So contagious and so lethal was the new bacterium, that its authors
expected the human race to be wiped out as completely as the Martian
colony. Each dying remnant of humanity, isolated from its fellows by the
breakdown of communications, imagined its own last moments to be the
last of man. But by accident, almost one might say by miracle, a spark
of human life was once more preserved, to hand on the sacred fire. A
certain stock or strain of the race, promiscuously scattered throughout
the continents, proved less susceptible than the majority. And, as the
bacterium was less vigorous in a hot climate, a few of these favoured
individuals, who happened to be in the tropical jungle, recovered from
the infection. And of these few a minority recovered also from the
pulmonary plague which, as usual, was propagated from the dead Martians.
It might have been expected that from this human germ a new civilized
community would have soon arisen. With such brilliant beings as the
Second Men, surely a few generations, or at the most a few thousand
years, should have sufficed to make up the lost ground.
But no. Once more it was in a manner the very excellence of the species
that prevented its recovery, and flung the spirit of Earth into a trance
which lasted longer than the whole previous career of mammals. Again and
again, some thirty million times, the seasons were repeated; and
throughout this period man remained as fixed in bodily and mental
character as, formerly, the platypus. Members of the earlier human
species must find it difficult to understand this prolonged impotence of
a race far more developed than themselves. For here apparently were both
the requisites of progressive culture, namely a world rich and
unpossessed, and a race exceptionally able. Yet nothing was done.
When the plagues, and all the immense consequent putrefactions, had
worked themselves off, the few isolated groups of human survivors
settled down to an increasingly indolent tropical life. The fruits of
past learning were not imparted to the young, who therefore grew up in
extreme ignorance of almost everything beyond their immediate
experience. At the same time the elder generation cowed their juniors
with vague suggestions of racial defeat and universal futility. This
would not have mattered, had the young themselves been normal; they
would have reacted with fervent optimism. But they themselves were now
by nature incapable of any enthusiasm. For, in a species in which the
lower functions were so strictly disciplined under the higher, the
long-drawn-out spiritual disaster had actually begun to take effect upon
the germ-plasm; so that individuals were doomed before birth to
lassitude, and to mentality in a minor key. The First Men, long ago, had
fallen into a kind of racial senility through a combination of vulgar
errors and indulgences. But the second species, like a boy whose mind
has been too soon burdened with grave experience, lived henceforth in a
sleep-walk.
As the generations passed, all the lore of civilization was shed, save
the routine of tropical agriculture and hunting. Not that intelligence
itself had waned. Not that the race had sunk into mere savagery.
Lassitude did not prevent it from readjusting itself to suit its new
circumstances. These sleep-walkers soon invented convenient ways of
making, in the home and by hand, much that had hitherto been made in
factories and by mechanical power. Almost without mental effort they
designed and fashioned tolerable instruments out of wood and flint and
bone. But though still intelligent, they had become by disposition,
supine, indifferent. They would exert themselves only under the pressure
of urgent primitive need. No man seemed capable of putting forth the
full energy of a man. Even suffering had lost its poignancy. And no ends
seemed worth pursuing that could not be realized speedily. The sting had
gone out of experience. The soul was calloused against every goad. Men
and women worked and played, loved and suffered; but always in a kind of
rapt absent-mindedness. It was as though they were ever trying to
remember something important which escaped them. The affairs of daily
life seemed too trivial to be taken seriously. Yet that other, and
supremely important thing, which alone deserved consideration, was so
obscure that no one had any idea what it was. Nor indeed was anyone
aware of this hypnotic subjection, any more than a sleeper is aware of
being asleep.
The minimum of necessary work was performed, and there was even a
certain dreamy zest in the performance, but nothing which would entail
extra toil ever seemed worth while. And so, when adjustment to the new
circumstances of the world had been achieved, complete stagnation set
in. Practical intelligence was easily able to cope with a slowly
changing environment, and even with sudden natural upheavals such as
floods, earthquakes, and disease epidemics. Man remained in a sense
master of his world, but he had no idea what to do with his mastery. It
was everywhere assumed that the sane end of living was to spend as many
days as possible in indolence, lying in the shade. Unfortunately human
beings had, of course, many needs which were irksome if not appeased,
and so a good deal of hard work had to be done. Hunger and thirst had to
be satisfied. Other individuals beside oneself had to be cared for,
since man was cursed with sympathy and with a sentiment for the welfare
of his group. The only fully rational behaviour, it was thought, would
be general suicide, but irrational impulses made this impossible.
Beatific drugs offered a temporary heaven. But, far as the Second Men
had fallen, they were still too clear-sighted to forget that such
beatitude is outweighed by subsequent misery.
Century by century, epoch by epoch, man glided on in this seemingly
precarious, yet actually unshakable equilibrium. Nothing that happened
to him could disturb his easy dominance over the beasts and over
physical nature; nothing could shock him out of his racial sleep.
Long-drawn-out climatic changes made desert, jungle, and grass-land
fluctuate like the clouds. As the years advanced by millions, ordinary
geological processes, greatly accentuated by the immense strains set up
by the Patagonian upheaval, remodelled the surface of the planet.
Continents were submerged, or lifted out of the sea, till presently
there was little of the old configuration. And along with these
geological changes went changes in the fauna and flora. The bacterium
which had almost exterminated man had also wrought havoc amongst other
mammals. Once more the planet had to be re-stocked, this time from the
few surviving tropical species. Once more there was a great remaking of
old types, only less revolutionary than that which had followed the
Patagonian disaster. And since the human race remained minute, through
the effects of its spiritual fatigue, other species were favoured.
Especially the ruminants and the large carnivora increased and
diversified themselves into many habits and forms.
But the most remarkable of all the biological trains of events in this
period was the history of the Martian subvital units that had been
disseminated by the slaughter of the Martian colony, and had then
tormented men and animals with pulmonary diseases. As the ages passed,
certain species of mammals so readjusted themselves that the Martian
virus became not only harmless but necessary to their well-being. A
relationship which was originally that of parasite and host became in
time a true symbiosis, a cooperative partnership, in which the
terrestrial animals gained something of the unique attributes of the
vanished Martian organisms. The time was to come when Man himself should
look with envy on these creatures, and finally make use of the Martian
‘virus’ for his own enrichment.
But meanwhile, and for many million years, almost all kinds of life were
on the move, save Man. Like a ship-wrecked sailor, he lay exhausted and
asleep on his raft, long after the storm had abated.
But his stagnation was not absolute. Imperceptibly, he was drifting on
the oceanic currents of life, and in a direction far out of his original
course. Little by little, his habit was becoming simpler, less
artificial, more animal. Agriculture faded out, since it was no longer
necessary in the luxuriant garden where man lived. Weapons of defence
and of the chase became more precisely adapted to their restricted
purposes, but at the same time less diversified and more stereotyped.
Speech almost vanished; for there was no novelty left in experience.
Familiar facts and familiar emotions were conveyed increasingly by
gestures which were mostly unwitting. Physically, the species had
changed little. Though the natural period of life was greatly reduced,
this was due less to physiological change than to a strange and fatal
increase of absent-mindedness in middle-age. The individual gradually
ceased to react to his environment; so that even if he escaped a violent
death, he died of starvation.
Yet in spite of this great change, the species remained essentially
human. There was no bestialization, such as had formerly produced a race
of submen. These tranced remnants of the second human species were not
beasts but innocents, simples, children of nature, perfectly adjusted to
their simple life. In many ways their state was idyllic and enviable.
But such was their dimmed mentality that they were never clearly aware
even of the blessings they had, still less, of course, of the loftier
experiences which had kindled and tortured their ancestors.