruciform or star-shaped in section,
+cloud-piercing, dignifying the invariable planes of Neptune. These
+mightiest of all buildings, which are constructed in adamantine
+materials formed of artificial atoms, would seem to our visitor
+geometrical mountains, far taller than any natural mountain could be,
+even on the smallest planet. In many cases the whole fabric is
+translucent or transparent, so that at night, with internal
+illumination, it appears as an edifice of light. Springing from a base
+twenty or more miles across, these star-seeking towers attain a height
+where even Neptune’s atmosphere is somewhat attenuated. In their summits
+work the hosts of our astronomers, the essential eyes through which our
+community, on her little raft, peers across the ocean. Thither also all
+men and women repair at one time or another to contemplate this galaxy
+of ours and the unnumbered remoter universes. There they perform
+together those supreme symbolic acts for which I find no adjective in
+your speech but the debased word ’religious’. There also they seek the
+refreshment of mountain air in a world where natural mountains are
+unknown. And on the pinnacles and precipices of these loftiest horns
+many of us gratify that primeval lust of climbing which was ingrained in
+man before ever he was man. These buildings thus combine the functions
+of observatory, temple, sanatorium, and gymnasium. Some of them are
+almost as old as the species, some are not yet completed. They embody,
+therefore, many styles. The traveller would find modes which he would be
+tempted to call Gothic, Classical, Egyptian, Peruvian, Chinese, or
+American, besides a thousand architectural ideas unfamiliar to him. Each
+of these buildings was the work of the race as a whole at some stage in
+its career. None of them is a mere local product. Every successive
+culture has expressed itself in one or more of these supreme monuments.
+Once in forty thousand years or so some new architectural glory would be
+conceived and executed. And such is the continuity of our cultures that
+there has scarcely ever been need to remove the handiwork of the past.
+
+If our visitor happened to be near enough to one of these great pylons,
+he would see it surrounded by a swarm of midges, which would turn out to
+be human fliers, wingless, but with outspread arms. The stranger might
+wonder how a large organism could rise from the ground in Neptune’s
+powerful field of gravity. Yet flight is our ordinary means of
+locomotion. A man has but to put on a suit of overalls fitted at various
+points with radiation-generators. Ordinary flight thus becomes a kind of
+aerial swimming. Only when very high speed is desired do we make use of
+closed-in air-boats and liners.
+
+At the feet of the great buildings the flat or undulating country is
+green, brown, golden, and strewn with houses. Our traveller would
+recognize that much land was under cultivation, and would see many
+persons at work upon it with tools or machinery. Most of our food,
+indeed, is produced by artificial photosynthesis on the broiling planet
+Jupiter, where, even now that the sun is becoming normal again, no life
+can exist without powerful refrigeration. As far as mere nutrition is
+concerned, we could do without vegetation; but agriculture and its
+products have played so great a part in human history that today
+agricultural operations and vegetable foods are very beneficial to the
+race psychologically. And so it comes about that vegetable matter is in
+great demand, not only as raw material for innumerable manufactures, but
+also for table delicacies. Green vegetables, fruit, and various
+alcoholic fruit drinks have come to have the same kind of ritual
+significance for us as wine has for you. Meat also, though not a part of
+ordinary diet, is eaten on very rare and sacred occasions. The cherished
+wild fauna of the planet contributes its toll to periodic symbolical
+banquets. And whenever a human being has chosen to die, his body is
+ceremoniously eaten by his friends.
+
+Communication with the food-factories of Jupiter and the agricultural
+polar regions of the less torrid Uranus, as also with the automatic
+mining stations on the glacial outer planets, is maintained by
+ether-ships, which, travelling much faster than the planets themselves,
+make the passage to the neighbour worlds in a small fraction of the
+Neptunian year. These vessels, of which the smallest are about a mile in
+length, may be seen descending on our oceans like ducks. Before they
+touch the water they cause a prodigious tumult with the downward
+pressure of their radiation; but once upon the surface, they pass
+quietly into harbour.
+
+The ether-ship is in a manner symbolic of our whole community, so highly
+organized is it, and so minute in relation to the void which engulfs it.
+The ethereal navigators, because they spend so much of their time in the
+empty regions, beyond the range of ‘telepathic’ communication and
+sometimes even of mechanical radio, form mentally a unique class among
+us. They are a hardy, simple, and modest folk. And though they embody
+man’s proud mastery of the ether, they are never tired of reminding
+land-lubbers, with dour jocularity, that the most daring voyages are
+confined within one drop of the boundless ocean of space.
+
+Recently an exploration ship returned from a voyage into the outer
+tracts. Half her crew had died. The survivors were emaciated, diseased,
+and mentally unbalanced. To a race that thought itself so well
+established in sanity that nothing could disturb it, the spectacle of
+these unfortunates was instructive. Throughout the voyage, which was the
+longest ever attempted, they had encountered nothing whatever but two
+comets and an occasional meteor. Some of the nearer constellations were
+seen with altered forms. One or two stars increased slightly in
+brightness; and the sun was reduced to being the most brilliant of
+stars. The aloof and changeless presence of the constellations seems to
+have crazed the voyagers. When at last the ship returned and berthed,
+there was a scene such as is seldom witnessed in our modern world. The
+crew flung open the ports and staggered blubbering into the arms of the
+crowd. It would never have been believed that members of our species
+could be so far reduced from the self-possession that is normal to us.
+Subsequently these poor human wrecks have shown an irrational phobia of
+the stars, and of all that not human. They dare not go out at night.
+They live in an extravagant passion for the presence of others. And
+since all others are astronomically minded, they cannot find real
+companionship. They insanely refuse to participate in the mental life of
+the race upon the plane where all things are seen in their just
+proportions. They cling piteously to the sweets of individual life; and
+so they are led to curse the immensities. They fill their minds with
+human conceits, and their houses with toys. By night they draw the
+curtains and drown the quiet voice of the stars in revelry. But it is a
+joyless and a haunted revelry, desired less for itself than as a defence
+against reality.
+
+
+                       2. CHILDHOOD AND MATURITY
+
+I said that we were all astronomically minded; but we are not without
+‘human’ interests. Our visitor from the earth would soon discover that
+the low buildings, sprinkled on all sides, were the homes of
+individuals, families, sexual groups, and bands of companions. Most of
+these buildings are so constructed that the roof and walls can be
+removed completely or partially, for sun-bathing and for the night.
+Round each house is a wilderness, or a garden, or an orchard of our
+sturdy fruit trees. Here and there men and women may be seen at work
+with hoe or spade or secateurs. The buildings themselves affect many
+styles; and within doors our visitor would find great variety from house
+to house. Even within a single house he might come on rooms seemingly of
+different epochs. And while some rooms are crowded with articles, many
+of which would be incomprehensible to the stranger, others are bare,
+save for a table, chairs, a cupboard, and perhaps some single object of
+pure art. We have an immense variety of manufactured goods. But the
+visitor from a world obsessed with material wealth would probably remark
+the simplicity, even austerity, which characterizes most private houses.
+
+He would doubtless be surprised to see no books. In every room, however,
+there is a cupboard filled with minute rolls of tape, microscopically
+figured. Each of these rolls contains matter which could not be cramped
+into a score of your volumes. They are used in connexion with a
+pocket-instrument, the size and shape of the ancient cigarette case.
+When the roll is inserted, it reels itself off at any desired speed, and
+interferes systematically with ethereal vibrations produced by the
+instrument. Thus is generated a very complex flow of ‘telepathic’
+language which permeates the brain of the reader. So delicate and direct
+is this medium of expression that there is scarcely any possibility of
+misunderstanding the author’s intention. The rolls themselves, it should
+be said, are produced by another special instrument, which is sensitive
+to vibrations generated in the author’s brain. Not that it produces a
+mere replica of his stream of consciousness; it records only those
+images and ideas with which he deliberately ‘inscribes’ it. I may
+mention also that, since we can at any moment communicate by direct
+‘telepathy’ with any person on the planet, these ‘books’ of ours are not
+used for the duplication of merely ephemeral thought. Each one of them
+preserves only the threshed and chosen grain of some mind’s harvest.
+
+Other instruments may be observed in our houses, which I cannot pause to
+describe, instruments whose office is either to carry out domestic
+drudgery, or to minister directly in one way or another to cultured
+life. Near the outer door would be hanging a number of flying-suits, and
+in a garage attached to the house would be the private air-boats, gaily
+coloured torpedo-shaped objects of various sizes.
+
+Decoration in our houses, save in those which belong to children, is
+everywhere simple, even severe. None the less we prize it greatly, and
+spend much consideration upon it. Children, indeed, often adorn their
+houses with splendour, which adults themselves can also enjoy through
+children’s eyes, even as they can enter into the frolics of infants with
+unaffected glee.
+
+The number of children in our world is small in relation to our immense
+population. Yet, seeing that every one of us is potentially immortal, it
+may be wondered how we can permit ourselves to have any children at all.
+The explanation is twofold. In the first place, our policy is to produce
+new individuals of higher type than ourselves, for we are very far from
+biologically perfect. Consequently we need a continuous supply of
+children. And as these successively reach maturity, they take over the
+functions of adults whose nature is less perfect; and these, when they
+are aware that they are no longer of service, elect to retire from life.
+
+But even though every individual, sooner or later, ceases to exist, the
+average length of life is not much less than a quarter of a million
+terrestrial years. No wonder, then, that we cannot accommodate many
+children. But we have more than might be expected, for with us infancy
+and adolescence are very lengthy. The foetus is carried for twenty
+years. Ectogenesis was practised by our predecessors, but was abandoned
+by our own species, because, with greatly improved motherhood, there is
+no need for it. Our mothers, indeed, are both physically and mentally
+most vigorous during the all too rare period of pregnancy. After birth,
+true infancy lasts for about a century. During this period, in which the
+foundations of body and mind are being laid, very slowly, but so
+securely that they will never fail, the individual is cared for by his
+mother. Then follow some centuries of childhood, and a thousand years of
+adolescence.
+
+Our children, of course, are very different beings from the children of
+the First Men. Though physically they are in many respects still
+childlike, they are independent persons in the community. Each has
+either a house of his own, or rooms in a larger building held in common
+by himself and his friends. Thousands of these are to be found in the
+neighbourhood of every educational centre. There are some children who
+prefer to live with their parents, or with one or other of their
+parents; but this is rare. Though there is often much friendly
+intercourse between parents and children, the generations usually fare
+better under separate roofs. This is inevitable in our species. For the
+adult’s overwhelmingly greater experience reveals the world to him in
+very different proportions from those which are possible even to the
+most brilliant of children; while on the other hand with us the mind of
+every child is, in some potentiality or other, definitely superior to
+every adult mind. Consequently, while the child can never appreciate
+what is best in his elders, the adult, in spite of his power of direct
+insight into all minds not superior to himself, is doomed to
+incomprehension of all that is novel in his own offspring.
+
+Six or seven hundred years after birth a child is in some respects
+physically equivalent to a ten-year-old of the First Men. But since his
+brain is destined for much higher development, it is already far more
+complex than any adult brain of that species. And though temperamentally
+he is in many ways still a child, intellectually he has already in some
+respects passed beyond the culture of the best adult minds of the
+ancient races. The traveller, encountering one of our bright boys, might
+sometimes be reminded of the wise simplicity of the legendary Child
+Christ. But also he might equally well discover a vast exuberance,
+boisterousness, impishness, and a complete inability to stand outside
+the child’s own eager life and regard it dispassionately. In general our
+children develop intellectually beyond the level of the First Men long
+before they begin to develop the dispassionate will which is
+characteristic of our adults. When there is conflict between a child’s
+personal needs and the need of society, he will as a rule force himself
+to the social course; but he does so with resentment and dramatic
+self-pity, thereby rendering himself in the adult view exquisitely
+ridiculous.
+
+When our children attain physical adolescence, nearly a thousand years
+after birth, they leave the safe paths of childhood to spend another
+thousand years in one of the antarctic continents, known as the Land of
+the Young. Somewhat reminiscent of the Wild Continent of the Fifth Men,
+this territory is preserved as virgin bush and prairie. Sub-human
+grazers and carnivora abound. Volcanic eruption, hurricanes, and glacial
+seasons afford further attractions to the adventurous young. There is
+consequently a high death rate. In this land our young people live the
+half primitive, half sophisticated life to which their nature is fitted.
+They hunt, fish, tend cattle, and till the ground. They cultivate all
+the simple beauties of human individuality. They love and hate. They
+sing, paint, and carve. They devise heroic myths, and delight in
+fantasies of direct intercourse with a cosmic person. They organise
+themselves as tribes and nations. Sometimes they even indulge in warfare
+of a primitive but bloody type. Formerly when this happened, the adult
+world interfered; but we have since learned to let the fever run its
+course. The loss of life is regrettable; but it is a small price to pay
+for the insight afforded even by this restricted and juvenile warfare,
+into those primitive agonies and passions which, when they are
+experienced by the adult mind, are so transformed by philosophy that
+their import is wholly changed. In the Land of the Young our boys and
+girls experience all that is precious and all that is abject in the
+primitive. They live through in their own persons, century by century,
+all its toilsomeness and cramped meanness, all its blind cruelty and
+precariousness; but also they taste its glamour, its vernal and lyrical
+glory. They make in little all the mistakes of thought and action that
+men have ever made; but at last they emerge ready for the large and more
+difficult world of maturity.
+
+It was expected that some day, when we should have perfected the
+species, there would be no need to build up successive generations, no
+need of children, no need of all this schooling. It was expected that
+the community would then consist of adults only; and that they would be
+immortal not merely potentially but in fact, yet also, of course,
+perennially in the flower of young maturity. Thus, death should never
+cut the string of individuality and scatter the hard-won pearls,
+necessitating new strings, and laborious re-gatherings. The many and
+very delectable beauties of childhood could still be amply enjoyed in
+exploration of the past.
+
+We know now that this goal is not to be attained, since man’s end is
+imminent.
+
+
+                         3. A RACIAL AWAKENING
+
+It is easy to speak of children; but how can I tell you anything
+significant of our adult experience, in relation to which not only the
+world of the First Men but the worlds of the most developed earlier
+species seem so naïve?
+
+The source of the immense difference between ourselves and all other
+human races lies in the sexual group, which is in fact much more than a
+sexual group.
+
+The designers of our species set out to produce a being that might be
+capable of an order of mentality higher than their own. The only
+possibility of doing so lay in planning a great increase of brain
+organization. But they knew that the brain of an individual human being
+could not safely be allowed to exceed a certain weight. They therefore
+sought to produce the new order of mentality in a system of distinct and
+specialized brains held in ‘telepathic’ unity by means of ethereal
+radiation. Material brains were to be capable of becoming on some
+occasions mere nodes in a system of radiation which itself should then
+constitute the physical basis of a single mind. Hitherto there had been
+‘telepathic’ communication between many individuals, but no
+super-individual, or group-mind. It was known that such a unity of
+individual minds had never been attained before, save on Mars; and it
+was known how lamentably the racial mind of Mars had failed to transcend
+the minds of the Martians. By a combination of shrewdness and good luck
+the designers hit upon a policy which escaped the Martian failure. They
+planned as the basis of the super-individual a small multi-sexual group.
+
+Of course the mental unity of the sexual group is not the direct outcome
+of the sexual intercourse of its members. Such intercourse does occur.
+Groups differ from one another very greatly in this respect; but in most
+groups all the members of the male sexes have intercourse with all the
+members of the female sexes. Thus sex is with us essentially social. It
+is impossible for me to give any idea of the great range and intensity
+of experience afforded by these diverse types of union. Apart from this
+emotional enrichment of the individuals, the importance of sexual
+activity in the group lies in its bringing individuals into that extreme
+intimacy, temperamental harmony, and complementariness, without which no
+emergence into higher experience would be possible.
+
+Individuals are not necessarily confined to the same group for ever.
+Little by little a group may change every one of its ninety-six members,
+and yet it will remain the same super-individual mind, though enriched
+with the memories grafted into it by the newcomers. Very rarely does an
+individual leave a group before he has been in it for ten thousand
+years. In some groups the members live together in a common home. In
+others they live apart. Sometimes an individual will form a sort of
+monogamous relation with another individual of his group, homing with
+the chosen one for many thousands of years, or even for a lifetime.
+Indeed some claim that life-long monogamy is the ideal state, so deep
+and delicate is the intimacy which it affords. But of course, even in
+monogamy, each partner must be periodically refreshed by intercourse
+with other members of the group, not only for the spiritual health of
+the two partners themselves, but also that the group-mind may be
+maintained in full vigour. Whatever the sexual custom of the group,
+there is always in the mind of each member a very special loyalty
+towards the whole group, a peculiar sexually toned _esprit de corps_,
+unparalleled in any other species.
+
+Occasionally there is a special kind of group intercourse in which,
+during the actual occurrence of group mentality, all the members of one
+group will have intercourse with those of another. Casual intercourse
+outside the group is not common, but not discouraged. When it occurs it
+comes as a symbolic act crowning a spiritual intimacy.
+
+Unlike the physical sex-relationship, the mental unity of the group
+involves all the members of the group every time it occurs, and so long
+as it persists. During times of group experience the individual
+continues to perform his ordinary routine of work and recreation, save
+when some particular activity is demanded of him by the group-mind
+itself. But all that he does as a private individual is carried out in a
+profound absent-mindedness. In familiar situations he reacts correctly,
+even to the extent of executing familiar types of intellectual work or
+entertaining acquaintances with intelligent conversation. Yet all the
+while he is in fact ‘far away’, rapt in the process of the group-mind.
+Nothing short of an urgent and unfamiliar crisis can recall him; and in
+recalling him it usually puts an end to the group’s experience.
+
+Each member of the group is fundamentally just a highly developed human
+animal. He enjoys his food. He has a quick eye for sexual attraction,
+within or without the group. He has his personal idiosyncrasies and
+foibles, and is pleased to ridicule the foibles of others—and of
+himself. He may be one of those who abhor children, or one of those who
+enter into children’s antics with fervour, if they will tolerate him. He
+may move heaven and earth to procure permission for a holiday in the
+Land of the Young. And if he fails, as he almost surely does, he may go
+walking with a friend, or boating and swimming, or playing violent
+games. Or he may merely potter in his garden, or refresh his mind though
+not his body by exploring some favourite region of the past. Recreation
+occupies a large part of his life. For this reason he is always glad to
+get back to work in due season, whether his function is to maintain some
+part of the material organization of our world, or to educate, or to
+perform scientific research, or to cooperate in the endless artistic
+venture of the race, or, as is more likely, to help in some of those
+innumerable enterprises whose nature it is impossible for me to
+describe.
+
+As a human individual, then, he or she is somewhat of the same type as a
+member of the Fifth species. Here once more is the perfected glandular
+outfit and instinctive nature. Here too is the highly developed sense
+perception and intellection. As in the Fifth species, so in the
+Eighteenth, each individual has his own private needs, which he heartily
+craves to fulfil; but also, in both species, he subordinates these
+private cravings to the good of the race absolutely and without
+struggle. The only kind of conflict which ever occurs between
+individuals is not the irreconcilable conflict of wills, but the
+conflict due to misunderstanding, to imperfect knowledge of the matter
+under dispute; and this can always be abolished by patient telepathic
+explication.
+
+In addition to the brain organization necessary to this perfection of
+individual human nature, each member of a sexual group has in his own
+brain a special organ which, useless by itself, can cooperate
+‘telepathically’ with the special organs of other members of the group
+to produce a single electro-magnetic system, the physical basis of the
+group-mind. In each sub-sex this organ has a peculiar form and function;
+and only by the simultaneous operation of the whole ninety-six does the
+group attain unified mental life. These organs do not merely enable each
+member to share the experience of all; for this is already provided in
+the sensitivity to radiation which is characteristic of all brain tissue
+in our species. By means of the harmonious activity of the special
+organs a true group-mind emerges, with experience far beyond the range
+of the individuals in isolation.
+
+This would not be possible did not the temperament and capacity of each
+sub-sex differ appropriately from those of the others. I can only hint
+at these differences by analogy. Among the First Men there are many
+temperamental types whose essential natures the psychologists of that
+species never fully analysed. I may mention, however, as superficial
+designations of these types, the meditative, the active, the mystical,
+the intellectual, the artistic, the theoretical, the concrete, the
+placid, the highly-strung. Now our sub-sexes differ from one another
+temperamentally in some such manners as these, but with a far greater
+range and diversity. These differences of temperament are utilized for
+the enrichment of a group-self, such as could never have been attained
+by the First Men, even if they had been capable of ‘telepathic’
+communication and electro-magnetic unity; for they had not the range of
+specialized brain form.
+
+For all the daily business of life, then, each of us is mentally a
+distinct individual, though his ordinary means of communication with
+others is ‘telepathic’. But frequently he wakes up to be a group-mind.
+Apart from this ‘waking of individuals together’, if I may so call it,
+the group-mind has no existence; for its being is solely the being of
+the individuals comprehended together. When this communal awakening
+occurs, each individual experiences all the bodies of the group as ‘his
+own multiple body’, and perceives the world equally from all those
+bodies. This awakening happens to all the individuals at the same time.
+But over and above this simple enlargement of the experienced field is
+the awakening into new kinds of experience. Of this obviously I can tell
+you nothing, save that it differs from the lowlier state more radically
+than the infant mind differs from the mind of the individual adult, and
+that it consists of insight into many unsuspected and previously
+inconceivable features of the familiar world of men and things. Hence,
+in our group mode, most, but not all, of the perennial philosophical
+puzzles, especially those connected with the nature of personality, can
+be so lucidly restated that they cease to be puzzles.
+
+Upon this higher plane of mentality the sexual groups, and therefore the
+individuals participating in them, have social intercourse with one
+another as super-individuals. Thus they form together a community of
+minded communities. For each group is a person differing from other
+groups in character and experience somewhat as individuals differ. The
+groups themselves are not allocated to different works, in such a manner
+that one group should be wholly engaged in industry, another in
+astronomy, and so on. Only the individuals are thus allocated. In each
+group there will be members of many professions. The function of the
+group itself is purely some special manner of insight and mode of
+appreciation; in relation to which, of course, the work of the
+individuals is constantly controlled, not only while they are actually
+supporting the group-self, but also when they have each fallen once more
+into the limited experience which is ordinary individual selfhood. For
+though, as individuals, they cannot retain clear insight into the high
+matters which they so recently experienced, they do remember so much as
+is not beyond the range of individual mentality; and in particular they
+remember the bearing of the group experience upon their own conduct as
+individuals.
+
+Recently another and far more penetrating kind of experience has been
+attained, partly by good fortune, partly through research directed by
+the group-minds. For these have specialized themselves for particular
+functions in the mental life of the race, as previously the individuals
+were specialized for functions within the mind of a group. Very rarely
+and precariously has this supreme experience been achieved. In it the
+individual passes beyond his group experience, and becomes the mind of
+the race. At all times, of course, he can communicate ‘telepathically’
+with other individuals anywhere upon the planet; and frequently the
+whole race ‘listens in’ while one individual addresses the world. But in
+the true racial experience the situation is different. The system of
+radiation which embraces the whole planet, and includes the million
+million brains of the race, becomes the physical basis of a racial self.
+The individual discovers himself to be embodied in all the bodies of the
+race. He savours in a single intuition all bodily contacts, including
+the mutual embraces of all lovers. Through the myriad feet of all men
+and women he enfolds his world in a single grasp. He sees with all eyes,
+and comprehends in a single vision all visual fields. Thus he perceives
+at once and as a continuous, variegated sphere, the whole surface of the
+planet. But not only so. He now stands above the group-minds as they
+above the individuals. He regards them as a man may regard his own vital
+tissues, with mingled contempt, sympathy, reverence, and dispassion. He
+watches them as one might study the living cells of his own brain; but
+also with the aloof interest of one observing an ant hill; and yet again
+as one enthralled by the strange and diverse ways of his fellow-men; and
+further as one who, from above the battle, watches himself and his
+comrades agonizing in some desperate venture; yet chiefly as the artist
+who has no thought but for his vision and its embodiment. In the racial
+mode a man apprehends all things astronomically. Through all eyes and
+all observatories, he beholds his voyaging world, and peers outward into
+space. Thus he merges in one view, as it were, the views of deck-hand,
+captain, stoker, and the man in the crow’s-nest. Regarding the solar
+system simultaneously from both limbs of Neptune, he perceives the
+planets and the sun stereoscopically, as though in binocular vision.
+Further, his perceived ‘now’ embraces not a moment but a vast age. Thus,
+observing the galaxy from every point in succession along Neptune’s wide
+orbit, and watching the nearer stars shift hither and thither, he
+actually perceives some of the constellations in three dimensions. Nay,
+with the aid of our most recent instruments the whole galaxy appears
+stereoscopically. But the great nebulae and remote universes remain mere
+marks upon the flat sky; and in contemplation of their remoteness man,
+even as the racial self of the mightiest of all human races, realizes
+his own minuteness and impotence.
+
+But chiefly the racial mind transcends the minds of groups and
+individuals in philosophical insight into the true nature of space and
+time, mind and its objects, cosmical striving and cosmical perfection.
+Some hints of this great elucidation must presently be given; but in the
+main it cannot be communicated. Indeed such insight is beyond the reach
+of ourselves as isolated individuals, and even beyond the group-minds.
+When we have declined from the racial mentality, we cannot clearly
+remember what it was that we experienced.
+
+In particular we have one very perplexing recollection about our racial
+experience, one which involves a seeming impossibility. In the racial
+mind our experience was enlarged not only spatially but temporarily in a
+very strange manner. In respect of temporal perception, of course, minds
+may differ in two ways, in the length of the span which they can
+comprehend as ‘now’, and the minuteness of the successive events which
+they can discriminate within the ‘now’. As individuals we can hold
+within one ‘now’ a duration equal to the old terrestrial day; and within
+that duration, we can, if we will, discriminate rapid pulsations such as
+commonly we hear together as a high musical tone. As the race-mind we
+perceived as ‘now’ the whole period since the birth of the oldest living
+individuals, and the whole past of the species appeared as personal
+memory, stretching back into the mist of infancy. Yet we could, if we
+willed, discriminate within the ‘now’ one light-vibration from the next.
+In this mere increased breadth and precision of temporal perception
+there is no contradiction. But how, we ask ourselves, could the
+race-mind experience as ‘now’ a vast period in which it had no existence
+whatever? Our first experience of racial mentality lasted only as long
+as Neptune’s moon takes to complete one circuit. Before that period,
+then, the race-mind was not. Yet during the month of its existence it
+regarded the whole previous career of the race as ‘present’.
+
+Indeed, the racial experience has greatly perplexed us as individuals,
+and we can scarcely be said to remember more of it than that it was of
+extreme subtlety and extreme beauty. At the same time we often have of
+it an impression of unspeakable horror. We who, in our familiar
+individual sphere are able to regard all conceivable tragedy not merely
+with fortitude but with exultation, are obscurely conscious that as the
+racial mind we have looked into an abyss of evil such as we cannot now
+conceive, and could not endure to conceive. Yet even this hell we know
+to have been acceptable as an organic member in the austere form of the
+cosmos. We remember obscurely, and yet with a strange conviction, that
+all the age-long striving of the human spirit, no less than the petty
+cravings of individuals, was seen as a fair component in something far
+more admirable than itself; and that man ultimately defeated, no less
+than man for a while triumphant, contributes to this higher excellence.
+
+How colourless these words! How unworthy of that wholly satisfying
+beauty of all things, which in our awakened racial mode we see face to
+face. Every human being, of whatever species, may occasionally glimpse
+some fragment or aspect of existence transfigured thus with the cold
+beauty which normally he cannot see. Even the First Men, in their
+respect for tragic art, had something of this experience. The Second,
+and still more surely the Fifth, sought it deliberately. The winged
+Seventh happened upon it while they were in the air. But their minds
+were cramped; and all that they could appreciate was their own small
+world and their own tragic story. We, the Last Men, have all their zest
+in private and in racial life, whether it fares well or ill. We have it
+at all times, and we have it in respect of matters inconceivable to
+lesser minds. We have it, moreover, intelligently. Knowing well how
+strange it is to admire evil along with good, we see clearly the
+subversiveness of this experience. Even we, as mere individuals, cannot
+reconcile our loyalty to the striving spirit of man with our own divine
+aloofness. And so, if we were mere individuals, there would remain
+conflict in each of us. But in the racial mode each one of us has now
+experienced the great elucidation of intellect and of feeling. And
+though, as individuals once more, we can never recapture that far-seeing
+vision, the obscure memory of it masters us always, and controls all our
+policies. Among yourselves, the artist, after his phase of creative
+insight is passed, and he is once more a partisan in the struggle for
+existence, may carry out in detail the design conceived in his brief
+period of clarity. He remembers, but no longer sees the vision. He tries
+to fashion some perceptible embodiment of the vanished splendour. So we,
+living our individual lives, delighting in the contacts of flesh, the
+relations of minds, and all the delicate activities of human culture,
+cooperating and conflicting in a thousand individual undertakings and
+performing each his office in the material maintenance of our society,
+see all things as though transfused with light from a source which is
+itself no longer revealed.
+
+I have tried to tell you something of the most distinctive
+characteristics of our species. You can imagine that the frequent
+occasions of group mentality, and even more the rare occasions of race
+mentality, have a far-reaching effect on every individual mind, and
+therefore on our whole social order. Ours is in fact a society
+dominated, as no previous society, by a single racial purpose which is
+in a sense religious. Not that the individual’s private efflorescence is
+at all thwarted by the racial purpose. Indeed, far otherwise; for that
+purpose demands as the first condition of its fulfilment a wealth of
+individual fulfilment, physical and mental. But in each mind of man or
+woman the racial purpose presides absolutely; and hence it is the
+unquestioned motive of all social policy.
+
+I must not stay to describe in detail this society of ours, in which a
+million million citizens, grouped in over a thousand nations, live in
+perfect accord without the aid of armies or even a police force. I must
+not tell of our much prized social organization which assigns a unique
+function to each citizen, controls the procreation of new citizens of
+every type in relation to social need, and yet provides an endless
+supply of originality. We have no government and no laws, if by law is
+meant a stereotyped convention supported by force, and not to be altered
+without the aid of cumbersome machinery. Yet, though our society is in
+this sense an anarchy, it lives by means of a very intricate system of
+customs, some of which are so ancient as to have become spontaneous
+taboos, rather than deliberate conventions. It is the business of those
+among us who correspond to your lawyers and politicians to study these
+customs and suggest improvements. Those suggestions are submitted to no
+representative body, but to the whole world-population in ‘telepathic’
+conference. Ours is thus in a sense the most democratic of all
+societies. Yet in another sense it is extremely bureaucratic, since it
+is already some millions of terrestrial years since any suggestion put
+forward by the College of Organizers was rejected or even seriously
+criticized, so thoroughly do these social engineers study their
+material. The only serious possibility of conflict lies now between the
+world population as individuals and the same individuals as group minds
+or racial mind. But though in these respects there have formerly
+occurred serious conflicts, peculiarly distressing to the individuals
+who experienced them, such conflicts are now extremely rare. For, even
+as mere individuals, we are learning to trust more and more to the
+judgement and dictates of our own super-individual experience.
+
+It is time to grapple with the most difficult part of my whole task.
+Somehow, and very briefly, I must give you an idea of that outlook upon
+existence which has determined our racial purpose, making it essentially
+a religious purpose. This outlook has come to us partly through the work
+of individuals in scientific research and philosophic thought, partly
+through the influence of our group and racial experiences. You can
+imagine that it is not easy to describe this modern vision of the nature
+of things in any manner intelligible to those who have not our
+advantages. There is much in this vision which will remind you of your
+mystics; yet between them and us there is far more difference than
+similarity, in respect both of the matter and the manner of our thought.
+For while they are confident that the cosmos is perfect, we are sure
+only that it is very beautiful. While they pass to their conclusion
+without the aid of intellect, we have used that staff every step of the
+way. Thus, even when in respect of conclusions we agree with your
+mystics rather than your plodding intellectuals, in respect of method we
+applaud most your intellectuals; for they scorned to deceive themselves
+with comfortable fantasies.
+
+
+                              4. COSMOLOGY
+
+We find ourselves living in a vast and boundless, yet finite, order of
+spatio-temporal events. And each of us, as the racial mind, has learned
+that there are other such orders, other and incommensurable spheres of
+events, related to our own neither spatially nor temporally but in
+another mode of eternal being. Of the contents of those alien spheres we
+know almost nothing but that they are incomprehensible to us, even in
+our racial mentality.
+
+Within this spatio-temporal sphere of ours we remark what we call the
+Beginning and what we call the End. In the Beginning there came into
+existence, we know not how, that all-pervading and unimaginably tenuous
+gas which was the parent of all material and spiritual existence within
+time’s known span. It was in fact a very multitudinous yet precisely
+numbered host. From the crowding together of this great population into
+many swarms, arose in time the nebulae, each of which in its turn
+condenses as a galaxy, a universe of stars. The stars have their
+beginnings and their ends; and for a few moments somewhere in between
+their beginnings and their ends a few, very few, may support mind. But
+in due course will come the universal End, when all the wreckage of the
+galaxies will have drifted together as a single, barren, and seemingly
+changeless ash, in the midst of a chaos of unavailing energy.
+
+But the cosmic events which we call the Beginning and the End are final
+only in relation to our ignorance of the events which lie beyond them.
+We know, and as the racial mind we have apprehended as a clear
+necessity, that not only space but time also is boundless, though
+finite. For in a sense time is cyclic. After the End, events unknowable
+will continue to happen during a period much longer than that which will
+have passed since the Beginning; but at length there will recur the
+identical event which was itself also the Beginning.
+
+Yet though time is cyclic, it is not repetitive; there is no other time
+within which it can repeat itself. For time is but an abstraction from
+the successiveness of events that pass; and since all events whatsoever
+form together a cycle of successiveness, there is nothing constant in
+relation to which there can be repetition. And so the succession of
+events is cyclic, yet not repetitive. The birth of the all-pervading gas
+in the so-called Beginning is not merely _similar_ to another such birth
+which will occur long after us and long after the cosmic End, so-called;
+the past Beginning _is_ the future Beginning.
+
+From the Beginning to the End is but the span from one spoke to the next
+on time’s great wheel. There is a vaster span, stretching beyond the End
+and round to the Beginning. Of the events therein we know nothing, save
+that there must be such events.
+
+Everywhere within time’s cycle there is endless passage of events. In a
+continuous flux, they occur and vanish, yielding to their successors.
+Yet each one of them is eternal. Though passage is of their very nature,
+and without passage they are nothing, yet they have eternal being. But
+their passage is no illusion. They have eternal being, yet eternally
+they exist with passage. In our racial mode we see clearly that this is
+so; but in our individual mode it remains a mystery. Yet even in our
+individual mode we must accept both sides of this mysterious antinomy,
+as a fiction needed for the rationalizing of our experience.
+
+The Beginning precedes the End by some hundred million million
+terrestrial years, and succeeds it by a period at least nine times
+longer. In the middle of the smaller span lies the still shorter period
+within which alone the living worlds can occur. And they are very few.
+One by one they dawn into mentality and die, successive blooms in life’s
+short summer. Before that season and after it, even to the Beginning and
+to the End, and even before the Beginning and after the End, sleep,
+utter oblivion. Not before there are stars, and not after the stars are
+chilled, can there be life. And then, rarely.
+
+In our own galaxy there have occurred hitherto some twenty thousand
+worlds that have conceived life. And of these a few score have attained
+or surpassed the mentality of the First Men. But of those that have
+reached this development, man has now outstripped the rest, and today
+man alone survives.
+
+There are the millions of other galaxies, for instance the Andromedan
+island. We have some reason to surmise that in that favoured universe
+mind may have attained to insight and power incomparably greater than
+our own. But all that we know for certain is that it contains four
+worlds of high order.
+
+Of the host of other universes that lie within range of our
+mind-detecting instruments, none have produced anything comparable with
+man. But there are many universes too remote to be estimated.
+
+You may wonder how we have come to detect these remote lives and
+intelligences. I can say only that the occurrence of mentality produces
+certain minute astronomical effects, to which our instruments are
+sensitive even at great distances. These effects increase slightly with
+the mere mass of living matter on any astronomical body, but far more
+with its mental and spiritual development. Long ago it was the spiritual
+development of the world-community of the Fifth Men that dragged the
+moon from its orbit. And in our own case, so numerous is our society
+today, and so greatly developed in mental and spiritual activities, that
+only by continuous expense of physical energy can we preserve the solar
+system from confusion.
+
+We have another means of detecting minds remote from us in space. We
+can, of course, enter into past minds wherever they are, so long as they
+are intelligible to us; and we have tried to use this power for the
+discovery of remote minded worlds. But in general the experience of such
+minds is too different in fibre from our own for us to be able even to
+detect its existence. And so our knowledge of minds in other worlds is
+almost wholly derived from their physical effects.
+
+We cannot say that nowhere save on those rare bodies called planets does
+life ever occur. For we have evidence that in a few of the younger stars
+there is life, and even intelligence. How it persists in an incandescent
+environment we know not, nor whether it is perhaps the life of the star
+as a whole, as a single organism, or the life of many flame-like
+inhabitants of the star. All that we know is that no star in its prime
+has life, and therefore that the lives of the younger ones are probably
+doomed.
+
+Again, we know that mind occurs, though very seldom, on a few extremely
+old stars, no longer incandescent. What the future of these minds will
+be, we cannot tell. Perhaps it is with them, and not with man, that the
+hope of the cosmos lies. But at present they are all primitive.
+
+Today nothing anywhere in this galaxy of ours can compare with man in
+respect of vision and mental creativeness.
+
+We have, therefore, come to regard our community as of some importance.
+Especially so in the light of our metaphysics; but I can only hint at
+our metaphysical vision of things by means of metaphors which will
+convey at best a caricature of that vision.
+
+In the Beginning there was great potency, but little form. And the
+spirit slept as the multitude of discrete primordial existents.
+Thenceforth there has been a long and fluctuating adventure towards
+harmonious complexity of form, and towards the awakening of the spirit
+into unity, knowledge, delight, and self-expression. And this is the
+goal of all living, that the cosmos may be known, and admired, and that
+it may be crowned with further beauties. Nowhere and at no time, so far
+as we can tell, at least within our own galaxy, has the adventure
+reached further than in ourselves. And in us, what has been achieved is
+but a minute beginning. But it is a real beginning. Man in our day has
+gained some depth of insight, some breadth of knowledge, some power of
+creation, some faculty of worship. We have looked far afield. We have
+probed not altogether superficially into the nature of existence, and
+have found it very beautiful, though also terrible. We have created a
+not inconsiderable community; and we have wakened together to be the
+unique spirit of that community. We had proposed to ourselves a very
+long and arduous future, which should culminate, at some time before the
+End, in the complete achievement of the spirit’s ideal. But now we know
+that disaster is already near at hand.
+
+When we are in full possession of our faculties, we are not distressed
+by this fate. For we know that though our fair community must cease, it
+has also indestructible being. We have at least carved into one region
+of the eternal real a form which has beauty of no mean order. The great
+company of diverse and most lovely men and women in all their subtle
+relationships, striving with a single purpose towards the goal which is
+mind’s final goal; the community and super-individuality of that great
+host; the beginnings of further insight and creativeness upon the higher
+plane—these surely are real achievements—even though, in the larger
+view, they are minute achievements.
+
+Yet though we are not at all dismayed by our own extinction, we cannot
+but wonder whether or not in the far future some other spirit will
+fulfil the cosmic ideal, or whether we ourselves are the modest crown of
+existence. Unfortunately, though we can explore the past wherever there
+are intelligible minds, we cannot enter into the future. And so in vain
+we ask, will ever any spirit awake to gather all spirits into itself, to
+elicit from the stars their full flower of beauty, to know all things
+together, and admire all things justly.
+
+If in the far future this end will be achieved, it is really achieved
+even now; for whenever it occurs, its being is eternal. But on the other
+hand if it is indeed achieved eternally, this achievement must be the
+work of spirits or a spirit not wholly unlike ourselves, though
+infinitely greater. And the physical location of that spirit must lie in
+the far future.
+
+But if no future spirit will achieve this end before it dies, then,
+though the cosmos is indeed very beautiful, it is not perfect.
+
+I said that we regard the cosmos as very beautiful. Yet it is also very
+terrible. For ourselves, it is easy to look forward with equanimity to
+our end, and even to the end of our admired community; for what we prize
+most is the excellent beauty of the cosmos. But there are the myriads of
+spirits who have never entered into that vision. They have suffered, and
+they were not permitted that consolation. There are, first, the
+incalculable hosts of lowly creatures scattered over all the ages in all
+the minded worlds. Theirs was only a dream life, and their misery not
+often poignant; but none the less they are to be pitied for having
+missed the more poignant experience in which alone spirit can find
+fulfilment. Then there are the intelligent beings, human and otherwise;
+the many minded worlds throughout the galaxies, that have struggled into
+cognizance, striven for they knew not what, tasted brief delights and
+lived in the shadow of pain and death, until at last their life has been
+crushed out by careless fate. In our solar system there are the
+Martians, insanely and miserably obsessed; the native Venerians,
+imprisoned in their ocean and murdered for man’s sake; and all the hosts
+of the forerunning human species. A few individuals no doubt in every
+period, and many in certain favoured races, have lived on the whole
+happily. And a few have even known something of the supreme beatitude.
+But for most, until our modern epoch, thwarting has outweighed
+fulfilment; and if actual grief has not preponderated over joy, it is
+because, mercifully, the fulfilment that is wholly missed cannot be
+conceived.
+
+Our predecessors of the Sixteenth species, oppressed by this vast
+horror, undertook a forlorn and seemingly irrational crusade for the
+rescue of the tragic past. We see now clearly that their enterprise,
+though desperate, was not quite fantastic. For, if ever the cosmic ideal
+should be realized, even though for a moment only, then in that time the
+awakened Soul of All will embrace within itself all spirits whatever
+throughout the whole of time’s wide circuit. And so to each one of them,
+even to the least, it will seem that he has awakened and discovered
+himself to be the Soul of All, knowing all things and rejoicing in all
+things. And though afterwards, through the inevitable decay of the
+stars, this most glorious vision must be lost, suddenly or in the
+long-drawn-out defeat of life, yet would the awakened Soul of All have
+eternal being, and in it each martyred spirit would have beatitude
+eternally, though unknown to itself in its own temporal mode.
+
+It may be that this is the case. If not, then eternally the martyred
+spirits are martyred only, and not blest.
+
+We cannot tell which of these possibilities is fact. As individuals we
+earnestly desire that the eternal being of things may include this
+supreme awakening. This, nothing less than this, has been the remote but
+ever-present goal of our practical religious life and of our social
+policy.
+
+In our racial mode also we have greatly desired this end, but
+differently.
+
+Even as individuals, all our desires are tempered by that relentless
+admiration of fate which we recognize as the spirit’s highest
+achievement. Even as individuals, we exult in the issue whether our
+enterprises succeed or fail. The pioneer defeated, the lover bereaved
+and overwhelmed, can find in his disaster the supreme experience, the
+dispassionate ecstasy which salutes the Real as it is and would not
+change one jot of it. Even as individuals, we can regard the impending
+extinction of mankind as a thing superb though tragic. Strong in the
+knowledge that the human spirit has already inscribed the cosmos with
+indestructible beauty, and that inevitably, whether sooner or later,
+man’s career must end, we face this too sudden end with laughter in our
+hearts, and peace.
+
+But there is the one thought by which, in our individual state, we are
+still dismayed, namely that the cosmic enterprise itself may fail; that
+the full potentiality of the Real may never find expression; that never,
+in any stage of time, the multitudinous and conflicting existents should
+be organized as the universal harmonious living body; that the spirit’s
+eternal nature, therefore, should be discordant, miserably tranced; that
+the indestructible beauties of this our sphere of space and time should
+remain imperfect, and remain, too, not adequately worshipped.
+
+But in the racial mind this ultimate dread has no place. On those few
+occasions when we have awakened racially, we have come to regard with
+piety even the possibility of cosmical defeat. For as the racial mind,
+though in a manner we earnestly desired the fulfilment of the cosmical
+ideal, yet we were no more enslaved to this desire than, as individuals,
+we are enslaved to our private desires. For though the racial mind wills
+this supreme achievement, yet in the same act it holds itself aloof from
+it, and from all desire, and all emotion, save the ecstasy which admires
+the real as it is, and accepts its dark-bright form with joy.
+
+As individuals, therefore, we try to regard the whole cosmic adventure
+as a symphony now in progress, which may or may not some day achieve its
+just conclusion. Like music, however, the vast biography of the stars is
+to be judged not in respect of its final moment merely, but in respect
+of the perfection of its whole form; and whether its form as a whole is
+perfect or not, we cannot know. Actual music is a pattern of
+intertwining themes which evolve and die; and these again are woven of
+simpler members, which again are spun of chords and unitary tones. But
+the music of the spheres is of a complexity almost infinitely more
+subtle, and its themes rank above and below one another in hierarchy
+beyond hierarchy. None but a God, none but a mind subtle as the music
+itself, could hear the whole in all its detail, and grasp in one act its
+close-knit individuality, if such it has. Not for any human mind to say
+authoritatively, ‘This is music, wholly’, or to say, ‘This is mere
+noise, flecked now and then by shreds of significance’.
+
+The music of the spheres is unlike other music not only in respect of
+its richness, but also in the nature of its medium. It is a music not
+merely of sounds but of souls. Each of its minor themes, each of its
+chords, each single tone of it, each tremor of each tone, is in its own
+degree more than a mere passive factor in the music; it is a listener,
+and also a creator. Wherever there is individuality of form, there is
+also an individual appreciator and originator. And the more complex the
+form, the more percipient and active the spirit. Thus in every
+individual factor within the music, the musical environment of that
+factor is experienced, vaguely or precisely, erroneously or with greater
+approximation to truth; and, being experienced, it is admired or
+loathed, rightly or falsely. And it is influenced. Just as in actual
+music each theme is in a manner a determination of its forerunners and
+followers and present accompaniment, so in this vaster music each
+individual factor is itself a determination of its environment. Also it
+is a determinant, both of that which precedes and that which follows.
+
+But whether these manifold interdeterminations are after all haphazard,
+or, as in music, controlled in relation to the beauty of the whole, we
+know not; nor whether, if this is the case, the beautiful whole of
+things is the work of some mind; nor yet whether some mind admires it
+adequately as a whole of beauty.
+
+But this we know: that we ourselves, when the spirit is most awake in
+us, admire the Real as it is revealed to us, and salute its dark-bright
+form with joy.
+
+
+
+
+                         XVI _The Last of Man_
+
+
+                          1. SENTENCE OF DEATH
+
+Ours has been essentially a philosophical age, in fact the supreme age
+of philosophy. But a great practical problem has also concerned us. We
+have had to prepare for the task of preserving humanity during a most
+difficult period which was calculated to begin about one hundred million
+years hence, but might, in certain circumstances, be sprung upon us at
+very short notice. Long ago the human inhabitants of Venus believed that
+already in their day the sun was about to enter the ‘white dwarf’ phase,
+and that the time would therefore soon come when their world would be
+frost-bound. This calculation was unduly pessimistic; but we know now
+that, even allowing for the slight delay caused by the great collision,
+the solar collapse must begin at some date astronomically not very
+distant. We had planned that during the comparatively brief period of
+the actual shrinkage, we would move our planet steadily nearer to the
+sun, until finally it should settle in the narrowest possible orbit.
+
+Man would then be comfortably placed for a very long period. But in the
+fullness of time there would come a far more serious crisis. The sun
+would continue to cool, and at last man would no longer be able to live
+by means of solar radiation. It would become necessary to annihilate
+matter to supply the deficiency. The other planets might be used for
+this purpose, and possibly the sun itself. Or, given the sustenance for
+so long a voyage, man might boldly project his planet into the
+neighbourhood of some younger star. Thenceforth, perhaps, he might
+operate upon a far grander scale. He might explore and colonize all
+suitable worlds in every corner of the galaxy, and organize himself as a
+vast community of minded worlds. Even (so we dreamed) he might achieve
+intercourse with other galaxies. It did not seem impossible that man
+himself was the germ of the world-soul, which, we still hope, is
+destined to awake for a while before the universal decline, and to crown
+the eternal cosmos with its due of knowledge and admiration, fleeting
+yet eternal. We dared to think that in some far distant epoch the human
+spirit, clad in all wisdom, power, and delight, might look back upon our
+primitive age with a certain respect; no doubt with pity also and
+amusement, but none the less with admiration for the spirit in us, still
+only half awake, and struggling against great disabilities. In such a
+mood, half pity, half admiration, we ourselves look back upon the
+primitive mankinds.
+
+Our prospect has now suddenly and completely changed, for astronomers
+have made a startling discovery, which assigns to man a speedy end. His
+existence has ever been precarious. At any stage of his career he might
+easily have been exterminated by some slight alteration of his chemical
+environment, by a more than usually malignant microbe, by a radical
+change of climate, or by the manifold effects of his own folly. Twice
+already he has been almost destroyed by astronomical events. How easily
+might it happen that the solar system, now rushing through a somewhat
+more crowded region of the galaxy, should become entangled with, or
+actually strike, a major astronomical body, and be destroyed. But fate,
+as it turns out, has a more surprising end in store for man.
+
+Not long ago an unexpected alteration was observed to be taking place in
+a near star. Through no discoverable cause, it began to change from
+white to violet, and increase in brightness. Already it has attained
+such extravagant brilliance that, though its actual disc remains a mere
+point in our sky, its dazzling purple radiance illuminates our nocturnal
+landscapes with hideous beauty. Our astronomers have ascertained that
+this is no ordinary ‘nova’, that it is not one of those stars addicted
+to paroxysms of brilliance. It is something unprecedented, a normal star
+suffering from a unique disease, a fantastic acceleration of its vital
+process, a riotous squandering of the energy which should have remained
+locked within its substance for aeons. At the present rate it will be
+reduced either to an inert cinder or to actual annihilation in a few
+thousand years. This extraordinary event may possibly have been produced
+by unwise tamperings on the part of intelligent beings in the star’s
+neighbourhood. But, indeed, since all matter at very high temperature is
+in a state of unstable equilibrium, the cause may have been merely some
+conjunction of natural circumstances.
+
+The event was first regarded simply as an intriguing spectacle. But
+further study roused a more serious interest. Our own planet, and
+therefore the sun also, was suffering a continuous and increasing
+bombardment of ethereal vibrations, most of which were of incredibly
+high frequency, and of unknown potentiality. What would be their effect
+upon the sun? After some centuries, certain astronomical bodies in the
+neighbourhood of the deranged star were seen to be infected with its
+disorder. Their fever increased the splendour of our night sky, but it
+also confirmed our fears. We still hoped that the sun might prove too
+distant to be seriously influenced, but careful analysis now showed that
+this hope must be abandoned. The sun’s remoteness might cause a delay of
+some thousands of years before the cumulative effects of the bombardment
+could start the disintegration; but sooner or later the sun itself must
+be infected. Probably within thirty thousand years life will be
+impossible anywhere within a vast radius of the sun, so vast a radius
+that it is quite impossible to propel our planet away fast enough to
+escape before the storm can catch us.
+
+
+                     2. BEHAVIOUR OF THE CONDEMNED
+
+The discovery of this doom kindled in us unfamiliar emotions. Hitherto
+humanity had seemed to be destined for a very long future, and the
+individual himself had been accustomed to look forward to very many
+thousands of years of personal life, ending in voluntary sleep. We had
+of course often conceived, and even savoured in imagination, the sudden
+destruction of our world. But now we faced it as a fact. Outwardly
+everyone behaved with perfect serenity, but inwardly every mind was in
+turmoil. Not that there was any question of our falling into panic or
+despair, for in this crisis our native detachment stood us in good
+stead. But inevitably some time passed before our minds became properly
+adjusted to the new prospect, before we could see our fate outlined
+clearly and beautifully against the cosmic background.
+
+Presently, however, we learned to contemplate the whole great saga of
+man as a completed work of art, and to admire it no less for its sudden
+and tragic end than for the promise in it which was not to be fulfilled.
+Grief was now transfigured wholly into ecstasy. Defeat, which had
+oppressed us with a sense of man’s impotence and littleness among the
+stars, brought us into a new sympathy and reverence for all those
+myriads of beings in the past out of whose obscure strivings we had been
+born. We saw the most brilliant of our own race and the lowliest of our
+prehuman forerunners as essentially spirits of equal excellence, though
+cast in diverse circumstances. When we looked round on the heavens, and
+at the violet splendour which was to destroy us, we were filled with awe
+and pity, awe for the inconceivable potentiality of this bright host,
+pity for its self-thwarting effort to fulfil itself as the universal
+spirit.
+
+At this stage it seemed that there was nothing left for us to do but to
+crowd as much excellence as possible into our remaining life, and meet
+our end in the noblest manner. But now there came upon us once more the
+rare experience of racial mentality. For a whole Neptunian year every
+individual lived in an enraptured trance, in which, as the racial mind,
+he or she resolved many ancient mysteries and saluted many unexpected
+beauties. This ineffable experience, lived through under the shadow of
+death, was the flower of man’s whole being. But I can tell nothing of
+it, save that when it was over we possessed, even as individuals, a new
+peace, in which, strangely but harmoniously, were blended grief,
+exaltation, and god-like laughter.
+
+In consequence of this racial experience we found ourselves faced with
+two tasks which had not before been contemplated. The one referred to
+the future, the other to the past.
+
+In respect of the future, we are now setting about the forlorn task of
+disseminating among the stars the seeds of a new humanity. For this
+purpose we shall make use of the pressure of radiation from the sun, and
+chiefly the extravagantly potent radiation that will later be available.
+We are hoping to devise extremely minute electro-magnetic
+‘wave-systems’, akin to normal protons and electrons, which will be
+individually capable of sailing forward upon the hurricane of solar
+radiation at a speed not wholly incomparable with the speed of light
+itself. This is a difficult task. But, further, these units must be so
+cunningly inter-related that, in favourable conditions, they may tend to
+combine to form spores of life, and to develop, not indeed into human
+beings, but into lowly organisms with a definite evolutionary bias
+toward the essentials of human nature. These objects we shall project
+from beyond our atmosphere in immense quantities at certain points of
+our planet’s orbit, so that solar radiation may carry them towards the
+most promising regions of the galaxy. The chance that any of them will
+survive to reach their destination is small, and still smaller the
+chance that any of them will find a suitable environment. But if any of
+this human seed should fall upon good ground, it will embark, we hope,
+upon a somewhat rapid biological evolution, and produce in due season
+whatever complex organic forms are possible in its environment. It will
+have a very real physiological bias toward the evolution of
+intelligence. Indeed it will have a much greater bias in that direction
+than occurred on the Earth in those subvital atomic groupings from which
+terrestrial life eventually sprang.
+
+It is just conceivable, then, that by extreme good fortune man may still
+influence the future of this galaxy, not directly but through his
+creature. But in the vast music of existence the actual theme of mankind
+now ceases for ever. Finished, the long reiterations of man’s history;
+defeated, the whole proud enterprise of his maturity. The stored
+experience of many mankinds must sink into oblivion, and today’s wisdom
+must vanish.
+
+The other task which occupies us, that which relates to the past, is one
+which may very well seem to you nonsensical.
+
+We have long been able to enter into past minds and participate in their
+experience. Hitherto we have been passive spectators merely, but
+recently we have acquired the power of influencing past minds. This
+seems an impossibility; for a past event is what it is, and how can it
+conceivably be altered at a subsequent date, even in the minutest
+respect?
+
+Now it is true that past events are what they are, irrevocably; but in
+certain cases some feature of a past event may depend on an event in
+their far future. The past event would never have been as it actually
+was (and is, eternally), if there had not been going to be a certain
+future event, which, though not contemporaneous with the past event,
+influences it directly in the sphere of eternal being. The passage of
+events is real, and time is the successiveness of passing events; but
+though events have passage, they have also eternal being. And in certain
+rare cases mental events far separated in time determine one another
+directly by way of eternity.
+
+Our own minds have often been profoundly influenced by direct inspection
+of past minds; and now we find that certain events of certain past minds
+are determined by present events in our own present minds. No doubt
+there are some mental events which are what they are by virtue of mental
+past-processes which we _shall_ perform but have not yet performed.
+
+Our historians and psychologists, engaged on direct inspection of past
+minds, had often complained of certain ‘singular’ points in past minds,
+where the ordinary laws of psychology fail to give a full explanation of
+the course of mental events; where, in fact, some wholly unknown
+influence seemed to be at work. Later it was found that, in some cases
+at least, this disturbance of the ordinary principles of psychology
+corresponded with certain thoughts or desires in the mind of the
+observer, living in our own age. Of course, only such matters as could
+have significance to the past mind could influence it at all. Thoughts
+and desires of ours which have no meaning to the particular
+past-individual fail to enter into his experience. New ideas and new
+values are only to be introduced by arranging familiar matter so that it
+may gain a new significance. Nevertheless we now found ourselves in
+possession of an amazing power of communicating with the past, and
+contributing to its thought and action, though of course we could not
+_alter_ it.
+
+But, it may be asked, what if, in respect of a particular ‘singularity’
+in some past mind, we do not, after all, choose to provide the necessary
+influence to account for it? The question is meaningless. There is no
+possibility that we should not choose to influence those past minds
+which are, as a matter of fact, dependent on our influence. For it is in
+the sphere of eternity (wherein alone we meet past minds), that we
+really make this free choice. And in the sphere of time, though the
+choosing has relations with our modern age, and may be said to occur in
+that age, it also had relations with the past mind, and may be said to
+have occurred also long ago.
+
+There are in some past minds singularities which are not the product of
+any influence that we have exerted today. Some of these singularities,
+no doubt, we shall ourselves produce on some occasion before our
+destruction. But it may be that some are due to an influence other than
+ours, perhaps to beings which, by good fortune, may spring long hence
+from our forlorn seminal enterprise; or they may be due perhaps to the
+cosmic mind, whose future occurrence and eternal existence we earnestly
+desire. However that may be, there are a few remarkable minds, scattered
+up and down past ages and even in the most primitive human races, which
+suggest an influence other than our own. They are so ‘singular’ in one
+respect or another, that we cannot give a perfectly clear psychological
+account of them in terms of the past only; and yet we ourselves are not
+the instigators of their singularity. Your Jesus, your Socrates, your
+Gautama, show traces of this uniqueness. But the most original of all
+were too eccentric to have any influence on their contemporaries. It is
+possible that in ourselves also there are ‘singularities’ which cannot
+be accounted for wholly in terms of ordinary biological and
+psychological laws. If we could prove that this is the case, we should
+have very definite evidence of the occurrence of a high order of
+mentality somewhere in the future, and therefore of its eternal
+existence. But hitherto this problem has proved too subtle for us, even
+in the racial mode. It may be that the mere fact that we have succeeded
+in attaining racial mentality involves some remote future influence. It
+is even conceivable that every creative advance that any mind has ever
+made involves unwitting cooperation with the cosmic mind which, perhaps,
+will awake at some date before the End.
+
+We have two methods of influencing the past through past individuals;
+for we can operate either upon minds of great originality and power, or
+upon any average individual whose circumstances happen to suit our
+purpose. In original minds we can only suggest some very vague
+intuition, which is then ‘worked up’ by the individual himself into some
+form very different from that which we intended, but very potent as a
+factor in the culture of his age. Average minds, on the other hand, we
+can use as passive instruments for the conveyance of detailed ideas. But
+in such cases the individual is incapable of working up the material
+into a great and potent form, suited to his age.
+
+But what is it, you may ask, that we seek to contribute to the past? We
+seek to afford intuitions of truth and of value, which, though easy to
+us from our point of vantage, would be impossible to the unaided past.
+We seek to help the past to make the best of itself, just as one man may
+help another. We seek to direct the attention of past individuals and
+past races to truths and beauties which, though implicit in their
+experience, would otherwise be overlooked.
+
+We seek to do this for two reasons. Entering into past minds, we become
+perfectly acquainted with them, and cannot but love them; and so we
+desire to help them. By influencing selected individuals, we seek to
+influence indirectly great multitudes. But our second motive is very
+different. We see the career of Man in his successive planetary homes as
+a process of very great beauty. It is far indeed from the perfect; but
+it is very beautiful, with the beauty of tragic art. Now it turns out
+that this beautiful thing entails our operation at various points in the
+past. Therefore we will to operate.
+
+Unfortunately our first inexperienced efforts were disastrous. Many of
+the fatuities which primitive minds in all ages have been prone to
+attribute to the influence of disembodied spirits, whether deities,
+fiends, or the dead, are but the gibberish which resulted from our
+earliest experiments. And this book, so admirable in our conception, has
+issued from the brain of the writer, your contemporary, in such disorder
+as to be mostly rubbish.
+
+We are concerned with the past not only in so far as we make very rare
+contributions to it, but chiefly in two other manners.
+
+First, we are engaged upon the great enterprise of becoming lovingly
+acquainted with the past, the human past, in every detail. This is, so
+to speak, our supreme act of filial piety. When one being comes to know
+and love another, a new and beautiful thing is created, namely the love.
+The cosmos is thus far and at that date enhanced. We seek then to know
+and love every past mind that we can enter. In most cases we can know
+them with far more understanding than they can know themselves. Not the
+least of them, not the worst of them, shall be left out of this great
+work of understanding and admiration.
+
+There is another manner in which we are concerned with the human past.
+We need its help. For we, who are triumphantly reconciled to our fate,
+are under obligation to devote our last energies not to ecstatic
+contemplation but to a forlorn and most uncongenial task, the
+dissemination. This task is almost intolerably repugnant to us. Gladly
+would we spend our last days in embellishing our community and our
+culture, and in pious exploration of the past. But it is incumbent on
+us, who are by nature artists and philosophers, to direct the whole
+attention of our world upon the arid labour of designing an artificial
+human seed, producing it in immense quantities, and projecting it among
+the stars. If there is to be any possibility of success, we must
+undertake a very lengthy programme of physical research, and finally
+organize a world-wide system of manufacture. The work will not be
+completed until our physical constitution is already being undermined,
+and the disintegration of our community has already begun. Now we could
+never fulfil this policy without a zealous conviction of its importance.
+Here it is that the past can help us. We, who have now learnt so
+thoroughly the supreme art of ecstatic fatalism, go humbly to the past
+to learn over again that other supreme achievement of the spirit,
+loyalty to the forces of life embattled against the forces of death.
+Wandering among the heroic and often forlorn ventures of the past, we
+are fired once more with primitive zeal. Thus, when we return to our own
+world, we are able, even while we preserve in our hearts the peace that
+passeth understanding, to struggle as though we cared only for victory.
+
+
+                              3. EPILOGUE
+
+I am speaking to you now from a period about twenty thousand terrestrial
+years after the date at which the whole preceding part of this book was
+communicated. It has become very difficult to reach you, and still more
+difficult to speak to you; for already the Last Men are not the men they
+were.
+
+Our two great undertakings are still unfinished. Much of the human past
+remains imperfectly explored, and the projection of the seed is scarcely
+begun. That enterprise has proved far more difficult than was expected.
+Only within the last few years have we succeeded in designing an
+artificial human dust capable of being carried forward on the sun’s
+radiation, hardy enough to endure the conditions of a trans-galactic
+voyage of many millions of years, and yet intricate enough to bear the
+potentiality of life and of spiritual development. We are now preparing
+to manufacture this seminal matter in great quantities, and to cast it
+into space at suitable points on the planet’s orbit.
+
+Some centuries have now passed since the sun began to show the first
+symptoms of disintegration, namely a slight change of colour towards the
+blue, followed by a definite increase of brightness and heat. Today,
+when he pierces the ever-thickening cloud, he smites us with an
+intolerable steely brilliance which destroys the sight of anyone foolish
+enough to face it. Even in the cloudy weather which is now normal, the
+eye is wounded by the fierce violet glare. Eye-troubles afflict us all,
+in spite of the special glasses which have been designed to protect us.
+The mere heat, too, is already destructive. We are forcing our planet
+outward from its old orbit in an ever-widening spiral; but, do what we
+will, we cannot prevent the climate from becoming more and more deadly,
+even at the poles. The intervening regions have already been deserted.
+Evaporation of the equatorial oceans has thrown the whole atmosphere
+into tumult, so that even at the poles we are tormented by hot wet
+hurricanes and incredible electric storms. These have already shattered
+most of our great buildings, sometimes burying a whole teeming province
+under an avalanche of tumbled vitreous crags.
+
+Our two polar communities at first managed to maintain radio
+communication; but it is now some time since we of the south received
+news of the more distressed north. Even with us the situation is already
+desperate. We had recently established some hundreds of stations for the
+dissemination, but less than a score have been able to operate. This
+failure is due mainly to an increasing lack of personnel. The deluge of
+fantastic solar radiation has had disastrous effect on the human
+organism. Epidemics of a malignant tumour, which medical science has
+failed to conquer, have reduced the southern people to a mere remnant,
+and this in spite of the migration of the tropical races into the
+Antarctic. Each of us, moreover, is but the wreckage of his former self.
+The higher mental functions, attained only in the most developed human
+species, are already lost or disordered, through the breakdown of their
+special tissues. Not only has the racial mind vanished, but the sexual
+groups have lost their mental unity. Three of the sub-sexes have already
+been exterminated by derangement of their chemical nature. Glandular
+troubles, indeed, have unhinged many of us with anxieties and loathings
+which we cannot conquer, though we know them to be unreasonable. Even
+the normal power of ‘telepathic’ communication has become so unreliable
+that we have been compelled to fall back upon the archaic practice of
+vocal symbolism. Exploration of the past is now confined to specialists,
+and is a dangerous profession, which may lead to disorders of temporal
+experience.
+
+Degeneration of the higher neural centres has also brought about in us a
+far more serious and deep-seated trouble, namely a general spiritual
+degradation which would formerly have seemed impossible, so confident
+were we of our integrity. The perfectly dispassionate will had been for
+many millions of years universal among us, and the corner-stone of our
+whole society and culture. We had almost forgotten that it has a
+physiological basis, and that if that basis were undermined, we might no
+longer be capable of rational conduct. But, drenched for some thousands
+of years by the unique stellar radiation, we have gradually lost not
+only the ecstasy of dispassionate worship, but even the capacity for
+normal disinterested behaviour. Everyone is now liable to an irrational
+bias in favour of himself as a private person, as against his fellows.
+Personal envy, uncharitableness, even murder and gratuitous cruelty,
+formerly unknown amongst us, are now becoming common. At first when men
+began to notice in themselves these archaic impulses, they crushed them
+with amused contempt. But as the highest nerve centres fell further into
+decay, the brute in us began to be ever more unruly, and the human more
+uncertain. Rational conduct was henceforth to be achieved only after an
+exhausting and degrading ‘moral struggle’, instead of spontaneously and
+fluently. Nay, worse, increasingly often the struggle ended not in
+victory but defeat. Imagine then, the terror and disgust that gripped us
+when we found ourselves one and all condemned to a desperate struggle
+against impulses which we had been accustomed to regard as insane. It is
+distressing enough to know that each one of us might at any moment,
+merely to help some dear individual or other, betray his supreme duty
+toward the dissemination; but it is harrowing to discover ourselves
+sometimes so far sunk as to be incapable even of common loving-kindness
+toward our neighbours. For a man to favour himself against his friend or
+beloved, even in the slightest respect, was formerly unknown. But today
+many of us are haunted by the look of amazed horror and pity in the eyes
+of an injured friend.
+
+In the early stages of our trouble lunatic asylums were founded, but
+they soon became over-crowded and a burden on a stricken community. The
+insane were then killed. But it became clear that by former standards we
+were all insane. No man now can trust himself to behave reasonably.
+
+And, of course, we cannot trust each other. Partly through the prevalent
+irrationality of desire, and partly through the misunderstandings which
+have come with the loss of ‘telepathic’ communication, we have been
+plunged into all manner of discords. A political constitution and system
+of laws had to be devised, but they seem to have increased our troubles.
+Order of a kind is maintained by an overworked police force. But this is
+in the hands of the professional organizers, who have now all the vices
+of bureaucracy. It was largely through their folly that two of the
+antarctic nations broke into social revolution, and are now preparing to
+meet the armament which an insane world-government is devising for their
+destruction. Meanwhile, through the breakdown of the economic order, and
+the impossibility of reaching the food-factories on Jupiter, starvation
+is added to our troubles, and has afforded to certain ingenious lunatics
+the opportunity of trading at the expense of others.
+
+All this folly in a doomed world, and in a community that was yesterday
+the very flower of a galaxy! Those of us who still care for the life of
+the spirit are tempted to regret that mankind did not choose decent
+suicide before ever the putrescence began. But indeed this could not be.
+The task that was undertaken had to be completed. For the Scattering of
+the Seed has come to be for every one of us the supreme religious duty.
+Even those who continually sin against it recognize this as the last
+office of man. It was for this that we outstayed our time, and must
+watch ourselves decline from spiritual estate into that brutishness from
+which man has so seldom freed himself.
+
+Yet why do we persist in the forlorn effort? Even if by good luck the
+seed should take root somewhere and thrive, there will surely come an
+end to its adventure, if not swiftly in fire, then in the ultimate
+battle of life against encroaching frost. Our labour will at best sow
+for death an ampler harvest. There seems no rational defence of it,
+unless it be rational to carry out blindly a purpose conceived in a
+former and more enlightened state.
+
+But we cannot feel sure that we really were more enlightened. We look
+back now at our former selves, with wonder, but also with
+incomprehension and misgiving. We try to recall the glory that seemed to
+be revealed to each of us in the racial mind, but we remember almost
+nothing of it. We cannot rise even to that more homely beatitude which
+was once within the reach of the unaided individual, that serenity
+which, it seemed, should be the spirit’s answer to every tragic event.
+It is gone from us. It is not only impossible but inconceivable. We now
+see our private distresses and the public calamity as merely hideous.
+That after so long a struggle into maturity man should be roasted alive
+like a trapped mouse, for the entertainment of a lunatic! How can any
+beauty lie in that?
+
+But this is not our last word to you. For though we have fallen, there
+is still something in us left over from the time that is passed. We have
+become blind and weak; but the knowledge that we are so has forced us to
+a great effort. Those of us who have not already sunk too far have
+formed themselves into a brotherhood for mutual strengthening, so that
+the true human spirit may be maintained a little longer, until the seed
+has been well sown, and death be permissible. We call ourselves the
+Brotherhood of the Condemned. We seek to be faithful to one another, and
+to our common undertaking, and to the vision which is no longer
+revealed. We are vowed to the comforting of all distressed persons who
+are not yet permitted death. We are vowed also to the dissemination. And
+we are vowed to keep the spirit bright until the end.
+
+Now and again we meet together in little groups or great companies to
+hearten ourselves with one another’s presence. Sometimes on these
+occasions we can but sit in silence, groping for consolation and for
+strength. Sometimes, the spoken word flickers hither and thither amongst
+us, shedding a brief light but little warmth to the soul that lies
+freezing in a torrid world.
+
+But there is among us one, moving from place to place and company to
+company, whose voice all long to hear. He is young, the last born of the
+Last Men; for he was the latest to be conceived before we learned man’s
+doom, and put an end to all conceiving. Being the latest, he is also the
+noblest. Not him alone, but all his generation, we salute, and look to
+for strength; but he, the youngest, is different from the rest. In him
+the spirit, which is but the flesh awakened into spirituality, has power
+to withstand the tempest of solar energy longer than the rest of us. It
+is as though the sun itself were eclipsed by this spirit’s brightness.
+It is as though in him at last, and for a day only, man’s promise were
+fulfilled. For though, like others, he suffers in the flesh, he is above
+his suffering. And though more than the rest of us he feels the
+suffering of others, he is above his pity. In his comforting there is a
+strange sweet raillery which can persuade the sufferer to smile at his
+own pain. When this youngest brother of ours contemplates with us our
+dying world and the frustration of all man’s striving, he is not, like
+us, dismayed, but quiet. In the presence of such quietness despair
+wakens into peace. By his reasonable speech, almost by the mere sound of
+his voice, our eyes are opened, and our hearts mysteriously filled with
+exultation. Yet often his words are grave.
+
+Let his words, not mine, close this story:
+
+Great are the stars, and man is of no account to them. But man is a fair
+spirit, whom a star conceived and a star kills. He is greater than those
+bright blind companies. For though in them there is incalculable
+potentiality, in him there is achievement, small, but actual. Too soon,
+seemingly, he comes to his end. But when he is done he will not be
+nothing, not as though he had never been; for he is eternally a beauty
+in the eternal form of things.
+
+Man was winged hopefully. He had in him to go further than this short
+flight, now ending. He proposed even that he should become the Flower of
+All Things, and that he should learn to be the All-Knowing, the
+All-Admiring. Instead, he is to be destroyed. He is only a fledgling
+caught in a bush-fire. He is very small, very simple, very little
+capable of insight. His knowledge of the great orb of things is but a
+fledgling’s knowledge. His admiration is a nestling’s admiration for the
+things kindly to his own small nature. He delights only in food and the
+food-announcing call. The music of the spheres passes over him, through
+him, and is not heard.
+
+Yet it has used him. And now it uses his destruction. Great, and
+terrible, and very beautiful is the Whole; and for man the best is that
+the Whole should use him.
+
+But does it really use him? Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced
+by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And what is beauty?
+Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of
+the spheres, and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some
+phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can never
+be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such
+perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is
+not for him in his littleness.
+
+But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a
+brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix
+of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in
+the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we
+may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful
+for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a
+fair conclusion to this brief music that is man.
+
+
+
+
+                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES
+
+Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
+spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
+
+Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
+occur.
+
+Some illustrations were moved to facilitate page layout.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79003 ***
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+    <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon</title>
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+  <body>   
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79003 ***</div>
+
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:350px;height:auto;'/>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
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+
+<div class='lgr' style=''> <!-- rend=';bold;' -->
+<p class='line' style='margin-top:2em;font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'>OLAF STAPLEDON</p>
+<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
+<p class='line' style='font-size:2em;font-weight:bold;'>Last and First Men</p>
+<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
+<p class='line' style='margin-bottom:10em;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;'>A story of the near and far future</p>
+</div> <!-- end rend -->
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:10em;font-size:.8em;font-weight:bold;'>First published 1930</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
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+<col span='1' style='width: 2.5em;'/>
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+<col span='1' style='width: 2.5em;'/>
+</colgroup>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col4 tdStyle1'  colspan='3'><span class='it'><span style='font-size:x-large'>Contents</span></span></td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col4 tdStyle1'  colspan='3'><span class='gesp'>PREFACE</span></td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#chp'>11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col4 tdStyle1'  colspan='3'><span style='font-size:smaller'><span class='gesp'>INTRODUCTION</span></span>, by One of the Last Men</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#chi'>15</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col4 tdStyle1'  colspan='3'><span style='font-size:larger'><span class='it'>The Chronicle</span></span></td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>I</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col4 tdStyle1'  colspan='3'><span class='gesp'>BALKAN EUROPE</span></td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The European War and After</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch1-1'>21</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Anglo-French War</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch1-2'>23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Europe after the Anglo-French War</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch1-3'>31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>4</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Russo-German War</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch1-4'>37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>II</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>EUROPE’S DOWNFALL</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Europe and America</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch2-1'>42</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Origins of a Mystery</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch2-2'>46</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Europe Murdered</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch2-3'>51</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>III</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>AMERICA AND CHINA</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Rivals</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch3-1'>55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Conflict</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch3-2'>63</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>On an Island in the Pacific</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch3-3'>67</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>IV</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>AN AMERICANIZED PLANET</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Foundation of the First World State</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch4-1'>75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Dominance of Science</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch4-2'>78</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Material Achievement</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch4-3'>81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>4</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Culture of the First World State</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch4-4'>84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>5</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Downfall</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch4-5'>93</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>V</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>THE FALL OF THE FIRST MEN</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The First Dark Age</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch5-1'>98</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Rise of Patagonia</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch5-2'>102</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Cult of Youth</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch5-3'>106</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>4</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Catastrophe</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch5-4'>112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>VI</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>TRANSITION</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The First Men at Bay</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch6-1'>120</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Second Dark Age</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch6-2'>129</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>VII</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>THE RISE OF THE SECOND MEN</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Appearance of a New Species</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch7-1'>132</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Intercourse of Three Species</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch7-2'>138</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Zenith of the Second Men</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch7-3'>143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>VIII</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>THE MARTIANS</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The First Martian Invasion</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch8-1'>151</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Life on Mars</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch8-2'>153</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Martian Mind</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch8-3'>160</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>4</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Delusions of the Martians</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch8-4'>164</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>IX</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>EARTH AND MARS</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Second Men at Bay</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch9-1'>169</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Ruin of Two Worlds</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch9-2'>176</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Third Dark Age</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch9-3'>184</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>X</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>THE THIRD MEN IN THE WILDERNESS</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Third Human Species</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch10-1'>189</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Digressions of the Third Men</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch10-2'>195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Vital Art</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch10-3'>200</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>4</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Conflicting Policies</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch10-4'>205</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>XI</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>MAN REMAKES HIMSELF</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The First of the Great Brains</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch11-1'>209</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Tragedy of the Fourth Men</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch11-2'>214</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Fifth Men</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch11-3'>221</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>4</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Culture of the Fifth Men</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch11-4'>225</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>XII</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>THE LAST TERRESTRIALS</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Cult of Evanescence</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch12-1'>233</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Exploration of Time</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch12-2'>238</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Voyaging in Space</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch12-3'>243</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>4</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Preparing a New World</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch12-4'>249</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>XIII</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>HUMANITY ON VENUS</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Taking Root Again</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch13-1'>255</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>The Flying Men</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch13-2'>259</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>A Minor Astronomical Event</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch13-3'>269</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>XIV</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>NEPTUNE</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Bird’s-Eye View</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch14-1'>273</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Da Capo</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch14-2'>275</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Slow Conquest</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch14-3'>279</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>XV</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>THE LAST MEN</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Introduction to the Last Human Species</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch15-1'>284</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Childhood and Maturity</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch15-2'>290</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>A Racial Awakening</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch15-3'>294</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>4</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Cosmology</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch15-4'>304</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'>XVI</td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span class='gesp'>THE LAST OF MAN</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>1</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Sentence of Death</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch16-1'>313</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>2</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Behaviour of the Condemned</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch16-2'>315</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>3</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>Epilogue</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#ch16-3'>321</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col5 tdStyle1'  colspan='4'><span style='font-size:larger'><span class='it'>Diagrams</span></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tdStyle1'></td><td class='tab1c3 tdStyle1'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c4 tdStyle2'>&nbsp;</td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col4 tdStyle1'  colspan='3'><span class='gesp'>TIME SCALE 1</span></td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#illo74'>74</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col4 tdStyle1'  colspan='3'><span class='gesp'>TIME SCALE 2</span></td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#illo135'>133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col4 tdStyle1'  colspan='3'><span class='gesp'>TIME SCALE 3</span></td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#illo192'>190</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='tab1c1 tdStyle0'></td><td class='tab1c2 tab1c2-col4 tdStyle1'  colspan='3'><span class='gesp'>TIME SCALES 4 AND 5</span></td><td class='tab1c5 tdStyle0'><a href='#illo285'>285</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1 id='chp'><span class='it'>Preface</span></h1></div>
+
+<p class='noindent'>This is a work of fiction. I have tried to invent a story which may seem
+a possible, or at least not wholly impossible, account of the future of
+man; and I have tried to make that story relevant to the change that is
+taking place today in man’s outlook.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>To romance of the future may seem to be indulgence in ungoverned
+speculation for the sake of the marvellous. Yet controlled imagination
+in this sphere can be a very valuable exercise for minds bewildered about
+the present and its potentialities. Today we should welcome, and even
+study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not
+merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities
+that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the
+certainty that many of our most cherished ideals would seem puerile to
+more developed minds. To romance of the far future, then, is to attempt
+to see the human race in its cosmic setting, and to mould our hearts to
+entertain new values.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But if such imaginative construction of possible futures is to be at all
+potent, our imagination must be strictly disciplined. We must endeavour
+not to go beyond the bounds of possibility set by the particular state of
+culture within which we live. The merely fantastic has only minor
+power. Not that we should seek actually to prophesy what will as a
+matter of fact occur; for in our present state such prophecy is certainly
+futile, save in the simplest matters. We are not set up as historians
+attempting to look ahead instead of backwards. We can only select a
+certain thread out of the tangle of many equally valid possibilities. But
+we must select with a purpose. The activity that we are undertaking is
+not science, but art; and the effect that it should have on the reader is
+the effect that art should have.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Yet our aim is not merely to create aesthetically admirable fiction.
+We must achieve neither mere history, nor mere fiction, but myth. A
+true myth is one which, within the universe of a certain culture (living
+or dead), expresses richly, and often perhaps tragically, the highest
+admirations possible within that culture. A false myth is one which
+either violently transgresses the limits of credibility set by its own
+cultural matrix, or expresses admirations less developed than those of
+its culture’s best vision. This book can no more claim to be true myth
+than true prophecy. But it is an essay in myth creation.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The kind of future which is here imagined, should not, I think, seem
+wholly fantastic, or at any rate not so fantastic as to be without significance,
+to modern western individuals who are familiar with the outlines
+of contemporary thought. Had I chosen matter in which there was
+nothing whatever of the fantastic, its very plausibility would have
+rendered it implausible. For one thing at least is almost certain about
+the future, namely, that very much of it will be such as we should call
+incredible. In one important respect, indeed, I may perhaps seem to
+have strayed into barren extravagance. I have supposed an inhabitant
+of the remote future to be communicating with us of today. I have
+pretended that he has the power of partially controlling the operations
+of minds now living, and that this book is the product of such influence.
+Yet even this fiction is perhaps not wholly excluded by our thought. I
+might, of course, easily have omitted it without more than superficial
+alteration of the theme. But its introduction was more than a convenience.
+Only by some such radical and bewildering device could I
+embody the possibility that there may be more in time’s nature than is
+revealed to us. Indeed, only by some such trick could I do justice to the
+conviction that our whole present mentality is but a confused and halting
+first experiment.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>If ever this book should happen to be discovered by some future
+individual, for instance by a member of the next generation sorting out
+the rubbish of his predecessors, it will certainly raise a smile; for very
+much is bound to happen of which no hint is yet discoverable. And
+indeed even in our generation circumstances may well change so unexpectedly
+and so radically that this book may very soon look ridiculous.
+But no matter. We of today must conceive our relation to the rest
+of the universe as best we can; and even if our images must seem fantastic
+to future men, they may none the less serve their purpose today.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Some readers, taking my story to be an attempt at prophecy, may
+deem it unwarrantably pessimistic. But it is not prophecy; it is myth, or
+an essay in myth. We all desire the future to turn out more happily than
+I have figured it. In particular we desire our present civilization to
+advance steadily toward some kind of Utopia. The thought that it may
+decay and collapse, and that all its spiritual treasure may be lost irrevocably,
+is repugnant to us. Yet this must be faced as at least a possibility.
+And this kind of tragedy, the tragedy of a race, must, I think, be
+admitted in any adequate myth.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>And so, while gladly recognizing that in our time there are strong
+seeds of hope as well as of despair, I have imagined for aesthetic purposes
+that our race will destroy itself. There is today a very earnest
+movement for peace and international unity; and surely with good
+fortune and intelligent management it may triumph. Most earnestly we
+must hope that it will. But I have figured things out in this book in such
+a manner that this great movement fails. I suppose it incapable of preventing
+a succession of national wars; and I permit it only to achieve
+the goal of unity and peace after the mentality of the race has been
+undermined. May this not happen! May the League of Nations, or
+some more strictly cosmopolitan authority, win through before it is
+too late! Yet let us find room in our minds and in our hearts for the
+thought that the whole enterprise of our race may be after all but a
+minor and unsuccessful episode in a vaster drama, which also perhaps
+may be tragic.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>American readers, if ever there are any, may feel that their great
+nation is given a somewhat unattractive part in the story. I have
+imagined the triumph of the cruder sort of Americanism over all that
+is best and most promising in American culture. May this not occur in
+the real world! Americans themselves, however, admit the possibility
+of such an issue, and will, I hope, forgive me for emphasizing it, and
+using it as an early turning-point in the long drama of Man.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Any attempt to conceive such a drama must take into account whatever
+contemporary science has to say about man’s own nature and his
+physical environment. I have tried to supplement my own slight
+knowledge of natural science by pestering my scientific friends. In
+particular, I have been very greatly helped by conversation with
+Professors P. G. H. Boswell, J. Johnstone, and J. Rice, of Liverpool.
+But they must not be held responsible for the many deliberate extravagances
+which, though they serve a purpose in the design, may jar upon
+the scientific ear.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>To Dr L. A. Reid I am much indebted for general comments, and to
+Mr E. V. Rieu for many very valuable suggestions. To Professor and
+Mrs L. C. Martin, who read the whole book in manuscript, I cannot
+properly express my gratitude for constant encouragement and criticism.
+To my wife’s devastating sanity I owe far more than she supposes.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Before closing this preface I would remind the reader that throughout
+the following pages the speaker, the first person singular, is supposed
+to be, not the actual writer, but an individual living in the extremely
+distant future.</p>
+
+<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:0em;'>O. S.</p>
+
+<div class='lgl' style=''> <!-- rend=';' -->
+<p class='line'><span class="l">West Kirby</span></p>
+<p class='line'><span class='it'>July 1930</span></p>
+</div> <!-- end rend -->
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1 id='chi'><span class='it'>Introduction</span><br/> <br/> <span style='font-size:smaller'>By One of the Last Men</span></h1></div>
+
+<p class='noindent'>This book has two authors, one contemporary with its readers, the
+other an inhabitant of an age which they would call the distant future.
+The brain that conceives and writes these sentences lives in the time of
+Einstein. Yet I, the true inspirer of this book, I who have begotten it
+upon that brain, I who influence that primitive being’s conception,
+inhabit an age which, for Einstein, lies in the very remote future.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The actual writer thinks he is merely contriving a work of fiction.
+Though he seeks to tell a plausible story, he neither believes it himself,
+nor expects others to believe it. Yet the story is true. A being whom you
+would call a future man has seized the docile but scarcely adequate
+brain of your contemporary, and is trying to direct its familiar processes
+for an alien purpose. Thus a future epoch makes contact with your age.
+Listen patiently; for we who are the Last Men earnestly desire to communicate
+with you, who are members of the First Human Species. We
+can help you, and we need your help.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>You cannot believe it. Your acquaintance with time is very imperfect,
+and so your understanding of it is defeated. But no matter. Do not
+perplex yourselves about this truth, so difficult to you, so familiar to
+us of a later aeon. Do but entertain, merely as a fiction, the idea that
+the thought and will of individuals future to you may intrude, rarely
+and with difficulty, into the mental processes of some of your contemporaries.
+Pretend that you believe this, and that the following
+chronicle is an authentic message from the Last Men. Imagine the
+consequences of such a belief. Otherwise I cannot give life to the great
+history which it is my task to tell.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When your writers romance of the future, they too easily imagine a
+progress toward some kind of Utopia, in which beings like themselves
+live in unmitigated bliss among circumstances perfectly suited to a fixed
+human nature. I shall not describe any such paradise. Instead, I shall
+record huge fluctuations of joy and woe, the results of changes not only
+in man’s environment but in his fluid nature. And I must tell how, in my
+own age, having at last achieved spiritual maturity and the philosophic
+mind, man is forced by an unexpected crisis to embark on an enterprise
+both repugnant and desperate.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>I invite you, then, to travel in imagination through the aeons that lie
+between your age and mine. I ask you to watch such a history of
+change, grief, hope, and unforeseen catastrophe, as has nowhere else
+occurred, within the girdle of the Milky Way. But first, it is well to
+contemplate for a few moments the mere magnitudes of cosmical
+events. For, compressed as it must necessarily be, the narrative that I
+have to tell may seem to present a sequence of adventures and disasters
+crowded together, with no intervening peace. But in fact man’s career
+has been less like a mountain torrent hurtling from rock to rock, than
+a great sluggish river, broken very seldom by rapids. Ages of quiescence,
+often of actual stagnation, filled with the monotonous problems and
+toils of countless almost identical lives, have been punctuated by rare
+moments of racial adventure. Nay, even these few seemingly rapid
+events themselves were in fact often long-drawn-out and tedious. They
+acquire a mere illusion of speed from the speed of the narrative.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The receding depths of time and space, though they can indeed be
+haltingly conceived even by primitive minds, cannot be imaged save by
+beings of a more ample nature. A panorama of mountains appears to
+naïve vision almost as a flat picture, and the starry void is a roof pricked
+with light. Yet in reality, while the immediate terrain could be spanned
+in an hour’s walking, the sky-line of peaks holds within it plain beyond
+plain. Similarly with time. While the near past and the new future
+display within them depth beyond depth, time’s remote immensities are
+foreshortened into flatness. It is almost inconceivable to simple minds
+that man’s whole history should be but a moment in the life of the stars,
+and that remote events should embrace within themselves aeon upon
+aeon.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In your day you have learnt to calculate something of the magnitudes
+of time and space. But to grasp my theme in its true proportions, it is
+necessary to do more than calculate. It is necessary to brood upon these
+magnitudes, to draw out the mind toward them, to feel the littleness of
+your here and now, and of the moment of civilization which you call
+history. You cannot hope to image, as we do, such vast proportions as
+one in a thousand million, because your sense-organs, and therefore
+your perceptions, are too coarse-grained to discriminate so small a
+fraction of their total field. But you may at least, by mere contemplation,
+grasp more constantly and firmly the significance of your calculations.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Men of your day, when they look back into the history of their planet,
+remark not only the length of time but also the bewildering acceleration
+of life’s progress. Almost stationary in the earliest period of the earth’s
+career, in your moment it seems headlong. Mind in you, it is said, not
+merely stands higher than ever before in respect of percipience, knowledge,
+insight, delicacy of admiration, and sanity of will, but also it
+moves upward century by century ever more swiftly. What next?
+Surely, you think, there will come a time when there will be no further
+heights to conquer.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This view is mistaken. You underestimate even the foothills that
+stand in front of you, and never suspect that far above them, hidden by
+cloud, rise precipices and snow-fields. The mental and spiritual
+advances which, in your day, mind in the solar system has still to
+attempt, are overwhelmingly more complex, more precarious and
+dangerous, than those which have already been achieved. And though
+in certain humble respects you have attained full development, the
+loftier potencies of the spirit in you have not yet even begun to put
+forth buds.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Somehow, then, I must help you to feel not only the vastness of
+time and space, but also the vast diversity of mind’s possible modes.
+But this I can only hint to you, since so much lies wholly beyond the
+range of your imagination.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Historians living in your day need grapple only with one moment of
+the flux of time. But I have to present in one book the essence not of
+centuries but of aeons. Clearly we cannot walk at leisure through such
+a tract, in which a million terrestrial years are but as a year is to your
+historians. We must fly. We must travel as you do in your aeroplanes,
+observing only the broad features of the continent. But since the flier
+sees nothing of the minute inhabitants below him, and since it is they
+who make history, we must also punctuate our flight with many
+descents, skimming as it were over the house-tops, and even alighting
+at critical points to speak face to face with individuals. And as the
+plane’s journey must begin with a slow ascent from the intricate
+pedestrian view to wider horizons, so we must begin with a somewhat
+close inspection of that little period which includes the culmination and
+collapse of your own primitive civilization.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:10em;font-size:1.2em;'><span class='gesp'>THE CHRONICLE</span></p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>I</span> <span class='it'>Balkan Europe</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch1-1'>1. THE EUROPEAN WAR AND AFTER</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">Observe</span> now your own epoch of history as it appears to the
+Last Men.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Long before the human spirit awoke to clear cognizance of the
+world and itself, it sometimes stirred in its sleep, opened bewildered
+eyes, and slept again. One of these moments of precocious
+experience embraces the whole struggle of the First Men from
+savagery towards civilization. Within that moment, you stand
+almost in the very instant when the species attains its zenith.
+Scarcely at all beyond your own day is this early culture to be
+seen progressing, and already in your time the mentality of the
+race shows signs of decline.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The first, and some would say the greatest, achievement of your
+own ‘Western’ culture was the conceiving of two ideals of conduct,
+both essential to the spirit’s well-being. Socrates, delighting
+in the truth for its own sake and not merely for practical ends,
+glorified unbiased thinking, honesty of mind and speech. Jesus,
+delighting in the actual human persons around him, and in that
+flavour of divinity which, for him, pervaded the world, stood for
+unselfish love of neighbours and of God. Socrates woke to the
+ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate
+yet self-oblivious worship. Socrates urged intellectual integrity,
+Jesus integrity of will. Each, of course, though starting with a
+different emphasis, involved the other.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain
+a degree of vitality and coherence of which the nervous system of
+the First Men was never really capable. For many centuries these
+twin stars enticed the more precociously human of human animals,
+in vain. And the failure to put these ideals in practice helped to
+engender in the race a cynical lassitude which was one cause of its
+decay.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There were other causes. The peoples from whom sprang
+Socrates and Jesus were also among the first to conceive admiration
+for Fate. In Greek tragic art and Hebrew worship of divine
+law, as also in the Indian resignation, man experienced, at first
+very obscurely, that vision of an alien and supernal beauty, which
+was to exalt and perplex him again and again throughout his
+whole career. The conflict between this worship and the intransigent
+loyalty to Life, embattled against Death, proved insoluble.
+And though few individuals were ever clearly conscious of the
+issue, the first human species was again and again unwittingly
+hampered in its spiritual development by this supreme perplexity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>While man was being whipped and enticed by these precocious
+experiences, the actual social constitution of his world kept changing
+so rapidly through increased mastery over physical energy,
+that his primitive nature could no longer cope with the complexity
+of his environment. Animals that were fashioned for hunting and
+fighting in the wild were suddenly called upon to be citizens, and
+moreover citizens of a world-community. At the same time they
+found themselves possessed of certain very dangerous powers
+which their petty minds were not fit to use. Man struggled; but,
+as you shall hear, he broke under the strain.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The European War, called at the time the War to End War,
+was the first and least destructive of those world conflicts which
+display so tragically the incompetence of the First Men to control
+their own nature. At the outset a tangle of motives, some honourable
+and some disreputable, ignited a conflict for which both
+antagonists were all too well prepared, though neither seriously
+intended it. A real difference of temperament between Latin-France
+and Nordic Germany combined with a superficial rivalry
+between Germany and England, and a number of stupidly brutal
+gestures on the part of the German Government and military
+command, to divide the world into two camps; yet in such a
+manner that it is impossible to find any difference of principle
+between them. During the struggle each party was convinced that
+it alone stood for civilization. But in fact both succumbed now
+and again to impulses of sheer brutality, and both achieved acts
+not merely of heroism, but of generosity unusual among the First
+Men. For conduct which to clearer minds seems merely sane, was
+in those days to be performed only by rare vision and self-mastery.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As the months of agony advanced, there was bred in the warring
+peoples a genuine and even passionate will for peace and a united
+world. Out of the conflict of the tribes arose, at least for a while,
+a spirit loftier than tribalism. But this fervour lacked as yet clear
+guidance, lacked even the courage of conviction. The peace which
+followed the European War is one of the most significant moments
+of ancient history; for it epitomizes both the dawning vision and
+the incurable blindness, both the impulse toward a higher loyalty
+and the compulsive tribalism of a race which was, after all, but
+superficially human.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch1-2'>2. THE ANGLO-FRENCH WAR</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>One brief but tragic incident, which occurred within a century
+after the European War, may be said to have sealed the fate of
+the First Men. During this century the will for peace and sanity
+was already becoming a serious factor in history. Save for a number
+of most untoward accidents, to be recorded in due course, the
+party of peace might have dominated Europe during its most
+dangerous period; and, through Europe, the world. With either a
+little less bad luck or a fraction more of vision and self-control at
+this critical time, there might never have occurred that aeon of
+darkness, in which the First Men were presently to be submerged.
+For had victory been gained before the general level of mentality
+had seriously begun to decline, the attainment of the world state
+might have been regarded, not as an end, but as the first step
+towards true civilization. But this was not to be.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>After the European War the defeated nation, formerly no less
+militaristic than the others, now became the most pacific, and a
+stronghold of enlightenment. Almost everywhere, indeed, there
+had occurred a profound change of heart, but chiefly in Germany.
+The victors on the other hand, in spite of their real craving to be
+human and generous, and to found a new world, were led partly
+by their own timidity, partly by their governors’ blind diplomacy,
+into all the vices against which they believed themselves to have
+been crusading. After a brief period in which they desperately
+affected amity for one another they began to indulge once
+more in physical conflicts. Of these conflicts, two must be
+observed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The first outbreak, and the less disastrous for Europe, was a
+short and grotesque struggle between France and Italy. Since the
+fall of ancient Rome, the Italians had excelled more in art and
+literature than in martial achievement. But the heroic liberation of
+Italy in the nineteenth Christian century had made Italians
+peculiarly sensitive to national prestige; and since among Western
+peoples national vigour was measured in terms of military glory,
+the Italians were fired, by their success against a rickety foreign
+domination, to vindicate themselves more thoroughly against the
+charge of mediocrity in warfare. After the European War, however,
+Italy passed through a phase of social disorder and self-distrust.
+Subsequently a flamboyant but sincere national party
+gained control of the State, and afforded the Italians a new self-respect,
+based on reform of the social services, and on militaristic
+policy. Trains became punctual, streets clean, morals puritanical.
+Aviation records were won for Italy. The young, dressed up and
+taught to play at soldiers with real fire-arms, were persuaded to
+regard themselves as saviours of the nation, encouraged to shed
+blood, and used to enforce the will of the Government. The whole
+movement was engineered chiefly by a man whose genius in action
+combined with his rhetoric and crudity of thought to make him a
+very successful dictator. Almost miraculously he drilled the Italian
+nation into efficiency. At the same time, with great emotional effect
+and incredible lack of humour he trumpeted Italy’s self-importance,
+and her will to ‘expand’. And since Italians were slow to
+learn the necessity of restricting their population, ‘expansion’
+was a real need.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus it came about that Italy, hungry for French territory in
+Africa, jealous of French leadership of the Latin races, indignant
+at the protection afforded to Italian ‘traitors’ in France, became
+increasingly prone to quarrel with the most assertive of her late
+allies. It was a frontier incident, a fancied ‘insult to the Italian
+flag’, which at last caused an unauthorized raid upon French
+territory by a small party of Italian militia. The raiders were
+captured, but French blood was shed. The consequent demand
+for apology and reparation was calm, but subtly offensive to
+Italian dignity. Italian patriots worked themselves into short-sighted
+fury. The Dictator, far from daring to apologize, was
+forced to require the release of the captive militia-men, and finally
+to declare war. After a single sharp engagement the relentless
+armies of France pressed into North Italy. Resistance, at first
+heroic, soon became chaotic. In consternation the Italians woke
+from their dream of military glory. The populace turned against
+the Dictator whom they themselves had forced to declare war. In
+a theatrical but gallant attempt to dominate the Roman mob, he
+failed, and was killed. The new government made a hasty peace,
+ceding to France a frontier territory which she had already annexed
+for ‘security’.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thenceforth Italians were less concerned to outshine the glory
+of Garibaldi than to emulate the greater glory of Dante, Giotto,
+and Galileo.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>France had now complete mastery of the continent of Europe;
+but having much to lose, she behaved arrogantly and nervously.
+It was not long before peace was once more disturbed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Scarcely had the last veterans of the European War ceased
+from wearying their juniors with reminiscence, when the long
+rivalry between France and England culminated in a dispute
+between their respective Governments over a case of sexual outrage
+said to have been committed by a French African soldier
+upon an Englishwoman. In this quarrel, the British Government
+happened to be definitely in the wrong, and was probably confused
+by its own sexual repressions. The outrage had never been
+committed. The facts which gave rise to the rumour were, that
+an idle and neurotic Englishwoman in the south of France, craving
+the embrace of a ‘cave man’, had seduced a Senegalese corporal
+in her own apartments. When, later, he had shown signs of
+boredom, she took revenge by declaring that he had attacked her
+indecently in the woods above the town. This rumour was such
+that the English were all too prone to savour and believe. At the
+same time, the magnates of the English Press could not resist this
+opportunity of trading upon the public’s sexuality, tribalism, and
+self-righteousness. There followed an epidemic of abuse, and
+occasional violence, against French subjects in England; and thus
+the party of fear and militarism in France was given the opportunity
+it had long sought. For the real cause of this war was connected
+with air power. France had persuaded the League of
+Nations (in one of its less intelligent moments) to restrict the size
+of military aeroplanes in such a manner that, while London lay
+within easy striking distance of the French coast, Paris could only
+with difficulty be touched by England. This state of affairs
+obviously could not last long. Britain was agitating more and
+more insistently for the removal of the restriction. On the other
+hand, there was an increasing demand for complete aerial disarmament
+in Europe; and so strong was the party of sanity in
+France, that the scheme would almost certainly have been accepted
+by the French Government. On both counts, therefore, the
+militarists of France were eager to strike while yet there was
+opportunity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In an instant, the whole fruit of this effort for disarmament was
+destroyed. That subtle difference of mentality which had ever
+made it impossible for these two nations to understand one another,
+was suddenly exaggerated by this provocative incident into
+an apparently insoluble discord. England reverted to her conviction
+that all Frenchmen were sensualists, while to France the
+English appeared, as often before, the most offensive of hypocrites.
+In vain did the saner minds in each country insist on the
+fundamental humanity of both. In vain did the chastened Germans
+seek to mediate. In vain did the League, which by now had
+very great prestige and authority, threaten both parties with expulsion,
+even with chastisement. Rumour got about in Paris that
+England, breaking all her international pledges, was now feverishly
+building giant planes which would wreck France from Calais to
+Marseilles. And indeed the rumour was not wholly a slander, for,
+when the struggle began, the British air force was found to have a
+range of intensive action far wider than was expected. Yet the
+actual outbreak of war took England by surprise. While the London
+papers were selling out upon the news that war was declared,
+enemy planes appeared over the city. In a couple of hours a third
+of London was in ruins, and half her population lay poisoned in
+the streets. One bomb, falling beside the British Museum, turned
+the whole of Bloomsbury into a crater, wherein fragments of
+mummies, statues, and manuscripts were mingled with the contents
+of shops, and morsels of salesmen and the intelligentsia. Thus
+in a moment was destroyed a large proportion of England’s most
+precious relics and most fertile brains.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Then occurred one of those microscopic, yet supremely potent
+incidents which sometimes mould the course of events for centuries.
+During the bombardment a special meeting of the British
+Cabinet was held in a cellar in Downing Street. The party in power
+at the time was progressive, mildly pacifist, and timorously cosmopolitan.
+It had got itself involved in the French quarrel quite
+unintentionally. At this Cabinet meeting an idealistic member
+urged upon his colleagues the need for a supreme gesture of heroism
+and generosity on the part of Britain. Raising his voice with
+difficulty above the bark of English guns and the volcanic crash of
+French bombs, he suggested sending by radio the following message.
+‘From the people of England to the people of France. Catastrophe
+has fallen on us at your hands. In this hour of agony, all
+hate and anger have left us. Our eyes are opened. No longer can
+we think of ourselves as merely English, and you as merely French;
+all of us are, before all else, civilized beings. Do not imagine that
+we are defeated, and that this message is a cry for mercy. Our
+armament is intact, and our resources still very great. Yet, because
+of the revelation which has come to us today, we will not fight. No
+plane, no ship, no soldier of Britain shall commit any further act
+of hostility. Do what you will. It would be better even that a great
+people should be destroyed than that the whole race should be
+thrown into turmoil. But you will not strike again. As our own
+eyes have been opened by agony, yours now will be opened by our
+act of brotherhood. The spirit of France and the spirit of England
+differ. They differ deeply; but only as the eye differs from the hand.
+Without you, we should be barbarians. And without us, even the
+bright spirit of France would be but half expressed. For the spirit
+of France lives again in our culture and in our very speech; and
+the spirit of England is that which strikes from you your most
+distinctive brilliance.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At no earlier stage of man’s history could such a message have
+been considered seriously by any government. Had it been suggested
+during the previous war, its author would have been ridiculed,
+execrated, perhaps even murdered. But since those days much had
+happened. Increased communication, increased cultural intercourse,
+and a prolonged vigorous campaign for cosmopolitanism,
+had changed the mentality of Europe. Even so, when, after a brief
+discussion, the Government ordered this unique message to be
+sent, its members were awed by their own act. As one of them
+expressed it, they were uncertain whether it was the devil or the
+deity that had possessed them, but possessed they certainly were.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>That night the people of London (those who were left) experienced
+an exaltation of spirit. Disorganization of the city’s life,
+overwhelming physical suffering and compassion, the consciousness
+of an unprecedented spiritual act in which each individual
+felt himself to have somehow participated—these influences combined
+to produce, even in the bustle and confusion of a wrecked
+metropolis, a certain restrained fervour, and a deep peace of mind,
+wholly unfamiliar to Londoners.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile the undamaged North knew not whether to regard
+the Government’s sudden pacificism as a piece of cowardice or as
+a superbly courageous gesture. Very soon, however, they began to
+make a virtue of necessity, and incline to the latter view. Paris
+itself was divided by the message into a vocal party of triumph
+and a silent party of bewilderment. But as the hours advanced,
+and the former urged a policy of aggression, the latter found voice
+for the cry, ‘<span class='it'>Vive l’Angleterre, vive l’humanité</span>’. And so strong by
+now was the will for cosmopolitanism that the upshot would
+almost certainly have been a triumph of sanity, had there not
+occurred in England an accident which tilted the whole precarious
+course of events in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The bombardment had occurred on a Friday night. On Saturday
+the repercussions of England’s great message were echoing
+throughout the nations. That evening, as a wet and foggy day was
+achieving its pallid sunset, a French plane was seen over the
+western outskirts of London. It gradually descended, and was
+regarded by onlookers as a messenger of peace. Lower and lower
+it came. Something was seen to part from it and fall. In a few
+seconds an immense explosion occurred in the neighbourhood of
+a great school and a royal palace. There was hideous destruction
+in the school. The palace escaped. But, chief disaster for the cause
+of peace, a beautiful and extravagantly popular young princess was
+caught by the explosion. Her body, obscenely mutilated, but still
+recognizable to every student of the illustrated papers, was impaled
+upon some high park-railings beside the main thoroughfare
+towards the city. Immediately after the explosion the enemy plane
+crashed, burst into flame, and was destroyed with its occupants.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A moment’s cool thinking would have convinced all onlookers
+that this disaster was an accident, that the plane was a belated
+straggler in distress, and no messenger of hate. But, confronted
+with the mangled bodies of schoolboys, and harrowed by cries of
+agony and terror, the populace was in no state for ratiocination.
+Moreover there was the princess, an overwhelmingly potent sexual
+symbol and emblem of tribalism, slaughtered and exposed before
+the eyes of her adorers.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The news was flashed over the country, and distorted of course
+in such a manner as to admit no doubt that this act was the
+crowning devilry of sexual fiends beyond the Channel. In an hour
+the mood of London was changed, and the whole population of
+England succumbed to a paroxysm of primitive hate far more
+extravagant than any that had occurred even in the war against
+Germany. The British air force, all too well equipped and prepared,
+was ordered to Paris.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile in France the militaristic government had fallen,
+and the party of peace was now in control. While the streets were
+still thronged by its vociferous supporters, the first bomb fell. By
+Monday morning Paris was obliterated. There followed a few days
+of strife between the opposing armaments, and of butchery committed
+upon the civilian populations. In spite of French gallantry,
+the superior organization, mechanical efficiency, and more cautious
+courage of the British Air Force soon made it impossible for
+a French plane to leave the ground. But if France was broken,
+England was too crippled to pursue her advantage. Every city of
+the two countries was completely disorganized. Famine, riot,
+looting, and above all the rapidly accelerating and quite uncontrollable
+spread of disease, disintegrated both States, and brought
+war to a standstill.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Indeed, not only did hostilities cease, but also both nations were
+too shattered even to continue hating one another. The energies of
+each were for a while wholly occupied in trying to prevent complete
+annihilation by famine and pestilence. In the work of reconstruction
+they had to depend very largely on help from outside.
+The management of each country was taken over, for the time, by
+the League of Nations.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It is significant to compare the mood of Europe at this time
+with that which followed the European War. Formerly, though
+there had been a real effort toward unity, hate and suspicion
+continued to find expression in national policies. There was much
+wrangling about indemnities, reparations, securities; and the
+division of the whole continent into two hostile camps persisted,
+though by then it was purely artificial and sentimental. But after
+the Anglo-French war, a very different mood prevailed. There was
+no mention of reparations, no possibility of seeking security by
+alliances. Patriotism simply faded out, for the time, under the
+influence of extreme disaster. The two enemy peoples cooperated
+with the League in the work of reconstructing not only each one
+itself, but each one the other. This change of heart was due partly
+to the temporary collapse of the whole national organization,
+partly to the speedy dominance of each nation by pacifist and anti-nationalist
+Labour, partly to the fact that the League was powerful
+enough to inquire into and publish the whole story of the
+origins of the war, and expose each combatant to itself and to the
+world in a sorry light.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We have now observed in some detail the incident which stands
+out in man’s history as perhaps the most dramatic example of
+petty cause and mighty effect. For consider. Through some miscalculation,
+or a mere defect in his instruments, a French airman
+went astray, and came to grief in London after the sending of the
+peace message. Had this not happened, England and France
+would not have been wrecked. And, had the war been nipped at
+the outset, as it almost was, the party of sanity throughout the
+world would have been very greatly strengthened; the precarious
+will to unity would have gained the conviction which it lacked,
+would have dominated man not merely during the terrified
+revulsion after each spasm of national strife, but as a permanent
+policy based on mutual trust. Indeed so delicately balanced were
+man’s primitive and developed impulses at this time, that, but
+for this trivial accident, the movement which was started by
+England’s peace message might have proceeded steadily and
+rapidly toward the unification of the race. It might, that is, have
+attained its goal, before, instead of after, the period of mental
+deterioration, which in fact resulted from a long epidemic of wars.
+And so the first Dark Age might never have occurred.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch1-3'>3. EUROPE AFTER THE ANGLO-FRENCH WAR</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>A subtle change now began to affect the whole mental climate of
+the planet. This is remarkable, since, viewed for instance from
+America or China, this war was, after all, but a petty disturbance,
+scarcely more than a brawl between quarrelsome statelets, an
+episode in the decline of a senile civilization. Expressed in dollars,
+the damage was not impressive to the wealthy West and the potentially
+wealthy East. The British Empire, indeed, that unique banyan
+tree of peoples, was henceforward less effective in world
+diplomacy; but since the bond that held it together was by now
+wholly a bond of sentiment, the Empire was not disintegrated by
+the misfortune of its parent trunk. Indeed, a common fear of
+American economic imperialism was already helping the colonies
+to remain loyal.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Yet this petty brawl was in fact an irreparable and far-reaching
+disaster. For in spite of those differences of temperament which
+had forced the English and French into conflict, they had cooperated,
+though often unwittingly, in tempering and clarifying the
+mentality of Europe. Though their faults played a great part in
+wrecking Western civilization, the virtues from which these vices
+sprang were needed for the salvation of a world prone to uncritical
+romance. In spite of the inveterate blindness and meanness of
+France in international policy, and the even more disastrous timidity
+of England, their influence on culture had been salutary, and
+was at this moment sorely needed. For, poles asunder in tastes
+and ideals, these two peoples were yet alike in being on the whole
+more sceptical, and in their finest individuals more capable of dispassionate
+yet creative intelligence than any other Western people.
+This very character produced their distinctive faults, namely, in
+the English a caution that amounted often to moral cowardice,
+and in the French a certain myopic complacency and cunning,
+which masqueraded as realism. Within each nation there was, of
+course, great variety. English minds were of many types. But
+most were to some extent distinctively English; and hence the
+special character of England’s influence in the world. Relatively
+detached, sceptical, cautious, practical, more tolerant than others,
+because more complacent and less prone to fervour, the typical
+Englishman was capable both of generosity and of spite, both of
+heroism and of timorous or cynical abandonment of ends proclaimed
+as vital to the race. French and English alike might sin
+against humanity, but in different manners. The French sinned
+blindly, through a strange inability to regard France dispassionately.
+The English sinned through faintheartedness, and with open
+eyes. Among all nations they excelled in the union of common
+sense and vision. But also among all nations they were most ready
+to betray their visions in the name of commonsense. Hence their
+reputation for perfidy.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Differences of national character and patriotic sentiment were
+not the most fundamental distinctions between men at this time.
+Although in each nation a common tradition or cultural environment
+imposed a certain uniformity on all its members, yet in each
+nation every mental type was present, though in different proportions.
+The most significant of all cultural differences between
+men, namely, the difference between the tribalists and the cosmopolitans,
+traversed the national boundaries. For throughout
+the world something like a new, cosmopolitan ‘nation’ with a new
+all-embracing patriotism was beginning to appear. In every land
+there was by now a salting of awakened minds who, whatever their
+temperament and politics and formal faith, were at one in respect
+of their allegiance to humanity as a race or as an adventuring
+spirit. Unfortunately this new loyalty was still entangled with old
+prejudices. In some minds the defence of the human spirit was
+sincerely identified with the defence of a particular nation, conceived
+as the home of all enlightenment. In others, social injustice
+kindled a militant proletarian loyalty, which, though at heart
+cosmopolitan, infected alike its champions and its enemies with
+sectarian passions.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Another sentiment, less definite and conscious than cosmopolitanism,
+also played some part in the minds of men, namely loyalty
+toward the dispassionate intelligence and perplexed admiration
+of the world which was beginning to be revealed, a world august,
+immense, subtle, in which, seemingly, man was doomed to play a
+part minute but tragic. In many races there had, no doubt, long
+existed some fidelity toward the dispassionate intelligence. But it
+was England and France that excelled in this respect. On the other
+hand, even in these two nations there was much that was opposed
+to this allegiance. These, like all peoples of the age, were liable to
+bouts of insane emotionalism. Indeed the French mind, in general
+so clear-sighted, so realistic, so contemptuous of ambiguity and
+mist, so detached in all its final valuations, was yet so obsessed
+with the idea ‘France’ as to be wholly incapable of generosity in
+international affairs. But it was France, with England, that had
+chiefly inspired the intellectual integrity which was the rarest and
+brightest thread of Western culture, not only within the territories
+of these two nations, but throughout Europe and America. In the
+seventeenth and eighteenth Christian centuries, the French and
+English had conceived, more clearly than other peoples, an interest
+in the objective world for its own sake, had founded physical
+science, and had fashioned out of scepticism the most brilliantly
+constructive of mental instruments. At a later stage it was largely
+the French and English who, by means of this instrument, had
+revealed man and the physical universe in something like their
+true proportions; and it was chiefly the elect of these two peoples
+that had been able to exult in this bracing discovery.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>With the eclipse of France and England this great tradition of
+dispassionate cognizance began to wane. Europe was now led by
+Germany. And the Germans, in spite of their practical genius,
+their scholarly contributions to history, their brilliant science and
+austere philosophy, were at heart romantic. This inclination was
+both their strength and their weakness. Thereby they had been
+inspired to their finest art and their most profound metaphysical
+speculation. But thereby they were also often rendered un-self-critical
+and pompous. More eager than other Western minds to
+solve the mystery of existence, less sceptical of the power of human
+reason, and therefore more inclined to ignore or argue away recalcitrant
+facts, the Germans were courageous systematizes. In this
+direction they had achieved great things. Without them, European
+thought would have been chaotic. But their passion for order and
+for a systematic reality behind the disorderly appearances, rendered
+their reasoning all too often biased. Upon shifty foundations
+they balanced ingenious ladders to reach the stars. Thus,
+without constant ribald criticism from across the Rhine and the
+North Sea, the Teutonic soul could not achieve full self-expression.
+A vague uneasiness about its own sentimentalism and lack of
+detachment did indeed persuade this great people to assert its
+virility now and again by ludicrous acts of brutality, and to compensate
+for its dream life by ceaseless hard-driven and brilliantly
+successful commerce; but what was needed was a far more radical
+self-criticism.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Beyond Germany, Russia. Here was a people whose genius
+needed, even more than that of the Germans, discipline under the
+critical intelligence. Since the Bolshevik revolution, there had
+risen in the scattered towns of this immense tract of corn and
+forest, and still more in the metropolis, an original mode of art
+and thought, in which were blended a passion for iconoclasm, a
+vivid sensuousness, and yet also a very remarkable and essentially
+mystical or intuitive power of detachment from all private cravings.
+America and Western Europe were interested first in the
+individual human life, and only secondarily in the social whole.
+For these peoples loyalty involved a reluctant self-sacrifice, and the
+ideal was ever a person, excelling in prowess of various kinds.
+Society was but the necessary matrix of this jewel. But the
+Russians, whether by an innate gift, or through the influence of
+age-long political tyranny, religious devotion, and a truly social
+revolution, were prone to self-contemptuous interest in groups,
+prone, indeed, to a spontaneous worship of whatever was conceived
+as loftier than the individual man whether society, or God,
+or the blind forces of nature. Western Europe could reach by way
+of the intellect a precise conception of man’s littleness and irrelevance
+when regarded as an alien among the stars; could even
+glimpse from this standpoint the cosmic theme in which all human
+striving is but one contributory factor. But the Russian mind,
+whether orthodox or Tolstoyan or fanatically materialist, could
+attain much the same conviction intuitively, by direct perception,
+instead of after an arduous intellectual pilgrimage; and, reaching
+it, could rejoice in it. But because of this independence of intellect,
+the experience was confused, erratic, frequently misinterpreted;
+and its effect on conduct was rather explosive than directive. Great
+indeed was the need that the West and East of Europe should
+strengthen and temper one another.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>After the Bolshevik revolution a new element appeared in
+Russian culture, and one which had not been known before in
+any modern state. The old regime was displaced by a real proletarian
+government, which, though an oligarchy, and sometimes
+bloody and fanatical, abolished the old tyranny of class, and encouraged
+the humblest citizen to be proud of his partnership in
+the great community. Still more important, the native Russian
+disposition not to take material possessions very seriously cooperated
+with the political revolution, and brought about such a
+freedom from the snobbery of wealth as was quite foreign to the
+West. Attention which elsewhere was absorbed in the amassing or
+display of money was in Russia largely devoted either to spontaneous
+instinctive enjoyments or to cultural activity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In fact, it was among the Russian townsfolk, less cramped by
+tradition than other city-dwellers, that the spirit of the First Men
+was beginning to achieve a fresh and sincere readjustment to the
+facts of its changing world. And from the townsfolk something of
+the new way of life was spreading even to the peasants; while in
+the depths of Asia a hardy and ever-growing population looked
+increasingly to Russia, not only for machinery, but for ideas.
+There were times when it seemed that Russia might transform the
+almost universal autumn of the race into a new spring.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>After the Bolshevik revolution the new Russia had been boycotted
+by the West, and had therefore passed through a stage of
+self-conscious extravagance. Communism and naïve materialism
+became the dogmas of a new crusading atheist church. All criticism
+was suppressed, even more rigorously than was the opposite
+criticism in other countries; and Russians were taught to think of
+themselves as saviours of mankind. Later, however, as economic
+isolation began to hamper the Bolshevik state, the new culture was
+mellowed and broadened. Bit by bit, economic intercourse with
+the West was restored, and with it cultural intercourse increased.
+The intuitive mystical detachment of Russia began to define itself,
+and so consolidate itself, in terms of the intellectual detachment
+of the best thought of the West. Iconoclasm was harnessed. The
+life of the senses and of impulse was tempered by a new critical
+movement. Fanatical materialism, whose fire had been derived
+from a misinterpreted, but intense, mystical intuition of dispassionate
+Reality, began to assimilate itself to the far more
+rational stoicism which was the rare flower of the West. At the
+same time, through intercourse with peasant culture and with the
+peoples of Asia, the new Russia began to grasp in one unifying
+act of apprehension both the grave disillusion of France and
+England and the ecstasy of the East.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The harmonizing of these two moods was now the chief spiritual
+need of mankind. Failure to integrate them into an all-dominant
+sentiment could not but lead to racial insanity. And so in due
+course it befell. Meanwhile this task of integration was coming
+to seem more and more urgent to the best minds of Russia, and
+might have been finally accomplished had they been longer
+illumined by the cold light of the West.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But this was not to be. The intellectual confidence of France
+and England, already shaken through progressive economic
+eclipse at the hands of America and Germany, was now undermined.
+For many decades England had watched these newcomers
+capture her markets. The loss had smothered her with a swarm of
+domestic problems, such as could never be solved save by drastic
+surgery; and this was a course which demanded more courage
+and energy than was possible to a people without hope. Then
+came the war with France, and harrowing disintegration. No
+delirium seized her, such as occurred in France; yet her whole
+mentality was changed, and her sobering influence in Europe was
+lessened.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As for France, her cultural life was now grievously reduced.
+It might, indeed, have recovered from the final blow, had it not
+already been slowly poisoned by gluttonous nationalism. For love
+of France was the undoing of the French. They prized the truly
+admirable spirit of France so extravagantly that they regarded all
+other nations as barbarians.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus it befell that in Russia the doctrines of communism and
+materialism, products of German systematists, survived uncriticized.
+On the other hand, the practice of communism was gradually
+undermined. For the Russian state came increasingly under the
+influence of Western, and especially American, finance. The
+materialism of the official creed also became a farce, for it was
+foreign to the Russian mind. Thus between practice and theory
+there was, in both respects, a profound inconsistency. What was
+once a vital and promising culture became insincere.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch1-4'>4. THE RUSSO-GERMAN WAR</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>The discrepancy between communist theory and individualist
+practice in Russia was one cause of the next disaster which befell
+Europe. Between Russia and Germany there should have been
+close partnership, based on interchange of machinery and corn.
+But the theory of communism stood in the way, and in a strange
+manner. Russian industrial organization had proved impossible
+without American capital; and little by little this influence had
+transformed the communistic system. From the Baltic to the
+Himalayas and the Bering Straits, pasture, timberlands, machine-tilled
+corn-lands, oil-fields, and a spreading rash of industrial
+towns, were increasingly dependent on American finance and
+organization. Yet not America but the far less individualistic
+Germany had become in the Russian mind the symbol of capitalism.
+Self-righteous hate of Germany compensated Russia for her
+own betrayal of the communistic ideal. This perverse antagonism
+was encouraged by the Americans; who, strong in their own individualism
+and prosperity, and by now contemptuously tolerant
+of Russian doctrines, were concerned only to keep Russian finance
+to themselves. In truth, of course, it was America that had helped
+Russia’s self-betrayal; and it was the spirit of America that was
+most alien to the Russian spirit. But American wealth was by now
+indispensable to Russia; so the hate due to America had to be
+borne vicariously by Germany.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Germans, for their part, were aggrieved that the Americans
+had ousted them from a most profitable field of enterprise, and in
+particular from the exploitation of Russian Asiatic oil. The
+economic life of the human race had for some time been based on
+coal, but latterly oil had been found a far more convenient source
+of power, and as the oil store of the planet was much smaller than
+its coal store, and the expenditure of oil had of course been wholly
+uncontrolled and wasteful, a shortage was already being felt.
+Thus the national ownership of the remaining oil-fields had become
+a main factor in politics and a fertile source of wars.
+America, having used up most of her own supplies, was now
+anxious to compete with the still prolific sources under Chinese
+control, by forestalling Germany in Russia. No wonder the
+Germans were aggrieved. But the fault was their own. In the days
+when Russian communism had been seeking to convert the world,
+Germany had taken over England’s leadership of individualistic
+Europe. While greedy for trade with Russia, she had been at the
+same time frightened of contamination by Russian social doctrine,
+the more so because communism had at first made some
+headway among the German workers. Later, even when sane
+industrial reorganization in Germany had deprived communism
+of its appeal to the workers, and thus had rendered it impotent,
+the habit of anti-communist vituperation persisted.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus the peace of Europe was in constant danger from the
+bickerings of two peoples who differed rather in ideals than in
+practice. For the one, in theory communistic, had been forced to
+delegate many of the community’s rights to enterprising individuals;
+while the other, in theory organized on a basis of private
+business, was becoming ever more socialized.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Neither party desired war. Neither was interested in military
+glory, for militarism as an end was no longer reputable. Neither
+was professedly nationalistic, for nationalism, though still potent,
+was no longer vaunted. Each claimed to stand for internationalism
+and peace, but accused the other of narrow patriotism. Thus
+Europe, though more pacific than ever before, was doomed to
+war.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Like most wars, the Anglo-French War had increased the desire
+for peace, yet made peace less secure. Distrust, not merely the old
+distrust of nation for nation, but a devastating distrust of human
+nature, gripped men like the dread of insanity. Individuals who
+thought of themselves as wholehearted Europeans, feared that at
+any moment they might succumb to some ridiculous epidemic of
+patriotism, and participate in the further crippling of Europe.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This dread was one cause of the formation of a European Confederacy,
+in which all the nations of Europe, save Russia, surrendered
+their sovereignty to a common authority and actually pooled
+their armaments. Ostensibly the motive of this act was peace; but
+America interpreted it as directed against herself, and withdrew
+from the League of Nations. China, the ‘natural enemy’ of
+America, remained within the League, hoping to use it against
+her rival.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>From without, indeed, the Confederacy at first appeared as a
+close-knit whole: but from within it was known to be insecure,
+and in every serious crisis it broke. There is no need to follow the
+many minor wars of this period, though their cumulative effect
+was serious, both economically and psychologically. Europe did
+at last, however, become something like a single nation in sentiment,
+though this unity was brought about less by a common
+loyalty than by a common fear of America.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Final consolidation was the fruit of the Russo-German War,
+the cause of which was partly economic and partly sentimental.
+All the peoples of Europe had long watched with horror the financial
+conquest of Russia by the United States, and they dreaded
+that they also must presently succumb to the same tyrant. To
+attack Russia, it was thought, would be to wound America in her
+only vulnerable spot. But the actual occasion of the war was
+sentimental. Half a century after the Anglo-French War, a second-rate
+German author published a typically German book of the
+baser sort. For as each nation had its characteristic virtues, so
+also each was prone to characteristic follies. This book was one
+of those brilliant but extravagant works in which the whole diversity
+of existence is interpreted under a single formula, with extreme
+detail and plausibility, yet with amazing <span class='it'>naïvéte</span>. Highly astute
+within its own artificial universe, it was none the less in wider
+regard quite uncritical. In two large volumes the author claimed
+that the cosmos was a dualism in which a heroic and obviously
+Nordic spirit ruled by divine right over an un-self-disciplined, yet
+servile and obviously Slavonic spirit. The whole of history, and of
+evolution, was interpreted on this principle; and of the contemporary
+world it was said that the Slavonic element was poisoning
+Europe. One phrase in particular caused fury in Moscow, ‘the
+anthropoid face of the Russian subman’.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Moscow demanded apology and suppression of the book.
+Berlin regretted the insult but with its tongue in its cheek; and
+insisted on the freedom of the press. Followed a crescendo of
+radio hate, and war.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The details of this war do not matter to one intent upon the
+history of mind in the Solar System, but its result was important.
+Moscow, Leningrad and Berlin were shattered from the air. The
+whole West of Russia was flooded with the latest and deadliest
+poison gas, so that not only was all animal and vegetable life
+destroyed, but also the soil between the Black Sea and the Baltic
+was rendered infertile and uninhabitable for many years. Within a
+week the war was over, for the reason that the combatants were
+separated by an immense territory in which life could not exist.
+But the effects of the war were lasting. The Germans had set going
+a process which they could not stop. Whiffs of the poison continued
+to be blown by fickle winds into every country of Europe
+and Western Asia. It was spring-time; but save in the Atlantic
+coast-lands the spring flowers shrivelled in the bud, and every
+young leaf had a withered rim. Humanity also suffered; though,
+save in the regions near the seat of war, it was in general only the
+children and the old people who suffered greatly. The poison
+spread across the Continent in huge blown tresses, broad as
+principalities, swinging with each change of wind. And wherever
+it strayed, young eyes, throats, and lungs were blighted like the
+leaves.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>America, after much debate, had at last decided to defend her
+interests in Russia by a punitive expedition against Europe. China
+began to mobilize her forces. But long before America was ready
+to strike, news of the widespread poisoning changed her policy.
+Instead of punishment, help was given. This was a fine gesture of
+good will. But also, as was observed in Europe, instead of being
+costly, it was profitable; for inevitably it brought more of Europe
+under American financial control.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The upshot of the Russo-German war, then, was that Europe
+was unified in sentiment by hatred of America, and that European
+mentality definitely deteriorated. This was due in part to the
+emotional influence of the war itself, partly to the socially damaging
+effects of the poison. A proportion of the rising generation had
+been rendered sickly for life. During the thirty years which intervened
+before the Euro-American war, Europe was burdened with
+an exceptional weight of invalids. First-class intelligence was on
+the whole rarer than before, and was more strictly concentrated
+on the practical work of reconstruction.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Even more disastrous for the human race was the fact that the
+recent Russian cultural enterprise of harmonizing Western intellectualism
+and Eastern mysticism was now wrecked.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>II</span> <span class='it'>Europe’s Downfall</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch2-1'>1. EUROPE AND AMERICA</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">Over</span> the heads of the European tribes two mightier peoples
+regarded each other with increasing dislike. Well might they;
+for the one cherished the most ancient and refined of all surviving
+cultures, while the other, youngest and most self-confident of the
+great nations, proclaimed her novel spirit as the spirit of the
+future.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the Far East, China, already half American, though largely
+Russian and wholly Eastern, patiently improved her rice lands,
+pushed forward her railways, organized her industries, and spoke
+fair to all the world. Long ago, during her attainment of unity and
+independence, China had learnt much from militant Bolshevism.
+And after the collapse of the Russian state it was in the East that
+Russian culture continued to live. Its mysticism influenced India.
+Its social ideal influenced China. Not indeed that China took over
+the theory, still less the practice of communism; but she learnt to
+entrust herself increasingly to a vigorous, devoted, and despotic
+party, and to feel in terms of the social whole rather than individualistically.
+Yet she was honeycombed with individualism, and in
+spite of her rulers she had precipitated a submerged and desperate
+class of wage-slaves.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the Far West, the United States of America openly claimed
+to be custodians of the whole planet. Universally feared and envied,
+universally respected for their enterprise, yet for their complacency
+very widely despised, the Americans were rapidly changing
+the whole character of man’s existence. By this time every
+human being throughout the planet made use of American products,
+and there was no region where American capital did not
+support local labour. Moreover the American press, gramophone,
+radio, cinematograph, and televisor ceaselessly drenched the planet
+with American thought. Year by year the ether reverberated with
+echoes of New York’s pleasures and the religious fervours of the
+Middle West. What wonder, then, that America, even while she
+was despised, irresistibly moulded the whole human race. This,
+perhaps, would not have mattered, had America been able to give
+of her very rare best. But inevitably only her worst could be propagated.
+Only the most vulgar traits of that potentially great people
+could get through into the minds of foreigners by means of these
+crude instruments. And so, by the floods of poison issuing from
+this people’s baser members, the whole world, and with it the
+nobler parts of America herself, were irrevocably corrupted.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For the best of America was too weak to withstand the worst.
+Americans had indeed contributed amply to human thought. They
+had helped to emancipate philosophy from ancient fetters. They
+had served science by lavish and rigorous research. In astronomy,
+favoured by their costly instruments and clear atmosphere, they
+had done much to reveal the dispositions of the stars and galaxies.
+In literature, though often they behaved as barbarians, they had
+also conceived new modes of expression, and moods of thought
+not easily appreciated in Europe. They had also created a new and
+brilliant architecture. And their genius for organization worked
+upon a scale that was scarcely conceivable, let alone practicable,
+to other peoples. In fact their best minds faced old problems of
+theory and of valuation with a fresh innocence and courage, so
+that fogs of superstition were cleared away wherever these choice
+Americans were present. But these best were after all a minority
+in a huge wilderness of opinionated self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly,
+an outworn religious dogma was championed with the
+intolerant optimism of youth. For this was essentially a race of
+bright, but arrested, adolescents. Something lacked which should
+have enabled them to grow up. One who looks back across the
+aeons to this remote people can see their fate already woven of
+their circumstance and their disposition, and can appreciate the
+grim jest that these, who seemed to themselves gifted to rejuvenate
+the planet, should have plunged it, inevitably, through spiritual
+desolation into senility and age-long night.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Inevitably. Yet here was a people of unique promise, gifted
+innately beyond all other peoples. Here was a race brewed of all
+the races, and mentally more effervescent than any. Here were
+intermingled Anglo-Saxon stubbornness, Teutonic genius for
+detail and systematization, Italian gaiety, the intense fire of Spain,
+and the more mobile Celtic flame. Here also was the sensitive and
+stormy Slav, a youth-giving Negroid infusion, a faint but subtly
+stimulating trace of the Red Man, and in the West a sprinkling of
+the Mongol. Mutual intolerance no doubt isolated these diverse
+stocks to some degree; yet the whole was increasingly one people,
+proud of its individuality, of its success, of its idealistic mission in
+the world, proud also of its optimistic and anthropocentric view
+of the universe. What might not this energy have achieved, had it
+been more critically controlled, had it been forced to attend to
+life’s more forbidding aspects! Direct tragic experience might perhaps
+have opened the hearts of this people. Intercourse with a
+more mature culture might have refined their intelligence. But the
+very success which had intoxicated them rendered them also too
+complacent to learn from less prosperous competitors.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Yet there was a moment when this insularity promised to wane.
+So long as England was a serious economic rival, America inevitably
+regarded her with suspicion. But when England was seen to
+be definitely in economic decline, yet culturally still at her zenith,
+America conceived a more generous interest in the last and severest
+phase of English thought. Eminent Americans themselves
+began to whisper that perhaps their unrivalled prosperity was not
+after all good evidence either of their own spiritual greatness or of
+the moral rectitude of the universe. A minute but persistent school
+of writers began to affirm that America lacked self-criticism, was
+incapable of seeing the joke against herself, was in fact wholly
+devoid of that detachment and resignation which was the finest,
+though of course the rarest mood of latter-day England. This
+movement might well have infused throughout the American
+people that which was needed to temper their barbarian egotism,
+and open their ears once more to the silence beyond man’s strident
+sphere. Once more, for only latterly had they been seriously
+deafened by the din of their own material success. And indeed,
+scattered over the continent throughout this whole period, many
+shrinking islands of true culture contrived to keep their heads
+above the rising tide of vulgarity and superstition. These it was
+that had looked to Europe for help, and were attempting a rally
+when England and France blundered into that orgy of emotionalism
+and murder which exterminated so many of their best minds
+and permanently weakened their cultural influence.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Subsequently it was Germany that spoke for Europe. And
+Germany was too serious an economic rival for America to be
+open to her influence. Moreover German criticism, though often
+emphatic, was too heavily pedantic, too little ironical, to pierce
+the hide of American complacency. Thus it was that America sank
+further and further into Americanism. Vast wealth and industry,
+and also brilliant invention, were concentrated upon puerile ends.
+In particular the whole of American life was organized around the
+cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe
+herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans
+who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the
+bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes
+for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves
+with some popular star, or gloated upon their American
+citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their
+government. Those who achieved power were satisfied so long as
+they could merely retain it, and advertise it uncritically in the conventionally
+self-assertive manner.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was almost inevitable that when Europe had recovered from
+the Russo-German disaster she should come to blows with America;
+for she had long chafed under the saddle of American
+finance, and the daily life of Europeans had become more and
+more cramped by the presence of a widespread and contemptuous
+foreign ‘aristocracy’ of American business men. Germany alone
+was comparatively free from this domination, for Germany
+was herself still a great economic power. But in Germany, no
+less than elsewhere, there was constant friction with the
+Americans.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of course neither Europe nor America desired war. Each was
+well aware that war would mean the end of business prosperity,
+and for Europe very possibly the end of all things; for it was
+known that man’s power of destruction had recently increased,
+and that if war were waged relentlessly, the stronger side might
+exterminate the other. But inevitably an ‘incident’ at last occurred
+which roused blind rage on each side of the Atlantic. A murder in
+South Italy, a few ill-considered remarks in the European Press,
+offensive retaliation in the American Press accompanied by the
+lynching of an Italian in the Middle West, an uncontrollable
+massacre of American citizens in Rome, the despatch of an American
+air fleet to occupy Italy, interception by the European air fleet,
+and war was in existence before ever it had been declared. This
+aerial action resulted, perhaps unfortunately for Europe, in a
+momentary check to the American advance. The enemy was put
+on his mettle, and prepared a crushing blow.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch2-2'>2. THE ORIGINS OF A MYSTERY</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>While the Americans were mobilizing their whole armament there
+occurred the really interesting event of the war. It so happened
+that an international society of scientific workers was meeting in
+England at Plymouth, and a young Chinese physicist had expressed
+his desire to make a report to a select committee. As he had
+been experimenting to find means for the utilization of subatomic
+energy by the annihilation of matter, it was with some excitement
+that, according to instruction, the forty international representatives
+travelled to the north coast of Devon and met upon the bare
+headland called Hartland Point.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was a bright morning after rain. Eleven miles to the north-west,
+the cliffs of Lundy Island displayed their markings with unusual
+detail. Sea-birds wheeled about the heads of the party as
+they seated themselves on their raincoats in a cluster upon the
+rabbit-cropped turf.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>They were a remarkable company, each one of them a unique
+person, yet characterized to some extent by his particular national
+type. And all were distinctively ‘scientists’ of the period. Formerly
+this would have implied a rather uncritical leaning towards materialism,
+and an affectation of cynicism; but by now it was fashionable
+to profess an equally uncritical belief that all natural phenomena
+were manifestations of the cosmic mind. In both periods,
+when a man passed beyond the sphere of his own serious scientific
+work he chose his beliefs irresponsibly, according to his taste,
+much as he chose his recreation or his food.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of the individuals present we may single out one or two for
+notice. The German, an anthropologist, and a product of the long-established
+cult of physical and mental health, sought to display
+in his own athletic person the characters proper to Nordic man.
+The Frenchman, an old but still sparkling psychologist, whose
+queer hobby was the collecting of weapons, ancient and modern,
+regarded the proceedings with kindly cynicism. The Englishman,
+one of the few remaining intellectuals of his race, compensated for
+the severe study of physics by a scarcely less devoted research into
+the history of English expletives and slang, delighting to treat his
+colleagues to the fruits of his toil. The West African president of
+the Society was a biologist, famous for his interbreeding of man
+and ape.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When all were settled, the President explained the purpose of
+the meeting. The utilization of subatomic energy had indeed been
+achieved, and they were to be given a demonstration.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The young Mongol stood up, and produced from a case an
+instrument rather like the old-fashioned rifle. Displaying this
+object, he spoke as follows, with that quaintly stilted formality
+which had once been characteristic of all educated Chinese.
+‘Before describing the details of my rather delicate process, I will
+illustrate its importance by showing what can be done with the
+finished product. Not only can I initiate the annihilation of matter,
+but also I can do so at a distance and in a precise direction. Moreover,
+I can inhibit the process. As a means of destruction, my
+instrument is perfect. As a source of power for the constructive
+work of mankind, it has unlimited potentiality. Gentlemen, this is
+a great moment in the history of Man. I am about to render into
+the hands of organized intelligence the means to stop for ever
+man’s internecine brawls. Henceforth this great Society, of which
+you are the <span class='it'>élite</span>, will beneficently rule the planet. With this little
+instrument you will stop the ridiculous war; and with another,
+which I shall soon perfect, you will dispense unlimited industrial
+power wherever you consider it needed. Gentlemen, with the aid
+of this handy instrument which I have the honour to demonstrate,
+you are about to become absolute masters of this planet.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Here the representative of England muttered an archaism whose
+significance was known only to himself, ‘Gawd ’elp us!’ In the
+minds of some of those foreigners who were not physicists this
+quaint expression was taken to be a technical word having some
+connexion with the new source of energy.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Mongol continued. Turning towards Lundy, he said, ‘That
+island is no longer inhabited, and as it is something of a danger to
+shipping, I will remove it.’ So saying he aimed his instrument at
+the distant cliff, but continued speaking. ‘This trigger will stimulate
+the ultimate positive and negative charges which constitute
+the atoms at a certain point on the rock-face to annihilate each
+other. These stimulated atoms will infect their neighbours, and so
+on indefinitely. This second trigger, however, will stop the actual
+annihilation. Were I to refrain from using it, the process would
+indeed continue indefinitely, perhaps until the whole of the planet
+had disintegrated.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There was an anxious movement among the spectators, but the
+young man took careful aim, and pressed the two triggers in quick
+succession. No sound from the instrument. No visible effect upon
+the smiling face of the island. Laughter began to gurgle from the
+Englishman, but ceased. For a dazzling point of light appeared on
+the remote cliff. It increased in size and brilliance, till all eyes
+were blinded in the effort to continue watching. It lit up the under
+parts of the clouds and blotted out the sun-cast shadows of gorse
+bushes beside the spectators. The whole end of the island facing
+the mainland was now an intolerable scorching sun. Presently,
+however, its fury was veiled in clouds of steam from the boiling
+sea. Then suddenly the whole island, three miles of solid granite,
+leapt asunder; so that a covey of great rocks soared heavenwards,
+and beneath them swelled more slowly a gigantic mushroom of
+steam and debris. Then the sound arrived. All hands were clapped
+to ears, while eyes still strained to watch the bay, pocked white
+with the hail of rocks. Meanwhile a great wall of sea advanced
+from the centre of turmoil. This was seen to engulf a coasting
+vessel, and pass on towards Bideford and Barnstaple.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The spectators leaped to their feet and clamoured, while the
+young author of this fury watched the spectacle with exultation,
+and some surprise at the magnitude of these mere after-effects of
+his process.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The meeting was now adjourned to a neighbouring chapel to
+hear the report of the research. As the representatives were filing
+through the door it was observed that the steam and smoke had
+cleared, and that open sea extended where had been Lundy. Within
+the chapel, the great Bible was decorously removed and the
+windows thrown open, to dispel somewhat the odour of sanctity.
+For though the early and spiritual interpretations of relativity
+and the quantum theory had by now accustomed men of science
+to pay their respects to the religions, many of them were still liable
+to a certain asphyxia when they were actually within the precincts
+of sanctity. When the scientists had settled themselves upon the
+archaic and unyielding benches, the President explained that the
+chapel authorities had kindly permitted this meeting because they
+realized that, since men of science had gradually discovered the
+spiritual foundation of physics, science and religion must henceforth
+be close allies. Moreover the purpose of this meeting was to
+discuss one of those supreme mysteries which it was the glory of
+science to discover and religion to transfigure. The President then
+complimented the young dispenser of power upon his triumph,
+and called upon him to address the meeting.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At this point, however, the aged representative of France intervened,
+and was granted a hearing. Born almost a hundred and forty
+years earlier, and preserved more by native intensity of spirit than
+by the artifices of the regenerator, this ancient seemed to speak
+out of a remote and wiser epoch. For in a declining civilization it
+is often the old who see furthest and see with youngest eyes. He
+concluded a rather long, rhetorical, yet closely reasoned speech as
+follows: ‘No doubt we are the intelligence of the planet; and
+because of our consecration to our calling, no doubt we are comparatively
+honest. But alas, even we are human. We make little
+mistakes now and then, and commit little indiscretions. The possession
+of such power as is offered us would not bring peace. On
+the contrary it would perpetuate our national hates. It would
+throw the world into confusion. It would undermine our own
+integrity, and turn us into tyrants. Moreover it would ruin science.
+And—well, when at last through some little error the world got
+blown up, the disaster would not be regrettable. I know that
+Europe is almost certainly about to be destroyed by those vigorous
+but rather spoilt children across the Atlantic. But distressing
+as this must be, the alternative is far worse. No, Sir! Your very
+wonderful toy would be a gift for developed minds; but for us,
+who are still barbarians—no, it must not be. And so, with deep
+regret I beg you to destroy your handiwork, and, if it were possible,
+your memory of your marvellous research. But above all
+breathe no word of your process to us, or to any man.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The German then protested that to refuse would be cowardly.
+He briefly described his vision of a world organized under organized
+science, and inspired by a scientifically organized religious
+dogma. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘to refuse were to refuse the gift of God,
+of that God whose presence in the humblest quantum we have so
+recently and so surprisingly revealed.’ Other speakers followed,
+for and against; but it soon grew clear that wisdom would prevail.
+Men of science were by now definitely cosmopolitan in sentiment.
+Indeed so far were they from nationalism, that on this occasion
+the representative of America had urged acceptance of the weapon,
+although it would be used against his own countrymen.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Finally, however, and actually by a unanimous vote, the meeting,
+while recording its deep respect for the Chinese scientists,
+requested, nay ordered, that the instrument and all account of it
+should be destroyed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The young man rose, drew his handiwork from its case, and
+fingered it. So long did he remain thus standing in silence with
+eyes fixed on the instrument, that the meeting became restless. At
+last, however, he spoke. ‘I shall abide by the decision of the meeting.
+Well, it is hard to destroy the fruit of ten years’ work, and
+such fruit, too. I expected to have the gratitude of mankind; but
+instead I am an outcast.’ Once more he paused. Gazing out of the
+window, he now drew from his pocket a field-glass, and studied
+the western sky. ‘Yes, they are American. Gentlemen, the American
+air fleet approaches.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The company leapt to its feet and crowded to the windows.
+High in the west a sparse line of dots stretched indefinitely into
+the north and the south. Said the Englishman, ‘For God’s sake
+use your damned tool once more, or England’s done. They must
+have smashed our fellows over the Atlantic.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Chinese scientist turned his eyes on the President. There
+was a general cry of ‘Stop them’. Only the Frenchman protested.
+The representative of the United States raised his voice and said,
+‘They are my people, I have friends up there in the sky. My own
+boy is probably there. But they’re mad. They want to do something
+hideous. They’re in the lynching mood. Stop them.’ The
+Mongol still gazed at the President, who nodded. The Frenchman
+broke down in senile tears. Then the young man, leaning upon the
+window sill, took careful aim at each black dot in turn. One by
+one, each became a blinding star, then vanished. In the chapel, a
+long silence. Then whispers; and glances at the Chinese scientist,
+expressive of anxiety and dislike.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There followed a hurried ceremony in a neighbouring field. A
+fire was lit. The instrument and the no less murderous manuscript
+were burnt. And then the grave young Mongol, having insisted
+on shaking hands all round, said, ‘With my secret alive in
+me, I must not live. Some day a more worthy race will rediscover
+it, but today I am a danger to the planet. And so I, who have
+foolishly ignored that I live among savages, help myself now by
+the ancient wisdom to pass hence.’ So saying, he fell dead.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch2-3'>3. EUROPE MURDERED</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>Rumour spread by voice and radio throughout the world. An
+island had been mysteriously exploded. The American fleet had
+been mysteriously annihilated in the air. And in the neighbourhood
+where these events had occurred, distinguished scientists
+were gathered in conference. The European Government sought
+out the unknown saviour of Europe, to thank him, and secure his
+process for their own use. The President of the scientific society
+gave an account of the meeting and the unanimous vote. He and
+his colleagues were promptly arrested, and ‘pressure’, first moral
+and then physical, was brought to bear on them to make them
+disclose the secret; for the world was convinced that they really
+knew it, and were holding it back for their own purposes.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile it was learnt that the American air commander,
+after he had defeated the European fleet, had been instructed
+merely to ‘demonstrate’ above England while peace was negotiated.
+For in America, big business had threatened the government
+with boycott if unnecessary violence were committed in Europe.
+Big business was by now very largely international in sentiment,
+and it was realized that the destruction of Europe would inevitably
+unhinge American finance. But the unprecedented disaster to
+the victorious fleet roused the Americans to blind hate, and the
+peace party was submerged. Thus it turned out that the Chinese
+scientist’s one hostile act had not saved England, but doomed
+her.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For some days Europeans lived in panic dread, knowing not
+what horror might at any moment descend on them. No wonder,
+then, that the Government resorted to torture in order to extract
+the secret from the scientists. No wonder that out of the forty
+individuals concerned, one, the Englishman, saved himself by
+deceit. He promised to do his best to ’remember’ the intricate
+process. Under strict supervision, he used his own knowledge of
+physics to experiment in search of the Chinese trick. Fortunately,
+however, he was on the wrong scent. And indeed he knew it. For
+though his first motive was mere self-preservation, later he conceived
+the policy of indefinitely preventing the dangerous discovery
+by directing research along a blind alley. And so his
+treason, by seeming to give the authority of a most eminent
+physicist to a wholly barren line of research, saved this undisciplined
+and scarcely human race from destroying its planet.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The American people, sometimes tender even to excess, were
+now collectively insane with hate of the English and of all
+Europeans. With cold efficiency they flooded Europe with the
+latest and deadliest of gases, till all the peoples were poisoned in
+their cities like rats in their holes. The gas employed was such that
+its potency would cease within three days. It was therefore possible
+for an American sanitary force to take charge of each metropolis
+within a week after the attack. Of those who first descended into
+the great silence of the murdered cities, many were unhinged by
+the overwhelming presence of dead populations. The gas had
+operated first upon the ground level, but, rising like a tide, it had
+engulfed the top stories, the spires, the hills. Thus, while in the
+streets lay thousands who had been overcome by the first waves of
+poison, every roof and pinnacle bore the bodies of those who had
+struggled upwards in the vain hope of escaping beyond the
+highest reach of the tide. When the invaders arrived they beheld
+on every height prostrate and contorted figures.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus Europe died. All centres of intellectual life were blotted
+out, and of the agricultural regions only the uplands and mountains
+were untouched. The spirit of Europe lived henceforth only
+in a piece-meal and dislocated manner in the minds of Americans,
+Chinese, Indians, and the rest.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There were indeed the British Colonies, but they were by now
+far less European than American. The war had, of course, disintegrated
+the British Empire. Canada sided with the United
+States. South Africa and India declared their neutrality at the
+outbreak of war. Australia, not through cowardice, but through
+conflict of loyalties, was soon reduced to neutrality. The New
+Zealanders took to their mountains and maintained an insane but
+heroic resistance for a year. A simple and gallant folk, they had
+almost no conception of the European spirit, yet obscurely and
+in spite of their Americanization they were loyal to it, or at least
+to that symbol of one aspect of Europeanism, ‘England’. Indeed
+so extravagantly loyal were they, or so innately dogged and
+opinionated, that when further resistance became impossible,
+many of them, both men and women, killed themselves rather
+than submit.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the most lasting agony of this war was suffered, not by the
+defeated, but by the victors. For when their passion had cooled
+the Americans could not easily disguise from themselves that they
+had committed murder. They were not at heart a brutal folk, but
+rather a kindly. They liked to think of the world as a place of
+innocent pleasure-seeking, and of themselves as the main purveyors
+of delight. Yet they had been somehow drawn into this fantastic
+crime; and henceforth an all-pervading sense of collective
+guilt warped the American mind. They had ever been vainglorious
+and intolerant; but now these qualities in them became extravagant
+even to insanity. Both as individuals and collectively, they
+became increasingly frightened of criticism, increasingly prone to
+blame and hate, increasingly self-righteous, increasingly hostile to
+the critical intelligence, increasingly superstitious.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus was this once noble people singled out by the gods to be
+cursed, and the minister of curses.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>III</span> <span class='it'>America and China</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch3-1'>1. THE RIVALS</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">After</span> the eclipse of Europe, the allegiance of men gradually
+crystallized into two great national or racial sentiments, the
+American and the Chinese. Little by little all other patriotisms
+became mere local variants of one or other of these two major
+loyalties. At first, indeed, there were many internecine conflicts.
+A detailed history of this period would describe how North
+America, repeating the welding process of the ancient ‘American
+Civil War’, incorporated within itself the already Americanized
+Latins of South America; and how Japan, once the bully of young
+China, was so crippled by social revolutions that she fell a prey to
+American Imperialism; and how this bondage turned her violently
+Chinese in sentiment, so that finally she freed herself by an heroic
+war of independence, and joined the Asian Confederacy, under
+Chinese leadership.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A full history would also tell of the vicissitudes of the League
+of Nations. Although never a cosmopolitan government, but an
+association of national governments, each concerned mainly for
+its own sovereignty, this great organization had gradually gained
+a very real prestige and authority over all its members. And in
+spite of its many shortcomings, most of which were involved in its
+fundamental constitution, it was invaluable as the great concrete
+focusing point of the growing loyalty toward humanity. At first its
+existence had been precarious; and indeed it had only preserved
+itself by an extreme caution, amounting almost to servility towards
+the ‘great powers’. Little by little, however, it had gained moral
+authority to such an extent that no single power, even the mightiest,
+dared openly and in cold blood either to disobey the will of
+the League or reject the findings of the High Court. But, since
+human loyalty was still in the main national rather than cosmopolitan,
+situations were all too frequent in which a nation would
+lose its head, run amok, throw its pledges to the winds, and
+plunge into fear-inspired aggression. Such a situation had produced
+the Anglo-French war. At other times the nations would
+burst apart into two great camps, and the League would be
+temporarily forgotten in their disunion. This happened in the
+Russo-German War, which was possible only because America
+favoured Russia and China favoured Germany. After the destruction
+of Europe, the world had for a while consisted of the League
+on one side and America on the other. But the League was dominated
+by China, and no longer stood for cosmopolitanism. This
+being so, those whose loyalty was genuinely human worked hard
+to bring America once more into the fold, and at last succeeded.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In spite of the League’s failure to prevent the ‘great’ wars, it
+worked admirably in preventing all the minor conflicts which had
+once been a chronic disease of the race. Latterly, indeed, the
+world’s peace was absolutely secure, save when the League itself
+was almost equally divided. Unfortunately, with the rise of
+America and China, this kind of situation became more and more
+common. During the war of North and South America an attempt
+was made to recreate the League as a Cosmopolitan Sovereignty,
+controlling the pooled armaments of all nations. But, though the
+cosmopolitan will was strong, tribalism was stronger. The upshot
+was that, over the Japanese question, the League definitely split
+into two Leagues, each claiming to inherit universal sovereignty
+from the old League, but each in reality dominated by a kind of
+supernational sentiment, the one American, the other Chinese.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This occurred within a century after the eclipse of Europe. The
+second century completed the process of crystallization into two
+systems, political and mental. On the one hand was the wealthy
+and close-knit American Continental Federation, with its poor
+relations, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the bedridden
+remains of Western Europe, and part of the soulless body that was
+Russia. On the other hand were Asia and Africa. In fact the
+ancient distinction between East and West had now become the
+basis of political sentiment and organization.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Within each system there were of course real differences of
+culture, of which the chief was the difference between the Chinese
+and Indian mentalities. The Chinese were interested in appearances,
+in the sensory, the urbane, the practical; while the Indians
+inclined to seek behind appearances for some ultimate reality, of
+which this life, they said, was but a passing aspect. Thus the average
+Indian never took to heart the practical social problem in all
+its seriousness. The ideal of perfecting this world was never an all-absorbing
+interest to him; since he had been taught to believe that
+this world was mere shadow. There was, indeed, a time when
+China had mentally less in common with India than with the West,
+but fear of America had drawn the two great Eastern peoples together.
+They agreed at least in earnest hate of that strange blend
+of the commercial traveller, the missionary, and the barbarian
+conqueror, which was the American abroad.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>China, owing to her relative weakness and the irritation caused
+by the tentacles of American industry within her, was at this time
+more nationalistic than her rival. America, indeed, professed to
+have outgrown nationalism, and to stand for political and cultural
+world unity. But she conceived this unity as a unity under American
+organization; and by culture she meant Americanism. This
+kind of cosmopolitanism was regarded by Asia and Africa without
+sympathy. In China a concerted effort had been made to
+purge the foreign element from her culture. Its success, however,
+was only superficial. Pigtails and chopsticks had once more come
+into vogue among the leisured, and the study of Chinese classics
+was once more compulsory in all schools. Yet the manner of life
+of the average man remained American. Not only did he use
+American cutlery, shoes, gramophones, domestic labour-saving
+devices, but also his alphabet was European, his vocabulary was
+permeated by American slang, his newspapers and radio were
+American in manner, though anti-American in politics. He saw
+daily on his domestic television screen every phase of American
+private life and every American public event. Instead of opium
+and joss sticks, he affected cigarettes and chewing gum.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>His thought also was largely a Mongolian variant of American
+thought. For instance, since his was a non-metaphysical mind, but
+since also some kind of metaphysics is unavoidable, he accepted
+the naïvely materialistic metaphysics which had been popularized
+by the earliest Behaviourists. In this view the only reality was
+physical energy, and the mind was but the system of the body’s
+movements in response to stimulus. Behaviourism had formerly
+played a great part in purging the best Western minds of superstition;
+and indeed at one time it was the chief growing point of
+thought.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This early, pregnant, though extravagant, doctrine it was that
+had been absorbed by China. But in its native land Behaviourism
+had gradually been infected by the popular demand for comfortable
+ideas, and had finally changed into a curious kind of spiritism,
+according to which, though the ultimate reality was indeed
+physical energy, this energy was identified with the divine spirit.
+The most dramatic feature of American thought in this period
+was the merging of Behaviourism and Fundamentalism, a belated
+and degenerate mode of Christianity. Behaviourism itself, indeed,
+had been originally a kind of inverted puritan faith, according to
+which intellectual salvation involved acceptance of a crude
+materialistic dogma, chiefly because it was repugnant to the self-righteous,
+and unintelligible to intellectuals of the earlier schools.
+The older Puritans trampled down all fleshly impulses; these
+newer Puritans trampled no less self-righteously upon the spiritual
+cravings. But in the increasingly spiritistic inclination of physics
+itself, Behaviourism and Fundamentalism had found a meeting
+place. Since the ultimate stuff of the physical universe was now
+said to be multitudinous and arbitrary ‘quanta’ of the activity of
+‘spirits’, how easy was it for the materialistic and the spiritistic to
+agree! At heart, indeed, they were never far apart in mood, though
+opposed in doctrine. The real cleavage was between the truly
+spiritual view on the one hand, and the spiritistic and materialistic
+on the other. Thus the most materialistic of Christian sects and
+the most doctrinaire of scientific sects were not long in finding a
+formula to express their unity, their denial of all those finer
+capacities which had emerged to be the spirit of man.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>These two faiths were at one in their respect for crude physical
+movement. And here lay the deepest difference between the
+American and the Chinese minds. For the former, activity, any
+sort of activity, was an end in itself; for the latter, activity was but
+a progress toward the true end, which was rest, and peace of mind.
+Action was to be undertaken only when equilibrium was disturbed.
+And in this respect China was at one with India. Both
+preferred contemplation to action.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus in China and India the passion for wealth was less potent
+than in America. Wealth was the power to set things and people
+in motion; and in America, therefore, wealth came to be frankly
+regarded as the breath of God, the divine spirit immanent in man.
+God was the supreme Boss, the universal Employer. His wisdom
+was conceived as a stupendous efficiency, his love as munificence
+towards his employees. The parable of the talents was made the
+corner-stone of education; and to be wealthy, therefore, was to be
+respected as one of God’s chief agents. The typical American man
+of big business was one who, in the midst of a show of luxury, was
+at heart ascetic. He valued his splendour only because it advertised
+to all men that he was of the elect. The typical Chinese
+wealthy man was one who savoured his luxury with a delicate and
+lingering palate, and was seldom tempted to sacrifice it to the
+barren lust of power.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>On the other hand, since American culture was wholly concerned
+with the values of the individual life, it was more sensitive
+than the Chinese with regard to the well-being of humble individuals.
+Therefore industrial conditions were far better under
+American than under Chinese capitalism. And in China both
+kinds of capitalism existed side by side. There were American
+factories in which the Chinese operatives thrived on the American
+system, and there were Chinese factories in which the operatives
+were by comparison abject wage-slaves. The fact that many
+Chinese industrial workers could not afford to keep a motor-car,
+let alone an aeroplane, was a source of much self-righteous indignation
+amongst American employers. And the fact that this fact
+did not cause a revolution in China, and that Chinese employers
+were able to procure plenty of labour in spite of the better conditions
+in American factories, was a source of perplexity. But in
+truth what the average Chinese worker wanted was not symbolical
+self-assertion through the control of privately owned machines,
+but security of life, and irresponsible leisure. In the earlier phase
+of ‘modern’ China there had indeed been serious explosions of
+class hatred. Almost every one of the great Chinese industrial
+centres had, at some point in its career, massacred its employers,
+and declared itself an independent communist city-state. But
+communism was alien to China, and none of these experiments
+was permanently successful. Latterly, when the rule of the
+Nationalist Party had become secure, and the worst industrial
+evils had been abolished, class feeling had given place to a patriotic
+loathing of American interference and American hustle, and
+those who worked under American employers were often called
+traitors.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Nationalist Party was not, indeed, the soul of China; but
+it was, so to speak, the central nervous system, within which the
+soul presided as a controlling principle. The Party was an intensely
+practical yet idealistic organization, half civil service, half religious
+order, though violently opposed to every kind of religion.
+Modelled originally on the Bolshevik Party of Russia, it had also
+drawn inspiration from the native and literary civil service of old
+China, and even from the tradition of administrative integrity
+which had been the best, the sole, contribution of British Imperialism
+to the East. Thus, by a route of its own, the Party had
+approached the ideal of the Platonic governors. In order to be
+admitted to the Party, it was necessary to do two things, to pass
+a very strict written examination on Western and Chinese social
+theory, and to come through a five years apprenticeship in actual
+administrative work. Outside the Party, China was still extremely
+corrupt; for peculation and nepotism were not censured, so long
+as they were kept decently hidden. But the Party set a brilliant
+example of self-oblivious devotion; and this unheard-of honesty
+was one source of its power. It was universally recognized that
+the party man was genuinely interested in social rather than
+private matters; and consequently he was trusted. The supreme
+object of his loyalty was not the Party, but China, not indeed the
+mass of Chinese individuals, whom he regarded with almost the
+same nonchalance as he regarded himself, but the corporate unity
+and culture of the race.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The whole executive power in China was now in the hands of
+members of the Party, and the final legislative authority was the
+Assembly of Party Delegates. Between these two institutions stood
+the President. Sometimes no more than chairman of the Executive
+Committee, this individual was now and then almost a dictator,
+combining in himself the attributes of Prime Minister, Emperor,
+and Pope. For the head of the Party was the head of the state; and
+like the ancient emperors, he became the symbolical object of
+ancestor worship.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Party’s policy was dominated by the Chinese respect for
+culture. Just as Western states had been all too often organized
+under the will for military prestige, so the new China was organized
+under the will for prestige of culture. For this end the American
+state was reviled as the supreme example of barbarian
+vulgarity; and so patriotism was drawn in to strengthen the
+cultural policy of the Party. It was boasted that, while indeed in
+America every man and woman might hope to fight a way to
+material wealth, in China every intelligent person could actually
+enjoy the cultural wealth of the race. The economic policy of the
+party was based on the principle of affording to all workers
+security of livelihood and full educational opportunity. (In
+American eyes, however, the livelihood thus secured was scarcely
+fit for beasts, and the education provided was out of date and
+irreligious.) The party took good care to gather into itself all the
+best of every social class, and also to encourage in the unintelligent
+masses a respect for learning, and the illusion that they
+themselves shared to some extent in the national culture.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But in truth this culture, which the common people so venerated
+in their superiors and mimicked in their own lives, was scarcely
+less superficial than the cult of power against which it was pitted.
+For it was almost wholly a cult of social rectitude and textual
+learning; not so much of the merely literary learning which had
+obsessed ancient China, as of the vast corpus of contemporary
+scientific dogma, and above all of pure mathematics. In old days
+the candidate for office had to show minute but uncritical knowledge
+of classical writers; now he had to give proof of a no less
+barren agility in describing the established formulae of physics,
+biology, psychology, and more particularly of economics and
+social theory. And though never encouraged to puzzle over the
+philosophical basis of mathematics, he was expected to be familiar
+with the intricacy of at least one branch of that vast game of skill.
+So great was the mass of information forced upon the student,
+that he had no time to think of the mutual implications of the
+various branches of his knowledge.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Yet there was a soul in China. And in this elusive soul of China
+the one hope of the First Men now lay. Scattered throughout the
+Party was a minority of original minds, who were its source of
+inspiration and the growing point of the human spirit in this
+period. Well aware of man’s littleness, these thinkers regarded
+him none the less as the crown of the universe. On the basis of a
+positivistic and rather perfunctory metaphysic, they built a social
+ideal and a theory of art. Indeed, in the practice and appreciation
+of art they saw man’s highest achievement. Pessimistic about the
+remote future of the race, and contemptuous of American evangelism,
+they accepted as the end of living the creation of an intricately
+unified pattern of human lives set in a fair environment.
+Society, the supreme work of art (so they put it), is a delicate and
+perishable texture of human intercourse. They even entertained the
+possibility that in the last resort, not only the individual’s life, but
+the whole career of the race, might be tragic, and should be valued
+according to the standards of tragic art. Contrasting their own
+spirit with that of the Americans, one of them had said, ‘America,
+a backward youth in a play-room equipped with luxury and electric
+power, pretends that his mechanical toy moves the world.
+China, a gentleman walking in his garden in the evening, admires
+the fragrance and the order all the more because in the air is the
+first nip of winter, and in his ear rumour of the irresistible
+barbarian.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In this attitude there was something admirable, and sorely
+needed at the time; but also there was a fatal deficiency. In its
+best exponents it rose to a detached yet fervent salutation of
+existence, but all too easily degenerated into a supine complacency,
+and a cult of social etiquette. In fact it was ever in danger
+of corruption through the inveterate Chinese habit of caring only
+for appearances. In some respects the spirit of America and the
+spirit of China were complementary, since the one was restless
+and the other bland, the one zealous and the other dispassionate,
+the one religious, the other artistic, the one superficially mystical
+or at least romantic, the other classical and rationalistic, though
+too easy-going for prolonged rigorous thought. Had they cooperated,
+these two mentalities might have achieved much. On
+the other hand, in both there was an identical and all-important
+lack. Neither of them was disturbed and enlightened by that
+insatiable lust for the truth, that passion for the free exercise of
+critical intelligence, the gruelling hunt for reality, which had been
+the glory of Europe and even of the earlier America, but now was
+no longer anywhere among the First Men. And, consequent on
+this lack, another disability crippled them. Both were by now
+without that irreverent wit which individuals of an earlier generation
+had loved to exercise upon one another and on themselves,
+and even on their most sacred values.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In spite of this weakness, with good luck they might have
+triumphed. But, as I shall tell, the spirit of America undermined
+the integrity of China, and thereby destroyed its one chance of
+salvation. There befell, in fact, one of those disasters, half inevitable
+and half accidental, which periodically descended on the
+First Men, as though by the express will of some divinity who
+cared more for the excellence of his dramatic creation than for
+the sentient puppets which he had conceived for its enacting.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch3-2'>2. THE CONFLICT</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>After the Euro-American War there occurred first a century of
+minor national conflicts, and then a century of strained peace,
+during which America and China became more and more irksome
+to each other. At the close of this period the great mass of men
+were in theory far more cosmopolitan than nationalist, yet the
+inveterate tribal spirit lurked within each mind and was ever ready
+to take possession. The planet was now a delicately organized
+economic unit, and big business in all lands was emphatically
+contemptuous of patriotism. Indeed the whole adult generation
+of the period was consciously and without reserve internationalist
+and pacifist. Yet this logically unassailable conviction was undermined
+by a biological craving for adventurous living. Prolonged
+peace and improved social conditions had greatly reduced the
+danger and hardship of life, and there was no socially harmless
+substitute to take the place of war in exercising the primitive courage
+and anger of animals fashioned for the wild. Consciously men
+desired peace, unconsciously they still needed some such gallantry
+as war afforded. And this repressed combative disposition ever
+and again expressed itself in explosions of irrational tribalism.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Inevitably a serious conflict at last occurred. As usual the cause
+was both economic and sentimental. The economic cause was the
+demand for fuel. A century earlier a very serious oil famine had
+so sobered the race that the League of Nations had been able to
+impose a system of cosmopolitan control upon the existing oil-fields,
+and even the coal fields. It had also imposed strict regulations
+as to the use of these invaluable materials. Oil in particular
+was only to be used for enterprises in which no other source of
+power would serve. The cosmopolitan control of fuel was perhaps
+the supreme achievement of the League, and it remained a fixed
+policy of the race long after the League had been superseded. Yet,
+by a choice irony of fate, this quite unusually sane policy contributed
+largely to the downfall of civilization. By means of it, as will
+later transpire, the end of coal was postponed into the period
+when the intelligence of the race was so deteriorated that it could
+no longer cope with such a crisis. Instead of adjusting itself to the
+novel situation, it simply collapsed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But at the time with which we are at present dealing, means had
+recently been found of profitably working the huge deposits of
+fuel in Antarctica. This vast supply unfortunately lay technically
+beyond the jurisdiction of the World Fuel Control Board.
+America was first in the field, and saw in Antarctic fuel a means
+for her advancement, and for her self-imposed duty of Americanizing
+the planet. China, fearful of Americanization, demanded
+that the new sources should be brought under the jurisdiction of
+the Board. For some years feeling had become increasingly violent
+on this point, and both peoples had by now relapsed into the crude
+old nationalistic mood. War began to seem almost inevitable.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The actual occasion of conflict, however, was, as usual, an
+accident. A scandal was brought to light about child labour in
+certain Indian factories. Boys and girls under twelve were being
+badly sweated, and in their abject state their only adventure was
+precocious sex. The American Government protested, and in
+terms which assumed that America was the guardian of the world’s
+morals. India immediately held up the reform which she had
+begun to impose, and replied to America as to a busy-body.
+America threatened an expedition to set things right, ‘backed by
+the approval of all the morally sensitive races of the earth’.
+China now intervened to keep the peace between her rival and
+her partner, and undertook to see that the evil should be abolished,
+if America would withdraw her extravagant slanders against the
+Eastern conscience. But it was too late. An American bank in
+China was raided, and its manager’s severed head was kicked
+along the street. The tribes of men had once more smelled blood.
+War was declared by the West upon the East.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of the combatants, Asia, with North Africa, formed geographically
+the more compact system, but America and her dependents
+were economically more organized. At the outbreak of war neither
+side had any appreciable armament, for war had long ago been
+‘outlawed’. This fact, however, made little difference; since the
+warfare of the period could be carried on with great effect simply
+by the vast swarms of civil aircraft, loaded with poison, high
+explosives, disease microbes, and the still more lethal ‘hypo-biological’
+organisms, which contemporary science sometimes
+regarded as the simplest living matter, sometimes as the most
+complex molecules.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The struggle began with violence, slackened, and dragged on
+for a quarter of a century. At the close of this period, Africa was
+mostly in the hands of America. But Egypt was an uninhabitable
+no-man’s land, for the South Africans had very successfully
+poisoned the sources of the Nile. Europe was under Chinese
+military rule. This was enforced by armies of sturdy Central-Asians,
+who were already beginning to wonder why they did not
+make themselves masters of China also. The Chinese language,
+with European alphabet, was taught in all schools. In England,
+however, there were no schools, and no population; for early in
+the war, an American air-base had been established in Ireland,
+and England had been repeatedly devastated. Airmen passing
+over what had been London, could still make out the lines of
+Oxford Street and the Strand among the green and grey tangle
+of ruins. Wild nature, once so jealously preserved in national
+‘beauty spots’ against the incursion of urban civilization, now
+rioted over the whole island. At the other side of the world, the
+Japanese islands had been similarly devastated in the vain American
+effort to establish there an air-base from which to reach the
+heart of the enemy. So far, however, neither China nor America
+had been very seriously damaged; but recently the American biologists
+had devised a new malignant germ, more infectious and
+irresistible than anything hitherto known. Its work was to disintegrate
+the highest levels of the nervous system, and therefore to
+render all who were even slightly affected incapable of intelligent
+action; while a severe attack caused paralysis and finally death.
+With this weapon the American military had already turned one
+Chinese city into a bedlam; and wandering bacilli had got into
+the brains of several high officials throughout the province, rendering
+their behaviour incoherent. It was becoming the fashion to
+attribute all one’s blunders to a touch of the new microbe. Hitherto
+no effective means of resisting spread of this plague had been
+discovered. And as in the early stages of the disease the patient
+became restlessly active, undertaking interminable and objectless
+journeys on the flimsiest pretexts, it seemed probable that the
+‘American madness’ would spread throughout China.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>On the whole, then, the military advantage lay definitely with
+the Americans; but economically they were perhaps the more
+damaged, for their higher standard of prosperity depended largely
+on foreign investment and foreign trade. Throughout the American
+continent there was now real poverty and serious symptoms
+of class war, not indeed between private workers and employers,
+but between workers and the autocratic military governing caste
+which inevitably war had created. Big business had at first succumbed
+to the patriotic fever, but had soon remembered that war
+is folly and ruinous to trade. Indeed, upon both sides the fervour
+of nationalism had lasted only a couple of years, after which the
+lust of adventure had given place to mere dread of the enemy.
+For on each side the populace had been nursed into the belief that
+its foe was diabolic. When a quarter of a century had passed since
+there had been free intercourse between the two peoples, the real
+mental difference which had always existed between them appeared
+to many almost as a difference of biological species. Thus
+in America the Church preached that no Chinaman had a soul.
+Satan, it was said, had tampered with evolution of the Chinese
+race when first it had emerged from the prehuman animal. He
+had contrived that it should be cunning, but wholly without
+tenderness. He had induced in it an insatiable sensuality, and wilful
+blindness towards the divine, towards that superbly masterful
+energy-for-energy’s sake which was the glory of America. Just as
+in a prehistoric era the young race of mammals had swept away
+the sluggish, brutish and demoded reptiles, so now, it was said,
+young soulful America was destined to rid the planet of the
+reptilian Mongol. In China, on the other hand, the official view
+was that the Americans were a typical case of biological retrogression.
+Like all parasitic organisms, they had thriven by specializing
+in one low-grade mode of behaviour at the expense of their
+higher nature; and now, ‘tape-worms of the planet’, they were
+starving out the higher capacities of the human race by their
+frantic acquisitiveness.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Such were the official doctrines. But the strain of war had
+latterly produced on each side a grave distrust of its own government,
+and an emphatic will for peace at any price. The governments
+hated the peace party even more than each other, since
+their existence now depended on war. They even went so far
+as to inform one another of the clandestine operations of
+the pacifists, discovered by their own secret service in enemy
+territory.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus when at last big business and the workers on each side of
+the Pacific had determined to stop the war by concerted action,
+it was very difficult for their representatives to meet.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch3-3'>3. ON AN ISLAND IN THE PACIFIC</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>Save for the governments, the whole human race now earnestly
+desired peace; but opinion in America was balanced between the
+will merely to effect an economic and political unification of the
+world, and a fanatical craving to impose American culture on the
+East. In China also there was a balance of the purely commercial
+readiness to sacrifice ideals for the sake of peace and prosperity,
+and the will to preserve Chinese culture. The two individuals who
+were to meet in secret for the negotiation of peace were typical of
+their respective races; in both of them the commercial and cultural
+motives were present, though the commercial was by now most
+often dominant.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was in the twenty-sixth year of the war that two seaplanes
+converged by night from the East and West upon an island in the
+Pacific, and settled on a secluded inlet. The moon, destined in
+another age to smother this whole equatorial region with her
+shattered body, now merely besparkled the waves. From each
+plane a traveller emerged, and rowed himself ashore in a rubber
+coracle. The two men met upon the beach, and shook hands, the
+one with ceremony, the other with a slightly forced brotherliness.
+Already the sun peered over the wall of the sea, shouting his
+brilliance and his heat. The Chinese, taking off his air-helmet,
+uncoiled his pigtail with a certain emphasis, stripped off his heavy
+coverings, and revealed a sky-blue silk pyjama suit, embroidered
+with golden dragons. The other, glancing with scarcely veiled
+dislike at this finery, flung off his wraps and displayed the decent
+grey coat and breeches with which the American business men of
+this period unconsciously symbolized their reversion to Puritanism.
+Smoking the Chinese envoy’s cigarettes, the two sat down to
+re-arrange the planet.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The conversation was amicable, and proceeded without hitch;
+for there was agreement about the practical measures to be
+adopted. The government in each country was to be overthrown
+at once. Both representatives were confident that this could be
+done if it could be attempted simultaneously on each side of the
+Pacific; for in both countries finance and the people could be
+trusted. In place of the national governments, a World Finance
+Directorate was to be created. This was to be composed of the
+leading commercial and industrial magnates of the world, along
+with representatives of the workers’ organizations. The American
+representative should be the first president of the Directorate, and
+the Chinese the first vice-president. The Directorate was to manage
+the whole economic reorganization of the world. In particular,
+industrial conditions in the East were to be brought into line with
+those of America, while on the other hand the American monopoly
+of Antarctica was to be abolished. That rich and almost virgin
+land was to be subjected to the control of the Directorate.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Occasionally during the conversation reference was made to
+the great cultural difference between the East and West; but both
+the negotiants seemed anxious to believe that this was only a
+minor matter which need not be allowed to trouble a business
+discussion.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At this point occurred one of those incidents which, minute in
+themselves, have disproportionately great effects. The unstable
+nature of the First Men made them peculiarly liable to suffer from
+such accidents, and especially so in their decline.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The talk was interrupted by the appearance of a human figure
+swimming round a promontory into the little bay. In the shallows
+she arose, and walked out of the water towards the creators of the
+World State. A bronze young smiling woman, completely nude,
+with breasts heaving after her long swim, she stood before them,
+hesitating. The relation between the two men was instantly
+changed, though neither was at first aware of it.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>‘Delicious daughter of Ocean,’ said the Chinese, in that somewhat
+archaic and deliberately un-American English which the
+Asians now affected in communication with foreigners, ‘what is
+there that these two despicable land animals can do for you?
+For my friend, I cannot answer, but I at least am henceforth your
+slave.’ His eyes roamed caressingly, yet as it were with perfect
+politeness, all over her body. And she, with that added grace
+which haloes women when they feel the kiss of an admiring gaze,
+pressed the sea from her hair and stood at the point of speech.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the American protested, ‘Whoever you are, please do not
+interrupt us. We are really very busy discussing a matter of great
+importance, and we have no time to spare. Please go. Your nudity
+is offensive to one accustomed to civilized manners. In a modern
+country you would not be allowed to bathe without a costume. We
+are growing very sensitive on this point.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A distressful but enhancing blush spread under the wet bronze,
+and the intruder made as if to go. But the Chinese cried, ‘Stay!
+We have almost finished our business talk. Refresh us with your
+presence. Bring the realities back into our discussion by permitting
+us to contemplate for a while the perfect vase line of your
+waist and thigh. Who are you? Of what race are you? My
+anthropological studies fail to place you. Your skin is fairer than
+is native here, though rich with sun. Your breasts are Grecian.
+Your lips are chiselled with a memory of Egypt. Your hair, night
+though it was, is drying with a most bewildering hint of gold. And
+your eyes, let me observe them. Long, subtle, as my countrywomen’s,
+unfathomable as the mind of India, they yet reveal
+themselves to your new slave as not wholly black, but violet
+as the zenith before dawn. Indeed this exquisite unity of incompatibles
+conquers both my heart and my understanding.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>During this harangue her composure was restored, though she
+glanced now and then at the American, who kept ever removing
+his gaze from her.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>She answered in much the same diction as the other; but,
+surprisingly, with an old-time English accent, ‘I am certainly a
+mongrel. You might call me, not daughter of Ocean, but daughter
+of Man; for wanderers of every race have scattered their seed on
+this island. My body, I know, betrays its diverse ancestry in a
+rather queer blend of characters. My mind is perhaps unusual too,
+for I have never left this island. And though it is actually less than
+a quarter of a century since I was born, a past century has perhaps
+had more meaning for me than the obscure events of today. A
+hermit taught me. Two hundred years ago he lived actively in
+Europe; but towards the end of his long life he retreated to this
+island. As an old man he loved me. And day by day he gave me
+insight into the great spirit of the past; but of this age he gave me
+nothing. Now that he is dead, I struggle to familiarize myself with
+the present, but I continue to see everything from the angle of
+another age. And so,’ (turning to the American) ‘if I have offended
+against modern customs, it is because my insular mind has never
+been taught to regard nakedness as indecent. I am very ignorant,
+truly a savage. If only I could gain experience of your great world!
+If ever this war ends, I must travel.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>‘Delectable,’ said the Chinese, ‘exquisitely proportioned,
+exquisitely civilized savage! Come with me for a holiday in
+modern China. There you can bathe without a costume, so long
+as you are beautiful.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>She ignored this invitation, and seemed to have fallen into a
+reverie. Then absently she continued, ‘Perhaps I should not suffer
+from this restlessness, this craving to experience the world, if only
+I were to experience motherhood instead. Many of the islanders
+from time to time have enriched me with their embraces. But with
+none of them could I permit myself to conceive. They are dear;
+but not one of them is at heart more than a child.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The American became restless. But again the Mongol intervened,
+with lowered and deepened voice. ‘I,’ he said, ‘I, the Vice-President
+of the World Finance Directorate, shall be honoured to
+afford you the opportunity of motherhood.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>She regarded him gravely, then smiled as on a child who asks
+more than it is reasonable to give. But the American rose hastily.
+Addressing the silken Mongol, he said, ‘You probably know
+that the American Government is in the act of sending a second
+poison fleet to turn your whole population insane, more insane
+than you are already. You cannot defend yourselves against this
+new weapon; and if I am to save you, I must not trifle any longer.
+Nor must you, for we must act simultaneously. We have settled
+all that matters for the moment. But before I leave, I must say that
+your behaviour towards this woman has very forcibly reminded me
+that there is something wrong with the Chinese way of thought
+and life. In my anxiety for peace, I overlooked my duty in this
+respect. I now give you notice that when the Directorate is established,
+we Americans must induce you to reform these abuses, for
+the world’s sake and your own.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Chinese rose and answered, ‘This matter must be settled
+locally. We do not expect you to accept our standards, so do not
+you expect us to accept yours.’ He moved towards the woman,
+smiling. And the smile outraged the American.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We need not follow the wrangle which now ensued between
+the two representatives, each of whom, though in a manner cosmopolitan
+in sentiment, was heartily contemptuous of the other’s
+values. Suffice it that the American became increasingly earnest
+and dictatorial, the other increasingly careless and ironical. Finally
+the American raised his voice and presented an ultimatum.
+‘Our treaty of world-union,’ he said, ‘will remain unsigned unless
+you add a clause promising drastic reforms, which, as a matter of
+fact, my colleagues had already proposed as a condition of cooperation.
+I had decided to withhold them, in case they should
+wreck our treaty; but now I see they are essential. You must
+educate your people out of their lascivious and idle ways, and
+give them modern scientific religion. Teachers in your schools and
+universities must pledge themselves to the modern fundamentalized
+physics, and behaviourism, and must enforce worship of the
+Divine Mover. The change will be difficult, but we will help you.
+You will need a strong order of Inquisitors, responsible to the
+Directorate. They will see also to the reform of your people’s
+sexual frivolity in which you squander so much of the Divine
+Energy. Unless you agree to this, I cannot stop the war. The law
+of God must be kept, and those who know it must enforce it.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The woman interrupted him. ‘Tell me, what is this “God” of
+yours? The Europeans worshipped love, not energy. What do you
+mean by energy? Is it merely to make engines go fast, and to
+agitate the ether?’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>He answered flatly, as if repeating a lesson, ‘God is the all-pervading
+spirit of movement which seeks to actualize itself wherever
+it is latent. God has appointed the great American people to
+mechanize the universe.’ He paused, contemplating the clean lines
+of his sea-plane. Then he continued with emphasis, ‘But come!
+Time is precious. Either you work for God, or we trample you
+out of God’s way.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The woman approached him, saying, ‘There is certainly something
+great in this enthusiasm. But somehow, though my heart
+says you are right, my head is doubting still. There must be a
+mistake somewhere.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>‘Mistake!’ he laughed, overhanging her with his mask of
+power. ‘When a man’s soul is action, how can he be mistaken that
+action is divine? I have served the great God, Energy, all my life,
+from garage boy to World President. Has not the whole American
+people proved its faith by its success?’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>With rapture, but still in perplexity, she gazed at him. ‘There’s
+something terribly wrong-headed about you Americans,’ she
+said, ‘but certainly you are great.’ She looked him in the eyes.
+Then suddenly she laid a hand on him, and said with conviction,
+‘Being what you are, you are probably right. Anyhow you are a
+man, a real man. Take me. Be the father of my boy. Take me to
+the dangerous cities of America to work with you.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The President was surprised with sudden hunger for her body,
+and she saw it; but he turned to the Vice-President and said, ‘She
+has seen where the truth lies. And you? War, or cooperation in
+God’s work?’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>‘The death of our bodies, or the death of our minds,’ said the
+Chinese, but with a bitterness that lacked conviction; for he was
+no fanatic. ‘Well, since the soul is only the harmoniousness of
+the body’s behaviour, and since, in spite of this little dispute, we
+are agreed that the coordination of activity is the chief need of the
+planet today, and since in respect of our differences of temperament
+this lady has judged in favour of America, and moreover
+since, if there is any virtue in our Asian way of life, it will not
+succumb to a little propaganda, but rather will be strengthened by
+opposition—since all these matters are so, I accept your terms.
+But it would be undignified in China to let this great change be
+imposed upon her externally. You must give me time to form in
+Asia a native and spontaneous party of Energists, who will themselves
+propagate your gospel, and perhaps give it an elegance
+which, if I may say so, it has not yet. Even this we will do to
+secure the cosmopolitan control of Antarctica.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thereupon the treaty was signed; but a new and secret codicil
+was drawn up and signed also, and both were witnessed by the
+Daughter of Man, in a clear, round, old-fashioned script.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Then, taking a hand of each, she said, ‘And so at last the world
+is united. For how long, I wonder. I seem to hear my old master’s
+voice scolding, as though I had been rather stupid. But he failed
+me, and I have chosen a new master, Master of the World.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>She released the hand of the Asian, and made as if to draw the
+American away with her. And he, though he was a strict monogamist
+with a better half waiting for him in New York, longed to
+crush her sun-clad body to his Puritan cloth. She drew him away
+among the palm trees.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Vice-President of the World sat down once more, lit a
+cigarette, and meditated, smiling.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/illo74.jpg' alt='' id='illo74' style='width:80%;height:auto;'/>
+</div>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>IV</span> <span class='it'>An Americanized Planet</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch4-1'>1. THE FOUNDATION OF THE FIRST WORLD STATE</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">We</span> have now reached that point in the history of the First Men
+when, some three hundred and eighty terrestrial years after the
+European War, the goal of world unity was at last achieved—not,
+however, before the mind of the race had been seriously crippled.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There is no need to recount in detail the transition from rival
+national sovereignties to unitary control by the World Financial
+Directorate. Suffice it that by concerted action in America and
+China the military governments found themselves hamstrung by
+the passive resistance of cosmopolitan big business. In China this
+process was almost instantaneous and bloodless; in America there
+was serious disorder for a few weeks, while the bewildered government
+attempted to reduce its rebels by martial law. But the population
+was by now eager for peace; and, although a few business
+magnates were shot, and a crowd of workers here and there mown
+down, the opposition was irresistible. Very soon the governing
+clique collapsed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The new order consisted of a vast system akin to guild socialism,
+yet at bottom individualistic. Each industry was in theory
+democratically governed by all its members, but in practice was
+controlled by its dominant individuals. Coordination of all industries
+was effected by a World Industrial Council, whereon the
+leaders of each industry discussed the affairs of the planet as a
+whole. The status of each industry on the Council was determined
+partly by its economic power in the world, partly by public esteem.
+For already the activities of men were beginning to be regarded as
+either ‘noble’ or ‘ignoble’; and the noble were not necessarily the
+most powerful economically. Thus upon the Council appeared an
+inner ring of noble ‘industries,’ which were, in approximate order
+of prestige, Finance, Flying, Engineering, Surface Locomotion,
+Chemical Industry, and Professional Athletics. But the real seat of
+power was not the Council, not even the inner ring of the Council,
+but the Financial Directorate. This consisted of a dozen millionaires,
+with the American President and the Chinese Vice-President
+at their head.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Within this august committee internal dissensions were inevitable.
+Shortly after the system had been inaugurated the Vice-President
+sought to overthrow the President by publishing his
+connexion with the coloured woman who now styled herself the
+Daughter of Man. This piece of scandal was expected to enrage
+the virtuous American public against their hero. But by a stroke
+of genius the President saved both himself and the unity of the
+world. Far from denying the charge, he gloried in it. In that
+moment of sexual triumph, he said, a great truth had been revealed
+to him. Without this daring sacrifice of his private purity,
+he would never have been really fit to be President of the World;
+he would have remained simply an American. In this lady’s veins
+flowed the blood of all races, and in her mind all cultures mingled.
+His union with her, confirmed by many subsequent visits, had
+taught him to enter into the spirit of the East, and had given him
+a broad human sympathy such as his high office demanded. As a
+private individual, he insisted, he remained a monogamist with a
+wife in New York; and, as a private individual, he had sinned, and
+must suffer for ever the pangs of conscience. But as President of
+the World, it was incumbent upon him to espouse the World. And
+since nothing could be said to be real without a physical basis, this
+spiritual union had to be embodied and symbolized by his physical
+union with the Daughter of Man. In tones of grave emotion he
+described through the microphone how, in the presence of that
+mystical woman, he had suddenly triumphed over his private
+moral scruples; and how, in a sudden access of the divine energy,
+he had consummated his marriage with the World in the shade of
+a banana tree.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The lovely form of the Daughter of Man (decently clad) was
+transmitted by television to every receiver in the world. Her face,
+blended of Asia and the West, became a most potent symbol of
+human unity. Every man on the planet became in imagination her
+lover. Every woman identified herself with this supreme woman.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Undoubtedly there was some truth in the plea that the Daughter
+of Man had enlarged the President’s mind, for his policy had been
+unexpectedly tactful towards the East. Often he had moderated the
+American demand for the immediate Americanization of China.
+Often he had persuaded the Chinese to welcome some policy
+which at first they had regarded with suspicion.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The President’s explanation of his conduct enhanced his prestige
+both in American and Asia. America was hypnotized by the
+romantic religiosity of the story. Very soon it became fashionable
+to be a strict monogamist with one domestic wife, and one ‘symbolical’
+wife in the East, or in another town, or a neighbouring
+street, or with several such in various localities. In China the cold
+tolerance with which the President was at first treated was warmed
+by this incident into something like affection. And it was partly
+through his tact, or the influence of his symbolical wife, that the
+speeding up of China’s Americanization was effected without
+disorder.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For some months after the foundation of the World State,
+China had been wholly occupied in coping with the plague of
+insanity, called ‘the American madness,’ with which her former
+enemy had poisoned her. The coast region of North China had
+been completely disorganized. Industry, agriculture, transport,
+were at a standstill. Huge mobs, demented and starving, staggered
+about the country devouring every kind of vegetable matter and
+wrangling over the flesh of their own dead. It was long before the
+disease was brought under control; and indeed for years afterwards
+an occasional outbreak would occur, and cause panic
+throughout the land.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>To some of the more old-fashioned Chinese it appeared as
+though the whole population had been mildly affected by the
+germ; for throughout China a new sect, apparently a spontaneous
+native growth, calling themselves Energists, began to preach a new
+interpretation of Buddhism in terms of the sanctity of action.
+And, strange to say, this gospel throve to such an extent that in
+a few years the whole educational system was captured by its
+adherents, though not without a struggle with the reactionary
+members of the older universities. Curiously enough, however, in
+spite of this general acceptance of the New Way, in spite of the
+fact that the young of China were now taught to admire movement
+in all its forms, in spite of a much increased wage-scale,
+which put all workers in possession of private mechanical locomotion,
+the masses of China continued at heart to regard action
+as a mere means towards rest. And when at last a native physicist
+pointed out that the supreme expression of energy was the tense
+balance of forces within the atom, the Chinese applied the doctrine
+to themselves, and claimed that in them quiescence was the
+perfect balance of mighty forces. Thus did the East contribute to
+the religion of this age. The worship of activity was made to
+include the worship of inactivity. And both were founded on the
+principles of natural science.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch4-2'>2. THE DOMINANCE OF SCIENCE</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>Science now held a position of unique honour among the First
+Men. This was not so much because it was in this field that the
+race long ago during its high noon had thought most rigorously,
+nor because it was through science that men had gained some
+insight into the nature of the physical world, but rather because
+the application of scientific principles had revolutionized their
+material circumstances. The once fluid doctrines of science had
+by now begun to crystallize into a fixed and intricate dogma; but
+inventive scientific intelligence still exercised itself brilliantly in
+improving the technique of industry, and thus completely dominated
+the imagination of a race in which the pure intellectual curiosity
+had waned. The scientist was regarded as an embodiment,
+not merely of knowledge, but of power; and no legends of the
+potency of science seemed too fantastic to be believed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A century after the founding of the first World State a rumour
+began to be heard in China about the supreme secret of scientific
+religion, the awful mystery of Gordelpus, by means of which it
+should be possible to utilize the energy locked up in the opposition
+of proton and electron. Long ago discovered by a Chinese
+physicist and saint, this invaluable knowledge was now reputed
+to have been preserved ever since among the <span class='it'>élite</span> of science, and
+to be ready for publication as soon as the world seemed fit to
+possess it. The new sect of Energists claimed that the young Discoverer
+was himself an incarnation of Buddha, and that, since
+the world was still unfit for the supreme revelation, he had entrusted
+his secret to the Scientists. On the side of Christianity a
+very similar legend was concerned with the same individual. The
+Regenerate Christian Brotherhood, by now overwhelmingly the
+most powerful of the Western Churches, regarded the Discoverer
+as the Son of God, who, in this his Second Coming, had proposed
+to bring about the millennium by publishing the secret of divine
+power; but, finding the peoples still unable to put in practice even
+the more primitive gospel of love which was announced at his
+First Coming, he had suffered martyrdom for man’s sake, and had
+entrusted his secret to the Scientists.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The scientific workers of the world had long ago organized
+themselves as a close corporation. Entrance to the International
+College of Science was to be obtained only by examination and
+the payment of high fees. Membership conferred the title of
+‘Scientist,’ and the right to perform experiments. It was also an
+essential qualification for many lucrative posts. Moreover, there
+were said to be certain technical secrets which members were
+pledged not to reveal. Rumour had it that in at least one case of
+minor blabbing the traitor had shortly afterwards mysteriously
+died.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Science itself, the actual corpus of natural knowledge, had by
+now become so complex that only a tiny fraction of it could be
+mastered by one brain. Thus students of one branch of science
+knew practically nothing of the work of others in kindred branches
+Especially was this the case with the huge science called
+Subatomic Physics. Within this were contained a dozen studies,
+any one of which was as complex as the whole of the physics of
+the Nineteenth Christian Century. This growing complexity had
+rendered students in one field ever more reluctant to criticize, or
+even to try to understand, the principles of other fields. Each
+petty department, jealous of its own preserves, was meticulously
+respectful of the preserves of others. In an earlier period the
+sciences had been coordinated and criticized philosophically by
+their own leaders and by the technical philosophers. But philosophy,
+as a rigorous technical discipline, no longer existed. There
+was, of course, a vague framework of ideas, or assumptions,
+based on science, and common to all men, a popular pseudo-science,
+constructed by the journalists from striking phrases
+current among scientists. But actual scientific workers prided
+themselves on the rejection of this ramshackle structure, even
+while they themselves were unwittingly assuming it. And each
+insisted that his own special subject must inevitably remain unintelligible
+even to most of his brother scientists.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Under these circumstances, when rumour declared that the
+mystery of Gordelpus was known to the physicists, each department
+of subatomic physics was both reluctant to deny the
+charge explicitly in its own case, and ready to believe that some
+other department really did possess the secret. Consequently, the
+conduct of the scientists as a body strengthened the general belief
+that they knew and would not tell.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>About two centuries after the formation of the first World
+State, the President of the World declared that the time was ripe
+for a formal union of science and religion, and called a conference
+of the leaders of these two great disciplines. Upon that island in
+the Pacific which had become the Mecca of cosmopolitan sentiment,
+and was by now one vast many-storied and cloud-capped
+Temple of Peace, the heads of Buddhism, Mohammedanism,
+Hinduism, the Regenerate Christian Brotherhood, and the
+Modern Catholic Church in South America, agreed that their
+differences were but differences of expression. One and all were
+worshippers of the Divine Energy, whether expressed in activity,
+or in tense stillness. One and all recognized the saintly Discoverer
+as either the last and greatest of the prophets or an actual incarnation
+of divine Movement. And these two concepts were easily
+shown, in the light of modern science, to be identical.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In an earlier age it had been the custom to single out heresy and
+extirpate it with fire and sword. But now the craving for uniformity
+was fulfilled by explaining away differences, amid universal
+applause.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When the Conference had registered the unity of the religions,
+it went on to establish the unity of religion and science. All knew,
+said the President, that some of the scientists were in possession
+of the supreme secret, though, wisely, they would not definitely
+admit it. It was time, then, that the organizations of Science and
+Religion should be merged, for the better guidance of men. He,
+therefore, called upon the International College of Science to
+nominate from amongst themselves a select body, which should
+be sanctified by the Church, and called the Sacred Order of
+Scientists. These custodians of the supreme secret were to be kept
+at public expense. They were to devote themselves wholly to the
+service of science, and in particular to research into the most
+scientific manner of worshipping the Divine Gordelpus.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of the scientists present, some few looked distinctly uncomfortable,
+but the majority scarcely concealed their delight under
+dignified and thoughtful hesitation. Amongst the priests also two
+expressions were visible; but on the whole it was felt that the
+Church must gain by thus gathering into herself the unique prestige
+of science. And so it was that the Order was founded which
+was destined to become the dominant force in human affairs until
+the downfall of the first world civilization.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch4-3'>3. MATERIAL ACHIEVEMENT</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>Save for occasional minor local conflicts, easily quelled by the
+World Police, the race was now a single social unit for some four
+thousand years. During the first of these millennia material progress
+at least was rapid, but subsequently there was little change
+until the final disintegration. The whole energy of man was concentrated
+on maintaining at a constant pitch the furious routine
+of his civilization, until, after another three thousand years of
+lavish expenditure, certain essential sources of power were
+suddenly exhausted. Nowhere was there the mental agility to
+cope with this novel crisis. The whole social order collapsed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We may pass over the earlier stages of this fantastic civilization,
+and examine it as it stood before the fatal change began to be felt.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The material circumstances of the race at this time would have
+amazed all its predecessors, even those who were in the true sense
+far more civilized beings. But to us, the Last Men, there is an
+extreme pathos and even comicality, not only in this most thorough
+confusion of material development with civilization, but
+also in the actual paucity of the vaunted material development
+itself, compared with that of our own society.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>All the continents, indeed, were by now minutely artificialized.
+Save for the many wild reserves which were cherished as museums
+and playgrounds, not a square mile of territory was left in a
+natural state. Nor was there any longer a distinction between
+agricultural and industrial areas. All the continents were urbanized,
+not of course in the manner of the congested industrial cities
+of an earlier age, but none the less urbanized. Industry and agriculture
+interpenetrated everywhere. This was possible partly
+through the great development of aerial communication, partly
+through a no less remarkable improvement of architecture. Great
+advances in artificial materials had enabled the erection of buildings
+in the form of slender pylons which, rising often to a height
+of three miles, or even more, and founded a quarter of a mile
+beneath the ground, might yet occupy a ground plan of less than
+half a mile across. In section these structures were often cruciform;
+and on each floor, the centre of the long-armed cross consisted
+of an aerial landing, providing direct access from the air
+for the dwarf private aeroplanes which were by now essential to
+the life of every adult. These gigantic pillars of architecture,
+prophetic of the still mightier structures of an age to come, were
+scattered over every continent in varying density. Very rarely
+were they permitted to approach one another by a distance less
+than their height; on the other hand, save in the arctic, they were
+very seldom separated by more than twenty miles. The general
+appearance of every country was thus rather like an open forest
+of lopped tree-trunks, gigantic in stature. Clouds often encircled
+the middle heights of these artificial peaks, or blotted out all but
+the lower stories. Dwellers in the summits were familiar with the
+spectacle of a dazzling ocean of cloud, dotted on all sides with
+steep islands of architecture. Such was the altitude of the upper
+floors that it was sometimes necessary to maintain in them, not
+merely artificial heating, but artificial air pressure and oxygen
+supply.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Between these columns of habitation and industry, the land
+was everywhere green or brown with the seasonal variations of
+agriculture, park, and wild reserve. Broad grey thoroughfares for
+heavy freight traffic netted every continent; but lighter transport
+and the passenger services were wholly aerial. Over all the more
+populous districts the air was ever aswarm with planes up to a
+height of five miles, where the giant air-liners plied between the
+continents.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The enterprise of an already distant past had brought every
+land under civilization. The Sahara was a lake district, crowded
+with sun-proud holiday resorts. The arctic islands of Canada,
+ingeniously warmed by directed tropical currents, were the homes
+of vigorous northerners. The coasts of Antarctica, thawed in the
+same manner, were permanently inhabited by those engaged in
+exploiting the mineral wealth of the hinterland.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Much of the power needed to keep this civilization in being was
+drawn from the buried remains of prehistoric vegetation, in the
+form of coal. Although after the foundation of the World State
+the fuel of Antarctica had been very carefully husbanded, the new
+supply of oil had given out in less than three centuries, and men
+were forced to drive their aeroplanes by electricity generated from
+coal. It soon became evident, however that even the unexpectedly
+rich coal-fields of Antarctica would not last for ever. The cessation
+of oil had taught men a much needed lesson, had made them
+feel the reality of the power problem. At the same time the cosmopolitan
+spirit, which was learning to regard the whole race as
+compatriots, was also beginning to take a broader view temporally,
+and to see things with the eyes of remote generations. During
+the first and sanest thousand years of the World State, there was
+a widespread determination not to incur the blame of the future
+by wasting power. Thus not only was there serious economy (the
+first large-scale cosmopolitan enterprise), but also efforts were
+made to utilize more permanent sources of power. Wind was used
+extensively. On every building swarms of windmills generated
+electricity, and every mountain range was similarly decorated,
+while every considerable fall of water forced its way through turbines.
+More important still was the utilization of power derived
+from volcanos and from borings into the subterranean heat. This,
+it had been hoped, would solve the whole problem of power, once
+and for all. But even in the earlier and more intelligent period of
+the World State inventive genius was not what it had been, and
+no really satisfactory method was found. Consequently at no
+stage of this civilization did volcanic sources do more than supplement
+the amazingly rich coal seams of Antarctica. In this
+region coal was preserved at far greater depth than elsewhere,
+because, by some accident, the earth’s central heat was not here
+fierce enough (as it was elsewhere) to turn the deeper beds into
+graphite. Another possible source of power was known to exist
+in the ocean tides; but the use of this was forbidden by the S.O.S.
+because, since tidal motion was so obviously astronomical in
+origin, it had come to be regarded as sacred.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Perhaps the greatest physical achievement of the First World
+State in its earlier and more vital phase had been in preventive
+medicine. Though the biological sciences had long ago become
+stereotyped in respect of fundamental theories, they continued to
+produce many practical benefits. No longer did men and women
+have to dread for themselves or those dear to them such afflictions
+as cancer, tuberculosis, angina pectoris, the rheumatic diseases,
+and the terrible disorders of the nervous system. No longer were
+there sudden microbic devastations. No longer was child-birth
+an ordeal, and womanhood itself a source of suffering. There
+were no more chronic invalids, no more life-long cripples. Only
+senility remained; and even this could be repeatedly alleviated by
+physiological rejuvenation. The removal of all these ancient
+sources of weakness and misery, which formerly had lamed the
+race and haunted so many individuals either with definite terrors
+or vague and scarcely conscious despond, brought about now a
+pervading buoyancy and optimism impossible to earlier peoples.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch4-4'>4. THE CULTURE OF THE FIRST WORLD STATE</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>Such was the physical achievement of this civilization. Nothing
+half so artificial and intricate and prosperous had ever before
+existed. An earlier age, indeed, had held before itself some such
+ideal as this; but its nationalistic mania prevented it from attaining
+the necessary economic unity. This latter-day civilization,
+however, had wholly outgrown nationalism, and had spent many
+centuries of peace in consolidating itself. But to what end? The
+terrors of destitution and ill-health having been abolished, man’s
+spirit was freed from a crippling burden, and might have dared
+great adventures. But unfortunately his intelligence had by now
+seriously declined. And so this age, far more than the notorious
+‘nineteenth century’, was the great age of barren complacency.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Every individual was a well-fed and physically healthy human
+animal. He was also economically independent. His working day
+was never more than six hours, often only four. He enjoyed a fair
+share of the products of industry; and in his long holidays he was
+free to wander in his own aeroplane all over the planet. With good
+luck he might find himself rich, even for those days, at forty;
+and if fortune had not favoured him, he might yet expect
+affluence before he was eighty, when he could still look forward
+to a century of active life.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But in spite of this material prosperity he was a slave. His work
+and his leisure consisted of feverish activity, punctuated by
+moments of listless idleness which he regarded as both sinful
+and unpleasant. Unless he was one of the furiously successful
+minority, he was apt to be haunted by moments of brooding, too
+formless to be called meditation, and of yearning, too blind to be
+called desire. For he and all his contemporaries were ruled by
+certain ideas which prevented them from living a fully human
+life.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of these ideas one was the ideal of progress. For the individual,
+the goal imposed by his religious teaching was continuous advance
+in aeronautical prowess, legal sexual freedom, and millionaireship.
+For the race also the ideal was progress, and progress of the
+same unintelligent type. Ever more brilliant and extensive aviation,
+ever more extensive legal sexual intercourse, ever more
+gigantic manufacture and consumption, were to be coordinated
+in an ever more intricately organized social system. For the last
+three thousand years, indeed, progress even of this rude kind had
+been minute; but this was a source of pride rather than of regret.
+It implied that the goal was already almost attained, the perfection
+which should justify the release of the secret of divine power,
+and the inauguration of an era of incomparably mightier activity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For the all-pervading idea which tyrannized over the race was
+the fanatical worship of movement. Gordelpus, the Prime Mover,
+demanded of his human embodiments swift and intricate activity,
+and the individual’s prospect of eternal life depended on the fulfilment
+of this obligation. Curiously, though science had long ago
+destroyed the belief in personal immortality as an intrinsic attribute
+of man, a complementary belief had grown up to the effect
+that those who justified themselves in action were preserved
+eternally, by special miracle, in the swift spirit of Gordelpus. Thus
+from childhood to death the individual’s conduct was determined
+by the obligation to produce as much motion as possible, whether
+by his own muscular activity or by the control of natural forces.
+In the hierarchy of industry three occupations were honoured
+almost as much as the Sacred Order of Scientists, namely flying,
+dancing, and athletics. Every one practised all three of these crafts
+to some extent, for they were imposed by religion; but the professional
+fliers and aeronautical engineers, and the professional
+dancers and athletes, were a privileged class.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Several causes had raised flying to a position of unique honour.
+As a means of communication it was of extreme practical importance;
+and as the swiftest locomotion it constituted the supreme
+act of worship. The accident that the form of the aeroplane was
+reminiscent of the main symbol of the ancient Christian religion
+lent flying an additional mystical significance. For though the
+spirit of Christianity was lost, many of its symbols had been
+preserved in the new faith. A more important source of the
+dominance of flying was that, since warfare had long ceased to
+exist, aviation of a gratuitously dangerous kind was the main outlet
+for the innate adventurousness of the human animal. Young
+men and women risked their lives fervently for the glory of
+Gordelpus and their own salvation, while their seniors took
+vicarious satisfaction in this endless festival of youthful prowess.
+Indeed, apart from the thrills of devotional aerial acrobatics, it is
+unlikely that the race would so long have preserved its peace and
+its unity. On each of the frequent Days of Sacred Flight special
+rituals of communal and solo aviation were performed at every
+religious centre. On these occasions the whole sky would be
+intricately patterned with thousands of planes, wheeling, tumbling,
+soaring, plunging, in perfect order and at various altitudes, the
+dance at one level being subtly complementary to the dance at
+others. It was as though the spontaneous evolutions of many
+distinct flocks of redshank and dunlin were multiplied a thousandfold
+in complexity, and subordinated to a single ever-developing
+terpsichorean theme. Then suddenly the whole would burst
+asunder to the horizon, leaving the sky open for the quartets,
+duets, and solos of the most brilliant stars of flight. At night also,
+regiments of planes bearing coloured lights would inscribe on the
+zenith ever-changing and symbolical patterns of fire. Besides these
+aerial dances, there had existed for eight hundred years a custom
+of spelling out periodically in a dense flight of planes six thousand
+miles long the sacred rubrics of the gospel of Gordelpus, so that
+the living word might be visible to other planets.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the life of every individual, flying played a great part.
+Immediately after birth he was taken up by a priestess of flight
+and dropped, clinging to a parachute, to be deftly caught upon
+the wings of his father’s plane. This ritual served as a substitute
+for contraception (forbidden as an interference with the divine
+energy); for since in many infants the old simian grasping-instinct
+was atrophied, a large proportion of the new-born let go and
+were smashed upon the paternal wings. At adolescence the
+individual (male or female) took charge of a plane for the first
+time, and his life was subsequently punctuated by severe aeronautical
+tests. From middle-age onwards, namely as a centenarian,
+when he could no longer hope to rise in the hierarchy of active
+flight, he continued to fly daily for practical purposes.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The two other forms of ritual activity, dancing and athletics,
+were scarcely less important. Nor were they confined wholly to
+the ground. For certain rites were celebrated by dances upon the
+wings of a plane in mid air.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Dancing was especially associated with the Negro race, which
+occupied a very peculiar position in the world at this time. As a
+matter of fact the great colour distinctions of mankind were now
+beginning to fade. Increased aerial communication had caused
+the black, brown, yellow and white stocks so to mingle that everywhere
+there was by now a large majority of the racially indistinguishable.
+Nowhere was there any great number of persons of
+marked racial character. But each of the ancient types was liable
+to crop up now and again in isolated individuals, especially in
+its ancient homeland. These ‘throw-backs’ were customarily
+treated in special and historically appropriate manners. Thus, for
+instance, it was to ‘sports’ of definite Negro character that the
+most sacred dancing was entrusted.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the days of the nations, the descendants of emancipated
+African slaves in North America had greatly influenced the
+artistic and religious life of the white population, and had inspired
+a cult of negroid dancing which survived till the end of the First
+Men. This was partly due to the sexual and primitive character of
+Negro dancing, sorely needed in a nation ridden by sexual taboos.
+But it had also a deeper source. The American nation had
+acquired its slaves by capture, and had long continued to spurn
+their descendants. Later it unconsciously compensated for its guilt
+by a cult of the Negro spirit. Thus when American culture
+dominated the planet, the pure Negroes became a sacred cast.
+Forbidden many of the rights of citizenship, they were regarded
+as the private servants of Gordelpus. They were both sacred and
+outcast. This dual role was epitomized in an extravagant ritual
+which took place once a year in each of the great national parks.
+A white woman and Negro, both chosen for their prowess in
+dance, performed a long and symbolical ballet, which culminated
+in a ritual act of sexual violation, performed in full view of the
+maddened spectators. This over, the Negro knifed his victim, and
+fled through the forest pursued by an exultant mob. If he reached
+sanctuary, he became a peculiarly sacred object for the rest of his
+life. But if he was caught, he was torn to pieces, or drenched with
+inflammable spirit and burned. Such was the superstition of the
+First Men at this time that the participants in this ceremony were
+seldom reluctant; for it was firmly believed that both were assured
+of eternal life in Gordelpus. In America this Sacred Lynching was
+the most popular of all festivals; for it was both sexual and
+bloody, and afforded a fierce joy to the masses whose sex-life was
+restricted and secret. In India and Africa the violator was always
+an ‘Englishman,’ when such a rare creature could be found. In
+China the whole character of the ceremony was altered; for the
+violation became a kiss, and the murder a touch with a fan.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>One other race, the Jews, were treated with a similar combination
+of honour and contempt, but for very different reasons. In
+ancient days their general intelligence, and in particular their
+financial talent, had cooperated with their homelessness to make
+them outcasts; and now, in the decline of the First Men, they
+retained the fiction, if not strictly the fact, of racial integrity. They
+were still outcasts, though indispensable and powerful. Almost
+the only kind of intelligent activity which the First Men could still
+respect was financial operation, whether private or cosmopolitan.
+The Jews had made themselves invaluable in the financial
+organization of the world state, having far outstripped the other
+races because they alone had preserved a furtive respect for pure
+intelligence. And so, long after intelligence had come to be
+regarded as disreputable in ordinary men and women, it was
+expected of the Jews. In them it was called satanic cunning, and
+they were held to be embodiments of the powers of evil, harnessed
+in the service of Gordelpus. Thus in time the Jews had made something
+like ‘a corner’ in intelligence. This precious commodity
+they used largely for their own purposes; for two thousand years of
+persecution had long ago rendered them permanently tribalistic,
+subconsciously if not consciously. Thus when they had gained control
+of the few remaining operations which demanded originality
+rather than routine, they used this advantage chiefly to strengthen
+their own position in the world. For, though relatively bright,
+they had suffered much of the general coarsening and limitation
+which had beset the whole world. Though capable to some extent
+of criticizing the practical means by which ends should be
+realized, they were by now wholly incapable of criticizing the
+major ends which had dominated their race for thousands of
+years. In them intelligence had become utterly subservient to
+tribalism. There was thus some excuse for the universal hate and
+even physical repulsion with which they were regarded; for they
+alone had failed to make the one great advance, from tribalism to
+a cosmopolitanism which in other races was no longer merely
+theoretical. There was good reason also for the respect which
+they received, since they retained and used somewhat ruthlessly a
+certain degree of the most distinctively human attribute,
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In primitive times the intelligence and sanity of the race had
+been preserved by the inability of its unwholesome members to
+survive. When humanitarianism came into vogue, and the unsound
+were tended at public expense, this natural selection ceased.
+And since these unfortunates were incapable alike of prudence
+and of social responsibility, they procreated without restraint,
+and threatened to infect the whole species with their rottenness.
+During the zenith of Western Civilization, therefore, the subnormal
+were sterilized. But the latter-day worshippers of Gordelpus
+regarded both sterilization and contraception as a wicked
+interference with the divine potency. Consequently the only
+restriction on population was the suspension of the new-born
+from aeroplanes, a process which, though it eliminated weaklings,
+favoured among healthy infants rather the primitive than the
+highly developed. Thus the intelligence of the race steadily
+declined. And no one regretted it.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The general revulsion from intelligence was a corollary of the
+adoration of instinct, and this in turn was an aspect of the worship
+of activity. Since the unconscious source of human vigour was the
+divine energy, spontaneous impulse must so far as possible never
+be thwarted. Reasoning was indeed permitted to the individual
+within the sphere of his official work, but never beyond. And not
+even specialists might indulge in reasoning and experiment without
+obtaining a licence for the particular research. The licence was
+expensive, and was only granted if the goal in view could be shown
+to be an increase of world activity. In old times certain persons of
+morbid curiosity had dared to criticize the time-honoured methods
+of doing things, and had suggested ‘better’ methods not convenient
+to the Sacred Order of Scientists. This had to be stopped. By
+the fourth millennium of the World State the operations of
+civilization had become so intricately stereotyped that novel
+situations of a major order never occurred.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>One kind of intellectual pursuit in addition to finance was,
+indeed, honoured, namely mathematical calculation. All ritual
+movements, all the motions of industrial machinery, all observable
+natural phenomena, had to be minutely described in mathematical
+formulae. The records were filed in the sacred archives
+of the S.O.S. And there they remained. This vast enterprise of
+mathematical description was the main work of the scientists, and
+was said to be the only means by which the evanescent thing,
+movement, could be passed into the eternal being of Gordelpus.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The cult of instinct did not result simply in a life of ungoverned
+impulse. Far from it. For the fundamental instinct, it was said,
+was the instinct to worship Gordelpus in action, and this should
+rule all the other instincts. Of these, the most important and sacred
+was the sexual impulse, which the First Men had ever tended to
+regard as both divine and obscene. Sex, therefore, was now very
+strictly controlled. Reference to sexuality, save by circumlocution,
+was forbidden by law. Persons who remarked on the obvious
+sexual significance of the religious dances were severely punished.
+No sexual activity and no sex knowledge were permitted to the
+individual until he had won his (or her) wings. Much information,
+of a distorted and perverted nature could, indeed, be gained
+meanwhile by observation of the religious writings and practices;
+but officially these sacred matters were all given a metaphysical,
+not a sexual interpretation. And though legal maturity, the Wing-Winning,
+might occur as early as the age of fifteen, sometimes it
+was not attained till forty. If at that age the individual still failed
+in the test, he or she was forbidden sexual intercourse and
+information for ever.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In China and India this extravagant sexual taboo was somewhat
+mitigated. Many easy-going persons had come to feel that
+the imparting of sex knowledge to the ‘immature’ was only
+wrong when the medium of communication was the sacred
+American language. They therefore made use of the local patois.
+Similarly, sexual activity of the ‘immature’ was permissible so
+long as it was performed solely in the wild reserves, and without
+American speech. These subterfuges, however, were condemned
+by the orthodox, even in Asia.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When a man had won his wings, he was formally initiated into
+the mystery of sex and all its ‘biologico-religious’ significance.
+He was also allowed to take a ‘domestic wife,’ and after a much
+more severe aviation test, any number of ‘symbolical’ wives.
+Similarly with the woman. These two kinds of partnership
+differed greatly. The ‘domestic’ husband and wife appeared in
+public together, and their union was indissoluble. The ‘symbolic’
+union, on the other hand, could be dissolved by either party. Also
+it was too sacred ever to be revealed, or even mentioned, in
+public.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A very large number of persons never passed the test which
+sanctioned sexuality. These either remained virgin, or indulged in
+sexual relations which were not only illegal but sacrilegious. The
+successful, on the other hand, were apt to consummate sexually
+every casual acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Under these circumstances it was natural that there should
+exist among the sexually submerged part of the population certain
+secret cults which sought escape from harsh reality into worlds of
+fantasy. Of these illicit sects, two were most widespread. One was
+a perversion of the ancient Christian faith in a God of Love. All
+love, it was said, is sexual; therefore in worship, private or public,
+the individual must seek a direct sexual relation with God. Hence
+arose a grossly phallic cult, very contemptible to those more
+fortunate persons who had no need of it.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The other great heresy was derived partly from the energy
+of repressed intellective impulses, and was practised by persons of
+natural curiosity, who nevertheless, shared the universal paucity of
+intelligence. These pathetic devotees of intellect were inspired by
+Socrates. That great primitive had insisted that clear thought is
+impossible without clear definition of terms, and that without
+clear thinking man misses fullness of being. These his last disciples
+were scarcely less fervent admirers of truth than their master, yet
+they missed his spirit completely. Only by knowing the truth, they
+said, can the individual attain immortality; only by defining can
+he know the truth. Therefore, meeting together in secret, and in
+constant danger of arrest for illicit intellection, they disputed
+endlessly about the definition of things. But the things which they
+were concerned to define were not the basic concepts of human
+thought; for these, they affirmed, had been settled once for all by
+Socrates and his immediate followers. Therefore, accepting these
+as true, and grossly misunderstanding them, the ultimate Socratics
+undertook to define all the processes of the world state and the
+ritual of the established religion, all the emotions of men and
+women, all the shapes of noses, mouths, buildings, mountains,
+clouds, and in fact the whole superficies of their world. Thus they
+believed that they emancipated themselves from the philistinism
+of their age, and secured comradeship with Socrates in the hereafter.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch4-5'>5. DOWNFALL</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>The collapse of this first world-civilization was due to the sudden
+failure of the supplies of coal. All the original fields had been
+sapped centuries earlier, and it should have been obvious that
+those more recently discovered could not last for ever. For some
+thousands of years the main supply had come from Antarctica.
+So prolific was this continent that latterly a superstition had
+arisen in the clouded minds of the world-citizens that it was in
+some mysterious manner inexhaustible. Thus when at last, in spite
+of strict censorship, the news began to leak out that even the
+deepest possible borings had failed to reveal further vegetable
+deposits of any kind, the world was at first incredulous.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The sane policy would have been to abolish the huge expense
+of power on ritual flying, which used more of the community’s
+resources than the whole of productive industry. But to believers
+in Gordelpus such a course was almost unthinkable. Moreover it
+would have undermined the flying aristocracy. This powerful
+class now declared that the time had come for the release of the
+secret of divine power, and called on the S.O.S. to inaugurate the
+new era. Vociferous agitation in all lands put the scientists in an
+awkward plight. They gained time by declaring that, though the
+moment of revelation was approaching, it had not yet arrived;
+for they had received a divine intimation that this failure of coal
+was imposed as a supreme test of man’s faith. The service of
+Gordelpus in ritual flight must be rather increased than reduced.
+Spending a bare minimum of its power on secular matters, the
+race must concentrate upon religion. When Gordelpus had evidence
+of their devotion and trust, he would permit the scientists
+to save them.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Such was the prestige of science that at first this explanation
+was universally accepted. The ritual flights were maintained. All
+luxury trades were abolished, and even vital services were reduced
+to a minimum. Workers thus thrown out of employment were
+turned over to agricultural labour; for it was felt that the use of
+mechanical power in mere tillage must be as soon as possible
+abolished. These changes demanded far more organizing ability
+than was left in the race. Confusion was widespread, save here and
+there where serious organization was attempted by certain Jews.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The first result of this great movement of economy and self-denial
+was to cause something of a spiritual awakening among
+many who had formerly lived a life of bored ease. This was
+augmented by the widespread sense of crisis and impending
+marvels. Religion, which, in spite of its universal authority in this
+age, had become a matter of ritual rather than of inward experience,
+began to stir in many hearts—not indeed as a moment of
+true worship, but rather as a vague awe, not unmixed with self-importance.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But as the novelty of this enthusiasm dwindled, and life became
+increasingly uncomfortable, even the most zealous began to
+notice with horror that in moments of inactivity they were prone
+to doubts too shocking to confess. And as the situation worsened,
+even a life of ceaseless action could not suppress these wicked
+fantasies.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For the race was now entering upon an unprecedented psychological
+crisis, brought about by the impact of the economic
+disaster upon a permanently unwholesome mentality. Each
+individual, it must be remembered, had once been a questioning
+child, but had been taught to shun curiosity as the breath of
+Satan. Consequently the whole race was suffering from a kind of
+inverted repression, a repression of the intellective impulses. The
+sudden economic change, which affected all classes throughout
+the planet, thrust into the focus of attention a shocking curiosity,
+an obsessive scepticism, which had hitherto been buried in the
+deepest recesses of the mind.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It is not easy to conceive the strange mental disorder that now
+afflicted the whole race, symbolizing itself in some cases by fits of
+actual physical vertigo. After centuries of prosperity, of routine,
+of orthodoxy, men were suddenly possessed by a doubt which
+they regarded as diabolical. No one said a word of it; but in each
+man’s own mind the fiend raised a whispering head, and each was
+haunted by the troubled eyes of his fellows. Indeed the whole
+changed circumstances of his life jibed at his credulity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Earlier in the career of the race, this world crisis might have
+served to wake men into sanity. Under the first pressure of distress
+they might have abandoned the extravagances of their
+culture. But by now the ancient way of life was too deeply rooted.
+Consequently, we observe the fantastic spectacle of a world
+engaged, devotedly and even heroically, on squandering its
+resources in vast aeronautical displays, not through single-minded
+faith in their rightness and efficacy, but solely in a kind of desperate
+automatism. Like those little rodents whose migration became
+barred by an encroachment of the sea, so that annually they
+drowned themselves in thousands, the First Men helplessly
+continued in their ritualistic behaviour; but unlike the lemmings,
+they were human enough to be at the same time
+oppressed by unbelief, an unbelief which, moreover, they dared
+not recognize.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile the scientists were earnestly and secretly delving in
+the ancient literature of their science, in hope of discovering the
+forgotten talisman. They undertook also clandestine experiments,
+but upon a false trail laid by the wily English contemporary of the
+Discoverer. The main results were, that several researchers were
+poisoned or electrocuted, and a great college was blown up. This
+event impressed the populace, who supposed the accident to be
+due to an over-daring exercise of the divine potency. The misunderstanding
+inspired the desperate scientists to rig further
+impressive ‘miracles’, and moreover to use them to dispel the increasing
+restlessness of hungry industrial workers. Thus when a
+deputation arrived outside the offices of Cosmopolitan Agriculture
+to demand more flour for industrialists Gordelpus miraculously
+blew up the ground on which they stood, and flung their
+bodies among the onlookers. When the agriculturists of China
+struck to obtain a reasonable allowance of electric power for their
+tillage, Gordelpus affected them with an evil atmosphere, so that
+they choked and died in thousands. Stimulated in this manner by
+direct divine intervention, the doubting and disloyal elements of
+the world-population recovered their faith and their docility. And
+so the world jogged on for a while, as nearly as possible as it had
+done for the last four thousand years, save for a general increase
+of hunger and ill-health.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But inevitably, as the conditions of life became more and more
+severe, docility gave place to desperation. Daring spirits began
+publicly to question the wisdom, and even the piety, of so vast
+an expenditure of power upon ritual flight, when prime necessities
+such as food and clothing were becoming so scarce. Did not this
+helpless devotion merely ridicule them in the divine eyes? God
+helps him who helps himself. Already the death-rate had risen
+alarmingly. Emaciated and ragged persons were beginning to beg
+in public places. In certain districts whole populations were
+starving, and the Directorate did nothing for them. Yet, elsewhere,
+harvests were being wasted for lack of power to reap
+them. In all lands an angry clamour arose for the inauguration of
+the new era.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The scientists were by now panic-stricken. Nothing had come
+of their researches, and it was evident that in future all wind- and
+water-power must be devoted to the primary industries. Even so,
+there was starvation ahead for many. The President of the
+Physical Society suggested to the Directorate that ritual flying
+should at once be reduced by half, as a compromise with Gordelpus.
+Immediately the hideous truth, which few hitherto had
+dared to admit even to themselves, was blurted out upon the
+ether by a prominent Jew: the whole hoary legend of the divine
+secret was a lie, else why were the physicists temporizing? Dismay
+and rage spread over the planet. Everywhere the people rose
+against the scientists, and against the governing authority which
+they controlled. Massacres and measures of retaliation soon
+developed into civil wars. China and India declared themselves
+free national states, but could not achieve internal unity. In
+America, ever a stronghold of science and religion, the Government
+maintained its authority for a while; but as its seat became
+less secure, its methods became more ruthless. Finally it made the
+mistake of using not merely poison gas, but microbes; and such
+was the decayed state of medical science that no one could invent
+a means of restraining their ravages. The whole American continent
+succumbed to a plague of pulmonary and nervous diseases.
+The ancient ‘American Madness’, which long ago had been used
+against China, now devastated America. The great stations of
+water-power and wind-power were wrecked by lunatic mobs who
+sought vengeance upon anything associated with authority. Whole
+populations vanished in an orgy of cannibalism.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In Asia and Africa, some semblance of order was maintained
+for a while. Presently, however, the American Madness spread to
+these continents also, and very soon all living traces of their
+civilization vanished.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Only in the most naturally fertile areas of the world could the
+diseased remnant of a population now scrape a living from the soil.
+Elsewhere, utter desolation. With easy strides the jungle came
+back into its own.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>V</span> <span class='it'>The Fall of the First Men</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch5-1'>1. THE FIRST DARK AGE</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">We</span> have reached a period in man’s history rather less than five
+thousand years after the life of Newton. In this chapter we must
+cover about one hundred and fifteen thousand years, and in the
+next chapter another ten million years. That will bring us to a
+point as remotely future from the First World State as the earliest
+anthropoids were remotely past. During the first tenth of the
+first million years after the fall of the World State, during a
+hundred thousand years, man remained in complete eclipse. Not
+till the close of this span, which we will call the First Dark Age,
+did he struggle once more from savagery through barbarism into
+civilization. And then his renaissance was relatively brief. From
+its earliest beginnings to its end, it covered only fifteen thousand
+years; and in its final agony the planet was so seriously damaged
+that mind lay henceforth in deep slumber for ten more millions
+of years. This was the Second Dark Age. Such is the field which
+we must observe in this and the following chapter.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It might have been expected that, after the downfall of the First
+World State, recovery would have occurred within a few generations.
+Historians have, indeed, often puzzled over the cause of this
+surprisingly complete and lasting degradation. Innate human
+nature was roughly the same immediately after as immediately
+before the crisis; yet minds that had easily maintained a world-civilization
+in being, proved quite incapable of building a new
+order on the ruins of the old. Far from recovering, man’s estate
+rapidly deteriorated till it had sunk into abject savagery.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Many causes contributed to this result, some relatively superficial
+and temporary, some profound and lasting. It is as though
+Fate, directing events toward an allotted end, had availed herself
+of many diverse instruments, none of which would have sufficed
+alone, though all worked together irresistibly in the same sense.
+The immediate cause of the helplessness of the race during the
+actual crisis of the World State was of course the vast epidemic
+of insanity and still more widespread deterioration of intelligence,
+which resulted from the use of microbes. This momentary seizure
+made it impossible for man to check his downfall during its
+earliest and least unmanageable stage. Later, when the epidemic
+was spent, even though civilization was already in ruins, a
+concerted effort of devotion might yet have rebuilt it on a more
+modest plan. But among the First Men only a minority had ever
+been capable of wholehearted devotion. The great majority were
+by nature too much obsessed by private impulses. And in this
+black period, such was the depth of disillusion and fatigue that
+even normal resolution was impossible. Not only man’s social
+structure but the structure of the universe itself, it seemed, had
+failed. The only reaction was supine despair. Four thousand
+years of routine had deprived human nature of all its suppleness.
+To expect these beings to refashion their whole behaviour, were
+scarcely less unreasonable than to expect ants, when their nest was
+flooded, to assume the habits of water beetles.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But a far more profound and lasting cause doomed the First
+Men to lie prone for a long while, once they had fallen. A subtle
+physiological change, which it is tempting to call ‘general senescence
+of the species’, was undermining the human body and mind.
+The chemical equilibrium of each individual was becoming more
+unstable, so that, little by little, man’s unique gift of prolonged
+youth was being lost. Far more rapidly than of old, his tissues failed
+to compensate for the wear and tear of living. This disaster was by
+no means inevitable; but it was brought on by influences peculiar to
+the make-up of the species, and aggravated artificially. For during
+some thousands of years man had been living at too high a pressure
+in a biologically unnatural environment, and had found no
+means of compensating his nature for the strain thus put upon it.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Conceive, then, that after the fall of the First World State, the
+generations slid rapidly through dusk into night. To inhabit those
+centuries was to live in the conviction of universal decay, and
+under the legend of a mighty past. The population was derived
+almost wholly from the agriculturists of the old order, and since
+agriculture had been considered a sluggish and base occupation,
+fit only for sluggish natures, the planet was now peopled with
+yokels. Deprived of power, machinery, and chemical fertilizers,
+these bumpkins were hard put to it to keep themselves alive. And
+indeed only a tenth of their number survived the great disaster.
+The second generation knew civilization only as a legend. Their
+days were filled with ceaseless tillage, and in banding together to
+fight marauders. Women became once more sexual and domestic
+chattels. The family, or tribe of families, became the largest social
+whole. Endless brawls and feuds sprang up between valley and
+valley, and between the tillers and the brigand swarms. Small
+military tyrants rose and fell; but no permanent unity of control
+could be maintained over a wide region. There was no surplus
+wealth to spend on such luxuries as governments and trained
+armies.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus without appreciable change the millennia dragged on in
+squalid drudgery. For these latter-day barbarians were hampered
+by living in a used planet. Not only were coal and oil no more, but
+almost no mineral wealth of any kind remained within reach of
+their feeble instruments and wits. In particular the minor metals,
+needed for so many of the multifarious activities of developed
+material civilization, had long ago disappeared from the more
+accessible depths of the earth’s crust. Tillage moreover was
+hampered by the fact that iron itself, which was no longer to be
+had without mechanical mining, was now inaccessible. Men had
+been forced to resort once more to stone implements, as their
+first human ancestors had done. But they lacked both the skill
+and the persistence of the ancients. Not for them the delicate
+flaking of the Paleoliths nor the smooth symmetry of the Neoliths.
+Their tools were but broken pebbles, chipped improvements upon
+natural stones. On almost every one they engraved the same
+pathetic symbol, the Swastika or cross, which had been used by
+the First Men as a sacred emblem throughout their existence,
+though with varying significance. In this instance it had originally
+been the figure of an aeroplane diving to destruction, and had
+been used by the rebels to symbolize the downfall of Gordelpus
+and the State. But subsequent generations reinterpreted the
+emblem as the sign manual of a divine ancestor, and as a memento
+of the golden age from which they were destined to decline for
+ever, or until the gods should intervene. Almost one might say
+that in its persistent use of this symbol the first human species
+unwittingly epitomized its own dual and self-thwarting nature.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The idea of irresistible decay obsessed the race at this time.
+The generation which brought about the downfall of the World
+State oppressed its juniors with stories of past amenities and
+marvels, and hugged to itself the knowledge that the young men
+had not the wit to rebuild such complexity. Generation by generation,
+as the circumstances of actual life became more squalid, the
+legend of past glory became more extravagant. The whole mass of
+scientific knowledge was rapidly lost, save for a few shreds which
+were of practical service even in savage life. Fragments of the old
+culture were indeed preserved in the tangle of folk lore that
+meshed the globe, but they were distorted beyond recognition.
+Thus there was a widespread belief that the world had begun as
+fire, and that life had evolved out of the fire. After the apes had
+appeared, evolution ceased (so it was said), until divine spirits
+came down and possessed the female apes, thereby generating
+human beings. Thus had arisen the golden age of the divine
+ancestors. But unfortunately after a while the beast in man had
+triumphed over the god, so that progress had given place to age-long
+decay. And indeed decay was now unavoidable, until such
+time as the gods should see fit to come down to cohabit with
+women and fire the race once more. This faith in the second
+coming of the gods persisted here and there throughout the First
+Dark Age, and consoled men for their vague conviction of
+degeneracy.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Even at the close of the First Dark Age the ruins of the ancient
+residential pylons still characterized every landscape, often with
+an effect of senile domination over the hovels of latter-day
+savages. For the living races dwelt beneath these relics like puny
+grandchildren playing around the feet of their fathers’ once
+mightier fathers. So well had the past built, and with such durable
+materials, that even after a hundred millennia the ruins were still
+recognizably artifacts. Though for the most part they were of
+course by now little more than pyramids of debris overgrown with
+grass and brushwood, most of them retained some stretch of
+standing wall, and here and there a favoured specimen still reared
+from its rubble-encumbered base a hundred foot or so of cliff,
+punctured with windows. Fantastic legends now clustered round
+these relics. In one myth the men of old had made for themselves
+huge palaces which could fly. For a thousand years (an aeon to
+these savages) men had dwelt in unity, and in reverence of the
+gods; but at last they had become puffed up with their own glory,
+and had undertaken to fly to the sun and moon and the field of
+stars, to oust the gods from their bright home. But the gods
+sowed discord among them, so that they fell a-fighting one
+another in the upper air, and their swift palaces crashed down to
+the earth in thousands, to be monuments of man’s folly for ever
+after. In yet another saga it was the men themselves who were
+winged. They inhabited dovecots of masonry, with summits overtopping
+the stars and outraging the gods; who therefore destroyed
+them. Thus in one form or another, this theme of the downfall of
+the mighty fliers of old tyrannized over these abject peoples. Their
+crude tillage, their hunting, their defence against the reviving
+carnivora, were hampered at every turn by fear of offending the
+gods by any innovation.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch5-2'>2. THE RISE OF PATAGONIA</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>As the centuries piled up, the human species had inevitably
+diverged once more into many races in the various geographical
+areas. And each race consisted of a swarm of tribes, each ignorant
+of all but its immediate neighbours. After many millennia this
+vast diversification of stocks and cultures made it possible for
+fresh biological transfusions and revivifications to occur. At last,
+after many racial copulations, a people arose in whom the ancient
+dignity of humanity was somewhat restored. Once more there
+was a real distinction between the progressive and the backward
+regions, between ‘primitive’ and relatively enlightened cultures.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This rebirth occurred in the Southern Hemisphere. Complex
+climatic changes had rendered the southern part of South America
+a fit nursery for civilization. Further, an immense warping of the
+earth’s crust to the east and south of Patagonia had turned what
+was once a relatively shallow region of the ocean into a vast new
+land connecting America with Antarctica by way of the former
+Falkland Islands and South Georgia, and stretching thence east
+and north-east into the heart of the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It happened also that in South America the racial conditions
+were more favourable than elsewhere. After the fall of the First
+World State the European element in this region had dwindled,
+and the ancient ‘Indian’ and Peruvian stock had come into dominance.
+Many thousands of years earlier, this race had achieved a
+primitive civilization of its own. After its ruin at the hands of the
+Spaniards, it had seemed a broken and negligible thing; yet it had
+ever kept itself curiously aloof in spirit from its conquerors.
+Though the two stocks had mingled inextricably, there remained
+ever in the remoter parts of this continent a way of life which was
+foreign to the dominant Americanism. Superficially Americanized,
+it remained fundamentally ‘Indian’ and unintelligible to the
+rest of the world. Throughout the former civilization this spirit
+had lain dormant like a seed in winter; but with the return of
+barbarism it had sprouted, and quietly spread in all directions.
+From the interaction of this ancient primitive culture and the
+many other racial elements left over in the continent from the old
+cosmopolitan civilization, civil life was to begin once more. Thus
+in a manner the Incas were at last to triumph over their conquerors.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Various causes, then, combined in South America, and especially
+in the new and virgin plains of Patagonia, to bring the First
+Dark Age to an end. The great theme of mind began to repeat
+itself. But in a minor key. For a grave disability hampered the
+Patagonians. They began to grow old before their adolescence was
+completed. In the days of Einstein, an individual’s youth lasted
+some twenty-five years, and under the World State it had been
+artificially doubled. After the downfall of civilization the increasing
+natural brevity of the individual life was no longer concealed
+by artifice, and at the end of the First Dark Age a boy of fifteen
+was already settling into middle-age. Patagonian civilization at its
+height afforded considerable ease and security of life, and enabled
+man to live to seventy or even eighty; but the period of sensitive
+and supple youth remained at the very best little more than a
+decade and a half. Thus the truly young were never able to contribute
+to culture before they were already at heart middle-aged.
+At fifteen their bones were definitely becoming brittle, their hair
+grizzled, their faces lined. Their joints and muscles were stiffening,
+their brains were no longer quick to learn new adjustments, their
+fervour was evaporating.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It may seem strange that under these circumstances any kind
+of civilization could be achieved by the race, that any generation
+should ever have been able to do more than learn the tricks of its
+elders. Yet in fact, though progress was never swift, it was steady.
+For though these beings lacked much of the vigour of youth, they
+were compensated somewhat by escaping much of youth’s fevers
+and distractions. The First Men, in fact, were now a race whose
+wild oats had been sown; and though their youthful escapades
+had somewhat crippled them, they had now the advantage of
+sobriety and singleness of purpose. Though doomed by lassitude,
+and a certain fear of extravagance, to fall short of the highest
+achievements of their predecessors, they avoided much of the
+wasteful incoherence and mental conflict which had tortured the
+earlier civilization at its height, though not in its decline. Moreover,
+because their animal nature was somewhat subdued, the
+Patagonians were more capable of dispassionate cognition, and
+more inclined toward intellectualism. They were a people in whom
+rational behaviour was less often subverted by passion, though
+more liable to fail through mere indolence or faintheartedness.
+Though they found detachment relatively easy, theirs was the
+detachment of mere lassitude, not the leap from the prison of
+life’s cravings into a more spacious world.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>One source of the special character of the Patagonian mind was
+that in it the sexual impulses was relatively weak. Many obscure
+causes had helped to temper that lavish sexuality in respect of
+which the first human species differed from all other animals, even
+the continuously sexual apes. These causes were diverse, but they
+combined to produce in the last phase of the life of the species a
+general curtailment of excess energy. In the Dark Ages the severity
+of the struggle for existence had thrust the sexual interest back
+almost into the subordinate place which it occupies in the animal
+mind. Coitus became a luxury only occasionally desired, while
+self-preservation had become once more an urgent and ever-present
+necessity. When at last life began to be easier, sexuality
+remained in partial eclipse, for the forces of racial ‘senescence’
+were at work. Thus the Patagonian culture differed in mood from
+all the earlier cultures of the First Men. Hitherto it had been the
+clash of sexuality and social taboo that had generated half the
+fervour and half the delusions of the race. The excess energy of a
+victorious species, directed by circumstance into the great river of
+sex, and damned by social convention, had been canalized for a
+thousand labours. And though often it would break loose and lay
+all waste before it, in the main it had been turned to good account.
+At all times indeed, it had been prone to escape in all directions
+and carve out channels for itself, as a lopped tree stump sends
+forth not one but a score of shoots. Hence the richness, diversity,
+incoherence, violent and uncomprehended cravings and enthusiasms,
+of the earlier peoples. In the Patagonians there was no such
+luxuriance. That they were not highly sexual was not in itself a
+weakness. What mattered was that the springs of energy which
+formerly happened to flood into the channel of sex were themselves
+impoverished.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Conceive, then, a small and curiously sober people established
+east of the ancient Bahia Blanca, and advancing century by
+century over the plains and up the valleys. In time it reached and
+encircled the heights which were once the island of South Georgia,
+while to the north and west it spread into the Brazilian highlands
+and over the Andes. Definitely of higher type than any of their
+neighbours, definitely more vigorous and acute, the Patagonians
+were without serious rivals. And since by temperament they were
+peaceable and conciliatory, their cultural progress was little
+delayed, either by military imperialism or internal strife. Like
+their predecessors in the northern hemisphere, they passed through
+phases of disruption and union, retrogression and regeneration;
+but their career was on the whole more steadily progressive, and
+less dramatic, than anything that had occurred before. Earlier
+peoples had leapt from barbarism to civil life and collapsed again
+within a thousand years. The slow march of the Patagonians took
+ten times as long to pass from a tribal to a civic organization.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Eventually they comprised a vast and highly organized community
+of autonomous provinces, whose political and cultural
+centre lay upon the new coast north-east of the ancient Falkland
+Islands, while its barbarian outskirts included much of Brazil
+and Peru. The absence of serious strife between the various parts
+of this ‘empire’ was due partly to an innately pacific disposition,
+partly to a genius for organization. These influences were
+strengthened by a curiously potent tradition of cosmopolitanism,
+or human unity, which had been born in the agony of disunion
+before the days of the World State, and was so burnt into men’s
+hearts that it survived as an element of myth even through the
+Dark Age. So powerful was this tradition, that even when the
+sailing ships of Patagonia had founded colonies in remote Africa
+and Australia, these new communities remained at heart one
+with the mother country. Even when the almost Nordic culture of
+the new and temperate Antarctic coasts had outshone the ancient
+centre, the political harmony of the race was never in danger.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch5-3'>3. THE CULT OF YOUTH</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>The Patagonians passed through all the spiritual phases that
+earlier races had experienced, but in a distinctive manner. They
+had their primitive tribal religion, derived from the dark past, and
+based on the fear of natural forces. They had their monotheistic
+impersonation of Power as a vindictive Creator. Their most
+adored racial hero was a god-man who abolished the old religion
+of fear. They had their phases, also, of devout ritual and their
+phases of rationalism, and again their phases of empirical
+curiosity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Most significant for the historian who would understand their
+special mentality is the theme of the god-man; so curiously did it
+resemble, yet differ from, similar themes in earlier cultures of the
+first human species. He was conceived as eternally adolescent,
+and as mystically the son of all men and women. Far from being
+the Elder Brother, he was the Favourite Child; and indeed he
+epitomises that youthful energy and enthusiasm which the race
+now guessed was slipping away from it. Though the sexual interest
+of this people was weak, the parental interest was curiously strong.
+But the worship of the Favourite Son was not merely parental; it
+expressed also both the individual’s craving for his own lost youth,
+and his obscure sense that the race itself was senescent.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was believed that the prophet had actually lived a century as
+a fresh adolescent. He was designated the Boy who Refused to
+Grow up. And this vigour of will was possible to him, it was said,
+because in him the feeble vitality of the race was concentrated
+many millionfold. For he was the fruit of all parental passion that
+ever was and would be; and as such he was divine. Primarily he
+was the Son of Man, but also he was God. For God, in this
+religion, was no prime Creator but the fruit of man’s endeavour.
+The Creator was brute power, which had quite inadvertently
+begotten a being nobler than itself. God, the adorable, was the
+eternal outcome of man’s labour in time, the eternally realized
+promise of what man himself should become. Yet though this cult
+was based on the will for a young-hearted future, it was also
+overhung by a dread, almost at times a certainty, that in fact such
+a future would never be, that the race was doomed to grow old
+and die, that spirit could never conquer the corruptible flesh, but
+must fade and vanish. Only by taking to heart the message of the
+Divine Boy, it was said, could man hope to escape this doom.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Such was the legend. It is instructive to examine the reality.
+The actual individual, in whom this myth of the Favourite Son
+was founded, was indeed remarkable. Born of shepherd parents
+among the Southern Andes, he had first become famous as the
+leader of a romantic ‘youth movement’; and it was this early
+stage of his career that won him followers. He urged the young to
+set an example to the old, to live their own life undaunted by conventions,
+to enjoy, to work hard but briefly, to be loyal comrades.
+Above all, he preached the religious duty of remaining young in
+spirit. No one, he said, need grow old, if he willed earnestly not
+to do so, if he would but keep his soul from falling asleep, his
+heart open to all rejuvenating influences and shut to every breath
+of senility. The delight of soul in soul, he said, was the great
+rejuvenator; it re-created both lover and beloved. If Patagonians
+would only appreciate each other’s beauty without jealousy, the
+race would grow young again. And the mission of his ever-increasing
+Band of Youth was nothing less than the rejuvenation
+of man.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The propagation of this attractive gospel was favoured by a
+seeming miracle. The prophet turned out to be biologically unique
+among Patagonians. When many of his coevals were showing
+signs of senescence, he remained physically young. Also he possessed
+a sexual vigour which to the Patagonians seemed miraculous.
+And since sexual taboo was unknown, he exercised himself
+so heartily in love-making, that he had paramours in every village,
+and presently his offspring were numbered in hundreds. In this
+respect his followers strove hard to live up to him, though with
+small success. But it was not only physically that the prophet
+remained young. He preserved also a strikingly youthful agility
+of mind. His sexual prodigality, though startling to his contemporaries,
+was in him a temperate overflow of surplus energy.
+Far from exhausting him, it refreshed him. Presently, however,
+this exuberance gave place to a more sober life of work and
+meditation. It was in this period that he began to differentiate
+himself mentally from his fellows. For at twenty-five, when most
+Patagonians were deeply settled into a mental groove, he was still
+battling with successive waves of ideas, and striking out into the
+unknown. Not till he was forty, and still physically in earliest
+prime, did he gather his strength and deliver himself of his mature
+gospel. This, his considered view of existence, turned out to be
+almost unintelligible to Patagonians. Though in a sense it was an
+expression of their own culture, it was an expression upon a plane
+of vitality to which very few of them could ever reach.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The climax came when, during a ceremony in the supreme
+temple of the capital city, while the worshippers were all prostrated
+before the hideous image of the Creator, the ageless prophet
+strode up to the altar, regarded first the congregation and then the
+god, burst into a hearty peal of laughter, slapped the image
+resoundingly, and cried, ‘Ugly, I salute you! Not as almighty, but
+as the greatest of all jokers. To have such a face, and yet to be
+admired for it! To be so empty, and yet so feared!’ Instantly
+there was hubbub. But such was the young iconoclast’s god-like
+radiance, confidence, unexpectedness, and such his reputation as
+the miraculous Boy, that when he turned upon the crowd, they
+fell silent, and listened to his scolding.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>‘Fools!’ he cried. ‘Senile infants! If God really likes your
+adulation, and all this hugger-mugger, it is because he enjoys
+the joke against you, and against himself, too. You are too
+serious, yet not serious enough; too solemn, and all for puerile
+ends. You are so eager for life, that you cannot live. You cherish
+your youth so much that it flies from you. When I was a boy, I
+said, “Let us keep young”; and you applauded, and went about
+hugging your toys and refusing to grow up. What I said was not
+bad for a boy, but it was not enough. Now I am a man; and I say,
+“For God’s sake, grow up!” Of course we must keep young;
+but it is useless to keep young if we do not also grow up, and
+never stop growing up. To keep young, surely, is just to keep
+supple and keen; and to grow up is not at all a mere sinking into
+stiffness and into disillusion, but a rising into ever finer skill in all
+the actions of the game of living. There is something else, too,
+which is a part of growing up—to see that life is really, after all, a
+game; a terribly serious game, no doubt, but none the less a game.
+When we play a game, as it should be played, we strain every
+muscle to win; but all the while we are less for winning than for
+the game. And we play the better for it. When barbarians play
+against a Patagonian team, they forget that it is a game, and go
+mad for victory. And then how we despise them! If they find themselves
+losing, they turn savage; if winning, blatant. Either way,
+the game is murdered, and they cannot see that they are slaughtering
+a lovely thing. How they pester and curse the umpire, too!
+I have done that myself, of course, before now; not in games but
+in life. I have actually cursed the umpire of life. Better so, anyhow,
+than to insult him with presents, in the hope of being favoured;
+which is what you are doing here, with your salaams and your
+vows. I never did that. I merely hated him. Then later I learned to
+laugh at him, or rather at the thing you set up in his place. But
+now at last I see him clearly, and laugh with him, at myself, for
+having missed the spirit of the game. But as for you! Coming here
+to fawn and whine and cadge favours of the umpire!’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At this point the people rushed toward him to seize him. But
+he checked them with a young laugh that made them love while
+they hated. He spoke again.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>‘I want to tell you how I came to learn my lesson. I have a queer
+love for clambering about the high mountains; and once when I
+was up among the snow-fields and precipices of Aconcagua, I was
+caught in a blizzard. Perhaps some of you may know what storms
+can be like in the mountains. The air became a hurtling flood of
+snow. I was swallowed up and carried away. After many hours of
+floundering, I fell into a snow-drift. I tried to rise, but fell again
+and again, till my head was buried. The thought of death enraged
+me, for there was still so much that I wanted to do. I struggled
+frantically, vainly. Then suddenly—how can I put it?—I saw the
+game that I was losing, and it was good. Good, no less to lose
+than to win. For it was the game, now, not victory, that mattered.
+Hitherto I had been blindfold, and a slave to victory; suddenly I
+was free, and with sight. For now I saw myself, and all of us,
+through the eyes of the umpire. It was as though a play-actor
+were to see the whole play, with his own part in it, through the
+author’s eyes, from the auditorium. Here was I, acting the part
+of a rather fine man who had come to grief through his own carelessness
+before his work was done. For me, a character in the
+play, the situation was hideous; yet for me, the spectator, it had
+become excellent within a wider excellence. I saw that it was
+equally so with all of us, and with all the worlds. For I seemed to
+see a thousand worlds taking part with us in the great show. And
+I saw everything through the calm eyes, the exultant, almost
+derisive, yet not unkindly, eyes of the playwright.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>‘Well, it had seemed that my exit had come; but no, there was
+still a cue for me. Somehow I was so strengthened by this new view
+of things that I struggled out of the snow-drift. And here I am
+once more. But I am a new man. My spirit is free. While I was a
+boy, I said, “Grow more alive”; but in those days I never guessed
+that there was an aliveness far intenser than youth’s flicker, a kind
+of still incandescence. Is there no one here who knows what I
+mean? No one who at least <span class='it'>desires</span> this keener living? The
+first step is to outgrow this adulation of life itself, and this
+cadging obsequiousness toward Power. Come! Put it away!
+Break the ridiculous image in your hearts, as I now smash this
+idol.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>So saying he picked up a great candlestick and shattered the
+image. Once more there was an uproar, and the temple authorities
+had him arrested. Not long afterwards he was tried for sacrilege
+and executed. For this final extravagance was but the climax
+of many indiscretions, and those in power were glad to have so
+obvious a pretext for extinguishing this brilliant but dangerous
+lunatic.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the cult of the Divine Boy had already become very popular,
+for the earlier teaching of the prophet expressed the fundamental
+craving of the Patagonians. Even his last and perplexing
+message was accepted by his followers, though without real understanding.
+Emphasis was laid upon the act of iconoclasm, rather
+than upon the spirit of his exhortation.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Century by century the new religion, for such it was, spread
+over the civilized world. And the race seemed to have been
+spiritually rejuvenated to some extent by widespread fervour.
+Physically also a certain rejuvenation took place; for before his
+death this unique biological ‘sport’, or throw-back to an earlier
+vitality, produced some thousands of sons and daughters; and
+they in turn propagated the good seed far and wide. Undoubtedly
+it was this new strain that brought about the golden age of
+Patagonia, greatly improving the material conditions of the race,
+carrying civilization into the northern continents, and attacking
+problems of science and philosophy with renewed ardour.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the revival was not permanent. The descendants of the
+prophet prided themselves too much on violent living. Physically,
+sexually, mentally, they over-reached themselves and became enfeebled.
+Moreover, little by little the potent strain was diluted
+and overwhelmed by intercourse with the greater volume of the
+innately ‘senile’; so that, after a few centuries, the race returned
+to its middle-aged mood. At the same time the vision of the
+Divine Boy was gradually distorted. At first it had been youth’s
+ideal of what youth should be, a pattern woven of fanatical
+loyalty, irresponsible gaiety, comradeship, physical gusto, and not
+a little pure devilry. But insensibly it became a pattern of that
+which was expected of youth by sad maturity. The violent young
+hero was sentimentalized into the senior’s vision of childhood,
+naïve and docile. All that had been violent was forgotten; and
+what was left became a whimsical and appealing stimulus to the
+parental impulses. At the same time this phantom was credited
+with all the sobriety and caution which are so easily appreciated
+by the middle-aged.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Inevitably this distorted image of youth became an incubus
+upon the actual young men and women of the race. It was held
+up as the model of social virtue; but it was a model to which they
+could never conform without doing violence to their best nature,
+since it was not any longer an expression of youth at all. Just as,
+in an earlier age, woman had been idealized and at the same
+time hobbled, so now youth.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Some few, indeed, throughout the history of Patagonia, attained
+a clearer vision of the prophet. Fewer still were able to enter into
+the spirit of his final message, in which his enduring youthfulness
+raised him to a maturity alien to Patagonia. For the tragedy of
+this people was not so much their ‘senescence’ as their arrested
+growth. Feeling themselves old, they yearned to be young again.
+But, through fixed immaturity of mind, they could never recognize
+that the true, though unlooked-for, fulfilment of youth’s
+passionate craving is not the mere achievement of the ends of
+youth itself, but an advance into a more awake and far-seeing
+vitality.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch5-4'>4. THE CATASTROPHE</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>It was in these latter days that the Patagonians discovered the
+civilization that had preceded them. In rejecting the ancient
+religion of fear, they had abandoned also the legend of a remote
+magnificence, and had come to regard themselves as pioneers of
+the mind. In the new continent which was their homeland there
+were, of course, no relics of the ancient order; and the ruins that
+besprinkled the older regions had been explained as mere freaks
+of nature. But latterly, with the advance of natural knowledge,
+archaeologists had reconstructed something of the forgotten
+world. And the crisis came when, in the basement of a shattered
+pylon in China, they found a store of metal plates (constructed
+of an immensely durable artificial element), on which were
+embossed crowded lines of writing. These objects were, in fact,
+blocks from which books were printed a thousand centuries
+earlier. Other deposits were soon discovered, and bit by bit the
+dead language was deciphered. Within three centuries the outline
+of the ancient culture was laid bare; and presently the whole
+history of man’s rise and ruin fell upon this latter-day civilization
+with crushing effect, as though an ancient pylon were to have
+fallen on a village of wigwams at its foot. The pioneers discovered
+that all the ground which they had so painfully won from the wild
+had been conquered long ago, and lost; that on the material side
+their glory was nothing beside the glory of the past; and that in
+the sphere of mind they had established only a few scattered
+settlements where formerly was an empire. The Patagonian system
+of natural knowledge had been scarcely further advanced than
+that of pre-Newtonian Europe. They had done little more than
+conceive the scientific spirit and unlearn a few superstitions. And
+now suddenly they came into a vast inheritance of thought.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This in itself was a gravely disturbing experience for a people
+of strong intellectual interest. But even more overwhelming was
+the discovery, borne in on them in the course of their research,
+that the past had been not only brilliant but crazy, and that in
+the long run the crazy element had completely triumphed. For the
+Patagonian mind was by now too sane and empirical to accept
+the ancient knowledge without testing it. The findings of the
+archaeologists were handed over to the physicists and other
+scientists, and the firm thought and valuation of Europe and
+America at their zenith were soon distinguished from the degenerate
+products of the World State.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The upshot of this impact with a more developed civilization
+was dramatic and tragic. It divided the Patagonians into loyalists
+and rebels, into those who clung to the view that the new learning
+was a satanic lie, and those who faced the facts. To the former
+party the facts were thoroughly depressing; the latter, though
+overawed, found in them a compelling majesty, and also a hope.
+That the earth was a mote among the starclouds was the least
+subversive of the new doctrines, for the Patagonians had already
+abandoned the geocentric view. What was so distressing to the
+reactionaries was the theory that an earlier race had long ago
+possessed and spent the vitality that they themselves so craved.
+The party of progress, on the other hand, urged that this vast
+new knowledge must be used; and that, thus equipped, Patagonia
+might compensate for lack of youthfulness by superior sanity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This divergence of will resulted in a physical conflict such as
+had never before occurred in the Patagonian world. Something
+like nationalism emerged. The more vigorous Antarctic coasts
+became modern, while Patagonia itself clung to the older culture.
+There were several wars, but as physics and chemistry advanced
+in Antarctica, the Southerners were able to devise engines of war
+which the Northerners could not resist. In a couple of centuries
+the new ‘culture’ had triumphed. The world was once more
+unified.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Hitherto Patagonian civilization had been of a medieval type.
+Under the influence of physics and chemistry it began to change.
+Wind- and water-power began to be used for the generation of
+electricity. Vast mining operations were undertaken in search of
+the metals and other minerals which no longer occurred at easy
+depths. Architecture began to make use of steel. Electrically
+driven aeroplanes were made, but without real success. And this
+failure was symptomatic; for the Patagonians were not sufficiently
+foolhardy to master aviation, even had their planes been more
+efficient. They themselves naturally attributed their failure wholly
+to lack of a convenient source of power, such as the ancient
+petrol. Indeed this lack of oil and coal hampered them at every
+turn. Volcanic power, of course, was available; but, never having
+been really mastered by the more resourceful ancients, it defeated
+the Patagonians completely.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As a matter of fact, in wind and water they had all that was
+needed. The resources of the whole planet were available, and the
+world-population was less than a hundred million. With this
+source alone they could never, indeed, have competed in luxury
+with the earlier World State, but they might well have achieved
+something like Utopia.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But this was not to be. Industrialism, though accompanied by
+only a slow increase of population, produced in time most of the
+social discords which had almost ruined their predecessors. To
+them it appeared that all their troubles would be solved if only
+their material power were far ampler. The strong and scarcely
+rational conviction was a symptom of their ruling obsession, the
+craving for increased vitality.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Under these circumstances it was natural that one event and
+one strand of ancient history should fascinate them. The secret of
+limitless material power had once been known and lost. Why
+should not Patagonians rediscover it, and use it, with their superior
+sanity, to bring heaven on earth? The ancients, no doubt, did
+well to forego this dangerous source of power; but the Patagonians,
+level-headed and single-minded, need have no fear. Some,
+indeed, considered it less important to seek power than to find a
+means of checking biological senescence; but, unfortunately,
+though physical science had advanced so rapidly, the more subtle
+biological sciences had remained backward, largely because
+among the ancients themselves little more had been done than to
+prepare their way. Thus it happened that the most brilliant minds
+of Patagonia, fascinated by the prize at stake, concentrated upon
+the problem of matter. The state encouraged this research by
+founding and endowing laboratories whose avowed end was this
+sole work.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The problem was difficult, and the Patagonian scientists, though
+intelligent, were somewhat lacking in grit. Only after some five
+hundred years of intermittent research was the secret discovered,
+or partially so. It was found possible, by means of a huge initial
+expenditure of energy, to annihilate the positive and negative
+electric charges in one not very common kind of atom. But this
+limitation mattered not at all; the human race now possessed an
+inexhaustible source of power which could be easily manipulated
+and easily controlled. But though controllable, the new gift was
+not fool-proof; and there was no guarantee that those who used it
+might not use it foolishly, or inadvertently let it get out of hand.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Unfortunately, at the time when the new source of energy was
+discovered, the Patagonians were more divided than of old.
+Industrialism, combined with the innate docility of the race, had
+gradually brought about a class cleavage more extreme even than
+that of the ancient world, though a cleavage of a curiously
+different kind. The strongly parental disposition of the average
+Patagonian prevented the dominant class from such brutal exploitation
+as had formerly occurred. Save during the first century
+of industrialism, there was no serious physical suffering among
+the proletariat. A paternal government saw to it that all Patagonians
+were at least properly fed and clothed, that all had ample
+leisure and opportunities of amusement. At the same time they
+saw to it also that the populace became more and more regimented.
+As in the First World State, civil authority was once more in
+the hands of a small group of masters of industry, but with a
+difference. Formerly the dominant motive of big business had
+been an almost mystical passion for the creation of activity; now
+the ruling minority regarded themselves as standing towards the
+populace <span class='it'>in loco parentis</span>, and aimed at creating ‘a young-hearted
+people, simple, gay, vigorous, and loyal’. Their ideal of the state
+was something between a preparatory school under a sympathetic
+but strict adult staff, and a joint-stock company, in which the
+shareholders retained only one function, to delegate their powers
+thankfully to a set of brilliant directors.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>That the system had worked so well and survived so long was
+due not only to innate Patagonian docility, but also to the principle
+by which the governing class recruited itself. One lesson at
+least had been learnt from the bad example of the earlier civilization,
+namely respect for intelligence. By a system of careful testing
+the brightest children were selected from all classes and trained to
+be governors. Even the children of the governors themselves were
+subjected to the same examination, and only those who qualified
+were sent to the ‘schools for young governors’. Some corruption
+no doubt existed, but in the main this system worked. The children
+thus selected were very carefully trained in theory and practice,
+as organizers, scientists, priests, and logicians.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The less brilliant children of the race were educated very
+differently from the young governors. It was impressed on them
+that they were less able than the others. They were taught to
+respect the governors as superior beings, who were called upon to
+serve the community in specially skilled and arduous work,
+simply because of their ability. It would not be true to say that
+the less intelligent were educated merely to be slaves; rather they
+were expected to be the docile, diligent, and happy sons and
+daughters of the fatherland. They were taught to be loyal and
+optimistic. They were given vocational training for their various
+occupations, and encouraged to use their intelligence as much as
+possible upon the plane suited to it; but the affairs of the state
+and the problems of religion and theoretical science were strictly
+forbidden. The official doctrine of the beauty of youth was
+fundamental in their education. They were taught all the conventional
+virtues of youth, and in particular modesty and simplicity.
+As a class they were extremely healthy, for physical training
+was a very important part of education in Patagonia. Moreover,
+the universal practice of sun-bathing, which was a religious rite,
+was especially encouraged among the proletariat, as it was
+believed to keep the body ‘young’ and the mind placid. The
+leisure of the governed class was devoted mostly to athletics and
+other sport, physical and mental. Music and other forms of art
+were also practised, for these were considered fit occupations for
+juveniles. The government exercised a censorship over artistic
+products, but it was seldom enforced; for the common folk of
+Patagonia were mostly too phlegmatic and too busy to conceive
+anything but the most obvious and respectable art. They were
+fully occupied with work and pleasure. They suffered no sexual
+restraints. Their impersonal interests were satisfied with the
+official religion of youth-worship and loyalty to the community.
+This placid condition lasted for some four hundred years after
+the first century of industrialism. But as time passed the mental
+difference between the two classes increased. Superior intelligence
+became rarer and rarer among the proletariat; the governors were
+recruited more and more from their own offspring, until finally
+they became an hereditary caste. The gulf widened. The governors
+began to lose all mental contact with the governed. They made a
+mistake which could never have been committed had their
+psychology kept pace with their other sciences. Ever confronted
+with the workers’ lack of intelligence, they came to treat them
+more and more as children, and forgot that, though simple, they
+were grown men and women who needed to feel themselves as
+free partners in a great human enterprise. Formerly this illusion
+of responsibility had been sedulously encouraged. But as the gulf
+widened the proletarians were treated rather as infants than as
+adolescents, rather as well-cared-for domestic animals than as
+human beings. Their lives became more and more minutely,
+though benevolently, systematized for them. At the same time
+less care was taken to educate them up to an understanding and
+appreciation of the common human enterprise. Under these
+circumstances the temper of the people changed. Though their
+material condition was better than had ever been known before,
+save under the first World State, they became listless, discontented,
+mischievous, ungrateful to their superiors.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Such was the state of affairs when the new source of energy was
+discovered. The world-community consisted of two very different
+elements, first a small, highly intellectual caste, passionately
+devoted to the state and to the advancement of culture amongst
+themselves; and, second, a much more numerous population of
+rather obtuse, physically well-cared-for, and spiritually starved
+industrialists. A serious clash between the two classes had already
+occurred over the use of a certain drug, favoured by the people
+for the bliss it produced, forbidden by the governors for its evil
+after-effects. The drug was abolished; but the motive was misinterpreted
+by the proletariat. This incident brought to the surface
+a hate that had for long been gathering strength in the popular
+mind, though unwittingly.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When rumour got afoot that in future mechanical power would
+be unlimited, the people expected a millennium. Every one
+would have his own limitless source of energy. Work would cease.
+Pleasure would be increased to infinity. Unfortunately the first use
+made of the new power was extensive mining at unheard-of depths
+in search of metals and other minerals which had long ago ceased
+to be available near the surface. This involved difficult and dangerous
+work for the miners. There were casualties. Riots occurred.
+The new power was used upon the rioters with murderous effect,
+the governors declaring that, though their paternal hearts bled
+for their foolish children, this chastisement was necessary to
+prevent worse evils. The workers were urged to face their troubles
+with that detachment which the Divine Boy had preached in his
+final phase; but this advice was greeted with the derision which it
+deserved. Further strikes, riots, assassinations. The proletariat
+had scarcely more power against their masters than sheep against
+the shepherd, for they had not the brains for large-scale organization.
+But it was through one of these pathetically futile rebellions
+that Patagonia was at last destroyed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A petty dispute had occurred in one of the new mines. The
+management refused to allow miners to teach their trade to their
+sons; for vocational education, it was said, should be carried on
+professionally. Indignation against this interference with parental
+authority caused a sudden flash of the old rage. A power unit
+was seized, and after a bout of insane monkeying with the machinery,
+the mischief-makers inadvertently got things into such a state
+that at last the awful djinn of physical energy was able to wrench off
+his fetters and rage over the planet. The first explosion was
+enough to blow up the mountain range above the mine. In those
+mountains were huge tracts of the critical element, and these were
+detonated by rays from the initial explosion. This sufficed to set
+in action still more remote tracts of the element. An incandescent
+hurricane spread over the whole of Patagonia, reinforcing itself
+with fresh atomic fury wherever it went. It raged along the line of
+the Andes and the Rockies, scorching both continents with its
+heat. It undermined and blew up the Bering Straits, spread like a
+brood of gigantic fiery serpents into Asia, Europe, and Africa.
+Martians, already watching the earth as a cat a bird beyond its
+spring, noted that the brilliance of the neighbour planet was
+suddenly enhanced. Presently the oceans began to boil here and
+there with submarine commotion. Tidal waves mangled the coasts
+and floundered up the valleys. But in time the general sea level
+sank considerably through evaporation and the opening of
+chasms in the ocean floor. All volcanic regions became fantastically
+active. The polar caps began to melt, but prevented the arctic
+regions from being calcined like the rest of the planet. The atmosphere
+was a continuous dense cloud of moisture, fumes, and
+dust, churned in ceaseless hurricanes. As the fury of the electro-magnetic
+collapse proceeded, the surface temperature of the
+planet steadily increased, till only in the Arctic and a few favoured
+corners of the sub-Arctic could life persist.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Patagonia’s death agony was brief. In Africa and Europe a few
+remote settlements escaped the actual track of the eruptions, but
+succumbed in a few weeks to hurricanes of steam. Of the two
+hundred million members of the human race, all were burnt or
+roasted or suffocated within three months—all but thirty-five, who
+happened to be in the neighbourhood of the North Pole.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>VI</span> <span class='it'>Transition</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch6-1'>1. THE FIRST MEN AT BAY</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">By</span> one of those rare tricks of fortune, which are as often favourable
+as hostile to humanity, an Arctic exploration ship had
+recently been embedded in the pack-ice for a long drift across the
+Polar sea. She was provisioned for four years, and when the
+catastrophe occurred she had already been at sea for six months.
+She was a sailing vessel; the expedition had been launched before
+it was practicable to make use of the new source of power. The
+crew consisted of twenty-eight men and seven women. Individuals
+of an earlier and more sexual race, proportioned thus, in such
+close proximity and isolation, would almost certainly have fallen
+foul of one another sooner or later. But to Patagonians the
+arrangement was not intolerable. Besides managing the whole
+domestic side of the expedition, the seven women were able to
+provide moderate sexual delight for all, for in this people the
+female sexuality was much less reduced than the male. There
+were, indeed, occasional jealousies and feuds in the little community,
+but these were subordinated to a strong <span class='it'>esprit de corps</span>.
+The whole company had, of course, been very carefully chosen
+for comradeship, loyalty, and health, as well as for technical skill.
+All claimed descent from the Divine Boy. All were of the governing
+class. One quaint expression of the strongly parental Patagonian
+temperament was that a pair of diminutive pet monkeys was
+taken with the expedition.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The crew’s first intimation of the catastrophe was a furious hot
+wind that melted the surface of the ice. The sky turned black. The
+Arctic summer became a weird and sultry night, torn by fantastic
+thunderstorms. Rain crashed on the ship’s deck in a continuous
+waterfall. Clouds of pungent smoke and dust irritated the eyes
+and nose. Submarine earthquakes buckled the pack-ice.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A year after the explosion, the ship was labouring in tempestuous
+and berg-strewn water near the Pole. The bewildered little company
+now began to feel its way south; but, as they proceeded, the
+air became more fiercely hot and pungent, storms more savage.
+Another twelve months were spent in beating about the Polar
+sea, ever and again retreating north from the impossible southern
+weather. But at length conditions improved slightly, and with
+great difficulty these few survivors of the human race approached
+their original objective in Norway, to find that the lowlands were
+a scorched and lifeless desert, while on the heights the valley
+vegetation was already struggling to establish itself, in patches of
+sickly green. Their base town had been flattened by a hurricane,
+and the skeletons of its population still lay in the streets. They
+coasted further south. Everywhere the same desolation. Hoping
+that the disturbance might be merely local, they headed round the
+British Isles and doubled back on France. But France turned out
+to be an appalling chaos of volcanoes. With a change of wind, the
+sea around them was infuriated with falling debris, often red hot.
+Miraculously they got away and fled north again. After creeping
+along the Siberian coast they were at last able to find a tolerable
+resting-place at the mouth of one of the great rivers. The ship
+was brought to anchor, and the crew rested. They were a diminished
+company, for six men and two women had been lost on the
+voyage.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Conditions even here must recently have been far more severe,
+since much of the vegetation had been scorched, and dead animals
+were frequent. But evidently the first fury of the vast explosion
+was now abating.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>By this time the voyagers were beginning to realize the truth.
+They remembered the half jocular prophecies that the new power
+would sooner or later wreck the planet, prophecies which had
+evidently been all too well founded. There had been a world-wide
+disaster; and they themselves had been saved only by their
+remoteness and the Arctic ice from a fate that had probably
+overwhelmed all their fellow-men.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>So desperate was the outlook for a handful of exhausted
+persons on a devastated planet, that some urged suicide. All
+dallied with the idea, save a woman, who had unexpectedly become
+pregnant. In her the strong parental disposition of her race
+was now awakened, and she implored the party to make a fight
+for the sake of her child. Reminded that the baby would only be
+born into a life of hardship, she reiterated with more persistence
+than reason, ‘My baby must live’.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The men shrugged their shoulders. But as their tired bodies
+recovered after the recent struggle, they began to realize the
+solemnity of their position. It was one of the biologists who
+expressed a thought which was already present to all. There was
+at least a chance of survival, and if ever men and women had a
+sacred duty, surely these had. For they were now the sole trustees
+of the human spirit. At whatever cost of toil and misery they
+must people the earth again.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This common purpose now began to exalt them, and brought
+them all into a rare intimacy. ‘We are ordinary folk,’ said the
+biologist, ‘but somehow we must become great.’ And they were,
+indeed, in a manner made great by their unique position. In
+generous minds a common purpose and common suffering breed
+a deep passion of comradeship, expressed perhaps not in words
+but in acts of devotion. These, in their loneliness and their sense
+of obligation, experienced not only comradeship, but a vivid
+communion with one another as instruments of a sacred
+cause.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The party now began to build a settlement beside the river.
+Though the whole area had, of course, been devastated, vegetation
+had soon revived, from roots and seeds, buried or wind-borne.
+The countryside was now green with those plants that had been
+able to adjust themselves to the new climate. Animals had suffered
+far more seriously. Save for the Arctic fox, a few small rodents,
+and one herd of reindeer, none were left but the dwellers in the
+actual Arctic seas, the Polar bear, various cetaceans, and seals.
+Of fish there were plenty. Birds in great numbers had crowded out
+of the south, and had died off in thousands through lack of food,
+but certain species were already adjusting themselves to the new
+environment. Indeed, the whole remaining fauna and flora of the
+planet was passing through a phase of rapid and very painful
+readjustment. Many well-established species had wholly failed to
+get a footing in the new world, while certain hitherto insignificant
+types were able to forge ahead.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The party found it possible to grow maize and even rice from
+seed brought from a ruined store in Norway. But the great heat,
+frequent torrential rain, and lack of sunlight made agriculture
+laborious and precarious. Moreover, the atmosphere had become
+seriously impure, and the human organism had not yet succeeded
+in adapting itself. Consequently the party were permanently tired
+and liable to disease.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The pregnant woman had died in child-birth, but her baby
+lived. It became the party’s most sacred object, for it kindled in
+every mind the strong parental disposition so characteristic of
+Patagonians.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Little by little the numbers of the settlement were reduced by
+sickness, hurricanes, and volcanic gases. But in time they achieved
+a kind of equilibrium with their environment, and even a certain
+strenuous amenity of life. As their prosperity increased, however,
+their unity diminished. Differences of temperament began to be
+dangerous. Among the men two leaders had emerged, or rather
+one leader and a critic. The original head of the expedition had
+proved quite incapable of dealing with the new situation, and had
+at last committed suicide. The company had then chosen the
+second navigating officer as their chief and had chosen him
+unanimously. The other born leader of the party was a junior
+biologist, a man of very different type. The relations of these two
+did much to determine the future history of man, and are worthy
+of study in themselves; but here we can only glance at them. In
+all times of stress the navigator’s authority was absolute, for
+everything depended on his initiative and heroic example. But in
+less arduous periods, murmurs arose against him for exacting
+discipline when discipline seemed unnecessary. Between him and
+the young biologist there grew up a strange blend of hostility and
+affection; for the latter, though critical, loved and admired the
+other, and declared that the survival of the party depended on
+this one man’s practical genius.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Three years after their landing, the community, though reduced
+in numbers and in vitality, was well established in a routine of
+hunting, agriculture, and building. Three fairly healthy infants
+rejoiced and exasperated their elders. With security, the navigator’s
+genius for action found less scope, while the knowledge of
+the scientists became more valuable. Plant and poultry-breeding
+were beyond the range of the heroic leader, and in prospecting
+for minerals he was equally helpless. Inevitably as time passed he
+and the other navigators grew restless and irritable; and at last,
+when the leader decreed that the party should take to the ship
+and explore for better land, a serious dispute occurred. All
+the sea-farers applauded; but the scientists, partly through
+clearer understanding of the calamity that had befallen the
+planet, partly through repugnance at the hardship involved,
+refused to go.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Violent emotions were aroused; but both sides restrained themselves
+through well-tried mutual respect and loyalty to the community.
+Then suddenly sexual passion set a light to the tinder.
+The woman who, by general consent, had come to be queen of
+the settlement, and was regarded as sacred to the leader, asserted
+her independence by sleeping with one of the scientists. The leader
+surprised them, and in sudden rage killed the young man. The
+little community at once fell into two armed factions, and more
+blood was shed. Very soon, however, the folly and sacrilege of
+this brawl became evident to these few survivors of a civilized
+race, and after a parley a grave decision was made.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The company was to be divided. One party, consisting of five
+men and two women, under the young biologist, was to remain
+in the settlement. The leader himself, with the remaining nine
+men and two women, was to navigate the ship toward Europe, in
+search of a better land. They promised to send word, if possible,
+during the following year.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>With this decision taken the two parties once more became
+amicable. All worked to equip the pioneers. When at last it was
+the time of departure, there was a solemn leave-taking. Every
+one was relieved at the cessation of a painful incompatibility;
+but more poignant than relief was the distressed affection of those
+who had so long been comrades in a sacred enterprise.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was a parting even more momentous than was supposed. For
+from this act arose at length two distinct human species.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Those who stayed behind heard no more of the wanderers, and
+finally concluded that they had come to grief. But in fact they
+were driven west and south-west past Iceland, now a cluster of
+volcanoes, to Labrador. On this voyage through fantastic storms
+and oceanic convulsions they lost nearly half their number, and
+were at last unable to work the ship. When finally they were
+wrecked on a rocky coast, only the carpenter’s mate, two women,
+and the pair of monkeys succeeded in clambering ashore.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>These found themselves in a climate far more sultry than
+Siberia; but like Siberia, Labrador contained uplands of luxuriant
+vegetation. The man and his two women had at first great
+difficulty in finding food, but in time they adapted themselves to
+a diet of berries and roots. As the years passed, however, the
+climate undermined their mentality, and their descendants sank
+into abject savagery, finally degenerating into a type that was
+human only in respect of its ancestry.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The little Siberian settlement was now hard-pressed but single-minded.
+Calculation had convinced the scientists that the planet
+would not return to its normal state for some millions of years;
+for though the first and superficial fury of the disaster had already
+ceased, the immense pent-up energy of the central explosions
+would take millions of years to leak out through volcanic vents.
+The leader of the party, by rare luck a man of genius, conceived
+their situation thus. For millions of years the planet would be
+uninhabitable save for a fringe of Siberian coast. The human race
+was doomed for ages to a very restricted and uncongenial environment.
+All that could be hoped for was the persistence of a mere
+remnant of civilized humanity, which should be able to lie dormant
+until a more favourable epoch. With this end in view the
+party must propagate itself, and make some possibility of cultured
+life for its offspring. Above all it must record in some permanent
+form as much as it could remember of Patagonian culture. ‘We
+are the germ,’ he said. ‘We must play for safety, mark time,
+preserve man’s inheritance. The chances against us are almost
+overwhelming, but just possibly we shall win through.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>And so in fact they did. Several times almost exterminated at
+the outset, these few harassed individuals preserved their spark of
+humanity. A close inspection of their lives would reveal an intense
+personal drama; for, in spite of the sacred purpose which united
+them, almost as muscles in one limb, they were individuals of
+different temperaments. The children, moreover, caused jealousy
+between their parentally hungry elders. There was ever a subdued,
+and sometimes an open, rivalry to gain the affection of these
+young things, these few and precious buds on the human stem.
+Also there was sharp disagreement about their education. For
+though all the elders adored them simply for their childishness,
+one at least, the visionary leader of the party, thought of them
+chiefly as potential vessels of the human spirit, to be moulded
+strictly for their great function. In this perpetual subdued antagonism
+of aims and temperaments the little society lived from day
+to day, much as a limb functions in the antagonism of its
+muscles.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The adults of the party devoted much of their leisure during
+the long winters to the heroic labour of recording the outline of
+man’s whole knowledge. This task was very dear to the leader,
+but the others often grew weary of it. To each person a certain
+sphere of culture was assigned; and after he or she had thought
+out a section and scribbled it down on slate, it was submitted to
+the company for criticism, and finally engraved deeply on tablets
+of hard stone. Many thousands of such tablets were produced in
+the course of years, and were stored in a cave which was carefully
+prepared for them. Thus was recorded something of the history
+of the earth and of man, the outlines of physics, chemistry, biology,
+psychology, and geometry. Each scribe set down also in some
+detail a summary of his own special study, and added a personal
+manifesto of his own views about existence. Much ingenuity was
+spent in devising a vast pictorial dictionary and grammar, with
+which, it was hoped, the remote future might interpret the whole
+library.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Years passed while this immense registration of human thought
+was still in progress. The founders of the settlement grew feebler
+while the eldest of the next generation were still adolescent. Of
+the two women, one had died and the other was almost a cripple,
+both martyrs to the task of motherhood. A youth, an infant boy,
+and four girls of various ages—on these the future of man now
+depended. Unfortunately these precious beings had suffered from
+their very preciousness. Their education had been bungled. They
+had been both pampered and oppressed. Nothing was thought too
+good for them, but they were overwhelmed with cherishing and
+teaching. Thus they came to hold the elders at arm’s length, and
+to weary of the ideals imposed on them. Brought into a ruined
+world without their own consent, they refused to accept the
+crushing obligation toward an improbable future. Hunting, and
+the daily struggle of a pioneering age, afforded their spirits full
+exercise in courage, mutual loyalty, and interest in one another’s
+personality. They would live for the present only, and for the
+tangible reality, not for a culture which they knew only by hearsay.
+In particular, they loathed the hardship of engraving endless
+verbiage upon granitic slabs.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The crisis came when the eldest girl had crossed the threshold
+of physical maturity. The leader told her that it was her duty to
+begin bearing children at once, and ordered her to have intercourse
+with her half-brother, his own son. Having herself assisted
+at the last birth, which had destroyed her mother, she refused;
+and when pressed she dropped her graving tool and fled. This was
+the first serious act of rebellion. In a few years the older generation
+was deposed from authority. A new way of life, more active,
+more dangerous, zestful, and careless, resulted in a lowering of
+the community’s standard of comfort and organization, but also
+in greater health and vitality. Experiments in plant and stock-breeding
+were neglected, buildings went out of repair; but great
+feats of hunting and exploration were undertaken. Leisure was
+given over to games of hazard and calculation, to dancing, singing,
+and romantic story-telling. Music and romance, indeed, were now
+the main expression of the finer nature of these beings, and became
+the vehicles of obscure religious experience. The intellectualism
+of the elders was ridiculed. What could their poor sciences
+tell of reality, of the many-faced, never-for-a-moment-the-same,
+superbly inconsequent, and ever-living Real? Man’s intelligence
+was all right for hunting and tillage in the world of common
+sense; but if he rode it further afield, he would find himself in a
+desert, and his soul would starve. Let him live as nature prompted.
+Let him keep the young god in his heart alive. Let him give
+free play to the struggling, irrational, dark vitality that sought to
+realize itself in him not as logic but as beauty.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The tablets were now engraved only by the aged.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But one day, after the infant boy had reached the early Patagonian
+adolescence, his curiosity was roused by the tail-like hind
+limbs of a seal. The old people timidly encouraged him. He made
+other biological observations, and was led on to envisage the
+whole drama of life on the planet, and to conceive loyalty to the
+cause which they had served.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile, sexual and parental nature had triumphed where
+schooling had failed. The young things inevitably fell in love with
+each other, and in time several infants appeared.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus, generation by generation, the little settlement maintained
+itself with varying success, varying zestfulness, and varying
+loyalty toward the future. With changing conditions the population
+fluctuated, sinking as low as two men and one woman, but
+increasing gradually up to a few thousand, the limit set by the
+food capacity of their strip of coast. In the long run, though
+circumstances did not prevent material survival, they made for
+mental decline. For the Siberian coast remained a tropical land,
+bounded on the south by a forest of volcanoes; and consequently
+in the long run the generations declined in mental vigour and
+subtlety. This result was perhaps due in part to too intensive inbreeding;
+but this factor had also one good effect. Though mental
+vigour waned, certain desirable characteristics were consolidated.
+The founders of the group represented the best remaining stock
+of the first human species. They had been chosen for their hardihood
+and courage, their native loyalty, their strong cognitive
+interest. Consequently, in spite of phases of depression, the race
+not only survived but retained its curiosity and its group feeling.
+Even while the ability of men decreased, their will to understand,
+and their sense of racial unity, remained. Though their conception
+of man and the universe gradually sank into crude myth, they
+preserved a strong unreasoning loyalty towards the future, and
+toward the now sacred stone library which was rapidly becoming
+unintelligible to them. For thousands and even millions of years,
+after the species had materially changed its nature, there remained
+a vague admiration for mental prowess, a confused tradition of a
+noble past, and pathetic loyalty toward a still nobler future.
+Above all, internecine strife was so rare that it served only to
+strengthen the clear will to preserve the unity and harmony of
+the race.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch6-2'>2. THE SECOND DARK AGE</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>We must now pass rapidly over the Second Dark Age, observing
+merely those influences which were to affect the future of
+humanity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Century by century the pent energy of the vast explosion dispersed
+itself; but not till many hundred thousand years had
+passed did the swarms of upstart volcanoes begin to die, and not
+till after millions of years did the bulk of the planet become once
+more a possible home for life.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>During this period many changes took place. The atmosphere
+became clearer, purer, and less turbulent. With the fall of temperature,
+frost and snow appeared occasionally in the Arctic regions,
+and in due course the Polar caps were formed again. Meanwhile,
+ordinary geological processes, augmented by the strains to which
+the planet was subjected by increased internal pressure, began to
+change the continents. South America mostly collapsed into the
+hollows blasted beneath it, but a new land rose to join Brazil
+with West Africa. The East Indies and Australia became a continuous
+continent. The huge mass of Tibet sank deeply into its
+disturbed foundations, lunged West, and buckled Afghanistan
+into a range of peaks nearly forty thousand feet above the sea.
+Europe sank under the Atlantic. Rivers writhed shiftingly hither
+and thither upon the continents, like tortured worms. New
+alluvial areas were formed. New strata were laid upon one
+another under new oceans. New animals and plants developed
+from the few surviving Arctic species, and spread south through
+Asia and America. In the new forests and grasslands appeared
+various specialized descendants of the reindeer, and swarms of
+rodents. Upon these preyed the large and small descendants of
+the Arctic fox, of which one species, a gigantic wolf-like creature,
+rapidly became the ‘King of Beasts’ in the new order, and
+remained so, until it was ousted by the more slowly-modified offspring
+of the polar bears. A certain genus of seals, reverting to
+the ancient terrestrial habit, had developed a slender snake-like
+body and an almost swift, and very serpentine, mode of locomotion
+among the coastal sand-dunes. There it was wont to stalk
+its rodent prey, and even follow them into their burrows. Everywhere
+there were birds. Many of the places left vacant by the
+destruction of the ancient fauna were now filled by birds which
+had discarded flight and developed pedestrian habits. Insects,
+almost exterminated by the great conflagration, had afterwards
+increased so rapidly, and had refashioned their types with such
+versatility, that they soon reached almost to their ancient profusion.
+Even more rapid was the establishment of the new micro-organisms.
+In general, among all the beasts and plants of the
+earth there was a great change of habit, and a consequent overlaying
+of old body-forms with new forms adapted to a new way
+of life.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The two human settlements had fared very differently. That of
+Labrador, oppressed by a more sweltering climate, and unsupported
+by the Siberian will to preserve human culture, sank into
+animality; but ultimately it peopled the whole West with swarming
+tribes. The human beings in Asia remained a mere handful
+throughout the ten million years of the Second Dark Age. An
+incursion of the sea cut them off from the south. The old Taimyr
+Peninsula, where their settlements clustered, became the northern
+promontory of an island whose coasts were the ancient valley-edges
+of the Yenessi, the Lower Tunguska, and the Lena. As the
+climate became less oppressive, the families spread towards the
+southern coast of the island, but there the sea checked them.
+Temperate conditions enabled them to regain a certain degree of
+culture. But they had no longer the capacity to profit much from
+the new clemency of nature, for the previous ages of tropical
+conditions had undermined them. Moreover, towards the end of
+the ten million years of the Second Dark Age, the Arctic climate
+spread south into their island. The crops failed, the rodents that
+formed their chief cattle dwindled, their few herds of deer faded
+out through lack of food. Little by little this scanty human race
+degenerated into a mere remnant of Arctic savages. And so they
+remained for a million years. Psychologically they were so
+crippled that they had almost completely lost the power of innovation.
+When their sacred quarries in the hills were covered with ice,
+they had not the wit to use stone from the valleys, but were
+reduced to making implements of bone. Their language degenerated
+into a few grunts to signify important acts, and a more complex
+system of emotional expressions. For emotionally these
+creatures still preserved a certain refinement. Moreover, though
+they had almost wholly lost the power of intelligent innovation,
+their instinctive responses were often such as a more enlightened
+intelligence would justify. They were strongly social, deeply
+respectful of the individual human life, deeply parental, and often
+terribly earnest in their religion.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Not till long after the rest of the planet was once more covered
+with life, not till nearly ten million years after the Patagonian
+disaster, did a group of these savages, adrift on an iceberg, get
+blown southward across the sea to the mainland of Asia. Luckily,
+for Arctic conditions were increasing, and in time the islanders
+were extinguished.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The survivors settled in the new land and spread, century by
+century, into the heart of Asia. Their increase was very slow for
+they were an infertile and inflexible race. But conditions were now
+extremely favourable. The climate was temperate; for Russia and
+Europe were now a shallow sea warmed by currents from the
+Atlantic. There were no dangerous animals save the small grey
+bears, an offshoot from the polar species, and the large wolf-like
+foxes. Various kinds of rodents and deer provided meat in plenty.
+There were birds of all sizes and habits. Timber, fruit, wild grains,
+and other nourishing plants throve on the well-watered volcanic
+soil. The prolonged eruptions, moreover, had once more enriched
+the upper layers of the rocky crust with metals.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A few hundred thousand years in this new world sufficed for
+the human species to increase from a handful of individuals to a
+swarm of races. It was in the conflict and interfusion of these
+races, and also through the absorption of certain chemicals from
+the new volcanic soil, that humanity at last recovered its vitality.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>VII</span> <span class='it'>The Rise of the Second Men</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch7-1'>1. THE APPEARANCE OF A NEW SPECIES</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">It</span> was some ten million years after the Patagonian disaster that
+the first elements of a new human species appeared, in an epidemic
+of biological variations, many of which were extremely valuable.
+Upon this raw material the new and stimulating environment
+worked for some hundred thousand years until at last there
+appeared the Second Man.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Though of greater stature and more roomy cranium, these
+beings were not wholly unlike their predecessors in general proportions.
+Their heads, indeed, were large even for their bodies,
+and their necks massive. Their hands were huge, but finely
+moulded. Their almost titanic size entailed a seemingly excessive
+strength of support; their legs were stouter, even proportionately,
+than the legs of the earlier species. Their feet had lost the separate
+toes, and, by a strengthening and growing together of the internal
+bones, had become more efficient instruments of locomotion.
+During the Siberian exile the First Men had acquired a thick hairy
+covering, and most races of the Second Man retained something
+of this blonde hirsute appearance throughout their career. Their
+eyes were large, and often jade green, their features firm as carved
+granite, yet mobile and lucent. Of the second human species one
+might say that Nature had at last repeated and far excelled the
+noble but unfortunate type which she had achieved once, long
+ago, with the first species, in certain prehistoric cave-dwelling
+hunters and artists.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/illo135.jpg' alt='' id='illo135' style='width:80%;height:auto;'/>
+</div>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Inwardly the Second Men differed from the earlier species in
+that they had shed most of those primitive relics which had
+hampered the First Men more than was realized. Not only were
+they free of appendix, tonsils, and other useless excrescences, but
+also their whole structure was more firmly knit into unity. Their
+chemical organization was such that their tissues were kept in
+better repair. Their teeth, though proportionately small and few,
+were almost completely immune from caries. Such was their
+glandular equipment that puberty did not begin till twenty;
+and not till they were fifty did they reach maturity. At about one
+hundred and ninety their powers began to fail, and after a few
+years of contemplative retirement they almost invariably died
+before true senility could begin. It was as though, when a man’s
+work was finished, and he had meditated in peace upon his whole
+career, there were nothing further to hold his attention and
+prevent him from falling asleep. Mothers carried the foetus for
+three years, suckled the infant for five years, and were sterile
+during this period and for another seven years. Their climacteric
+was reached at about a hundred and sixty. Architecturally massive
+like their mates, they would have seemed to the First Men very
+formidable titanesses; but even those early half-human beings
+would have admired the women of the second species both for
+their superb vitality and for their brilliantly human expression.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In temperament the Second Men were curiously different from
+the earlier species. The same factors were present, but in different
+proportions, and in far greater subordination to the considered
+will of the individual. Sexual vigour had returned. But sexual
+interest was strangely altered. Around the ancient core of delight
+in physical and mental contact with the opposite sex there now
+appeared a kind of innately sublimated, and no less poignant,
+appreciation of the unique physical and mental forms of all kinds
+of live things. It is difficult for less ample natures to imagine this
+expansion of the innate sexual interest; for to them it is not
+apparent that the lusty admiration which at first directs itself
+solely on the opposite sex is the appropriate attitude to all the
+beauties of flesh and spirit in beast and bird and plant. Parental
+interest also was strong in the new species, but it too was universalized.
+It had become a strong innate interest in, and a devotion
+to, all beings that were conceived as in need of help. In the
+earlier species this passionate spontaneous altruism occurred only
+in exceptional persons. In the new species, however, all normal
+men and women experienced altruism as a passion. And yet at the
+same time primitive parenthood had become tempered to a less
+possessive and more objective love, which among the First Men
+was less common than they themselves were pleased to believe.
+Assertiveness had also greatly changed. Formerly very much of a
+man’s energy had been devoted to the assertion of himself as a
+private individual over against other individuals; and very much
+of his generosity had been at bottom selfish. But in the Second
+Men this competitive self-assertion, this championship of the
+most intimately known animal against all others, was greatly
+tempered. Formerly the major enterprises of society would never
+have been carried through had they not been able to annex to
+themselves the egoism of their champions. But in the Second
+Men the parts were reversed. Few individuals could ever trouble
+to exert themselves to the last ounce for merely private ends, save
+when those ends borrowed interest or import from some public
+enterprise. It was only his vision of a world-wide community of
+persons, and of his own function therein, that could rouse the
+fighting spirit in a man. Thus it was inwardly, rather than in outward
+physical characters, that the Second Men differed from the
+First. And in nothing did they differ more than in their native
+aptitude for cosmopolitanism. They had their tribes and nations.
+War was not quite unknown amongst them. But even in primitive
+times a man’s most serious loyalty was directed toward the race
+as a whole; and wars were so hampered by impulses of kindliness
+towards the enemy that they were apt to degenerate
+into rather violent athletic contests, leading to an orgy of
+fraternization.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It would not be true to say that the strongest interest of these
+beings was social. They were never prone to exalt the abstraction
+called the state, or the nation, or even the world-commonwealth.
+For their most characteristic factor was not mere gregariousness
+but something novel, namely an innate interest in personality,
+both in the actual diversity of persons and in the ideal of personal
+development. They had a remarkable power of vividly intuiting
+their fellows as unique persons with special needs. Individuals of
+the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable
+spiritual isolation from one another. Not even lovers, and scarcely
+even the geniuses with special insight into personality, ever had
+anything like accurate vision of one another. But the Second Men,
+more intensely and accurately self-conscious, were also more
+intensely and accurately conscious of one another. This they
+achieved by no unique faculty, but solely by a more ready
+interest in each other, a finer insight, and a more active
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>They had also a remarkable innate interest in the higher kinds
+of mental activity, or rather in the subtle objects of these activities.
+Even children were instinctively inclined towards a genuinely
+aesthetic interest in their world and their own behaviour, and also
+towards scientific inquiry and generalization. Small boys, for
+instance, would delight in collecting not merely such things as
+eggs or crystals, but mathematical formulae expressive of the
+different shapes of eggs and crystals, or of the innumerable
+rhythms of shells, fronds, leaflets, grass-nodes. And there was a
+wealth of traditional fairy-stories whose appeal was grounded in
+philosophical puzzles. Little children delighted to hear how the
+poor things called Illusions were banished from the Country of
+the Real, how one-dimensional Mr Line woke up in a two-dimensional
+world, and how a brave young tune slew cacophonous
+beasts and won a melodious bride in that strange
+country where the landscape is all of sound and all living things
+are music. The First Men had attained to interest in science,
+mathematics, philosophy, only after arduous schooling, but in
+the Second Men there was a natural propensity for these activities,
+no less vigorous than the primitive instincts. Not, of course, that
+they were absolved from learning; but they had the same zest and
+facility in these matters as their predecessors had enjoyed only in
+humbler spheres.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the earlier species, indeed, the nervous system had maintained
+only a very precarious unity, and was all too liable to derangement
+by the rebellion of one of its subordinate parts. But in the
+second species the highest centres maintained an almost absolute
+harmony among the lower. Thus the moral conflict between
+momentary impulse and considered will, and again between private
+and public interest, played a very subordinate part among the
+Second Men.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In actual cognitive powers, also, this favoured species far outstripped
+its predecessor. For instance, vision had greatly developed.
+The Second Men distinguished in the spectrum a new
+primary colour between green and blue; and beyond blue they
+saw, not a reddish blue, but again a new primary colour, which
+faded with increasing ruddiness far into the old ultra-violet.
+These two new primary colours were complementary to one
+another. At the other end of the spectrum they saw the infra-red
+as a peculiar purple. Further, owing to the very great size of their
+retinae, and the multiplication of rods and cones, they discriminated
+much smaller fractions of their field of vision.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Improved discrimination combined with a wonderful fertility
+of mental imagery to produce a greatly increased power of insight
+into the character of novel situations. Whereas among the First
+Men, native intelligence had increased only up to the age of
+fourteen, among the Second Men it progressed up to forty. Thus
+an average adult was capable of immediate insight into problems
+which even the most brilliant of the First Men could only solve
+by prolonged reasoning. This superb clarity of mind enabled the
+second species to avoid most of those age-long confusions and
+superstitions which had crippled its predecessor. And along with
+great intelligence went a remarkable flexibility of will. In fact the
+Second Men were far more able than the First to break habits
+that were seen to be no longer justified.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>To sum the matter, circumstance had thrown up a very noble
+species. Essentially it was of the same type as the earlier species,
+but it had undergone extensive improvements. Much that the
+First Men could only achieve by long schooling and self-discipline
+the Second Men performed with effortless fluency and delight. In
+particular, two capacities which for the First Men had been
+unattainable ideals were now realized in every normal individual,
+namely the power of wholly dispassionate cognition, and the
+power of loving one’s neighbour as oneself, without reservation.
+Indeed, in this respect the Second Men might be called ‘Natural
+Christians’, so readily and constantly did they love one another
+in the manner of Jesus, and infuse their whole social policy with
+loving-kindness. Early in their career they conceived the religion
+of love, and they were possessed by it again and again, in diverse
+forms, until their end. On the other hand, their gift of dispassionate
+cognition helped them to pass speedily to the admiration
+of fate. And being by nature rigorous thinkers, they were
+peculiarly liable to be disturbed by the conflict between their
+religion of love and their loyalty to fate.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Well might it seem that the stage was now set for a triumphant
+and rapid progress of the human spirit. But though the second
+human species constituted a real improvement on the first, it
+lacked certain faculties without which the next great mental
+advance could not be made.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Moreover its very excellence involved one novel defect from
+which the First Men were almost wholly free. In the lives of
+humble individuals there are many occasions when nothing but
+an heroic effort can wrest their private fortunates from stagnation
+or decline, and set them pioneering in new spheres. Among the
+First Men this effort was often called forth by passionate regard
+for self. And it was upon the tidal wave of innumerable egoisms,
+blindly surging in one direction, that the first species was carried
+forward. But, to repeat, in the Second Men self-regard was never
+an over-mastering motive. Only at the call of social loyalty or
+personal love would a man spur himself to desperate efforts.
+Whenever the stake appeared to be mere private advancement,
+he was apt to prefer peace to enterprise, the delights of sport,
+companionship, art or intellect, to the slavery of self-regard. And
+so in the long run, though the Second Men were fortunate in their
+almost complete immunity from the lust of power and personal
+ostentation (which cursed the earlier species with industrialism
+and militarism), and though they enjoyed long ages of idyllic
+peace, often upon a high cultural plane, their progress towards
+full self-conscious mastery of the planet was curiously slow.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch7-2'>2. THE INTERCOURSE OF THREE SPECIES</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>In a few thousand years the new species filled the region from
+Afghanistan to the China Sea, overran India, and penetrated far
+into the new Australasian continent. Its advance was less military
+than cultural. The remaining tribes of the First Men, with whom
+the new species could not normally interbreed, were unable to
+live up to the higher culture that flooded round them and over
+them. They faded out.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For some further thousands of years the Second Men remained
+as noble savages, then passed rapidly through the pastoral into
+the agricultural stage. In this era they sent an expedition across
+the new and gigantic Hindu Kush to explore Africa. Here it was
+that they came upon the subhuman descendants of the ship’s
+crew that had sailed from Siberia millions of years earlier. These
+animals had spread south through America and across the new
+Atlantic Isthmus into Africa.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Dwarfed almost to the knees of the superior species, bent so
+that as often as not they used their arms as aids to locomotion,
+flat-headed and curiously long-snouted, these creatures were by
+now more baboon-like than human. Yet in the wild state they
+maintained a very complicated organization into castes, based on
+the sense of smell. Their powers of scent, indeed, had developed
+at the expense of their intelligence. Certain odours, which had
+become sacred through their very repulsiveness, were given off
+only by individuals having certain diseases. Such individuals were
+treated with respect by their fellows; and though, in fact, they
+were debilitated by their disease, they were so feared that no
+healthy individual dared resist them. The characteristic odours
+were themselves graded in nobility, so that those individuals who
+bore only the less repulsive perfume, owed respect to those in whom
+a widespread rotting of the body occasioned the most nauseating
+stench. These plagues had the special effect of stimulating reproductive
+activity; and this fact was one cause both of the respect
+felt for them, and of the immense fertility of the species, such a
+fertility that, in spite of plagues and obtuseness, it had flooded
+two continents. For though the plagues were fatal, they were slow
+to develop. Further, though individuals far advanced in disease
+were often incapable of feeding themselves, they profited by the
+devotion of the healthy, who were well-pleased if they also became
+infected.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the most startling fact about these creatures was that many
+of them had become enslaved to another species. When the
+Second Men had penetrated further into Africa they came to a
+forest region where companies of diminutive monkeys resisted
+their intrusion. It was soon evident that any interference with the
+imbecile and passive subhumans in this district was resented by
+the monkeys. And as the latter made use of a primitive kind of
+bow and poisoned arrows, their opposition was seriously inconvenient
+to the invaders. The use of weapons and other tools, and
+a remarkable coordination in warfare, made it clear that in
+intelligence this simian species had far outstripped all creatures
+save man. Indeed, the Second Men were now face to face with the
+only terrestrial species which ever evolved so far as to compete
+with man in versatility and practical shrewdness.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As the invaders advanced, the monkeys were seen to round up
+whole flocks of the submen and drive them out of reach. It was
+noticed also that these domesticated submen were wholly free
+from the diseases that infected their wild kinsfolk, who on this
+account greatly despised the healthy drudges. Later it transpired
+that the submen were trained as beasts of burden by the monkeys
+and that their flesh was a much relished article of diet. An arboreal
+city of woven branches was discovered, and was apparently in
+course of construction, for the submen were dragging timber and
+hauling it aloft, goaded by the boneheaded spears of the monkeys.
+It was evident also that the authority of the monkeys was maintained
+less by force than by intimidation. They anointed
+themselves with the juice of a rare aromatic plant, which
+struck terror into their poor cattle, and reduced them to abject
+docility.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Now the invaders were only a handful of pioneers. They had
+come over the mountains in search of metals, which had been
+brought to the earth’s surface during the volcanic era. An amiable
+race, they felt no hostility toward the monkeys, but rather amusement
+at their habits and ingenuity. But the monkeys resented the
+mere presence of these mightier beings; and, presently collecting
+in the tree-tops in thousands, they annihilated the party with their
+poisoned arrows. One man alone escaped into Asia. In a couple
+of years he returned, with a host. Yet this was no punitive expedition,
+for the bland Second Men were strangely lacking in resentment.
+Establishing themselves on the outskirts of the forest region,
+they contrived to communicate and barter with the little people
+of the trees, so that after a while they were allowed to enter the
+territory unmolested, and begin their great metallurgical
+survey.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A close study of the relations of these very different intelligences
+would be enlightening, but we have no time for it. Within
+their own sphere the monkeys showed perhaps a quicker wit than
+the men; but only within very narrow limits did their intelligence
+work at all. They were deft at finding new means for the better
+satisfaction of their appetites. But they wholly lacked self-criticism.
+Upon a normal outfit of instinctive needs they had
+developed many acquired, traditional cravings, most of which
+were fantastic and harmful. The Second Men, on the other hand,
+though often momentarily outwitted by the monkeys, were in the
+long run incomparably more able and more sane.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The difference between the two species is seen clearly in their
+reaction to metals. The Second Men sought metal solely for the
+carrying on of an already well-advanced civilization. But the
+monkeys, when for the first time they saw the bright ingots, were
+fascinated. They had already begun to hate the invaders for their
+native superiority and their material wealth; and now this jealousy
+combined with primitive acquisitiveness to make the slabs of
+copper and tin become in their eyes symbols of power. In order to
+remain unmolested in their work, the invaders had paid a toll of
+the wares of their own country, of baskets, pottery, and various
+specially designed miniature tools. But at the sight of the crude
+metal, the monkeys demanded a share of this noblest product of
+their own land. This was readily granted, since it did away with
+the need of bringing goods from Asia. But the monkeys had no
+real use for metal. They merely hoarded it, and became increasingly
+avaricious. No one had respect among them who did not
+laboriously carry a great ingot about with him wherever he went.
+And after a while it came to be considered actually indecent to be
+seen without a slab of metal. In conversation between the sexes
+this symbol of refinement was always held so as to conceal the
+genitals.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The more metal the monkeys acquired the more they craved.
+Blood was often shed in disputes over the possession of hoards.
+But this internecine strife gave place at length to a concerted
+movement to prevent the whole export of metal from their land.
+Some even suggested that the ingots in their possession should be
+used for making more effective weapons, with which to expel
+the invaders. This policy was rejected, not merely because there
+were none who could work up the crude metal, but because it was
+generally agreed that to put such a sacred material to any kind of
+service would be base.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The will to be rid of the invader was augmented by a dispute
+about the submen. These abject beings were treated very harshly by
+their masters. Not only were they overworked, but also they were
+tortured in cold blood, not precisely through lust in cruelty, but
+through a queer sense of humour, or delight in the incongruous.
+For instance, it afforded the monkeys a strangely innocent and
+extravagant pleasure to compel these cattle to carry on their work
+in an erect posture, which was by now quite unnatural to them,
+or to eat their own excrement or even their own young. If ever
+these tortures roused some exceptional subman to rebel, the
+monkeys flared into contemptuous rage at such a lack of humour,
+so incapable were they of realizing the subjective processes of
+others. To one another they could, indeed, be kindly and generous;
+but even among themselves the imp of humour would sometimes
+run riot. In any matter in which an individual was misunderstood
+by his fellows, he was sure to be gleefully baited, and
+often harried to death. But in the main it was only the slave-species
+that suffered.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The invaders were outraged by this cruel imbecility, and ventured
+to protest. To the monkeys the protest was unintelligible.
+What were cattle for, but to be used in the service of superior
+beings? Evidently, the monkeys thought, the invaders were after
+all lacking in the finer capacities of mind, since they failed to
+appreciate the beauty of the fantastic.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This and other causes of friction finally led the monkeys to
+conceive a means of freeing themselves for ever. The Second Men
+had proved to be terribly liable to the diseases of their wretched
+subhuman kinsfolk. Only by very rigorous quarantine had they
+stamped out the epidemic that had revealed this fact. Now partly
+for revenge, but partly also through malicious delight in the
+topsy-turvy, the monkeys determined to make use of this human
+weakness. There was a certain nut, very palatable to both men and
+monkeys, which grew in a remote part of the country. The
+monkeys had already begun to barter this nut for extra metal;
+and the pioneering Second Men were arranging to send caravans
+laden with nuts into their own country. In this situation the
+monkeys found their opportunity. They carefully infected large
+quantities of nuts with the plagues rampant among those herds
+of submen which had not been domesticated. Very soon caravans
+of infected nuts were scattered over Asia. The effect upon a race
+wholly fresh to these microbes was disastrous. Not only were the
+pioneering settlements wiped out, but the bulk of the species also.
+The submen themselves had become adjusted to the microbes,
+and even reproduced more rapidly because of them. Not so the
+more delicately organized species. They died off like autumn
+leaves. Civilization fell to pieces. In a few generations Asia was
+peopled only by a handful of scattered savages, all diseased and
+mostly crippled.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But in spite of this disaster the species remained potentially
+the same. Within a few centuries it had thrown off the infection
+and had begun once more the ascent towards civilization. After
+another thousand years, pioneers again crossed the mountain
+and entered Africa. They met with no opposition. The precarious
+flicker of simian intelligence had long ago ceased. The monkeys
+had so burdened their bodies with metal and their minds with
+the obsession of metal, that at length the herds of subhuman
+cattle were able to rebel and devour their masters.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch7-3'>3. THE ZENITH OF THE SECOND MEN</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>For nearly a quarter of a million years the Second Men passed
+through successive phases of prosperity and decline. Their
+advance to developed culture was not nearly so steady and
+triumphal as might have been expected from a race of such
+brilliance. As with individuals, so with species, accidents are all
+too likely to defeat even the most cautious expectations. For
+instance, the Second Men were for a long time seriously hampered
+by a ‘glacial epoch’ which at its height imposed Arctic conditions
+even as far south as India. Little by little the encroaching ice
+crowded their tribes into the extremity of that peninsula, and
+reduced their culture to the level of the Esquimaux. In time, of
+course, they recovered, but only to suffer other scourges, of which
+the most devastating were epidemics of bacteria. The more
+recently developed and highly organized tissues of this species
+were peculiarly susceptible to disease, and not once but many
+times a promising barbarian culture or ‘medieval’ civilization was
+wiped out by plagues.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But of all the natural disasters which befell the Second Men, the
+worst was due to a spontaneous change in their own physical
+constitution. Just as the fangs of the ancient sabre-toothed tiger
+had finally grown so large that the beast could not eat, so the
+brain of the second human species threatened to outgrow the
+rest of its body. In a cranium that was originally roomy enough,
+this rare product of nature was now increasingly cramped; while
+a circulatory system, that was formerly quite adequate, was
+becoming more and more liable to fail in pumping blood through
+so cramped a structure. These two causes at last began to take
+serious effect. Congenital imbecility became increasingly common,
+along with all manner of acquired mental diseases. For some
+thousands of years the race remained in a most precarious condition,
+now almost dying out, now rapidly attaining an extravagant
+kind of culture in some region where physical nature
+happened to be peculiarly favourable. One of these precarious
+flashes of spirit occurred in the Yang-tze valley as a sudden and
+brief effulgence of city states peopled by neurotics, geniuses and
+imbeciles. The lasting upshot of this civilization was a brilliant
+literature of despair, dominated by a sense of the difference
+between the actual and the potential in man and the universe.
+Later, when the race had attained its noontide glory, it was wont
+to brood upon this tragic voice from the past in order to remind
+itself of the underlying horror of existence.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile, brains became more and more overgrown, and the
+race more and more disorganized. There is no doubt that it would
+have gone the way of the sabre-toothed tiger, simply through the
+fatal direction of its own physiological evolution, had not a more
+stable variety of this second human species at last appeared. It
+was in North America, into which, by way of Africa, the Second
+Men had long ago spread, that the roomier-skulled and stronger-hearted
+type first occurred. By great good fortune this new variety
+proved to be a dominant Mendelian character. And as it interbred
+freely with the older variety, a superbly healthy race soon
+peopled America. The species was saved.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But another hundred thousand years were to pass before the
+Second Men could reach their zenith. I must not dwell on this
+movement of the human symphony, though it is one of great
+richness. Inevitably many themes are now repeated from the
+career of the earlier species, but with special features, and transposed,
+so to speak, from the minor to the major key. Once more
+primitive cultures succeed one another, or pass into civilization,
+barbarian or ‘medieval’; and in turn these fall or are transformed.
+Twice, indeed, the planet became the home of a single world-wide
+community which endured for many thousands of years, until
+misfortune wrecked it. The collapse is not altogether surprising,
+for unlike the earlier species, the Second Men had no coal and oil.
+In both these early world societies of the Second Men there was a
+complete lack of mechanical power. Consequently, though world-wide
+and intricate, they were in a manner ‘medieval’. In every
+continent intensive and highly skilled agriculture crept from the
+valleys up the mountain sides and over the irrigated deserts. In
+the rambling garden-cities each citizen took his share of drudgery,
+practised also some fine handicraft, and yet had leisure for gaiety
+and contemplation. Intercourse within and between the five great
+continental communities had to be maintained by coaches,
+caravans, and sailing ships. Sail, indeed, now came back into its
+own, and far surpassed its previous achievements. On every sea,
+fleets of great populous red-sailed clippers, wooden, with carved
+poops and prows, but with the sleek flanks of the dolphin, carried
+the produce of every land, and the many travellers who delighted
+to spend a sabbatical year among foreigners.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>So much, in the fullness of time, could be achieved, even
+without mechanical power, by a species gifted with high intelligence
+and immune from anti-social self-regard. But inevitably there
+came an end. A virus, whose subtle derangement of the glandular
+system was never suspected by a race still innocent of physiology,
+propagated throughout the world a mysterious fatigue. Century
+by century, agriculture withdrew from the hills and deserts,
+craftsmanship deteriorated, thought became stereotyped. And the
+vast lethargy produced a vast despond. At length the nations lost
+touch with one another, forgot one another, forgot their culture,
+crumbled into savage tribes. Once more Earth slept.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Many thousand years later, long after the disease was spent,
+several great peoples developed in isolation. When at last they
+made contact, they were so alien that in each there had to occur a
+difficult cultural revolution, not unaccompanied by bloodshed,
+before the world could once more feel as one. But this second
+world-order endured only a few centuries, for profound subconscious
+differences now made it impossible for the races to keep
+whole-heartedly loyal to each other. Religion finally severed the
+unity which all willed but none could trust. An heroic nation of
+monotheists sought to impose its faith on a vaguely pantheist
+world. For the first and last time the Second Men stumbled into
+a world-wide civil war; and just because the war was religious it
+developed a brutality hitherto unknown. With crude artillery, but
+with fanaticism, the two groups of citizen armies harried one
+another. The fields were laid waste, the cities burned, the rivers,
+and finally the winds, were poisoned. Long after that pitch of
+horror had been passed, at which an inferior species would have
+lost heart, these heroic madmen continued to organize destruction.
+And when at last the inevitable breakdown came, it was the
+more complete. In a sensitive species the devastating enlightenment
+which at last began to invade every mind, the overwhelming
+sense of treason against the human spirit, the tragic comicality of
+the whole struggle, sapped all energy. Not for thousands of years
+did the Second Men achieve once more a world-community. But
+they had learnt their lesson.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The third and most enduring civilization of the Second Men
+repeated the glorified medievalism of the first, and passed beyond
+it into a phase of brilliant natural science. Chemical fertilizers
+increased the crops, and therefore the world-population. Wind-
+and water-power was converted into electricity to supplement
+human and animal labour. At length, after many failures, it
+became possible to use volcanic and subterranean energy to drive
+dynamos. In a few years the whole physical character of civilization
+was transformed. Yet in this headlong passage into industrialism
+the Second Men escaped the errors of ancient Europe,
+America, and Patagonia. This was due partly to their greater gift
+of sympathy, which, save during the one great aberration of the
+religious war, made them all in a very vivid manner members one
+of another. But partly also it was due to their combination of a
+practical commonsense that was more than British, with a more
+than Russian immunity from the glamour of wealth, and a passion
+for the life of the mind that even Greece had never known. Mining
+and manufacture, even with plentiful electric power, were occupations
+scarcely less arduous than of old; but since each individual
+was implicated by vivid sympathy in the lives of all persons
+within his ken, there was little or no obsession with private
+economic power. The will to avoid industrial evils was effective,
+because sincere.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At its height, the culture of the Second Men was dominated by
+respect for the individual human personality. Yet contemporary
+individuals were regarded both as end and as means, as a stage
+towards far ampler individuals in the remote future. For, although
+they themselves were more long-lived than their predecessors, the
+Second Men were oppressed by the brevity of human life, and the
+pettiness of the individual’s achievement in comparison with the
+infinity round about him which awaited apprehension and admiration.
+Therefore they were determined to produce a race
+endowed with much greater natural longevity. Again, though they
+participated in one another far more than their predecessors, they
+themselves were dogged by despair at the distortion and error
+which spoiled every mind’s apprehension of others. Like their
+predecessors, they had passed through all the more naïve phases
+of self-consciousness and other-consciousness, and through idealizations
+of various modes of personality. They had admired the
+barbarian hero, the romantical, the sensitive-subtle, the bluff and
+hearty, the decadent, the bland, the severe. And they had concluded
+that each person, while being himself an expression of
+some one mode of personality, should seek to be also sensitive to
+every other mode. They even conceived that the ideal community
+should be knit into one mind by each unique individual’s direct
+telepathic apprehension of the experience of all his fellows. And
+the fact that this ideal seemed utterly unattainable wove through
+their whole culture a thread of darkness, a yearning for spiritual
+union, a horror of loneliness, which never seriously troubled their
+far more insulated predecessors.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This craving for union influenced the sexual life of the species.
+In the first place, so closely was the mental related to the physiological
+in their composition, that when there was no true union of
+minds, the sexual act failed to give conception. Casual sexual
+relations thus came to be regarded very differently from those
+which expressed a deeper intimacy. They were treated as a delightful
+embroidery on life, affording opportunity of much elegance,
+light-hearted tenderness, banter, and of course physical inebriation;
+but they were deemed to signify nothing more than the
+delight of friend in friend. Where there was a marriage of minds,
+but then only during the actual passion of communion, sexual
+intercourse almost always resulted in conception. Under these
+circumstances, intimate persons had often to practise contraception,
+but acquaintances never. And one of the most beneficial
+inventions of the psychologists was a technique of auto-suggestion,
+which, at will, either facilitated conception, or prevented it,
+surely, harmlessly, and without inaesthetic accompaniments.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The sexual morality of the Second Men passed through all the
+phases known to the First Men; but by the time that they had
+established a single world-culture it had a form not known before.
+Not only were both men and women encouraged to have as much
+casual sexual intercourse as they needed for their enrichment, but
+also, on the higher plane of spiritual union, strict monogamy was
+deprecated. For in sexual union of this higher kind they saw a
+symbol of that communion of minds which they longed to make
+universal. Thus the most precious gift that a lover could bring
+to the beloved was not virginity but sexual experience. The union,
+it was felt, was the more pregnant the more each party could
+contribute from previous sexual and spiritual intimacy with
+others. Yet, though as a principle monogamy was not applauded,
+the higher kind of union would in practice sometimes result in a
+life-long partnership. But since the average life was so much
+longer than among the First Men, such fortuitously perennial
+unions were often deliberately interrupted for a while, by a
+change of partners, and then restored with their vitality renewed.
+Sometimes, on the other hand, a group of persons of both sexes
+would maintain a composite and permanent marriage together.
+Sometimes such a group would exchange a member, or members,
+with another group, or disperse itself completely among other
+groups, to come together again years afterwards with enriched
+experience. In one form or another, this ‘marriage of groups’ was
+much prized, as an extension of the vivid sexual participation into
+an ampler sphere. Among the First Men the brevity of life made
+these novel forms of union impossible; for obviously no sexual,
+and no spiritual, relation can be developed with any richness in
+less than thirty years of close intimacy. It would be interesting to
+examine the social institutions of the Second Men at their zenith;
+but we have not time to spare for this subject, nor even for the
+brilliant intellectual achievements in which the species so far outstripped
+its predecessor. Obviously any account of the natural
+science and the philosophy of the Second Men would be unintelligible
+to readers of this book. Suffice it that they avoided the errors
+which had led the First Men into false abstraction, and into metaphysical
+theories which were at once sophisticated and naïve.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Not until after they had passed beyond the best work of the
+First Men in science and philosophy did the Second Men discover
+the remains of the great stone library in Siberia. A party of
+engineers happened upon it while they were preparing to sink a
+shaft for subterranean energy. The tablets were broken, disordered,
+weathered. Little by little, however, they were reconstructed
+and interpreted, with the aid of the pictorial dictionary.
+The finds were of extreme interest to the Second Men, but not in
+the manner which the Siberian party had intended, not as a store
+of scientific and philosophic truth, but as a vivid historical document.
+The view of the universe which the tablets recorded was
+both too naïve and too artificial; but the insight which they
+afforded into the mind of the earlier species was invaluable. So
+little of the old world had survived the volcanic epoch that the
+Second Men had failed hitherto to get a clear picture of their
+predecessors.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>One item alone in this archaeological treasure had more than
+historical interest. The biologist leader of the little party in Siberia
+had recorded much of the sacred text of the Life of the Divine
+Boy. At the end of the record came the prophet’s last words,
+which had so baffled Patagonia. This theme was full of meaning
+for the Second Men, as indeed it would have been even for the
+First Men in their prime. But whereas for the First Men the dispassionate
+ecstasy which the Boy had preached was rather an
+ideal than a fact of experience, the Second Men recognized in the
+prophet’s words an intuition familiar to themselves. Long ago
+the tortured geniuses of the Yang-tze cities had expressed this
+same intuition. Subsequently also it had often been experienced
+by the more healthy generations, but always with a certain shame.
+For it had become associated with morbid mentality. But now
+with growing conviction that it was wholesome, the Second Men
+had begun to grope for a wholesome expression of it. In the life
+and the last words of the remote apostle of youth they found an
+expression which was not wholly inadequate. The species was
+presently to be in sore need of this gospel.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The world-community reached at length a certain relative perfection
+and equilibrium. There was a long summer of social
+harmony, prosperity, and cultural embellishment. Almost all
+that could be done by mind in the stage to which it had then
+reached seemed to have been done. Generations of long-lived,
+eager, and mutually delightful beings succeeded one another.
+There was a widespread feeling that the time had come for man to
+gather all his strength for a flight into some new sphere of mentality.
+The present type of human being, it was recognized, was but a
+rough and incoherent natural product. It was time for man to
+take control of himself and remake himself upon a nobler pattern.
+With this end in view, two great works were set afoot, research
+into the ideal of human nature, and research into practical means
+of remaking human nature. Individuals in all lands, living their
+private lives, delighting in each other, keeping the tissue of society
+alive and vigorous, were deeply moved by the thought that their
+world-community was at last engaged upon this heroic task.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But elsewhere in the solar system life of a very different kind
+was seeking, in its own strange manner, ends incomprehensible to
+man, yet at bottom identical with his own ends. And presently
+the two were to come together, not in cooperation.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>VIII</span> <span class='it'>The Martians</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch8-1'>1. THE FIRST MARTIAN INVASION</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">Upon</span> the foothills of the new and titanic mountains that were
+once the Hindu Kush, were many holiday centres, whence the
+young men and women of Asia were wont to seek Alpine dangers
+and hardships for their souls’ refreshment. It was in this district,
+and shortly after a summer dawn, that the Martians were first
+seen by men. Early walkers noticed that the sky had an unaccountably
+greenish tinge, and that the climbing sun, though free from
+cloud, was wan. Observers were presently surprised to see the
+green concentrate itself into a thousand tiny cloudlets, with clear
+blue between. Field-glasses revealed within each fleck of green
+some faint hint of a ruddy nucleus, and shifting strands of an infra-red
+colour, which would have been invisible to the earlier human
+race. These extraordinary specks of cloud were all of about the
+same size, the largest of them appearing smaller than the moon’s
+disc; but in form they varied greatly, and were seen to be changing
+their shapes more rapidly than the natural cirrus which they
+slightly resembled. In fact, though there was much that was cloud-like
+in their form and motion, there was also something definite
+about them, both in their features and behaviour, which suggested
+life. Indeed they were strongly reminiscent of primitive amoeboid
+organisms seen through a microscope.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The whole sky was strewn with them, here and there in concentrations
+of unbroken green, elsewhere more sparsely. And
+they were observed to be moving. A general drift of the whole
+celestial population was setting toward one of the snowy peaks
+that dominated the landscape. Presently the foremost individuals
+reached the mountain’s crest, and were seen to be creeping down
+the rock-face with a very slow amoeboid action.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile a couple of aeroplanes, electrically driven, had
+climbed the sky to investigate the strange phenomenon at close
+quarters. They passed among the drifting cloudlets, and actually
+through many of them, without hindrance, and almost without
+being obscured from view.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>On the mountain a vast swarm of the cloudlets was collecting,
+and creeping down the precipices and snow-fields into a high
+glacier valley. At a certain point, where the glacier dropped
+steeply to a lower level, the advance guard slowed down and
+stopped, while hosts of their fellows continued to pack in on
+them from behind. In half an hour the whole sky was once more
+clear, save for normal clouds; but upon the glacier lay what might
+almost have been an exceptionally dark solid-looking thundercloud,
+save for its green tinge and seething motion. For some
+minutes this strange object was seen to concentrate itself into a
+somewhat smaller bulk and become darker. Then it moved forward
+again, and passed over the cliffy end of the glacier into the
+pine-clad valley. An intervening ridge now hid it from its first
+observers.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Lower down the valley there was a village. Many of the inhabitants,
+when they saw the mysterious dense fume advancing upon
+them, took to their mechanical vehicles and fled; but some waited
+out of curiosity. They were swallowed up in a murky olive-brown
+fog, shot here and there with queer shimmering streaks of a
+ruddier tint. Presently there was complete darkness. Artificial
+lights were blotted out almost at arm’s length. Breathing became
+difficult. Throats and lungs were irritated. Every one was seized
+with a violent attack of sneezing and coughing. The cloud
+streamed through the village, and seemed to exercise irregular
+pressures upon objects, not always in the general direction of
+movement but sometimes in the opposite direction, as though it
+were getting a purchase upon human bodies and walls, and
+actually elbowing its way along. Within a few minutes the fog
+lightened; and presently it left the village behind it, save for a
+few strands and whiffs of its smoke-like substance, which had
+become entangled in side-streets and isolated. Very soon, however,
+these seemed to get themselves clear and hurry to overtake the
+main body.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When the gasping villagers had somewhat recovered, they sent
+a radio message to the little town lower down the valley, urging
+temporary evacuation. The message was not broadcast, but transmitted
+on a slender beam of rays. It so happened that the beam
+had to be directed through the noxious matter itself. While the
+message was being given, the cloud’s progress ceased, and its outlines
+became vague and ragged. Fragments of it actually drifted
+away on the wind and dissipated themselves. Almost as soon as
+the message was completed, the cloud began to define itself again,
+and lay for a quarter of an hour at rest. A dozen bold young men
+from the town now approached the dark mass out of curiosity.
+No sooner did they come face to face with it, round a bend in the
+valley, than the cloud rapidly contracted, till it was no bigger
+than a house. Looking now something between a dense, opaque
+fume and an actual jelly, it lay still until the party had ventured
+within a few yards. Evidently their courage failed, for they were
+seen to turn. But before they had retreated three paces, a long
+proboscis shot out of the main mass with the speed of a chameleon’s
+tongue, and enveloped them. Slowly it withdrew; but the
+young men had been gathered in with it. The cloud, or jelly,
+churned itself violently for some seconds, then ejected the bodies
+in a single chewed lump.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The murderous thing now elbowed itself along the road towards
+the town, leaned against the first house, crushed it, and proceeded
+to wander hither and thither, pushing everything down before it,
+as though it were a lava-stream. The inhabitants took to their
+heels, but several were licked up and slaughtered.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Powerful beam radiation was now poured into the cloud from
+all the neighbouring installations. Its destructive activity slackened,
+and once more it began to disintegrate and expand.
+Presently it streamed upwards as a huge column of smoke; and,
+at a great altitude, it dissipated itself again into a swarm of the
+original green cloudlets, noticeably reduced in numbers. These
+again faded into a uniform greenish tinge, which gradually vanished.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus ended the first invasion of the Earth from Mars.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch8-2'>2. LIFE ON MARS</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>Our concern is with humanity, and with the Martians only in
+relation to men. But in order to understand the tragic intercourse
+of the two planets, it is necessary to glance at conditions on Mars,
+and conceive something of those fantastically different yet fundamentally
+similar beings, who were now seeking to possess man’s
+home.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>To describe the biology, psychology, and history of a whole
+world in a few pages is as difficult as it would be to give the
+Martians themselves in the same compass a true idea of man.
+Encyclopaedias, libraries, would be needed in either case. Yet,
+somehow, I must contrive to suggest the alien sufferings and
+delights, and the many aeons of struggle, which went to the
+making of these strange non-human intelligences, in some ways
+so inferior yet in others definitely superior to the human species
+which they encountered.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Mars was a world whose mass was about one-tenth that of the
+earth. Gravity therefore had played a less tyrannical part in
+Martian than in terrestrial history. The weakness of Martian
+gravity combined with the paucity of the planet’s air envelope to
+make the general atmospheric pressure far lighter than on earth.
+Oxygen was far less plentiful. Water also was comparatively rare.
+There were no oceans or seas, but only shallow lakes and marshes,
+many of which dried up in summer. The climate of the planet was
+in general very dry, and yet very cold. Being without cloud, it was
+perennially bright with the feeble rays of a distant sun.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Earlier in the history of Mars, when there were more air, more
+water, and a higher temperature from internal heat, life had
+appeared in the coastal waters of the seas, and evolution had
+proceeded in much the same manner as on earth. Primitive life
+was differentiated into the fundamental animal and vegetable
+types. Multicellular structures appeared, and specialized themselves
+in diverse manners to suit diverse environments. A great
+variety of plant forms clothed the lands, often with forests of
+gigantic and slender-stemmed plumes. Mollusc-like and insect-like
+animals crept or swam, or shot themselves hither and thither
+in fantastic jumps. Huge spidery creatures of a type not wholly
+unlike crustaceans, or gigantic grasshoppers, bounded after their
+prey, and developed a versatility and cunning which enabled them
+to dominate the planet almost as, at a much later date, early man
+was to dominate the terrestrial wild.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But meanwhile a rapid loss of atmosphere, and especially of
+water-vapour, was changing Martian conditions beyond the limits
+of adaptability of this early fauna and flora. At the same time a
+very different kind of vital organization was beginning to profit
+by the change. On Mars, as on the Earth, life had arisen from one
+of many ‘subvital’ forms. The new type of life on Mars evolved
+from another of these subvital kinds of molecular organization,
+one which had hitherto failed to evolve at all, and had played an
+insignificant part, save occasionally as a rare virus in the respiratory
+organs of animals. These fundamental subvital units of
+organization were ultra-microscopic, and indeed far smaller than
+the terrestrial bacteria, or even the terrestrial viruses. They
+originally occurred in the marshy ponds, which dried up every
+spring, and became depressions of baked mud and dust. Certain
+of their species, borne into the air upon dust-particles, developed
+an extremely dry habit of life. They maintained themselves by
+absorbing chemicals from the wind-borne dust, and a very slight
+amount of moisture from the air. Also they absorbed sunlight by
+a photosynthesis almost identical with that of the plants.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>To this extent they were similar to the other living things, but
+they had also certain capacities which the other stock had lost at
+the very outset of its evolutionary career. Terrestrial organisms,
+and Martian organisms of the terrestrial type, maintained themselves
+as vital unities by means of nervous systems, or other forms
+of material contact between parts. In the most developed forms,
+an immensely complicated neural ‘telephone’ system connected
+every part of the body with a vast central exchange, the brain.
+Thus on the earth a single organism was without exception a continuous
+system of matter, which maintained a certain constancy
+of form. But from the distinctively Martian subvital unit there
+evolved at length a very different kind of complex organism, in
+which material contact of parts was not necessary either to coordination
+of behaviour or unity of consciousness. These ends
+were achieved upon a very different physical basis. The ultra-microscopic
+subvital members were sensitive to all kinds of ethereal
+vibrations, directly sensitive, in a manner impossible to terrestrial
+life; and they could also initiate vibrations. Upon this basis
+Martian life developed at length the capacity of maintaining vital
+organization as a single conscious individual without continuity
+of living matter. Thus the typical Martian organism was a cloudlet,
+a group of free-moving members dominated by a ‘group-mind’.
+But in one species individuality came to inhere, for certain
+purposes, not in distinct cloudlets only, but in a great fluid system
+of cloudlets. Such was the single-minded Martian host which
+invaded the Earth.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Martian organism depended, so to speak, not on ‘telephone’
+wires, but on an immense crowd of mobile ‘wireless
+stations’, transmitting and receiving different wave-lengths according
+to their function. The radiation of a single unit was of
+course very feeble; but a great system of units could maintain
+contact with its wandering parts over a considerable distance.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>One other important characteristic distinguished the dominant
+form of life on Mars. Just as a cell, in the terrestrial form of life,
+has often the power of altering its shape (whence the whole
+mechanism of muscular activity), so in the Martian form the free-floating
+ultra-microscopic unit might be specialized for generating
+around itself a magnetic field, and so either repelling or attracting
+its neighbours. Thus a system of materially disconnected units
+had a certain cohesion. Its consistency was something between
+a smoke-cloud and a very tenuous jelly. It had a definite though
+ever-changing contour and resistant surface. By massed mutual
+repulsions of its constituent units it could exercise pressure on
+surrounding objects; and in its most concentrated form the Martian
+cloud-jelly could bring to bear immense forces which could
+also be controlled for very delicate manipulation. Magnetic forces
+were also responsible for the mollusc-like motion of the cloud as
+a whole over the ground, and again for the transport of lifeless
+material and living units from region to region within the cloud.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The magnetic field of repulsion and attraction generated by a
+subvital unit was much more restricted than its field of ‘wireless’
+communication. Similarly with organized systems of units. Thus
+each of the cloudlets which the Second Men saw in their sky was
+an independent motor unit; but also it was in a kind of ‘telepathic’
+communication with all its fellows. Indeed in every public enterprise,
+such as the terrestrial campaigns, almost perfect unity of
+consciousness was maintained within the limits of a huge field of
+radiation. Yet only when the whole population concentrated itself
+into a small and relatively dense cloud-jelly, did it become a single
+magnetic motor unit. The Martians, it should be noted, had three
+possible forms, or formations, namely: first, an ‘open order’ of
+independent and very tenuous cloudlets in ‘telepathic’ communication,
+and often in strict unity as a group-mind; second, a
+more concentrated and less vulnerable corporate cloud; and
+third, an extremely concentrated and formidable cloud-jelly.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Save for these very remarkable characteristics, there was no
+really fundamental difference between the distinctively Martian
+and the distinctively terrestrial forms of life. The chemical basis
+of the former was somewhat more complicated than that of the
+latter; and selenium played a part in it, to which nothing corresponded
+in terrestrial life. The Martian organism, moreover, was
+unique in that it fulfilled within itself the functions of both animal
+and vegetable. But, save for these peculiarities, the two types of
+life were biochemically much the same. Both needed material
+from the ground, both needed sunlight. Each lived in the chemical
+changes occurring in its own ‘flesh’. Each, of course, tended to
+maintain itself as an organic unity. There was a certain difference,
+indeed, in respect of reproduction; for the Martian subvital units
+retained the power of growth and subdivision. Thus the birth of a
+Martian cloud arose from the subdivision of myriads of units
+within the parent cloud, followed by their ejection as a new
+individual. And, as the units were highly specialized for different
+functions, representatives of many types had to pass into the new
+cloud.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the earliest stages of evolution on Mars the units had become
+independent of each other as soon as they parted in reproduction.
+But later the hitherto useless and rudimentary power of
+emitting radiation was specialized, so that, after reproduction,
+free individuals came to maintain radiant contact with one another,
+and to behave with ever-increasing coordination. Still later,
+these organized groups themselves maintained radiant contact
+with groups of their offspring, thus constituting larger individuals
+with specialized members. With each advance in complexity the
+sphere of radiant influence increased; until, at the zenith of
+Martian evolution, the whole planet (save for the remaining
+animal and vegetable representatives of the other and unsuccessful
+kind of life) constituted sometimes a single biological and
+psychological individual. But this occurred as a rule only in
+respect of matters which concerned the species as a whole. At
+most times the Martian individual was a cloudlet, such as those
+which first astonished the Second Men. But in great public crises
+each cloudlet would suddenly wake up to find himself the mind of
+the whole race, sensing through many individuals, and interpreting
+his sensations in the light of the experience of the whole race.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The life which dominated Mars was thus something between
+an extremely well-disciplined army of specialized units, and a
+body possessed by one mind. Like an army, it could take any
+form without destroying its organic unity. Like an army it was
+sometimes a crowd of free-wandering units, yet at other times
+also it disposed itself in very special orders to fulfil special functions.
+Like an army it was composed of free, experiencing individuals
+who voluntarily submitted themselves to discipline. On
+the other hand, unlike an army, it woke occasionally into unified
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The same fluctuation between individuality and multiplicity
+which characterized the race as a whole, characterized also each
+of the cloudlets themselves. Each was sometimes an individual,
+sometimes a swarm of more primitive individuals. But while the
+race rather seldom rose to full individuality, the cloudlets declined
+from it only in very special circumstances. Each cloudlet was an
+organization of specialized groups formed of minor specialized
+groups, which in turn were composed of the fundamental specialized
+varieties of subvital units. Each free-roving group of free-roving
+units constituted a special organ, fulfilling some particular
+function in the whole. Thus some were specialized for attraction
+and repulsion, some for chemical operations, some for storing the
+sun’s energy, some for emitting radiation, some for absorbing and
+storing water, some for special sensitivities, such as awareness of
+mechanical pressure and vibration, or temperature changes, or
+light rays. Others again were specialized to fulfil the function of
+the brain of man; but in a peculiar manner. The whole volume of
+the cloudlet vibrated with innumerable ‘wireless’ messages in very
+many wave-lengths from the different ‘organs’. It was the function
+of the ‘brain’ units to receive, and correlate, and interpret
+these messages in the light of past experience, and to initiate
+responses in the wave-lengths appropriate to the organs concerned.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>All these subvital units, save a few types that were too highly
+specialized, were capable of independent life as air-borne bacteria
+or viruses. And whenever they lost touch with the radiation of the
+whole system, they continued to live their own simple lives until
+they were once more controlled. All were free-floating units, but
+normally they were under the influence of the cloudlet’s system of
+electro-magnetic fields, and were directed hither and thither for
+their special functions. And under this influence some of them
+might be held rigidly in position in relation to one another. Such
+was the case of the organs of sight. In early stages of evolution,
+some of the units had specialized for carrying minute globules of
+water. Later, much larger droplets were carried, millions of units
+holding between them a still microscopic globule of life’s most
+precious fluid. Ultimately this function was turned to good
+account in vision. Aqueous lenses as large as the eye of an ox
+were supported by a scaffolding of units; while, at focal length
+from the lens, a rigid retina of units was held in position. Thus the
+Martian could produce eyes of every variety whenever he wanted
+them, and telescopes and microscopes too. This production and
+manipulation of visual organs was of course largely subconscious,
+like the focusing mechanism in man. But latterly the Martians
+had greatly increased their conscious control of physiological
+processes; and it was this achievement which facilitated their
+remarkable optical triumphs.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>One other physiological function we must note before considering
+the Martian psychology. The fully evolved, but as yet
+uncivilized, Martian had long ago ceased to depend for his
+chemicals on wind-borne volcanic dust. Instead, he rested at night
+on the ground, like a knee-high mist on terrestrial meadows, and
+projected specialized tubular groups of units into the soil, like
+rootlets. Part of the day also had to be occupied in this manner.
+Somewhat later this process was supplemented by devouring the
+declining plant-life of the planet. But the final civilized Martians
+had greatly improved their methods of exploiting the ground and the
+sunlight, both by mechanical means and by artificial specialization
+of their own organs. Even so, however, as their activities
+increased, these vegetable functions became an ever more serious
+problem for them. They practised agriculture; but only a very
+small area of the arid planet could be induced to bear. It was
+terrestrial water and terrestrial vegetation that finally determined
+them to make the great voyage.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch8-3'>3. THE MARTIAN MIND</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>The Martian mind was of a very different type from the terrestrial,
+different, yet at bottom identical. In so strange a body, the mind
+was inevitably equipped with alien cravings, and alien manners of
+apprehending its environment. And with so different a history,
+it was confused by prejudices very unlike those of man. Yet it was
+none the less mind, concerned in the last resort with the maintenance
+and advancement of life, and the exercise of vital capacities.
+Fundamentally the Martian was like all other living beings, in
+that he delighted in the free working of his body and his mind.
+Yet superficially, he was as unlike man in mind as in body.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The most distinctive feature of the Martian, compared with
+man, was that his individuality was both far more liable to disruption,
+and at the same time immeasurably more capable of
+direct participation in the minds of other individuals. The human
+mind in its solid body maintained its unity and its dominance
+over its members in all normal circumstances. Only in disease was
+man liable to mental or physical dissociation. On the other hand,
+he was incapable of direct contact with other individuals, and the
+emergence of a ‘super-mind’ in a group of individuals was quite
+impossible. The Martian cloudlet, however, though he fell to
+pieces physically, and also mentally, far more readily than a man,
+might also at any moment wake up to be the intelligent mind of
+his race, might begin to perceive with the sense-organs of all other
+individuals, and experience thoughts and desires which were, so
+to speak, the resultant of all individual thoughts and desires upon
+some matter of general interest. But unfortunately, as I shall tell,
+the common mind of the Martians never woke into any order of
+mentality higher than that of the individual.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>These differences between the Martian and the human psyche
+entailed characteristic advantages and disadvantages. The Martian,
+immune from man’s inveterate selfishness and spiritual
+isolation from his fellows, lacked the mental coherence, the concentrated
+attention and far-reaching analysis and synthesis, and
+again the vivid self-consciousness and relentless self-criticism,
+which even the First Men, at their best, had attained in some
+degree, and which in the Second Men were still more developed.
+The Martians, moreover, were hampered by being almost identical
+in character. They possessed perfect harmony; but only through
+being almost wholly in temperamental unison. They were all
+hobbled by their sameness to one another. They were without
+that rich diversity of personal character, which enabled the human
+spirit to cover so wide a field of mentality. This infinite variety of
+human nature entailed, indeed, endless wasteful and cruel
+personal conflicts in the first, and even to some extent in the
+second, species of man; but also it enabled every individual of
+developed sympathy to enrich his spirit by intercourse with
+individuals whose temperament, thought, and ideals differed from
+his own. And while the Martians were little troubled by internecine
+strife and the passion of hate, they were also almost wholly
+devoid of the passion of love. The Martians individual could
+admire, and be utterly faithful to, the object of his loyalty; but his
+admiration was given, not to concrete and uniquely charactered
+persons of the same order as himself, but at best to the vaguely
+conceived ‘spirit of the race’. Individuals like himself he regarded
+merely as instruments or organs of the ‘super-mind’.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This would not have been amiss, had the mind of the race, into
+which he so frequently awoke under the influence of the general
+radiation, been indeed a mind of higher rank than his own. But
+it was not. It was but a pooling of the percipience and thought and
+will of the cloudlets. Thus it was that the superb loyalty of the
+Martians was squandered upon something which was not greater
+than themselves in mental calibre, but only in mere bulk.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Martian cloudlet, like the human animal, had a complex
+instinctive nature. By night and day, respectively, he was impelled
+to perform the vegetative functions of absorbing chemicals from
+the ground and energy from the sunlight. Air and water he also
+craved, though he dealt with them, of course, in his own manner.
+He had also his own characteristic instinctive impulses to move
+his ‘body’, both for locomotion and manipulation. Martian
+civilization provided an outlet for these cravings, both in the
+practice of agriculture and in intricate and wonderfully beautiful
+cloud-dances and gymnastics. For these perfectly supple beings
+rejoiced in executing aerial evolutions, flinging out wild rhythmical
+streamers, intertwining with one another in spirals, concentrating
+into opaque spheres, cubes, cones, and all sorts of
+fantastical volumes. Many of these movements and shapes had
+intense emotional significance for them in relation to the operations
+of their life, and were executed with a religious fervour and
+solemnity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Martian had also his impulses of fear and pugnacity. In
+the remote past these had often been directed against hostile
+members of his own species; but since the race had become
+unified, they found exercise only upon other types of life and
+upon inanimate nature. Instinctive gregariousness was, of course,
+extremely developed in the Martian at the expense of instinctive
+self-assertion. Sexuality the Martian had not; there were not partners
+in reproduction. But his impulse to merge physically and
+mentally with other individuals, and wake up as the super-mind,
+had in it much that was characteristic of sex in man. Parental
+impulses, of a kind, he knew; but they were scarcely worthy of
+the name. He cared only to eject excessive living matter from his
+system, and to keep <span class='it'>en rapport</span> with the new individual thus
+formed, as he would with any other individual. He knew no more
+of the human devotion to children as budding personalities than
+of the subtle intercourse of male and female temperaments. By
+the time of the first invasion, however, reproduction had been
+greatly restricted; for the planet was fully populated, and each
+individual cloudlet was potentially immortal. Among the Martians
+there was no ‘natural death’, no spontaneous death through
+mere senility. Normally the cloudlet’s members kept themselves
+in repair indefinitely by the reproduction of their constituent
+units. Diseases, indeed, were often fatal. And chief among them
+was a plague, corresponding to terrestrial cancer, in which the
+subvital units lost their sensitivity to radiation, so that they
+proceeded to live as primitive organisms and reproduce without
+restraint. As they also became parasitic on the unaffected units,
+the cloudlet inevitably died.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Like the higher kinds of terrestrial mammal, the Martians had
+strong impulses of curiosity. Having also many practical needs to
+fulfil as a result of their civilization, and being extremely well
+equipped by nature for physical experiment and microscopy, they
+had gone far in the natural sciences. In physics, astronomy,
+chemistry, and even in the chemistry of life, man had nothing to
+teach them.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The vast corpus of Martian knowledge had taken many
+thousands of years to grow. All its stages, and its current achievements,
+were recorded on immense scrolls of paper made from
+vegetable pulp, and stored in libraries of stone. For the Martians,
+curiously enough, had become great masons, and had covered
+much of their planet with buildings of feathery and toppling
+design, such as would have been quite impossible on earth. They
+had no need of buildings for habitation, save in the arctic regions;
+but as workshops, granaries, and store rooms of all sorts, buildings
+had become very necessary to the Martians. Moreover these
+extremely tenuous creatures took a peculiar joy in manipulating
+solids. Even their most utilitarian architecture blossomed with a
+sort of gothic or arabesque ornateness and fantasy, wherein the
+ethereal seemed to torture the substance of solid rock into its own
+likeness.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At the time of the invasion, the Martians were still advancing
+intellectually; and, indeed, it was through an achievement in
+theoretical physics that they were able to leave their planet. They
+had long known that minute particles at the upper limit of the
+atmosphere might be borne into space by the pressure of the sun’s
+rays at dawn and sunset. And at length they discovered how to
+use this pressure as the wind is used in sailing. Dissipating themselves
+into their ultra-microscopic units, they contrived to get a
+purchase on the gravitational fields of the solar system, as a boat’s
+keel and rudder get a purchase on the water. Thus they were able
+to tack across to the earth as an armada of ultra-microscopic
+vessels. Arrived in the terrestrial sky, they re-formed themselves
+as cloudlets, swam through the dense air to the alpine summit, and
+climbed downwards, as a swimmer may climb down a ladder
+under water.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This achievement involved very intricate calculations and
+chemical inventions, especially for the preservation of life in transit
+and on an alien planet. It could never have been done save by
+beings with far-reaching and accurate knowledge of the physical
+world. But though in respect of ‘natural knowledge’ the Martians
+were so well advanced, they were extremely backward in all those
+spheres which may be called ‘spiritual knowledge’. They had
+little understanding of their own mentality, and less of the place
+of mind in the cosmos. Though in a sense a highly intelligent
+species, they were at the same time wholly lacking in philosophical
+interest. They scarcely conceived, still less tackled, the problems
+which even the First Men had faced so often, though so vainly.
+For the Martians there was no mystery in the distinction between
+reality and appearance or in the relation of the one and the
+many, or in the status of good and evil. Nor were they ever critical
+of their own ideals. They aimed whole-heartedly at the advancement
+of the Martian super-individual. But what should constitute
+individuality, and its advancement, they never seriously considered.
+And the idea that they were under obligation also towards
+beings not included in the Martian system of radiation, proved
+wholly beyond them. For, though so clever, they were the most
+naïve of self-deceivers, and had no insight to see what it is that
+is truly desirable.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch8-4'>4. DELUSIONS OF THE MARTIANS</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>To understand how the Martians tricked themselves, and how
+they were finally undone by their own insane will, we must
+glance at their history.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The civilized Martians constituted the sole remaining variety
+of a species. That species itself, in the remote past, had competed
+with, and exterminated, many other species of the same general
+type. Aided by the changing climate, it had also exterminated
+almost all the species of the more terrestrial kind of fauna, and
+had thereby much reduced the vegetation which it was subsequently
+to need and foster so carefully. This victory of the species
+had been due partly to its versatility and intelligence, partly to a
+remarkable zest in ferocity, partly to its unique powers of radiation
+and sensitivity to radiation, which enabled it to act with a
+coordination impossible even to the most gregarious of animals.
+But, as with other species in biological history, the capacity by
+which it triumphed became at length a source of weakness. When
+the species reached a stage corresponding to primitive human
+culture, one of its races, achieving a still higher degree of radiant
+intercourse and physical unity, was able to behave as a single
+vital unit; and so it succeeded in exterminating all its rivals.
+Racial conflict had persisted for many thousands of years, but
+as soon as the favoured race had developed this almost absolute
+solidarity of will, its victory was sweeping, and was clinched by
+joyous massacre of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But ever afterwards the Martians suffered from the psychological
+effects of their victory at the close of the epoch of racial
+wars. The extreme brutality with which the other races had been
+exterminated conflicted with the generous impulses which civilization
+had begun to foster, and left a scar upon the conscience of
+the victors. In self-defence they persuaded themselves that since
+they were so much more admirable than the rest, the extermination
+was actually a sacred duty. And their unique value, they
+said, consisted in their unique radiational development. Hence
+arose a gravely insincere tradition and culture, which finally
+ruined the species. They had long believed that the physical basis
+of consciousness must necessarily be a system of units directly
+sensitive to ethereal vibrations, and that organisms dependent on
+the physical contact of their parts were too gross to have any
+experience whatever. After the age of the racial massacres they
+sought to persuade themselves that the excellence, or ethical
+worth, of any organism depended upon the degree of complexity
+and unity of its radiation. Century by century they strengthened
+their faith in this vulgar doctrine, and developed also a system of
+quite irrational delusions and obsessions based upon an obsessive
+and passionate lust in radiation.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It would take too long to tell of all these subsidiary fantasies,
+and of the ingenious ways in which they were reconciled with the
+main body of sane knowledge. But one at least must be mentioned,
+because of the part it played in the struggle with man. The
+Martians knew, of course, that ‘solid matter’ was solid by virtue
+of the interlocking of the minute electro-magnetic systems called
+atoms. Now rigidity had for them somewhat the same significance
+and prestige that air, breath, spirit, had for early man. It was in
+the quasi-solid form that Martians were physically most potent;
+and the maintenance of this form was exhausting and difficult.
+These facts combined in the Martian consciousness with the
+knowledge that rigidity was after all the outcome of interlocked
+electro-magnetic systems. Rigidity was thus endowed with a
+peculiar sanctity. The superstition was gradually consolidated, by
+a series of psychological accidents, into a fanatical admiration of
+all very rigid materials, but especially of hard crystals, and above
+all of diamonds. For diamonds were extravagantly resistant; and
+at the same time, as the Martians themselves put it, diamonds
+were superb jugglers with the ethereal radiation called light. Every
+diamond was therefore a supreme embodiment of the tense energy
+and eternal equilibrium of the cosmos, and must be treated with
+reverence. In Mars, all known diamonds were exposed to sunlight
+on the pinnacles of sacred buildings; and the thought that on the
+neighbour planet might be diamonds which were not properly
+treated, was one motive of the invasion.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus did the Martian mind, unwittingly side-tracked from its
+true development, fall sick, and strive ever more fanatically
+towards mere phantoms of its goal. In the early stages of the disorder,
+radiation was merely regarded as an infallible <span class='it'>sign</span> of
+mentality, and radiative complexity was taken as an infallible
+<span class='it'>measure</span>, merely, of spiritual worth. But little by little, radiation
+and mentality failed to be distinguished, and radiative organization
+was actually mistaken for spiritual worth.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In this obsession the Martians resembled somewhat the First
+Men during their degenerate phase of servitude to the idea of
+movement; but with a difference. For the Martian intelligence
+was still active, though its products were severely censored in the
+name of the ‘spirit of the race’. Every Martian was a case of dual
+personality. Not merely was he sometimes a private consciousness,
+sometimes the consciousness of the race, but further, even
+as a private individual he was in a manner divided against himself.
+Though his practical allegiance to the super-individual was
+absolute, so that he condemned or ignored all thoughts and
+impulses that could not be assimilated to the public consciousness,
+he did in fact have such thoughts and impulses, as it were
+in the deepest recesses of his being. He very seldom noticed that
+he was having them, and whenever he did notice it, he was shocked
+and terrified; yet he did have them. They constituted an intermittent,
+sometimes almost a continuous, critical commentary on
+all his more reputable experience.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This was the great tragedy of the spirit on Mars. The Martians
+were in many ways extremely well equipped for mental progress
+and for true spiritual adventure, but through a trick of fortune
+which had persuaded them to prize above all else unity and uniformity,
+they were driven to thwart their own struggling spirits
+at every turn.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Far from being superior to the private mind, the public mind
+which obsessed every Martian was in many ways actually inferior.
+It had come into dominance in a crisis which demanded severe
+military coordination; and though, since that remote age, it had
+made great intellectual progress, it remained at heart a military
+mind. Its disposition was something between that of a field-marshal
+and the God of the ancient Hebrews. A certain English
+philosopher once described and praised the fictitious corporate
+personality of the state, and named it ‘Leviathan’. The Martian
+super-individual was Leviathan endowed with consciousness. In
+this consciousness there was nothing but what was easily assimilated
+and in accord with tradition. Thus the public mind was always
+intellectually and culturally behind the times. Only in respect of
+practical social organization did it keep abreast of its own
+individuals. Intellectual progress had always been initiated by
+private individuals, and had only penetrated the public mind
+when the mass of individuals had been privately infected by intercourse
+with the pioneers. The public consciousness itself initiated
+progress only in the sphere of social, military, and economic
+organization.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The novel circumstances which were encountered on the earth
+put the mentality of the Martians to a supreme test. For the
+unique enterprise of tackling a new world demanded the extremes
+of both public and private activity, and so led to agonizing conflicts
+within each private mind. For, while the undertaking was
+essentially social and even military, and necessitated very strict
+coordination and unity of action, the extreme novelty of the new
+environment demanded all the resources of the untrammelled
+private consciousness. Moreover the Martians encountered much
+on the earth which made nonsense of their fundamental assumptions.
+And in their brightest moment of private consciousness
+they sometimes recognized this fact.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>IX</span> <span class='it'>Earth and Mars</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch9-1'>1. THE SECOND MEN AT BAY</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">Such</span> were the beings that invaded the earth when the Second
+Men were gathering their strength for a great venture in artificial
+evolution. The motives of the invasion were both economic and
+religious. The Martians sought water and vegetable matter; but
+they came also in a crusading spirit, to ‘liberate’ the terrestrial
+diamonds.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Conditions on the earth were very unfavourable to the invaders.
+Excessive gravitation troubled them less than might have been
+expected. Only in their most concentrated form did they find it
+oppressive. More harmful was the density of the terrestrial
+atmosphere, which constricted the tenuous animate cloudlets very
+painfully, hindering their vital processes, and deadening all their
+movements. In their native atmosphere they swam hither and
+thither with ease and considerable speed; but the treacly air of the
+earth hampered them as a bird’s wings are hampered under
+water. Moreover, owing to their extreme buoyancy as individual
+cloudlets, they were scarcely able to dive down so far as the
+mountain-tops. Excessive oxygen was also a source of distress; it
+tended to put them into a violent fever, which they had only been
+able to guard against very imperfectly. Even more damaging was
+the excessive moisture of the atmosphere, both through its solvent
+effect upon certain factors in the subvital units, and because heavy
+rain interfered with the physiological processes of the cloudlets
+and washed many of their materials to the ground.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The invaders had also to cope with the tissue of ‘radio’ messages
+that constantly enveloped the planet, and tended to interfere
+with their own organic systems of radiation. They were prepared
+for this to some extent; but ‘beam wireless’ at close range surprised,
+bewildered, tortured, and finally routed them; so that
+they fled back to Mars, leaving many of their number disintegrated
+in the terrestrial air.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the pioneering army (or individual, for throughout the
+adventure it maintained unity of consciousness) had much to
+report at home. As was expected, there was rich vegetation, and
+water was even too abundant. There were solid animals, of the
+type of the prehistoric Martian fauna, but mostly two-legged and
+erect. Experiment had shown that these creatures died when they
+were pulled to pieces, and that though the sun’s rays affected
+them by setting up chemical action in their visual organs, they
+had no really direct sensitivity to radiation. Obviously, therefore,
+they must be unconscious. On the other hand, the terrestrial
+atmosphere was permanently alive with radiation of a violent and
+incoherent type. It was still uncertain whether these crude ethereal
+agitations were natural phenomena, mere careless offshoots of
+the cosmic mind, or whether they were emitted by a terrestrial
+organism. There was reason to suppose this last to be the case,
+and that the solid organisms were used by some hidden terrestrial
+intelligence as instruments; for there were buildings, and many of
+the bipeds were found within the buildings. Moreover, the sudden
+violent concentration of beam radiation upon the Martian cloud
+suggested purposeful and hostile behaviour. Punitive action had
+therefore been taken, and many buildings and bipeds had been
+destroyed. The physical basis of such a terrestrial intelligence was
+still to be discovered. It was certainly not in the terrestrial clouds,
+for these had turned out to be insensitive to radiation. Anyhow,
+it was obviously an intelligence of very low order, for its radiation
+was scarcely at all systematic, and was indeed excessively crude.
+One or two unfortunate diamonds had been found in a building.
+There was no sign that they were properly venerated.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Terrestrials, on their side, were left in complete bewilderment
+by the extraordinary events of that day. Some had jokingly
+suggested that since the strange substance had behaved in a manner
+obviously vindictive, it must have been alive and conscious;
+but no one took the suggestion seriously. Clearly, however, the
+thing had been dissipated by beam radiation. That at least was an
+important piece of practical knowledge. But theoretical knowledge
+about the real nature of the clouds, and their place in the
+order of the universe, was for the present wholly lacking. To a
+race of strong cognitive interest and splendid scientific achievement,
+this ignorance was violently disturbing. It seemed to shake
+the foundations of the great structure of knowledge. Many
+frankly hoped, in spite of the loss of life in the first invasion, that
+there would soon be another opportunity for studying these
+amazing objects, which were not quite gaseous and not quite
+solid, not (apparently) organic, yet capable of behaving in a
+manner suggestive of life. An opportunity was soon afforded.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Some years after the first invasion, the Martians appeared
+again, and in far greater force. This time, moreover, they were
+almost immune from man’s offensive radiation. Operating simultaneously
+from all the alpine regions of the earth, they began to
+dry up the great rivers at their sources; and, venturing further
+afield, they spread over jungle and agricultural land, and stripped
+off every leaf. Valley after valley was devastated as though by
+endless swarms of locusts, so that in whole countries there was
+not a green blade left. The booty was carried off to Mars. Myriads
+of the subvital units, specialized for transport of water and food
+materials, were loaded each with a few molecules of the treasure,
+and dispatched to the home planet. The traffic continued indefinitely.
+Meanwhile the main body of the Martians proceeded
+to explore and loot. They were irresistible. For the absorption of
+water and leafage, they spread over the countryside as an impalpable
+mist which man had no means to dispel. For the destruction
+of civilization, they became armies of gigantic cloud-jellies, far
+bigger than the brute which had formed itself during the earlier
+invasion. Cities were knocked down and flattened, human
+beings masticated into pulp. Man tried weapon after weapon in
+vain.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Presently the Martians discovered the sources of terrestrial
+radiation in the innumerable wireless transmitting stations. Here
+at last was the physical basis of the terrestrial intelligence! But
+what a lowly creature! What a caricature of life! Obviously in
+respect of complexity and delicacy of organization these wretched
+immobile systems of glass, metal, and vegetable compounds were
+not to be compared with the Martian cloud. Their only feat
+seemed to be that they had managed to get control of the unconscious
+bipeds who tended them.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the course of their explorations the Martians also discovered
+a few more diamonds. The second human species had outgrown
+the barbaric lust for jewellery; but they recognized the beauty of
+gems and precious metals, and used them as badges of office.
+Unfortunately, the Martians, in sacking a town, came upon a
+woman who was wearing a large diamond between her breasts;
+for she was mayor of the town, and in charge of the evacuation.
+That the sacred stone should be used thus, apparently for the mere
+identification of cattle, shocked the invaders even more than the
+discovery of fragments of diamonds in certain cutting-instruments.
+The war now began to be waged with all the heroism and
+brutality of a crusade. Long after a rich booty of water and
+vegetable matter had been secured, long after the Terrestrials had
+developed an effective means of attack, and were slaughtering the
+Martian clouds with high-tension electricity in the form of artificial
+lightning flashes, the misguided fanatics stayed on to rescue
+the diamonds and carry them away to the mountain-tops, where,
+years afterwards, climbers discovered them, arranged along the
+rock-edges in glittering files, like sea-bird’s eggs. Thither the
+dying remnant of the Martian host had transported them with its
+last strength, scorning to save itself before the diamonds were
+borne into the pure mountain air, to be lodged with dignity.
+When the Second Men learned of this great hoard of diamonds,
+they began to be seriously persuaded that they had been dealing,
+not with a freak of physical nature, nor yet (as some said) with
+swarms of bacteria, but with organisms of a higher order. For how
+could the jewels have been singled out, freed from their metallic
+settings, and so carefully regimented on the rocks, save by conscious
+purpose? The murderous clouds must have had at least the
+pilfering mentality of jackdaws, since evidently they had been
+fascinated by the treasure. But the very action which revealed
+their consciousness suggested also that they were no more intelligent
+than the merely instinctive animals. There was no opportunity
+of correcting this error, since all the clouds had been destroyed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The struggle had lasted only a few months. Its material effects
+on Man were serious but not insurmountable. Its immediate
+psychological effect was invigorating. The Second Men had long
+been accustomed to a security and prosperity that were almost
+utopian. Suddenly they were overwhelmed by a calamity which
+was quite unintelligible in terms of their own systematic knowledge.
+Their predecessors, in such a situation, would have behaved
+with their own characteristic vacillation between the human and
+the subhuman. They would have contracted a fever of romantic
+loyalty, and have performed many random acts of secretly self-regarding
+self-sacrifice. They would have sought profit out of the
+public disaster, and howled at all who were more fortunate than
+themselves. They would have cursed their gods, and looked for
+more useful ones. But also, in an incoherent manner, they would
+sometimes have behaved reasonably, and would even have risen
+now and again to the standards of the Second Men. Wholly unused
+to large-scale human bloodshed, these more developed
+beings suffered an agony of pity for their mangled fellows. But
+they said nothing about their pity, and scarcely noticed their own
+generous grief; for they were busy with the work of rescue.
+Suddenly confronted with the need of extreme loyalty and courage,
+they exulted in complying, and experienced that added keenness
+of spirit which comes when danger is well faced. But it did
+not occur to them that they were bearing themselves heroically;
+for they thought they were merely behaving reasonably, showing
+commonsense. And if any one failed in a tight place, they did
+not call him coward, but gave him a drug to clear his head; or, if
+that failed, they put him under a doctor. No doubt, among the
+First Men such a policy would not have been justified, for these
+bewildered beings had not the clear and commanding vision
+which kept all sane members of the second species constant in
+loyalty.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The immediate psychological effect of the disaster was that it
+afforded this very noble race healthful exercise for its great
+reserves of loyalty and heroism. Quite apart from this immediate
+invigoration, however, the first agony, and those many others
+which were to follow, influenced the Second Men for good and ill
+in a train of effects which may be called spiritual. They had long
+known very well that the universe was one in which there could
+be not only private but also great public tragedies; and their
+philosophy did not seek to conceal this fact. Private tragedy they
+were able to face with a bland fortitude, and even an ecstasy of
+acceptance, such as the earlier species had but rarely attained.
+Public tragedy, even world-tragedy, they declared should be faced
+in the same spirit. But to know world-tragedy in the abstract, is
+very different from the direct acquaintance with it. And now the
+Second Men, even while they held their attention earnestly fixed
+upon the practical work of defence, were determined to absorb
+this tragedy into the very depths of their being, to scrutinize it
+fearlessly, savour it, digest it, so that its fierce potency should
+henceforth be added to them. Therefore they did not curse their
+gods, nor supplicate them. They said to themselves, ‘Thus, and
+thus, and thus, is the world. Seeing the depth we shall see also
+the height; and we shall praise both.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But their schooling was yet scarcely begun. The Martian invaders
+were all dead, but their subvital units were dispersed over
+the planet as a virulent ultra-microscopic dust. For, though as
+members of the living cloud they could enter the human body
+without doing permanent harm, now that they were freed from
+their functions within the higher organic system, they became a
+predatory virus. Breathed into man’s lungs, they soon adapted
+themselves to the new environment, and threw his tissues into
+disorder. Each cell that they entered overthrew its own constitution,
+like a state which the enemy has successfully infected with
+lethal propaganda through a mere handful of agents. Thus,
+though man was temporarily victor over the Martian super-individual,
+his own vital units were poisoned and destroyed by the
+subvital remains of his dead enemy. A race whose physique had
+been as Utopian as its body politic, was reduced to timid invalidity.
+And it was left in possession of a devastated planet. The loss of
+water proved negligible; but the destruction of vegetation in all
+the war areas produced for a while a world famine such as the
+Second Men had never known. And the material fabric of
+civilization had been so broken that many decades would have to
+be spent in rebuilding it.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the physical damage proved far less serious than the
+physiological. Earnest research discovered, indeed, a means of
+checking the infection; and, after a few years of rigorous purging
+the atmosphere and man’s flesh were clean once more. But the
+generations that had been stricken never recovered; their tissues
+had been too seriously corroded. Little by little, of course, there
+arose a fresh population of undamaged men and women. But it
+was a small population; for the fertility of the stricken had been
+much reduced. Thus the earth was now occupied by a small
+number of healthy persons below middle-age and a very large
+number of ageing invalids. For many years these cripples had
+contrived to carry on the work of the world in spite of their frailty,
+but gradually they began to fail both in endurance and competence.
+For they were rapidly losing their grip on life, and sinking
+into a long-drawn-out senility, from which the Second Men had
+never before suffered; and at the same time the young, forced to
+take up work for which they were not equipped, committed all
+manner of blunders and crudities of which their elders would
+never have been guilty. But such was the general standard of
+mentality in the second human species, that what might have been
+an occasion for recrimination produced an unparalleled example
+of human loyalty at its best. The stricken generations decided
+almost unanimously that whenever an individual was declared by
+his generation to have outlived his competence, he should commit
+suicide. The younger generations, partly through affection, partly
+through dread of their own incompetence, were at first earnestly
+opposed to this policy. ‘Our elders’, one young man said, ‘may
+have declined in vigour, but they are still beloved, and still wise.
+We dare not carry on without them.’ But the elders maintained
+their point. Many members of the rising generation were no
+longer juveniles. And, if the body politic was to survive the
+economic crisis, it must now ruthlessly cut out all its damaged
+tissues. Accordingly the decision was carried out. One by one, as
+occasion demanded, the stricken ‘chose the peace of annihilation,’
+leaving a scanty, inexperienced, but vigorous, population to
+rebuild what had been destroyed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Four centuries passed, and then again the Martian clouds
+appeared in the sky. Once more devastation and slaughter. Once
+more a complete failure of the two mentalities to conceive one
+another. Once more the Martians were destroyed. Once more the
+pulmonary plague, the slow purging, a crippled population, and
+generous suicide.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Again, and again they appeared, at irregular intervals for fifty
+thousand years. On each occasion the Martians came irresistibly
+fortified against whatever weapon humanity had last used against
+them. And so, by degrees, men began to recognize that the
+enemy was no merely instinctive brute, but intelligent. They therefore
+made attempts to get in touch with these alien minds, and
+make overtures for a peaceful settlement. But since obviously the
+negotiations had to be performed by human beings, and since the
+Martians always regarded human beings as the mere cattle of the
+terrestrial intelligence, the envoys were always either ignored or
+destroyed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>During each invasion the Martians contrived to dispatch a
+considerable bulk of water to Mars. And every time, not satisfied
+with this material gain, they stayed too long crusading, until man
+had found a weapon to circumvent their new defences; and then
+they were routed. After each invasion man’s recovery was slower
+and less complete, while Mars, in spite of the loss of a large
+proportion of its population, was in the long run invigorated with
+the extra water.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch9-2'>2. THE RUIN OF TWO WORLDS</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>Rather more than fifty thousand years after their first appearance,
+the Martians secured a permanent footing on the Antarctic tableland
+and overran Australasia and South Africa. For many
+centuries they remained in possession of a large part of the earth’s
+surface, practising a kind of agriculture, studying terrestrial conditions,
+and spending much energy on the ‘liberation’ of diamonds.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>During the considerable period before their settlement their
+mentality had scarcely changed; but actual habitation of the earth
+now began to undermine their self-complacency and their unity.
+It was borne in upon certain exploring Martians that the terrestrial
+bipeds, though insensitive to radiation, were actually the intelligences
+of the planet. At first this fact was studiously shunned, but
+little by little it gripped the attention of all terrestrial Martians. At
+the same time they began to realize that the whole work of
+research into terrestrial conditions, and even the social construction
+of their colony, depended, not on the public mind, but on
+private individuals, acting in their private capacity. The colonial
+super-individual inspired only the diamond crusade, and the
+attempt to extirpate the terrestrial intelligence, or radiation. These
+various novel acts of insight woke the Martian colonists from an
+age-long dream. They saw that their revered super-individual was
+scarcely more than the least common measure of themselves, a
+bundle of atavistic fantasies and cravings, knit into one mind and
+gifted with a certain practical cunning. A rapid and bewildering
+spiritual renascence now came over the whole Martian colony.
+The central doctrine of it was that what was valuable in the Martian
+species was not radiation but mentality. These two utterly
+different things had been confused, and even identified, since the
+dawn of Martian civilization. At last they were clearly distinguished.
+A fumbling but sincere study of mind now began; and
+distinction was even made between the humbler and loftier
+mental activities.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There is no telling whither this renascence might have led, had
+it run its course. Possibly in time the Martians might have recognized
+worth even in minds other than Martian minds. But such a
+leap was at first far beyond them. Though they now understood
+that human animals were conscious and intelligent, they regarded
+them with no sympathy, rather indeed, with increased hostility.
+They still rendered allegiance to the Martian race, or brotherhood,
+just because it was in a sense one flesh, and, indeed, one mind. For
+they were concerned not to abolish but to recreate the public
+mind of the colony, and even that of Mars itself.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the colonial public mind still largely dominated them in
+their more somnolent periods, and actually sent some of those
+who, in their private phases, were revolutionaries across to Mars
+for help against the revolutionary movement. The home planet
+was quite untouched by the new ideas. Its citizens cooperated
+whole-heartedly in an attempt to bring the colonists to their
+senses. But in vain. The colonial public mind itself changed its
+character as the centuries passed, until it became seriously
+alienated from Martian orthodoxy. Presently, indeed, it began
+to undergo a very strange and thorough metamorphosis, from
+which, conceivably, it might have emerged as the noblest inhabitant
+of the solar system. Little by little it fell into a kind of hypnotic
+trance. That is to say, it ceased to possess the attention of its
+private members, yet remained as a unity of their subconscious,
+or unnoticed mentality. Radiational unity of the colony was
+maintained, but only in this subconscious manner; and it was at
+that depth that the great metamorphosis began to take place under
+the fertilizing influence of the new ideas; which, so to speak, were
+generated in the tempest of the fully conscious mental revolution,
+and kept on spreading down into the oceanic depth of the subconsciousness.
+Such a condition was likely to produce in time the
+emergence of a qualitatively new and finer mentality, and to
+waken at last into a fully conscious super-individual of higher
+order than its own members. But meanwhile this trance of the
+public consciousness incapacitated the colony for that prompt
+and coordinated action which had been the most successful
+faculty of Martian life. The public mind of the home planet easily
+destroyed its disorderly offspring, and set about re-colonizing the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Several times during the next three hundred thousand years
+this process repeated itself. The changeless and terribly efficient
+super-individual of Mars extirpated its own offspring on the
+earth, before it could emerge from the chrysalis. And the tragedy
+might have been repeated indefinitely, but for certain changes
+that took place in humanity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The first few centuries after the foundation of the Martian
+colony had been spent in ceaseless war. But at last, with terribly
+reduced resources, the Second Men had reconciled themselves to
+the fact that they must live in the same world with their mysterious
+enemy. Moreover, constant observation of the Martians began
+to restore somewhat man’s shattered self-confidence. For during
+the fifty thousand years before the Martian colony was founded
+his opinion of himself had been undermined. He had formerly
+been used to regarding himself as the sun’s ablest child. Then
+suddenly a stupendous new phenomenon had defeated his intelligence.
+Slowly he had learned that he was at grips with a determined
+and versatile rival, and that this rival hailed from a despised
+planet. Slowly he had been forced to suspect that he himself was
+outclassed, outshone, by a race whose very physique was incomprehensible
+to man. But after the Martians had established a
+permanent colony, human scientists began to discover the real
+physiological nature of the Martian organism, and were comforted
+to find that it did not make nonsense of human science. Man
+also learned that the Martians, though very able in certain spheres,
+were not really of a high mental type. These discoveries restored
+human self-confidence. Man settled down to make the best of the
+situation. Impassable barriers of high-power electric current were
+devised to keep the Martians out of human territory, and men
+began patiently to rebuild their ruined homes as best they could.
+At first there was little respite from the crusading zeal of the
+Martians, but in the second millennium this began to abate, and
+the two races left one another alone, save for occasional revivals
+of Martian fervour. Human civilization was at last reconstructed
+and consolidated, though upon a modest scale. Once more,
+though interrupted now and again by decades of agony, human
+beings lived in peace and relative prosperity. Life was somewhat
+harder than formerly, and the physique of the race was definitely
+less reliable than of old; but men and women still enjoyed conditions
+which most nations of the earlier species would have
+envied. The age of ceaseless personal sacrifice in service of the
+stricken community had ended at last. Once more a wonderful
+diversity of untrammelled personalities was put forth. Once more
+the minds of men and women were devoted without hindrance to
+the joy of skilled work, and all the subtleties of personal intercourse.
+Once more the passionate interest in one’s fellows, which
+had for so long been hushed under the all-dominating public
+calamity, refreshed and enlarged the mind. Once more there was
+music, sweet, and backward-hearkening towards a golden past.
+Once more a wealth of literature, and of the visual arts. Once
+more intellectual exploration into the nature of the physical world
+and the potentiality of mind. And once more the religious experience,
+which had for so long been coarsened and obscured by all
+the violent distractions and inevitable self-deceptions of war,
+seemed to be refining itself under the influence of reawakened
+culture.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In such circumstances the earlier and less sensitive human
+species might well have prospered indefinitely. Not so the Second
+Men. For their very refinement of sensibility made them incapable
+of shunning an ever-present conviction that in spite of all their
+prosperity they were undermined. Though superficially they
+seemed to be making a slow but heroic recovery they were at the
+same time suffering from a still slower and far more profound
+spiritual decline. Generation succeeded generation. Society
+became almost perfected, within its limited territory and its
+limitations of material wealth. The capacities of personality were
+developed with extreme subtlety and richness. At last the race
+proposed to itself once more its ancient project of remaking
+human nature upon a loftier plane. But somehow it had no longer
+the courage and self-respect for such work. And so, though there
+was much talk, nothing was done. Epoch succeeded epoch, and
+everything human remained apparently the same. Like a twig
+that has been broken but not broken off, man settled down to
+retain his life and culture, but could make no progress.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It is almost impossible to describe in a few words the subtle
+malady of the spirit that was undermining the Second Men. To
+say that they were suffering from an inferiority complex, would
+not be wholly false, but it would be a misleading vulgarization of
+the truth. To say that they had lost faith, both in themselves and
+in the universe, would be almost as inadequate. Crudely stated,
+their trouble was that, as a species, they had attempted a certain
+spiritual feat beyond the scope of their still-primitive nature.
+Spiritually they had over-reached themselves, broken every
+muscle (so to speak) and incapacitated themselves for any further
+effort. For they had determined to see their own racial tragedy as
+a thing of beauty, and they had failed. It was the obscure sense of
+this defeat that had poisoned them. For, being in many respects a
+very noble species, they could not simply turn their backs upon
+their failure and pursue the old way of life with the accustomed
+zest and thoroughness.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>During the earliest Martian raids, the spiritual leaders of
+humanity had preached that the disaster must be an occasion for
+a supreme religious experience. While striving mightily to save
+their civilization, men must yet (so it was said) learn not merely to
+endure, but to admire, even the sternest issue. ‘Thus and thus is
+the world. Seeing the depth, we shall see also the height, and
+praise both.’ The whole population had accepted this advice. At
+first they had seemed to succeed. Many noble literary expressions
+were given forth, which seemed to define and elaborate, and even
+actually to create in men’s hearts, this supreme experience. But
+as the centuries passed and the disasters were repeated, men
+began to fear that their forefathers had deceived themselves.
+Those remote generations had earnestly longed to feel the racial
+tragedy as a factor in the cosmic beauty; and at last they had
+persuaded themselves that this experience had actually befallen
+them. But their descendants were slowly coming to suspect that
+no such experience had ever occurred, that it would never occur
+to any man, and that there was in fact no such cosmic beauty to
+be experienced. The First Men would probably, in such a situation,
+have swung violently either into spiritual nihilism, or else into
+some comforting religious myth. At any rate, they were of too
+coarse-grained a nature to be ruined by a trouble so impalpable.
+Not so the Second Men. For they realized all too clearly that they
+were faced with the supreme crux of existence. And so, age after
+age the generations clung desperately to the hope that, if only they
+could endure a little longer, the light would break in on them.
+Even after the Martian colony had been three times established
+and destroyed by the orthodox race in Mars, the supreme preoccupation
+of the human species was with this religious crux. But
+afterwards, and very gradually, they lost heart. For it was borne
+in on them that either they themselves were by nature too obtuse
+to perceive this ultimate excellence of things (an excellence which
+they had strong reason to believe in intellectually, although they
+could not actually experience it), or the human race had utterly
+deceived itself, and the course of cosmic events after all was not
+significant, but a meaningless rigmarole.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was this dilemma that poisoned them. Had they been still
+physically in their prime, they might have found fortitude to
+accept it, and proceed to the patient exfoliation of such very real
+excellences as they were still capable of creating. But they had
+lost the vitality which alone could perform such acts of spiritual
+abnegation. All the wealth of personality, all the intricacies of
+personal relationship, all the complex enterprise of a very great
+community, all art, all intellectual research, had lost their savour.
+It is remarkable that a purely religious disaster should have
+warped even the delight of lovers in one another’s bodies, actually
+taken the flavour out of food, and drawn a veil between the sunbather
+and the sun. But individuals of this species, unlike their
+predecessors, were so closely integrated, that none of their functions
+could remain healthy while the highest was disordered.
+Moreover, the general slight failure of physique, which was the
+legacy of age-long war, had resulted in a recurrence of those
+shattering brain disorders which had dogged the earliest races of
+their species. The very horror of the prospect of racial insanity
+increased their aberration from reasonableness. Little by little,
+shocking perversions of desire began to terrify them. Masochistic
+and sadistic orgies alternated with phases of extravagant and
+ghastly revelry. Acts of treason against the community, hitherto
+almost unknown, at last necessitated a strict police system. Local
+groups organized predatory raids against one another. Nations
+appeared, and all the phobias that make up nationalism.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Martian colonists, when they observed man’s disorganization,
+prepared, at the instigation of the home planet, a very great
+offensive. It so happened that at this time the colony was going
+through its phase of enlightenment, which had always hitherto
+been followed sooner or later by chastisement from Mars. Many
+individuals were at the moment actually toying with the idea of
+seeking harmony with man, rather than war. But the public mind
+of Mars, outraged by this treason, sought to overwhelm it by
+instituting a new crusade. Man’s disunion offered a great
+opportunity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The first attack produced a remarkable change in the human
+race. Their madness seemed suddenly to leave them. Within a few
+weeks the national governments had surrendered their sovereignty
+to a central authority. Disorders, debauchery, perversions, wholly
+ceased. The treachery and self-seeking and corruption, which had
+by now been customary for many centuries, suddenly gave place
+to universal and perfect devotion to the social cause. The species
+was apparently once more in its right mind. Everywhere, in spite
+of the war’s horrors, there was gay brotherliness, combined with a
+heroism, which clothed itself in an odd extravagance of jocularity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The war went ill for man. The general mood changed to cold
+resolution. And still victory was with the Martians. Under the
+influence of the huge fanatical armies which were poured in from
+the home planet, the colonists had shed their tentative pacifism,
+and sought to vindicate their loyalty by ruthlessness. In reply the
+human race deserted its sanity, and succumbed to an uncontrollable
+lust for destruction. It was at this stage that a human bacteriologist
+announced that he had bred a virus of peculiar deadliness
+and transmissibility, with which it would be possible to infect
+the enemy, but at the cost of annihilating also the human race. It
+is significant of the insane condition of the human population at
+this time that, when these facts were announced and broadcast,
+there was no discussion of the desirability of using this weapon. It
+was immediately put in action, the whole human race applauding.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Within a few months the Martian colony had vanished, their
+home planet itself had received the infection, and its population
+was already aware that nothing could save it. Man’s constitution
+was tougher than that of the animate clouds, and he appeared to
+be doomed to a somewhat more lingering death. He made no
+effort to save himself, either from the disease which he himself had
+propagated, or from the pulmonary plague which was caused by
+the disintegrated substance of the dead Martian colony. All the
+public processes of civilization began to fall to pieces; for the
+community was paralysed by disillusion, and by the expectation
+of death. Like a bee-hive that has no queen, the whole population
+of the earth sank into apathy. Men and women stayed in their
+homes, idling, eating whatever food they could procure, sleeping
+far into the mornings, and, when at last they rose, listlessly avoiding
+one another. Only the children could still be gay, and even
+they were oppressed by their elders’ gloom. Meanwhile the disease
+was spreading. Household after household was stricken, and was
+left unaided by its neighbours. But the pain in each individual’s
+flesh was strangely numbed by his more poignant distress in the
+spiritual defeat of the race. For such was the high development of
+this species, that even physical agony could not distract it from
+the racial failure. No one wanted to save himself; and each knew
+that his neighbours desired not his aid. Only the children, when
+the disease crippled them, were plunged into agony and terror.
+Tenderly, yet listlessly, their elders would then give them the last
+sleep. Meanwhile the unburied dead spread corruption among the
+dying. Cities fell still and silent. The corn was not harvested.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch9-3'>3. THE THIRD DARK AGE</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>So contagious and so lethal was the new bacterium, that its
+authors expected the human race to be wiped out as completely as
+the Martian colony. Each dying remnant of humanity, isolated
+from its fellows by the breakdown of communications, imagined
+its own last moments to be the last of man. But by accident, almost
+one might say by miracle, a spark of human life was once
+more preserved, to hand on the sacred fire. A certain stock or
+strain of the race, promiscuously scattered throughout the continents,
+proved less susceptible than the majority. And, as the
+bacterium was less vigorous in a hot climate, a few of these
+favoured individuals, who happened to be in the tropical jungle,
+recovered from the infection. And of these few a minority
+recovered also from the pulmonary plague which, as usual, was
+propagated from the dead Martians.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It might have been expected that from this human germ a new
+civilized community would have soon arisen. With such brilliant
+beings as the Second Men, surely a few generations, or at the most
+a few thousand years, should have sufficed to make up the lost
+ground.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But no. Once more it was in a manner the very excellence of the
+species that prevented its recovery, and flung the spirit of Earth
+into a trance which lasted longer than the whole previous career of
+mammals. Again and again, some thirty million times, the seasons
+were repeated; and throughout this period man remained as fixed
+in bodily and mental character as, formerly, the platypus. Members
+of the earlier human species must find it difficult to understand
+this prolonged impotence of a race far more developed than
+themselves. For here apparently were both the requisites of progressive
+culture, namely a world rich and unpossessed, and a race
+exceptionally able. Yet nothing was done.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When the plagues, and all the immense consequent putrefactions,
+had worked themselves off, the few isolated groups of
+human survivors settled down to an increasingly indolent tropical
+life. The fruits of past learning were not imparted to the young,
+who therefore grew up in extreme ignorance of almost everything
+beyond their immediate experience. At the same time the elder
+generation cowed their juniors with vague suggestions of racial
+defeat and universal futility. This would not have mattered, had
+the young themselves been normal; they would have reacted with
+fervent optimism. But they themselves were now by nature incapable
+of any enthusiasm. For, in a species in which the lower
+functions were so strictly disciplined under the higher, the long-drawn-out
+spiritual disaster had actually begun to take effect
+upon the germ-plasm; so that individuals were doomed before
+birth to lassitude, and to mentality in a minor key. The First Men,
+long ago, had fallen into a kind of racial senility through a combination
+of vulgar errors and indulgences. But the second species,
+like a boy whose mind has been too soon burdened with grave
+experience, lived henceforth in a sleep-walk.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As the generations passed, all the lore of civilization was shed,
+save the routine of tropical agriculture and hunting. Not that
+intelligence itself had waned. Not that the race had sunk into
+mere savagery. Lassitude did not prevent it from readjusting itself
+to suit its new circumstances. These sleep-walkers soon invented
+convenient ways of making, in the home and by hand, much that
+had hitherto been made in factories and by mechanical power.
+Almost without mental effort they designed and fashioned tolerable
+instruments out of wood and flint and bone. But though still
+intelligent, they had become by disposition, supine, indifferent.
+They would exert themselves only under the pressure of urgent
+primitive need. No man seemed capable of putting forth the full
+energy of a man. Even suffering had lost its poignancy. And no
+ends seemed worth pursuing that could not be realized speedily.
+The sting had gone out of experience. The soul was calloused
+against every goad. Men and women worked and played, loved
+and suffered; but always in a kind of rapt absent-mindedness. It
+was as though they were ever trying to remember something
+important which escaped them. The affairs of daily life seemed
+too trivial to be taken seriously. Yet that other, and supremely
+important thing, which alone deserved consideration, was so
+obscure that no one had any idea what it was. Nor indeed was
+anyone aware of this hypnotic subjection, any more than a
+sleeper is aware of being asleep.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The minimum of necessary work was performed, and there
+was even a certain dreamy zest in the performance, but nothing
+which would entail extra toil ever seemed worth while. And so,
+when adjustment to the new circumstances of the world had been
+achieved, complete stagnation set in. Practical intelligence was
+easily able to cope with a slowly changing environment, and even
+with sudden natural upheavals such as floods, earthquakes, and
+disease epidemics. Man remained in a sense master of his world,
+but he had no idea what to do with his mastery. It was everywhere
+assumed that the sane end of living was to spend as many days as
+possible in indolence, lying in the shade. Unfortunately human
+beings had, of course, many needs which were irksome if not
+appeased, and so a good deal of hard work had to be done. Hunger
+and thirst had to be satisfied. Other individuals beside oneself had
+to be cared for, since man was cursed with sympathy and with a
+sentiment for the welfare of his group. The only fully rational
+behaviour, it was thought, would be general suicide, but irrational
+impulses made this impossible. Beatific drugs offered a temporary
+heaven. But, far as the Second Men had fallen, they were still too
+clear-sighted to forget that such beatitude is outweighed by subsequent
+misery.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Century by century, epoch by epoch, man glided on in this
+seemingly precarious, yet actually unshakable equilibrium. Nothing
+that happened to him could disturb his easy dominance
+over the beasts and over physical nature; nothing could shock
+him out of his racial sleep. Long-drawn-out climatic changes made
+desert, jungle, and grass-land fluctuate like the clouds. As the
+years advanced by millions, ordinary geological processes, greatly
+accentuated by the immense strains set up by the Patagonian upheaval,
+remodelled the surface of the planet. Continents were submerged,
+or lifted out of the sea, till presently there was little of the
+old configuration. And along with these geological changes went
+changes in the fauna and flora. The bacterium which had almost
+exterminated man had also wrought havoc amongst other mammals.
+Once more the planet had to be re-stocked, this time from
+the few surviving tropical species. Once more there was a great
+remaking of old types, only less revolutionary than that which
+had followed the Patagonian disaster. And since the human race
+remained minute, through the effects of its spiritual fatigue, other
+species were favoured. Especially the ruminants and the large
+carnivora increased and diversified themselves into many habits
+and forms.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the most remarkable of all the biological trains of events in
+this period was the history of the Martian subvital units that had
+been disseminated by the slaughter of the Martian colony, and
+had then tormented men and animals with pulmonary diseases.
+As the ages passed, certain species of mammals so readjusted
+themselves that the Martian virus became not only harmless but
+necessary to their well-being. A relationship which was originally
+that of parasite and host became in time a true symbiosis, a cooperative
+partnership, in which the terrestrial animals gained
+something of the unique attributes of the vanished Martian
+organisms. The time was to come when Man himself should look
+with envy on these creatures, and finally make use of the Martian
+‘virus’ for his own enrichment.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But meanwhile, and for many million years, almost all kinds of
+life were on the move, save Man. Like a ship-wrecked sailor, he
+lay exhausted and asleep on his raft, long after the storm had
+abated.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But his stagnation was not absolute. Imperceptibly, he was
+drifting on the oceanic currents of life, and in a direction far out
+of his original course. Little by little, his habit was becoming
+simpler, less artificial, more animal. Agriculture faded out, since
+it was no longer necessary in the luxuriant garden where man
+lived. Weapons of defence and of the chase became more precisely
+adapted to their restricted purposes, but at the same time less
+diversified and more stereotyped. Speech almost vanished; for
+there was no novelty left in experience. Familiar facts and familiar
+emotions were conveyed increasingly by gestures which were
+mostly unwitting. Physically, the species had changed little.
+Though the natural period of life was greatly reduced, this was
+due less to physiological change than to a strange and fatal
+increase of absent-mindedness in middle-age. The individual
+gradually ceased to react to his environment; so that even if he
+escaped a violent death, he died of starvation.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Yet in spite of this great change, the species remained essentially
+human. There was no bestialization, such as had formerly produced
+a race of submen. These tranced remnants of the second
+human species were not beasts but innocents, simples, children of
+nature, perfectly adjusted to their simple life. In many ways their
+state was idyllic and enviable. But such was their dimmed
+mentality that they were never clearly aware even of the blessings
+they had, still less, of course, of the loftier experiences which
+had kindled and tortured their ancestors.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>X</span> <span class='it'>The Third Men in the Wilderness</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch10-1'>1. THE THIRD HUMAN SPECIES</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">We</span> have now followed man’s career during some forty million
+years. The whole period to be covered by this chronicle is about
+two thousand million. In this chapter, and the next, therefore, we
+must accomplish a swift flight at great altitude over a tract of time
+more than three times as long as that which we have hitherto
+observed. This great expanse is no desert, but a continent teeming
+with variegated life, and many successive and very diverse civilizations.
+The myriads of human beings who inhabit it far outnumber
+the First and Second Men combined. And the content of each
+one of these lives is a universe, rich and poignant as that of any
+reader of this book.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In spite of the great diversity of this span of man’s history,
+it is a single movement within the whole symphony, just as the
+careers of the First and of the Second Men are each a single
+movement. Not only is it a period dominated by a single natural
+human species and the artificial human species into which the
+natural species at length transformed itself; but, also, in spite of
+innumerable digressions, a single theme, a single mood of the
+human will, informs the whole duration. For now at last man’s
+main energy is devoted to remaking his own physical and mental
+nature. Throughout the rise and fall of many successive cultures
+this purpose is progressively clarifying itself, and expressing itself
+in many tragic and even devastating experiments; until, towards
+the close of this immense period, it seems almost to achieve its end.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When the Second Men had remained in their strange racial
+trance for about thirty million years, the obscure forces that make
+for advancement began to stir in them once more. This reawakening
+was favoured by geological accident. An incursion of the sea
+gradually isolated some of their number in an island continent,
+which was once part of the North Atlantic ocean-bed. The climate
+of this island gradually cooled from sub-tropical to temperate and
+sub-arctic. The vast change of conditions caused in the imprisoned
+race a subtle chemical re-arrangement of the germ-plasm, such
+that there ensued an epidemic of biological variation. Many new
+types appeared, but in the long run one, more vigorous and better
+adapted than the rest, crowded out all competitors and slowly
+consolidated itself as a new species, the Third Men.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/illo192.jpg' alt='' id='illo192' style='width:80%;height:auto;'/>
+</div>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Scarcely more than half the stature of their predecessors, these
+beings were proportionately slight and lithe. Their skin was of a
+sunny brown, covered with a luminous halo of red-gold hairs,
+which on the head became a russet mop. Their golden eyes,
+reminiscent of the snake, were more enigmatic than profound.
+Their faces were compact as cat’s muzzles, their lips full, but subtle
+at the corners. Their ears, objects of personal pride and of sexual
+admiration, were extremely variable both in individuals and
+races. These surprising organs, which would have seemed merely
+ludicrous to the First Men, were expressive both of temperament
+and passing mood. They were immense, delicately involuted, of a
+silken texture, and very mobile. They gave an almost bat-like
+character to the otherwise somewhat feline heads. But the most
+distinctive feature of the Third Men was their great lean hands,
+on which were six versatile fingers, six antennae of living steel.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Unlike their predecessors, the Third Men were short-lived.
+They had a brief childhood and a brief maturity, followed (in the
+natural course) by a decade of senility, and death at about sixty.
+But such was their abhorrence of decrepitude, that they seldom
+allowed themselves to grow old. They preferred to kill themselves
+when their mental and physical agility began to decline. Thus,
+save in exceptional epochs of their history, very few lived to be
+fifty.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But though in some respects the third human species fell short
+of the high standard of its predecessor, especially in certain of the
+finer mental capacities, it was by no means simply degenerate.
+The admirable sensory equipment of the second species was
+retained, and even improved. Vision was no less ample and precise
+and colourful. Touch was far more discriminate, especially in the
+delicately pointed sixth finger-tip. Hearing was so developed that
+a man could run through wooded country blindfold without
+colliding with the trees. Moreover the great range of sounds and
+rhythms had acquired an extremely subtle gamut of emotional
+significance. Music was therefore one of the main preoccupations
+of the civilizations of this species.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Mentally the Third Men were indeed very unlike their predecessors.
+Their intelligence was in some ways no less agile; but it
+was more cunning than intellectual, more practical than theoretical.
+They were interested more in the world of sense-experience
+than in the world of abstract reason, and again far more in living
+things than in the lifeless. They excelled in certain kinds of art, and
+indeed also in some fields of science. But they were led into
+science more through practical, aesthetic, or religious needs than
+through intellectual curiosity. In mathematics, for instance
+(helped greatly by the duo-decimal system, which resulted from
+their having twelve fingers), they became wonderful calculators;
+yet they never had the curiosity to inquire into the essential nature
+of number. Nor, in physics, were they ever led to discover the
+more obscure properties of space. They were, indeed, strangely
+devoid of curiosity. Hence, though sometimes capable of a penetrating
+mystical intuition, they never seriously disciplined themselves
+under philosophy, nor tried to relate their mystical intuitions
+with the rest of their experience.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In their primitive phases the Third Men were keen hunters;
+but also, owing to their strong parental impulses, they were much
+addicted to making pets of captured animals. Throughout their
+career they displayed what earlier races would have called an uncanny
+sympathy with, and understanding of, all kinds of animals
+and plants. This intuitive insight into the nature of living things,
+and this untiring interest in the diversity of vital behaviour, constituted
+the dominating impulse throughout the whole career of
+the third human species. At the outset they excelled not only as
+hunters but as herdsmen and domesticators. By nature they were
+very apt in every kind of manipulation, but especially in the manipulation
+of living things. As a species they were also greatly
+addicted to play of all kinds, but especially to manipulative play,
+and above all to the playful manipulation of organisms. From the
+first they performed great feats of riding on the moose-like deer
+which they had domesticated. They tamed also a certain gregarious
+coursing beast. The pedigree of this great leonine wolf led,
+through the tropical survivors of the Martian plague, back to
+those descendants of the arctic fox which had over-run the world
+after the Patagonian disaster. This animal the Third Men trained
+not only to help them in shepherding and in the chase, but also to
+play intricate hunting games. Between this hound and its master
+or mistress there frequently arose a very special relation, a kind
+of psychical symbiosis, a dumb intuitive mutual insight, a genuine
+love, based on economic cooperation, but strongly toned also, in
+a manner peculiar to the third human species, with religious
+symbolism and frankly sexual intimacy.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As herdsmen and shepherds the Third Men very early practised
+selective breeding; and increasingly they became absorbed in the
+perfecting and enriching of all types of animals and plants. It was
+the boast of every local chieftain not only that the men of his
+tribe were more manly and the women more beautiful than all
+others, but also that the bears in his territory were the noblest and
+most bear-like of all bears, that the birds built more perfect nests
+and were more skilful fliers and singers than birds elsewhere. And
+so on, through all the animal and vegetable races.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This biological control was achieved at first by simple breeding
+experiments, but later and increasingly by crude physiological
+manipulation of the young animal, the foetus and (later, still) the
+germ-plasm. Hence arose a perennial conflict, which often caused
+wars of a truly religious bitterness, between the tender-hearted,
+who shrank from the infliction of pain, and the passionately
+manipulative, who willed to create at whatever cost. This conflict,
+indeed, was waged not only between individuals but within each
+mind; for all were innately hunters and manipulators, but also all
+had intuitive sympathy even with the quarry which they tormented.
+The trouble was increased by a strain of sheer cruelty which
+occurred even in the most tender-hearted. This sadism was at
+bottom an expression of an almost mystical reverence for sensory
+experience. Physical pain, being the most intense of all sensed
+qualities, was apt to be thought the most excellent. It might be
+expected that this would lead rather to self-torture than to cruelty.
+Sometimes it did. But in general those who could not appreciate
+pain in their own flesh were yet able to persuade themselves that
+in inflicting pain on lower animals they were creating vivid psychic
+reality, and therefore high excellence. It was just the intense
+reality of pain, they said, that made it intolerable to men and
+animals. Seen with the detachment of the divine mind, it appeared
+in its true beauty. And even man, they declared, could appreciate
+its excellence when it occurred not in men but in animals.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Though the Third Men lacked interest in systematic thought,
+their minds were often concerned with matters outside the fields
+of private and social economy. They experienced not only aesthetic
+but mystical cravings. And though they were without any
+appreciation of those finer beauties of human personality, which
+their predecessors had admired as the highest attainment of life
+on the planet, the Third Men themselves, in their own way,
+sought to make the best of human nature, and indeed of animal
+nature. Man they regarded in two aspects. In the first place he was
+the noblest of all animals, gifted with unique aptitudes. He was,
+as was sometimes said, God’s chief work of art. But secondly,
+since his special virtues were his insight into the nature of all
+living things and his manipulative capacity, he was himself God’s
+eye and God’s hand. These convictions were expressed over and
+over again in the religions of the Third Men by the image of the
+deity as a composite animal, with wings of the albatross, jaws of
+the great wolf-fox, feet of the deer, and so on. For the human
+element was represented in this deity by the hands, the eyes, and
+the sexual organs of man. And between the divine hands lay the
+world, with all its diverse population. Often the world was represented
+as being the fruit of God’s primitive potency, but also as in
+process of being drastically altered and tortured into perfection
+by the hands.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Most of the cultures of the Third Men were dominated by this
+obscure worship of Life as an all-pervading spirit, expressing itself
+in myriad diverse individuals. And at the same time the intuitive
+loyalty to living things and to a vaguely conceived life-force
+was often complicated by sadism. For in the first place it was
+recognized, of course, that what is valued by higher beings may be
+intolerable to lower; and, as has been said, pain itself was thought
+to be a superior excellence of this kind. And again in a second
+manner sadism expressed itself. The worship of Life, as agent or
+subject, was complemented by worship of environment, as object
+to life’s subjectivity, as that which remains ever foreign to life,
+thwarting its enterprises, torturing it, yet making it possible, and,
+by its very resistance, goading it into nobler expressions. Pain, it
+was said, was the most vivid apprehension of the sacred and
+universal Object.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The thought of the third human species was never systematic.
+But in some such manner as the foregoing it strove to rationalize
+its obscure intuition of the beauty which includes at once Life’s
+victory and defeat.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch10-2'>2. DIGRESSIONS OF THE THIRD MEN</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>Such, in brief, was the physical and mental nature of the third
+human species. In spite of innumerable distractions, the spirit of
+the Third Men kept on returning to follow up the thread of biological
+interest through a thousand variegated cultures. Again and
+again folk after folk would clamber out of savagery and barbarism
+into relative enlightenment; and mostly, though not always, the
+main theme of this enlightenment was some special mood either
+of biological creativeness or of sadism, or of both. To a man born
+into such a society, no dominant characteristic would be apparent.
+He would be impressed rather by the many-sidedness of human
+activities in his time. He would note a wealth of personal intercourse,
+of social organization and industrial invention, of art and
+speculation, all set in that universal matrix, the private struggle to
+preserve or express the self. Yet the historian may often see in a
+society, over and above this multifarious proliferation, some one
+controlling theme.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Again and again, then, at intervals of a few thousand or a few
+hundred thousand years, man’s whim was imposed upon the
+fauna and flora of the earth, and at length directed to the task of
+remaking man himself. Again and again, through a diversity of
+causes, the effort collapsed, and the species sank once more into
+chaos. Sometimes indeed there was an interlude of culture in some
+quite different key. Once, early in the history of the species, and
+before its nature had become fixed, there occurred a non-industrial
+civilization of a genuinely intellectual kind, almost like that of
+Greece. Sometimes, but not often, the third human species fooled
+itself into an extravagantly industrial world civilization, in the
+manner of the Americanized First Men. In general its interest was
+too much concerned with other matters to become entangled with
+mechanical devices. But on three occasions at least it succumbed.
+Of these civilizations one derived its main power from wind and
+falling water, one from the tides, one from the earth’s internal
+heat. The first, saved from the worst evils of industrialism by the
+limitations of its power, lasted some hundred thousand years in
+barren equilibrium, until it was destroyed by an obscure bacterium.
+The second was fortunately brief; but its fifty thousand years
+of unbridled waste of tidal energy was enough to interfere
+appreciably with the orbit of the moon. This world-order collapsed
+at length in a series of industrial wars. The third endured a
+quarter of a million years as a brilliantly sane and efficient world
+organization. Throughout most of its existence there was almost
+complete social harmony with scarcely as much internal strife as
+occurs in a bee-hive. But once more civilization came at length to
+grief, this time through the misguided effort to breed special
+human types for specialized industrial pursuits.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Industrialism, however, was never more than a digression, a
+lengthy and disastrous irrelevance in the life of this species.
+There were other digressions. There were for instance cultures,
+enduring sometimes for several thousand years, which were predominantly
+musical. This could never have occurred among the
+First Men; but, as was said, the third species was peculiarly
+developed in hearing, and in emotional sensitivity to sound and
+rhythm. Consequently, just as the First Men at their height were
+led into the wilderness by an irrational obsession with mechanical
+contrivances, just as the Third Men themselves were many times
+undone by their own interest in biological control, so, now and
+again, it was their musical gift that hypnotized them.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of these predominantly musical cultures the most remarkable
+was one in which music and religion combined to form a tyranny
+no less rigid than that of religion and science in the remote past. It
+is worth while to dwell on one of these episodes for a few moments.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Third Men were very subject to a craving for personal
+immortality. Their lives were brief, their love of life intense. It
+seemed to them a tragic flaw in the nature of existence that the
+melody of the individual life must either fade into a dreary
+senility or be cut short, never to be repeated. Now, music had a
+special significance for this race. So intense was their experience
+of it, that they were ready to regard it as in some manner the
+underlying reality of all things. In leisure hours, snatched from a
+toilful and often tragic life, groups of peasants would seek to
+conjure about them by song or pipe or viol a universe more beautiful,
+more real, than that of daily labour. Concentrating their
+sensitive hearing upon the inexhaustible diversity of tone and
+rhythm, they would seem to themselves to be possessed by the
+living presence of music, and to be transported thereby into a
+lovelier world. No wonder they believed that every melody was a
+spirit, leading a life of its own within the universe of music. No
+wonder they imagined that a symphony or chorus was itself a
+single spirit inhering in all its members. No wonder it seemed to
+them that when men and women listened to great music, the
+barriers of their individuality were broken down, so that they
+became one soul through communion with the music.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The prophet was born in a highland village where the native
+faith in music was intense, though quite unformulated. In time he
+learnt to raise his peasant audiences to the most extravagant joy
+and the most delicious sorrow. Then at last he began to think, and
+to expound his thoughts with the authority of a great bard. Easily
+he persuaded men that music was the reality, and all else illusion,
+that the living spirit of the universe was pure music, and that each
+individual animal and man, though he had a body that must die
+and vanish for ever, had also a soul that was music and eternal.
+A melody, he said, is the most fleeting of things. It happens and
+ceases. The great silence devours it, and seemingly annihilates it.
+Passage is essential to its being. Yet though for a melody, to halt
+is to die a violent death, all music, the prophet affirmed, has also
+eternal life. After silence it may occur again, with all its freshness
+and aliveness. Time cannot age it; for its home is in a country
+outside time. And that country, thus the young musician earnestly
+preached, is also the homeland of every man and woman, nay
+of every living thing that has any gift of music. Those who seek
+immortality, must strive to waken their tranced souls into melody
+and harmony. And according to their degree of musical originality
+and proficiency will be their standing in the eternal life.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The doctrine, and the impassioned melodies of the prophet,
+spread like fire. Instrumental and vocal music sounded from every
+pasture and corn plot. The government tried to suppress it,
+partly because it was thought to interfere with agricultural
+productivity, largely because its passionate significance reverberated
+even in the hearts of courtly ladies, and threatened to
+undo the refinement of centuries. Nay, the social order itself began
+to crumble. For many began openly to declare that what mattered
+was not aristocratic birth, nor even proficiency in the time-honoured
+musical forms (so much prized by the leisured), but the
+gift of spontaneous emotional expression in rhythm and harmony.
+Persecution strengthened the new faith with a glorious company
+of martyrs who, it was affirmed, sang triumphantly even in the
+flames.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>One day the sacred monarch himself, hitherto a prisoner within
+the conventions, declared half sincerely, half by policy, that he
+was converted to his people’s faith. Bureaucracy gave place to an
+enlightened dictatorship, the monarch assumed the title of
+Supreme Melody, and the whole social order was refashioned,
+more to the taste of the peasants. The subtle prince, backed by the
+crusading zeal of his people, and favoured by the rapid spontaneous
+spread of the faith in all lands, conquered the whole world,
+and founded the universal Church of Harmony. The prophet himself,
+meanwhile, dismayed by his own too facile success, had
+retired into the mountains to perfect his art under the influence of
+their great quiet, or the music of wind, thunder, and waterfall.
+Presently, however, the silence of the fells was shattered by the
+blare of military bands and ecclesiastical choirs, which the emperor
+had sent to salute him and conduct him to the metropolis. He
+was secured, though not without a scrimmage, and lodged in the
+High Temple of Music. There he was kept a prisoner, dubbed
+God’s Big Noise, and used by the world-government as an oracle
+needing interpretation. In a few years the official music of the
+temple, and of deputations from all over the world, drove him
+into raving madness; in which state he was the more useful to the
+authorities.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus was founded the Holy Empire of Music, which gave order
+and purpose to the species for a thousand years. The sayings of
+the prophet, interpreted by a series of able rulers, became the
+foundation of a great system of law which gradually supplanted
+all local codes by virtue of its divine authority. Its root was madness;
+but its final expression was intricate commonsense, decorated
+with harmless and precious flowers of folly. Throughout,
+the individual was wisely, but tacitly, regarded as a biological
+organism having definite needs or rights and definite social obligations;
+but the language in which this principle was expressed and
+elaborated was a jargon based on the fiction that every human
+being was a melody, demanding completion within a greater musical
+theme of society.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Toward the close of this millennium of order a schism occurred
+among the devout. A new and fervent sect declared that the true
+spirit of the musical religion had been stifled by ecclesiasticism.
+The founder of the religion had preached salvation by individual
+musical experience, by an intensely emotional communion with
+the Divine Music. But little by little, so it was said, the church had
+lost sight of this central truth, and had substituted a barren interest
+in the objective forms and principles of melody and counterpoint.
+Salvation, in the official view, was not to be had by subjective
+experience, but by keeping the rules of an obscure musical
+technique. And what was this technique? Instead of making the
+social order a practical expression of the divine law of music,
+churchmen and statesmen had misinterpreted these divine laws to
+suit mere social convenience, until the true spirit of music had
+been lost. Meanwhile on the other side a counter-revival took
+place. The self-centred and soul-saving mood of the rebels was
+ridiculed. Men were urged to care rather for the divine and
+exquisitely ordered forms of music itself than for their own
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was amongst the rebel peoples that the biological interest of
+the race, hitherto subordinate, came into its own. Mating, at least
+among the more devout sort of women, began to be influenced by
+the desire to have children who should be of outstanding musical
+brilliance and sensitivity. Biological sciences were rudimentary,
+but the general principle of selective breeding was known. Within
+a century this policy of breeding for music, or breeding ‘soul’,
+developed from a private idiosyncrasy into a racial obsession. It
+was so far successful that after a while a new type became common,
+and thrived upon the approbation and devotion of ordinary
+persons. These new beings were indeed extravagantly sensitive to
+music, so much so that the song of a skylark caused them
+serious torture by its banality, and in response to any human
+music of the kind which they approved, they invariably fell into
+a trance. Under the stimulus of music which was not to their taste
+they were apt to run amok and murder the performers.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We need not pause to trace the stages by which an infatuated
+race gradually submitted itself to the whims of these creatures of
+human folly, until for a brief period they became the tyrannical
+ruling caste of a musical theocracy. Nor need we observe how they
+reduced society to chaos; and how at length an age of confusion
+and murder brought mankind once more to its senses, but also
+into so bitter a disillusionment that the effort to re-orientate the
+whole direction of its endeavour lacked determination. Civilization
+fell to pieces and was not rebuilt till after the race had lain
+fallow for some thousands of years.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>So ended perhaps the most pathetic of racial delusions. Born of
+a genuine and potent aesthetic experience, it retained a certain
+crazy nobility even to the end.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Many scores of other cultures occurred, separated often by long
+ages of barbarism, but they must be ignored in this brief chronicle.
+The great majority of them were mainly biological in spirit. Thus
+one was dominated by an obsessive interest in flight, and therefore
+in birds, another by the concept of metabolism, several by sexual
+creativity, and very many by some general but mostly unenlightened
+policy of eugenics. All these we must pass over, so that we
+may descend to watch the greatest of all the races of the third
+species torture itself into a new form.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch10-3'>3. THE VITAL ART</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>It was after an unusually long period of eclipse that the spirit of
+the third human species attained its greatest brilliance. We need
+not watch the stages by which this enlightenment was reached.
+Suffice it that the upshot was a very remarkable civilization, if
+such a word can be applied to an order in which agglomerations
+of architecture were unknown, clothing was used only when
+needed for warmth, and such industrial development as occurred
+was wholly subordinated to other activities.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Early in the history of this culture the requirements of hunting
+and agriculture, and the spontaneous impulse to manipulate live
+things, gave rise to a primitive but serviceable system of biological
+knowledge. Not until the culture had unified the whole planet, did
+biology itself give rise to chemistry and physics. At the same time
+a well-controlled industrialism, based first on wind and water, and
+later on subterranean heat, afforded the race all the material
+luxuries it desired, and much leisure from the business of keeping
+itself in existence. Had there not already existed a more powerful
+and all-dominating interest, industrialism itself would probably
+have hypnotized the race, as it had so many others. But in this
+race the interest in live things, which characterized the whole
+species, was dominant before industrialism began. Egotism
+among the Third Men could not be satisfied by the exercise of
+economic power, nor by the mere ostentation of wealth. Not that
+the race was immune from egotism. On the contrary, it had lost
+almost all that spontaneous altruism which had distinguished the
+Second Men. But in most periods the only kind of personal ostentation
+which appealed to the Third Men was directly connected with
+the primitive interest in ‘pecunia’. To own many and noble beasts,
+whether they were economically productive or not, was ever the
+mark of respectability. The vulgar, indeed, were content with mere
+numbers, or at most with the convential virtues of the recognized
+breeds. But the more refined pursued, and flaunted, certain very
+exact principles of aesthetic excellence in their control of living
+forms.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In fact, as the race gained biological insight, it developed a very
+remarkable new art, which we may call ‘plastic vital art’. This was
+to become the chief vehicle of expression of the new culture. It
+was practised universally, and with religious fervour; for it was
+very closely connected with the belief in a life-god. The canons of
+this art, and the precepts of this religion, fluctuated from age to
+age, but in general certain basic principles were accepted. Or
+rather, though there was almost always universal agreement that
+the practice of vital art was the supreme goal, and should not be
+treated in a utilitarian spirit, there were two conflicting sets of
+principles which were favoured by opposed sects. One mode of
+vital art sought to evoke the full potentiality of each natural type
+as a harmonious and perfected nature, or to produce new types
+equally harmonious. The other prided itself on producing monsters.
+Sometimes a single capacity was developed at the expense of the
+harmony and welfare of the organism as a whole. Thus a bird was
+produced which could fly faster than any other bird; but it could
+neither reproduce nor even feed, and therefore had to be maintained
+artificially. Sometimes, on the other hand, certain characters
+incompatible in nature were forced upon a single organism,
+and maintained in precarious and torturing equilibrium. To give
+examples, one much-talked-of feat was the production of a carnivorous
+mammal in which the fore-limbs had assumed the structure
+of a bird’s wings, complete with feathers. This creature could
+not fly, since its body was wrongly proportioned. Its only mode of
+locomotion was a staggering run with outstretched wings. Other
+examples of monstrosity were an eagle with twin heads, and a
+deer in which, with incredible ingenuity, the artists had induced
+the tail to develop as a head, with brain, sense-organs, and jaws.
+In this monstrous art, interest in living things was infected with
+sadism through the preoccupation with fate, especially internal
+fate, as the divinity that shapes our ends. In its more vulgar forms,
+of course, it was a crude expression of egotistical lust in power.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This <span class='it'>motif</span> of the monstrous and the self-discrepant was less
+prominent than the other, the <span class='it'>motif</span> of harmonious perfection;
+but at all times it was apt to exercise at least a subconscious
+influence. The supreme aim of the dominant, perfection-seeking
+movement was to embellish the planet with a very diverse fauna
+and flora, with the human race as at once the crown and the
+instrument of terrestrial life. Each species, and each variety, was
+to have its place and fulfil its part in the great cycle of living types.
+Each was to be internally perfected to its function. It must have
+no harmful relics of a past manner of life; and its capacities must
+be in true accord with one another. But, to repeat, the supreme
+aim was not concerned merely with individual types, but with the
+whole vital economy of the planet. Thus, though there were to be
+types of every order from the most humble bacterium up to man,
+it was contrary to the canon of orthodox sacred art that any type
+should thrive by the destruction of a type higher than itself. In the
+sadistic mode of the art, however, a peculiarly exquisite tragic
+beauty was said to inhere in situations in which a lowly type
+exterminated a higher. There were occasions in the history of the
+race when the two sects indulged in bloody conflict because the
+sadists kept devising parasites to undermine the noble products of
+the orthodox.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of those who practised vital art, and all did so to some extent, a
+few, though they deliberately rejected the orthodox principles,
+gained notoriety and even fame by their grotesques; while others,
+less fortunate, were ready to accept ostracism and even martyrdom,
+declaring that what they had produced was a significant
+symbol of the universal tragedy of vital nature. The great majority,
+however, accepted the sacred canon. They had therefore to
+choose one or other of certain recognized modes of expression.
+For instance, they might seek to enhance some extant type of
+organism, both by perfecting its capacities and by eliminating
+from it all that was harmful or useless. Or else, a more original
+and precarious work, they might set about creating a new type to
+fill a niche in the world, which had not yet been occupied. For this
+end they would select a suitable organism, and seek to remake it
+upon a new plan, striving to produce a creature of perfectly harmonious
+nature precisely adapted to the new way of life. In this
+kind of work sundry strict aesthetic principles must be observed.
+Thus it was considered bad art to reduce a higher type to a lower,
+or in any manner to waste the capacities of a type. And further,
+since the true end of art was not the production of individual
+types, but the production of a world-wide and perfectly systematic
+fauna and flora, it was inadmissible to harm even accidentally any
+type higher than that which it was intended to produce. For the
+practice of orthodox vital art was regarded as a cooperative enterprise.
+The ultimate artist, under God, was mankind as a whole;
+the ultimate work of art must be an ever more subtle garment of
+living forms for the adornment of the planet, and the delight of
+the supreme Artist, in relation to whom man was both creature
+and instrument.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Little was achieved, of course, until the applied biological
+sciences had advanced far beyond the high-water mark attained
+long ago during the career of the Second Men. Much more was
+needed than the rule-of-thumb principles of earlier breeders. It
+took this brightest of all the races of the third species many
+thousands of years of research to discover the more delicate
+principles of heredity, and to devise a technique by which the
+actual hereditary factors in the germ could be manipulated. It was
+this increasing penetration of biology itself that opened up the
+deeper regions of chemistry and physics. And owing to this
+historical sequence the latter sciences were conceived in a biological
+manner, with the electron as the basic organism, and the
+cosmos as an organic whole.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Imagine, then, a planet organized almost as a vast system of
+botanical and zoological gardens, or wild parks, interspersed with
+agriculture and industry. In every great centre of communications
+occurred annual and monthly shows. The latest creations were put
+through their paces, judged by the high priests of vital art,
+awarded distinctions, and consecrated with religious ceremony.
+At these shows some of the exhibits would be utilitarian, others
+purely aesthetic. There might be improved grains, vegetables,
+cattle, some exceptionally intelligent or sturdy variety of herdsman’s
+dog, or a new micro-organism with some special function
+in agriculture or in human digestion. But also there would be the
+latest achievements in pure vital art. Great sleek-limbed, hornless,
+racing deer, birds or mammals adapted to some hitherto unfulfilled
+role, bears intended to outclass all existing varieties in the
+struggle for existence, ants with specialized organs and instincts,
+improvements in the relations of parasite and host, so as to make
+a true symbiosis in which the host profited by the parasite. And so
+on. And everywhere there would be the little unclad ruddy faun-like
+beings who had created these marvels. Shy forest-dwelling
+folk of Gurkha physique would stand beside their antelopes,
+vultures, or new great cat-like prowlers. A grave young woman
+might cause a stir by entering the grounds followed by several
+gigantic bears. Crowds would perhaps press round to examine the
+creatures’ teeth or limbs, and she might scold the meddlers away
+from her patient flock. For the normal relation between man and
+beast at this time was one of perfect amity, rising, sometimes, in
+the case of domesticated animals, to an exquisite, almost painful,
+mutual adoration. Even the wild beasts never troubled to avoid
+man, still less to attack him, save in the special circumstances of
+the hunt and the sacred gladiatorial show.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>These last need special notice. The powers of combat in beasts
+were admired no less than other powers. Men and women alike
+experienced a savage joy, almost an ecstasy, in the spectacle of
+mortal combat. Consequently there were formal occasions when
+different kinds of beasts were enraged against one another and
+allowed to fight to the death. Not only so, but also there were
+sacred contests between beast and man, between man and man,
+between woman and woman, and, most surprising to the readers
+of this book, between woman and man. For in this species,
+woman in her prime was not physically weaker than her partner.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch10-4'>4. CONFLICTING POLICIES</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>Almost from the first, vital art had been applied to some extent
+to man himself, though with hesitation. Certain great improvements
+had been effected, but only improvements about which
+there could be no two opinions. The many diseases and abnormalities
+left over from past civilizations were patiently abolished,
+and various more fundamental defects were remedied. For
+instance, teeth, digestion, glandular equipment, and the circulatory
+system were greatly improved. Extreme good health and
+considerable physical beauty became universal. Child-bearing was
+made a painless and health-giving process. Senility was postponed.
+The standard of practical intelligence was appreciably raised.
+These reforms were made possible by a vast concerted effort of
+research and experiment supported by the world-community.
+But private enterprise was also effective, for the relation between
+the sexes was much more consciously dominated by the thought
+of offspring than among the First Men. Every individual knew
+the characteristics of his or her hereditary composition, and knew
+what kinds of offspring were to be expected from intercourse of
+different hereditary types. Thus in courtship the young man was
+not content to persuade his beloved that his mind was destined by
+nature to afford her mind joyful completion; he sought also to
+persuade her that with his help she might bear children of a
+peculiar excellence. Consequently there was at all times going on
+a process of selective breeding towards the conventionally ideal
+type. In certain respects the ideal remained constant for many
+thousands of years. It included health, cat-like agility, manipulative
+dexterity, musical sensitivity, refined perception of rightness
+and wrongness in the sphere of vital art, and an intuitive practical
+judgement in all the affairs of life. Longevity, and the abolition of
+senility, were also sought, and partially attained. Waves of fashion
+sometimes directed sexual selection toward prowess in combat, or
+some special type of facial expression or vocal powers. But these
+fleeting whims were negligible. Only the permanently desired
+characters were actually intensified by private selective breeding.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But at length there came a time when more ambitious aims were
+entertained. The world-community was now a highly organized
+theocratic hierarchy, strictly but on the whole benevolently ruled
+by a supreme council of vital priests and biologists. Each individual,
+down to the humblest agricultural worker, had his special
+niche in society, allotted him by the supreme council or its delegates,
+according to his known heredity and the needs of society.
+This system, of course, sometimes led to abuse, but mostly it
+worked without serious friction. Such was the precision of biological
+knowledge that each person’s mental calibre and special
+aptitudes were known beyond dispute, and rebellion against his
+lot in society would have been rebellion against his own heredity.
+This fact was universally known, and accepted without regret.
+A man had enough scope for emulation and triumph among his
+peers, without indulging in vague attempts to transcend his own
+nature, by rising into a superior hierarchical order. This state of
+affairs would have been impossible had there not been universal
+faith in the religion of life and the truth of biological science. Also
+it would have been impossible had not all normal persons been
+active practitioners of the sacred vital art, upon a plane suited to
+their capacity. Every individual adult of the rather scanty world-population
+regarded himself or herself as a creative artist, in
+however humble a sphere. And in general he, or she, was so
+fascinated by the work, that he was well content to leave social
+organization and control to those who were fitted for it. Moreover,
+at the back of every mind was the conception of society itself as
+an organism of specialized members. The strong sentiment for
+organized humanity tended, in this race, to master even its strong
+egotistical impulses, though not without a struggle.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was such a society, almost unbelievable to the First Men, that
+now set about remaking human nature. Unfortunately there were
+conflicting views about the goal. The orthodox desired only to
+continue the work that had for long been on foot; though they proposed
+greater enterprise and coordination. They would perfect
+man’s body, but upon its present plan; they would perfect his
+mind, but without seeking to introduce anything new in essence.
+His physique, percipience, memory, intelligence, and emotional
+nature should be improved almost beyond recognition; but they
+must, it was said, remain essentially what they had always
+been.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A second party, however, finally persuaded orthodox opinion
+to amplify itself in one important respect. As has already been
+said, the Third Men were prone to phases of preoccupation with
+the ancient craving for personal immortality. This craving had
+often been strong among the First Men; and even the Second Men,
+in spite of their great gift of detachment, had sometimes allowed
+their admiration for human personality to persuade them that
+souls must live for ever. The short-lived and untheoretical Third
+Men, with their passion for living things of all kinds, and all the
+diversity of vital behaviour, conceived immortality in a variety of
+manners. In their final culture they imagined that at death all
+living things whom the Life God approved passed into another
+world, much like the familiar world, but happier. There they were
+said to live in the presence of the deity, serving him in untrammelled
+vital creativeness of sundry kinds.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Now it was believed that communication might occur between
+the two worlds, and that the highest type of terrestrial life was
+that which communicated most effectively, and further that the
+time had now arrived for much fuller revelation of the life to
+come. It was therefore proposed to breed highly specialized communicants
+whose office should be to guide this world by means of
+advice from the other. As among the First Men, this communication
+with the unseen world was believed to take place in the
+mediumistic trance. The new enterprise, then, was to breed extremely
+sensitive mediums, and to increase the mediumistic
+powers of the average individual.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There was yet another party, whose aim was very different.
+Man, they said, is a very noble organism. We have dealt with
+other organisms so as to enhance in each its noblest attributes. It
+is time to do the same with man. What is most distinctive in man
+is intelligent manipulation, brain and hand. Now hand is really
+outclassed by modern mechanisms, but brain will never be outclassed.
+Therefore we must breed strictly for brain, for intelligent
+coordination of behaviour. All the organic functions which can be
+performed by machinery, must be relegated to machinery, so that
+the whole vitality of the organism may be devoted to brain-building
+and brain-working. We must produce an organism which
+shall be no mere bundle of relics left over from its primitive
+ancestors and precariously ruled by a glimmer of intelligence. We
+must produce a man who is nothing but man. When we have
+done this we can, if we like, ask him to find out the truth about
+immortality. And also, we can safely surrender to him the control
+of all human affairs.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The governing caste were strongly opposed to this policy. They
+declared that, if it succeeded, it would only produce a most inharmonious
+being whose nature would violate all the principles
+of vital aesthetics. Man, they said, was essentially an animal,
+though uniquely gifted. His whole nature must be developed, not
+one faculty at the expense of others. In arguing thus, they were
+probably influenced partly by the fear of losing their authority;
+but their arguments were cogent, and the majority of the community
+agreed with them. Nevertheless a small group of the
+governors themselves were determined to carry through the enterprise
+in secret.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There was no need of secrecy in breeding communicants. The
+world state encouraged this policy and even set up institutions
+for its pursuit.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>XI</span> <span class='it'>Man Remakes Himself</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch11-1'>1. THE FIRST OF THE GREAT BRAINS</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">Those</span> who sought to produce a super-brain embarked upon a
+great enterprise of research and experiment in a remote corner of
+the planet. It is unnecessary to tell in detail how they fared.
+Working first in secret, they later strove to persuade the world to
+approve of their scheme, but only succeeded in dividing mankind
+into two parties. The body politic was torn asunder. There were
+religious wars. But after a few centuries of intermittent bloodshed
+the two sects, those who sought to produce communicants and
+those who sought the super-brain, settled down in different regions
+to pursue their respective aims unmolested. In time each
+developed into a kind of nation, united by a religious faith and
+crusading spirit. There was little cultural intercourse between the
+two.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Those who desired to produce the super-brain employed four
+methods, namely selective breeding, manipulation of the hereditary
+factors in germ cells (cultivated in the laboratory), manipulation
+of the fertilized ovum (cultivated also in the laboratory),
+and manipulation of the growing body. At first they produced
+innumerable tragic abortions. These we need not observe. But at
+length, several thousand years after the earliest experiments,
+something was produced which seemed to promise success. A
+human ovum had been carefully selected, fertilized in the laboratory,
+and largely reorganized by artificial means. By inhibiting
+the growth of the embryo’s body, and the lower organs of the
+brain itself, and at the same time greatly stimulating the growth of
+the cerebral hemispheres, the dauntless experimenters succeeded
+at last in creating an organism which consisted of a brain twelve
+feet across, and a body most of which was reduced to a mere
+vestige upon the under-surface of the brain. The only parts of the
+body which were allowed to attain the natural size were the arms
+and hands. These sinewy organs of manipulation were induced to
+key themselves at the shoulders into the solid masonry which
+formed the creature’s house. Thus they were able to get a purchase
+for their work. The hands were the normal six-fingered hands of
+the Third Men, very greatly enlarged and improved. The fantastic
+organism was generated and matured in a building designed to
+house both it and the complicated machinery which was necessary
+to keep it alive. A self-regulating pump, electrically driven,
+served it as a heart. A chemical factory poured the necessary
+materials into its blood and removed waste products, thus taking
+the place of digestive organs and the normal battery of glands. Its
+lungs consisted of a great room full of oxidizing tubes, through
+which a constant wind was driven by an electric fan. The same fan
+forced air through the artificial organs of speech. These organs
+were so constructed that the natural nerve-fibres, issuing from the
+speech centres of the brain, could stimulate appropriate electrical
+controls so as to produce sounds identical with those which they
+would have produced from a living throat and mouth. The sensory
+equipment of this trunkless brain was a blend of the natural and
+the artificial. The optic nerves were induced to grow out along
+two flexible probosces, five feet long, each of which bore a huge
+eye at the end. But by a very ingenious alteration of the structure
+of the eye, the natural lens could be moved aside at will, so that
+the retina could be applied to any of a great diversity of optical
+instruments. The ears also could be projected upon stalks, and
+were so arranged that the actual nerve endings could be brought
+into contact with artificial resonators of various kinds, or could
+listen directly to the microscopic rhythms of the most minute
+organisms. Scent and taste were developed as a chemical sense,
+which could distinguish almost all compounds and elements by
+their flavour. Pressure, warmth, and cold were detected only by
+the fingers, but there with great subtlety. Sensory pain was to have
+been eliminated from the organism altogether; but this end was
+not achieved.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The creature was successfully launched upon life, and was
+actually kept alive for four years. But though at first all went well,
+in his second year the unfortunate child, if such he may be called,
+began to suffer severe pain, and to show symptoms of mental
+derangement. In spite of all that his devoted foster-parents could
+do, he gradually sank into insanity and died. He had succumbed
+to his own brain weight and to certain failures in the chemical
+regulation of his blood.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We may overlook the next four hundred years, during which
+sundry vain attempts were made to repeat the great experiment
+more successfully. Let us pass on to the first true individual of the
+fourth human species. He was produced in the same artificial
+manner as his forerunners, and was designed upon the same
+general plan. His mechanical and chemical machinery, however,
+was far more efficient; and his makers expected that, owing to
+careful adjustments of the mechanisms of growth and decay, he
+would prove to be immortal. His general plan, also, was changed
+in one important respect. His makers built a large circular ‘brain
+turret’ which they divided with many partitions, radiating from a
+central space, and covered everywhere with pigeon-holes. By a
+technique which took centuries to develop, they induced the cells
+of the growing embryonic brain to spread outwards, not as normal
+hemispheres of convolutions, but into the pigeon-holes which had
+been prepared for them. Thus the artificial ‘cranium’ had to be a
+roomy turret of ferro-concrete some forty feet in diameter. A
+door and a passage led from the outer world into the centre of the
+turret, and thence other passages radiated between tiers of little
+cupboards. Innumerable tubes of glass, metal, and a kind of
+vulcanite conveyed blood and chemicals over the whole system.
+Electric radiators preserved an even warmth in every cupboard,
+and throughout the innumerable carefully protected channels of
+the nerve fibres. Thermometers, dials, pressure gauges, indicators
+of all sorts, informed the attendants of every physical change in
+this strange half-natural, half-artificial system, this preposterous
+factory of mind.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Eight years after its inception the organism had filled its brain
+room, and attained the mentality of a new-born infant. His advance
+to maturity seemed to his foster-parents dishearteningly slow. Not
+till almost at the end of his fifth decade could he be said to have
+reached the mental standard of a bright adolescent. But there was
+no real reason for disappointment. Within another decade this
+pioneer of the Fourth Men had learned all that the Third Men
+could teach him, and had also seen that a great part of their
+wisdom was folly. In manual dexterity he could already vie with
+the best; but though manipulation afforded him intense delight,
+he used his hands almost wholly in service of his tireless curiosity.
+In fact, it was evident that curiosity was his main characteristic.
+He was a huge bump of curiosity equipped with most cunning
+hands. A department of state had been created to look after his
+nurture and education. An army of learned persons was kept in
+readiness to answer his impatient questions and assist him in his
+own scientific experiments. Now that he had attained maturity
+these unfortunate pundits found themselves hopelessly outclassed,
+and reduced to mere clerks, bottle-washers, and errand-boys.
+Hundreds of his servants were for ever scurrying into every corner
+of the planet to seek information and specimens; and the significance
+of their errands was by now often quite beyond the range of
+their own intelligence. They were careful, however, not to let their
+ignorance appear to the public. On the contrary, they succeeded
+in gaining much prestige from the mere mysteriousness of their
+errands.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The great brain was wholly lacking in all normal instinctive
+responses, save curiosity and constructiveness. Instinctive fear he
+knew not, though of course he was capable of cold caution in any
+circumstances which threatened to damage him and hinder his
+passionate research. Anger he knew not, but only an adamantine
+firmness in the face of opposition. Normal hunger and thirst he
+knew not, but only an experience of faintness when his blood was
+not properly supplied with nutriment. Sex was wholly absent from
+his mentality. Instinctive tenderness and instinctive group-feeling
+were not possible to him, for he was without the bowels of mercy.
+The heroic devotion of his most intimate servants called forth no
+gratitude, but only cold approval.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At first he interested himself not at all in the affairs of the
+society which maintained him, served his every whim, and adored
+him. But in time he began to take pleasure in suggesting brilliant
+solutions of all the current problems of social organization. His
+advice was increasingly sought and accepted. He became autocrat
+of the state. His own intelligence and complete detachment combined
+with the people’s superstitious reverence to establish him
+far more securely than any ordinary tyrant. He cared nothing for
+the petty troubles of his people, but he was determined to be
+served by a harmonious, healthy, and potent race. And as relaxation
+from the more serious excitement of research in physics and
+astronomy, the study of human nature was not without attractions.
+It may seem strange that one so completely devoid of human
+sympathy could have the tact to govern a race of the emotional
+Third Men. But he had built up for himself a very accurate behaviouristic
+psychology; and like the skilful master of animals, he
+knew unerringly how much could be expected of his people, even
+though their emotions were almost wholly foreign to him. Thus,
+for instance, while he thoroughly despised their admiration of
+animals and plants, and their religion of life, he soon learned not
+to seem hostile to these obsessions, but rather to use them for his
+own ends. He himself was interested in animals only as material
+for experiments. In this respect his people readily helped him,
+partly because he assured them that his goal was the further improvement
+of all types, partly because they were fascinated by his
+complete disregard, in his experimentation, of the common techniques
+for preventing pain. The orgy of vicarious suffering
+awakened in his people the long-suppressed lust in cruelty which,
+in spite of their intuitive insight into animal nature, was so strong
+a factor in the third human species.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Little by little the great brain probed the material universe and
+the universe of mentality. He mastered the principles of biological
+evolution, and constructed for his own delight a detailed history
+of life on earth. He learned, by marvellous archaeological technique,
+the story of all the earlier human peoples, and of the
+Martian episode, matters which had remained hidden from the
+Third Men. He discovered the principles of relativity and the
+quantum theory, the nature of the atom as a complex system of
+wave trains. He measured the cosmos; and with his delicate
+instruments he counted the planetary systems in much of the
+remote universe. He casually solved, to his own satisfaction at
+least, the ancient problems of good and evil, of mind and its
+object, of the one and the many, and of truth and error. He
+created many new departments of state for the purpose of recording
+his discoveries in an artificial language which he devised for the
+purpose. Each department consisted of many colleges of carefully
+bred and educated specialists who could understand the subject
+of their own department to some extent. But the coordination of
+all, and true insight into each, lay with the great brain alone.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch11-2'>2. THE TRAGEDY OF THE FOURTH MEN</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>When some three thousand years had passed since his beginning,
+the unique individual determined to create others of his kind. Not
+that he suffered from loneliness. Not that he yearned for love, or
+even for intellectual companionship. But solely for the undertaking
+of more profound research, he needed the cooperation of
+beings of his own mental stature. He therefore designed, and had
+built in various regions of the planet, turrets and factories like his
+own, though greatly improved. Into each he sent, by his servants,
+a cell of his own vestigial body, and directed how it should be
+cultivated so as to produce a new individual. At the same time he
+caused far-reaching operations to be performed upon himself, so
+that he should be remade upon a more ample plan. Of the new
+capacities which he inculcated in himself and his progeny the
+most important was direct sensitivity to radiation. This was
+achieved by incorporating in each brain-tissue a specially bred
+strain of Martian parasites. These henceforth were to live in the
+great brain as integral members of each one of its cells. Each
+brain was also equipped with a powerful wireless transmitting
+apparatus. Thus should the widely scattered sessile population
+maintain direct ‘telepathic’ contact with one another.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The undertaking was successfully accomplished. Some ten
+thousand of these new individuals, each specialized for his particular
+locality and office, now constituted the Fourth Men. On the
+highest mountains were super-astronomers with vast observatories,
+whose instruments were partly artificial, partly natural
+excrescences of their own brains. In the very entrails of the planet
+others, specially adapted to heat, studied the subterranean forces,
+and were kept in ‘telepathic’ union with the astronomers. In the
+tropics, in the Arctic, in the forests, the deserts, and on the ocean
+floor, the Fourth Men indulged their immense curiosity; and in
+the homeland, around the father of the race, a group of great
+buildings housed a hundred individuals. In the service of this
+world-wide population, those races of Third Men which had
+originally cooperated to produce the new human species tilled
+the land, tended the cattle, manufactured the immense material
+requisites of the new civilization, and satisfied their spirits with
+an ever more stereotyped ritual of their vital art. This degradation
+of the whole race to a menial position had occurred slowly, imperceptibly.
+But the result was none the less irksome. Occasionally
+there were sparks of rebellion, but they always failed to kindle
+serious trouble; for the prestige and persuasiveness of the Fourth
+Men were irresistible.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At length, however, a crisis occurred. For some three thousand
+years the Fourth Men had pursued their research with constant
+success, but latterly progress had been slow. It was becoming
+increasingly difficult to devise new lines of research. True, there
+was still much detail to be filled in, even in their knowledge of
+their own planet, and very much in their knowledge of the stars.
+But there was no prospect of opening up entirely new fields which
+might throw some light on the essential nature of things. Indeed,
+it began to dawn on them that they had scarcely plumbed a surface
+ripple of the ocean of mystery. Their knowledge seemed to them
+perfectly systematic, yet wholly enigmatic. They had a growing
+sense that though in a manner they knew almost everything, they
+really knew nothing.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The normal mind, when it experiences intellectual frustration,
+can seek recreation in companionship, or physical exercise, or
+art. But for the Fourth Men there was no such escape. These
+activities were impossible and meaningless to them. The Great
+Brains were whole-heartedly interested in the objective world, but
+solely as a vast stimulus to intellection, never for its own sake.
+They admired only the intellective process itself and the interpretative
+formulae and principles which it devised. They cared no
+more for men and women than for material in a test-tube, no
+more for one another than for mechanical calculators. Nay, of
+each one of them it might almost be said that he cared ever for
+himself solely as an instrument of knowing. Many of the species
+had actually sacrificed their sanity, even in some cases their lives,
+to the obsessive lust of intellection.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As the sense of frustration became more and more oppressive,
+the Fourth Men suffered more and more from the onesidedness of
+their nature. Though so completely dispassionate while their
+intellectual life proceeded smoothly, now that it was thwarted they
+began to be confused by foolish whims and cravings which they
+disguised from themselves under a cloak of excuses. Sessile and
+incapable of affection, they continually witnessed the free movement,
+the group life, the love-making of their menials. Such
+activities became an offence to them, and filled them with a cold
+jealousy, which it was altogether beneath their dignity to notice.
+The affairs of the serf-population began to be conducted by their
+masters with less than the accustomed justice. Serious grievances
+arose.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The climax occurred in connexion with a great revival of
+research, which, it was said, would break down the impalpable
+barriers and set knowledge in progress again. The Great Brains
+were to be multiplied a thousandfold, and the resources of the
+whole planet were to be devoted far more strictly than before to
+the crusade of intellection. The menial Third Men would therefore
+have to put up with more work and less pleasure. Formerly
+they would willingly have accepted this fate for the glory of serving
+the superhuman brains. But the days of their blind devotion
+were past. It was murmured among them that the great experiment
+of their forefathers had proved a great disaster, and that the
+Fourth Men, the Great Brains, in spite of their devilish cunning,
+were mere abortions.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Matters came to a head when the tyrants announced that all
+useless animals must be slaughtered, since their upkeep was too
+great an economic burden upon the world-community. The vital
+art, moreover, was to be practised in future only by the Great
+Brains themselves. This announcement threw the Third Men into
+violent excitement, and divided them into two parties. Many of
+those whose lives were spent in direct service of the Great Brains
+favoured implicit obedience, though even these were deeply
+distressed. The majority, on the other hand, absolutely refused to
+permit the impious slaughter, or even to surrender their privileges
+as vital artists. For, they said, to kill off the fauna of the planet
+would be to violate the fair form of the universe by blotting out
+many of its most beautiful features. It would be an outrage to the
+Life God, and he would surely avenge it. They therefore urged
+that the time was come for all true human beings to stand together
+and depose the tyrants. And this, they pointed out, could easily
+be done. It was only necessary to cut a few electric cables, connecting
+the Great Brains with the subterranean generating stations.
+The electric pumps would then cease to supply the brain-turrets
+with aerated blood. Or, in the few cases in which the Great Brains
+were so located that they could control their own source of power
+in wind or water, it was necessary merely to refrain from transporting
+food to their digestion laboratories.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The personal attendants of the Great Brains shrank from such
+action; for their whole lives had been devoted, proudly and even
+in a manner lovingly, to service of the revered beings. But the
+agriculturists determined to withhold supplies. The Great Brains,
+therefore, armed their servitors with a diversity of ingenious
+weapons. Immense destruction was done; but since the rebels
+were decimated, there were not enough hands to work the fields.
+Some of the Great Brains, and many of their servants, actually
+died of starvation. And as hardship increased, the servants themselves
+began to drift over to the rebels. It now seemed certain to
+the Third Men that the Great Brains would very soon be impotent,
+and the plant once more under the control of natural beings.
+But the tyrants were not to be so easily defeated. Already for
+some centuries they had been secretly experimenting with a means
+of gaining a far more thorough dominion over the natural species.
+At the eleventh hour they succeeded.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In this undertaking they had been favoured by the results which
+a section of the natural species itself had produced long ago in the
+effort to breed specialized communicants to keep in touch with
+the unseen world. That sect, or theocratic nation, which had
+striven for many centuries toward this goal, had finally attained
+what they regarded as success. There came into existence an
+hereditary caste of communicants. Now, though these beings
+were subject to mediumistic trances in which they apparently
+conversed with denizens of the other world and received instructions
+about the ordering of matters terrestrial, they were in fact
+merely abnormally suggestible. Trained from childhood in the
+lore of the unseen world, their minds, during the trance, were
+amazingly fertile in developing fantasies based on that lore. Left
+to themselves, they were merely folk who were abnormally lacking
+in initiative and intelligence. Indeed, so naïve were they, and so
+sluggish, that they were mentally more like cattle than human
+beings. Yet under the influence of suggestion they became both
+intelligent and vigorous. Their intelligence, however, operating
+strictly in service of the suggestion, was wholly incapable of
+criticizing the suggestion itself.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There is no need to revert to the downfall of this theocratic
+society, beyond saying that, since both private and public affairs
+were regulated by reference to the sayings of the communicants,
+inevitably the state fell into chaos. The other community of the
+Third Men, that which was engaged upon breeding the Great
+Brains, gradually dominated the whole planet. The mediumistic
+stock, however, remained in existence, and was treated with a
+half-contemptuous reverence. The mediums were still generally
+regarded as in some manner specially gifted with the divine spirit,
+but they were now thought to be too holy for their sayings to have
+any relation to mundane affairs.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was by means of this mediumistic stock that the Great Brains
+had intended to consolidate their position. Their earlier efforts
+may be passed over. But in the end they produced a race of living
+and even intelligent machines whose will they could control
+absolutely, even at a great distance. For the new variety of Third
+Men was ‘telepathically’ united with its masters. Martian units
+had been incorporated in its nervous system.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At the last moment the Great Brains were able to put into the
+field an army of these perfect slaves, which they equipped with the
+most efficient lethal weapons. The remnant of original servants
+discovered too late that they had been helping to produce their
+supplanters. They joined the rebels, only to share in the general
+destruction. In a few months all the Third Men, save the new
+docile variety, were destroyed; except for a few specimens
+which were preserved in cages for experimental purposes. And
+in a few years every type of animal that was not known
+to be directly or indirectly necessary to human life had
+been exterminated. None were preserved even as specimens,
+for the Great Brains had already studied them through and
+through.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But though the Great Brains were now absolute possessors of
+the Earth, they were after all no nearer their goal than before.
+The actual struggle with the natural species had provided them
+with an aim; but now that the struggle was over, they began to
+be obsessed once more with their intellectual failure. With painful
+clarity they realized that, in spite of their vast weight of neural
+tissue, in spite of their immense knowledge and cunning, they
+were practically no nearer the ultimate truth than their predecessors
+had been. Both were infinitely far from it.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For the Fourth Men, the Great Brains, there was no possible
+life but the life of intellect; and the life of intellect had become
+barren. Evidently something more than mere bulk of brain was
+needed for the solving of the deeper intellectual problems. They
+must, therefore, somehow create a new brain-quality, or organic
+formation of brain, capable of a mode of vision or insight impossible
+in their present state. They must learn somehow to remake
+their own brain-tissues upon a new plan. With this aim, and partly
+through unwitting jealousy of the natural and more balanced
+species which had created them, they began to use their captive
+specimens of that species for a great new enterprise of research
+into the nature of human brain-tissue. It was hoped thus to find
+some hint of the direction in which the new evolutionary leap
+should take place. The unfortunate specimens were therefore submitted
+to a thousand ingenious physiological and psychological
+tortures. Some were kept alive with their brains spread out permanently
+on a laboratory table, for microscopic observation
+during their diverse psychological reactions. Others were put into
+fantastic states of mental abnormality. Others were maintained
+in perfect health of body and mind, only to be felled at last by
+some ingeniously contrived tragic experience. New types were
+produced which, it was hoped, might show evidence of emergence
+into a qualitatively higher mode of mentality; but in fact they
+succeeded only in ranging through the whole gamut of
+insanity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The research continued for some thousands of years, but
+gradually slackened, so utterly barren did it prove to be. As this
+frustration became more and more evident, a change began to
+come over the minds of the Fourth Men.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>They knew, of course, that the natural species valued many
+things and activities which they themselves did not appreciate at
+all. Hitherto this had seemed a symptom merely of the low mental
+development of the natural species. But the behaviour of the
+unfortunate specimens upon whom they had been experimenting
+had gradually given the Fourth Men a greater insight into the
+likings and admirations of the natural species, so that they had
+learned to distinguish between those desires which were fundamental
+and those merely accidental cravings which clear thinking
+would have dismissed. In fact, they came to see that certain
+activities and certain objects were appreciated by these beings
+with the same clear-sighted conviction as they themselves appreciated
+knowledge. For instance, the natural human beings valued
+one another, and were sometimes capable of sacrificing themselves
+for the sake of others. They also valued love itself. And again
+they valued very seriously their artistic activities; and the
+activities of their bodies and of animal bodies appeared to them
+to have intrinsic excellence.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Little by little the Fourth Men began to realize that what was
+wrong with themselves was not merely their intellectual limitation,
+but, far more seriously, the limitation of their insight into
+values. And this weakness, they saw, was the result, not of paucity
+of intellective brain, but of paucity of body and lower brain
+tissues. This defect they could not remedy. It was obviously
+impossible to remake themselves so radically that they should
+become of a more normal type. Should they concentrate their
+efforts upon the production of new individuals more harmonious
+than themselves? Such a work, it might be supposed, would have
+seemed unattractive to them. But no. They argued thus. ‘It is
+our nature to care most for knowing. Full knowledge is to be
+attained only by minds both more penetrating and more broadly
+based than ours. Let us, therefore, waste no more time in seeking
+to achieve the goal in ourselves. Let us seek rather to produce a
+kind of being, free from our limitations, in whom we may attain
+the goal of perfect knowledge vicariously. The producing of such
+a being will exercise all our powers, and will afford the highest
+kind of fulfilment possible to us. To refrain from this work would
+be irrational.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Thus it came about that the artificial Fourth Men began to
+work in a new spirit upon the surviving specimens of the Third
+Men to produce their own supplanters.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch11-3'>3. THE FIFTH MEN</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>The plan of the proposed new human being was worked out in
+great detail before any attempt was made to produce an actual
+individual. Essentially he was to be a normal human organism,
+with all the bodily functions of the natural type; but he was to be
+perfected through and through. Care must be taken to give him
+the greatest possible bulk of brain compatible with such a general
+plan, but no more. Very carefully his creators calculated the
+dimensions and internal proportions which their creature must
+have. His brain could not be nearly as large as their own, since
+he would have to carry it about with him, and maintain it with
+his own physiological machinery. On the other hand, if it was to
+be at all larger than the natural brain, the rest of the organism
+must be proportionately sturdy. Like the Second Men, the new
+species must be titanic. Indeed, it must be such as to dwarf even
+those natural giants. The body, however, must not be so huge as
+to be seriously hampered by its own weight, and by the necessity
+of having bones so massive as to be unmanageable.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In working out the general proportions of the new man, his
+makers took into account the possibility of devising more efficient
+bone and muscle. After some centuries of patient experiment they
+did actually invent a means of inducing in germ cells a tendency
+toward far stronger bone-tissues and far more powerful muscle.
+At the same time they devised nerve-tissues more highly specialized
+for their particular functions. And in the new brain, so minute
+compared with their own, smallness was to be compensated for
+by efficiency of design, both in the individual cells and in their
+organization.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Further, it was found possible to economize somewhat in bulk
+and vital energy by improvements in the digestive system. Certain
+new models of micro-organisms were produced, which, living
+symbiotically in the human gut, should render the whole process
+of digestion easier, more rapid, and less erratic.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Special attention was given to the system of self-repair in all
+tissues, especially in those which had hitherto been the earliest
+to wear out. And at the same time the mechanism regulating
+growth and general senescence was so designed that the new man
+should reach maturity at the age of two hundred years, and should
+remain in full vigour for at least three thousand years, when,
+with the first serious symptom of decay, his heart should suddenly
+cease functioning. There had been some dispute whether the new
+being should be endowed with perennial life, like his makers. But
+in the end it had been decided that, since he was intended only
+as a transitional type, it would be safer to allow him only a finite,
+though a prolonged lifetime. There must be no possibility that
+he should be tempted to regard himself as life’s final expression.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In sensory equipment, the new man was to have all the advantages
+of the Second and Third Men, and, in addition a still
+wider range and finer discrimination in every sense organ. More
+important was the incorporation of Martian units in the new
+model of germ cell. As the organism developed, these should
+propagate themselves and congregate in the cells of the brain, so
+that every brain area might be sensitive to ethereal vibrations,
+and the whole might emit a strong system of radiation. But care
+was taken so that this ‘telepathic’ faculty of the new species
+should remain subordinate. There must be no danger that the
+individual should become a mere resonator of the herd.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Long drawn out chemical research enabled the Fourth Men to
+design also far-reaching improvements in the secretions of the
+new man, so that he should maintain both a perfect physiological
+equilibrium, and a well-balanced temperament. For they
+were determined that though he should experience all the range
+of emotional life, his passions should not run into disastrous
+excess; nor should he be prone to some one emotion in season
+and out of season. It was necessary also to revise in great detail
+the whole system of natural reflexes, abolishing some, modifying
+others, and again strengthening others. All the more complex,
+‘instinctive’ responses, which had persisted in man since the days
+of Pithecanthropus Erectus, had also to be meticulously revised,
+both in respect of the form of the activity and the objects upon
+which they should be instinctively directed. Anger, fear, curiosity,
+humour, tenderness, egoism, sexual passion, and sociality must
+all be possible, but never uncontrollable. In fact, as with the
+Second Men, but more emphatically, the new type was to have
+an innate aptitude for, and inclination toward, all those higher
+activities and objects which, in the First Men, were only achieved
+after laborious discipline. Thus, while the design included self-regard,
+it also involved a disposition to prize the self chiefly as a
+social and intellectual being, rather than as a primeval savage.
+And while it included strong sociality, the group upon which
+instinctive interest was to be primarily directed was to be nothing
+less than the organized community of all minds. And again,
+while it included vigorous primitive sexuality and parenthood, it
+provided also those innate ‘sublimations’ which had occurred in
+the second species; for instance, the native aptitude for altruistic
+love of individual spirits of every kind, and for art and religion.
+Only by a miracle of pure intellectual skill could the cold-natured
+Great Brains, who were themselves doomed never to have actual
+experience of such activities, contrive, merely by study of the
+Third Men, to see their importance, and to design an organism
+splendidly capable of them. It was much as though a blind race,
+after studying physics, should invent organs of sight.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was recognized, of course, that in a race in which the average
+life-span should be counted in thousands of years, procreation
+must be very rare. Yet it was also recognized that, for full development
+of mind, not only sexual intercourse but parenthood was
+necessary in both sexes. This difficulty was overcome partly by
+designing a very prolonged infancy and childhood; which,
+necessary in themselves for the proper mental and physical growth
+of these complicated organisms, provided also a longer exercise
+of parenthood for the mature. At the same time the actual process
+of child-birth was designed to be as easy as among the Third Men.
+And it was expected that with its greatly improved physiological
+organization the infant would not need that anxious and absorbing
+care which had so seriously hobbled most mothers among the
+earlier races.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The mere sketching out of these preliminary specifications of an
+improved human being involved many centuries of research and
+calculation which taxed even the ingenuity of the Great Brains.
+Then followed a lengthy period of tentative experiment in the
+actual production of such a type. For some thousands of years
+little was done but to show that many promising lines of attack
+were after all barren. And several times during this period the
+whole work was held up by disagreements among the Great
+Brains themselves as to the policy to be adopted. Once, indeed,
+they took to violence, one party attacking the other with chemicals,
+microbes, and armies of human automata.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In short it was only after many failures, and after many
+barren epochs during which, for a variety of reasons, the enterprise
+was neglected, that the Fourth Men did at length fashion
+two individuals almost precisely of the type they had originally
+designed. These were produced from a single fertilized ovum, in
+laboratory conditions. Identical twins, but of opposite sexes, they
+became the Adam and Eve of a new and glorious human species,
+the Fifth Men.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It may fittingly be said of the Fifth Men that they were the
+first to attain true human proportions of body and mind. On
+the average they were more than twice as tall as the First Men,
+and much taller than the Second Men. Their lower limbs had
+therefore to be extremely massive compared with the torso which
+they had to support. Thus, upon the ample pedestal of their feet,
+they stood like columns of masonry. Yet though their proportions
+were in a manner elephantine, there was a remarkable
+precision and even delicacy in the volumes that composed them.
+Their great arms and shoulders, dwarfed somewhat by their still
+mightier legs, were instruments not only of power but also of fine
+adjustment. Their hands also were fashioned both for power and
+for minute control; for, while the thumb and forefinger constituted
+a formidable vice, the delicate sixth finger had been induced
+to divide its tip into two Lilliputian fingers and a corresponding
+thumb. The contours of the limbs were sharply visible, for the
+body bore no hair, save for a close, thick skullcap which, in the
+original stock, was of ruddy brown. The well-marked eyebrows,
+when drawn down, shaded the sensitive eyes from the sun. Elsewhere
+there was no need of hair, for the brown skin had been so
+ingeniously contrived that it maintained an even temperature alike
+in tropical and sub-Arctic climates, with no aid either from hair
+or clothes. Compared with the great body, the head was not large,
+though the brain-capacity was twice that of the Second Men. In
+the original pair of individuals the immense eyes were of a deep
+violet, the features strongly moulded and mobile. These facial
+characters had not been specially designed, for they seemed unimportant
+to the Fourth Men; but the play of biological forces
+resulted in a face not unlike that of the Second Men, though with
+an added and indescribable expression which no human face had
+hitherto attained.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>How from this pair of individuals the new population gradually
+arose; how at first it was earnestly fostered by its creators; how
+it subsequently asserted its independence and took control of its
+own destiny; how the Great Brains failed piteously to understand
+and sympathize with the mentality of their creatures, and tried
+to tyrannize over them; how for a while the planet was divided
+into two mutually intolerant communities, and was at last
+drenched with man’s blood, until the human automata were
+exterminated, the Great Brains starved or blown to pieces, and
+the Fifth Men themselves decimated; how, as a result of these
+events, a dense fog of barbarism settled once more upon the
+planet, so that the Fifth Men, like so many other races, had after
+all to start rebuilding civilization and culture from its very foundations;
+how all these things befell we must not in detail observe.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch11-4'>4. THE CULTURE OF THE FIFTH MEN</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>It is not possible to recount the stages by which the Fifth Men
+advanced toward their greatest civilization and culture; for it is
+that fully developed culture itself which concerns us. And even
+of their highest achievement, which persisted for so many millions
+of years, I can say but little, not merely because I must hasten to
+the end of my story, but also because so much of that achievement
+lies wholly beyond the comprehension of those for whom this
+book is intended. For I have at last reached that period in the
+history of man when he first began to reorganize his whole
+mentality to cope with matters whose very existence had been
+hitherto almost completely hidden from him. The old aims persist,
+and are progressively realized as never before; but also they
+become increasingly subordinate to the requirements of new aims
+which are more and more insistently forced upon him by his
+deepening experience. Just as the interests and ideals of the First
+Men lie beyond the grasp of their ape contemporaries, so the
+interests and ideals of the Fifth Men in their full development lie
+beyond the grasp of the First Men. On the other hand, just as, in
+the life of primitive man, there is much which would be meaningful
+even to the ape, so in the life of the Fifth Men much remains
+which is meaningful even to the First Men.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Conceive a world-society developed materially far beyond the
+wildest dreams of America. Unlimited power, derived partly from
+the artificial disintegration of atoms, partly from the actual annihilation
+of matter through the union of electrons and protons to
+form radiation, completely abolished the whole grotesque burden
+of drudgery which hitherto had seemed the inescapable price of
+civilization, nay of life itself. The vast economic routine of the
+world-community was carried on by the mere touching of appropriate
+buttons. Transport, mining, manufacture, and even agriculture,
+were performed in this manner. And indeed in most cases
+the systematic coordination of these activities was itself the work
+of self-regulating machinery. Thus, not only was there no longer
+need for any human beings to spend their lives in unskilled monotonous
+labour, but further, much that earlier races would have
+regarded as highly skilled though stereotyped work was now
+carried on by machinery. Only the pioneering of industry, the
+endless exhilarating research, invention, design, and reorganization,
+which is incurred by an ever-changing society, still engaged
+the minds of men and women. And though this work was of
+course immense, it could not occupy the whole attention of a
+great world-community. Thus very much of the energy of the
+race was free to occupy itself with other no less difficult and
+exacting matters, or to seek recreation in its many admirable
+sports and arts. Materially every individual was a multi-millionaire,
+in that he had at his beck and call a great diversity of powerful
+mechanisms; but also he was a penniless friar, for he had no
+vestige of economic control over any other human being. He could
+fly through the upper air to the ends of the earth in an hour, or
+hang idle among the clouds all day long. His flying machine was
+no cumbersome aeroplane, but either a wingless aerial boat, or a
+mere suit of overalls in which he could disport himself with the
+freedom of a bird. Not only in the air, but in the sea also, he was
+free. He could stroll about the ocean bed, or gambol with the deep-sea
+fishes. And for habitation he could make his home, as he
+willed, either in a shack in the wilderness or in one of the great
+pylons which dwarfed the architecture even of the American age.
+He could possess this huge palace in loneliness and fill it with his
+possessions, to be automatically cared for without human service;
+or he could join with others and create a hive of social life. All
+these amenities he took for granted as the savage takes for granted
+the air which he breathes. And because they were as universally
+available as air, no one craved them in excess, and no one grudged
+another the use of them.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Yet the population of the earth was now very numerous. Some
+ten thousand million persons had their homes in the snow-capped
+pylons which covered the continents with an open forest of architecture.
+Between these great obelisks lay corn-land, park, and
+wilderness. For there were very many areas of hill-country and
+forest which were preserved as playgrounds. And indeed one
+whole continent, stretching from the Tropical to the Arctic, was
+kept as nearly as possible in its natural state. This region was
+chosen mainly for its mountains; for since most of the Alpine
+tracts had by now been worn into insignificance by water and
+frost, mountains were much prized. Into this Wild Continent
+individuals of all ages repaired to spend many years at a time in
+living the life of primitive man without any aid whatever for
+civilization. For it was recognized that a highly sophisticated
+race, devoted almost wholly to art and science, must take special
+measures to preserve its contact with the primitive. Thus in the
+Wild Continent was to be found at any time a sparse population
+of ‘savages’, armed with flint and bone, or more rarely with iron,
+which they or their friends had wrested from the earth. These
+voluntary primitives were intent chiefly upon hunting and simple
+agriculture. Their scanty leisure was devoted to art, and meditation,
+and to savouring fully all the primeval human values. Indeed
+it was a hard life and a dangerous one that these intellectuals
+periodically imposed on themselves. And though of course they
+had zest in it, they often dreaded its hardship and the uncertainty
+that they would ever return from it. For the danger was very real.
+The Fifth Men had compensated for the Fourth Men’s foolish
+destruction of the animals by creating a whole system of new
+types, which they set at large in the Wild Continent; and some of
+these creatures were extremely formidable carnivora, which man
+himself, armed only with primitive weapons, had very good reason
+to fear. In the Wild Continent there was inevitably a high death-rate.
+Many promising lives were tragically cut short. But it was
+recognized that from the point of view of the race this sacrifice
+was worth while, for the spiritual effects of the institution of
+periodic savagery were very real. Beings whose natural span was
+three thousand years, given over almost wholly to civilized pursuits,
+were greatly invigorated and enlightened by an occasional
+decade in the wild.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The culture of the Fifth Men was influenced in many respects
+by their ‘telepathic’ communication with one another. The
+obvious advantages of this capacity were now secured without its
+dangers. Each individual could isolate himself at will from the
+radiation of his fellows, either wholly or in respect of particular
+elements of his mental process; and thus he was in no danger of
+losing his individuality. But, on the other hand, he was immeasurably
+more able to participate in the experience of others
+than were beings for whom the only possible communication
+was symbolic. The result was that, though conflict of wills was
+still possible, it was far more easily resolved by mutual understanding
+than had ever been the case in earlier species. Thus there
+were no lasting and no radical conflicts, either of thought or
+desire. It was universally recognized that every discrepancy of
+opinion and of aim could be abolished by telepathic discussion.
+Sometimes the process would be easy and rapid; sometimes it
+could not be achieved without a patient and detailed ‘laying of
+mind to mind’, so as to bring to light the point where the difference
+originated.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>One result of the general ‘telepathic’ facility of the species was
+that speech was no longer necessary. It was still preserved and
+prized, but only as a medium of art, not as a means of communication.
+Thinking, of course, was still carried on largely by means of
+words; but in communication there was no more need actually to
+speak the words than in thinking in private. Written language
+remained essential for the recording and storing of thought. Both
+language and the written expression of it had become far more
+complex and accurate than they had ever been, more faithful
+instruments for the expression and creation of thought and
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>‘Telepathy’ combined with longevity and the extremely subtle
+brain-structure of the species to afford each individual an immense
+number of intimate friendships, and some slight acquaintance
+actually with the whole race. This, I fear, must seem
+incredible to my readers, unless they can be persuaded to regard
+it as a symptom of the high mental development of the species.
+However that may be, it is a fact that each person was aware of
+every other, at least as a face, or a name, or the holder of a
+certain office. It is impossible to exaggerate the effects of this
+facility of personal intercourse. It meant that the species constituted
+at any moment, if not strictly a community of friends, at
+least a vast club or college. Further, since each individual saw his
+own mind reflected, as it were, in very many other minds, and
+since there was great variety of psychological types, the upshot in
+each individual was a very accurate self-consciousness.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the Martians, ‘telepathic’ intercourse had resulted in a true
+group-mind, a single psychical process embodied in the electro-magnetic
+radiation of the whole race; but this group-mind was
+inferior in calibre to the individual minds. All that was distinctive
+of an individual at his best failed to contribute to the group-mind.
+But in the fifth human species ‘telepathy’ was only a
+means of intercourse between individuals; there was no true
+group-mind. On the other hand, telepathic intercourse occurred
+even on the highest planes of experience. It was by ‘telepathic’
+intercourse in respect of art, science, philosophy, and the appreciation
+of personalities, that the public mind, or rather the public
+culture, of the Fifth Men had being. With the Martians,
+‘telepathic’ union took place chiefly by elimination of the differences
+between individuals; with the Fifth Men ‘telepathic’ communication
+was, as it were, a kind of spiritual multiplication of
+mental diversity, by which each mind was enriched with the wealth
+of ten thousand million. Consequently each individual was, in
+a very real sense, the cultured mind of the species; but there
+were as many such minds as there were individuals. There was no
+additional racial mind over and above the minds of the individuals.
+Each individual himself was a conscious centre which participated
+in, and contributed to, the experience of all other centres.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This state of affairs would not have been possible had not the
+world-community been able to direct so much of its interest and
+energy into the higher mental activities. The whole structure of
+society was fashioned in relation to its best culture. It is almost
+impossible to give even an inkling of the nature and aims of this
+culture, and to make it believable that a huge population should
+have spent scores of millions of years not wholly, not even chiefly,
+on industrial advancement, but almost entirely on art, science,
+and philosophy, without ever repeating itself or falling into ennui
+I can only point out that, the higher a mind’s development, the
+more it discovers in the universe to occupy it.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Needless to say, the Fifth Men had early mastered all those
+paradoxes of physical science which had so perplexed the First
+Men. Needless to say, they had a very complete knowledge of the
+geography of the cosmos and of the atom. But again and again
+the very foundations of their science were shattered by some new
+discovery, so that they had patiently to reconstruct the whole
+upon an entirely new plan. At length, however, with the clear
+formulation of the principles of psycho-physics, in which the
+older psychology and the older physics were held, so to speak, in
+chemical combination, they seemed to have built upon the rock.
+In this science, the fundamental concepts of psychology were
+given a physical meaning, and the fundamental concepts of
+physics were stated in a psychological manner. Further, the most
+fundamental relations of the physical universe were found to be
+of the same nature as the fundamental principles of art. But, and
+herein lay mystery and horror even for the Fifth Men, there was
+no shred of evidence that this aesthetically admirable cosmos was
+the work of a conscious artist, nor yet that any mind would ever
+develop so greatly as to be able to appreciate the Whole in all
+its detail and unity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Since art seemed to the Fifth Men to be in some sense basic to
+the cosmos, they were naturally very much preoccupied with
+artistic creation. Consequently, all those who were not social or
+economic organizers, or scientific researchers, or pure philosophers,
+were by profession creative artists or handicraftsmen.
+That is to say, they were engaged on the production of material
+objects of various kinds, whose form should be aesthetically
+significant to the receiver. In some cases the material object was
+a pattern of spoken words, in others pure music, in others moving
+coloured shapes, in others a complex of steel cubes and bars, in
+others some translation of the human figure into a particular
+medium, and so on. But also the aesthetic impulse expressed itself
+in the production, by hand, of innumerable common utensils,
+indulging sometimes in lavish decoration, trusting at other times
+to the beauty of function. Every medium of art that had ever been
+employed was employed by the Fifth Men, and innumerable new
+vehicles were also used. They prized on the whole more highly
+those kinds of art which were not static, but involved time as well
+as space, for as a race they were peculiarly fascinated by time.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>These innumerable artists held that they were doing something
+of great importance. The cosmos was to be regarded as an
+aesthetic unity in four dimensions, and of inconceivable complexity.
+Human works of pure art were thought of as instruments
+through which man might behold and admire some aspect of the
+cosmic beauty. They were said to focus together features of the
+cosmos too vast and elusive for man otherwise to apprehend
+their form. The work of art was sometimes likened to a compendious
+mathematical formula expressive of some immense and
+apparently chaotic field of facts. But in the case of art, it was
+said, the unity which the artistic object elicited was one in which
+factors of vital nature and of mind itself were essential members.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The race thus deemed itself to be engaged upon a great enterprise
+both of discovery and creation in which each individual was
+both an originator of some unique contribution, and an appraiser
+of all.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Now, as the years advanced in millions and in decades of
+millions, it began to be noticed that the movement of world-culture
+was in a manner spiral. There would be an age during which
+the interest of the race was directed almost wholly upon certain
+tracts or aspects of existence; and then, after perhaps a hundred
+thousand years, these would seem to have been fully cultivated,
+and would be left fallow. During the next epoch attention would
+be in the main directed to other spheres, and then afterwards to
+yet others, and again others. But at length a return would be made
+to the fields that had been deserted, and it would be discovered
+that they could now miraculously bear a millionfold the former
+crop. Thus, in both science and art man kept recurring again
+and again to the ancient themes, to work over them once more
+in meticulous detail and strike from them new truth and new
+beauty, such as, in the earlier epoch, he could never have conceived.
+Thus it was that, though science gathered to itself unfalteringly
+an ever wider and more detailed view of existence, it
+periodically discovered some revolutionary general principle in
+terms of which its whole content had to be given a new significance.
+And in art there would appear in one age works superficially
+almost identical with works of another age, yet to the
+discerning eye incomparably more significant. Similarly, in respect
+of human personality itself, those men and women who lived
+at the close of the aeon of the Fifth Men could often discover in
+the remote beginning of their own race beings curiously like
+themselves, yet, as it were, expressed in fewer dimensions than
+their own many-dimensional natures. As a map is like the
+mountainous land, or the picture like the landscape, or indeed
+as the point and the circle are like the sphere, so, and only so,
+the earlier Fifth Men resembled the flower of the species.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Such statements would be in a manner true of any period of
+steady cultural progress. But in the present instance they have a
+peculiar significance which I must now somehow contrive to
+suggest.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>XII</span> <span class='it'>The Last Terrestrials</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch12-1'>1. THE CULT OF EVANESCENCE</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">The</span> Fifth Men had not been endowed with that potential immortality
+which their makers themselves possessed. And from
+the fact that they were mortal and yet long-lived, their culture
+drew its chief brilliance and poignancy. Beings for whom the
+natural span was three thousand years, and ultimately as much
+as fifty thousand, were peculiarly troubled by the prospect of
+death, and by the loss of those dear to them. The more ephemeral
+kind of spirit, that comes into being and then almost immediately
+ceases, before it has entered at all deeply into consciousness of
+itself, can face its end with a courage that is half unwitting.
+Even its smart in the loss of other beings with whom it has been
+intimate is but a vague and dream-like suffering. For the ephemeral
+spirit has no time to grow fully awake, or fully intimate
+with another, before it must lose its beloved, and itself once more
+fade into unconsciousness. But with the long-lived yet not immortal
+Fifth Men the case was different. Gathering to themselves
+experience of the cosmos, acquiring an ever more precise and
+vivid insight and appreciation, they knew that very soon all
+this wealth of the soul must cease to be. And in love, though
+they might be fully intimate not merely with one but with
+very many persons, the death of one of these dear spirits
+seemed an irrevocable tragedy, an utter annihilation of the
+most resplendent kind of glory, an impoverishment of the
+cosmos for evermore.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In their brief primitive phase, the Fifth Men, like so many other
+races, sought to console themselves by unreasoning faith in a
+life after death. They conceived, for instance, that at death
+terrestrial beings embarked upon a career continuous with
+earthly life, but far more ample, either in some remote planetary
+system, or in some wholly distinct orb of space-time. But though
+such theories were never disproved in the primitive era, they
+gradually began to seem not merely improbable but ignoble. For
+it came to be recognized that the resplendent glories of personality,
+even in that degree of beauty which now for the first time was
+attained, were not after all the extreme of glory. It was seen with
+pain, but also with exultation, that even love’s demand that the
+beloved should have immortal life is a betrayal of man’s paramount
+allegiance. And little by little it became evident that those
+who used great gifts, and even genius, to establish the truth of the
+after life, or to seek contact with their beloved dead, suffered from
+a strange blindness, an obtuseness of the spirit. Though the love
+which had misled them was itself a very lovely thing, yet they
+were misled. Like children, searching for lost toys, they wandered.
+Like adolescents seeking to recapture delight in the things of
+childhood, they shunned those more difficult admirations which
+are proper to the grown mind.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>And so it became a constant aim of the Fifth Men to school
+themselves to admire chiefly even in the very crisis of bereavement,
+not persons, but that great music of innumerable personal
+lives, which is the life of the race. And quite early in their career
+they discovered an unexpected beauty in the very fact that the
+individual must die. So that, when they had actually come into
+possession of the means to make themselves immortal, they
+refrained, choosing rather merely to increase the life-span of
+succeeding generations to fifty thousand years. Such a
+period seemed to be demanded for the full exercise of human
+capacity; but immortality, they held, would lead to spiritual
+disaster.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Now as their science advanced they saw that there had been a
+time, before the stars were formed, when there was no possible
+footing for minds in the cosmos; and that there would come a
+time when mentality would be driven out of existence. Earlier
+human species had not needed to trouble about mind’s ultimate
+fate; but for the long-lived Fifth Men the end, though remote,
+did not seem infinitely distant. The prospect distressed them.
+They had schooled themselves to live not for the individual but
+for the race; and now the life of the race itself was seen to be a
+mere instant between the endless void of the past and the endless
+void of the future. Nothing within their ken was more worthy of
+admiration than the organized progressive mentality of mankind;
+and the conviction that this most admired thing must soon cease
+filled many of their less ample minds with horror and indignation.
+But in time the Fifth Men, like the Second Men long before them,
+came to suspect that even in this tragic brevity of mind’s course
+there was a quality of beauty, more difficult than the familiar
+beauty, but also more exquisite. Even thus imprisoned in an
+instant, the spirit of man might yet plumb the whole extent of
+space, and also the whole past and the whole future; and so,
+from behind his prison bars, he might render the universe that
+intelligent worship which, they felt, it demanded of him. Better so,
+they said, than that he should fret himself with puny efforts to
+escape. He is dignified by his very weakness, and the cosmos by its
+very indifference to him.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For aeons they remained in this faith. And they schooled their
+hearts to acquiesce in it, saying, if it is so, it is best, and somehow
+we must learn to see that it is best. But what they meant by ‘best’
+was not what their predecessors would have meant. They did not,
+for instance, deceive themselves by pretending that after all they
+themselves actually preferred life to be evanescent. On the
+contrary, they continued to long that it might be otherwise. But
+having discovered, both behind the physical order and behind
+the desires of minds, a fundamental principle whose essence was
+aesthetic, they were faithful to the conviction that whatever was
+fact must somehow in the universal view be fitting, right, beautiful,
+integral to the form of the cosmos. And so they accepted as
+right a state of affairs which in their own hearts they still felt
+grievously wrong.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This conviction of the irrevocability of the past and of the
+evanescence of mind induced in them a great tenderness for all
+beings that had lived and ceased. Deeming themselves to be near
+the crest of life’s achievement, blessed also with longevity and
+philosophic detachment, they were often smitten with pity for
+those humbler, briefer, and less free spirits whose lot had fallen in
+the past. Moreover, themselves extremely complex, subtle, conscious,
+they conceived a generous admiration for all simple
+minds, for the early men, and for the beasts. Very strongly they
+condemned the action of their predecessors in destroying so many
+joyous and delectable creatures. Earnestly they sought to reconstruct
+in imagination all those beings that blind intellectualism
+had murdered. Earnestly they delved in the near and the remote
+past so as to recover as much as possible of the history of life on
+the planet. With meticulous love they would figure out the life
+stories of extinct types, such as the brontosaurus, the hippopotamus,
+the chimpanzee, the Englishman, the American, as also
+of the still extant amoeba. And while they could not but relish
+the comicality of these remote beings, their amusement was the
+outgrowth of affectionate insight into simple natures, and was
+but the obverse of their recognition that the primitive is essentially
+tragic, because blind. And so, while they saw that the main work
+of man must have regard to the future, they felt that he owed
+also a duty toward the past. He must preserve it in his own
+mind, if not actually in life at least in being. In the future lay
+glory, joy, brilliance of the spirit. The future needed service, not
+pity, not piety; but in the past lay darkness, confusion, waste, and
+all the cramped primitive minds, bewildered, torturing one
+another in their stupidity, yet one and all in some unique manner
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The reconstruction of the past, not merely as abstract history
+but with the intimacy of the novel, thus became one of the main
+preoccupations of the Fifth Men. Many devoted themselves to
+this work, each individual specializing very minutely in some
+particular episode of human or animal history, and transmitting
+his work into the culture of the race. Thus increasingly the
+individual felt himself to be a single flicker between the teeming
+gulf of the never-more and the boundless void of the not-yet.
+Himself a member of a very noble and fortunate race, his zest in
+existence was tempered, deepened, by a sense of the presence, the
+ghostly presence, of the myriad less fortunate beings in the past.
+Sometimes, and especially in epochs when the contemporary
+world seemed most satisfactory and promising, this piety toward
+the primitive and the past became the dominant activity of the
+race, giving rise to alternating phases of rebellion against the
+tyrannical nature of the cosmos, and faith that in the universal
+view, after all, this horror must be right. In this latter mood it was
+held that the very irrevocability of the past dignified all past
+existence, and dignified the cosmos, as a work of tragic art is
+dignified by the irrevocability of disaster. It was this mood of
+acquiescence and faith which in the end became the characteristic
+attitude of the Fifth Men for many millions of years.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But a bewildering discovery was in store for the Fifth Men, a
+discovery which was to change their whole attitude toward
+existence. Certain obscure biological facts began to make them
+suspect, on purely empirical grounds, that past events were not
+after all simply non-existent, that though no longer existent in the
+temporal manner, they had eternal existence in some other
+manner. The effect of this increasing suspicion about the past was
+that a once harmonious race was divided for a while into two
+parties, those who insisted that the formal beauty of the universe
+demanded the tragic evanescence of all things, and those who
+determined to show that living minds could actually reach back
+into past events in all their pastness.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The readers of this book are not in a position to realize the
+poignancy of the conflict which now threatened to wreck humanity.
+They cannot approach it from the point of view of a race
+whose culture had consisted of an age-long schooling in admiration
+of an ever-vanishing cosmos. To the orthodox it seemed that
+the new view was iconoclastic, impertinent, vulgar. Their opponents,
+on the other hand, insisted that the matter must be
+decided dispassionately, according to the evidence. They were
+also able to point out that this devotion to evanescence was after
+all but the outcome of the conviction that the cosmos must be
+supremely noble. No one, it was said, really had direct vision of
+evanescence as in itself an excellence. So heartfelt was the dispute
+that the orthodox party actually broke off all ‘telepathic’ communication
+with the rebels, and even went so far as to plan their
+destruction. There can be no doubt that if violence had actually
+been used the human race would have succumbed; for in a
+species of such high mental development internecine war would
+have been a gross violation of its nature. It would never have
+been able to live down so shameful a spiritual disaster. Fortunately,
+however, at the eleventh hour, commonsense prevailed.
+The iconoclasts were permitted to carry on their research, and
+the whole race awaited the result.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch12-2'>2. EXPLORATION OF TIME</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>This first attack upon the nature of time involved an immense
+cooperative work, both theoretical and practical. It was from
+biology that the first hint had come that the past persisted. And
+it would be necessary to restate the whole of biology and the
+physical sciences in terms of the new idea. On the practical side it
+was necessary to undertake a great campaign of experiment,
+physiological and psychological. We cannot stay to watch this
+work. Millions of years passed by. Sometimes, for thousands of
+years at a spell, temporal research was the main preoccupation
+of the race; sometimes it was thrust into the background, or
+completely ignored, during epochs which were dominated by
+other interests. Age after age passed, and always the effort of
+man in this sphere remained barren. Then at last there was a real
+success.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A child had been selected from among those produced by an
+age-long breeding enterprise, directed towards the mastery of
+time. From infancy this child’s brain had been very carefully
+controlled physiologically. Psychologically also he had been subjected
+to a severe treatment, that he might be properly schooled
+for his strange task. In the presence of several scientists and
+historians he was put into a kind of trance, and brought out of
+it again, half an hour later. He was then asked to give an account
+‘telepathically’ of his experiences during the trance. Unfortunately
+he was now so shattered that his evidence was almost unintelligible.
+After some months of rest he was questioned again,
+and was able to describe a curious episode which turned out
+to be a terrifying incident in the girlhood of his dead mother. He
+seemed to have seen the incident through her eyes, and to have
+been aware of all her thoughts. This alone proved nothing, for he
+might have received the information from some living mind.
+Once more, therefore, and in spite of his entreaties, he was put
+into the peculiar trance. On waking he told a rambling story of
+‘little red people living in a squat white tower’. It was clear that
+he was referring to the Great Brains and their attendants. But
+once more, this proved nothing; and before the account was
+finished the child died.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Another child was chosen, but was not put to the test until
+late in adolescence. After an hour of the trance, he woke and
+became terribly agitated, but forced himself to describe an
+episode which the historians assigned to the age of the Martian
+invasions. The importance of this incident lay in his account of a
+certain house with a carved granite portico, situated at the head
+of a waterfall in a mountain valley. He said he had found himself
+to be an old woman, and that he, or she, was being hurriedly
+helped out of the house by the other inmates. They watched a
+formless monster creep down the valley, destroy their house, and
+mangle two persons who failed to get away in time. Now this
+house was not at all typical of the Second Men, but must have
+expressed the whim of some freakish individual. From evidence
+derived from the boy himself, it proved possible to locate the
+valley with reference to a former mountain, known to history.
+No valley survived in that spot; but deep excavations revealed
+the ancient slopes, the fault that had occasioned the waterfall,
+and the broken pillars.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This and many similar incidents confirmed the Fifth Men in
+their new view of time. There followed an age in which the
+technique of direct inspection of the past was gradually improved,
+but not without tragedy. In the early stages it was found impossible
+to keep the ‘medium’ alive for more than a few weeks after
+his venture into the past. The experience seemed to set up a
+progressive mental disintegration which produced first insanity,
+then paralysis, and, within a few months, death. This difficulty
+was at last overcome. By one means and another a type of brain
+was produced capable of undergoing the strain of supra-temporal
+experience without fatal results. An increasingly large proportion
+of the rising generation had now direct access to the past, and
+were engaged upon a great re-statement of history in relation to
+their first-hand experience; but their excursions into the past
+were uncontrollable. They could not go where they wanted to go,
+but only where fate flung them. Nor could they go of their own
+will, but only through a very complicated technique, and with the
+cooperation of experts. After a time the process was made much
+easier, in fact, too easy. The unfortunate medium might slip so
+easily into the trance that his days were eaten up by the past. He
+might suddenly fall to the ground, and lie rapt, inert, dependent
+on artificial feeding, for weeks, months, even for years. Or a
+dozen times in the same day he might be flung into a dozen different
+epochs of history. Or, still more distressing, his experience of
+past events might not keep pace with the actual rhythm of those
+events themselves. Thus he might behold the events of a month, or
+even a lifetime, fantastically accelerated so as to occupy a trance
+of no more than a day’s duration. Or, worse, he might find himself
+sliding backwards down the vista of the hours and experiencing
+events in an order the reverse of the natural order. Even the
+magnificent brains of the Fifth Men could not stand this. The
+result was maniacal behaviour, followed by death. Another
+trouble also beset these first experimenters. Supra-temporal
+experience proved to be like a dangerous and habit-forming drug.
+Those who ventured into the past might become so intoxicated
+that they would try to spend every moment of their natural lives
+in roaming among past events. Thus gradually they would lose
+touch with the present, live in absentminded brooding, fail to
+react normally to their environment, turn socially worthless, and
+often come actually to physical disaster through inability to look
+after themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Many more thousands of years passed before these difficulties
+and dangers were overcome. At length, however, the technique
+of supra-temporal experience was so perfected that every individual
+could at will practise it with safety, and could, within
+limits, project his vision into any locality of space-time which
+he desired to inspect. It was only possible, however, to see past
+events through the mind of some past organism, no longer living.
+And in practice only human minds, and to some extent the minds
+of the higher mammals, could be entered. The explorer retained
+throughout his adventure his own personality and system of
+memory. While experiencing the past individual’s perceptions,
+memories, thoughts, desires, and in fact the whole process and
+content of the past mind, the explorer continued to be himself,
+and to react in terms of his own character, now condemning, now
+sympathizing, now critically enjoying the spectacle.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The task of explaining the mechanism of this new faculty
+occupied the scientists and philosophers of the species for a very
+long period. The final account, of course, cannot be presented
+save by parable; for it was found necessary to recast many fundamental
+concepts in order to interpret the facts coherently. The
+only hint that I can give of the explanation is in saying, metaphorically
+of course, that the living brain had access to the past, not by
+way of some mysterious kind of racial memory, nor by some
+equally impossible journey up the stream of time, but by a partial
+awakening, as it were, into eternity, and into inspection of a
+minute tract of space-time through some temporal mind in the
+past, as though through an optical instrument. In the early
+experiments the fantastic speeding, slowing, and reversal of the
+temporal process resulted from disorderly inspection. As a
+reader may either skim the pages of a book, or read at a comfortable
+pace, or dwell upon one word, or spell the sentence backwards,
+so, unintentionally, the novice in eternity might read or
+misread the mind that was presented to him.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This new mode of experience, it should be noted, was the
+activity of living brains, though brains of a novel kind. Hence
+what was to be discovered ‘through the medium of eternity’ was
+limited by the particular exploring brain’s capacity of understanding
+what was presented to it. And, further, though the actual
+supra-temporal contact with past events occupied no time in the
+brain’s natural life, the assimilating of that moment of vision, the
+reduction of it to normal temporal memory in the normal brain
+structures, took time, and had to be done during the period of
+the trance. To expect the neural structure to record the experience
+instantaneously would be to expect a complicated machine to
+effect a complicated readjustment without a process of readjusting.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The new access to the past had, of course, far-reaching effects
+upon the culture of the Fifth Men. Not only did it give them an
+incomparably more accurate knowledge of past events, and insight
+into the motives of historical personages, and into large-scale
+cultural movements, but also it effected a subtle change in
+their estimate of the importance of things. Though intellectually
+they had, of course, realized both the vastness and the richness of
+the past, now they realized it with an overwhelming vividness.
+Matters that had been known hitherto only historically, schematically,
+were now available to be lived through by intimate
+acquaintance. The only limit to such acquaintance was set by
+the limitations of the explorer’s own brain-capacity. Consequently
+the remote past came to enter into a man and shape his
+mind in a manner in which only the recent past, through memory,
+had shaped him hitherto. Even before the new kind of experience
+was first acquired, this race had been, as was said, peculiarly
+under the spell of the past; but now it was infinitely more so.
+Hitherto the Fifth Men had been like stay-at-home folk who had
+read minutely of foreign parts, but had never travelled; now they
+had become travellers experienced in all the continents of human
+time. The presences that had hitherto been ghostly were now
+presences of flesh and blood seen in broad daylight. And so the
+moving instant called the present appeared no longer as the only,
+and infinitesimal, real, but as the growing surface of an everlasting
+tree of existence. It was now the past that seemed most
+real, while the future still seemed void, and the present merely
+the impalpable becomingness of the indestructible past.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The discovery that past events were after all persistent, and
+accessible, was of course for the Fifth Men a source of deep joy;
+but also it caused them a new distress. While the past was thought
+of as a mere gulf of non-existence, the inconceivably great pain,
+misery, baseness, that had fallen into that gulf, could be dismissed
+as done with; and the will could be concentrated wholly on preventing
+such horrors from occurring in the future. But now, along
+with past joy, past distress was found to be everlasting. And
+those who, in the course of their voyaging in the past, encountered
+regions of eternal agony, came back distraught. It was easy
+to remind these harrowed explorers that if pain was eternal, so
+also was joy. Those who had endured travel in the tragic past were
+apt to dismiss such assurances with contempt, affirming that all
+the delights of the whole population of time could not compensate
+for the agony of one tortured individual. And anyhow, they
+declared, it was obvious that there had been no preponderance of
+joy over pain. Indeed, save in the modern age, pain had been
+overwhelmingly in excess.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>So seriously did these convictions prey upon the minds of the
+Fifth Men, that in spite of their own almost perfect social order,
+in which suffering had actually to be sought out as a tonic, they
+fell into despair. At all times, in all pursuits, the presence of the
+tragic past haunted them, poisoning their lives, sapping their
+strength. Lovers were ashamed of the delight in one another. As
+in the far-off days of sexual taboo, guilt crept between them, and
+held their spirits apart even while their bodies were united.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch12-3'>3. VOYAGING IN SPACE</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>It was while they were struggling in the grip of this vast social
+melancholy, and anxiously craving some new vision by which to
+reinterpret or transcend the agony of the past, that the Fifth Men
+were confronted with a most unexpected physical crisis. It was
+discovered that something queer was happening to the moon; in
+fact, that the orbit of the satellite was narrowing in upon the
+earth in a manner contrary to all the calculations of the scientists.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Fifth Men had long ago fashioned for themselves an all-embracing
+and minutely coherent system of natural sciences,
+every factor in which had been put to the test a thousand times
+and had never been shaken. Imagine, then, their bewilderment at
+this extraordinary discovery. In ages when science was still fragmentary,
+a subversive discovery entailed merely a reorganization
+of some one department of science; but by now, such was the
+coherence of knowledge, that any minute discrepancy of fact and
+theory must throw man into a state of complete intellectual
+vertigo.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The evolution of the lunar orbit had, of course, been studied
+from time immemorial. Even the First Men had learned that the
+moon must first withdraw from and subsequently once more
+approach the earth, till it should reach a critical proximity and
+begin to break up into a swarm of fragments like the rings of
+Saturn. This view had been very thoroughly confirmed by the
+Fifth Men themselves. The satellite should have continued to
+withdraw for yet many hundreds of millions of years; but in fact
+it was now observed that not only had the withdrawal ceased, but
+a comparatively rapid approach had begun.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Observations and calculations were repeated, and ingenious
+theoretical explanations were suggested; but the truth remained
+completely hidden. It was left to a future and more brilliant species
+to discover the connexion between a planet’s gravitation and its
+cultural development. Meanwhile, the Fifth Men knew only that
+the distance between the earth and the moon was becoming
+smaller with ever-increasing rapidity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This discovery was a tonic to a melancholy race. Men turned
+from the tragic past to the bewildering present and the uncertain
+future.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For it was evident that, if the present acceleration of approach
+were to be maintained, the moon would enter the critical zone and
+disintegrate in less than ten million years; and, further, that the
+fragments would not maintain themselves as a ring, but would
+soon crash upon the earth. Heat generated by their impact would
+make the surface of the earth impossible as the home of life. A
+short-lived and short-sighted species might well have considered
+ten million years as equivalent to eternity. Not so the Fifth Men.
+Thinking primarily in terms of the race, they recognized at once
+that their whole social policy must now be dominated by this
+future catastrophe. Some there were indeed who at first refused to
+take the matter seriously, saying that there was no reason to
+believe that the moon’s odd behaviour would continue indefinitely.
+But as the years advanced, this view became increasingly
+improbable. Some of those who had spent much of their lives in
+exploration of the past now sought to explore the future also,
+hoping to prove that human civilization would always be discoverable
+on the earth in no matter how remote a future. But the
+attempt to unveil the future by direct inspection failed completely.
+It was surmised, erroneously, that future events, unlike past
+events, must be strictly non-existent until their creation by the
+advancing present.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Clearly humanity must leave its native planet. Research was
+therefore concentrated on the possibility of flight through empty
+space, and the suitability of neighbouring worlds. The only
+alternatives were Mars and Venus. The former was by now without
+water and without atmosphere. The latter had a dense moist
+atmosphere, but one which lacked oxygen. The surface of Venus,
+moreover, was known to be almost completely covered with a
+shallow ocean. Further the planet was so hot by day that, even
+at the poles, man in his present state would scarcely survive.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It did not take the Fifth Men many centuries to devise a
+tolerable means of voyaging in interplanetary space. Immense
+rockets were constructed, the motive power of which was derived
+from the annihilation of matter. The vehicle was propelled simply
+by the terrific pressure of radiation thus produced. ‘Fuel’ for a
+voyage of many months, or even years, could, of course, easily be
+carried, since the annihilation of a minute amount of matter
+produced a vast wealth of energy. Moreover, when once the
+vessel had emerged from the earth’s atmosphere, and had attained
+full speed, she would, of course, maintain it without the use of
+power from the rocket apparatus. The task of rendering the
+‘ether-ship’ properly manageable and decently habitable proved
+difficult, but not insurmountable. The first vessel to take the ether
+was a cigar-shaped hull some three thousand feet long, and
+built of metals whose artificial atoms were incomparably more
+rigid than anything hitherto known. Batteries of ‘rocket’ apparatus
+at various points on the hull enabled the ship not only to travel
+forward, but to reverse, turn in any direction, or side-step.
+Windows of an artificial transparent element, scarcely less strong
+than the metal of the hull, enabled the voyagers to look around
+them. Within there was ample accommodation for a hundred
+persons and their provisions for three years. Air for the same
+period was manufactured in transit from protons and electrons
+stored under pressure comparable to that in the interior of a star.
+Heat was, of course, provided by the annihilation of matter.
+Powerful refrigeration would permit the vessel to approach the
+sun almost to the orbit of Mercury. An ‘artificial gravity’ system,
+based on the properties of the electro-magnetic field, could be
+turned on and regulated at will, so as to maintain a more or less
+normal environment for the human organism.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This pioneer ship was manned with a navigating crew and a
+company of scientists, and was successfully dispatched upon a
+trial trip. The intention was to approach close to the surface of
+the moon, possibly to circumnavigate it at an altitude of ten
+thousand feet, and to return without landing. For many days
+those on earth received radio messages from the vessel’s powerful
+installation, reporting that all was going well. But suddenly the
+messages ceased, and no more was ever heard of the vessel.
+Almost at the moment of the last message, telescopes had revealed
+a sudden flash of light at a point on the vessel’s course. It was
+therefore surmised that she had collided with a meteor and fused
+with the heat of the impact.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Other vessels were built and dispatched on trial voyages. Many
+failed to return. Some got out of control, and reported that they
+were heading for outer space or plunging towards the sun, their
+hopeless messages continuing until the last of the crew succumbed
+to suffocation. Other vessels returned successfully, but with
+crews haggard and distraught from long confinement in bad
+atmosphere. One, venturing to land on the moon, broke her back,
+so that the air rushed out of her, and her people died. After
+her last message was received, she was detected from the earth,
+as an added speck on the stippled surface of a lunar ‘sea’.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As time passed, however, accidents became rarer; indeed, so
+rare that trips in the void began to be a popular form of amusement.
+Literature of the period reverberates with the novelty of
+such experiences, with the sense that man had at last learned true
+flight, and acquired the freedom of the solar system. Writers
+dwelt upon the shock of seeing, as the vessel soared and accelerated,
+the landscape dwindle to a mere illuminated disc or
+crescent, surrounded by constellations. They remarked also the
+awful remoteness and mystery which travellers experienced on
+these early voyages, with dazzling sunlight on one side of the
+vessel and dazzlingly bespangled night on the other. They described
+how the intense sun spread his corona against a black and
+star-crowded sky. They expatiated also on the overwhelming
+interest of approaching another planet; of inspecting from the
+sky the still visible remains of Martian civilization; of groping
+through the cloud banks of Venus to discover islands in her
+almost coastless ocean; of daring an approach to Mercury, till
+the heat became insupportable in spite of the best refrigerating
+mechanism; of feeling a way across the belt of the asteroids and
+onwards toward Jupiter, till shortage of air and provisions forced
+a return.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But though the mere navigation of space was thus easily
+accomplished, the major task was still untouched. It was necessary
+either to remake man’s nature to suit another planet, or to
+modify conditions upon another planet to suit man’s nature. The
+former alternative was repugnant to the Fifth Men. Obviously it
+would entail an almost complete refashioning of the human
+organism. No existing individual could possibly be so altered as
+to live in the present conditions of Mars or Venus. And it would
+probably prove impossible to create a new being, adapted to
+these conditions, without sacrificing the brilliant and harmonious
+constitution of the extant species.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>On the other hand, Mars could not be made habitable without
+first being stocked, with air and water; and such an undertaking
+seemed impossible. There was nothing for it, then, but to attack
+Venus. The polar surfaces of that planet, shielded by impenetrable
+depths of cloud, proved after all not unendurably hot.
+Subsequent generations might perhaps be modified so as to
+withstand even the sub-arctic and ‘temperate’ climates. Oxygen
+was plentiful, but it was all tied up in chemical combination.
+Inevitably so, since oxygen combines very readily, and on Venus
+there was no vegetable life to exhale the free gas and replenish
+the ever-vanishing supply. It was necessary, then, to equip Venus
+with an appropriate vegetation, which in the course of ages
+should render the planet’s atmosphere hospitable to man. The
+chemical and physical conditions on Venus had therefore to be
+studied in great detail, so that it might be possible to design a
+kind of life which would have a chance of flourishing. This
+research had to be carried out from within the ether-ships, or
+with gas helmets, since no human being could live in the natural
+atmosphere of the planet.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We must not dwell upon the age of heroic research and adventure
+which now began. Observations of the lunar orbit were
+showing that ten million years was too long an estimate of the
+future habitability of the earth; and it was soon realized that
+Venus could not be made ready soon enough unless some more
+rapid change was set on foot. It was therefore decided to split up
+some of the ocean of the planet into hydrogen and oxygen by a
+vast process of electrolysis. This would have been a more difficult
+task, had not the ocean been relatively free from salt, owing to
+the fact that there was so little dry land to be denuded of salts by
+rain and river. The oxygen thus formed by electrolysis would be
+allowed to mix with the atmosphere. The hydrogen had to be
+got rid of somehow, and an ingenious method was devised by
+which it should be ejected beyond the limits of the atmosphere at
+so great a speed that it would never return. Once sufficient free
+oxygen had been produced, the new vegetation would replenish
+the loss due to oxidation. This work was duly set on foot. Great
+automatic electrolysing stations were founded on several of the
+islands; and biological research produced at length a whole flora
+of specialized vegetable types to cover the land surface of the
+planet. It was hoped that in less than a million years Venus would
+be fit to receive the human race, and the race fit to live on Venus.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile a careful survey of the planet had been undertaken.
+Its land surface, scarcely more than a thousandth that of the
+earth, consisted of an unevenly distributed archipelago of
+mountainous islands. The planet had evidently not long ago
+been through a mountain-forming era, for soundings proved its
+whole surface to be extravagantly corrugated. The ocean was
+subject to terrific storms and currents; for since the planet took
+several weeks to rotate, there was a great difference of temperature
+and atmospheric pressure between the almost Arctic hemisphere
+of night and the sweltering hemisphere of day. So great
+was the evaporation, that open sky was almost never visible
+from any part of the planet’s surface; and indeed the average daytime
+weather was a succession of thick fogs and fantastic thunderstorms.
+Rain in the evening was a continuous torrent. Yet before
+night was over the waves clattered with fragments of ice.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Man looked upon his future home with loathing, and on his
+birthplace with an affection which became passionate. With its
+blue sky, its incomparable starry nights, its temperate and varied
+continents, its ample spaces of agriculture, wilderness, and park,
+its well-known beasts and plants, and all the material fabric of
+the most enduring of terrestrial civilizations, it seemed to the men
+and women who were planning flight almost a living thing imploring
+them not to desert it. They looked often with hate at the
+quiet moon, now visibly larger than the moon of history. They
+revised again and again their astronomical and physical theories,
+hoping for some flaw which should render the moon’s observed
+behaviour less mysterious, less terrifying. But they found nothing.
+It was as though a fiend out of some ancient myth had come to
+life in the modern world, to interfere with the laws of nature for
+man’s undoing.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch12-4'>4. PREPARING A NEW WORLD</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>Another trouble now occurred. Several electrolysis stations on
+Venus were wrecked, apparently by submarine eruption. Also,
+a number of ether-ships, engaged in surveying the ocean,
+mysteriously exploded. The explanation was found when one of
+these vessels, though damaged, was able to return to the earth.
+The commander reported that, when the sounding line was drawn
+up, a large spherical object was seen to be attached to it. Closer
+inspection showed that this object was fastened to the sounding
+apparatus by a hook, and was indeed unmistakably artificial, a
+structure of small metal plates riveted together. While preparations
+were being made to bring the object within the ship, it
+happened to bump against the hull, and then it exploded.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Evidently there must be intelligent life somewhere in the ocean
+of Venus. Evidently the marine Venerians resented the steady
+depletion of their aqueous world, and were determined to stop it.
+The terrestrials had assumed that water in which no free oxygen
+was dissolved could not support life. But observation soon
+revealed that in this world-wide ocean there were many living
+species, some sessile, others free-swimming, some microscopic,
+others as large as whales. The basis of life in these creatures lay
+not in photosynthesis and chemical combination, but in the
+controlled disintegration of radio-active atoms. Venus was
+particularly rich in these atoms, and still contained certain elements
+which had long ago ceased to exist on the earth. The
+oceanic fauna subsisted in the destruction of minute quantities
+of radio-active atoms throughout its tissues.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Several of the Venerian species had attained considerable
+mastery over their physical environment, and were able to destroy
+one another very competently with various mechanical contrivances.
+Many types were indeed definitely intelligent and versatile
+within certain limits. And of these intelligent types, one had come
+to dominate all the others by virtue of its superior intelligence,
+and had constructed a genuine civilization on the basis of radio-active
+power. These most developed of all the Venerian creatures
+were beings of about the size and shape of a swordfish. They had
+three manipulative organs, normally sheathed within the long
+‘sword’, but capable of extension beyond its point, as three
+branched muscular tentacles. They swam with a curious screw-like
+motion of their bodies and triple tails. Three fins enabled
+them to steer. They had also organs of phosphorescence, vision,
+touch, and something analogous to hearing. They appeared to
+reproduce asexually, laying eggs in the ooze of the ocean bed.
+They had no need of nutrition in the ordinary sense; but in
+infancy they seemed to gather enough radio-active matter to keep
+them alive for many years. Each individual, when his stock was
+running out and he began to be feeble, was either destroyed by his
+juniors or buried in a radio-active mine, to rise from this living
+death in a few months completely rejuvenated.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At the bottom of the Venerian ocean these creatures thronged
+in cities of proliferated coral-like buildings, equipped with many
+complex articles, which must have constituted the necessities and
+luxuries of their civilization. So much was ascertained by the
+Terrestrials in the course of their submarine exploration. But
+the mental life of the Venerians remained hidden. It was clear,
+indeed, that like all living things, they were concerned with self-maintenance
+and the exercise of their capacities; but of the nature
+of these capacities little was discoverable. Clearly they used some
+kind of symbolic language, based on mechanical vibrations set up
+in the water by the snapping claws of their tentacles. But their
+more complex activities were quite unintelligible. All that could
+be recorded with certainty was that they were much addicted to
+warfare, even to warfare between groups of one species; and that
+even in the stress of military disaster they maintained a feverish
+production of material articles of all sorts, which they proceeded
+to destroy and neglect.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>One activity was observed which was peculiarly mysterious. At
+certain seasons three individuals, suddenly developing unusual
+luminosity, would approach one another with rhythmic swayings
+and tremors, and would then rise on their tails and press their
+bodies together. Sometimes at this stage an excited crowd would
+collect, whirling around the three like driven snow. The chief
+performers would now furiously tear one another to pieces with
+their crab-like pincers, till nothing was left but tangled shreds of
+flesh, the great swords, and the still twitching claws. The Terrestrials,
+observing these matters with difficulty, at first suspected
+some kind of sexual intercourse; but no reproduction was ever
+traced to this source. Possibly the behaviour had once served a
+biological end, and had now become a useless ritual. Possibly it
+was a kind of voluntary religious sacrifice. More probably it was
+of a quite different nature, unintelligible to the human mind.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As man’s activities on Venus became more extensive, the
+Venerians became more energetic in seeking to destroy him.
+They could not come out of the ocean to grapple with him, for
+they were deep-sea organisms. Deprived of oceanic pressure, they
+would have burst. But they contrived to hurl high explosives into
+the centres of the islands, or to undermine them from tunnels.
+The work of electrolysis was thus very seriously hampered. And
+as all efforts to parley with the Venerians failed completely, it was
+impossible to effect a compromise. The Fifth Men were thus
+faced with a grave moral problem. What right had man to interfere
+in a world already possessed by beings who were obviously
+intelligent, even though their mental life was incomprehensible
+to man? Long ago man himself had suffered at the hands of
+Martian invaders, who doubtless regarded themselves as more
+noble than the human race. And now man was committing a
+similar crime. On the other hand, either the migration to Venus
+must go forward, or humanity must be destroyed; for it seemed
+quite certain by now that the moon would fall, and at no very
+distant date. And though man’s understanding of the Venerians
+was so incomplete, what he did know of them strongly suggested
+that they were definitely inferior to himself in mental range. This
+judgement might, of course, be mistaken; the Venerians might
+after all be so superior to man that man could not get an inkling
+of their superiority. But this argument would apply equally to
+jelly-fish and micro-organisms. Judgement had to be passed
+according to the evidence available. So far as man could judge at
+all in the matter, he was definitely the higher type.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There was another fact to be taken into account. The life of
+the Venerian organism depended on the existence of radio-active
+atoms. Since those atoms are subject to disintegration, they must
+become rarer. Venus was far better supplied than the earth in this
+respect, but there must inevitably come a time when there would
+be no more radio-active matter in Venus. Now submarine research
+showed that the Venerian fauna had once been much more
+extensive, and that the increasing difficulty of procuring radio-active
+matter was already the great limiting factor of civilization.
+Thus the Venerians were doomed, and man would merely hasten
+their destruction.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was hoped, of course, that in colonizing Venus mankind
+would be able to accommodate itself without seriously interfering
+with the native population. But this proved impossible for two
+reasons. In the first place, the natives seemed determined to destroy
+the invader even if they should destroy themselves in the
+process. Titanic explosions were engineered, which caused the
+invaders serious damage, but also strewed the ocean surface with
+thousands of dead Venerians. Secondly, it was found that, as
+electrolysis poured more and more free oxygen into the atmosphere,
+the ocean absorbed some of the potent element back into
+itself by solution; and this dissolved oxygen had a disastrous
+effect upon the oceanic organisms. Their tissues began to oxidize.
+They were burnt up, internally and externally, by a slow fire. Man
+dared not stop the process of electrolysis until the atmosphere had
+become as rich in oxygen as his native air. Long before this state
+was reached, it was already clear that the Venerians were beginning
+to feel the effects of the poison, and that in a few thousand
+years, at most, they would be exterminated. It was therefore
+determined to put them out of their misery as quickly as possible.
+Men could by now walk abroad on the islands of Venus, and
+indeed the first settlements were already being founded. They
+were thus able to build a fleet of powerful submarine vessels to
+scour the ocean and destroy the whole native fauna.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This vast slaughter influenced the mind of the fifth human
+species in two opposite directions, now flinging it into despair,
+now rousing it to grave elation. For on the one hand the horror
+of the slaughter produced a haunting guiltiness in all men’s minds,
+an unreasoning disgust with humanity for having been driven to
+murder in order to save itself. And this guiltiness combined with
+the purely intellectual loss of self-confidence which had been produced
+by the failure of science to account for the moon’s approach.
+It reawakened, also, that other quite irrational sense of
+guilt which had been bred of sympathy with the everlasting distress
+of the past. Together, these three influences tended toward
+racial neurosis.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>On the other hand a very different mood sometimes sprang
+from the same three sources. After all, the failure of science was a
+challenge to be gladly accepted; it opened up a wealth of possibilities
+hitherto unimagined. Even the unalterable distress of the
+past constituted a challenge; for in some strange manner the
+present and future, it was said, must transfigure the past. As for
+the murder of Venerian life, it was, indeed, terrible, but right. It
+had been committed without hate; indeed, rather in love. For as
+the navy proceeded with its relentless work, it had gathered much
+insight into the life of the natives, and had learned to admire, even
+in a sense to love, while it killed. This mood, of inexorable yet
+not ruthless will, intensified the spiritual sensibility of the species,
+refined, so to speak, its spiritual hearing, and revealed to it tones
+and themes in the universal music which were hitherto obscure.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Which of these two moods, despair or courage, would triumph?
+All depended on the skill of the species to maintain a high degree
+of vitality in untoward circumstances.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Man now busied himself in preparing his new home. Many
+kinds of plant life, derived from the terrestrial stock, but bred
+for the Venerian environment, now began to swarm on the
+islands and in the sea. For so restricted was the land surface,
+that great areas of ocean had to be given over to specially
+designed marine plants, which now formed immense floating
+continents of vegetable matter. On the least torrid islands
+appeared habitable pylons, forming an architectural forest, with
+vegetation on every acre of free ground. Even so, it would be
+impossible for Venus ever to support the huge population of the
+earth. Steps had therefore been taken to ensure that the birth-rate
+should fall far short of the death-rate; so that, when the time
+should come, the race might emigrate without leaving any living
+members behind. No more than a hundred million, it was
+reckoned, could live tolerably on Venus. The population had
+therefore to be reduced to a hundredth of its former size. And
+since, in the terrestrial community, with its vast social and cultural
+activity, every individual had fulfilled some definite function in
+society, it was obvious that the new community must be not
+merely small but mentally impoverished. Hitherto, each individual
+had been enriched by intercourse with a far more intricate
+and diverse social environment that would be possible on Venus.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Such was the prospect when at length it was judged advisable
+to leave the earth to its fate. The moon was now so huge that it
+periodically turned day into night, and night into a ghastly day.
+Prodigious tides and distressful weather conditions had already
+spoilt the amenities of the earth, and done great damage to the
+fabric of civilization. And so at length humanity reluctantly
+took flight. Some centuries passed before the migration was
+completed, before Venus had received, not only the whole
+remaining human population, but also representatives of many
+other species of organisms, and all the most precious treasure of
+man’s culture.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>XIII</span> <span class='it'>Humanity on Venus</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch13-1'>1. TAKING ROOT AGAIN</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">Man’s</span> sojourn on Venus lasted somewhat longer than his whole
+career on the Earth. From the days of Pithecanthropus to the
+final evacuation of his native planet he passed, as we have seen,
+through a bewildering diversity of form and circumstance. On
+Venus, though the human type was somewhat more constant
+biologically, it was scarcely less variegated in culture.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>To give an account of this period, even on the minute scale that
+has been adopted hitherto, would entail another volume. I can
+only sketch its bare outline. The sapling, humanity, transplanted
+into foreign soil, withers at first almost to the root, slowly readjusts
+itself, grows into strength and a certain permanence of
+form, burgeons, season by season, with leaf and flower of many
+successive civilizations and cultures, sleeps winter by winter,
+through many ages of reduced vitality, but at length (to force the
+metaphor), avoids this recurrent defeat by attaining an evergreen
+constitution and a continuous efflorescence. Then once more,
+through the whim of Fate, it is plucked up by the roots and cast
+upon another world.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The first human settlers on Venus knew well that life would be
+a sorry business. They had done their best to alter the planet to
+suit human nature, but they could not make Venus into another
+Earth. The land surface was minute. The climate was almost unendurable.
+The extreme difference of temperature between the
+protracted day and night produced incredible storms, rain like a
+thousand contiguous waterfalls, terrifying electrical disturbances,
+and fogs in which a man could not see his own feet. To make
+matters worse, the oxygen supply was as yet barely enough to
+render the air breathable. Worse still, the liberated hydrogen was
+not always successfully ejected from the atmosphere. It would
+sometimes mingle with the air to form an explosive mixture, and
+sooner or later there would occur a vast atmospheric flash.
+Recurrent disasters of this sort destroyed the architecture and
+the human inhabitants of many islands, and further reduced the
+oxygen supply. In time, however, the increasing vegetation
+made it possible to put an end to the dangerous process of
+electrolysis.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile, these atmospheric explosions crippled the race so
+seriously that it was unable to cope with a more mysterious trouble
+which beset it some time after the migration. A new and inexplicable
+decay of the digestive organs, which first occurred as a rare
+disease, threatened within a few centuries to destroy mankind.
+The physical effects of this plague were scarcely more disastrous
+than the psychological effects of the complete failure to master it;
+for, what with the mystery of the moon’s vagaries and the deep-seated,
+unreasoning sense of guilt produced by the extermination
+of the Venerians, man’s self-confidence was already seriously
+shaken, and his highly organized mentality began to show symptoms
+of derangement. The new plague was, indeed, finally traced
+to something in the Venerian water, and was supposed to be due
+to certain molecular groupings, formerly rare, but subsequently
+fostered by the presence of terrestrial organic matter in the ocean.
+No cure was discovered.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>And now another plague seized upon the enfeebled race.
+Human tissues had never perfectly assimilated the Martian units
+which were the means of ‘telepathic’ communication. The
+universal ill-health now favoured a kind of ‘cancer’ of the
+nervous system, which was due to the ungoverned proliferation
+of these units. The harrowing results of this disease may be left
+unmentioned. Century by century it increased; and even those
+who did not actually contract the sickness lived in constant terror
+of madness.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>These troubles were aggravated by the devastating heat. The
+hope that, as the generations passed, human nature would adapt
+itself even to the more sultry regions, seemed to be unfounded.
+Far otherwise, within a thousand years the once-populous arctic
+and antarctic islands were almost deserted. Out of each hundred
+of the great pylons, scarcely more than two were inhabited, and
+these only by a few plague-stricken and broken-spirited human
+relics. These alone were left to turn their telescopes upon the
+earth and watch the unexpectedly delayed bombardment of their
+native world by the fragments of the moon.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Population decreased still further. Each brief generation was
+slightly less well developed than its parents. Intelligence declined.
+Education became superficial and restricted. Contact with the
+past was no longer possible. Art lost its significance, and philosophy
+its dominion over the minds of men. Even applied science
+began to be too difficult. Unskilled control of the subatomic
+sources of power led to a number of disasters, which finally gave
+rise to a superstition that all ‘tampering with nature’ was wicked,
+and all the ancient wisdom a snare of Man’s Enemy. Books,
+instruments, all the treasures of human culture, were therefore
+burnt. Only the perdurable buildings resisted destruction. Of the
+incomparable world-order of the Fifth Men nothing was left but
+a few island tribes cut off from one another by the ocean, and
+from the rest of space-time by the depths of their own ignorance.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>After many thousands of years human nature did begin to
+adapt itself to the climate and to the poisoned water without
+which life was impossible. At the same time a new variety of the
+fifth species now began to appear, in which the Martian units
+were not included. Thus at last the race regained a certain mental
+stability, at the expense of its faculty of ‘telepathy’, which man
+was not to regain until almost the last phase of his career. Meanwhile,
+though he had recovered somewhat from the effects of an
+alien world, the glory that had been was no more. Let us therefore
+hurry through the ages that passed before noteworthy events
+again occurred.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In early days on Venus men had gathered their foodstuff from
+the great floating islands of vegetable matter which had been
+artificially produced before the migration. But as the oceans
+became populous with modifications of the terrestrial fauna, the
+human tribes turned more and more to fishing. Under the influence
+of its marine environment, one branch of the species assumed
+such an aquatic habit that in time it actually began to develop
+biological adaptations for marine life. It is perhaps surprising
+that man was still capable of spontaneous variation; but the fifth
+human species was artificial, and had always been prone to
+epidemics of mutation. After some millions of years of variation
+and selection there appeared a very successful species of seal-like
+submen. The whole body was moulded to stream-lines. The lung
+capacity was greatly developed. The spine had elongated, and
+increased in flexibility. The legs were shrunken, grown together,
+and flattened into a horizontal rudder. The arms also were diminutive
+and fin-like, though they still retained the manipulative forefinger
+and thumb. The head had sunk into the body and looked
+forward in the direction of swimming. Strong carnivorous teeth,
+emphatic gregariousness, and a new, almost human, cunning in
+the chase, combined, to make these seal-men lords of the ocean.
+And so they remained for many million years, until a more human
+race, annoyed at their piscatorial successes, harpooned them out
+of existence.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For another branch of the degenerated fifth species had retained
+a more terrestrial habit and the ancient human form. Sadly
+reduced in stature and in brain, these abject beings were so unlike
+the original invaders that they are rightly considered a new species,
+and may therefore be called the Sixth Men. Age after age they
+gained a precarious livelihood by grubbing roots upon the forest-clad
+islands, trapping the innumerable birds, and catching fish in
+the tidal inlets with ground bait. Not infrequently they devoured,
+or were devoured by, their seal-like relatives. So restricted and
+constant was the environment of these human remnants,
+that they remained biologically and culturally stagnant for some
+millions of years.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At length, however, geological events afforded man’s nature
+once more the opportunity of change. A mighty warping of the
+planet’s crust produced an island almost as large as Australia.
+In time this was peopled, and from the clash of tribes a new and
+versatile race emerged. Once more there was methodical tillage,
+craftsmanship, complex social organization, and adventure in
+the realm of thought.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>During the next two hundred million years all the main phases
+of man’s life on earth were many times repeated on Venus with
+characteristic differences. Theocratic empires; free and intellectualistic
+island cities; insecure overlordships of feudal archipelagos;
+rivalries of high priest and emperor; religious feuds over
+the interpretation of sacred scriptures; recurrent fluctuations of
+thought from naïve animism, through polytheism, conflicting
+monotheisms, and all the desperate ‘isms’ by which mind seeks
+to blur the severe outline of truth; recurrent fashions of comfort-seeking
+fantasy and cold intelligence; social disorders through the
+misuse of volcanic or wind-power in industry; business empires
+and pseudo-communistic empires—all these forms flitted over
+the changing substance of mankind again and again, as in an
+enduring hearth-fire there appear and vanish the infinitely diverse
+forms of flame and smoke. But all the while the brief spirits, in
+whose massed configurations these forms inhered, were intent
+chiefly on the primitive needs of food, shelter, companionship,
+crowd-lust, love-making, the two-edged relationship of parent
+and child, the exercise of muscle and intelligence in facile sport.
+Very seldom, only in rare moments of clarity, only after ages of
+misapprehension, did a few of them, here and there, now and
+again, begin to have the deeper insight into the world’s nature
+and man’s. And no sooner had this precious insight begun to
+propagate itself, than it would be blotted out by some small or
+great disaster, by epidemic disease, by the spontaneous disruption
+of society, by an access of racial imbecility, by a prolonged
+bombardment of meteorites, or by the mere cowardice and
+vertigo that dared not look down the precipice of the fact.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch13-2'>2. THE FLYING MEN</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>We need not dwell upon these multitudinous reiterations of
+culture, but must glance for a moment at the last phase of this
+sixth human species, so that we may pass on to the artificial
+species which it produced.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Throughout their career the Sixth Men had often been fascinated
+by the idea of flight. The bird was again and again their most
+sacred symbol. Their monotheism was apt to be worship not of a
+god-man, but of a god-bird, conceived now as the divine sea
+eagle, winged with power, now as the giant swift, winged with
+mercy, now as a disembodied spirit of air, and once as the bird-god
+that became man to endow the human race with flight,
+physical and spiritual.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was inevitable that flight should obsess man on Venus, for
+the planet afforded but a cramping home for groundlings; and
+the riotous efflorescence of avian species shamed man’s pedestrian
+habit. When in due course the Sixth Men attained knowledge and
+power comparable to that of the First Men at their height, they
+invented flying machines of various types. Many times, indeed,
+mechanical flight was rediscovered and lost again with the downfall
+of civilization. But at its best it was regarded only as a makeshift.
+And when at length, with the advance of the biological
+sciences, the Sixth Men were in a position to influence the human
+organism itself, they determined to produce a true flying man.
+Many civilizations strove vainly for this result, sometimes half-heartedly,
+sometimes with religious earnestness. Finally the most
+enduring and brilliant of all the civilizations of the Sixth Men
+actually attained the goal.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Seventh Men were pigmies, scarcely heavier than the
+largest of terrestrial flying birds. Through and through they
+were organized for flight. A leathery membrane spread from
+the foot to the tip of the immensely elongated and strengthened
+‘middle finger’. The three ‘outer’ fingers, equally elongated,
+served as ribs to the membrane; while the index, and thumb
+remained free for manipulation. The body assumed the stream-lines
+of a bird, and was covered with a deep quilt of feathery
+wool. This, and the silken down of the flight-membranes, varied
+greatly from individual to individual in colouring and texture.
+On the ground the Seventh Men walked much as other human
+beings, for the flight-membranes were folded close to the legs and
+body, and hung from the arms like exaggerated sleeves. In flight
+the legs were held extended as a flattened tail, with the feet
+locked together by the big toes. The breastbone was greatly
+developed as a keel, and as a base for the muscles of flight.
+The other bones were hollow, for lightness, and their internal
+surfaces were utilized as supplementary lungs. For, like the
+birds, these flying men had to maintain a high rate of oxidation.
+A state which others would regard as fever was normal to
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Their brains were given ample tracts for the organization of
+prowess in flight. In fact, it was found possible to equip the
+species with a system of reflexes for aerial balance, and a true,
+though artificial, instinctive aptitude for flight, and interest in
+flight. Compared with their makers their brain volume was of
+necessity small, but their whole neural system was very carefully
+organized. Also it matured rapidly, and was extremely facile in
+the acquirement of new modes of activity. This was very desirable;
+for the individual’s natural life period was but fifty years,
+and in most cases it was deliberately cut short by some impossible
+feat at about forty, or whenever the symptoms of old age
+began to be felt.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of all human species these bat-like Flying Men, the Seventh
+Men, were probably the most carefree. Gifted with harmonious
+physique and gay temperament, they came into a social heritage
+well adapted to their nature. There was no occasion for them,
+as there had often been for some others, to regard the world as
+fundamentally hostile to life, or themselves as essentially deformed.
+Of quick intelligence in respect of daily personal affairs and social
+organization, they were untroubled by the insatiable lust
+of understanding. Not that they were an unintellectual race, for
+they soon formulated a beautifully systematic account of experience.
+They clearly perceived, however, that the perfect sphere of
+their thought was but a bubble adrift in chaos. Yet it was an
+elegant bubble. And the system was true, in its own gay and
+frankly insincere manner, true as significant metaphor, not literally
+true. What more, it was asked, could be expected of human
+intellect? Adolescents were encouraged to study the ancient problems
+of philosophy, for no reason but to convince themselves of
+the futility of probing beyond the limits of the orthodox system.
+‘Prick the bubble of thought at any point’, it was said, ‘and you
+shatter the whole of it. And since thought is one of the necessities
+of human life, it must be preserved.’</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Natural science was taken over from the earlier species with
+half-contemptuous gratitude, as a necessary means of sane
+adjustment to the environment. Its practical applications were
+valued as the ground of the social order; but as the millennia
+advanced, and society approached that remarkable perfection
+and stability which was to endure for many million years, scientific
+inventiveness became less and less needful, and science itself
+was relegated to the infant schools. History also was given in outline
+during childhood, and subsequently ignored.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This curiously sincere intellectual insincerity was due to the
+fact that the Seventh Men were chiefly concerned with matters
+other than abstract thought. It is difficult to give to members of
+the first human species an inkling of the great preoccupation of
+these Flying Men. To say that it was flight would be true, yet
+far less than the truth. To say that they sought to live dangerously
+and vividly, to crowd as much experience as possible into each
+moment, would again be a caricature of the truth. On the physical
+plane, indeed, ‘the universe of flight’, with all the variety of peril
+and skill afforded by a tempestuous atmosphere, was every
+individual’s chief medium of self-expression. Yet it was not
+flight itself, but the spiritual aspect of flight which obsessed the
+species.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the air and on the ground the Seventh Men were different
+beings. Whenever they exercised themselves in flight they suffered
+a remarkable change of spirit. Much of their time had to be spent
+on the ground, since most of the work upon which civilization
+rested was impossible in the air. Moreover, life in the air was life
+at high pressure, and necessitated spells of recuperation on the
+ground. In their pedestrian phase the Seventh Men were sober
+folk, mildly bored, yet in the main cheerful, humorously impatient
+of the drabness and irk of pedestrian affairs, but ever supported
+by memory and anticipation of the vivid life of the air. Often
+they were tired, after the strain of that other life, but seldom were
+they despondent or lazy. Indeed, in the routine of agriculture and
+industry they were industrious as the wingless ants. Yet they
+worked in a strange mood of attentive absent-mindedness; for
+their hearts were ever in the air. So long as they could have
+frequent periods of aviation, they remained bland even on the
+ground. But if for any reason such as illness they were confined
+to the ground for a long period, they pined, developed acute
+melancholia, and died. Their makers had so contrived them that
+with the onset of any very great pain or misery their hearts
+should stop. Thus they were to avoid all serious distress. But, in
+fact, this merciful device worked only on the ground. In the air
+they assumed a very different and more heroic nature, which their
+makers had not foreseen, though indeed it was a natural consequence
+of their design.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the air the flying man’s heart beat more powerfully. His
+temperature rose. His sensation became more vivid and more
+discriminate, his intelligence more agile and penetrating. He
+experienced a more intense pleasure or pain in all that happened
+to him. It would not be true to say that he became more emotional;
+rather the reverse, if by emotionality is meant enslavement
+to the emotions. For the most remarkable feature of the aerial
+phase was that this enhanced power of appreciation was dispassionate.
+So long as the individual was in the air, whether in
+lonely struggle with the storm, or in the ceremonial ballet with
+sky-darkening hosts of his fellows; whether in the ecstatic love
+dance with a sexual partner, or in solitary and meditative circlings
+far above the world; whether his enterprise was fortunate, or he
+found himself dismembered by the hurricane, and crashing to
+death; always the gay and the tragic fortunes of his own person
+were regarded equally with detached aesthetic delight. Even when
+his dearest companion was mutilated or destroyed by some aerial
+disaster, he exulted; though also he would give his own life in
+the hope of effecting a rescue. But very soon after he had returned
+to the ground he would be overwhelmed with grief, would strive
+vainly to recapture the lost vision, and would perhaps die of
+heart failure.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Even when, as happened occasionally in the wild climate of
+Venus, a whole aerial population was destroyed by some world-wide
+atmospheric tumult, the few broken survivors, so long as
+they could remain in the air, exulted. And actually while at length
+they sank exhausted towards the ground, towards certain disillusionment
+and death, they laughed inwardly. Yet an hour after they
+had alighted, their constitution would be changed, their vision
+lost. They would remember only the horror of the disaster, and
+the memory would kill them.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>No wonder the Seventh Men grudged every moment that was
+passed on the ground. While they were in the air, of course, the
+prospect of a pedestrian interlude, or indeed of endless pedestrianism,
+though in a manner repugnant, would be accepted with
+unswerving gaiety; but while they were on the ground, they
+grudged bitterly to be there. Early in the career of the species the
+proportion of aerial to terrestrial hours was increased by a biological
+invention. A minute food-plant was produced which spent
+the winter rooted in the ground, and the summer adrift in the
+sunlit upper air, engaged solely in photosynthesis. Henceforth the
+populations of the Flying Men were able to browse upon the
+bright pastures of the sky, like swallows. As the ages passed,
+material civilization became more and more simplified. Needs
+which could not be satisfied without terrestrial labour tended to
+be outgrown. Manufactured articles became increasingly rare.
+Books were no longer written or read. In the main, indeed, they
+were no longer necessary; but to some extent their place was
+taken by verbal tradition and discussion, in the upper air. Of the
+arts, music, spoken lyric and epic verse, and the supreme art of
+winged dance, were constantly practised. The rest vanished. Many
+of the sciences inevitably faded into tradition; yet the true scientific
+spirit was preserved in a very exact meteorology, a sufficient
+biology, and a human psychology surpassed only by the second
+and fifth species at their height. None of these sciences, however,
+was taken very seriously, save in its practical applications. For
+instance, psychology explained the ecstasy of flight very neatly as
+a febrile and ‘irrational’ beatitude. But no one was disconcerted
+by this theory; for every one, while on the wing, felt it to be
+merely an amusing half-truth.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The social order of the Seventh Men was in essence neither
+utilitarian, nor humanistic, nor religious, but aesthetic. Every
+act and every institution were to be justified as contributing to
+the perfect form of the community. Even social prosperity was
+conceived as merely the medium in which beauty should be
+embodied, the beauty, namely, of vivid individual lives harmoniously
+related. Yet not only for the individual, but even for the
+race itself (so the wise insisted), death on the wing was more
+excellent than prolonged life on the ground. Better, far better,
+would be racial suicide than a future of pedestrianism. Yet though
+both the individual and the race were conceived as instrumental
+to objective beauty, there was nothing religious, in any ordinary
+sense, in this conviction. The Seventh Men were completely without
+interest in the universal and the unseen. The beauty which
+they sought to create was ephemeral and very largely sensuous.
+And they were well content that it should be so. Personal immortality,
+said a dying sage, would be as tedious as an endless
+song. Equally so with the race. The lovely flame, of which we all
+are members, must die, he said, must die; for without death she
+would fall short of beauty.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For close on a hundred million terrestrial years this aerial
+society endured with little change. On many of the islands throughout
+this period stood even yet a number of the ancient pylons,
+though repaired almost beyond recognition. In these nests the
+men and women of the seventh species slept through the long
+Venerian nights, crowded like roosting swallows. By day the same
+great towers were sparsely peopled with those who were serving
+their turn in industry, while in the fields and on the sea others
+laboured. But most were in the air. Many would be skimming the
+ocean, to plunge, gannet-like, for fish. Many, circling over land
+or sea, would now and again stoop like hawks upon the wildfowl
+which formed the chief meat of the species. Others, forty or fifty
+thousand feet above the waves, where even the plentiful atmosphere
+of Venus was scarcely capable of supporting them, would
+be soaring, circling, sweeping, for pure joy of flight. Others, in the
+calm and sunshine of high altitudes, would be hanging effortless
+upon some steady up-current of air for meditation and the rapture
+of mere percipience. Not a few love-intoxicated pairs would
+be entwining their courses in aerial patterns, in spires, cascades,
+and true-love knots of flight, presently to embrace and drop ten
+thousand feet in bodily union. Some would be driving hither and
+thither through the green mists of vegetable particles, gathering
+the manna in their open mouths. Companies, circling together,
+would be discussing matters social or aesthetic; others would be
+singing together, or listening to recitative epic verse. Thousands,
+gathering in the sky like migratory birds, would perform massed
+convolutions, reminiscent of the vast mechanical aerial choreography
+of the First World State, but more vital and expressive, as
+a bird’s flight is more vital than the flight of any machine. And
+all the while there would be some, solitary or in companies,
+who, either in the pursuit of fish and wildfowl, or out of pure
+devilment, pitted their strength and skill against the hurricane,
+often tragically, but never without zest, and laughter of the
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It may seem to some incredible that the culture of the Seventh
+Men should have lasted so long. Surely it must either have
+decayed through mere monotony and stagnation or have advanced
+into richer experience. But no. Generation succeeded generation,
+and each was too short-lived to outlast its young delight
+and discover boredom. Moreover, so perfect was the adjustment
+of these beings to their world, that even if they had lived for
+centuries they would have felt no need of change. Flight provided
+them with intense physical exhilaration, and with the physical
+basis of a genuine and ecstatic, though limited, spiritual
+experience. In this their supreme attainment they rejoiced not only
+in the diversity of flight itself, but also in the perceived beauties
+of their variegated world, and most of all, perhaps, in the
+thousand lyric and epic ventures of human intercourse in an
+aerial community.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The end of this seemingly everlasting elysium was nevertheless
+involved in the very nature of the species. In the first place, as the
+ages lengthened into aeons, the generations preserved less and less
+of the ancient scientific lore. For it became insignificant to them.
+The aerial community had no need of it. This loss of mere
+information did not matter so long as their condition remained
+unaltered; but in due course biological changes began to undermine
+them. The species had always been prone to a certain biological
+instability. A proportion of infants, varying with circumstances,
+had always been misshapen; and the deformity had
+generally been such as to make flight impossible. The normal
+infant was able to fly early in its second year. If some accident
+prevented it from doing so, it invariably fell into a decline and
+died before its third year was passed. But many of the deformed
+types, being the result of a partial reversion to the pedestrian
+nature, were able to live on indefinitely without flight. According
+to a merciful custom these cripples had always to be destroyed.
+But at length, owing to the gradual exhaustion of a certain marine
+salt essential to the high-strung nature of the Seventh Men, infants
+were more often deformed than true to type. The world-population
+declined so seriously that the organized aerial life of the
+community could no longer be carried on according to the time-honoured
+aesthetic principles. No one knew how to check this
+racial decay, but many felt that with greater biological knowledge
+it might be avoided. A disastrous policy was now adopted. It was
+decided to spare a carefully selected proportion of the deformed
+infants, those namely which, though doomed to pedestrianism,
+were likely to develop high intelligence. Thus it was hoped to raise
+a specialized group of persons whose work should be biological
+research untrammelled by the intoxication of flight.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The brilliant cripples that resulted from this policy looked at
+existence from a new angle. Deprived of the supreme experience
+for which their fellows lived, envious of a bliss which they knew
+only by report, yet contemptuous of the naïve mentality which
+cared for nothing (it seemed) but physical exercise, love-making,
+the beauty of nature, and the elegances of society, these flightless
+intelligences sought satisfaction almost wholly in the life of
+research and scientific control. At the best, however, they were a
+tortured and resentful race. For their natures were fashioned for
+the aerial life which they could not lead. Although they received
+from the winged folk just treatment and a certain compassionate
+respect, they writhed under this kindness, locked their hearts
+against all the orthodox values, and sought out new ideals.
+Within a few centuries they had rehabilitated the life of intellect,
+and, with the power that knowledge gives, they had made themselves
+masters of the world. The amiable fliers were surprised,
+perplexed, even pained; and yet withal amused. Even when it
+became evident that the pedestrians were determined to create a
+new world-order in which there would be no place for the beauties
+of natural flight, the fliers were only distressed while they were on
+the ground.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The islands were becoming crowded with machinery and flightless
+industrialists. In the air itself the winged folk found themselves
+outstripped by the base but effective instruments of
+mechanical flight. Wings became a laughing stock, and the life of
+natural flight was condemned as a barren luxury. It was ordained
+that in future every flier must serve the pedestrian world-order,
+or starve. And as the cultivation of wind-borne plants had been
+abandoned, and fishing and fowling rights were strictly controlled,
+this law was no empty form. At first it was impossible for the
+fliers to work on the ground for long hours, day after day,
+without incurring serious ill-health and an early death. But the
+pedestrian physiologists invented a drug which preserved the poor
+wage-slaves in something like physical health, and actually prolonged
+their life. No drug, however, could restore their spirit,
+for their normal aerial habit was reduced to a few tired hours of
+recreation once a week. Meanwhile, breeding experiments were
+undertaken to produce a wholly wingless large-brained type. And
+finally a law was enacted by which all winged infants must be
+either mutilated or destroyed. At this point the fliers made an
+heroic but ineffectual bid for power. They attacked the pedestrian
+population from the air. In reply the enemy rode them down in
+his great aeroplanes and blew them to pieces with high explosive.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The fighting squadrons of the natural fliers were finally driven
+to the ground in a remote and barren island. Thither the whole
+flying population, a mere remnant of its former strength, fled
+out of every civilized archipelago in search of freedom: the
+whole population—save the sick, who committed suicide, and
+all infants that could not yet fly. These were stifled by their
+mothers or next-of-kin, in obedience to a decree of the leaders.
+About a million men, women and children, some of whom were
+scarcely old enough for the prolonged flight, now gathered on
+the rocks, regardless that there was not food in the neighbourhood
+for a great company.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Their leaders, conferring together, saw clearly that the day of
+Flying Man was done, and that it would be more fitting for a
+high-souled race to die at once than to drag on in subjection to
+contemptuous masters. They therefore ordered the population
+to take part in an act of racial suicide that should at least make
+death a noble gesture of freedom. The people received the message
+while they were resting on the stony moorland. A wail of
+sorrow broke from them. It was checked by the speaker, who
+bade them strive to see, even on the ground, the beauty of the
+thing that was to be done. They could not see it; but they knew
+that if they had the strength to take wing again they would see
+it clearly, almost as soon as their tired muscles bore them aloft.
+There was no time to waste, for many were already faint with
+hunger, and anxious lest they should fail to rise. At the appointed
+signal the whole population rose into the air with a deep roar of
+wings. Sorrow was left behind. Even the children, when their
+mothers explained what was to be done, accepted their fate with
+zest; though, had they learned of it on the ground, they would
+have been terror-stricken. The company now flew steadily West,
+forming themselves into a double file many miles long. The cone
+of a volcano appeared over the horizon, and rose as they approached.
+The leaders pressed on towards its ruddy smoke plume;
+and unflinchingly, couple by couple, the whole multitude darted
+into its fiery breath and vanished. So ended the career of Flying
+Man.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch13-3'>3. A MINOR ASTRONOMICAL EVENT</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>The flightless yet still half avian race that now possessed the
+planet settled down to construct a society based on industry and
+science. After many vicissitudes of fortune and of aim, they
+produced a new human species, the Eighth Men. These long-headed
+and substantial folk were designed to be strictly pedestrian,
+physically and mentally. Apt for manipulation, calculation,
+and invention, they very soon turned Venus into an engineer’s
+paradise. With power drawn from the planet’s central heat, their
+huge electric ships bored steadily through the perennial monsoons
+and hurricanes, which also their aircraft treated with
+contempt. Islands were joined by tunnels and by millipede
+bridges. Every inch of land served some industrial or agricultural
+end. So successfully did the generations amass wealth that their
+rival races and rival castes were able to indulge, every few
+centuries, in vast revelries of mutual slaughter and material
+destruction without, as a rule, impoverishing their descendants.
+And so insensitive had man become that these orgies shamed him
+not at all. Indeed, only by the ardours of physical violence could
+this most philistine species wrench itself for a while out of its
+complacency. Strife, which to nobler beings would have been a
+grave spiritual disaster, was for these a tonic, almost a religious
+exercise. These cathartic paroxysms, it should be observed, were
+but the rare and brief crises which automatically punctuated ages
+of stolid peace. At no time did they threaten the existence of the
+species; seldom did they even destroy its civilization.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was after a lengthy period of peace and scientific advancement
+that the Eighth Men made a startling astronomical discovery.
+Ever since the First Men had learned that in the life of
+every star there comes a critical moment when the great orb
+collapses, shrinking to a minute, dense grain with feeble radiation,
+man had periodically suspected that the sun was about to
+undergo this change, and become a typical ‘White Dwarf’. The
+Eighth Men detected sure signs of the catastrophe, and predicted
+its date. Twenty thousand years they gave themselves before the
+change should begin. In another fifty thousand years, they
+guessed, Venus would probably be frozen and uninhabitable.
+The only hope was to migrate to Mercury during the great
+change, when that planet was already ceasing to be intolerably
+hot. It was necessary then to give Mercury an atmosphere, and to
+breed a new species which should be capable of adapting itself
+finally to a world of extreme cold.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This desperate operation was already on foot when a new
+astronomical discovery rendered it futile. Astronomers detected,
+some distance from the solar system, a volume of non-luminous
+gas. Calculation showed that this object and the sun were
+approaching one another at a tangent, and that they would
+collide. Further calculation revealed the probable results of this
+event. The sun would flare up and expand prodigiously. Life
+would be quite impossible on any of the planets save, just
+possibly, Uranus, and more probably Neptune. The three planets
+beyond Neptune would escape roasting, but were unsuitable for
+other reasons. The two outermost would remain glacial, and,
+moreover, lay beyond the range of the imperfect ether-ships of the
+Eighth Men. The innermost was practically a bald globe of iron,
+devoid not merely of atmosphere and water, but also of the
+normal covering of rock. Neptune alone might be able to support
+life; but how could even Neptune be populated? Not only was its
+atmosphere very unsuitable, and its gravitational pull such as
+to make man’s body an intolerable burden, but also up to the
+time of the collision it would remain excessively cold. Not till
+after the collision could it support any kind of life known to
+man.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>How these difficulties were overcome I have no time to tell,
+though the story of man’s attack upon his final home is well
+worthy of recording. Nor can I tell in detail of the conflict of
+policy which now occurred. Some, realizing that the Eighth Men
+themselves could never live on Neptune, advocated an orgy of
+pleasure-living till the end. But at length the race excelled itself
+in an almost unanimous resolve to devote its remaining centuries
+to the production of a human being capable of carrying the torch
+of mentality into a new world.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Ether-vessels were able to reach that remote world and set up
+chemical changes for the improvement of the atmosphere. It was
+also possible, by means of the lately rediscovered process of
+automatic annihilation of matter, to produce a constant supply of
+energy for the warming of an area where life might hope to survive
+until the sun should be rejuvenated.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When at last the time for migration was approaching, a
+specially designed vegetation was shipped to Neptune and
+established in the warm area to fit it for man’s use. Animals,
+it was decided, would be unnecessary. Subsequently a specially
+designed human species, the Ninth Men, was transported to man’s
+new home. The giant Eighth Men could not themselves inhabit
+Neptune. The trouble was not merely that they could scarcely
+support their own weight, let alone walk, but that the atmospheric
+pressure on Neptune was unendurable. For the great planet bore
+a gaseous envelope thousands of miles deep. The solid globe was
+scarcely more than the yolk of a huge egg. The mass of the air
+itself combined with the mass of the solid to produce a gravitational
+pressure greater than that upon the Venerian ocean floor.
+The Eighth Men, therefore, dared not emerge from their ether-ships
+to tread the surface of the planet save for brief spells in
+steel diving suits. For them there was nothing else to do but to
+return to the archipelagos of Venus, and make the best of life
+until the end. They were not spared for long. A few centuries
+after the settlement of Neptune had been completed by transferring
+thither all the most precious material relics of humanity,
+the great planet itself narrowly missed collision with the dark
+stranger from space. Uranus and Jupiter were at the time well
+out of its track. Not so Saturn, which, a few years after Neptune’s
+escape, was engulfed with all its rings and satellites. The sudden
+incandescence which resulted from this minor collision was but
+a prelude. The huge foreigner rushed on. Like a finger poked into
+a spider’s web, it tangled up the planetary orbits. Having devoured
+its way through the asteroids, it missed Mars, caught Earth and
+Venus in its blazing hair, and leapt at the sun. Henceforth the
+centre of the solar system was a star nearly as wide as the old
+orbit of Mercury and the system was transformed.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>XIV</span> <span class='it'>Neptune</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch14-1'>1. BIRD’S-EYE VIEW</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">I have</span> told man’s story up to a point about half-way from his
+origin to his annihilation. Behind lies the vast span which includes
+the whole Terrestrial and Venerian ages, with all their slow
+fluctuations of darkness and enlightenment. Ahead lies the
+Neptunian age, equally long, equally tragic perhaps, but more
+diverse, and in its last phase incomparably more brilliant. It
+would not be profitable to recount the history of man on Neptune
+on the scale of the preceding chronicle. Very much of it would be
+incomprehensible to terrestrials, and much of it repeats again and
+again, in the many Neptunian modes, themes that we have already
+observed in the Terrestrial or the Venerian movements of the
+human symphony. To appreciate fully the range and subtlety of
+the great living epic, we ought, no doubt, to dwell on its every
+movement with the same faithful care. But this is impossible to
+any human mind. We can but attend to significant phrases, here
+and there, and hope to capture some fragmentary hint of its
+vast intricate form. And for the readers of this book, who are
+themselves tremors in the opening bars of the music, it is best
+that I should dwell chiefly on things near to them, even at the
+cost of ignoring much that is in fact greater.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Before continuing our long flight let us look around us. Hitherto
+we have passed over time’s fields at a fairly low altitude, making
+many detailed observations. Now we shall travel at a greater
+height and with speed of a new order. We must therefore orientate
+ourselves within the wider horizon that opens around us; we must
+consider things from the astronomical rather than the human
+point of view. I said that we were half-way from man’s beginning
+to his end. Looking back to that remote beginning we see that the
+span of time which includes the whole career of the First Men
+from Pithecanthropus to the Patagonian disaster is an unanalysable
+point. Even the preceding and much longer period between
+the first mammal and the first man, some twenty-five millions of
+terrestrial years, seems now inconsiderable. The whole of it,
+together with the age of the First Men, may be said to lie half-way
+between the formation of the planets, two thousand million years
+earlier, and their final destruction, two thousand million years
+later. Taking a still wider view, we see that this aeon of four
+thousand million years is itself no more than a moment in comparison
+with the sun’s age. And before the birth of the suns the
+stuff of this galaxy had already endured for aeons as a nebula.
+Yet even these aeons look brief in relation to the passage of time
+before the myriad great nebulae themselves, the future galaxies,
+condensed out of the all-pervading mist in the beginning. Thus
+the whole duration of humanity, with its many sequent species
+and its incessant downpour of generations, is but a flash in the
+lifetime of the cosmos.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Spatially, also, man is inconceivably minute. If in imagination
+we reduce this galaxy of ours to the size of an ancient terrestrial
+principality, we must suppose it adrift in the void with millions
+of other such principalities, very remote from one another. On
+the same scale the all-embracing cosmos would bulk as a sphere
+whose diameter was some twenty times greater than that of the
+lunar orbit in your day; and somewhere within the little wandering
+asteroid-like principality which is our own universe, the solar
+system would be an ultra-microscopic point, the greatest planet
+incomparably smaller.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We have watched the fortunes of eight successive human species
+for a thousand million years, the first half of that flicker which is
+the duration of man. Ten more species now succeed one another,
+or are contemporary, on the plains of Neptune. We, the Last Men,
+are the Eighteenth Men. Of the eight pre-Neptunian species,
+some, as we have seen, remained always primitive; many achieved
+at least a confused and fleeting civilization, and one, the brilliant
+Fifth, was already wakening into true humanity when misfortune
+crushed it. The ten Neptunian species show an even greater
+diversity. They range from the instinctive animal to modes of
+consciousness never before attained. The definitely subhuman
+degenerate types are confined mostly to the first six hundred
+million years of man’s sojourn on Neptune. During the earlier
+half of this long phase of preparation, man, at first almost crushed
+out of existence by a hostile environment, gradually peopled the
+huge north; but with beasts, not men. For man, as man, no
+longer existed. During the latter half of the preparatory six
+hundred million years, the human spirit gradually awoke again,
+to undergo the fluctuating advance and decline characteristic of
+the pre-Neptunian ages. But subsequently, in the last four hundred
+million years of his career on Neptune, man has made an almost
+steady progress toward full spiritual maturity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Let us now look rather more closely at these three great
+epochs of man’s history.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch14-2'>2. DA CAPO</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>It was in desperate haste that the last Venerian men had designed
+and fashioned the new species for the colonization of Neptune.
+The mere remoteness of the great planet, moreover, had prevented
+its nature from being explored at all thoroughly, and so the new
+human organism was but partially adapted to its destined environment.
+Inevitably it was a dwarf type, limited in size by the
+necessity of resisting an excessive gravitation. Its brain was so
+cramped that everything but the bare essentials of humanity had
+to be omitted from it. Even so, the Ninth Men were too delicately
+organized to withstand the ferocity of natural forces on Neptune.
+This ferocity the designers had seriously underestimated; and so
+they were content merely to produce a miniature copy of their
+own type. They should have planned a hardy brute, lustily procreative,
+cunning in the struggle for physical existence, but above
+all tough, prolific, and so insensitive as to be scarcely worthy of
+the name man. They should have trusted that if once this crude
+seed could take root, natural forces themselves would in time
+conjure from it something more human. Instead, they produced
+a race cursed with the inevitable fragility of miniatures, and
+designed for a civilized environment which feeble spirits could
+not possibly maintain in a tumultuous world. For it so happened
+that the still youthful giant, Neptune, was slowly entering one of
+his phases of crustal shrinkage, and therefore of earthquake and
+eruption. Thus the frail colonists found themselves increasingly
+in danger of being swallowed in sudden fiery crevasses or buried
+under volcanic dust. Moreover, their squat buildings, when not
+actually being trampled by lava streams, or warped and cracked
+by their shifting foundations, were liable to be demolished by the
+battering-ram thrust of a turbulent and massive atmosphere.
+Further, the atmosphere’s unwholesome composition killed all
+possibility of cheerfulness and courage in a race whose nature
+was doomed to be, even in favourable circumstances, neurotic.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Fortunately this agony could not last indefinitely. Little by
+little, civilization crumbled into savagery, the torturing vision of
+better things was lost, man’s consciousness was narrowed and
+coarsened into brute-consciousness. By good luck the brute
+precariously survived.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Long after the Ninth Men had fallen from man’s estate, nature
+herself, in her own slow and blundering manner, succeeded where
+man had failed. The brute descendants of this human species
+became at length well adapted to their world. In time there arose
+a wealth of subhuman forms in the many kinds of environment
+afforded by the lands and seas of Neptune. None of them
+penetrated far towards the Equator, for the swollen sun had
+rendered the tropics at this time far too hot to support life of
+any kind. Even at the pole the protracted summer put a great
+strain on all but the most hardy creatures.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Neptune’s year was at this time about one hundred and sixty-five
+times the length of the old terrestrial year. The slow seasonal
+change had an important effect on life’s own rhythms. All but
+the most ephemeral organisms tended to live through at least
+one complete year, and the higher mammals survived longer. At
+a much later stage this natural longevity was to play a great and
+beneficial part in the revival of man. But, on the other hand, the
+increasing sluggishness of individual growth, the length of immaturity
+in each generation, retarded the natural evolutionary
+process on Neptune, so that compared with the Terrestrial and
+Venerian epochs the biological story now moves at a snail’s pace.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>After the fall of the Ninth Men the subhuman creatures had
+one and all adopted a quadruped habit, the better to cope with
+gravity. At first they had indulged merely in occasional support
+from their knuckles, but in time many species of true quadrupeds
+had appeared. In several of the running types the fingers, like
+the toes, had grown together, and a hoof had developed, not on
+the old finger-tips, which were bent back and atrophied, but on
+the knuckles.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Two hundred millions years after the solar collision innumerable
+species of subhuman grazers with long sheep-like muzzles,
+ample molars, and almost ruminant digestive systems, were
+competing with one another on the polar continent. Upon these
+preyed the subhuman carnivora, of whom some were built for
+speed in the chase, others for stalking and a sudden spring. But
+since jumping was no easy matter on Neptune, the cat-like types
+were all minute. They preyed upon man’s more rabbit-like and
+rat-like descendants, or on the carrion of the larger mammals,
+or on the lusty worms and beetles. These had sprung originally
+from vermin which had been transported accidentally from Venus.
+For of all the ancient Venerian fauna only man himself, a few
+insects and other invertebrates, and many kinds of micro-organisms,
+succeeded in colonizing Neptune. Of plants, many
+types had been artificially bred for the new world, and from these
+eventually arose a host of grasses, flowering plants, thick-trunked
+bushes, and novel sea-weeds. On this marine flora fed certain
+highly developed marine worms; and of these last, some in time
+became vertebrate, predatory, swift, and fish-like. On these in
+turn man’s own marine descendants preyed, whether as subhuman
+seals, or still more specialized subhuman porpoises.
+Perhaps most remarkable of these developments of the ancient
+human stock was that which led, through a small insectivorous
+bat-like glider, to a great diversity of true flying mammals,
+scarcely larger than humming birds, but in some cases agile as
+swallows.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Nowhere did the typical human form survive. There were only
+beasts, fitted by structure and instinct to some niche or other of
+their infinitely diverse and roomy world.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Certain strange vestiges of human mentality did indeed persist
+here and there, even as, in the fore-limbs of most species, there
+still remained buried the relics of man’s once cunning fingers. For
+instance, there were certain grazers which in times of hardship
+would meet together and give tongue in cacophonous ululation;
+or, sitting on their haunches with fore-limbs pressed together,
+they would listen by the hour to the howls of some leader,
+responding intermittently with groans and whimpers, and working
+themselves at last into foaming madness. And there were
+carnivora which, in the midst of the spring-time fervour, would
+suddenly cease from love-making, fighting, and the daily routine
+of hunting, to sit alone in some high place day after day, night
+after night, watching, waiting; until at last hunger forced them
+into action.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Now in the fullness of time, about three hundred million
+terrestrial years after the solar collision, a certain minute, hairless,
+rabbit-like creature, scampering on the polar grasslands, found
+itself greatly persecuted by a swift hound from the south. The
+subhuman rabbit was relatively unspecialized, and had no effective
+means of defence or flight. It was almost exterminated. A few
+individuals, however, saved themselves by taking to the dense
+and thick-trunked scrub, whither the hound could not follow
+them. Here they had to change their diet and manner of life,
+deserting grass for roots, berries, and even worms and beetles.
+Their fore-limbs were now increasingly used for digging and
+climbing, and eventually for weaving nests of stick and straw.
+In this species the fingers had never grown together. Internally
+the fore-paw was like a minute clenched fist from the elongated
+and exposed knuckles of which separate toes protruded. And now
+the knuckles elongated themselves still further, becoming in time
+a new set of fingers. Within the palm of the new little monkey-hand
+there still remained traces of man’s ancient fingers, bent in
+upon themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As of old, manipulation gave rise to clearer percipience. And
+this, in conjunction with the necessity of frequent experiments in
+diet, hunting, and defence, produced at length a real versatility
+of behaviour and suppleness of mind. The rabbit throve, adopted
+an almost upright gait, continued to increase in stature and in
+brain. Yet, just as the new hand was not merely a resurrection of
+the old hand, so the new regions of the brain were no mere
+revival of the atrophied human cerebrum, but a new organ, which
+overlaid and swallowed up that ancient relic. The creature’s mind,
+therefore, was in many respects a new mind, though moulded to
+the same great basic needs. Like his forerunners, of course, he
+craved food, love, glory, companionship. In pursuit of these ends
+he devised weapons and traps, and built wicker villages. He held
+pow-wows. He became the Tenth Men.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch14-3'>3. SLOW CONQUEST</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>For a million terrestrial years these long-armed hairless beings
+were spreading their wicker huts and bone implements over the
+great northern continents, and for many more millions they
+remained in possession without making further cultural progress;
+for evolution, both biological and cultural, was indeed slow on
+Neptune. At last the Tenth Men were attacked by a micro-organism
+and demolished. From their ruins several primitive
+human species developed, and remained isolated in remote territories
+for millions of decades, until at length chance or enterprise
+brought them into contact. One of these early species, crouched
+and tusked, was persistently trapped for its ivory by an abler type,
+till it was exterminated. Another, long of muzzle and large of
+base, habitually squatted on its haunches like the kangaroo.
+Shortly after this industrious and social species had discovered
+the use of the wheel, a more primitive but more war-like type
+crashed into it like a tidal wave and overwhelmed it. Erect, but
+literally almost as broad as they were tall, these chunkish and
+bloody-minded savages spread over the whole arctic and sub-arctic
+region and spent some millions of years in monotonous
+reiteration of progress and decline; until at last a slow decay of
+their germ-plasm almost ended man’s career. But after an aeon of
+darkness, there appeared another thick-set, but larger brained,
+species. This, for the first time on Neptune, conceived the religion
+of love, and all those spiritual cravings and agonies which had
+flickered in man so often and so vainly upon Earth and Venus.
+There appeared again feudal empires, militant nations, economic
+class wars, and, not once but often, a world-state covering the
+whole northern hemisphere. These men it was that first crossed
+the equator in artificially cooled electric ships, and explored the
+huge south. No life of any kind was discovered in the southern
+hemisphere; for even in that age no living matter could have
+crossed the roasting tropics without artificial refrigeration. Indeed,
+it was only because the sun’s temporary revival had already
+passed its zenith that even man, with all his ingenuity, could
+endure a long tropical voyage.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Like the First Men and so many other natural human types,
+these Fourteenth Men were imperfectly human. Like the First
+Men, they conceived ideals of conduct which their imperfectly
+organized nervous systems could never attain and seldom
+approach. Unlike the First Men, they survived with but minor
+biological changes for three hundred million years. But even so
+long a period did not enable them to transcend their imperfect
+spiritual nature. Again and again and again they passed from
+savagery to world-civilization and back to savagery. They were
+captive within their own nature, as a bird in a cage. And as a
+caged bird may fumble with nest-building materials and periodically
+destroy the fruit of its aimless toil, so these cramped beings
+destroyed their civilizations.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At length, however, this second phase of Neptunian history,
+this era of fluctuation, was brought to an end. At the close of the
+six hundred million years after the first settlement of the planet,
+unaided nature produced, in the Fifteenth human species, that
+highest form of natural man which she had produced only once
+before, in the Second species. And this time no Martians interfered.
+We must not stay to watch the struggle of this greatheaded
+man to overcome his one serious handicap, excessive weight of
+cranium and unwieldy proportions of body. Suffice it that after a
+long-drawn-out immaturity, including one great mechanized war
+between the northern and southern hemispheres, the Fifteenth
+Men outgrew the ailments and fantasies of youth, and consolidated
+themselves as a single world-community. This civilization was
+based economically on volcanic power, and spiritually on
+devotion to the fulfilment of human capacity. It was this species
+which, for the first time on Neptune, conceived, as an enduring
+racial purpose, the will to remake human nature upon an ampler
+scale.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Henceforth in spite of many disasters, such as another period
+of earthquake and eruption, sudden climatic changes, innumerable
+plagues and biological aberrations, human progress was
+relatively steady. It was not by any means swift and sure. There
+were still to be ages, often longer than the whole career of the
+First Men, in which the human spirit would rest from its pioneering
+to consolidate its conquests, or would actually stray into the
+wilderness. But never again, seemingly, was it to be routed and
+crushed into mere animality.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In tracing man’s final advance to full humanity we can observe
+only the broadest features of a whole astronomical era. But in
+fact it is an era crowded with many thousands of long-lived
+generations. Myriads of individuals, each one unique, live out
+their lives in rapt intercourse with one another, contribute their
+heart’s pulses to the universal music, and presently vanish, giving
+place to others. All this age-long sequence of private living, which
+is the actual tissue of humanity’s flesh, I cannot describe. I can
+only trace, as it were, the disembodied form of its growth.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Fifteenth Men first set themselves to abolish five great
+evils, namely, disease, suffocating toil, senility, misunderstanding, and
+ill-will. The story of their devotion, their many disastrous experiments,
+and ultimate triumph, cannot here be told. Nor can I
+recount how they learned and used the secret of deriving power
+from the annihilation of matter, nor how they invented ether-ships
+for the exploration of neighbouring planets, nor how, after
+ages of experiments, they designed and produced a new species,
+the Sixteenth, to supersede themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The new type was analogous to the ancient Fifth, which had
+colonized Venus. Artificial rigid atoms had been introduced into
+its bone-tissues, so that it might support great stature and an
+ample brain; in which, moreover, an exceptionally fine-grained
+cellular structure permitted a new complexity of organization.
+‘Telepathy’, also, was once more achieved, not by means of the
+Martian units, which had long ago become extinct, but by the
+synthesis of new molecular groups of a similar type. Partly
+through the immense increase of mutual understanding, which
+resulted from ‘telepathic’ rapport, partly through improved coordination
+of the nervous system, the ancient evil of selfishness
+was entirely and finally abolished from the normal human being.
+Egoistic impulses, whenever they refused to be subordinated, were
+henceforth classed as symptoms of insanity. The sensory powers
+of the new species were, of course, greatly improved; and it was
+even given a pair of eyes in the back of the head. Henceforth
+man was to have a circular instead of a semi-circular field of
+vision. And such was the general intelligence of the new race that
+many problems formerly deemed insoluble were now solved in a
+single flash of insight.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of the great practical uses to which the Sixteenth Men put
+their powers, one only need be mentioned as an example. They
+gained control of the movement of their planet. Early in their
+career they were able, with the unlimited energy at their disposal,
+to direct it into a wider orbit, so that its average climate became
+more temperate, and snow occasionally covered the polar regions.
+But as the ages advanced, and the sun became steadily less ferocious,
+it became necessary to reverse this process and shift the
+planet gradually nearer to the sun.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When they had possessed their world for nearly fifty million
+years, the Sixteenth Men, like the Fifth before them, learned to
+enter into past minds. For them this was a more exciting adventure
+than for their forerunners, since they were still ignorant of
+Terrestrial and Venerian history. Like their forerunners, so dismayed
+were they at the huge volume of eternal misery in the past,
+that for a while, in spite of their own great blessings and spontaneous
+gaiety, existence seemed a mockery. But in time they came
+to regard the past’s misery as a challenge. They told themselves
+that the past was calling to them for help, and that somehow they
+must prepare a great ‘crusade to liberate the past’. How this was
+to be done, they could not conceive; but they were determined to
+bear in mind this quixotic aim in the great enterprise which had
+by now become the chief concern of the race, namely the creation
+of a human type of an altogether higher order.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It had become clear that man had by now advanced in understanding
+and creativeness as far as was possible to the individual
+human brain acting in physical isolation. Yet the Sixteenth Men
+were oppressed by their own impotence. Though in philosophy
+they had delved further than had ever been possible, yet even at
+their deepest they found only the shifting sands of mystery. In
+particular they were haunted by three ancient problems, two of
+which were purely intellectual, namely the mystery of time and
+the mystery of mind’s relation to the world. Their third problem
+was the need somehow to reconcile their confirmed loyalty to life,
+which they conceived as embattled against death, with their ever-strengthening
+impulse to rise above the battle and admire it
+dispassionately.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Age after age the races of the Sixteenth Men blossomed with
+culture after culture. The movement of thought ranged again
+and again through all the possible modes of the spirit, ever discovering
+new significance in ancient themes. Yet throughout this
+epoch the three great problems remained unsolved, perplexing
+the individual and vitiating the policy of the race.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Forced thus at length to choose between spiritual stagnation
+and a perilous leap in the dark, the Sixteenth Men determined to
+set about devising a type of brain which, by means of the mental
+fusion of many individuals, might waken into an altogether new
+mode of consciousness. Thus, it was hoped, man might gain
+insight into the very heart of existence, whether finally to admire
+or loathe. And thus the racial purpose, which had been so much
+confused by philosophical ignorance, might at last become clear.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of the hundred million years which passed before the Sixteenth
+Men produced the new human type, I must not pause to tell.
+They thought they had achieved their hearts’ desire; but in fact
+the glorious beings which they had produced were tortured by
+subtle imperfections beyond their makers’ comprehension. Consequently,
+no sooner had these Seventeenth Men peopled the
+world and attained full cultural stature, than they also bent all
+their strength to the production of a new type, essentially like
+their own, but perfected. Thus after a brief career of a few hundred
+thousand years, crowded with splendour and agony, the
+Seventeenth gave place to the Eighteenth, and, as it turns out,
+the Last, human species. Since all the earlier cultures find their
+fulfilment in the world of the Last Men, I pass over them to enlarge
+somewhat upon our modern age.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>XV</span> <span class='it'>The Last Men</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch15-1'>1. INTRODUCTION TO THE LAST HUMAN SPECIES</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">If</span> one of the First Men could enter the world of the Last Men, he
+would find many things familiar and much that would seem
+strangely distorted and perverse. But nearly everything that is
+most distinctive of the last human species would escape him.
+Unless he were to be told that behind all the obvious and imposing
+features of civilization, behind all the social organization and
+personal intercourse of a great community, lay a whole other
+world of spiritual culture, round about him, yet beyond his ken,
+he would no more suspect its existence than a cat in London
+suspects the existence of finance or literature.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/illo285.jpg' alt='' id='illo285' style='width:80%;height:auto;'/>
+</div>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Among the familiar things that he would encounter would be
+creatures recognizably human yet in his view grotesque. While he
+himself laboured under the weight of his own body, these giants
+would be easily striding. He would consider them very sturdy,
+often thick-set, folk, but he would be compelled to allow them
+grace of movement and even beauty of proportion. The longer he
+stayed with them the more beauty he would see in them, and the
+less complacently would he regard his own type. Some of these
+fantastic men and women he would find covered with fur, hirsute,
+or mole-velvet, revealing the underlying muscles. Others would
+display bronze, yellow, or ruddy skin, and yet others a translucent
+ashgreen, warmed by the underflowing blood. As a species, though
+we are all human, we are extremely variable in body and mind, so
+variable that superficially we seem to be not one species but many.
+Some characters, of course, are common to all of us. The traveller
+might perhaps be surprised by the large yet sensitive hands which
+are universal, both in men and women. In all of us the outermost
+finger bears at its tip three minute organs of manipulation, rather
+similar to those which were first devised for the Fifth Men. These
+excrescences would doubtless revolt our visitor. The pair of
+occipital eyes, too, would shock him; so would the upward-looking
+astronomical eye on the crown, which is peculiar to the Last
+Men. This organ was so cunningly designed that, when fully
+extended, about a hand-breadth from its bony case, it reveals the
+heavens in as much detail as your smaller astronomical telescopes.
+Apart from such special features as these, there is nothing definitely
+novel about us; though every limb, every contour, shows
+unmistakably that much has happened since the days of the First
+Men. We are both more human and more animal. The primitive
+explorer might be more readily impressed by our animality than
+our humanity, so much of our humanity would lie beyond his
+grasp. He would perhaps at first regard us as a degraded type. He
+would call us faun-like, and in particular cases, ape-like, bear-like,
+ox-like, marsupial, or elephantine. Yet our general proportions
+are definitely human in the ancient manner. Where gravity is not
+insurmountable, the erect biped form is bound to be most
+serviceable to intelligent land animals; and so, after long wanderings,
+man has returned to his old shape. Moreover, if our observer
+were himself at all sensitive to facial expression, he would come to
+recognize in every one of our innumerable physiognomic types
+an indescribable but distinctively human look, the visible sign of
+that inward and spiritual grace which is not wholly absent from
+his own species. He would perhaps say, ‘These men that are
+beasts are surely gods also’. He would be reminded of those old
+Egyptian deities with animal heads. But in us the animal and the
+human interpenetrate in every feature, in every curve of the body,
+and with infinite variety. He would observe in us, together with
+hints of the long-extinct Mongol, Negro, Nordic, and Semitic,
+many outlandish features and expressions, deriving from the subhuman
+period on Neptune, or from Venus. He would see in every
+limb unfamiliar contours of muscle, sinew, or bone, which were
+acquired long after the First Men had vanished. Besides the
+familiar eye-colours, he would discover orbs of topaz, emerald,
+amethyst, and ruby, and a thousand varieties of these. But in all
+of us he would see also, if he had discernment, a facial expression
+and bodily gesture peculiar to our own species, a certain luminous,
+yet pungent and ironical significance, which we miss almost wholly
+in the earlier human faces.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The traveller would recognize among us unmistakable sexual
+features, both of general proportions and special organs. But it
+would take him long to discover that some of the most striking
+bodily and facial differences were due to differentiation of the
+two ancient sexes into many sub-sexes. Full sexual experience
+involves for us a complicated relationship between individuals of
+all these types. Of the extremely important sexual groups I shall
+speak again.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Our visitor would notice, by the way, that, though all persons
+on Neptune go habitually nude, save for a pouch or ruck-sack,
+clothing, often brightly coloured, and made of diverse lustrous or
+homely tissues unknown before our time, is worn for special
+purposes.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>He would notice also, scattered about the green countryside,
+many buildings, mostly of one storey; for there is plenty of room
+on Neptune even for the million million of the Last Men. Here
+and there, however, we have great architectural pylons, cruciform
+or star-shaped in section, cloud-piercing, dignifying the invariable
+planes of Neptune. These mightiest of all buildings, which are
+constructed in adamantine materials formed of artificial atoms,
+would seem to our visitor geometrical mountains, far taller than
+any natural mountain could be, even on the smallest planet. In
+many cases the whole fabric is translucent or transparent, so that
+at night, with internal illumination, it appears as an edifice of
+light. Springing from a base twenty or more miles across, these
+star-seeking towers attain a height where even Neptune’s atmosphere
+is somewhat attenuated. In their summits work the hosts
+of our astronomers, the essential eyes through which our community,
+on her little raft, peers across the ocean. Thither also all
+men and women repair at one time or another to contemplate this
+galaxy of ours and the unnumbered remoter universes. There they
+perform together those supreme symbolic acts for which I find no
+adjective in your speech but the debased word ’religious’. There
+also they seek the refreshment of mountain air in a world where
+natural mountains are unknown. And on the pinnacles and
+precipices of these loftiest horns many of us gratify that primeval
+lust of climbing which was ingrained in man before ever he was
+man. These buildings thus combine the functions of observatory,
+temple, sanatorium, and gymnasium. Some of them are almost as
+old as the species, some are not yet completed. They embody,
+therefore, many styles. The traveller would find modes which he
+would be tempted to call Gothic, Classical, Egyptian, Peruvian,
+Chinese, or American, besides a thousand architectural ideas unfamiliar
+to him. Each of these buildings was the work of the race
+as a whole at some stage in its career. None of them is a mere local
+product. Every successive culture has expressed itself in one or
+more of these supreme monuments. Once in forty thousand years
+or so some new architectural glory would be conceived and
+executed. And such is the continuity of our cultures that there has
+scarcely ever been need to remove the handiwork of the past.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>If our visitor happened to be near enough to one of these great
+pylons, he would see it surrounded by a swarm of midges, which
+would turn out to be human fliers, wingless, but with outspread
+arms. The stranger might wonder how a large organism could
+rise from the ground in Neptune’s powerful field of gravity. Yet
+flight is our ordinary means of locomotion. A man has but to
+put on a suit of overalls fitted at various points with radiation-generators.
+Ordinary flight thus becomes a kind of aerial swimming.
+Only when very high speed is desired do we make use of
+closed-in air-boats and liners.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At the feet of the great buildings the flat or undulating country
+is green, brown, golden, and strewn with houses. Our traveller
+would recognize that much land was under cultivation, and would
+see many persons at work upon it with tools or machinery. Most
+of our food, indeed, is produced by artificial photosynthesis on
+the broiling planet Jupiter, where, even now that the sun is
+becoming normal again, no life can exist without powerful refrigeration.
+As far as mere nutrition is concerned, we could do without
+vegetation; but agriculture and its products have played so great
+a part in human history that today agricultural operations and
+vegetable foods are very beneficial to the race psychologically.
+And so it comes about that vegetable matter is in great demand,
+not only as raw material for innumerable manufactures, but also
+for table delicacies. Green vegetables, fruit, and various alcoholic
+fruit drinks have come to have the same kind of ritual significance
+for us as wine has for you. Meat also, though not a part of ordinary
+diet, is eaten on very rare and sacred occasions. The cherished
+wild fauna of the planet contributes its toll to periodic symbolical
+banquets. And whenever a human being has chosen to die, his
+body is ceremoniously eaten by his friends.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Communication with the food-factories of Jupiter and the
+agricultural polar regions of the less torrid Uranus, as also with
+the automatic mining stations on the glacial outer planets, is
+maintained by ether-ships, which, travelling much faster than the
+planets themselves, make the passage to the neighbour worlds
+in a small fraction of the Neptunian year. These vessels, of which
+the smallest are about a mile in length, may be seen descending
+on our oceans like ducks. Before they touch the water they cause
+a prodigious tumult with the downward pressure of their radiation;
+but once upon the surface, they pass quietly into harbour.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The ether-ship is in a manner symbolic of our whole community,
+so highly organized is it, and so minute in relation to the void
+which engulfs it. The ethereal navigators, because they spend so
+much of their time in the empty regions, beyond the range of
+‘telepathic’ communication and sometimes even of mechanical
+radio, form mentally a unique class among us. They are a hardy,
+simple, and modest folk. And though they embody man’s proud
+mastery of the ether, they are never tired of reminding land-lubbers,
+with dour jocularity, that the most daring voyages are
+confined within one drop of the boundless ocean of space.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Recently an exploration ship returned from a voyage into the
+outer tracts. Half her crew had died. The survivors were emaciated,
+diseased, and mentally unbalanced. To a race that thought
+itself so well established in sanity that nothing could disturb it,
+the spectacle of these unfortunates was instructive. Throughout
+the voyage, which was the longest ever attempted, they had encountered
+nothing whatever but two comets and an occasional
+meteor. Some of the nearer constellations were seen with altered
+forms. One or two stars increased slightly in brightness; and the
+sun was reduced to being the most brilliant of stars. The aloof and
+changeless presence of the constellations seems to have crazed
+the voyagers. When at last the ship returned and berthed, there
+was a scene such as is seldom witnessed in our modern world.
+The crew flung open the ports and staggered blubbering into the
+arms of the crowd. It would never have been believed that
+members of our species could be so far reduced from the self-possession
+that is normal to us. Subsequently these poor human
+wrecks have shown an irrational phobia of the stars, and of all that
+not human. They dare not go out at night. They live in an extravagant
+passion for the presence of others. And since all others are
+astronomically minded, they cannot find real companionship.
+They insanely refuse to participate in the mental life of the race
+upon the plane where all things are seen in their just proportions.
+They cling piteously to the sweets of individual life; and so they
+are led to curse the immensities. They fill their minds with human
+conceits, and their houses with toys. By night they draw the curtains
+and drown the quiet voice of the stars in revelry. But it is a
+joyless and a haunted revelry, desired less for itself than as a
+defence against reality.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch15-2'>2. CHILDHOOD AND MATURITY</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>I said that we were all astronomically minded; but we are not
+without ‘human’ interests. Our visitor from the earth would soon
+discover that the low buildings, sprinkled on all sides, were the
+homes of individuals, families, sexual groups, and bands of companions.
+Most of these buildings are so constructed that the roof
+and walls can be removed completely or partially, for sun-bathing
+and for the night. Round each house is a wilderness, or
+a garden, or an orchard of our sturdy fruit trees. Here and there
+men and women may be seen at work with hoe or spade or secateurs.
+The buildings themselves affect many styles; and within
+doors our visitor would find great variety from house to house.
+Even within a single house he might come on rooms seemingly of
+different epochs. And while some rooms are crowded with articles,
+many of which would be incomprehensible to the stranger, others
+are bare, save for a table, chairs, a cupboard, and perhaps some
+single object of pure art. We have an immense variety of manufactured
+goods. But the visitor from a world obsessed with
+material wealth would probably remark the simplicity, even
+austerity, which characterizes most private houses.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>He would doubtless be surprised to see no books. In every
+room, however, there is a cupboard filled with minute rolls of
+tape, microscopically figured. Each of these rolls contains matter
+which could not be cramped into a score of your volumes. They
+are used in connexion with a pocket-instrument, the size and shape
+of the ancient cigarette case. When the roll is inserted, it reels itself
+off at any desired speed, and interferes systematically with ethereal
+vibrations produced by the instrument. Thus is generated a
+very complex flow of ‘telepathic’ language which permeates the
+brain of the reader. So delicate and direct is this medium of expression
+that there is scarcely any possibility of misunderstanding
+the author’s intention. The rolls themselves, it should be said, are
+produced by another special instrument, which is sensitive to
+vibrations generated in the author’s brain. Not that it produces
+a mere replica of his stream of consciousness; it records only
+those images and ideas with which he deliberately ‘inscribes’ it.
+I may mention also that, since we can at any moment communicate
+by direct ‘telepathy’ with any person on the planet, these ‘books’
+of ours are not used for the duplication of merely ephemeral
+thought. Each one of them preserves only the threshed and chosen
+grain of some mind’s harvest.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Other instruments may be observed in our houses, which I
+cannot pause to describe, instruments whose office is either to
+carry out domestic drudgery, or to minister directly in one way
+or another to cultured life. Near the outer door would be hanging
+a number of flying-suits, and in a garage attached to the house
+would be the private air-boats, gaily coloured torpedo-shaped
+objects of various sizes.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Decoration in our houses, save in those which belong to
+children, is everywhere simple, even severe. None the less we prize
+it greatly, and spend much consideration upon it. Children,
+indeed, often adorn their houses with splendour, which adults
+themselves can also enjoy through children’s eyes, even as they
+can enter into the frolics of infants with unaffected glee.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The number of children in our world is small in relation to our
+immense population. Yet, seeing that every one of us is potentially
+immortal, it may be wondered how we can permit ourselves to
+have any children at all. The explanation is twofold. In the first
+place, our policy is to produce new individuals of higher type than
+ourselves, for we are very far from biologically perfect. Consequently
+we need a continuous supply of children. And as these
+successively reach maturity, they take over the functions of adults
+whose nature is less perfect; and these, when they are aware that
+they are no longer of service, elect to retire from life.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But even though every individual, sooner or later, ceases to
+exist, the average length of life is not much less than a quarter
+of a million terrestrial years. No wonder, then, that we cannot
+accommodate many children. But we have more than might be
+expected, for with us infancy and adolescence are very lengthy.
+The foetus is carried for twenty years. Ectogenesis was practised
+by our predecessors, but was abandoned by our own species,
+because, with greatly improved motherhood, there is no need for
+it. Our mothers, indeed, are both physically and mentally most
+vigorous during the all too rare period of pregnancy. After birth,
+true infancy lasts for about a century. During this period, in
+which the foundations of body and mind are being laid, very
+slowly, but so securely that they will never fail, the individual is
+cared for by his mother. Then follow some centuries of childhood,
+and a thousand years of adolescence.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Our children, of course, are very different beings from the
+children of the First Men. Though physically they are in many
+respects still childlike, they are independent persons in the community.
+Each has either a house of his own, or rooms in a larger
+building held in common by himself and his friends. Thousands
+of these are to be found in the neighbourhood of every educational
+centre. There are some children who prefer to live with their
+parents, or with one or other of their parents; but this is rare.
+Though there is often much friendly intercourse between parents
+and children, the generations usually fare better under separate
+roofs. This is inevitable in our species. For the adult’s overwhelmingly
+greater experience reveals the world to him in very different
+proportions from those which are possible even to the most
+brilliant of children; while on the other hand with us the
+mind of every child is, in some potentiality or other, definitely
+superior to every adult mind. Consequently, while the child can
+never appreciate what is best in his elders, the adult, in spite of
+his power of direct insight into all minds not superior to himself,
+is doomed to incomprehension of all that is novel in his own
+offspring.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Six or seven hundred years after birth a child is in some respects
+physically equivalent to a ten-year-old of the First Men. But
+since his brain is destined for much higher development, it is
+already far more complex than any adult brain of that species.
+And though temperamentally he is in many ways still a child,
+intellectually he has already in some respects passed beyond the
+culture of the best adult minds of the ancient races. The traveller,
+encountering one of our bright boys, might sometimes be reminded
+of the wise simplicity of the legendary Child Christ. But
+also he might equally well discover a vast exuberance, boisterousness,
+impishness, and a complete inability to stand outside the
+child’s own eager life and regard it dispassionately. In general our
+children develop intellectually beyond the level of the First Men
+long before they begin to develop the dispassionate will which
+is characteristic of our adults. When there is conflict between a
+child’s personal needs and the need of society, he will as a rule
+force himself to the social course; but he does so with resentment
+and dramatic self-pity, thereby rendering himself in the adult view
+exquisitely ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When our children attain physical adolescence, nearly a
+thousand years after birth, they leave the safe paths of childhood
+to spend another thousand years in one of the antarctic continents,
+known as the Land of the Young. Somewhat reminiscent of the
+Wild Continent of the Fifth Men, this territory is preserved as
+virgin bush and prairie. Sub-human grazers and carnivora
+abound. Volcanic eruption, hurricanes, and glacial seasons afford
+further attractions to the adventurous young. There is consequently
+a high death rate. In this land our young people live the
+half primitive, half sophisticated life to which their nature is
+fitted. They hunt, fish, tend cattle, and till the ground. They
+cultivate all the simple beauties of human individuality. They love
+and hate. They sing, paint, and carve. They devise heroic myths,
+and delight in fantasies of direct intercourse with a cosmic
+person. They organise themselves as tribes and nations. Sometimes
+they even indulge in warfare of a primitive but bloody type.
+Formerly when this happened, the adult world interfered; but we
+have since learned to let the fever run its course. The loss of life
+is regrettable; but it is a small price to pay for the insight afforded
+even by this restricted and juvenile warfare, into those primitive
+agonies and passions which, when they are experienced by the
+adult mind, are so transformed by philosophy that their import is
+wholly changed. In the Land of the Young our boys and girls
+experience all that is precious and all that is abject in the primitive.
+They live through in their own persons, century by century,
+all its toilsomeness and cramped meanness, all its blind cruelty
+and precariousness; but also they taste its glamour, its vernal and
+lyrical glory. They make in little all the mistakes of thought and
+action that men have ever made; but at last they emerge ready
+for the large and more difficult world of maturity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It was expected that some day, when we should have perfected
+the species, there would be no need to build up successive generations,
+no need of children, no need of all this schooling. It was
+expected that the community would then consist of adults only;
+and that they would be immortal not merely potentially but in
+fact, yet also, of course, perennially in the flower of young maturity.
+Thus, death should never cut the string of individuality and
+scatter the hard-won pearls, necessitating new strings, and
+laborious re-gatherings. The many and very delectable beauties
+of childhood could still be amply enjoyed in exploration of the
+past.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We know now that this goal is not to be attained, since man’s
+end is imminent.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch15-3'>3. A RACIAL AWAKENING</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>It is easy to speak of children; but how can I tell you anything
+significant of our adult experience, in relation to which not only
+the world of the First Men but the worlds of the most developed
+earlier species seem so naïve?</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The source of the immense difference between ourselves and
+all other human races lies in the sexual group, which is in fact
+much more than a sexual group.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The designers of our species set out to produce a being that
+might be capable of an order of mentality higher than their own.
+The only possibility of doing so lay in planning a great increase
+of brain organization. But they knew that the brain of an individual
+human being could not safely be allowed to exceed a certain
+weight. They therefore sought to produce the new order of
+mentality in a system of distinct and specialized brains held in
+‘telepathic’ unity by means of ethereal radiation. Material brains
+were to be capable of becoming on some occasions mere nodes
+in a system of radiation which itself should then constitute the
+physical basis of a single mind. Hitherto there had been ‘telepathic’
+communication between many individuals, but no super-individual,
+or group-mind. It was known that such a unity of
+individual minds had never been attained before, save on Mars;
+and it was known how lamentably the racial mind of Mars had
+failed to transcend the minds of the Martians. By a combination
+of shrewdness and good luck the designers hit upon a policy
+which escaped the Martian failure. They planned as the basis of
+the super-individual a small multi-sexual group.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of course the mental unity of the sexual group is not the direct
+outcome of the sexual intercourse of its members. Such intercourse
+does occur. Groups differ from one another very greatly
+in this respect; but in most groups all the members of the male
+sexes have intercourse with all the members of the female sexes.
+Thus sex is with us essentially social. It is impossible for me to
+give any idea of the great range and intensity of experience
+afforded by these diverse types of union. Apart from this emotional
+enrichment of the individuals, the importance of sexual
+activity in the group lies in its bringing individuals into that
+extreme intimacy, temperamental harmony, and complementariness,
+without which no emergence into higher experience would
+be possible.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Individuals are not necessarily confined to the same group for
+ever. Little by little a group may change every one of its ninety-six
+members, and yet it will remain the same super-individual
+mind, though enriched with the memories grafted into it by the
+newcomers. Very rarely does an individual leave a group before
+he has been in it for ten thousand years. In some groups the
+members live together in a common home. In others they live
+apart. Sometimes an individual will form a sort of monogamous
+relation with another individual of his group, homing with the
+chosen one for many thousands of years, or even for a lifetime.
+Indeed some claim that life-long monogamy is the ideal state, so
+deep and delicate is the intimacy which it affords. But of course,
+even in monogamy, each partner must be periodically refreshed
+by intercourse with other members of the group, not only for
+the spiritual health of the two partners themselves, but also that
+the group-mind may be maintained in full vigour. Whatever the
+sexual custom of the group, there is always in the mind of each
+member a very special loyalty towards the whole group, a peculiar
+sexually toned <span class='it'>esprit de corps</span>, unparalleled in any other
+species.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Occasionally there is a special kind of group intercourse in
+which, during the actual occurrence of group mentality, all the
+members of one group will have intercourse with those of another.
+Casual intercourse outside the group is not common, but not
+discouraged. When it occurs it comes as a symbolic act crowning
+a spiritual intimacy.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Unlike the physical sex-relationship, the mental unity of the
+group involves all the members of the group every time it occurs,
+and so long as it persists. During times of group experience the
+individual continues to perform his ordinary routine of work and
+recreation, save when some particular activity is demanded of
+him by the group-mind itself. But all that he does as a private
+individual is carried out in a profound absent-mindedness. In
+familiar situations he reacts correctly, even to the extent of
+executing familiar types of intellectual work or entertaining
+acquaintances with intelligent conversation. Yet all the while
+he is in fact ‘far away’, rapt in the process of the group-mind.
+Nothing short of an urgent and unfamiliar crisis can recall him;
+and in recalling him it usually puts an end to the group’s
+experience.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Each member of the group is fundamentally just a highly
+developed human animal. He enjoys his food. He has a quick eye
+for sexual attraction, within or without the group. He has his
+personal idiosyncrasies and foibles, and is pleased to ridicule the
+foibles of others—and of himself. He may be one of those who
+abhor children, or one of those who enter into children’s antics
+with fervour, if they will tolerate him. He may move heaven and
+earth to procure permission for a holiday in the Land of the
+Young. And if he fails, as he almost surely does, he may go
+walking with a friend, or boating and swimming, or playing
+violent games. Or he may merely potter in his garden, or refresh
+his mind though not his body by exploring some favourite region
+of the past. Recreation occupies a large part of his life. For this
+reason he is always glad to get back to work in due season,
+whether his function is to maintain some part of the material
+organization of our world, or to educate, or to perform scientific
+research, or to cooperate in the endless artistic venture of the race,
+or, as is more likely, to help in some of those innumerable enterprises
+whose nature it is impossible for me to describe.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As a human individual, then, he or she is somewhat of the same
+type as a member of the Fifth species. Here once more is the
+perfected glandular outfit and instinctive nature. Here too is the
+highly developed sense perception and intellection. As in the
+Fifth species, so in the Eighteenth, each individual has his own
+private needs, which he heartily craves to fulfil; but also, in
+both species, he subordinates these private cravings to the good
+of the race absolutely and without struggle. The only kind of
+conflict which ever occurs between individuals is not the irreconcilable
+conflict of wills, but the conflict due to misunderstanding,
+to imperfect knowledge of the matter under dispute; and this can
+always be abolished by patient telepathic explication.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In addition to the brain organization necessary to this perfection
+of individual human nature, each member of a sexual group
+has in his own brain a special organ which, useless by itself, can
+cooperate ‘telepathically’ with the special organs of other members
+of the group to produce a single electro-magnetic system, the
+physical basis of the group-mind. In each sub-sex this organ has
+a peculiar form and function; and only by the simultaneous
+operation of the whole ninety-six does the group attain unified
+mental life. These organs do not merely enable each member to
+share the experience of all; for this is already provided in the
+sensitivity to radiation which is characteristic of all brain tissue
+in our species. By means of the harmonious activity of the special
+organs a true group-mind emerges, with experience far beyond
+the range of the individuals in isolation.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>This would not be possible did not the temperament and
+capacity of each sub-sex differ appropriately from those of the
+others. I can only hint at these differences by analogy. Among the
+First Men there are many temperamental types whose essential
+natures the psychologists of that species never fully analysed. I
+may mention, however, as superficial designations of these types,
+the meditative, the active, the mystical, the intellectual, the artistic,
+the theoretical, the concrete, the placid, the highly-strung.
+Now our sub-sexes differ from one another temperamentally in
+some such manners as these, but with a far greater range and
+diversity. These differences of temperament are utilized for the
+enrichment of a group-self, such as could never have been attained
+by the First Men, even if they had been capable of ‘telepathic’
+communication and electro-magnetic unity; for they had not the
+range of specialized brain form.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For all the daily business of life, then, each of us is mentally
+a distinct individual, though his ordinary means of communication
+with others is ‘telepathic’. But frequently he wakes up to be
+a group-mind. Apart from this ‘waking of individuals together’,
+if I may so call it, the group-mind has no existence; for its being
+is solely the being of the individuals comprehended together.
+When this communal awakening occurs, each individual experiences
+all the bodies of the group as ‘his own multiple body’, and
+perceives the world equally from all those bodies. This awakening
+happens to all the individuals at the same time. But over and
+above this simple enlargement of the experienced field is the
+awakening into new kinds of experience. Of this obviously I can
+tell you nothing, save that it differs from the lowlier state more
+radically than the infant mind differs from the mind of the individual
+adult, and that it consists of insight into many unsuspected
+and previously inconceivable features of the familiar world of
+men and things. Hence, in our group mode, most, but not all, of
+the perennial philosophical puzzles, especially those connected
+with the nature of personality, can be so lucidly restated that they
+cease to be puzzles.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Upon this higher plane of mentality the sexual groups, and
+therefore the individuals participating in them, have social intercourse
+with one another as super-individuals. Thus they form
+together a community of minded communities. For each group is
+a person differing from other groups in character and experience
+somewhat as individuals differ. The groups themselves are not
+allocated to different works, in such a manner that one group
+should be wholly engaged in industry, another in astronomy,
+and so on. Only the individuals are thus allocated. In each group
+there will be members of many professions. The function of the
+group itself is purely some special manner of insight and mode of
+appreciation; in relation to which, of course, the work of the
+individuals is constantly controlled, not only while they are
+actually supporting the group-self, but also when they have each
+fallen once more into the limited experience which is ordinary
+individual selfhood. For though, as individuals, they cannot retain
+clear insight into the high matters which they so recently experienced,
+they do remember so much as is not beyond the range of
+individual mentality; and in particular they remember the bearing
+of the group experience upon their own conduct as individuals.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Recently another and far more penetrating kind of experience
+has been attained, partly by good fortune, partly through research
+directed by the group-minds. For these have specialized themselves
+for particular functions in the mental life of the race, as
+previously the individuals were specialized for functions within
+the mind of a group. Very rarely and precariously has this
+supreme experience been achieved. In it the individual passes
+beyond his group experience, and becomes the mind of the race.
+At all times, of course, he can communicate ‘telepathically’ with
+other individuals anywhere upon the planet; and frequently the
+whole race ‘listens in’ while one individual addresses the world.
+But in the true racial experience the situation is different. The
+system of radiation which embraces the whole planet, and includes
+the million million brains of the race, becomes the physical basis
+of a racial self. The individual discovers himself to be embodied
+in all the bodies of the race. He savours in a single intuition all
+bodily contacts, including the mutual embraces of all lovers.
+Through the myriad feet of all men and women he enfolds his
+world in a single grasp. He sees with all eyes, and comprehends
+in a single vision all visual fields. Thus he perceives at once and
+as a continuous, variegated sphere, the whole surface of the
+planet. But not only so. He now stands above the group-minds
+as they above the individuals. He regards them as a man may
+regard his own vital tissues, with mingled contempt, sympathy,
+reverence, and dispassion. He watches them as one might study
+the living cells of his own brain; but also with the aloof interest
+of one observing an ant hill; and yet again as one enthralled by
+the strange and diverse ways of his fellow-men; and further as
+one who, from above the battle, watches himself and his comrades
+agonizing in some desperate venture; yet chiefly as the
+artist who has no thought but for his vision and its embodiment.
+In the racial mode a man apprehends all things astronomically.
+Through all eyes and all observatories, he beholds his voyaging
+world, and peers outward into space. Thus he merges in one view,
+as it were, the views of deck-hand, captain, stoker, and the man
+in the crow’s-nest. Regarding the solar system simultaneously
+from both limbs of Neptune, he perceives the planets and the sun
+stereoscopically, as though in binocular vision. Further, his
+perceived ‘now’ embraces not a moment but a vast age. Thus,
+observing the galaxy from every point in succession along Neptune’s
+wide orbit, and watching the nearer stars shift hither and
+thither, he actually perceives some of the constellations in three
+dimensions. Nay, with the aid of our most recent instruments the
+whole galaxy appears stereoscopically. But the great nebulae and
+remote universes remain mere marks upon the flat sky; and in
+contemplation of their remoteness man, even as the racial self
+of the mightiest of all human races, realizes his own minuteness
+and impotence.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But chiefly the racial mind transcends the minds of groups and
+individuals in philosophical insight into the true nature of space
+and time, mind and its objects, cosmical striving and cosmical
+perfection. Some hints of this great elucidation must presently
+be given; but in the main it cannot be communicated. Indeed
+such insight is beyond the reach of ourselves as isolated individuals,
+and even beyond the group-minds. When we have declined
+from the racial mentality, we cannot clearly remember what it
+was that we experienced.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In particular we have one very perplexing recollection about
+our racial experience, one which involves a seeming impossibility.
+In the racial mind our experience was enlarged not only spatially
+but temporarily in a very strange manner. In respect of temporal
+perception, of course, minds may differ in two ways, in the
+length of the span which they can comprehend as ‘now’, and the
+minuteness of the successive events which they can discriminate
+within the ‘now’. As individuals we can hold within one ‘now’ a
+duration equal to the old terrestrial day; and within that duration,
+we can, if we will, discriminate rapid pulsations such as
+commonly we hear together as a high musical tone. As the race-mind
+we perceived as ‘now’ the whole period since the birth of
+the oldest living individuals, and the whole past of the species
+appeared as personal memory, stretching back into the mist of
+infancy. Yet we could, if we willed, discriminate within the ‘now’
+one light-vibration from the next. In this mere increased breadth
+and precision of temporal perception there is no contradiction.
+But how, we ask ourselves, could the race-mind experience as
+‘now’ a vast period in which it had no existence whatever?
+Our first experience of racial mentality lasted only as long as
+Neptune’s moon takes to complete one circuit. Before that
+period, then, the race-mind was not. Yet during the month of
+its existence it regarded the whole previous career of the race
+as ‘present’.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Indeed, the racial experience has greatly perplexed us as
+individuals, and we can scarcely be said to remember more of it
+than that it was of extreme subtlety and extreme beauty. At the
+same time we often have of it an impression of unspeakable
+horror. We who, in our familiar individual sphere are able to
+regard all conceivable tragedy not merely with fortitude but with
+exultation, are obscurely conscious that as the racial mind we have
+looked into an abyss of evil such as we cannot now conceive, and
+could not endure to conceive. Yet even this hell we know to have
+been acceptable as an organic member in the austere form of the
+cosmos. We remember obscurely, and yet with a strange conviction,
+that all the age-long striving of the human spirit, no less
+than the petty cravings of individuals, was seen as a fair component
+in something far more admirable than itself; and that man
+ultimately defeated, no less than man for a while triumphant,
+contributes to this higher excellence.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>How colourless these words! How unworthy of that wholly
+satisfying beauty of all things, which in our awakened racial
+mode we see face to face. Every human being, of whatever
+species, may occasionally glimpse some fragment or aspect of
+existence transfigured thus with the cold beauty which normally
+he cannot see. Even the First Men, in their respect for tragic art,
+had something of this experience. The Second, and still more
+surely the Fifth, sought it deliberately. The winged Seventh
+happened upon it while they were in the air. But their minds were
+cramped; and all that they could appreciate was their own small
+world and their own tragic story. We, the Last Men, have all their
+zest in private and in racial life, whether it fares well or ill. We
+have it at all times, and we have it in respect of matters inconceivable
+to lesser minds. We have it, moreover, intelligently.
+Knowing well how strange it is to admire evil along with good,
+we see clearly the subversiveness of this experience. Even we, as
+mere individuals, cannot reconcile our loyalty to the striving
+spirit of man with our own divine aloofness. And so, if we were
+mere individuals, there would remain conflict in each of us. But
+in the racial mode each one of us has now experienced the great
+elucidation of intellect and of feeling. And though, as individuals
+once more, we can never recapture that far-seeing vision, the
+obscure memory of it masters us always, and controls all our
+policies. Among yourselves, the artist, after his phase of creative
+insight is passed, and he is once more a partisan in the struggle
+for existence, may carry out in detail the design conceived in his
+brief period of clarity. He remembers, but no longer sees the
+vision. He tries to fashion some perceptible embodiment of the
+vanished splendour. So we, living our individual lives, delighting
+in the contacts of flesh, the relations of minds, and all the delicate
+activities of human culture, cooperating and conflicting in a
+thousand individual undertakings and performing each his office
+in the material maintenance of our society, see all things as though
+transfused with light from a source which is itself no longer
+revealed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>I have tried to tell you something of the most distinctive
+characteristics of our species. You can imagine that the frequent
+occasions of group mentality, and even more the rare occasions
+of race mentality, have a far-reaching effect on every individual
+mind, and therefore on our whole social order. Ours is in fact a
+society dominated, as no previous society, by a single racial
+purpose which is in a sense religious. Not that the individual’s
+private efflorescence is at all thwarted by the racial purpose.
+Indeed, far otherwise; for that purpose demands as the first
+condition of its fulfilment a wealth of individual fulfilment,
+physical and mental. But in each mind of man or woman the racial
+purpose presides absolutely; and hence it is the unquestioned
+motive of all social policy.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>I must not stay to describe in detail this society of ours, in
+which a million million citizens, grouped in over a thousand
+nations, live in perfect accord without the aid of armies or even
+a police force. I must not tell of our much prized social organization
+which assigns a unique function to each citizen, controls the
+procreation of new citizens of every type in relation to social
+need, and yet provides an endless supply of originality. We have
+no government and no laws, if by law is meant a stereotyped convention
+supported by force, and not to be altered without the aid
+of cumbersome machinery. Yet, though our society is in this
+sense an anarchy, it lives by means of a very intricate system of
+customs, some of which are so ancient as to have become spontaneous
+taboos, rather than deliberate conventions. It is the
+business of those among us who correspond to your lawyers and
+politicians to study these customs and suggest improvements.
+Those suggestions are submitted to no representative body, but
+to the whole world-population in ‘telepathic’ conference. Ours is
+thus in a sense the most democratic of all societies. Yet in another
+sense it is extremely bureaucratic, since it is already some millions
+of terrestrial years since any suggestion put forward by the
+College of Organizers was rejected or even seriously criticized, so
+thoroughly do these social engineers study their material. The
+only serious possibility of conflict lies now between the world
+population as individuals and the same individuals as group
+minds or racial mind. But though in these respects there have
+formerly occurred serious conflicts, peculiarly distressing to the
+individuals who experienced them, such conflicts are now
+extremely rare. For, even as mere individuals, we are learning to
+trust more and more to the judgement and dictates of our own
+super-individual experience.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It is time to grapple with the most difficult part of my whole
+task. Somehow, and very briefly, I must give you an idea of that
+outlook upon existence which has determined our racial purpose,
+making it essentially a religious purpose. This outlook has come
+to us partly through the work of individuals in scientific research
+and philosophic thought, partly through the influence of our
+group and racial experiences. You can imagine that it is not easy
+to describe this modern vision of the nature of things in any
+manner intelligible to those who have not our advantages. There
+is much in this vision which will remind you of your mystics;
+yet between them and us there is far more difference than
+similarity, in respect both of the matter and the manner of our
+thought. For while they are confident that the cosmos is perfect,
+we are sure only that it is very beautiful. While they pass to their
+conclusion without the aid of intellect, we have used that staff
+every step of the way. Thus, even when in respect of conclusions
+we agree with your mystics rather than your plodding intellectuals,
+in respect of method we applaud most your intellectuals; for they
+scorned to deceive themselves with comfortable fantasies.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch15-4'>4. COSMOLOGY</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>We find ourselves living in a vast and boundless, yet finite, order
+of spatio-temporal events. And each of us, as the racial mind,
+has learned that there are other such orders, other and incommensurable
+spheres of events, related to our own neither spatially
+nor temporally but in another mode of eternal being. Of the
+contents of those alien spheres we know almost nothing but that
+they are incomprehensible to us, even in our racial mentality.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Within this spatio-temporal sphere of ours we remark what we
+call the Beginning and what we call the End. In the Beginning
+there came into existence, we know not how, that all-pervading
+and unimaginably tenuous gas which was the parent of all
+material and spiritual existence within time’s known span. It was
+in fact a very multitudinous yet precisely numbered host. From
+the crowding together of this great population into many swarms,
+arose in time the nebulae, each of which in its turn condenses as
+a galaxy, a universe of stars. The stars have their beginnings and
+their ends; and for a few moments somewhere in between their
+beginnings and their ends a few, very few, may support mind. But
+in due course will come the universal End, when all the wreckage
+of the galaxies will have drifted together as a single, barren, and
+seemingly changeless ash, in the midst of a chaos of unavailing
+energy.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the cosmic events which we call the Beginning and the End
+are final only in relation to our ignorance of the events which
+lie beyond them. We know, and as the racial mind we have apprehended
+as a clear necessity, that not only space but time also is
+boundless, though finite. For in a sense time is cyclic. After the
+End, events unknowable will continue to happen during a period
+much longer than that which will have passed since the Beginning;
+but at length there will recur the identical event which was itself
+also the Beginning.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Yet though time is cyclic, it is not repetitive; there is no other
+time within which it can repeat itself. For time is but an abstraction
+from the successiveness of events that pass; and since all
+events whatsoever form together a cycle of successiveness, there
+is nothing constant in relation to which there can be repetition.
+And so the succession of events is cyclic, yet not repetitive. The
+birth of the all-pervading gas in the so-called Beginning is not
+merely <span class='it'>similar</span> to another such birth which will occur long after
+us and long after the cosmic End, so-called; the past Beginning <span class='it'>is</span>
+the future Beginning.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>From the Beginning to the End is but the span from one spoke
+to the next on time’s great wheel. There is a vaster span, stretching
+beyond the End and round to the Beginning. Of the events therein
+we know nothing, save that there must be such events.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Everywhere within time’s cycle there is endless passage of
+events. In a continuous flux, they occur and vanish, yielding to
+their successors. Yet each one of them is eternal. Though passage
+is of their very nature, and without passage they are nothing, yet
+they have eternal being. But their passage is no illusion. They have
+eternal being, yet eternally they exist with passage. In our racial
+mode we see clearly that this is so; but in our individual mode it
+remains a mystery. Yet even in our individual mode we must
+accept both sides of this mysterious antinomy, as a fiction needed
+for the rationalizing of our experience.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The Beginning precedes the End by some hundred million
+million terrestrial years, and succeeds it by a period at least nine
+times longer. In the middle of the smaller span lies the still
+shorter period within which alone the living worlds can occur.
+And they are very few. One by one they dawn into mentality and
+die, successive blooms in life’s short summer. Before that season
+and after it, even to the Beginning and to the End, and even before
+the Beginning and after the End, sleep, utter oblivion. Not before
+there are stars, and not after the stars are chilled, can there be life.
+And then, rarely.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In our own galaxy there have occurred hitherto some twenty
+thousand worlds that have conceived life. And of these a few
+score have attained or surpassed the mentality of the First Men.
+But of those that have reached this development, man has now
+outstripped the rest, and today man alone survives.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There are the millions of other galaxies, for instance the
+Andromedan island. We have some reason to surmise that in that
+favoured universe mind may have attained to insight and power
+incomparably greater than our own. But all that we know for
+certain is that it contains four worlds of high order.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Of the host of other universes that lie within range of our mind-detecting
+instruments, none have produced anything comparable
+with man. But there are many universes too remote to be
+estimated.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>You may wonder how we have come to detect these remote
+lives and intelligences. I can say only that the occurrence of
+mentality produces certain minute astronomical effects, to which
+our instruments are sensitive even at great distances. These
+effects increase slightly with the mere mass of living matter on
+any astronomical body, but far more with its mental and spiritual
+development. Long ago it was the spiritual development of the
+world-community of the Fifth Men that dragged the moon from
+its orbit. And in our own case, so numerous is our society today,
+and so greatly developed in mental and spiritual activities, that
+only by continuous expense of physical energy can we preserve
+the solar system from confusion.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We have another means of detecting minds remote from us in
+space. We can, of course, enter into past minds wherever they are,
+so long as they are intelligible to us; and we have tried to use this
+power for the discovery of remote minded worlds. But in general
+the experience of such minds is too different in fibre from our own
+for us to be able even to detect its existence. And so our knowledge
+of minds in other worlds is almost wholly derived from
+their physical effects.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We cannot say that nowhere save on those rare bodies called
+planets does life ever occur. For we have evidence that in a few
+of the younger stars there is life, and even intelligence. How it
+persists in an incandescent environment we know not, nor
+whether it is perhaps the life of the star as a whole, as a single
+organism, or the life of many flame-like inhabitants of the star.
+All that we know is that no star in its prime has life, and therefore
+that the lives of the younger ones are probably doomed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Again, we know that mind occurs, though very seldom, on a
+few extremely old stars, no longer incandescent. What the future
+of these minds will be, we cannot tell. Perhaps it is with them, and
+not with man, that the hope of the cosmos lies. But at present
+they are all primitive.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Today nothing anywhere in this galaxy of ours can compare
+with man in respect of vision and mental creativeness.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We have, therefore, come to regard our community as of some
+importance. Especially so in the light of our metaphysics; but I
+can only hint at our metaphysical vision of things by means of
+metaphors which will convey at best a caricature of that vision.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the Beginning there was great potency, but little form. And
+the spirit slept as the multitude of discrete primordial existents.
+Thenceforth there has been a long and fluctuating adventure
+towards harmonious complexity of form, and towards the awakening
+of the spirit into unity, knowledge, delight, and self-expression.
+And this is the goal of all living, that the cosmos may be known,
+and admired, and that it may be crowned with further beauties.
+Nowhere and at no time, so far as we can tell, at least within our
+own galaxy, has the adventure reached further than in ourselves.
+And in us, what has been achieved is but a minute beginning. But
+it is a real beginning. Man in our day has gained some depth of
+insight, some breadth of knowledge, some power of creation,
+some faculty of worship. We have looked far afield. We have
+probed not altogether superficially into the nature of existence,
+and have found it very beautiful, though also terrible. We have
+created a not inconsiderable community; and we have wakened
+together to be the unique spirit of that community. We had proposed
+to ourselves a very long and arduous future, which should
+culminate, at some time before the End, in the complete achievement
+of the spirit’s ideal. But now we know that disaster is already
+near at hand.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>When we are in full possession of our faculties, we are not distressed
+by this fate. For we know that though our fair community
+must cease, it has also indestructible being. We have at least
+carved into one region of the eternal real a form which has beauty
+of no mean order. The great company of diverse and most lovely
+men and women in all their subtle relationships, striving with a
+single purpose towards the goal which is mind’s final goal; the
+community and super-individuality of that great host; the beginnings
+of further insight and creativeness upon the higher plane—these
+surely are real achievements—even though, in the larger
+view, they are minute achievements.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Yet though we are not at all dismayed by our own extinction,
+we cannot but wonder whether or not in the far future some other
+spirit will fulfil the cosmic ideal, or whether we ourselves are the
+modest crown of existence. Unfortunately, though we can explore
+the past wherever there are intelligible minds, we cannot enter
+into the future. And so in vain we ask, will ever any spirit awake
+to gather all spirits into itself, to elicit from the stars their full
+flower of beauty, to know all things together, and admire all
+things justly.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>If in the far future this end will be achieved, it is really achieved
+even now; for whenever it occurs, its being is eternal. But on the
+other hand if it is indeed achieved eternally, this achievement
+must be the work of spirits or a spirit not wholly unlike ourselves,
+though infinitely greater. And the physical location of that
+spirit must lie in the far future.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But if no future spirit will achieve this end before it dies, then,
+though the cosmos is indeed very beautiful, it is not perfect.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>I said that we regard the cosmos as very beautiful. Yet it is also
+very terrible. For ourselves, it is easy to look forward with equanimity
+to our end, and even to the end of our admired community;
+for what we prize most is the excellent beauty of the
+cosmos. But there are the myriads of spirits who have never
+entered into that vision. They have suffered, and they were not
+permitted that consolation. There are, first, the incalculable hosts
+of lowly creatures scattered over all the ages in all the minded
+worlds. Theirs was only a dream life, and their misery not often
+poignant; but none the less they are to be pitied for having missed
+the more poignant experience in which alone spirit can find fulfilment.
+Then there are the intelligent beings, human and otherwise;
+the many minded worlds throughout the galaxies, that have
+struggled into cognizance, striven for they knew not what, tasted
+brief delights and lived in the shadow of pain and death, until at
+last their life has been crushed out by careless fate. In our solar
+system there are the Martians, insanely and miserably obsessed;
+the native Venerians, imprisoned in their ocean and murdered for
+man’s sake; and all the hosts of the forerunning human species.
+A few individuals no doubt in every period, and many in certain
+favoured races, have lived on the whole happily. And a few have
+even known something of the supreme beatitude. But for most,
+until our modern epoch, thwarting has outweighed fulfilment;
+and if actual grief has not preponderated over joy, it is because,
+mercifully, the fulfilment that is wholly missed cannot be conceived.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Our predecessors of the Sixteenth species, oppressed by this
+vast horror, undertook a forlorn and seemingly irrational crusade
+for the rescue of the tragic past. We see now clearly that their
+enterprise, though desperate, was not quite fantastic. For, if ever
+the cosmic ideal should be realized, even though for a moment
+only, then in that time the awakened Soul of All will embrace
+within itself all spirits whatever throughout the whole of time’s
+wide circuit. And so to each one of them, even to the least, it will
+seem that he has awakened and discovered himself to be the
+Soul of All, knowing all things and rejoicing in all things. And
+though afterwards, through the inevitable decay of the stars, this
+most glorious vision must be lost, suddenly or in the long-drawn-out
+defeat of life, yet would the awakened Soul of All have eternal
+being, and in it each martyred spirit would have beatitude eternally,
+though unknown to itself in its own temporal mode.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It may be that this is the case. If not, then eternally the martyred
+spirits are martyred only, and not blest.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We cannot tell which of these possibilities is fact. As individuals
+we earnestly desire that the eternal being of things may include
+this supreme awakening. This, nothing less than this, has been
+the remote but ever-present goal of our practical religious life
+and of our social policy.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In our racial mode also we have greatly desired this end, but
+differently.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Even as individuals, all our desires are tempered by that relentless
+admiration of fate which we recognize as the spirit’s highest
+achievement. Even as individuals, we exult in the issue whether our
+enterprises succeed or fail. The pioneer defeated, the lover bereaved
+and overwhelmed, can find in his disaster the supreme
+experience, the dispassionate ecstasy which salutes the Real as
+it is and would not change one jot of it. Even as individuals, we
+can regard the impending extinction of mankind as a thing
+superb though tragic. Strong in the knowledge that the human
+spirit has already inscribed the cosmos with indestructible beauty,
+and that inevitably, whether sooner or later, man’s career must
+end, we face this too sudden end with laughter in our hearts, and
+peace.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But there is the one thought by which, in our individual state,
+we are still dismayed, namely that the cosmic enterprise itself
+may fail; that the full potentiality of the Real may never find
+expression; that never, in any stage of time, the multitudinous
+and conflicting existents should be organized as the universal
+harmonious living body; that the spirit’s eternal nature, therefore,
+should be discordant, miserably tranced; that the indestructible
+beauties of this our sphere of space and time should remain
+imperfect, and remain, too, not adequately worshipped.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But in the racial mind this ultimate dread has no place. On
+those few occasions when we have awakened racially, we have
+come to regard with piety even the possibility of cosmical defeat.
+For as the racial mind, though in a manner we earnestly desired
+the fulfilment of the cosmical ideal, yet we were no more enslaved
+to this desire than, as individuals, we are enslaved to our private
+desires. For though the racial mind wills this supreme achievement,
+yet in the same act it holds itself aloof from it, and from all
+desire, and all emotion, save the ecstasy which admires the real
+as it is, and accepts its dark-bright form with joy.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>As individuals, therefore, we try to regard the whole cosmic
+adventure as a symphony now in progress, which may or may
+not some day achieve its just conclusion. Like music, however,
+the vast biography of the stars is to be judged not in respect of
+its final moment merely, but in respect of the perfection of its
+whole form; and whether its form as a whole is perfect or not, we
+cannot know. Actual music is a pattern of intertwining themes
+which evolve and die; and these again are woven of simpler
+members, which again are spun of chords and unitary tones. But
+the music of the spheres is of a complexity almost infinitely more
+subtle, and its themes rank above and below one another in
+hierarchy beyond hierarchy. None but a God, none but a mind
+subtle as the music itself, could hear the whole in all its detail,
+and grasp in one act its close-knit individuality, if such it has.
+Not for any human mind to say authoritatively, ‘This is music,
+wholly’, or to say, ‘This is mere noise, flecked now and then by
+shreds of significance’.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The music of the spheres is unlike other music not only in
+respect of its richness, but also in the nature of its medium. It is a
+music not merely of sounds but of souls. Each of its minor themes,
+each of its chords, each single tone of it, each tremor of each tone,
+is in its own degree more than a mere passive factor in the music;
+it is a listener, and also a creator. Wherever there is individuality
+of form, there is also an individual appreciator and originator.
+And the more complex the form, the more percipient and active
+the spirit. Thus in every individual factor within the music, the
+musical environment of that factor is experienced, vaguely or
+precisely, erroneously or with greater approximation to truth;
+and, being experienced, it is admired or loathed, rightly or falsely.
+And it is influenced. Just as in actual music each theme is in a
+manner a determination of its forerunners and followers and
+present accompaniment, so in this vaster music each individual
+factor is itself a determination of its environment. Also it is a
+determinant, both of that which precedes and that which follows.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But whether these manifold interdeterminations are after all
+haphazard, or, as in music, controlled in relation to the beauty
+of the whole, we know not; nor whether, if this is the case, the
+beautiful whole of things is the work of some mind; nor yet
+whether some mind admires it adequately as a whole of beauty.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But this we know: that we ourselves, when the spirit is most
+awake in us, admire the Real as it is revealed to us, and salute
+its dark-bright form with joy.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<div><h1><span style='font-size:x-large'>XVI</span> <span class='it'>The Last of Man</span></h1></div>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch16-1'>1. SENTENCE OF DEATH</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'><span class="l">Ours</span> has been essentially a philosophical age, in fact the supreme
+age of philosophy. But a great practical problem has also concerned
+us. We have had to prepare for the task of preserving
+humanity during a most difficult period which was calculated to
+begin about one hundred million years hence, but might, in
+certain circumstances, be sprung upon us at very short notice.
+Long ago the human inhabitants of Venus believed that already
+in their day the sun was about to enter the ‘white dwarf’ phase,
+and that the time would therefore soon come when their world
+would be frost-bound. This calculation was unduly pessimistic;
+but we know now that, even allowing for the slight delay caused
+by the great collision, the solar collapse must begin at some date
+astronomically not very distant. We had planned that during the
+comparatively brief period of the actual shrinkage, we would
+move our planet steadily nearer to the sun, until finally it should
+settle in the narrowest possible orbit.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Man would then be comfortably placed for a very long period.
+But in the fullness of time there would come a far more serious
+crisis. The sun would continue to cool, and at last man would no
+longer be able to live by means of solar radiation. It would become
+necessary to annihilate matter to supply the deficiency. The
+other planets might be used for this purpose, and possibly the
+sun itself. Or, given the sustenance for so long a voyage, man
+might boldly project his planet into the neighbourhood of some
+younger star. Thenceforth, perhaps, he might operate upon a far
+grander scale. He might explore and colonize all suitable worlds
+in every corner of the galaxy, and organize himself as a vast
+community of minded worlds. Even (so we dreamed) he might
+achieve intercourse with other galaxies. It did not seem impossible
+that man himself was the germ of the world-soul, which, we still
+hope, is destined to awake for a while before the universal decline,
+and to crown the eternal cosmos with its due of knowledge and
+admiration, fleeting yet eternal. We dared to think that in some
+far distant epoch the human spirit, clad in all wisdom, power,
+and delight, might look back upon our primitive age with a
+certain respect; no doubt with pity also and amusement, but
+none the less with admiration for the spirit in us, still only half
+awake, and struggling against great disabilities. In such a mood,
+half pity, half admiration, we ourselves look back upon the
+primitive mankinds.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Our prospect has now suddenly and completely changed, for
+astronomers have made a startling discovery, which assigns to
+man a speedy end. His existence has ever been precarious. At any
+stage of his career he might easily have been exterminated by some
+slight alteration of his chemical environment, by a more than
+usually malignant microbe, by a radical change of climate, or by
+the manifold effects of his own folly. Twice already he has been
+almost destroyed by astronomical events. How easily might it
+happen that the solar system, now rushing through a somewhat
+more crowded region of the galaxy, should become entangled
+with, or actually strike, a major astronomical body, and be
+destroyed. But fate, as it turns out, has a more surprising end in
+store for man.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Not long ago an unexpected alteration was observed to be
+taking place in a near star. Through no discoverable cause, it
+began to change from white to violet, and increase in brightness.
+Already it has attained such extravagant brilliance that, though
+its actual disc remains a mere point in our sky, its dazzling purple
+radiance illuminates our nocturnal landscapes with hideous
+beauty. Our astronomers have ascertained that this is no ordinary
+‘nova’, that it is not one of those stars addicted to paroxysms of
+brilliance. It is something unprecedented, a normal star suffering
+from a unique disease, a fantastic acceleration of its vital process,
+a riotous squandering of the energy which should have remained
+locked within its substance for aeons. At the present rate it will
+be reduced either to an inert cinder or to actual annihilation in a
+few thousand years. This extraordinary event may possibly have
+been produced by unwise tamperings on the part of intelligent
+beings in the star’s neighbourhood. But, indeed, since all matter
+at very high temperature is in a state of unstable equilibrium, the
+cause may have been merely some conjunction of natural circumstances.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The event was first regarded simply as an intriguing spectacle.
+But further study roused a more serious interest. Our own planet,
+and therefore the sun also, was suffering a continuous and increasing
+bombardment of ethereal vibrations, most of which were of
+incredibly high frequency, and of unknown potentiality. What
+would be their effect upon the sun? After some centuries, certain
+astronomical bodies in the neighbourhood of the deranged star
+were seen to be infected with its disorder. Their fever increased
+the splendour of our night sky, but it also confirmed our fears.
+We still hoped that the sun might prove too distant to be seriously
+influenced, but careful analysis now showed that this hope must
+be abandoned. The sun’s remoteness might cause a delay of some
+thousands of years before the cumulative effects of the bombardment
+could start the disintegration; but sooner or later the sun
+itself must be infected. Probably within thirty thousand years
+life will be impossible anywhere within a vast radius of the sun,
+so vast a radius that it is quite impossible to propel our planet
+away fast enough to escape before the storm can catch us.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch16-2'>2. BEHAVIOUR OF THE CONDEMNED</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>The discovery of this doom kindled in us unfamiliar emotions.
+Hitherto humanity had seemed to be destined for a very long
+future, and the individual himself had been accustomed to look
+forward to very many thousands of years of personal life,
+ending in voluntary sleep. We had of course often conceived, and
+even savoured in imagination, the sudden destruction of our
+world. But now we faced it as a fact. Outwardly everyone behaved
+with perfect serenity, but inwardly every mind was in turmoil.
+Not that there was any question of our falling into panic or
+despair, for in this crisis our native detachment stood us in good
+stead. But inevitably some time passed before our minds became
+properly adjusted to the new prospect, before we could see our fate
+outlined clearly and beautifully against the cosmic background.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Presently, however, we learned to contemplate the whole great
+saga of man as a completed work of art, and to admire it no less
+for its sudden and tragic end than for the promise in it which was
+not to be fulfilled. Grief was now transfigured wholly into ecstasy.
+Defeat, which had oppressed us with a sense of man’s impotence
+and littleness among the stars, brought us into a new sympathy
+and reverence for all those myriads of beings in the past out of
+whose obscure strivings we had been born. We saw the most
+brilliant of our own race and the lowliest of our prehuman forerunners
+as essentially spirits of equal excellence, though cast in
+diverse circumstances. When we looked round on the heavens,
+and at the violet splendour which was to destroy us, we were filled
+with awe and pity, awe for the inconceivable potentiality of this
+bright host, pity for its self-thwarting effort to fulfil itself as the
+universal spirit.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At this stage it seemed that there was nothing left for us to do
+but to crowd as much excellence as possible into our remaining
+life, and meet our end in the noblest manner. But now there came
+upon us once more the rare experience of racial mentality. For a
+whole Neptunian year every individual lived in an enraptured
+trance, in which, as the racial mind, he or she resolved many
+ancient mysteries and saluted many unexpected beauties. This
+ineffable experience, lived through under the shadow of death,
+was the flower of man’s whole being. But I can tell nothing of it,
+save that when it was over we possessed, even as individuals, a
+new peace, in which, strangely but harmoniously, were blended
+grief, exaltation, and god-like laughter.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In consequence of this racial experience we found ourselves
+faced with two tasks which had not before been contemplated.
+The one referred to the future, the other to the past.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In respect of the future, we are now setting about the forlorn
+task of disseminating among the stars the seeds of a new humanity.
+For this purpose we shall make use of the pressure of radiation
+from the sun, and chiefly the extravagantly potent radiation that
+will later be available. We are hoping to devise extremely minute
+electro-magnetic ‘wave-systems’, akin to normal protons and
+electrons, which will be individually capable of sailing forward
+upon the hurricane of solar radiation at a speed not wholly incomparable
+with the speed of light itself. This is a difficult task.
+But, further, these units must be so cunningly inter-related that,
+in favourable conditions, they may tend to combine to form
+spores of life, and to develop, not indeed into human beings, but
+into lowly organisms with a definite evolutionary bias toward the
+essentials of human nature. These objects we shall project from
+beyond our atmosphere in immense quantities at certain points
+of our planet’s orbit, so that solar radiation may carry them
+towards the most promising regions of the galaxy. The chance that
+any of them will survive to reach their destination is small, and
+still smaller the chance that any of them will find a suitable
+environment. But if any of this human seed should fall upon good
+ground, it will embark, we hope, upon a somewhat rapid biological
+evolution, and produce in due season whatever complex
+organic forms are possible in its environment. It will have a very
+real physiological bias toward the evolution of intelligence.
+Indeed it will have a much greater bias in that direction than
+occurred on the Earth in those subvital atomic groupings from
+which terrestrial life eventually sprang.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>It is just conceivable, then, that by extreme good fortune man
+may still influence the future of this galaxy, not directly but
+through his creature. But in the vast music of existence the actual
+theme of mankind now ceases for ever. Finished, the long reiterations
+of man’s history; defeated, the whole proud enterprise of
+his maturity. The stored experience of many mankinds must sink
+into oblivion, and today’s wisdom must vanish.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The other task which occupies us, that which relates to the past,
+is one which may very well seem to you nonsensical.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We have long been able to enter into past minds and participate
+in their experience. Hitherto we have been passive spectators
+merely, but recently we have acquired the power of influencing
+past minds. This seems an impossibility; for a past event is what
+it is, and how can it conceivably be altered at a subsequent date,
+even in the minutest respect?</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Now it is true that past events are what they are, irrevocably;
+but in certain cases some feature of a past event may depend on
+an event in their far future. The past event would never have been
+as it actually was (and is, eternally), if there had not been going
+to be a certain future event, which, though not contemporaneous
+with the past event, influences it directly in the sphere of eternal
+being. The passage of events is real, and time is the successiveness
+of passing events; but though events have passage, they have also
+eternal being. And in certain rare cases mental events far separated
+in time determine one another directly by way of eternity.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Our own minds have often been profoundly influenced by
+direct inspection of past minds; and now we find that certain
+events of certain past minds are determined by present events in
+our own present minds. No doubt there are some mental events
+which are what they are by virtue of mental past-processes which
+we <span class='it'>shall</span> perform but have not yet performed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Our historians and psychologists, engaged on direct inspection
+of past minds, had often complained of certain ‘singular’ points
+in past minds, where the ordinary laws of psychology fail to give
+a full explanation of the course of mental events; where, in fact,
+some wholly unknown influence seemed to be at work. Later it
+was found that, in some cases at least, this disturbance of the
+ordinary principles of psychology corresponded with certain
+thoughts or desires in the mind of the observer, living in our own
+age. Of course, only such matters as could have significance to the
+past mind could influence it at all. Thoughts and desires of ours
+which have no meaning to the particular past-individual fail to
+enter into his experience. New ideas and new values are only to
+be introduced by arranging familiar matter so that it may gain a
+new significance. Nevertheless we now found ourselves in possession
+of an amazing power of communicating with the past, and
+contributing to its thought and action, though of course we
+could not <span class='it'>alter</span> it.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But, it may be asked, what if, in respect of a particular ‘singularity’
+in some past mind, we do not, after all, choose to provide
+the necessary influence to account for it? The question is meaningless.
+There is no possibility that we should not choose to influence
+those past minds which are, as a matter of fact, dependent
+on our influence. For it is in the sphere of eternity (wherein alone
+we meet past minds), that we really make this free choice. And
+in the sphere of time, though the choosing has relations with our
+modern age, and may be said to occur in that age, it also had
+relations with the past mind, and may be said to have occurred
+also long ago.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There are in some past minds singularities which are not the
+product of any influence that we have exerted today. Some of
+these singularities, no doubt, we shall ourselves produce on some
+occasion before our destruction. But it may be that some are due
+to an influence other than ours, perhaps to beings which, by
+good fortune, may spring long hence from our forlorn seminal
+enterprise; or they may be due perhaps to the cosmic mind,
+whose future occurrence and eternal existence we earnestly
+desire. However that may be, there are a few remarkable minds,
+scattered up and down past ages and even in the most primitive
+human races, which suggest an influence other than our own.
+They are so ‘singular’ in one respect or another, that we cannot
+give a perfectly clear psychological account of them in terms of
+the past only; and yet we ourselves are not the instigators of their
+singularity. Your Jesus, your Socrates, your Gautama, show
+traces of this uniqueness. But the most original of all were too
+eccentric to have any influence on their contemporaries. It is
+possible that in ourselves also there are ‘singularities’ which
+cannot be accounted for wholly in terms of ordinary biological
+and psychological laws. If we could prove that this is the case, we
+should have very definite evidence of the occurrence of a high
+order of mentality somewhere in the future, and therefore of its
+eternal existence. But hitherto this problem has proved too subtle
+for us, even in the racial mode. It may be that the mere fact that
+we have succeeded in attaining racial mentality involves some
+remote future influence. It is even conceivable that every creative
+advance that any mind has ever made involves unwitting cooperation
+with the cosmic mind which, perhaps, will awake at some
+date before the End.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We have two methods of influencing the past through past
+individuals; for we can operate either upon minds of great
+originality and power, or upon any average individual whose
+circumstances happen to suit our purpose. In original minds we
+can only suggest some very vague intuition, which is then ‘worked
+up’ by the individual himself into some form very different from
+that which we intended, but very potent as a factor in the culture
+of his age. Average minds, on the other hand, we can use as
+passive instruments for the conveyance of detailed ideas. But in
+such cases the individual is incapable of working up the material
+into a great and potent form, suited to his age.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But what is it, you may ask, that we seek to contribute to the
+past? We seek to afford intuitions of truth and of value, which,
+though easy to us from our point of vantage, would be impossible
+to the unaided past. We seek to help the past to make the best of
+itself, just as one man may help another. We seek to direct the
+attention of past individuals and past races to truths and beauties
+which, though implicit in their experience, would otherwise be
+overlooked.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We seek to do this for two reasons. Entering into past minds,
+we become perfectly acquainted with them, and cannot but love
+them; and so we desire to help them. By influencing selected
+individuals, we seek to influence indirectly great multitudes. But
+our second motive is very different. We see the career of Man in
+his successive planetary homes as a process of very great beauty.
+It is far indeed from the perfect; but it is very beautiful, with the
+beauty of tragic art. Now it turns out that this beautiful thing
+entails our operation at various points in the past. Therefore we
+will to operate.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Unfortunately our first inexperienced efforts were disastrous.
+Many of the fatuities which primitive minds in all ages have been
+prone to attribute to the influence of disembodied spirits, whether
+deities, fiends, or the dead, are but the gibberish which resulted
+from our earliest experiments. And this book, so admirable in
+our conception, has issued from the brain of the writer, your
+contemporary, in such disorder as to be mostly rubbish.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>We are concerned with the past not only in so far as we
+make very rare contributions to it, but chiefly in two other
+manners.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>First, we are engaged upon the great enterprise of becoming
+lovingly acquainted with the past, the human past, in every detail.
+This is, so to speak, our supreme act of filial piety. When one
+being comes to know and love another, a new and beautiful
+thing is created, namely the love. The cosmos is thus far and at
+that date enhanced. We seek then to know and love every past
+mind that we can enter. In most cases we can know them with
+far more understanding than they can know themselves. Not the
+least of them, not the worst of them, shall be left out of this great
+work of understanding and admiration.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>There is another manner in which we are concerned with the
+human past. We need its help. For we, who are triumphantly
+reconciled to our fate, are under obligation to devote our last
+energies not to ecstatic contemplation but to a forlorn and most
+uncongenial task, the dissemination. This task is almost intolerably
+repugnant to us. Gladly would we spend our last days in
+embellishing our community and our culture, and in pious
+exploration of the past. But it is incumbent on us, who are by
+nature artists and philosophers, to direct the whole attention of
+our world upon the arid labour of designing an artificial human
+seed, producing it in immense quantities, and projecting it among
+the stars. If there is to be any possibility of success, we must
+undertake a very lengthy programme of physical research, and
+finally organize a world-wide system of manufacture. The work
+will not be completed until our physical constitution is already
+being undermined, and the disintegration of our community has
+already begun. Now we could never fulfil this policy without a
+zealous conviction of its importance. Here it is that the past can
+help us. We, who have now learnt so thoroughly the supreme art
+of ecstatic fatalism, go humbly to the past to learn over again that
+other supreme achievement of the spirit, loyalty to the forces of
+life embattled against the forces of death. Wandering among the
+heroic and often forlorn ventures of the past, we are fired once
+more with primitive zeal. Thus, when we return to our own world,
+we are able, even while we preserve in our hearts the peace that
+passeth understanding, to struggle as though we cared only for
+victory.</p>
+
+<h2 class='nobreak' id='ch16-3'>3. EPILOGUE</h2>
+
+<p class='noindent'>I am speaking to you now from a period about twenty thousand
+terrestrial years after the date at which the whole preceding part
+of this book was communicated. It has become very difficult to
+reach you, and still more difficult to speak to you; for already the
+Last Men are not the men they were.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Our two great undertakings are still unfinished. Much of the
+human past remains imperfectly explored, and the projection of
+the seed is scarcely begun. That enterprise has proved far more
+difficult than was expected. Only within the last few years have we
+succeeded in designing an artificial human dust capable of being
+carried forward on the sun’s radiation, hardy enough to endure
+the conditions of a trans-galactic voyage of many millions of
+years, and yet intricate enough to bear the potentiality of life and
+of spiritual development. We are now preparing to manufacture
+this seminal matter in great quantities, and to cast it into space
+at suitable points on the planet’s orbit.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Some centuries have now passed since the sun began to show
+the first symptoms of disintegration, namely a slight change of
+colour towards the blue, followed by a definite increase of brightness
+and heat. Today, when he pierces the ever-thickening cloud,
+he smites us with an intolerable steely brilliance which destroys
+the sight of anyone foolish enough to face it. Even in the cloudy
+weather which is now normal, the eye is wounded by the fierce
+violet glare. Eye-troubles afflict us all, in spite of the special
+glasses which have been designed to protect us. The mere heat,
+too, is already destructive. We are forcing our planet outward
+from its old orbit in an ever-widening spiral; but, do what we will,
+we cannot prevent the climate from becoming more and more
+deadly, even at the poles. The intervening regions have already
+been deserted. Evaporation of the equatorial oceans has thrown
+the whole atmosphere into tumult, so that even at the poles we
+are tormented by hot wet hurricanes and incredible electric
+storms. These have already shattered most of our great buildings,
+sometimes burying a whole teeming province under an avalanche
+of tumbled vitreous crags.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Our two polar communities at first managed to maintain radio
+communication; but it is now some time since we of the south
+received news of the more distressed north. Even with us the
+situation is already desperate. We had recently established some
+hundreds of stations for the dissemination, but less than a score
+have been able to operate. This failure is due mainly to an increasing
+lack of personnel. The deluge of fantastic solar radiation has
+had disastrous effect on the human organism. Epidemics of a
+malignant tumour, which medical science has failed to conquer,
+have reduced the southern people to a mere remnant, and this in
+spite of the migration of the tropical races into the Antarctic. Each
+of us, moreover, is but the wreckage of his former self. The higher
+mental functions, attained only in the most developed human
+species, are already lost or disordered, through the breakdown
+of their special tissues. Not only has the racial mind vanished, but
+the sexual groups have lost their mental unity. Three of the sub-sexes
+have already been exterminated by derangement of their
+chemical nature. Glandular troubles, indeed, have unhinged many
+of us with anxieties and loathings which we cannot conquer,
+though we know them to be unreasonable. Even the normal
+power of ‘telepathic’ communication has become so unreliable
+that we have been compelled to fall back upon the archaic practice
+of vocal symbolism. Exploration of the past is now confined to
+specialists, and is a dangerous profession, which may lead to
+disorders of temporal experience.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Degeneration of the higher neural centres has also brought
+about in us a far more serious and deep-seated trouble, namely
+a general spiritual degradation which would formerly have seemed
+impossible, so confident were we of our integrity. The perfectly
+dispassionate will had been for many millions of years universal
+among us, and the corner-stone of our whole society and culture.
+We had almost forgotten that it has a physiological basis, and that
+if that basis were undermined, we might no longer be capable of
+rational conduct. But, drenched for some thousands of years by
+the unique stellar radiation, we have gradually lost not only the
+ecstasy of dispassionate worship, but even the capacity for
+normal disinterested behaviour. Everyone is now liable to an
+irrational bias in favour of himself as a private person, as against
+his fellows. Personal envy, uncharitableness, even murder and
+gratuitous cruelty, formerly unknown amongst us, are now becoming
+common. At first when men began to notice in themselves
+these archaic impulses, they crushed them with amused contempt.
+But as the highest nerve centres fell further into decay, the brute in
+us began to be ever more unruly, and the human more uncertain.
+Rational conduct was henceforth to be achieved only after
+an exhausting and degrading ‘moral struggle’, instead of spontaneously
+and fluently. Nay, worse, increasingly often the struggle
+ended not in victory but defeat. Imagine then, the terror and
+disgust that gripped us when we found ourselves one and all condemned
+to a desperate struggle against impulses which we had
+been accustomed to regard as insane. It is distressing enough to
+know that each one of us might at any moment, merely to help
+some dear individual or other, betray his supreme duty toward
+the dissemination; but it is harrowing to discover ourselves sometimes
+so far sunk as to be incapable even of common loving-kindness
+toward our neighbours. For a man to favour himself against
+his friend or beloved, even in the slightest respect, was formerly
+unknown. But today many of us are haunted by the look of
+amazed horror and pity in the eyes of an injured friend.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>In the early stages of our trouble lunatic asylums were founded,
+but they soon became over-crowded and a burden on a stricken
+community. The insane were then killed. But it became clear that
+by former standards we were all insane. No man now can trust
+himself to behave reasonably.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>And, of course, we cannot trust each other. Partly through the
+prevalent irrationality of desire, and partly through the misunderstandings
+which have come with the loss of ‘telepathic’
+communication, we have been plunged into all manner of discords.
+A political constitution and system of laws had to be
+devised, but they seem to have increased our troubles. Order of
+a kind is maintained by an overworked police force. But this is
+in the hands of the professional organizers, who have now all the
+vices of bureaucracy. It was largely through their folly that two
+of the antarctic nations broke into social revolution, and are now
+preparing to meet the armament which an insane world-government
+is devising for their destruction. Meanwhile, through the
+breakdown of the economic order, and the impossibility of
+reaching the food-factories on Jupiter, starvation is added to our
+troubles, and has afforded to certain ingenious lunatics the
+opportunity of trading at the expense of others.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>All this folly in a doomed world, and in a community that was
+yesterday the very flower of a galaxy! Those of us who still care
+for the life of the spirit are tempted to regret that mankind did
+not choose decent suicide before ever the putrescence began. But
+indeed this could not be. The task that was undertaken had to be
+completed. For the Scattering of the Seed has come to be for every
+one of us the supreme religious duty. Even those who continually
+sin against it recognize this as the last office of man. It was for this
+that we outstayed our time, and must watch ourselves decline
+from spiritual estate into that brutishness from which man has so
+seldom freed himself.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Yet why do we persist in the forlorn effort? Even if by good
+luck the seed should take root somewhere and thrive, there will
+surely come an end to its adventure, if not swiftly in fire, then in
+the ultimate battle of life against encroaching frost. Our labour
+will at best sow for death an ampler harvest. There seems no
+rational defence of it, unless it be rational to carry out blindly a
+purpose conceived in a former and more enlightened state.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But we cannot feel sure that we really were more enlightened.
+We look back now at our former selves, with wonder, but also
+with incomprehension and misgiving. We try to recall the glory
+that seemed to be revealed to each of us in the racial mind, but
+we remember almost nothing of it. We cannot rise even to that
+more homely beatitude which was once within the reach of the
+unaided individual, that serenity which, it seemed, should be the
+spirit’s answer to every tragic event. It is gone from us. It is not
+only impossible but inconceivable. We now see our private
+distresses and the public calamity as merely hideous. That after
+so long a struggle into maturity man should be roasted alive like
+a trapped mouse, for the entertainment of a lunatic! How can
+any beauty lie in that?</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But this is not our last word to you. For though we have fallen,
+there is still something in us left over from the time that is passed.
+We have become blind and weak; but the knowledge that we are
+so has forced us to a great effort. Those of us who have not already
+sunk too far have formed themselves into a brotherhood for
+mutual strengthening, so that the true human spirit may be maintained
+a little longer, until the seed has been well sown, and death
+be permissible. We call ourselves the Brotherhood of the Condemned.
+We seek to be faithful to one another, and to our
+common undertaking, and to the vision which is no longer revealed.
+We are vowed to the comforting of all distressed persons
+who are not yet permitted death. We are vowed also to the dissemination.
+And we are vowed to keep the spirit bright until the
+end.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Now and again we meet together in little groups or great
+companies to hearten ourselves with one another’s presence.
+Sometimes on these occasions we can but sit in silence, groping
+for consolation and for strength. Sometimes, the spoken word
+flickers hither and thither amongst us, shedding a brief light but
+little warmth to the soul that lies freezing in a torrid world.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But there is among us one, moving from place to place and
+company to company, whose voice all long to hear. He is young,
+the last born of the Last Men; for he was the latest to be conceived
+before we learned man’s doom, and put an end to all
+conceiving. Being the latest, he is also the noblest. Not him alone,
+but all his generation, we salute, and look to for strength; but
+he, the youngest, is different from the rest. In him the spirit,
+which is but the flesh awakened into spirituality, has power to
+withstand the tempest of solar energy longer than the rest of us.
+It is as though the sun itself were eclipsed by this spirit’s brightness.
+It is as though in him at last, and for a day only, man’s
+promise were fulfilled. For though, like others, he suffers in the
+flesh, he is above his suffering. And though more than the rest of
+us he feels the suffering of others, he is above his pity. In his
+comforting there is a strange sweet raillery which can persuade
+the sufferer to smile at his own pain. When this youngest brother
+of ours contemplates with us our dying world and the frustration
+of all man’s striving, he is not, like us, dismayed, but quiet. In the
+presence of such quietness despair wakens into peace. By his
+reasonable speech, almost by the mere sound of his voice, our
+eyes are opened, and our hearts mysteriously filled with exultation.
+Yet often his words are grave.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Let his words, not mine, close this story:</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Great are the stars, and man is of no account to them. But man
+is a fair spirit, whom a star conceived and a star kills. He is greater
+than those bright blind companies. For though in them there is
+incalculable potentiality, in him there is achievement, small, but
+actual. Too soon, seemingly, he comes to his end. But when he is
+done he will not be nothing, not as though he had never been;
+for he is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Man was winged hopefully. He had in him to go further than
+this short flight, now ending. He proposed even that he should
+become the Flower of All Things, and that he should learn to
+be the All-Knowing, the All-Admiring. Instead, he is to be
+destroyed. He is only a fledgling caught in a bush-fire. He is very
+small, very simple, very little capable of insight. His knowledge
+of the great orb of things is but a fledgling’s knowledge. His
+admiration is a nestling’s admiration for the things kindly to his
+own small nature. He delights only in food and the food-announcing
+call. The music of the spheres passes over him, through him,
+and is not heard.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Yet it has used him. And now it uses his destruction. Great,
+and terrible, and very beautiful is the Whole; and for man the
+best is that the Whole should use him.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But does it really use him? Is the beauty of the Whole really
+enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And
+what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving
+to hear the music of the spheres, and has seemed to himself
+once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the
+whole form of it. Yet he can never be sure that he has truly heard
+it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard.
+Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is
+music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment,
+its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his
+degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is
+very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together
+with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and
+for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion
+to this brief music that is man.</p>
+
+<hr class='pbk'/>
+
+<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:.5em;font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'>TRANSCRIBER NOTES</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.
+Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been
+employed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious
+printer errors occur.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Some illustrations were moved to facilitate page layout.</p>
+
+<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79003 ***</div>
+</body>
+<!-- created with fpgen.py 4.62a on 2020-05-12 13:28:44 GMT -->
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+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+[Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook [#79003](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79003)