Save for occasional minor local conflicts, easily quelled by the World
Police, the race was now a single social unit for some four thousand
years. During the first of these millennia material progress at least
was rapid, but subsequently there was little change until the final
disintegration. The whole energy of man was concentrated on maintaining
at a constant pitch the furious routine of his civilization, until,
after another three thousand years of lavish expenditure, certain
essential sources of power were suddenly exhausted. Nowhere was there
the mental agility to cope with this novel crisis. The whole social
order collapsed.
We may pass over the earlier stages of this fantastic civilization, and
examine it as it stood before the fatal change began to be felt.
The material circumstances of the race at this time would have amazed
all its predecessors, even those who were in the true sense far more
civilized beings. But to us, the Last Men, there is an extreme pathos
and even comicality, not only in this most thorough confusion of
material development with civilization, but also in the actual paucity
of the vaunted material development itself, compared with that of our
own society.
All the continents, indeed, were by now minutely artificialized. Save
for the many wild reserves which were cherished as museums and
playgrounds, not a square mile of territory was left in a natural state.
Nor was there any longer a distinction between agricultural and
industrial areas. All the continents were urbanized, not of course in
the manner of the congested industrial cities of an earlier age, but
none the less urbanized. Industry and agriculture interpenetrated
everywhere. This was possible partly through the great development of
aerial communication, partly through a no less remarkable improvement of
architecture. Great advances in artificial materials had enabled the
erection of buildings in the form of slender pylons which, rising often
to a height of three miles, or even more, and founded a quarter of a
mile beneath the ground, might yet occupy a ground plan of less than
half a mile across. In section these structures were often cruciform;
and on each floor, the centre of the long-armed cross consisted of an
aerial landing, providing direct access from the air for the dwarf
private aeroplanes which were by now essential to the life of every
adult. These gigantic pillars of architecture, prophetic of the still
mightier structures of an age to come, were scattered over every
continent in varying density. Very rarely were they permitted to
approach one another by a distance less than their height; on the other
hand, save in the arctic, they were very seldom separated by more than
twenty miles. The general appearance of every country was thus rather
like an open forest of lopped tree-trunks, gigantic in stature. Clouds
often encircled the middle heights of these artificial peaks, or blotted
out all but the lower stories. Dwellers in the summits were familiar
with the spectacle of a dazzling ocean of cloud, dotted on all sides
with steep islands of architecture. Such was the altitude of the upper
floors that it was sometimes necessary to maintain in them, not merely
artificial heating, but artificial air pressure and oxygen supply.
Between these columns of habitation and industry, the land was
everywhere green or brown with the seasonal variations of agriculture,
park, and wild reserve. Broad grey thoroughfares for heavy freight
traffic netted every continent; but lighter transport and the passenger
services were wholly aerial. Over all the more populous districts the
air was ever aswarm with planes up to a height of five miles, where the
giant air-liners plied between the continents.
The enterprise of an already distant past had brought every land under
civilization. The Sahara was a lake district, crowded with sun-proud
holiday resorts. The arctic islands of Canada, ingeniously warmed by
directed tropical currents, were the homes of vigorous northerners. The
coasts of Antarctica, thawed in the same manner, were permanently
inhabited by those engaged in exploiting the mineral wealth of the
hinterland.
Much of the power needed to keep this civilization in being was drawn
from the buried remains of prehistoric vegetation, in the form of coal.
Although after the foundation of the World State the fuel of Antarctica
had been very carefully husbanded, the new supply of oil had given out
in less than three centuries, and men were forced to drive their
aeroplanes by electricity generated from coal. It soon became evident,
however that even the unexpectedly rich coal-fields of Antarctica would
not last for ever. The cessation of oil had taught men a much needed
lesson, had made them feel the reality of the power problem. At the same
time the cosmopolitan spirit, which was learning to regard the whole
race as compatriots, was also beginning to take a broader view
temporally, and to see things with the eyes of remote generations.
During the first and sanest thousand years of the World State, there was
a widespread determination not to incur the blame of the future by
wasting power. Thus not only was there serious economy (the first
large-scale cosmopolitan enterprise), but also efforts were made to
utilize more permanent sources of power. Wind was used extensively. On
every building swarms of windmills generated electricity, and every
mountain range was similarly decorated, while every considerable fall of
water forced its way through turbines. More important still was the
utilization of power derived from volcanos and from borings into the
subterranean heat. This, it had been hoped, would solve the whole
problem of power, once and for all. But even in the earlier and more
intelligent period of the World State inventive genius was not what it
had been, and no really satisfactory method was found. Consequently at
no stage of this civilization did volcanic sources do more than
supplement the amazingly rich coal seams of Antarctica. In this region
coal was preserved at far greater depth than elsewhere, because, by some
accident, the earth’s central heat was not here fierce enough (as it was
elsewhere) to turn the deeper beds into graphite. Another possible
source of power was known to exist in the ocean tides; but the use of
this was forbidden by the S.O.S. because, since tidal motion was so
obviously astronomical in origin, it had come to be regarded as sacred.
Perhaps the greatest physical achievement of the First World State in
its earlier and more vital phase had been in preventive medicine. Though
the biological sciences had long ago become stereotyped in respect of
fundamental theories, they continued to produce many practical benefits.
No longer did men and women have to dread for themselves or those dear
to them such afflictions as cancer, tuberculosis, angina pectoris, the
rheumatic diseases, and the terrible disorders of the nervous system. No
longer were there sudden microbic devastations. No longer was
child-birth an ordeal, and womanhood itself a source of suffering. There
were no more chronic invalids, no more life-long cripples. Only senility
remained; and even this could be repeatedly alleviated by physiological
rejuvenation. The removal of all these ancient sources of weakness and
misery, which formerly had lamed the race and haunted so many
individuals either with definite terrors or vague and scarcely conscious
despond, brought about now a pervading buoyancy and optimism impossible
to earlier peoples.