It was after an unusually long period of eclipse that the spirit of the
third human species attained its greatest brilliance. We need not watch
the stages by which this enlightenment was reached. Suffice it that the
upshot was a very remarkable civilization, if such a word can be applied
to an order in which agglomerations of architecture were unknown,
clothing was used only when needed for warmth, and such industrial
development as occurred was wholly subordinated to other activities.
Early in the history of this culture the requirements of hunting and
agriculture, and the spontaneous impulse to manipulate live things, gave
rise to a primitive but serviceable system of biological knowledge. Not
until the culture had unified the whole planet, did biology itself give
rise to chemistry and physics. At the same time a well-controlled
industrialism, based first on wind and water, and later on subterranean
heat, afforded the race all the material luxuries it desired, and much
leisure from the business of keeping itself in existence. Had there not
already existed a more powerful and all-dominating interest,
industrialism itself would probably have hypnotized the race, as it had
so many others. But in this race the interest in live things, which
characterized the whole species, was dominant before industrialism
began. Egotism among the Third Men could not be satisfied by the
exercise of economic power, nor by the mere ostentation of wealth. Not
that the race was immune from egotism. On the contrary, it had lost
almost all that spontaneous altruism which had distinguished the Second
Men. But in most periods the only kind of personal ostentation which
appealed to the Third Men was directly connected with the primitive
interest in ‘pecunia’. To own many and noble beasts, whether they were
economically productive or not, was ever the mark of respectability. The
vulgar, indeed, were content with mere numbers, or at most with the
convential virtues of the recognized breeds. But the more refined
pursued, and flaunted, certain very exact principles of aesthetic
excellence in their control of living forms.
In fact, as the race gained biological insight, it developed a very
remarkable new art, which we may call ‘plastic vital art’. This was to
become the chief vehicle of expression of the new culture. It was
practised universally, and with religious fervour; for it was very
closely connected with the belief in a life-god. The canons of this art,
and the precepts of this religion, fluctuated from age to age, but in
general certain basic principles were accepted. Or rather, though there
was almost always universal agreement that the practice of vital art was
the supreme goal, and should not be treated in a utilitarian spirit,
there were two conflicting sets of principles which were favoured by
opposed sects. One mode of vital art sought to evoke the full
potentiality of each natural type as a harmonious and perfected nature,
or to produce new types equally harmonious. The other prided itself on
producing monsters. Sometimes a single capacity was developed at the
expense of the harmony and welfare of the organism as a whole. Thus a
bird was produced which could fly faster than any other bird; but it
could neither reproduce nor even feed, and therefore had to be
maintained artificially. Sometimes, on the other hand, certain
characters incompatible in nature were forced upon a single organism,
and maintained in precarious and torturing equilibrium. To give
examples, one much-talked-of feat was the production of a carnivorous
mammal in which the fore-limbs had assumed the structure of a bird’s
wings, complete with feathers. This creature could not fly, since its
body was wrongly proportioned. Its only mode of locomotion was a
staggering run with outstretched wings. Other examples of monstrosity
were an eagle with twin heads, and a deer in which, with incredible
ingenuity, the artists had induced the tail to develop as a head, with
brain, sense-organs, and jaws. In this monstrous art, interest in living
things was infected with sadism through the preoccupation with fate,
especially internal fate, as the divinity that shapes our ends. In its
more vulgar forms, of course, it was a crude expression of egotistical
lust in power.
This _motif_ of the monstrous and the self-discrepant was less prominent
than the other, the _motif_ of harmonious perfection; but at all times
it was apt to exercise at least a subconscious influence. The supreme
aim of the dominant, perfection-seeking movement was to embellish the
planet with a very diverse fauna and flora, with the human race as at
once the crown and the instrument of terrestrial life. Each species, and
each variety, was to have its place and fulfil its part in the great
cycle of living types. Each was to be internally perfected to its
function. It must have no harmful relics of a past manner of life; and
its capacities must be in true accord with one another. But, to repeat,
the supreme aim was not concerned merely with individual types, but with
the whole vital economy of the planet. Thus, though there were to be
types of every order from the most humble bacterium up to man, it was
contrary to the canon of orthodox sacred art that any type should thrive
by the destruction of a type higher than itself. In the sadistic mode of
the art, however, a peculiarly exquisite tragic beauty was said to
inhere in situations in which a lowly type exterminated a higher. There
were occasions in the history of the race when the two sects indulged in
bloody conflict because the sadists kept devising parasites to undermine
the noble products of the orthodox.
Of those who practised vital art, and all did so to some extent, a few,
though they deliberately rejected the orthodox principles, gained
notoriety and even fame by their grotesques; while others, less
fortunate, were ready to accept ostracism and even martyrdom, declaring
that what they had produced was a significant symbol of the universal
tragedy of vital nature. The great majority, however, accepted the
sacred canon. They had therefore to choose one or other of certain
recognized modes of expression. For instance, they might seek to enhance
some extant type of organism, both by perfecting its capacities and by
eliminating from it all that was harmful or useless. Or else, a more
original and precarious work, they might set about creating a new type
to fill a niche in the world, which had not yet been occupied. For this
end they would select a suitable organism, and seek to remake it upon a
new plan, striving to produce a creature of perfectly harmonious nature
precisely adapted to the new way of life. In this kind of work sundry
strict aesthetic principles must be observed. Thus it was considered bad
art to reduce a higher type to a lower, or in any manner to waste the
capacities of a type. And further, since the true end of art was not the
production of individual types, but the production of a world-wide and
perfectly systematic fauna and flora, it was inadmissible to harm even
accidentally any type higher than that which it was intended to produce.
For the practice of orthodox vital art was regarded as a cooperative
enterprise. The ultimate artist, under God, was mankind as a whole; the
ultimate work of art must be an ever more subtle garment of living forms
for the adornment of the planet, and the delight of the supreme Artist,
in relation to whom man was both creature and instrument.
Little was achieved, of course, until the applied biological sciences
had advanced far beyond the high-water mark attained long ago during the
career of the Second Men. Much more was needed than the rule-of-thumb
principles of earlier breeders. It took this brightest of all the races
of the third species many thousands of years of research to discover the
more delicate principles of heredity, and to devise a technique by which
the actual hereditary factors in the germ could be manipulated. It was
this increasing penetration of biology itself that opened up the deeper
regions of chemistry and physics. And owing to this historical sequence
the latter sciences were conceived in a biological manner, with the
electron as the basic organism, and the cosmos as an organic whole.
Imagine, then, a planet organized almost as a vast system of botanical
and zoological gardens, or wild parks, interspersed with agriculture and
industry. In every great centre of communications occurred annual and
monthly shows. The latest creations were put through their paces, judged
by the high priests of vital art, awarded distinctions, and consecrated
with religious ceremony. At these shows some of the exhibits would be
utilitarian, others purely aesthetic. There might be improved grains,
vegetables, cattle, some exceptionally intelligent or sturdy variety of
herdsman’s dog, or a new micro-organism with some special function in
agriculture or in human digestion. But also there would be the latest
achievements in pure vital art. Great sleek-limbed, hornless, racing
deer, birds or mammals adapted to some hitherto unfulfilled role, bears
intended to outclass all existing varieties in the struggle for
existence, ants with specialized organs and instincts, improvements in
the relations of parasite and host, so as to make a true symbiosis in
which the host profited by the parasite. And so on. And everywhere there
would be the little unclad ruddy faun-like beings who had created these
marvels. Shy forest-dwelling folk of Gurkha physique would stand beside
their antelopes, vultures, or new great cat-like prowlers. A grave young
woman might cause a stir by entering the grounds followed by several
gigantic bears. Crowds would perhaps press round to examine the
creatures’ teeth or limbs, and she might scold the meddlers away from
her patient flock. For the normal relation between man and beast at this
time was one of perfect amity, rising, sometimes, in the case of
domesticated animals, to an exquisite, almost painful, mutual adoration.
Even the wild beasts never troubled to avoid man, still less to attack
him, save in the special circumstances of the hunt and the sacred
gladiatorial show.
These last need special notice. The powers of combat in beasts were
admired no less than other powers. Men and women alike experienced a
savage joy, almost an ecstasy, in the spectacle of mortal combat.
Consequently there were formal occasions when different kinds of beasts
were enraged against one another and allowed to fight to the death. Not
only so, but also there were sacred contests between beast and man,
between man and man, between woman and woman, and, most surprising to
the readers of this book, between woman and man. For in this species,
woman in her prime was not physically weaker than her partner.