Of the Origin of Rational Life in Hesperos—Of the Cyclical Organic
Life—Of the Law of Evanescence by Mortal Lesion—The story of the
Hesperian Cain—Of the Law of Evanescence by adverse Metronomic
Balance—How a Court of Justice sentenced a culprit to Eternal
Punishment; and how the culprit escaped.
[WARNUNG BY ANTARES SKORPIOS.—_Should this book, by any mischance,
have fallen into the hands of any habitual consumer of the style
of literature known as ‘Shilling Shockers,’ or ‘Penny Dreadfuls,’
the Shocked or Terrified is earnestly exhorted to waste none of
his valuable time on the pages which follow. He may rely on it
that, although up to this point he may have been able to
comprehend the narrative, the remainder of the work is utterly
beyond his tether. I now proceed with my translation._]
I shall now proceed to give an account of the nature and origin of
rational life in Hesperos; but, before doing so, I must venture to
address a word of advice and exhortation to the reader. Should he,
unhappily, be one of those narrow-minded persons who exalt the normal
phenomena of this little globe of earth into the unique standard and
pattern of what must needs prevail throughout the entire universe, he
had better close the book at once. But should he be of larger mind, and
allow the possibility of more than he has dreamed of in his philosophy
existing in heaven, he may perhaps find in the following sketch of the
ancient history of Hesperos, communicated to me by those who were
themselves the eye-witnesses of what they related, abundant matter both
for profitable reflection and delectable entertainment.
I may here add that, for the convenience of these large-minded readers,
I have in all cases reduced the measures of time and distance from the
Hesperian terms in which they were given to me, to those which are best
known in Europe. Thus, when I speak of years, I mean our own period of
365 days, and not the Hesperian of 224; and similarly I have expressed
their measure of distance in English miles and feet; these being,
perhaps, the best international standards.
The whole surface of Hesperos contains a little over one hundred and
eighty-two millions of square miles. Hence, as land and water occur in
nearly equal proportions, we have as the total amount of land about
ninety-one millions. This again, being nearly equally divided between
the north and south hemispheres, gives forty-five and a-half millions
for each. If we deduct from this the odd five and a-half millions, as an
allowance for the immensely high mountain chains, and other districts
not suited for supporting life, we shall have left forty millions of
square miles in each hemisphere available for that purpose.
Such being the physical condition of the planet, it happened that, in
the year B.C. 18,270, just twenty thousand years ago, there suddenly
appeared, uniformly dispersed over the forty million square miles of the
northern hemisphere, exactly one hundred millions of rational creatures
in the likeness of the human race. This is an ultimate fact which has
hitherto baffled all inquiry. The manifestation took place suddenly and
simultaneously; but whether it was the result of a new creation, or of a
translation from other regions of space, is wrapped in impenetrable
mystery. For twenty thousand years the Unknown Power which called them
into being has preserved a rigid and unbroken silence. All that is known
is that at the above epoch one hundred millions of highly intelligent
creatures, equally divided between the two sexes, male and female,
simultaneously awoke into conscious life.
Though thus strictly contemporaneous in origin, they were nevertheless,
so far as appearance indicated, of very different ages. They all seemed
to be adults, but their aspects varied between that of an adult of
twenty and one of sixty years of age.
It is not my intention to describe the long and complicated process by
which these detached creations, all alike ignorant of what had taken
place, were, in the long course of ages, gradually amalgamated into
communities and states. This would form the subject of a separate work
on the ancient history of Hesperos, for which I possess copious
materials. [I fear lost.] I must here confine myself to setting out more
in detail the extraordinary differences, as to their circumstances and
conditions of life, which exist between the rational inhabitants of
Hesperos and those of the earth.
The first fact which will strike the reader as a very extraordinary
difference indeed is this—that, although there is the same distinction
of sexes as is found on earth, and although there is just the same
mutual attraction between them, there is no such thing as reproduction
of the species. To counterbalance this strange fact, however, there are
no such things, at least as the result of natural causes, as disease,
decay, and death. When I said that the apparent ages of the new created
or imported Hesperians varied between twenty and sixty years, I did not
mean to intimate, and the reader is not to infer, that anything in the
slightest degree resembling the horrible condition of the Struldbrugs of
Luggnagg has place in Hesperos. Far from it; the dependence of the
bodily organism on the age of the individual in that planet has no
analogy with the progressive decay of the wretched Struldbrug; it
follows a more complicated law.
Every Hesperian, in fact, considered solely with reference to this
bodily organism, leads a periodical life. The length of this period is
not absolutely fixed, but it may be taken on an average at one hundred
years, which may be conveniently divided into three sections, which may
be respectively named as stationary, senescent, and juvenescent. For
example, if we take a person who has just reached the apparent age of
twenty years, his organic life will proceed somewhat as follow:—For the
next twenty years he or she shows no outward and visible sign of change;
but, at the end of this first or stationary period, traces of departing
youth begin to manifest themselves. This process goes on for forty
years, much in the same way as is the case with the human race on earth;
and, at the end of this period, which we call senescent, the person has,
in external form, all the look of a man or woman sixty years old.
At or about this time a crisis in life takes place. This crisis is
marked by the patient falling into a sort of stupor or trance, in which
he usually continues for about seven days. On awakening from this trance
he resumes his ordinary life, apparently under the same conditions as
before. But the conditions are not the same. It soon becomes plain that
the trance has wrought some mysterious change in his powers of bodily
life. At the date of his awakening the last section of the periodical
life, called the juvenescent, begins. Change both in external form and
bodily activity proceeds, but it proceeds in a reversed direction, so
that at the end of ten years the man of sixty, instead of being promoted
to the rank of a septuagenarian, has all the appearance of a man of
fifty; ten years more bring him to forty, and so on, till the limit of
twenty is reached again, and the stationary stage sets in once more.
Thus the cycle of one hundred years is completed—twenty years
stationary, forty senescent, forty juvenescent. It should be remembered
that these numbers only give averages; they vary in different cases
within limits of a few years, nor are they, even for one and the same
person, quite rigidly fixed. So the reader must not suppose that those
who happen to be of the same apparent age at any one given date, will
evermore preserve the same chronological relation to each other.
It appears at once from the consideration of this cyclical law, that
about one-half of the population of the planet are (apparently) over,
and the other half under, the age of thirty-five years. Still it must
never be forgotten that this cycle of events affects the corporeal
existence exclusively. Mental power is in no way under its control.
Although it is true that, during the senescent period, both the desire
and the capacity for active bodily exertion alike decline, there is no
abatement whatever in the intellectual energy, or the slightest failure
in the faculty of memory.
This, then, is the second essential difference between the Hesperian and
the Terrestrial conditions of life. The first being the fact of
Non-reproduction, the second may be called the Law of Cyclical Organism.
A third still remains for our investigation.
This third essential difference was known, during the period of the
ancient history of Hesperos, as the Law of Evanescence. But, before
proceeding to explain it, I must premise that, since the commencement of
the modern history, it has been ascertained that the real significance
of this law was entirely misconceived in the earlier period. Though the
facts, so far as they had been then observed, were sufficiently
accounted for by it, the observations had been very far from complete.
The reader has, of course, already noticed, as an obvious consequence of
the fact of non-reproduction, that all the now existing rational
inhabitants of Hesperos are contemporaneous with the sudden
manifestation of rational life on her surface. Whatever appearances
might seem to indicate, not one of them is under twenty thousand years
of age. Even the lovely girl who made notes of my conversation was not a
day under it, though, at that time, I should have found it very hard to
believe the fact. I have already mentioned that there is no such thing
as death from disease or other natural and necessary cause. Still other
causes may exist, and to these a portion of the original population may
have fallen victims, so that the present Hesperians may be only the
survivors of the original creation. These, too, some day or other may in
like manner disappear, and rational life may thus be ultimately
obliterated from the face of the planet. Such indeed was for ages the
prevailing belief. How the belief was found to be based on an erroneous
view of the actual facts will appear when we come to the history of the
wonderful discovery which marks the commencement of the modern history.
But, as for the belief itself in the likelihood of extinction of life in
the planet, its origin may be easily explained. Soon after the sudden
creation, or manifestation, of the Hesperians, the people in contiguous
districts began to fraternise with each other. By degrees small
communities were formed; rude languages were invented; private property
began to be acquired; the advantages of co-operation and division of
labour were dimly discerned. But, side by side with these marks of
progress, many discouraging symptoms appeared. These, perhaps the
inseparable companions of advancing civilization, were simply envy,
hatred, jealousy, and all kinds of malice, too often resulting in
energetic quarrelling, blows, and wounds.
In one of these early contests one of the combatants, who had armed
himself with an exceptionally heavy bludgeon, chanced to strike his
antagonist an awful blow on the temple. The result was equally awful.
Instead of falling to the ground, stunned by the force of the blow, as
had been the usual result under similar circumstances in many previous
encounters, the man who had received it simply vanished—instantaneously
vanished. Not a trace of him was left, and the Hesperian Cain stood
staring at the vacancy which his departed brother had filled, gasping
with amazement and consternation at the work he had achieved.
As years went on many similar cases occurred. Occasionally this
evanescence took place as the result of an accident; the co-operation of
a neighbour, though a common, was not an indispensable antecedent. For
instance, if a man fell over a precipice several hundred feet high—and
many such are to be found among the mountains—evanescence on reaching
the foot of it was invariable.
At length, by the process of comparing a vast number of instances in
which this strange phenomenon had been observed, what was called the Law
of Evanescence was established, namely, that a certain class of bodily
injuries exist, which result in the instantaneous dissolution and
disappearance of the recipient. And here I found my medical education of
great service in enabling me to understand the nature of this law; for,
from the accounts I got of the various causes of evanescence, it became
quite clear to me that in _almost_ every case of the occurrence of the
phenomenon, what would be called in human beings a mortal lesion is the
invariable antecedent; that, in fact, the decomposition of the body,
which on the earth takes place slowly, is instantaneously effected in
Hesperos.
Having referred to my medical education, I may call the reader’s
attention, just in passing, to a difficulty which that education brought
very forcibly before my mind. How could there be any science of anatomy
in Hesperos? No corpses could be procured for dissection. An amputated
arm or leg might be anatomised, but an examination of the structure of
any of the vital organs is simply impossible. Just as, in mediæval
times, medical students on the earth were obliged to have recourse to
the dissection of the lower mammalia, in order to learn their business,
so is it now with the Hesperians; and, in both cases, the results
arrived at may be useful as the grounds for more or less ingenious
hypotheses, but are quite insufficient as a foundation for any science
worthy of the name.
But the above account of evanescence as, in all cases, the result of
mortal lesion, is not in absolute conformity with the facts of
experience. Such lesions are unquestionably, in the vast majority of
instances, the real causes of the phenomena. Still, occasionally, though
comparatively rarely, cases occur which seem to be irreducible to any
such rule, and these, for many ages, were regarded as inexplicable
anomalies. However, the law which governs such mysterious cases of
evanescence was at last found out, as I shall now proceed to explain.
This important discovery was really the result of the invention of a
most ingenious instrument, by means of which the degrees of pain and
suffering on the one hand, and of joy and satisfaction on the other,
endured or enjoyed by any given individual, during any assigned period,
may be accurately measured, their aggregate amount computed, and the
balance on either side struck. The machine is constructed somewhat on
the principle of Mr. Fahrenheit’s thermometer, but the details of the
construction, and of the mode of fixing the unit on which the
calculations rest, were not communicated to me; indeed, the Hesperian
who gave me a general account of it very frankly assured me—and I find
no difficulty in believing him—that to understand its mode of action
lies far beyond the range of my merely human faculties. However this may
be, it is not easy to see how, without some such invention, the Second
Law of Evanescence could have been discovered; but, by the application
of this wonderful instrument to a great number of cases, the Law in
question was at last established on a sufficiently wide inductive basis.
This Second Law of Evanescence may be stated in a popular form as
follows:—Evanescence takes place whenever the total quantity of
suffering undergone by anyone, exceeds, by a certain fixed amount, the
total quantity of happiness he has enjoyed. This fixed amount when
estimated by the Hesperian joy-and-sorrow-metronome, above described, is
exactly ten million units of its scale. When this negative balance is
reached, the second law acts spontaneously, and the sufferer is thus
released from all further misery.
Under the existing conditions of life in Hesperos, it would be hard to
over-estimate the importance of this law. For example, only for it there
is nothing to prevent a court of justice from sentencing a prisoner to
eternal punishment. And, as a matter of fact, one of the very earliest
noticed cases of anomalous evanescence was the result of just such a
sentence.
The case occurred, about three thousand years after the creation. At
that time, states, governments, and courts of justice had been fully
established. In one of the larger islands not far from the northern
continent, a somewhat turbulent citizen had, in a quarrel commenced by
himself, ‘evanesced’ one of his neighbours, a man who happened to be
exceedingly popular in the community where he dwelt. Public indignation
was thereby excited to a terrible pitch. Cases of violent evanescence,
or, as we should call them, murder, were frequent in the earlier
periods; but, at the time of this outrage, they were beginning to be
regarded with much disfavour. Owing to the absence of reproduction, it
was quite plain that, unless this practice was discountenanced, the
depopulation of the planet was inevitable; and, inasmuch as the question
‘Is Life worth living?’ had not yet been answered in the negative, it
was resolved that the whole force of society should be brought to bear
against all violent evanishers.
This state of public opinion, combined with the great amiability of the
victim, induced the judges to pass on the criminal a sentence which they
must have believed to amount to eternal punishment, namely, penal
servitude for life. Life was, at that time, held to be interminable,
except by violence; and, inasmuch as the convict in prison was secure
from everything of the kind, the sentence could bear no other
interpretation. However, at the end of about three years and a-half, the
prisoner, without any apparent lawful reason, suddenly evanesced. This
event greatly puzzled the community where it occurred; but after the
discovery of the Second Law, there was no further mystery about it. The
man’s absolute wretchedness at the forlorn prospect before him of
everlasting life in jail, was quite sufficient, without his undergoing
any other form of physical suffering, to work his deliverance. The
negative balance of ten million units was reached in the three years and
a half, whereupon he departed into invisibility under the natural
operation of the law.
It is obvious that the time which is required to make up the fixed
number of metronomic units will depend very much on the degree of the
intensity of the suffering undergone. Instances have occurred where a
few days of exceedingly acute bodily torture have sufficed to raise the
index to the required point. On the other hand, a man who is only
suffering from chronic _ennui_ may endure for half a century; the
balance against him rising by very slow degrees. It should also be
remembered that when a man who has enjoyed a very happy life falls into
adversity, he will certainly have much sorrow to endure, before he can
hope for deliverance by this beneficent law; for the balance on the
positive side (for joy), which will be high, must be reduced quite down
to zero before the negative summation begins.
From the above-stated facts the reader will have perceived that the
conditions of rational life among the Hesperians differ from those
experienced on the earth in several essential points. The most important
of these are the three following:—The absence of any reproduction of the
species; the exemption of the individual from death, so far as this is
the result of natural and necessary causes; and the cyclical waxing and
waning of the powers of the bodily organism. Evanescence, though its
real nature was unknown, had plainly, for the ancient Hesperians, the
same significance as death has for us; the only difference being that,
with them, the dissolution of the body was an instantaneous act, instead
of being effected, except when accelerated by fire, through the medium
of a slow and loathsome process of decay.