I said that we were all astronomically minded; but we are not without
‘human’ interests. Our visitor from the earth would soon discover that
the low buildings, sprinkled on all sides, were the homes of
individuals, families, sexual groups, and bands of companions. Most of
these buildings are so constructed that the roof and walls can be
removed completely or partially, for sun-bathing and for the night.
Round each house is a wilderness, or a garden, or an orchard of our
sturdy fruit trees. Here and there men and women may be seen at work
with hoe or spade or secateurs. The buildings themselves affect many
styles; and within doors our visitor would find great variety from house
to house. Even within a single house he might come on rooms seemingly of
different epochs. And while some rooms are crowded with articles, many
of which would be incomprehensible to the stranger, others are bare,
save for a table, chairs, a cupboard, and perhaps some single object of
pure art. We have an immense variety of manufactured goods. But the
visitor from a world obsessed with material wealth would probably remark
the simplicity, even austerity, which characterizes most private houses.
He would doubtless be surprised to see no books. In every room, however,
there is a cupboard filled with minute rolls of tape, microscopically
figured. Each of these rolls contains matter which could not be cramped
into a score of your volumes. They are used in connexion with a
pocket-instrument, the size and shape of the ancient cigarette case.
When the roll is inserted, it reels itself off at any desired speed, and
interferes systematically with ethereal vibrations produced by the
instrument. Thus is generated a very complex flow of ‘telepathic’
language which permeates the brain of the reader. So delicate and direct
is this medium of expression that there is scarcely any possibility of
misunderstanding the author’s intention. The rolls themselves, it should
be said, are produced by another special instrument, which is sensitive
to vibrations generated in the author’s brain. Not that it produces a
mere replica of his stream of consciousness; it records only those
images and ideas with which he deliberately ‘inscribes’ it. I may
mention also that, since we can at any moment communicate by direct
‘telepathy’ with any person on the planet, these ‘books’ of ours are not
used for the duplication of merely ephemeral thought. Each one of them
preserves only the threshed and chosen grain of some mind’s harvest.
Other instruments may be observed in our houses, which I cannot pause to
describe, instruments whose office is either to carry out domestic
drudgery, or to minister directly in one way or another to cultured
life. Near the outer door would be hanging a number of flying-suits, and
in a garage attached to the house would be the private air-boats, gaily
coloured torpedo-shaped objects of various sizes.
Decoration in our houses, save in those which belong to children, is
everywhere simple, even severe. None the less we prize it greatly, and
spend much consideration upon it. Children, indeed, often adorn their
houses with splendour, which adults themselves can also enjoy through
children’s eyes, even as they can enter into the frolics of infants with
unaffected glee.
The number of children in our world is small in relation to our immense
population. Yet, seeing that every one of us is potentially immortal, it
may be wondered how we can permit ourselves to have any children at all.
The explanation is twofold. In the first place, our policy is to produce
new individuals of higher type than ourselves, for we are very far from
biologically perfect. Consequently we need a continuous supply of
children. And as these successively reach maturity, they take over the
functions of adults whose nature is less perfect; and these, when they
are aware that they are no longer of service, elect to retire from life.
But even though every individual, sooner or later, ceases to exist, the
average length of life is not much less than a quarter of a million
terrestrial years. No wonder, then, that we cannot accommodate many
children. But we have more than might be expected, for with us infancy
and adolescence are very lengthy. The foetus is carried for twenty
years. Ectogenesis was practised by our predecessors, but was abandoned
by our own species, because, with greatly improved motherhood, there is
no need for it. Our mothers, indeed, are both physically and mentally
most vigorous during the all too rare period of pregnancy. After birth,
true infancy lasts for about a century. During this period, in which the
foundations of body and mind are being laid, very slowly, but so
securely that they will never fail, the individual is cared for by his
mother. Then follow some centuries of childhood, and a thousand years of
adolescence.
Our children, of course, are very different beings from the children of
the First Men. Though physically they are in many respects still
childlike, they are independent persons in the community. Each has
either a house of his own, or rooms in a larger building held in common
by himself and his friends. Thousands of these are to be found in the
neighbourhood of every educational centre. There are some children who
prefer to live with their parents, or with one or other of their
parents; but this is rare. Though there is often much friendly
intercourse between parents and children, the generations usually fare
better under separate roofs. This is inevitable in our species. For the
adult’s overwhelmingly greater experience reveals the world to him in
very different proportions from those which are possible even to the
most brilliant of children; while on the other hand with us the mind of
every child is, in some potentiality or other, definitely superior to
every adult mind. Consequently, while the child can never appreciate
what is best in his elders, the adult, in spite of his power of direct
insight into all minds not superior to himself, is doomed to
incomprehension of all that is novel in his own offspring.
Six or seven hundred years after birth a child is in some respects
physically equivalent to a ten-year-old of the First Men. But since his
brain is destined for much higher development, it is already far more
complex than any adult brain of that species. And though temperamentally
he is in many ways still a child, intellectually he has already in some
respects passed beyond the culture of the best adult minds of the
ancient races. The traveller, encountering one of our bright boys, might
sometimes be reminded of the wise simplicity of the legendary Child
Christ. But also he might equally well discover a vast exuberance,
boisterousness, impishness, and a complete inability to stand outside
the child’s own eager life and regard it dispassionately. In general our
children develop intellectually beyond the level of the First Men long
before they begin to develop the dispassionate will which is
characteristic of our adults. When there is conflict between a child’s
personal needs and the need of society, he will as a rule force himself
to the social course; but he does so with resentment and dramatic
self-pity, thereby rendering himself in the adult view exquisitely
ridiculous.
When our children attain physical adolescence, nearly a thousand years
after birth, they leave the safe paths of childhood to spend another
thousand years in one of the antarctic continents, known as the Land of
the Young. Somewhat reminiscent of the Wild Continent of the Fifth Men,
this territory is preserved as virgin bush and prairie. Sub-human
grazers and carnivora abound. Volcanic eruption, hurricanes, and glacial
seasons afford further attractions to the adventurous young. There is
consequently a high death rate. In this land our young people live the
half primitive, half sophisticated life to which their nature is fitted.
They hunt, fish, tend cattle, and till the ground. They cultivate all
the simple beauties of human individuality. They love and hate. They
sing, paint, and carve. They devise heroic myths, and delight in
fantasies of direct intercourse with a cosmic person. They organise
themselves as tribes and nations. Sometimes they even indulge in warfare
of a primitive but bloody type. Formerly when this happened, the adult
world interfered; but we have since learned to let the fever run its
course. The loss of life is regrettable; but it is a small price to pay
for the insight afforded even by this restricted and juvenile warfare,
into those primitive agonies and passions which, when they are
experienced by the adult mind, are so transformed by philosophy that
their import is wholly changed. In the Land of the Young our boys and
girls experience all that is precious and all that is abject in the
primitive. They live through in their own persons, century by century,
all its toilsomeness and cramped meanness, all its blind cruelty and
precariousness; but also they taste its glamour, its vernal and lyrical
glory. They make in little all the mistakes of thought and action that
men have ever made; but at last they emerge ready for the large and more
difficult world of maturity.
It was expected that some day, when we should have perfected the
species, there would be no need to build up successive generations, no
need of children, no need of all this schooling. It was expected that
the community would then consist of adults only; and that they would be
immortal not merely potentially but in fact, yet also, of course,
perennially in the flower of young maturity. Thus, death should never
cut the string of individuality and scatter the hard-won pearls,
necessitating new strings, and laborious re-gatherings. The many and
very delectable beauties of childhood could still be amply enjoyed in
exploration of the past.
We know now that this goal is not to be attained, since man’s end is
imminent.