Flaxius

I know not to what land or region strange the immortal Magian betook himself, after this century had reached its end and tumbled over Time’s great precipice. All that I know is this, that it was in some realm within the realm of shadowed sense, where he forgot the stars, the moon, and sun; where he forgot the blue above the trees; where he forgot the dells where water runs; where he forgot the chilly autumn breeze; where he forgot there had been newspapers or stocks or pigeon-shoots at Hurlingham, or wondrous things at the Aquarium, or Piccadilly or the Savile Club—yea, all of earth and what there is of life—most useful, beautiful, æsthetical—all this had vanished like the lightest dream.

Now whether he had dipped a while in Dîs, to talk with Pluto, whom he much admired, or sailed to some celestial violet star, to exercise strange senses here unknown, expanding in the fourth di‑men‑si‑on, this is certain, that it was about the time when the Twentieth century had attained its majority of two thousand, Flaxius found himself again on earth, suddenly dropped from some supernal height or upward shot from the great world below.

… Seated on a very comfortable bench under the lee of the Great Wall of China in a remote corner of Manchuria, he was not there a minute ere he realised that remarkable, not to say radical, changes had swept over the face of the whole world since his evanishment.

For he observed, firstly, that the Great Wall, which he had last seen in a most dilapidated, eroded, crumbled, and top-worn state of oxidation and moss-grown rustiness, was now, so far as he could behold—and it wound like a serpent up and down rolling hills, and over tremendous rocks for half a century of miles, till it vanished in an invisible, grey thread—completely restored as if by contract, all its ancient towers being likewise correctly renewed, as if by some Chinese Gilbert Scott. At its base, at the rate of about one to the acre, were bungalows of graceful construction, but all without chimneys,[16] rising from tufted groves and gardened plains, in whose architecture the old Chinese style seemed curiously mingled with other influences. A very striking feature indeed was that of many colossal towers, about a mile one from the other; every one, as Flaxius estimated, being about one thousand feet in height.

Hearing a rustling sound hard by, he, looking up, perceived a man alighting from what he at once understood was a flying-machine. It had come unseen and noiselessly as an owl, whence, as Flaxius

divined, it had proceeded with incredible speed. The new-comer, who seemed to be about thirty years of age, was a man of attractive countenance, manly, and evidently intelligent, altogether the right sort of man for the right sort to meet. He was clad in a graceful, but extremely practical garb of some material new even to the Sage. As for nationality, he was certainly European, and probably English, but his first greeting to the Immortal was in a singular jargon, which appeared to be based upon the Pidgin, once dear to Flaxius in bygone years.

‘Come sta, my flin? What one-piecey man you be? My no savvy you—no hè te jamas visto—never look-see you before one-time, allo my life‑o!’

‘I understand you,’ replied Flaxius; ‘but I also speak English.’

‘Oh, of course,’ replied the stranger with a genial smile, ‘only a fellow gets so into the habit of pidgining; it comes from flying about——’

‘Naturally,’ observed Flaxius.

The stranger darted at him a quick glance, and then looked about anxiously, as if fearful that some one had overheard them, observing in a hurried, low tone:

‘I say, don’t do that again. Joking’s against the law, you know.’

‘I did not know it,’ replied Flaxius. ‘But why are you so much astonished at not knowing me?’

‘Because,’ replied the stranger, ‘I cannot recall ever meeting anybody in all my life whom I had not seen before. You know how it is nowadays, when everybody goes flying about, and all the world is acquainted. And as you are evidently a superior sort of person, I am indeed utterly amazed at not knowing you, because I would have sworn that from China to Peru there was not one gentleman with whom I was not, I may say, intimate.’

‘But you must count your acquaintances by millions,’ replied Flaxius.

‘Certainly,’ answered the stranger gravely. ‘I know nine hundred and eighty-four million, seven hundred and fifty-eight thousand, four hundred and twenty-eight men and women by face and name. Since the new system of accretive memorising has come in, and the whole world has got mixed up, and keeps mixing, everybody knows everybody.’

‘And does everybody now know everything?’ inquired Flaxius, as nearly astonished as he had ever been during the whole course of his long and well-spent life.

‘Well, among all the whiter people of age, I think it may be fairly asserted that every grown-up person knows all that man has ever known. Of course, only the most advanced scientists and deducers are really well acquainted with the knowledge of the future. But who, in the name of the Prima Materia, are you, who put such incomprehensibly odd questions?’

‘I have been,’ replied Flaxius, ‘out of the world for a century, and am utterly ignorant of all that has taken place during that time.’

The stranger did not seem to doubt the assertion, nor to be much astonished, as he merely remarked:

‘I have heard there were a few of the very far advanced who could do that, and you look like one of them. And I suppose, of course, they keep it a secret. So if you wish it, I will say nothing to anybody. Now to know what has been doing since you left, is a long story. Do you know where to lodge to-night?’

‘No,’ replied Flaxius, ‘unless it be à la belle étoile.’

‘We can sleep in any of these bungalows,’ replied the stranger. ‘I have coupons entitling us to rooms and food, and medical attendance, and social attentions, anywhere in the world.’

‘I have plenty of gold money,’ observed Flaxius.

‘Money!’ exclaimed the stranger, as if astonished. ‘Well, certainly, money can be exchanged for coupons, and coins are rising rapidly in value for collections and museums. But coupons, issued in all cities, pass current all the world over at par. But let us get to our quarters and I will tell you the rest!’

He invited Flaxius to enter the machine, in which there was room for two, and a trunk, with some comfortable wrappings. Then as he turned a handle they shot off, upward and onward like the wind. As they flew, they overtook two other aerevolantes like their own, when Flaxius’s friend, exclaiming, ‘Good fellows, good luck!’ ignited several small coloured squibs or minute rockets—it had by this time grown dark—which were responded to by a single red spark from each.

‘I invited them to meet an interesting stranger whom I have just discovered,’ remarked the stranger with a laugh. ‘My name is Oakford,’ he added, ‘and it is Pidgined into Oakforto. Yours?—Flaxius. That will become Flasio or Flaso. Ah! here we are!’

He stopped at a large and somewhat singular, though pretty house, before which sat in a garden at tables several well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, of a somewhat Eurasian appearance. An elderly woman examined the coupons which Oakford presented.

‘Take double,’ he remarked. ‘I want extra food. This is a distinguished man of science.’

Hearing this, the landlady and all the rest present rose and bowed low to Flaxius. But with all their politeness it was evident that they were utterly amazed, which Oakford explained by saying:

‘They have all travelled so much that they never saw a stranger before in all their lives.’

‘Now, for a paradox I call that a good one,’ reflected Flaxius. ‘That at least remains in the world.’

‘May I mention the fact that you have been absent from the world for a century?’ inquired Oakford of the Sage. ‘These are all gentlemen and ladies—that is, well-educated and of strict principles.’

‘Certainly,’ replied Flaxius.

‘This, my dear friends,’ then resumed Oakford, ‘is a scientist and philosopher of the very highest rank, since he has been absent from the world for more than a century. As you are all aware, only one among many millions ever achieves such extraordinary power, and from it you can draw your own conclusions.’

The party, which had been augmented by the arrival of two additional gentlemen with ladies, all gazed at Flaxius with an expression of such sympathetic intelligence as he had rarely met among mortals in the earlier time, and then, approaching him very reverently, bowed and worshipped, each addressing him a short prayer, after which the sage, perceiving that a benediction was hoped for, gave it with impressive feeling, to their very great satisfaction.

‘You must understand,’ explained Oakford, ‘that the religion which now prevails is, that the Creative Force manifests itself in the ascending series of ideals, and most perfectly in Man; therefore we worship him in one another, but chiefly in the advanced scientist, since it is to the power in him that we are chiefly indebted for inventions, and all that does us any good.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘you have somewhat changed religion as it was a century ago. Then, men chiefly worshipped, firstly, themselves, and, secondly, Politicians, who, instead of doing any good to anybody, made all the devil’s own mischief they could in every way, and were all the more admired for it.’

‘You speak of the Devil,’ remarked Oakford. ‘It must have been curious to live in the world when people believed in such a being, and thought they saw his influence manifest in all things.’

‘H’m!’ quoth the sage. ‘If you have succeeded in getting the devil entirely out of everything, and removed all traces of his existence, I will say this for you, that you have more than realised my greatest expectations and fondest hopes.’

‘Nay, we have only got rid of the initial D; but that is the first step. By scientifically supplying natural wants and discouraging the development of needless ones, we have very much extinguished the worst forms of selfishness.’

‘Ah, that initial D!’ said Flaxius. ‘The Dee——!

‘“There was a jolly miller
Lived by the river Dee,
Who sang, As I care for nobody,
Then nobody cares for me!”’

‘I grant that evil still remains in many a form,’ resumed Oakford; ‘but science and philanthropy have combined to a degree which would once have been deemed incredible (being supplied with all the power which mankind could contribute, to investigate and extinguish it). The vast interest which all mankind took a century ago in the idle squabbling of windy politicians, that is in mere factional, silly quarrels about nothing, or human cock-fighting in oratory, has been supplanted, owing to the ascendency of the man of science, by a general and serious interest in what really concerns our earthly welfare. Perhaps we have not accomplished so much as you may have anticipated, but to this we have really come: increased liberalism has so far diminished prejudices, that the world has pretty well agreed as to what it really wants, first of all.’

‘A tremendous progress,’ interpolated Flaxius. ‘It is nine-tenths of the battle won. To know what we want is almost equivalent to having all we need.’

‘Well, let us toilette and then refresh!’ said Oakford. ‘Here is your room. If you want anything, press the button, and speak.’

‘And then the servant will come to receive orders?’

‘No; for you must first form in your own mind an image, by volitional pseudophia—that is depicting by will—and this image is, with your voice, conveyed to the chambermaid. Thus you want two silk towels, you close your eyes, form their image, and order. The maid touches the button, closes her eyes, beholds two silk towels, and brings them. Some men of science—in fact, I can do it myself, to a certain extent—make the towels for themselves at once out of the atmosphere, by a peculiar mental, physiological process, but the less expert prefer the maid.’

‘H’m!’ quoth Flaxius, as a very lady-like, pretty damsel appeared. ‘I should think, indeed, that with many travellers the volitional physiological effort would be chiefly exerted in that direction.’

‘The position of servant in a house specially frequented by men of science,’ pursued Oakford, ‘is regarded as a great honour, and only conferred on highly-educated and deserving persons. This young lady,’ he continued, ‘is the only daughter of the celebrated Kien-Long-na, who first converted rose-leaves into butterflies, he being, indeed, a leader among the mighty minds who broke away the barrier between organic or inorganic creative chemistry, and proved that living creatures could be made in the laboratory. It is even said that he has actually succeeded in making a human child, but as regards that, his daughter, here, can give you better information.

This was said with the utmost gravity, and the lady chambermaid responded quite as seriously, but with interest.

‘Yes; it is true, he has established the fact beyond all question that it can be done, by sub-etherising protoplasm, even in the fourth grade, but I must admit that the specimens of work which he has thus far produced are not remarkably creditable to his skill, nor very attractive.’

‘Now, if I had heard that a century ago,’ mused Flaxius, ‘I should have taken the liberty to deny it, but I suppose that science has even extinguished Frenchmen by this time. By Nemesis! I would like to know what this chambermaid thinks when she turns over—if she ever does—specimens of what constituted nine-tenths of the reading of young ladies at the end of the last century; or what she thinks, if she indeed stoops to think, of those who revelled in it, or supplied it! Holy Science! thou hast indeed taken a great deal of fun out of life, but thou hast outbalanced the loss with abundant, honest decency!’

‘I must explain to you, also,’ said Oakford, ‘though you doubtless surmise it, that such positions are in request, because it is only in a comparatively few great families, or establishments, that servants are kept at all, since scientific appliances now enable people to do everything for themselves. Waiting has become a refined and elegant accomplishment, which can only be properly filled by ladies of superior education. In fact, it is very mortifying to a girl to have it said of her that she is always seen as a guest, and never as a waiter. It enables a young lady to see society and the world, and become more intimately acquainted with people of intellect.’

The supper, or evening refreshment, did not surprise Flaxius as a novelty, because it was precisely the same as that which he had enjoyed during his visit to the God of Ancient Days, and on other transcendental occasions. It consisted simply of a cake to each guest with a bottle of what—for want of a better term—I may call wine. Both, however, were the very perfection of food and drink.

Turning to the assembled company, Oakford said:

‘I propose, my friends, to give to our distinguished guest some account of what changes have taken place in the world as regards food, since he last honoured this planet by residing in it, and will be pleased if you would kindly aid me in so doing. To begin with, I think I may broadly state that chemistry, as the word was understood, completed its first stage, or that of Analysis, about a hundred years ago, and then began to attempt Synthesis, or the combination of the elements.’

‘It was at the same time,’ remarked the waiting-maid, ‘that the elements were reduced to one.’

‘Quite right. One of the first results of Synthesis was to make not only metals but all kinds of substances, including every variety of food. For a long time men persisted—as many of the less educated still do—in liking only imitations of what they had preferred in earlier ages, such as meat and fish, or certain vegetables and fruits. I myself have several times eaten mutton-chops, and once a roasted chicken, and, I think, I once ate a pea.’

‘History repeats itself,’ mused Flaxius.

‘But in a very short time good palatable food was produced so cheaply, and in such immense quantities, that finally every human being was supplied for nothing with a daily ration; it being now the fundamental law that all who are born are entitled to food, lodging, clothes, and facilities for mental improvement and recreation.’

‘Did not this have the effect of creating a vast mass of idlers?’ inquired Flaxius.

‘My dear Master,’ remarked one of those present, ‘you will probably have conjectured that during the past century history has been made more rapidly, and the world has passed through more important changes than it had during all its earlier period of warfare and theology, with incoherent, spasmodic, or despairing struggles. We have had terrible trials, and as yet are only beginning to realise what we have still to do. In fact I often think that we have thus far done almost next to nothing, with all our science, and that the one great glory of this our century is that we have reduced a chaos to something like order, and have produced a mere beginning from which those who are to succeed us may proceed with something like union and mutual intelligence.’

There was a general murmur of approbation at these words, when Oakford again spoke:

‘There was much idleness and more discontent than ever, more complaining over dainty food, than there ever had been during famines wherein thousands died of starvation; the reason being that those who were the most intelligent and industrious could still earn more than others and feed better. But man is really after all a working animal, and as the grosser and more intolerable kinds of labour were relieved by mechanical invention, and agriculture and raising animals gave way to artificial food, and education and culture advanced, great changes and improvements came about. And though, as I truly said, we are far from being out of all these social troubles, we think we see our way out, and have in the main succeeded in conquering those horrible pests of poverty, dirt, disease and social discontent, which once raged so terribly when you were formerly in the world. Even at the end of the Nineteenth century, when there was such a sad period of pessimism and doubt and despair, and such warring elements of labour and capital and religion and politics, men had done great and good work, it would seem as if by mere instinct to do good. Ay, it brought forth Evolution.

‘And Evolution, which had been conceived and born, as one may say, by the Natur-philosophie of Germany, was warmed to new life or re-born in England by the genius of Darwin, Wallace and their supporters. From the beginning, it in turn developed science, and science, technical art. One of the first great inventions which followed the era of synthesis in chemistry was this production of artificial food in vast quantities at a very cheap rate. When attention was drawn to this, chemists soon found out how to vary its texture or substance.’

‘That is to say,’ remarked one present, ‘that it was made like meat or bread or vegetables to suit association of tastes. After a time this association greatly diminished; but it was discarded with great difficulty. People are so conservative as regards food and taste, and so convinced that what they are not accustomed to is unnatural and vile, that it rose to the magnitude of a great national, or rather world, question. But after a while the artificial food became so palpably superior to the natural, both as to taste and uniform wholesomeness, that the former had to give way. Now the poorest man has by legal right a daily ration of food, such as a king would have relished in the old time.

‘Then came another invention, which was simple enough, yet which had great results. It was the production of cloth fabrics of all kinds, in incredible quantity, very rapidly and at a very trifling cost.’

‘That sounds to me,’ replied Flaxius, ‘like what Tennyson called “a fairy tale of science.” There was a story in the olden time in Florence that a brownie or household goblin once served in a family, where he did all the work—swept the rooms, cooked the dinner and played with the children—for nothing.’

‘That I suppose,’ remarked the waiting-maid, illustrates the earlier or theistic stage of society, and a Divine Providence.’

‘Ahem!’ coughed Flaxius. ‘Well, the goblin was greatly loved by the eldest boy, Marco, who, observing that his elfin friend had only a red cap and a tattered and very scanty shirt for apparel, had made and gave to him a full suit of red velvet. Whereupon the goblin declared that as he was now a fine gentleman, and had dreed his weird or served his time out, he would work no more.’

‘I see,’ quoth the chambermaid. ‘That was the Church after it had attained to violet robes and gold croziers with jewelled mitres, and ceased to be useful.’

‘Um! Well, the goblin ere departing gave Marco a stick, assuring him that whenever he would say to it, “Stick, turn, risvolge!” or “Unroll!” it would unroll cloth, velvet, lace, or any stuff, to any extent. And by means of it, Marco fulfilled a government contract, and supplied all the clothing for the Papal army in less than a quarter of an hour, besides dressing up all his friends in purple and fine linen, ad infinitum.’

There was a laugh at this, and Oakford said:

‘That story would not astonish any child of this generation, for we can really roll out cloth with as great rapidity. What is to me utterly incomprehensible, is that people who knew enough to make even such simple toys as steam-engines and telephones, did not begin long before by making cheap cloth. In fact I am astonished that the man who had the wit to make that tale had not the sense to learn from it how it could be done. Why, the very roller suggests the whole. For even then men knew how to make paper by the mile, and also felt, and the step from these to fibrous and cloth-like stuffs was extremely simple. However it really required the great discovery of making fibrine, which followed immediately after that of the nature, identity and relative conditions of inorganic and organic substance. After that, people spun all kinds of fibre out of anything. Now clothing, like food, is supplied from the government manufactory gratis to everybody; the result having been to destroy the vanity of dress or ostentation of mere clothing, for now that gold and diamonds are cheap, and everything can be made, we have very different ambitions.

‘Perhaps the greatest factor in producing our present state of society has been Aerostation by flying-machines. The first were so rudely constructed that it is said that every other man who used one lost his life by it. This proved to be such an extraordinary attraction to Americans that they all went in like lunatics for flying. They flew races, and fought duels in the air, and roamed all over the earth in machines, in which no man now living would dare to go a rod. We have specimens of them in our museums, and I have seen bold aeronauts stand before them almost mute with horror. Even so Columbus ventured over the Atlantic in a crazy little craft. Ah, Master Flaxius, you must have seen awful deeds in your time, and marvellously bold men who had no fear of death or suffering.

‘Yet pray observe, friend,’ he continued, ‘that we do not travel so much to behold scenery or man as men did of old. For now, he who sits in his study can see all things on earth and hear all distant sounds by telegraph; in which art we are making every day new discoveries, even to dispensing with wires, and seeing all the world while we sit still.’

‘I can hardly believe,’ remarked a lady present, ‘that there ever were people who dared to travel night and day in steamboats, much more in locomotive-trains. My blood almost curdles when I think of such reckless, fiendish courage! But, I dare say,’ she added after a pause, ‘it was only the madly-brave, like the Berserkers of an early age, who really did such things out of bravado. Master,’ she suddenly exclaimed, ‘did you ever see a locomotive?’

‘Truly,’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘I travelled in my time during nearly a century many thousands of miles in such trains, with ladies as gentle as yourself, to say nothing of innumerable maids and children, but none of us ever imagined that we were doing anything remarkably brave. But I believe,’ he added, ‘that any of my companions would have been terrified at the idea of flying through the air like sky-rockets as you do.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed the waiting-maid, ‘but that is a very different thing.’

‘Ah, h’m!’ mused Flaxius. ‘Women with all their science still retain certain traces of their primeval savage logic—or nature.’

‘After the first stages,’ resumed Oakford, ‘when the flying-machine was very much improved, and made very cheap, it was at first terribly abused. Thieves pounced down like hawks on property, and with the vehicle to carry two or three, an era of abduction and elopements with women began. Then there was organised a grand World Detective Flying Association, which pursued thieves into the very depths of Greenland, or Thibet, or anywhere else; the result being that in the end the dangerous classes were almost extirpated. For when they became dangerous to everybody, instead of to a few, there was a general war on them.’

‘And the abductions and elopements?’ inquired the Sage.

‘Well, Society found itself obliged to compromise a little on that question, which I must freely admit is in rather a dubious condition even at the present day. While the rights of persons and things to immunity from attack are more strictly observed than ever, it has in due proportion been discovered that conventional and sentimental rights or wrongs disappear with great rapidity among cosmopolites, and that the emancipated woman claims the same privileges as man. Still, on the whole, from all that I have learned in books, we get on far more peaceably and pleasantly than you did in the days of duels and divorce-courts, and all that. When people have nothing to do but fly away like birds in order to part, divorce becomes too easy, and so they end by pairing like birds. Those who have a turn for a kind of domestic life and families—and they are in a great majority—follow it; and those who have not, do pretty much as they like, and are left alone unnoticed. Society gladly takes care of all the foundlings—very good care indeed—and it is a fact that while there was at first a very great increase in the number of such children they are now diminishing very rapidly.’

‘About ten per cent. per annum,’ remarked a lady.

‘And last year nine and four-sevenths diminution,’ added the waiting-girl.

‘As you have observed,’ said Oakford, ‘the flying-machine has led to an universal lingua-franca or pidgin English; and this has induced perhaps millions to speak good English. The old nations are breaking up and diminishing so rapidly that millions really belong nowhere. If a man is too warm any day anywhere he mounts his flyer, and can in most cases be, in an hour, on a mountain or by the sea, or vice versa. Whatever his calling is, he can find employment enough to pay his bill in any city. There is no mountain so high, no valley so deep, that you will not find some house of entertainment or shelter there. War is unknown, armies and navies have vanished before cosmopolitanism; the Frenchman has found to his amazement that he is not precisely the leader, type, and ideal of all culture, intellect, and intelligence on earth; the American no longer passes most of his time in informing every one how much grander, more beautiful, and in every way superior, everything is in Amùraca or Amáraca to everything everywhere else—in fact, he has ceased to talk about himself and his country altogether, because everybody has been there. In like manner, the English, the German officers and nobility, the Spanish, the provincial gentry of Italy, the niggers of Barbadoes and Sierra Leone, the Jews, and Irish have all slowly abandoned the opinion that they are God’s special favourites and the fine fleur of creation, put into this world solely to convince everybody else how degraded they are in comparison with themselves. There is no use in nations annexing other countries—nobody cares where he belongs; the only binding laws are those of society, or mutual agreement, and as the latter grow in force, those of nations and creeds and circles vanish. Even the home does not exist for millions.

‘“And now our dream of science is to pass
In mental vision over all the world,
Seeing and knowing all, for we have found
New senses in mankind which still reveal
New qualities, conditions, and ideas,
And myriad beings who inhabit space,
Whom men of old divined in feverish dreams.
And as we are, there is no spot on earth
Unknown unto its humblest habitant,
While lenses quite perfected now reveal
The smallest secrets of the starry world;
And yet we deem that we have little won,
But in bold hope keep ever pushing on.”’

‘You will probably be very much struck,’ remarked another of the company, ‘with two very general facts as you come to see the world as it is. Firstly, the great improvement which has resulted from advanced hygiene, sanitary laws, and physical culture. Even a century ago men had begun to discover that cleanliness meant life and health, and that at the end of the reign of Queen Victoria the average of life was more than one-third greater than it had been a century before. Now, the death-rate in the most unhealthy parts of Europe is only three in a thousand, and there is great complaint as to that.’

‘It is to be noted,’ added Oakford, ‘that it was not till about 1920 that the great question arose as to whether politics, or action on public questions, should be a mere matter of faction, like Guelf against Ghibelline, Red versus Green, Big Endian contra Little Endian, in which people sacrificed everything to see their public men take the place of the ancient prize-fighters and quarrel. People began to weary of Grand Old Gladiators, controversialists, co-rivals, and champions of all kinds, and said it was time that measures took the place of men. In fine, the principle became a party with the motto, “A plague o’ both your houses,” and the end was the substitution of questions of practical utility for “politics,” diplomacy, foreign quarrels, and court-intrigues.

‘When this principle was once adopted, it became a burning question, and was acted on with great energy. When people awoke to the fact that they had really been fooling themselves more than they had been fooled by their leaders, and that they themselves were really the government, if they did but know it, men of science and of action, yes, men of great, vigorous, and practical minds, nurtured in evolution and true principles of history and sociology, sprung up like a race of giants and extinguished the talking politicians and mere scholars. It was perhaps the turning-point in History itself, and to us it ranks even above the Reformation in Germany and the Emancipation in America, for it was the substitution of the practical human interests of all for the idle power and ostentation of a few.

‘Then it was that the accumulations of capital made by a few, or by syndicates and trusts, were transferred to governments for the use of the people, so that it seemed providential that they had acted as they did.

‘It is wonderful that at the end of the nineteenth century when these and a hundred other causes had clearly begun to work, so few foresaw to what they would lead. Men did not note that the immense accumulation of capital and rapidly increasing ease of making money would inevitably transfer it all to government and revolutionise society. “It will not come in our time,” was the cry. They did not realise, either, the great law that population diminishes and improves in proportion to culture, and least of all did they comprehend the unity and tendency of all this with improved sanitary reforms, education, transit by air, and free food and clothing, with less hard work, or gross labour. Indeed, until these advances had been made, they could not be co-ordinated, yet it is in that that the very life of society and progress lies.

‘Among the first great public measures which took the place of mere words, such as Conservative and Liberal or Republican and Democratic, was that of health and cleanliness, which at once led to gentler humanity and abhorrence of cruelty, both as regarded men and animals. Men became at first intolerant as regarded seeing others suffer from poverty, and finally detested pain in every form. I dare say that you can recall much which would now seem incredible to the greatest brute now living.’

‘Truly, I can,’ replied Flaxius. ‘There was a very good sort of man named Alexis of Piedmont, who wrote a book of quaint odds and ends of amusement, in which he gave a recipe how a goose could be roasted alive. It was very ingenious indeed, but cruel to the last degree of torture, and it ended with these words, “Then take it from the fire and serve it up, and though roasted it will still be living, and will cry out loud while it is being carved, which is a very merry thing to behold.” It was republished in many books for generations after. And in fact there was a great deal of amusement at the very end of the nineteenth century, much patronised by the very élite of society which was very little worse than this. Bulls were literally tortured to death in Paris in imitation of Spanish sport, gentlemen were present at prize fights, ladies at pigeon shooting; and, perhaps, no day passed in which some magistrate did not let some wretch guilty of horrible and infamous cruelty to children or women escape with ten shillings’ fine, or a few days’ imprisonment. Even a man guilty of cruelties, very far surpassing anything ever told of Red Indians or inquisitors, or torturers of the Middle Ages—I say this advisedly—cruelties wickeder than a thousand murders, was after public trial only sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment! And the general manner in which such things were treated was to smile complacently and say, “Ah, yes, but a little roughness and knocking about makes us manly.” Under the same impression there survived in society, among the most refined people, a vast amount of covert satire, innuendo, vexation by assuming superiority, sneers—in short, the vileness of building self up on the abasement of others, as one may see in half the humorous pictures setting forth the coarse fun of the time. Torture by the peine forte et dure was not abolished by law in England till the year 1823 or thereabout. Yet all this did not make people braver or more manly. It crushed and frightened the weak, or the majority; it developed bullying, and it drove the would-be dignified into reserve, hauteur and coldness, which was all in fact only a masque for mean cowardice and vanity. Yet there were with all this certain curious antitheses, not without great beauty, which I apprehend you have now quite lost. There was, in the cruellest ages, the Madonna-like saintly meekness and innocence, yea, purity, which I apprehend has now taken very different form—or vanished. There was a romance and personal character in it all, which, I suppose, is now unknown to you.’

‘It is true that we have lost immensely since we have been guided solely by science and common-sense and utility,’ remarked an elderly man who had not before spoken. ‘We have lost much of domestic life or home-feeling, and as I infer from what I heard from old people in my youth, and extensive study of ancient books, we have no longer the sweet and genial ideals or inspirations of art and faith, poetry and humour, which once fired the world. They have all sunk to the level of very inferior races and children, who, indeed, are rapidly growing ashamed of them. But then we have gained what compensates for it all a thousand-fold. We are no longer sentimental or despairing or pessimistic, nor is the poison of soft sorrow in our every cup, and in every kiss. In fact, if a man of a hundred years ago were among us now he would probably decide that we do not know what love is; and to judge from the poems and novels of the olden time, I should say that it is decidedly lucky that we do not; for such a mass of misery, philandering, caprices, quarrels, tears, and agonies, as men anciently went through with, according to their romances, before they could accomplish the extremely simple and prosaic end of marriage—or similar union—passes all comprehension, suggesting a mixture of hell and lunacy. Add to this, that, with all their “beautiful poetry” and genial humour, every biography of the time shows us lives steeped in a deep consciousness of woe and suffering, with so little mitigation of it, according to their own deepest convictions, that one must needs see very plainly that they paid a fearful price for all their delightful, domestic affections and devoted loves of one fond heart, for their home circles and piety and fine art of all sorts. Yes, an awful price, not worth the whistle. We at least do not wail and howl, and sing and pray. When anything is wrong with us we go to the doctor, and if he says we are all right, we get on the flying-machine, and skim over the seas, and mountains. When we are not busied with science, or practical matters, we are engaged in taking our recreation, and between the two we have really no time for sentiment of any kind.’

‘I observe,’ replied Flaxius, ‘that you are rapidly losing, or have entirely lost, home-ties, domestic feelings, the warm attachment to a native land, or patriotism, devotion to a church or religion, with all the ancient form or spirit of art and poetry—in fact nearly all that once was supposed to form all that a man ought to live for, including the ideal of self or character. But with it you have lost their terrible sorrows; and you have gained stupendously more than you have lost in a grand philanthropy which the men of the past regarded as mere moonshine, or Utopian. Everything in its time. Every man is your friend now—no one your enemy—quarrelling is bad form, for it is unscientific. I see in you the beginning of an entirely new race of beings. You are neither happy nor unhappy, as those words were once understood—in short you would have been utterly incomprehensible to everybody a hundred years ago. But they would in the end have feared you like giants, and vanished before you as the Red Indian is crushed morally by the white man. Therefore you are great, and I, a man of the ages, tremble to think what awful, what stupendous, power you are destined to attain. You will master every law of nature, and conquer death and the grave, space and time. What were the greatest glories of art and the highest flights of poetry or genius are already beginning to appear to you as frivolous and rococo, because they were founded on false or vanished unrealities, while you are pressing forward into such a realisation of the real in all its immensity as it never entered into the heart of man to conceive. Ye are already dreaming of doing—nay, ye have in part done—what Homer of old would not have dared attribute to the gods. Ye take unto yourselves wings, and are in the earliest rosy dawn, even in the depths of ocean ye are there. Ye spin forth gold or pearl or diamond from the air, as ye will, when ye will, or will soon do so. It is as easy now to create and combine atoms as to breathe; to build a towered castle is easier and cheaper than it was to construct a cottage of yore. And it is all but the beginning of the beginnings of the very rudiments compared to what is to come. You will read with perfected lenses the minutest secrets of all the stars, discover new senses, and through them new orders of existence not now perceptible to man. And with every new discovery will come ten more daring dreams of others, far, far beyond it, and they will also be realised. In such illimitable achievements man must pass so far beyond all old conceptions of every kind that all will shrivel up and vanish. Terribly grand wilt thou be, O Humanity of the future!’

There was a pause, when the eldest one again spoke.

‘Thou hast understood us. Humanity has hitherto been in its boyhood, pleased with its pretty toys and fancies, indulging in passion or despair at every trifle. Now it is advancing to eternal manhood, and growing serious, which means more truly happy. It is leaving the paternal home, and all petty ties and beliefs, and going out into the world to do and dare. In the past lay the fabled, infinite power of the gods; in the future lies the illimitable might of man. What man has never done, man can do, is the motto of the future.’

Then the waiting-maid spoke more gaily:

‘But to prove to our guest that art has not as yet quite left the world, and that we still retain some trace of old-fashioned entertainment, I propose that Master Oakford, who is an expert in hypnotising, give us all a pleasant drama, with magnificent scenery and dresses, so that we may all have something cheerful in our memories before we retire to rest.’

This proposal met with general approbation, and Master Oakford explained it to Flaxius as follows:

‘You must know that we now have spectacles, theatrical entertainments, operas, and exhibitions of the most varied description, for all the world, at no expense whatever. In every family there is some one who is the special hypnotiser, and in larger assemblies masters on a greater scale. These masters—of whom I am one—store their memories with all that can conduce to entertainment. Then we keep by us, or, indeed, generally find in every house, an infinite amount of music, songs, speeches, or dialogues, such as were once recorded on tinfoil, but which are now kept imperishable on a new and better material.

‘When the performance begins, I hypnotise all present; impressing it on their minds that they are about to see a certain spectacle, and that they are to vividly behold certain scenery or persons. By this method, and the aid of phonographs and monologue, I give them a very perfect entertainment. Pray note two things: one is, that I will them to vividly remember all that they have seen, when they awake; secondly, that the art of understanding, and of enjoying such plays, is very much improved with practice.’

‘Much of this,’ remarked Flaxius, ‘was known to the Egyptian, Chaldæan and Etruscan priests of yore, and it perished with them, or lingered in broken fragments among witches and sorcerers. I know so much of it that you need not hypnotise me, who am, indeed, master of the art, but I will most gladly enter into sympathetic perception with both the actor and the audience.’

Those present sat in a semi-circle, and by unanimous request, Oakford was requested to give Shakespeare’s play of Macbeth. It was only necessary for Flaxius to take the hand of one of the auditors in his own—it chanced to be that of the pretty waiting-maid—to close his eyes, and bring his perception into mutual sympathy with hers, which is a peculiarly delicate, cerebral, voltaic, volitional, vital act, and the condition for enjoying the play was complete. Then the pretty waiting-maid—who, as has been already intimated, was also a distinguished chemico-physiolobiologiste—retired within her inner consciousness, but with one hand—so to speak—on the door of that department of her memory which was labelled Macbeth (Shakespeare, English), ready to let out the imprisoned images. That is, she went into hypnotic sleep, to see the things which eye could not behold.

All present were apparently insensible. Soon Flaxius heard the softest, strangest sound, which rose to a grand peal of exquisite music; and then, trembling, sunk and quivered into a strange, half-fearful, half-fantastic, witch melody, like a forest through which flitted at intervals—ever and anon inaudible or lost—a wild, yet exquisite waltz—a butterfly in a thunder-cloud. Meanwhile, there was perceptible all around a gradually developing, rising, and spreading scenery of barren moors, with encircling rocks and mountains, vast trees waving in the wailing wind—a torrent. And with it all there was an indescribable, mental, general impression, apart from what was seen or heard, as of another mighty wind, or spiritual opium, disposing the beholder unto fascination.

‘I have beheld many a magnificent mise en scène,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘but never anything like this. It would have been an art-wonder of the world a century ago, and it is only a mere family-charade and a game of puss-in-the-corner or proverb, for people now. They have mastered art beyond our wildest dreams—only to despise it!’

Then the play went on, improving at every pace, as Oakford became inspired, rising in grandeur and beauty, impressiveness, and the subtle sorcery of more than mere skill. The music became a marvellous opera of accompaniment in no excess, yet mighty in effect, while the scenery was that of nature in her grandest or most enchanting moods. Best of all was the acting, in which the auditor seemed unto himself to be the one who spoke—and so it rolled on to an end. With a final finely accentuated, biological-cardiac pressure of the hand—such as in earlier ages would have ignorantly described as a fond squeeze—the pretty waiting-maid awoke.

‘You are a great artist,’ said Flaxius to Oakford.

‘So, so. I am far from being first or even great. Nor is it considered any great accomplishment among educated people nowadays to give such games in such style. It is only our child’s play, O Master, just as the performances of Thespius sank in later ages to the level of the mob, though they had improved in quality. And you now understand, that while we understand and practise art a hundred times better than our ancestors did, we do not esteem it at one hundredth the part of its ancient value.’

‘I understand,’ said Flaxius.

‘Go to Rome or Greece,’ pursued Oakford, ‘and you will see the Colosseum, and Forum and Parthenon, and all the most celebrated buildings of antiquity restored in all their beauty, but even the school-children now regard them as mere curiosities, illustrations of a barbarous past—pretty enough in their small, naïve way—but mere savage trifles compared to the works of science; why, we could now do in a week all that Egypt built or unbuilt in six thousand years. And we have the fullest, deepest secret of their art, too—the very spirit of its spirit—and don’t think so very much of it either. Ah! you nineteenth century men wrote an awful lot of rubbish, which they called Criticism. After it died out, art began again—travelling a long way after science, it is true—but ages in advance of where it had gone before. All of the Ruskins and Taines of the last century look to us like ants toiling over lumps of sugar, which they believed were mountains. Very industrious ants they were, and good judges of white sugar, too; but not of real Alps or Himalayas of eternal snow.’

‘Truly,’ observed Flaxius, ‘there were a few even in their own time who began to suspect that human genius was not quite exhausted in the Renaissance, and also that there was better nutriment for man than the confectionery of pictures, or the iced-cake of a Milan Cathedral. All very fine, very fine indeed for weddings and Christmas-trees, tempi passati. Well, as nature is an artist, I suspect that art after all has only begun afresh, on a grander scale than ever.’

---

‘Haec fabula docet,’ wrote Flaxius, as usual on the proof, ‘that all mankind are pretty generally mistaken in believing that certain habits, prejudices, customs, usages, modes, and ideas, in or according to which they and their fathers grew up, are eternal and innate laws of human nature never to be removed. For all things may be taken out of us, even conceit, by the cork-screw of time or the air-pump of science; and it is the most marvellous manifestation of the age that none foresee what a tremendous pop and what a stupendous out-flowing of the champagne of genius there will be when the stopple shall be drawn from the final end or mouth of this century bottle!

‘“It will not come in my time,” said a young savant to me in the last generation when I told him that ere long cities would be lit by gas. “’Tis all very fine, and perhaps possible, but we shall not live to see it.” And within five years after, the city wherein he spake was illuminated as I had predicted. Friends, the child is born unto whom, ere death, naught which I have here written will seem strange, for he will have seen the better part, or enough to make a proof, with his own eyes. Ye may more safely say that a piece of wax can never be moulded into a certain form than declare what man or society will never be; but what is most wondrous of all in that which I predict, is that the spirit of the change is coming soon—even as a French Revolution comes so suddenly upon those in power, and who are the most learned in the signs of the times, that they have not time to move their office furniture. For the salts are all in solution, the liquid will hold no more, and ere long a voice or a book will precipitate the vast and brilliant crystals by sound or shock.

‘For that is to be for which Jesus Christ most ardently longed, and which is the one great theme of the New Testament, that a time will come when patriotism, the tenderest ties of home, the form and letter of formalised religion, the great distinctions between poverty and wealth, yea, every harsher, oppressive, conventional law which is per se useless shall disappear in a grand cosmopolitan altruism, at the very name of which time-serving, petty fools now jibe and titter, even as they sneered in ancient Rome at the new Christianity, which is now coming again in the dazzling, all-glorious, white cloud of science. Let them laugh that will, and exalt their old idols, crying that there is this and that which man will never do. “Upharsin is writ on the wall.”

‘Woe unto the false prophets who give tips for races, be they on horses or politicians or religion—’tis all one—for both the horse and the demagogue are doomed to pass away.

‘Woe unto those who live in the trash and rot and folly of gossip and fashion, for their memory will stink in the ages to come.

‘Woe unto the Jew and the Yankee, the Greek and Parsee, the Englishman and Dutchman, the great former of trusts and syndicates, yea, the promoter and swindler, be he who he may, for in the great future history of iniquity his name will not be forgotten.

‘Woe unto you who shall struggle in the last hour to maintain your cracked and decayed old creeds and worn-out fads, screaming that “they all agree perfectly with science, which was sent to support and prove them.”

‘Yea, woe to the old Jerusalem which stoned the prophets, for there shall not be left one stone upon another of all her ancient temples, gambling-dens, policy-offices, stock-exchanges, lupanars or society-newspapers, in human form or literal.

‘Woe unto Jerusalem; and, finally, woe unto myself! For I, too, with all my small writing will be whirled away with the rest, down the back entry of Time into the gutter of semi-forgetfulness, to be carried away into the River of Oblivion. And rightly too; for how would any of us of the present day seem among the glorious ones who are to come? Verily, as a great divine once said of sinners or dissenters in heaven, we should “look like pigs in a parlour.” Therefore let us all go in peace—and be thankful that there will be far better than we are to succeed us!

‘But, “if not impossible it is only possible, at least it will not come in our time,” cries all the world, when science foretells these reforms of the future. Here I am reminded of what was once written by Paul Féval, a muddled romanticist, who, however, in his dunghill of rubbish had at times a pearl, and he said, when speaking of steam as applied to boats and railway trains:

‘“It took many years before that learned and illustrious body, the Admiralty—la marine de l’état—took into consideration that force which repelled the wind, and laughed at the strength of currents. It is true that at the same time the Academy professed the opinion that a velocity of ten leagues an hour on a railroad would stifle respiration in a man and kill all who would risk it. Yet it would be foolish to blame our marine or our academics for this—for le monde est ainsi fait—such is the world. Every progress afflicts some interest or irritates some vanity.

‘“Ancient wisdom said, ‘If you doubt, consider carefully.’ Modern wisdom cries, ‘If you do not understand, then hinder!’ Can we ever enumerate the men and ideas put to death in the name of the idiotic phantom whom sages call Improbability?

‘“Horace said that the man must have had a heart triply clad with bronze who first on a frail plank dared all the terrors of a raging stream. It is admirably true. Add to it that the sages of his time would have abused that man with all their might.

‘“And yet in every age those men so wise still cast themselves in vain before the path on which humanity was bound to pass, for spite their spite humanity marched on. Improbability, grotesque scarecrow as it was, recoiled with its fogs before the light. Miracles, once declared impossible, are now seen undisturbed in every street. It was only forty years ago, and now you may find men living on their ‘shares’ whose hands once tried to stop the march of steam…. And if another marvel should arise they would laugh at and abuse it, crying, Cela ne se peut pas, it is impossible…. To say now that anything is impossible, a man should have not only a heart shielded by triple bronze, but the tenfold skin of a jackass.”

‘And we should consider all this when any one now dreams of the future, for the true age of ease has only just begun. Certain chemical discoveries made of late years have drawn from all intelligent men of science the opinion that we are advancing very rapidly indeed to a cheap, wholesale production of all scents and flavours in perfection. This means very cheap food of every taste to suit, or the enjoyment of all delicacies—mere imagination or association being set aside. Herein—all consequences being considered—is something stupendous, since enjoyment of taste in food is one of the greatest factors in life, and a great stimulant to industry. When this shall be somewhat relieved, industry will be more at leisure and liberty to devote itself to higher things. “It may be that the Chinaman of the future will run the machines which the Aryan will invent.”’

1. Since this chapter was written I have observed that a great prophet, W. W. Astor, the author of Looking Backwards, noticed this same want of chimneys in the future.↩