aided, it is true, by incomparable machines. Everywhere, at the head of
all the workings, were to be found Lydia and Miltiades. Henceforth
inseparable, they vied with one another in ardour; and before a year was
out the galleries of the mines had become sufficiently large and
comfortable, sufficiently decorated even and brilliantly lighted, to
receive the vast and priceless collections of all kinds, which it was
their object to place in safety there, in view of the future.
With infinite precautions they were lowered one after another, bale by
bale, into the bowels of the earth. This salvage of the goods and
chattels of humanity was methodically carried out. It included all the
quintessence of the ancient grand libraries of Paris, Berlin, and
London, which had been brought together at Babylon, and then carried for
safety into the desert with the rest. The cream of all former museums,
of all previous exhibitions of industry and art, was concentrated there
with considerable additions. There were manuscripts, books, bronzes, and
pictures. What an expenditure of energy and incessant toil, in spite of
the assistance of inter-terrestrial forces, had been necessary for
packing, transporting, and housing it all! And yet, for the greater
part, it was useless to those who voluntarily this task imposed upon
themselves. They all knew it. They were well aware that they were
probably condemned for the rest of their days to a hard and
matter-of-fact existence, for which their lives as artists,
philosophers, and men of letters, had scarcely prepared them. But--for
the first time--the idea of duty to be done found its way into these
hearts, the beauty of self-sacrifice subdued these dilettanti. They
sacrificed themselves to the Unknown, to that which is not yet, to the
posterity towards which were turned all the desires of their electrified
spirits, as all the atoms of the magnetised iron turn towards the pole.
It was thus that, at the time when there were still countries, in the
midst of some great national peril, a wave of heroism swept over the
most frivolous cities. However admirable may have been, at the epoch of
which I speak, this collective need of individual self-sacrifice, ought
we to be astonished at it, when we know from the treatises on natural
history that have been preserved, that mere insects giving the same
example of foresight and self-renunciation, used before their death to
employ their latest energies to collect provisions useless to
themselves, and only useful in the future to their larvæ at their birth.
IV
SAVED!
The day at length arrived on which, all the intellectual inheritance of
the past, all the real capital of humanity having been rescued from the
general shipwreck, the castaways were able to go down in their turn,
having henceforth only to think of their own preservation. That day
which forms, as everyone knows, the starting point of our new era,
called the era of salvation, was a solemn holiday. The sun, however, as
if to arouse regret, indulged in a few last bursts of sunshine. On
casting a final glance on this brightness, which they were never to
behold again, the survivors of mankind could not, we are told, restrain
their tears. A young poet on the brink of the pit that yawned to swallow
them up, repeated in the musical language of Euripides, the farewell to
the light of the dying Iphigenia. But that was a short-lived moment of
very natural emotion which speedily changed into an outburst of
unspeakable delight.
How great in fact was their amazement and their ecstasy! They expected a
tomb; they opened their eyes in the most brilliant and interminable
galleries of art they could possibly see, in _salons_ more beautiful
than those of Versailles, in enchanted palaces, in which all extremes of
climate, rain, and wind, cold and torrid heat were unknown; where
innumerable lamps, veritable suns in brilliancy and moons in softness,
shed unceasingly through the blue depths their daylight that knew no
night. Assuredly the sight was far from what it has since become; we
need an effort of imagination in order to represent the psychological
condition of our poor ancestors, hitherto accustomed to the perpetual
and insufferable discomforts and inconveniences of life on the surface
of the globe, in order to realise their enthusiasm, at a moment, when
only counting on escaping from the most appalling of deaths by means of
the gloomiest of dungeons, they felt themselves delivered of all their
troubles, and of all their apprehensions at the same time! Have you
noticed in the retrospective museum that quaint bit of apparatus of our
fathers, which is called an umbrella? Look at it and reflect on the
heart-breaking element, in a situation, which condemned man to make use
of this ridiculous piece of furniture. Imagine yourself obliged to
protect yourselves against those gigantic downpours which would
unexpectedly arrive on the scene and drench you for three or four days
running. Think likewise of sailors caught in a whirling cyclone, of the
victims of sunstroke, of the 20,000 Indians annually devoured by tigers
or killed by the bite of venomous serpents; think of those struck by
lightning. I do not speak of the legions of parasites and insects, of
the acarus, the phylloxera, and the microscopic beings which drained the
blood, the sweat, and the life of man, inoculating him with typhus,
plague, and cholera. In truth, if our change of condition has demanded
some sacrifices, it is not an illusion to declare that the balance of
advantage is immensely greater. What in comparison with this
unparalleled revolution is the most renowned of the petty revolutions of
the past which to-day are treated so lightly, and rightly so, by our
historians. One wonders how the first inhabitants of these underground
dwellings could, even for a moment, regret the sun, a mode of lighting
that bristled with so many inconveniences. The sun was a capricious
luminary which went out and was relit at variable hours, shone when it
felt disposed, sometimes was eclipsed, or hid itself behind the clouds
when one had most need of it, or pitilessly blinded one at the very
moment one yearned for shade! Every night,--do we really realise the
full force of the inconvenience?--every night the sun commanded social
life to desist and social life desisted. Humanity was actually to that
extent the slave of nature! To think it never succeeded in, never even
dreamed of, freeing itself from this slavery which weighed so heavily
and unconsciously on its destinies, on the course of its progress thus
straitened and confined! Ah! Let us once more bless our fortunate
disaster!
What excuses or explains the weakness of the first immigrants of the
inner world is the fact that their life was necessarily rough and full
of hardships, in spite of a notable improvement after their descent into
the caverns. They had perpetually to enlarge them, to adjust them to the
requirements of the two civilisations, ancient and modern. That was not
the work of a single day. I am well aware how happily fortune favoured
them; how they again and again had the good luck when driving their
tunnels to discover natural grottoes of the utmost beauty, in which it
was enough to illuminate with the usual methods of lighting (which was
absolutely cost-free, as Miltiades had foreseen) in order to render them
almost habitable: delightful squares, as it were, enshrined and sparsely
disseminated throughout the labyrinth of our brilliantly lighted
streets; mines of sparkling diamonds, lakes of quicksilver, mounds of
golden ingots. I am well aware that they had at their disposition a sum
of natural forces very superior to all that the preceding ages had been
acquainted with. That is very easy to understand. In fact, if they
lacked waterfalls, they replaced them very advantageously by the finest
falls in temperature that physicists have ever dreamed of. The central
heat of the globe could not, it is true, by itself alone be a mechanical
force, any more than formerly a large mass of water falling by
hypothesis to the greatest possible depth. It is in its passage from a
higher to a lower level that the mass of water becomes (or rather
became) available energy: it is in its descent from a higher to a lower
degree of the thermometer that heat likewise becomes so. The greater
distance between any two degrees the greater amount of surplus energy.
Now, the mining physicists had hardly descended into the bowels of the
earth ere they at once perceived that thus placed between the furnaces
of the central fire, as it were, a forge of the Cyclops, hot enough to
liquefy granite, and the outer cold, which was sufficient to solidify
oxygen and nitrogen, they had at their disposal the most enormous
extremes in temperature, and consequently thermic cataracts by the side
of which all the cataracts of Abyssinia and Niagara were only toys. What
caldrons did they own in the ancient volcanoes! What condensers in the
glaciers! At first sight they must have seen that if a few distributing
agencies of this prodigious energy were provided, they had power enough
there to perform the whole work of mankind--excavation, air supply,
water supply, sanitation, locomotion, descent and transport of
provisions, etc.
I am well aware of that. I am further aware that ever favoured by
fortune, the inseparable friend of daring, the new Troglodytes have
never suffered from famine, nor from shortness of supplies. When one of
their snow-covered deposits of carcasses threatened to give out, they
used to make several trial borings, drive several shafts in an upward
direction. They never failed presently to meet with rich finds of food
reserves, extensive enough to close the mouths of the alarmists, whereby
there resulted on each occasion, according to the law of Malthus, a
sudden increase in the population, coupled with the excavation of new
underground cities, more flourishing than their older sisters. But, in
spite of all this, we remain overwhelmed with wonder when we consider
the incalculable degree of courage and intelligence lavished on such a
work, and solely called into being by an idea which, starting one day
from one individual brain, has leavened the whole globe. What giant
falls of earth, what murderous explosions, what a death-roll there must
have been at the outset of the enterprise! We shall never know what
bloodthirsty duels, what rapes, what doleful tragedies, took place in
this lawless society, which had not yet been reorganised. The history of
the early conquerors and colonists of America, if it could be told in
detail, would pale entirely beside it. Let us draw a veil over the
proceedings. But this pitch of horrors was perhaps necessary to teach us
that in the forced intimacy of a cave there is no mean between warfare
and love, between mutual slaughter or mutual embraces. We began by
fighting; to-day we fall on each other's necks. And in fact, what human
ear, nose, or stomach could have longer withstood the deafening roar and
smoke of melanite explosions beneath our crypts; the sight and stench of
mangled bodies piled up within our narrow confines? Hideous and odious,
revolting beyond all expression, the underground war finished by
becoming impossible.
It is, however, painful to think that it lasted right up to the death of
our glorious preserver. Everyone is acquainted with the heroic adventure
in which Miltiades and his companion lost their lives. It has been so
often painted, sculptured, sung, and immortalised by the great masters,
that it is not allowable to pass it over in silence. The famous struggle
between the centralist and federalist cities, that is to say, at bottom,
between the industrial and artist cities, having ended in the triumph of
the latter, a still more bloodthirsty conflict sprang up between the
free thinking and the cellular cities. The former fought to assert the
freedom of love with its uncertain fecundity; the second, for its
prudent regulation. Miltiades, misled by his passion, committed the
fault of siding with the former, a pardonable error which posterity has
forgiven him. Besieged in his last grotto--a perfect marvel in
strongholds--and at the end of his provisions, the besiegers having
intercepted the arrival of all his convoys, he essayed a final effort:
he prepared a formidable explosion intended to blow up the vault of his
cavern, and forcibly to open a way upwards by which he might have the
chance of reaching a deposit of provisions. His hope was deceived. The
vault blew up, it is true, and disclosed a cavern above it, the most
colossal one had hitherto seen, that dimly resembled a Hindoo temple.
But the hero himself perished miserably, buried with Lydia beneath
enormous rocks on the very spot on which now stands their double statue
in marble, the masterpiece of our new Phidias, which is now the crowded
meeting-place of our national pilgrimages.
From these fruitful though troublous times, and from this beneficial
disorder, an advantage has accrued to us which we shall never
sufficiently appreciate. Our race, already so beautiful, has been
further strengthened and purified by these numerous trials.
Short-sightedness itself has disappeared under the prolonged influence
of a light that is pleasing to the eye, and of the habit of reading
books which are written in very large characters. For, from lack of
paper, we are obliged to write on slates, on pillars, obelisks, on the
broad panels of marble, and this necessity, in addition to compelling us
to adopt a sober style and contributing to the formation of taste,
prevents the daily newspapers from reappearing, to the great benefit of
the optic nerves and the lobes of the brain. It was, by the way, an
immense misfortune for "pre-salvationist" man to possess textile plants
which allowed him to stereotype without the slightest trouble on rags of
paper without the slightest value, all his ideas, idle or serious, piled
indiscriminately one on the other. Now, before graving our thoughts on a
panel of rock, we take time to reflect on our subject. Yet another bane
among our primitive forefathers was tobacco. At present we no longer
smoke, we can no longer smoke. The public health is accordingly
magnificent.
V
REGENERATION
It does not fall within the scope of my rapid sketch to relate date by
date the laborious vicissitudes of humanity since its settlement within
the planet from the year 1 of the era of Salvation to the year 596, in
which I write these lines in chalk on slabs of schist. I should only
like to bring out for my contemporaries, who might very well fail to
notice them (for we barely observe what we have always before our eyes),
the distinctive and original features of this modern civilisation of
which we are so justly proud. Now that after many abortive trials and
agonizing convulsions it has succeeded in taking its final shape, we can
clearly establish its essential characteristics. It consists in the
complete elimination of living nature, whether animal or vegetable, man
only excepted. That has produced, so to say, a purification of society.
Secluded thus from every influence of the natural milieu into which it
was hitherto plunged and confined, the social milieu was for the first
time able to reveal and display its true virtues, and the real social
bond appeared in all its vigour and purity. It might be said that
destiny had desired to make in our case an extended sociological
experiment for its own edification by placing us in such extraordinarily
unique conditions.[1] The problem, in a way, was to learn, what would
social man become if committed to his own keeping, yet left to
himself--furnished with all the intellectual acquisitions accumulated
through a remote past by human geniuses, but deprived of the assistance
of all other living beings, nay, even of those beings half endowed with
life, that we call rivers and seas and stars, and thrown back on the
conquered, yet passive forces of chemical, inorganic and lifeless
Nature, which is separated from man by too deep a chasm to exercise on
him any action from the social point of view. The problem was to learn
what this humanity would do when restricted to man, and obliged to
extract from its own resources, if not its food supplies, yet at least
all its pleasures, all its occupations, all its creative inspirations.
The answer has been given, and we have realised at the same time what an
unsuspected drag the terrestrial fauna and flora had hitherto been on
the progress of humanity.
[1] In appearance only: we must not forget that in accordance
with all probability many extinct stars must have served as the scene of
this normal and necessary phase of social life.
At first human pride and the faith of man in himself hitherto held in
check by the constant presence, by the profound sense of the superiority
of the forces round it, rebounded with a force of elasticity really
appalling. We are a race of Titans. But, at the same time, whatever
enervating element there might have been in the air of our grottoes has
been thereby victoriously combated. Otherwise our air is the purest that
man has ever breathed; all the bad germs with which the atmosphere was
loaded were killed by the cold. Far from being attacked by anæmia as
some predicted, we live in a state of habitual excitement maintained by
the multiplicity of our relations and of our "social tonics" (friendly
shakes of the hand, talks, meetings with charming women, etc.). With a
certain number among us it passes into a state of unintermittent
delirium under the name of Troglodytic fever. This new malady, whose
microbe has not yet been discovered, was unknown to our forefathers,
thanks perhaps to the stupefying (or soothing, if you prefer it)
influence of natural and rural distractions. Rural! what a strange
anachronism! Fishermen, hunters, ploughmen, and shepherds--do we really
understand to-day the meaning of these words? Have we for a moment
reflected on the life of that fossil creature who is so frequently
mentioned in books of ancient history and who was called the peasant?
The habitual society of this curious creature which comprised half or
three-quarters of the population was not man, but four-footed beasts,
pot herbs and green crops, which, owing to the conditions necessary for
their production in the country (yet another word which has become
meaningless) condemned him to live a wild, solitary life, far from his
fellows. As for his herds, they were acquainted with the charms of
social life, but he had not the slightest inkling of what it meant.
The towns, to which people were so astonished that there should be a
desire to emigrate, were the only centres, rare and widely scattered as
they were, in which life in society was then known. But to what extent
does it not appear to have been adulterated, and attenuated by animal
and vegetable life? Another fossil peculiar to these regions is the
artisan. Was the relation of the worker to his employer, of the artisan
class to the other classes of the population, of these classes between
themselves a really social relation? Not the least in the world! Certain
sophists, who were called economists, and who were to our sociologists
of to-day what the alchemists formerly were to the chemists or the
astrologers to the astronomers, had given credit, it is true, to this
error--that society essentially consists in an exchange of services.
From this point of view, which, moreover, is quite out of date, the
social bond could never be closer than that between the ass and the ass
driver, the ox and drover, the sheep and the shepherd. Society, we now
know, consists in the exchange of reflections. Mutually to ape one
another, and by dint of accumulated apings diversely combined to create
an originality is the important thing. Reciprocal service is only an
accessory. That is why the urban life of former days being principally
founded on the organic and natural, rather than on the social relation
of producer to consumer, or of workman to employer, was itself only a
very imperfect kind of social life, and accordingly the source of
endless disagreements.
If it has been possible for us to realise the most perfect and the most
intense social life that has ever been seen, it is thanks to the extreme
simplicity of our strictly so-called wants. At a time when man was
"panivorous" and omnivorous, the craving for food was broken up into an
infinity of petty ramifications. To-day it is confined to eating meat
which has been preserved in the best of refrigerators. Within the space
of an hour each morning, a single member of society by the employment of
our ingenious transport machinery feeds a thousand of his kind. The need
of clothing has been pretty nearly abolished by the softness of an ever
constant climate, and, we must also admit it, by the absence of
silkworms and of textile plants. That would perhaps be a disadvantage
were it not for the incomparable beauty of our bodies, which lends a
real charm to this grand simplicity of costume. Let us observe, however,
that it is fairly customary to wear coats of asbestos spangled with
mica, of silver interwoven and enriched with gold, in which the refined
and delicate charms of our women appear as though moulded in metal,
rather than completely screened from view. This metallic iridescence
with its infinite tints has a most delightful effect. These are,
however, costumes that never wear out. How many clothiers, milliners,
tailors, and drapery establishments are thereby abolished at a single
stroke! The need of shelter remains, it is true, but it has been greatly
reduced. One is no longer obliged to sleep at "starlight-hotel". When a
young man grows weary of the life in common which has hitherto sufficed
him in the spacious working-drawing-room of his fellows, and desires for
matrimonial reasons to have a dwelling to himself, he has only to apply
the boring-machine somewhere against the rocky wall and his cell is
excavated in a few days. There is no rent and few articles of furniture.
The joint-stock furniture, which is magnificent, is almost the only one
of which the pair of lovers make use.
The quota of absolute necessities being thus reduced to almost nothing,
the quota of superfluities has been able to be extended to almost
everything. Since we live on so little, there remains abundant time for
thought. A minimum of utilitarian work and a maximum of æsthetic, is
surely civilisation itself in its most essential element. The room left
vacant in the heart by the reduction of our wants is taken up by the
talents--those artistic, poetic, and scientific talents which, as they
day by day multiply and take deeper root, become really and truly
acquired wants. They really spring, however, from a necessity to
produce, and not from a necessity to consume. I underline this
difference. The manufacturer is ever toiling, not for his own pleasure
nor for that of the world about him, of his fellow-men or his natural
rivals, but for a society different from his own--on mutual terms, but
that is immaterial. His work, therefore, constitutes a non-social, an
almost anti-social relationship with those who are not of his kind, to
the great hurt and hindrance of his relations with those who are. The
increasing intensity of his work tends to accentuate and not to
attenuate the dissimilarities between the different grades of society,
which act as an obstacle to the general reunion. We have clearly seen
the truth of this in the course of the twentieth century of the ancient
era, when the whole population was divided into trades-unions of the
different professions, which waged desperate warfare on one another, and
whose members in the bosom of each union hated one another as only
brothers can.
But for the scientist, the artist, the lover of beauty in all its forms,
to produce is a passion, to consume is only a taste. For every artist
has a dilettante double. But his dilettantism in respect to arts other
than his own only plays by comparison a secondary part in his life. The
artist creates through sheer delight, and he alone creates for such
motives.