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.