For a million terrestrial years these long-armed hairless beings were
spreading their wicker huts and bone implements over the great northern
continents, and for many more millions they remained in possession
without making further cultural progress; for evolution, both biological
and cultural, was indeed slow on Neptune. At last the Tenth Men were
attacked by a micro-organism and demolished. From their ruins several
primitive human species developed, and remained isolated in remote
territories for millions of decades, until at length chance or
enterprise brought them into contact. One of these early species,
crouched and tusked, was persistently trapped for its ivory by an abler
type, till it was exterminated. Another, long of muzzle and large of
base, habitually squatted on its haunches like the kangaroo. Shortly
after this industrious and social species had discovered the use of the
wheel, a more primitive but more war-like type crashed into it like a
tidal wave and overwhelmed it. Erect, but literally almost as broad as
they were tall, these chunkish and bloody-minded savages spread over the
whole arctic and sub-arctic region and spent some millions of years in
monotonous reiteration of progress and decline; until at last a slow
decay of their germ-plasm almost ended man’s career. But after an aeon
of darkness, there appeared another thick-set, but larger brained,
species. This, for the first time on Neptune, conceived the religion of
love, and all those spiritual cravings and agonies which had flickered
in man so often and so vainly upon Earth and Venus. There appeared again
feudal empires, militant nations, economic class wars, and, not once but
often, a world-state covering the whole northern hemisphere. These men
it was that first crossed the equator in artificially cooled electric
ships, and explored the huge south. No life of any kind was discovered
in the southern hemisphere; for even in that age no living matter could
have crossed the roasting tropics without artificial refrigeration.
Indeed, it was only because the sun’s temporary revival had already
passed its zenith that even man, with all his ingenuity, could endure a
long tropical voyage.
Like the First Men and so many other natural human types, these
Fourteenth Men were imperfectly human. Like the First Men, they
conceived ideals of conduct which their imperfectly organized nervous
systems could never attain and seldom approach. Unlike the First Men,
they survived with but minor biological changes for three hundred
million years. But even so long a period did not enable them to
transcend their imperfect spiritual nature. Again and again and again
they passed from savagery to world-civilization and back to savagery.
They were captive within their own nature, as a bird in a cage. And as a
caged bird may fumble with nest-building materials and periodically
destroy the fruit of its aimless toil, so these cramped beings destroyed
their civilizations.
At length, however, this second phase of Neptunian history, this era of
fluctuation, was brought to an end. At the close of the six hundred
million years after the first settlement of the planet, unaided nature
produced, in the Fifteenth human species, that highest form of natural
man which she had produced only once before, in the Second species. And
this time no Martians interfered. We must not stay to watch the struggle
of this greatheaded man to overcome his one serious handicap, excessive
weight of cranium and unwieldy proportions of body. Suffice it that
after a long-drawn-out immaturity, including one great mechanized war
between the northern and southern hemispheres, the Fifteenth Men outgrew
the ailments and fantasies of youth, and consolidated themselves as a
single world-community. This civilization was based economically on
volcanic power, and spiritually on devotion to the fulfilment of human
capacity. It was this species which, for the first time on Neptune,
conceived, as an enduring racial purpose, the will to remake human
nature upon an ampler scale.
Henceforth in spite of many disasters, such as another period of
earthquake and eruption, sudden climatic changes, innumerable plagues
and biological aberrations, human progress was relatively steady. It was
not by any means swift and sure. There were still to be ages, often
longer than the whole career of the First Men, in which the human spirit
would rest from its pioneering to consolidate its conquests, or would
actually stray into the wilderness. But never again, seemingly, was it
to be routed and crushed into mere animality.
In tracing man’s final advance to full humanity we can observe only the
broadest features of a whole astronomical era. But in fact it is an era
crowded with many thousands of long-lived generations. Myriads of
individuals, each one unique, live out their lives in rapt intercourse
with one another, contribute their heart’s pulses to the universal
music, and presently vanish, giving place to others. All this age-long
sequence of private living, which is the actual tissue of humanity’s
flesh, I cannot describe. I can only trace, as it were, the disembodied
form of its growth.
The Fifteenth Men first set themselves to abolish five great evils,
namely, disease, suffocating toil, senility, misunderstanding, and
ill-will. The story of their devotion, their many disastrous
experiments, and ultimate triumph, cannot here be told. Nor can I
recount how they learned and used the secret of deriving power from the
annihilation of matter, nor how they invented ether-ships for the
exploration of neighbouring planets, nor how, after ages of experiments,
they designed and produced a new species, the Sixteenth, to supersede
themselves.
The new type was analogous to the ancient Fifth, which had colonized
Venus. Artificial rigid atoms had been introduced into its bone-tissues,
so that it might support great stature and an ample brain; in which,
moreover, an exceptionally fine-grained cellular structure permitted a
new complexity of organization. ‘Telepathy’, also, was once more
achieved, not by means of the Martian units, which had long ago become
extinct, but by the synthesis of new molecular groups of a similar type.
Partly through the immense increase of mutual understanding, which
resulted from ‘telepathic’ rapport, partly through improved coordination
of the nervous system, the ancient evil of selfishness was entirely and
finally abolished from the normal human being. Egoistic impulses,
whenever they refused to be subordinated, were henceforth classed as
symptoms of insanity. The sensory powers of the new species were, of
course, greatly improved; and it was even given a pair of eyes in the
back of the head. Henceforth man was to have a circular instead of a
semi-circular field of vision. And such was the general intelligence of
the new race that many problems formerly deemed insoluble were now
solved in a single flash of insight.
Of the great practical uses to which the Sixteenth Men put their powers,
one only need be mentioned as an example. They gained control of the
movement of their planet. Early in their career they were able, with the
unlimited energy at their disposal, to direct it into a wider orbit, so
that its average climate became more temperate, and snow occasionally
covered the polar regions. But as the ages advanced, and the sun became
steadily less ferocious, it became necessary to reverse this process and
shift the planet gradually nearer to the sun.
When they had possessed their world for nearly fifty million years, the
Sixteenth Men, like the Fifth before them, learned to enter into past
minds. For them this was a more exciting adventure than for their
forerunners, since they were still ignorant of Terrestrial and Venerian
history. Like their forerunners, so dismayed were they at the huge
volume of eternal misery in the past, that for a while, in spite of
their own great blessings and spontaneous gaiety, existence seemed a
mockery. But in time they came to regard the past’s misery as a
challenge. They told themselves that the past was calling to them for
help, and that somehow they must prepare a great ‘crusade to liberate
the past’. How this was to be done, they could not conceive; but they
were determined to bear in mind this quixotic aim in the great
enterprise which had by now become the chief concern of the race, namely
the creation of a human type of an altogether higher order.
It had become clear that man had by now advanced in understanding and
creativeness as far as was possible to the individual human brain acting
in physical isolation. Yet the Sixteenth Men were oppressed by their own
impotence. Though in philosophy they had delved further than had ever
been possible, yet even at their deepest they found only the shifting
sands of mystery. In particular they were haunted by three ancient
problems, two of which were purely intellectual, namely the mystery of
time and the mystery of mind’s relation to the world. Their third
problem was the need somehow to reconcile their confirmed loyalty to
life, which they conceived as embattled against death, with their
ever-strengthening impulse to rise above the battle and admire it
dispassionately.
Age after age the races of the Sixteenth Men blossomed with culture
after culture. The movement of thought ranged again and again through
all the possible modes of the spirit, ever discovering new significance
in ancient themes. Yet throughout this epoch the three great problems
remained unsolved, perplexing the individual and vitiating the policy of
the race.
Forced thus at length to choose between spiritual stagnation and a
perilous leap in the dark, the Sixteenth Men determined to set about
devising a type of brain which, by means of the mental fusion of many
individuals, might waken into an altogether new mode of consciousness.
Thus, it was hoped, man might gain insight into the very heart of
existence, whether finally to admire or loathe. And thus the racial
purpose, which had been so much confused by philosophical ignorance,
might at last become clear.
Of the hundred million years which passed before the Sixteenth Men
produced the new human type, I must not pause to tell. They thought they
had achieved their hearts’ desire; but in fact the glorious beings which
they had produced were tortured by subtle imperfections beyond their
makers’ comprehension. Consequently, no sooner had these Seventeenth Men
peopled the world and attained full cultural stature, than they also
bent all their strength to the production of a new type, essentially
like their own, but perfected. Thus after a brief career of a few
hundred thousand years, crowded with splendour and agony, the
Seventeenth gave place to the Eighteenth, and, as it turns out, the
Last, human species. Since all the earlier cultures find their
fulfilment in the world of the Last Men, I pass over them to enlarge
somewhat upon our modern age.