Rather more than fifty thousand years after their first appearance, the
Martians secured a permanent footing on the Antarctic tableland and
overran Australasia and South Africa. For many centuries they remained
in possession of a large part of the earth’s surface, practising a kind
of agriculture, studying terrestrial conditions, and spending much
energy on the ‘liberation’ of diamonds.
During the considerable period before their settlement their mentality
had scarcely changed; but actual habitation of the earth now began to
undermine their self-complacency and their unity. It was borne in upon
certain exploring Martians that the terrestrial bipeds, though
insensitive to radiation, were actually the intelligences of the planet.
At first this fact was studiously shunned, but little by little it
gripped the attention of all terrestrial Martians. At the same time they
began to realize that the whole work of research into terrestrial
conditions, and even the social construction of their colony, depended,
not on the public mind, but on private individuals, acting in their
private capacity. The colonial super-individual inspired only the
diamond crusade, and the attempt to extirpate the terrestrial
intelligence, or radiation. These various novel acts of insight woke the
Martian colonists from an age-long dream. They saw that their revered
super-individual was scarcely more than the least common measure of
themselves, a bundle of atavistic fantasies and cravings, knit into one
mind and gifted with a certain practical cunning. A rapid and
bewildering spiritual renascence now came over the whole Martian colony.
The central doctrine of it was that what was valuable in the Martian
species was not radiation but mentality. These two utterly different
things had been confused, and even identified, since the dawn of Martian
civilization. At last they were clearly distinguished. A fumbling but
sincere study of mind now began; and distinction was even made between
the humbler and loftier mental activities.
There is no telling whither this renascence might have led, had it run
its course. Possibly in time the Martians might have recognized worth
even in minds other than Martian minds. But such a leap was at first far
beyond them. Though they now understood that human animals were
conscious and intelligent, they regarded them with no sympathy, rather
indeed, with increased hostility. They still rendered allegiance to the
Martian race, or brotherhood, just because it was in a sense one flesh,
and, indeed, one mind. For they were concerned not to abolish but to
recreate the public mind of the colony, and even that of Mars itself.
But the colonial public mind still largely dominated them in their more
somnolent periods, and actually sent some of those who, in their private
phases, were revolutionaries across to Mars for help against the
revolutionary movement. The home planet was quite untouched by the new
ideas. Its citizens cooperated whole-heartedly in an attempt to bring
the colonists to their senses. But in vain. The colonial public mind
itself changed its character as the centuries passed, until it became
seriously alienated from Martian orthodoxy. Presently, indeed, it began
to undergo a very strange and thorough metamorphosis, from which,
conceivably, it might have emerged as the noblest inhabitant of the
solar system. Little by little it fell into a kind of hypnotic trance.
That is to say, it ceased to possess the attention of its private
members, yet remained as a unity of their subconscious, or unnoticed
mentality. Radiational unity of the colony was maintained, but only in
this subconscious manner; and it was at that depth that the great
metamorphosis began to take place under the fertilizing influence of the
new ideas; which, so to speak, were generated in the tempest of the
fully conscious mental revolution, and kept on spreading down into the
oceanic depth of the subconsciousness. Such a condition was likely to
produce in time the emergence of a qualitatively new and finer
mentality, and to waken at last into a fully conscious super-individual
of higher order than its own members. But meanwhile this trance of the
public consciousness incapacitated the colony for that prompt and
coordinated action which had been the most successful faculty of Martian
life. The public mind of the home planet easily destroyed its disorderly
offspring, and set about re-colonizing the earth.
Several times during the next three hundred thousand years this process
repeated itself. The changeless and terribly efficient super-individual
of Mars extirpated its own offspring on the earth, before it could
emerge from the chrysalis. And the tragedy might have been repeated
indefinitely, but for certain changes that took place in humanity.
The first few centuries after the foundation of the Martian colony had
been spent in ceaseless war. But at last, with terribly reduced
resources, the Second Men had reconciled themselves to the fact that
they must live in the same world with their mysterious enemy. Moreover,
constant observation of the Martians began to restore somewhat man’s
shattered self-confidence. For during the fifty thousand years before
the Martian colony was founded his opinion of himself had been
undermined. He had formerly been used to regarding himself as the sun’s
ablest child. Then suddenly a stupendous new phenomenon had defeated his
intelligence. Slowly he had learned that he was at grips with a
determined and versatile rival, and that this rival hailed from a
despised planet. Slowly he had been forced to suspect that he himself
was outclassed, outshone, by a race whose very physique was
incomprehensible to man. But after the Martians had established a
permanent colony, human scientists began to discover the real
physiological nature of the Martian organism, and were comforted to find
that it did not make nonsense of human science. Man also learned that
the Martians, though very able in certain spheres, were not really of a
high mental type. These discoveries restored human self-confidence. Man
settled down to make the best of the situation. Impassable barriers of
high-power electric current were devised to keep the Martians out of
human territory, and men began patiently to rebuild their ruined homes
as best they could. At first there was little respite from the crusading
zeal of the Martians, but in the second millennium this began to abate,
and the two races left one another alone, save for occasional revivals
of Martian fervour. Human civilization was at last reconstructed and
consolidated, though upon a modest scale. Once more, though interrupted
now and again by decades of agony, human beings lived in peace and
relative prosperity. Life was somewhat harder than formerly, and the
physique of the race was definitely less reliable than of old; but men
and women still enjoyed conditions which most nations of the earlier
species would have envied. The age of ceaseless personal sacrifice in
service of the stricken community had ended at last. Once more a
wonderful diversity of untrammelled personalities was put forth. Once
more the minds of men and women were devoted without hindrance to the
joy of skilled work, and all the subtleties of personal intercourse.
Once more the passionate interest in one’s fellows, which had for so
long been hushed under the all-dominating public calamity, refreshed and
enlarged the mind. Once more there was music, sweet, and
backward-hearkening towards a golden past. Once more a wealth of
literature, and of the visual arts. Once more intellectual exploration
into the nature of the physical world and the potentiality of mind. And
once more the religious experience, which had for so long been coarsened
and obscured by all the violent distractions and inevitable
self-deceptions of war, seemed to be refining itself under the influence
of reawakened culture.
In such circumstances the earlier and less sensitive human species might
well have prospered indefinitely. Not so the Second Men. For their very
refinement of sensibility made them incapable of shunning an
ever-present conviction that in spite of all their prosperity they were
undermined. Though superficially they seemed to be making a slow but
heroic recovery they were at the same time suffering from a still slower
and far more profound spiritual decline. Generation succeeded
generation. Society became almost perfected, within its limited
territory and its limitations of material wealth. The capacities of
personality were developed with extreme subtlety and richness. At last
the race proposed to itself once more its ancient project of remaking
human nature upon a loftier plane. But somehow it had no longer the
courage and self-respect for such work. And so, though there was much
talk, nothing was done. Epoch succeeded epoch, and everything human
remained apparently the same. Like a twig that has been broken but not
broken off, man settled down to retain his life and culture, but could
make no progress.
It is almost impossible to describe in a few words the subtle malady of
the spirit that was undermining the Second Men. To say that they were
suffering from an inferiority complex, would not be wholly false, but it
would be a misleading vulgarization of the truth. To say that they had
lost faith, both in themselves and in the universe, would be almost as
inadequate. Crudely stated, their trouble was that, as a species, they
had attempted a certain spiritual feat beyond the scope of their
still-primitive nature. Spiritually they had over-reached themselves,
broken every muscle (so to speak) and incapacitated themselves for any
further effort. For they had determined to see their own racial tragedy
as a thing of beauty, and they had failed. It was the obscure sense of
this defeat that had poisoned them. For, being in many respects a very
noble species, they could not simply turn their backs upon their failure
and pursue the old way of life with the accustomed zest and
thoroughness.
During the earliest Martian raids, the spiritual leaders of humanity had
preached that the disaster must be an occasion for a supreme religious
experience. While striving mightily to save their civilization, men must
yet (so it was said) learn not merely to endure, but to admire, even the
sternest issue. ‘Thus and thus is the world. Seeing the depth, we shall
see also the height, and praise both.’ The whole population had accepted
this advice. At first they had seemed to succeed. Many noble literary
expressions were given forth, which seemed to define and elaborate, and
even actually to create in men’s hearts, this supreme experience. But as
the centuries passed and the disasters were repeated, men began to fear
that their forefathers had deceived themselves. Those remote generations
had earnestly longed to feel the racial tragedy as a factor in the
cosmic beauty; and at last they had persuaded themselves that this
experience had actually befallen them. But their descendants were slowly
coming to suspect that no such experience had ever occurred, that it
would never occur to any man, and that there was in fact no such cosmic
beauty to be experienced. The First Men would probably, in such a
situation, have swung violently either into spiritual nihilism, or else
into some comforting religious myth. At any rate, they were of too
coarse-grained a nature to be ruined by a trouble so impalpable. Not so
the Second Men. For they realized all too clearly that they were faced
with the supreme crux of existence. And so, age after age the
generations clung desperately to the hope that, if only they could
endure a little longer, the light would break in on them. Even after the
Martian colony had been three times established and destroyed by the
orthodox race in Mars, the supreme preoccupation of the human species
was with this religious crux. But afterwards, and very gradually, they
lost heart. For it was borne in on them that either they themselves were
by nature too obtuse to perceive this ultimate excellence of things (an
excellence which they had strong reason to believe in intellectually,
although they could not actually experience it), or the human race had
utterly deceived itself, and the course of cosmic events after all was
not significant, but a meaningless rigmarole.
It was this dilemma that poisoned them. Had they been still physically
in their prime, they might have found fortitude to accept it, and
proceed to the patient exfoliation of such very real excellences as they
were still capable of creating. But they had lost the vitality which
alone could perform such acts of spiritual abnegation. All the wealth of
personality, all the intricacies of personal relationship, all the
complex enterprise of a very great community, all art, all intellectual
research, had lost their savour. It is remarkable that a purely
religious disaster should have warped even the delight of lovers in one
another’s bodies, actually taken the flavour out of food, and drawn a
veil between the sunbather and the sun. But individuals of this species,
unlike their predecessors, were so closely integrated, that none of
their functions could remain healthy while the highest was disordered.
Moreover, the general slight failure of physique, which was the legacy
of age-long war, had resulted in a recurrence of those shattering brain
disorders which had dogged the earliest races of their species. The very
horror of the prospect of racial insanity increased their aberration
from reasonableness. Little by little, shocking perversions of desire
began to terrify them. Masochistic and sadistic orgies alternated with
phases of extravagant and ghastly revelry. Acts of treason against the
community, hitherto almost unknown, at last necessitated a strict police
system. Local groups organized predatory raids against one another.
Nations appeared, and all the phobias that make up nationalism.
The Martian colonists, when they observed man’s disorganization,
prepared, at the instigation of the home planet, a very great offensive.
It so happened that at this time the colony was going through its phase
of enlightenment, which had always hitherto been followed sooner or
later by chastisement from Mars. Many individuals were at the moment
actually toying with the idea of seeking harmony with man, rather than
war. But the public mind of Mars, outraged by this treason, sought to
overwhelm it by instituting a new crusade. Man’s disunion offered a
great opportunity.
The first attack produced a remarkable change in the human race. Their
madness seemed suddenly to leave them. Within a few weeks the national
governments had surrendered their sovereignty to a central authority.
Disorders, debauchery, perversions, wholly ceased. The treachery and
self-seeking and corruption, which had by now been customary for many
centuries, suddenly gave place to universal and perfect devotion to the
social cause. The species was apparently once more in its right mind.
Everywhere, in spite of the war’s horrors, there was gay brotherliness,
combined with a heroism, which clothed itself in an odd extravagance of
jocularity.
The war went ill for man. The general mood changed to cold resolution.
And still victory was with the Martians. Under the influence of the huge
fanatical armies which were poured in from the home planet, the
colonists had shed their tentative pacifism, and sought to vindicate
their loyalty by ruthlessness. In reply the human race deserted its
sanity, and succumbed to an uncontrollable lust for destruction. It was
at this stage that a human bacteriologist announced that he had bred a
virus of peculiar deadliness and transmissibility, with which it would
be possible to infect the enemy, but at the cost of annihilating also
the human race. It is significant of the insane condition of the human
population at this time that, when these facts were announced and
broadcast, there was no discussion of the desirability of using this
weapon. It was immediately put in action, the whole human race
applauding.
Within a few months the Martian colony had vanished, their home planet
itself had received the infection, and its population was already aware
that nothing could save it. Man’s constitution was tougher than that of
the animate clouds, and he appeared to be doomed to a somewhat more
lingering death. He made no effort to save himself, either from the
disease which he himself had propagated, or from the pulmonary plague
which was caused by the disintegrated substance of the dead Martian
colony. All the public processes of civilization began to fall to
pieces; for the community was paralysed by disillusion, and by the
expectation of death. Like a bee-hive that has no queen, the whole
population of the earth sank into apathy. Men and women stayed in their
homes, idling, eating whatever food they could procure, sleeping far
into the mornings, and, when at last they rose, listlessly avoiding one
another. Only the children could still be gay, and even they were
oppressed by their elders’ gloom. Meanwhile the disease was spreading.
Household after household was stricken, and was left unaided by its
neighbours. But the pain in each individual’s flesh was strangely numbed
by his more poignant distress in the spiritual defeat of the race. For
such was the high development of this species, that even physical agony
could not distract it from the racial failure. No one wanted to save
himself; and each knew that his neighbours desired not his aid. Only the
children, when the disease crippled them, were plunged into agony and
terror. Tenderly, yet listlessly, their elders would then give them the
last sleep. Meanwhile the unburied dead spread corruption among the
dying. Cities fell still and silent. The corn was not harvested.