Part 21

‘Among the first great public measures which took the place of mere words, such as Conservative and Liberal or Republican and Democratic, was that of health and cleanliness, which at once led to gentler humanity and abhorrence of cruelty, both as regarded men and animals. Men became at first intolerant as regarded seeing others suffer from poverty, and finally detested pain in every form. I dare say that you can recall much which would now seem incredible to the greatest brute now living.’

‘Truly, I can,’ replied Flaxius. ‘There was a very good sort of man named Alexis of Piedmont, who wrote a book of quaint odds and ends of amusement, in which he gave a recipe how a goose could be roasted alive. It was very ingenious indeed, but cruel to the last degree of torture, and it ended with these words, “Then take it from the fire and serve it up, and though roasted it will still be living, and will cry out loud while it is being carved, which is a very merry thing to behold.” It was republished in many books for generations after. And in fact there was a great deal of amusement at the very end of the nineteenth century, much patronised by the very _élite_ of society which was very little worse than this. Bulls were literally tortured to death in Paris in imitation of Spanish sport, gentlemen were present at prize fights, ladies at pigeon shooting; and, perhaps, no day passed in which some magistrate did not let some wretch guilty of horrible and infamous cruelty to children or women escape with ten shillings’ fine, or a few days’ imprisonment. Even a man guilty of cruelties, very far surpassing anything ever told of Red Indians or inquisitors, or torturers of the Middle Ages--I say this advisedly--cruelties wickeder than a thousand murders, was after public trial only sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment! And the general manner in which such things were treated was to smile complacently and say, “Ah, yes, but a little roughness and knocking about makes us manly.” Under the same impression there survived in society, among the most refined people, a vast amount of covert satire, innuendo, vexation by assuming superiority, sneers--in short, the vileness of building self up on the abasement of others, as one may see in half the humorous pictures setting forth the coarse fun of the time. Torture by the _peine forte et dure_ was not abolished by law in England till the year 1823 or thereabout. Yet all this did not make people braver or more manly. It crushed and frightened the weak, or the majority; it developed bullying, and it drove the would-be dignified into reserve, _hauteur_ and coldness, which was all in fact only a masque for mean cowardice and vanity. Yet there were with all this certain curious antitheses, not without great beauty, which I apprehend you have now quite lost. There was, in the cruellest ages, the Madonna-like saintly meekness and innocence, yea, purity, which I apprehend has now taken very different form--or vanished. There was a romance and personal character in it all, which, I suppose, is now unknown to you.’

‘It is true that we have lost immensely since we have been guided solely by science and common-sense and utility,’ remarked an elderly man who had not before spoken. ‘We have lost much of domestic life or home-feeling, and as I infer from what I heard from old people in my youth, and extensive study of ancient books, we have no longer the sweet and genial ideals or inspirations of art and faith, poetry and humour, which once fired the world. They have all sunk to the level of very inferior races and children, who, indeed, are rapidly growing ashamed of them. But then we have gained what compensates for it all a thousand-fold. We are no longer sentimental or despairing or pessimistic, nor is the poison of soft sorrow in our every cup, and in every kiss. In fact, if a man of a hundred years ago were among us now he would probably decide that we do not know what love is; and to judge from the poems and novels of the olden time, I should say that it is decidedly lucky that we do not; for such a mass of misery, philandering, caprices, quarrels, tears, and agonies, as men anciently went through with, according to their romances, before they could accomplish the extremely simple and prosaic end of marriage--or similar union--passes all comprehension, suggesting a mixture of hell and lunacy. Add to this, that, with all their “beautiful poetry” and genial humour, every biography of the time shows us lives steeped in a deep consciousness of woe and suffering, with so little mitigation of it, according to their own deepest convictions, that one must needs see very plainly that they paid a fearful price for all their delightful, domestic affections and devoted loves of one fond heart, for their home circles and piety and fine art of all sorts. Yes, an awful price, not worth the whistle. We at least do not wail and howl, and sing and pray. When anything is wrong with us we go to the doctor, and if he says we are all right, we get on the flying-machine, and skim over the seas, and mountains. When we are not busied with science, or practical matters, we are engaged in taking our recreation, and between the two we have really no time for sentiment of any kind.’

‘I observe,’ replied Flaxius, ‘that you are rapidly losing, or have entirely lost, home-ties, domestic feelings, the warm attachment to a native land, or patriotism, devotion to a church or religion, with all the ancient form or spirit of art and poetry--in fact nearly all that once was supposed to form all that a man ought to live for, including the ideal of self or character. But with it you have lost their terrible sorrows; and you have gained stupendously more than you have lost in a grand philanthropy which the men of the past regarded as mere moonshine, or Utopian. Everything in its time. Every man is your friend now--no one your enemy--quarrelling is bad form, for it is unscientific. I see in you the beginning of an entirely new race of beings. You are neither happy nor unhappy, as those words were once understood--in short you would have been utterly incomprehensible to everybody a hundred years ago. But they would in the end have feared you like giants, and vanished before you as the Red Indian is crushed morally by the white man. Therefore you are great, and I, a man of the ages, tremble to think what awful, what stupendous, power you are destined to attain. You will master every law of nature, and conquer death and the grave, space and time. What were the greatest glories of art and the highest flights of poetry or genius are already beginning to appear to you as frivolous and rococo, because they were founded on false or vanished unrealities, while you are pressing forward into such a realisation of the real in all its immensity as it never entered into the heart of man to conceive. Ye are already dreaming of doing--nay, ye have in part done--what Homer of old would not have dared attribute to the gods. Ye take unto yourselves wings, and are in the earliest rosy dawn, even in the depths of ocean ye are there. Ye spin forth gold or pearl or diamond from the air, as ye will, when ye will, or will soon do so. It is as easy now to create and combine atoms as to breathe; to build a towered castle is easier and cheaper than it was to construct a cottage of yore. And it is all but the beginning of the beginnings of the very rudiments compared to what is to come. You will read with perfected lenses the minutest secrets of all the stars, discover new senses, and through them new orders of existence not now perceptible to man. And with every new discovery will come ten more daring dreams of others, far, far beyond it, and they will also be realised. In such illimitable achievements man must pass so far beyond all old conceptions of every kind that all will shrivel up and vanish. Terribly grand wilt thou be, O Humanity of the future!’

There was a pause, when the eldest one again spoke.

‘Thou hast understood us. Humanity has hitherto been in its boyhood, pleased with its pretty toys and fancies, indulging in passion or despair at every trifle. Now it is advancing to eternal manhood, and growing serious, which means more truly happy. It is leaving the paternal home, and all petty ties and beliefs, and going out into the world to do and dare. In the past lay the fabled, infinite power of the gods; in the future lies the illimitable might of man. What man has _never_ done, man can do, is the motto of the future.’

Then the waiting-maid spoke more gaily:

‘But to prove to our guest that art has not as yet quite left the world, and that we still retain some trace of old-fashioned entertainment, I propose that Master Oakford, who is an expert in hypnotising, give us all a pleasant drama, with magnificent scenery and dresses, so that we may all have something cheerful in our memories before we retire to rest.’

This proposal met with general approbation, and Master Oakford explained it to Flaxius as follows:

‘You must know that we now have spectacles, theatrical entertainments, operas, and exhibitions of the most varied description, for all the world, at no expense whatever. In every family there is some one who is the special hypnotiser, and in larger assemblies masters on a greater scale. These masters--of whom I am one--store their memories with all that can conduce to entertainment. Then we keep by us, or, indeed, generally find in every house, an infinite amount of music, songs, speeches, or dialogues, such as were once recorded on tinfoil, but which are now kept imperishable on a new and better material.

‘When the performance begins, I hypnotise all present; impressing it on their minds that they are about to see a certain _spectacle_, and that they are to vividly behold certain scenery or persons. By this method, and the aid of phonographs and monologue, I give them a very perfect entertainment. Pray note two things: one is, that I _will_ them to vividly remember all that they have seen, when they awake; secondly, that the art of understanding, and of enjoying such plays, is very much improved with practice.’

‘Much of this,’ remarked Flaxius, ‘was known to the Egyptian, Chaldæan and Etruscan priests of yore, and it perished with them, or lingered in broken fragments among witches and sorcerers. I know so much of it that you need not hypnotise me, who am, indeed, master of the art, but I will most gladly enter into sympathetic perception with both the actor and the audience.’

Those present sat in a semi-circle, and by unanimous request, Oakford was requested to give Shakespeare’s play of _Macbeth_. It was only necessary for Flaxius to take the hand of one of the auditors in his own--it chanced to be that of the pretty waiting-maid--to close his eyes, and bring his perception into mutual sympathy with hers, which is a peculiarly delicate, cerebral, voltaic, volitional, vital act, and the condition for enjoying the play was complete. Then the pretty waiting-maid--who, as has been already intimated, was also a distinguished chemico-physiolobiologiste--retired within her inner consciousness, but with one hand--so to speak--on the door of that department of her memory which was labelled Macbeth (Shakespeare, English), ready to let out the imprisoned images. That is, she went into hypnotic sleep, to see the things which eye could not behold.

All present were apparently insensible. Soon Flaxius heard the softest, strangest sound, which rose to a grand peal of exquisite music; and then, trembling, sunk and quivered into a strange, half-fearful, half-fantastic, witch melody, like a forest through which flitted at intervals--ever and anon inaudible or lost--a wild, yet exquisite waltz--a butterfly in a thunder-cloud. Meanwhile, there was perceptible all around a gradually developing, rising, and spreading scenery of barren moors, with encircling rocks and mountains, vast trees waving in the wailing wind--a torrent. And with it all there was an indescribable, mental, general impression, apart from what was seen or heard, as of another mighty wind, or spiritual opium, disposing the beholder unto _fascination_.

‘I have beheld many a magnificent _mise en scène_,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘but never anything like this. It would have been an art-wonder of the world a century ago, and it is only a mere family-charade and a game of puss-in-the-corner or proverb, for people now. They have mastered art beyond our wildest dreams--only to despise it!’

Then the play went on, improving at every pace, as Oakford became inspired, rising in grandeur and beauty, impressiveness, and the subtle sorcery of more than mere skill. The music became a marvellous opera of accompaniment in no excess, yet mighty in effect, while the scenery was that of nature in her grandest or most enchanting moods. Best of all was the acting, in which the auditor seemed unto himself to be the one who spoke--and so it rolled on to an end. With a final finely accentuated, biological-cardiac pressure of the hand--such as in earlier ages would have ignorantly described as a fond squeeze--the pretty waiting-maid awoke.

‘You are a great artist,’ said Flaxius to Oakford.

‘So, so. I am far from being first or even great. Nor is it considered any great accomplishment among educated people nowadays to give such games in such style. It is only our child’s play, O Master, just as the performances of Thespius sank in later ages to the level of the mob, though they had improved in quality. And you now understand, that while we understand and practise art a hundred times better than our ancestors did, we do not esteem it at one hundredth the part of its ancient value.’

‘I understand,’ said Flaxius.

‘Go to Rome or Greece,’ pursued Oakford, ‘and you will see the Colosseum, and Forum and Parthenon, and all the most celebrated buildings of antiquity restored in all their beauty, but even the school-children now regard them as mere curiosities, illustrations of a barbarous past--pretty enough in their small, naïve way--but mere savage trifles compared to the works of science; why, we could now do in a week all that Egypt built or unbuilt in six thousand years. And we have the fullest, deepest secret of their art, too--the very spirit of its spirit--and don’t think so very much of it either. Ah! you nineteenth century men wrote an awful lot of rubbish, which they called Criticism. After it died out, art began again--travelling a long way after science, it is true--but ages in advance of where it had gone before. All of the Ruskins and Taines of the last century look to us like ants toiling over lumps of sugar, which they believed were mountains. Very industrious ants they were, and good judges of white sugar, too; but not of real Alps or Himalayas of eternal snow.’

‘Truly,’ observed Flaxius, ‘there were a few even in their own time who began to suspect that human genius was not quite exhausted in the Renaissance, and also that there was better nutriment for man than the confectionery of pictures, or the iced-cake of a Milan Cathedral. All very fine, very fine indeed for weddings and Christmas-trees, _tempi passati_. Well, as nature is an artist, I suspect that art after all has only begun afresh, on a grander scale than ever.’

* * * * *

‘_Haec fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius, as usual on the proof, ‘that all mankind are pretty generally mistaken in believing that certain habits, prejudices, customs, usages, modes, and ideas, in or according to which they and their fathers grew up, are eternal and innate laws of human nature never to be removed. For all things may be taken out of us, even conceit, by the cork-screw of time or the air-pump of science; and it is the most marvellous manifestation of the age that none foresee what a tremendous pop and what a stupendous out-flowing of the champagne of genius there will be when the stopple shall be drawn from the final end or mouth of this century bottle!

‘“It will not come in my time,” said a young _savant_ to me in the last generation when I told him that ere long cities would be lit by gas. “’Tis all very fine, and perhaps possible, but we shall not live to see it.” And within five years after, the city wherein he spake was illuminated as I had predicted. Friends, the child is born unto whom, ere death, naught which I have here written will seem strange, for he will have seen the better part, or enough to make a proof, with his own eyes. Ye may more safely say that a piece of wax can _never_ be moulded into a certain form than declare what man or society will never be; but what is most wondrous of all in that which I predict, is that the spirit of the change is coming _soon_--even as a French Revolution comes so suddenly upon those in power, and who are the most learned in the signs of the times, that they have not time to move their office furniture. For the salts are all in solution, the liquid will hold no more, and ere long a voice or a book will precipitate the vast and brilliant crystals by sound or shock.

‘For that is to be for which Jesus Christ most ardently longed, and which is the one great theme of the New Testament, that a time will come when patriotism, the tenderest ties of home, the form and letter of formalised religion, the great distinctions between poverty and wealth, yea, every harsher, oppressive, conventional law which is _per se_ useless shall disappear in a grand cosmopolitan altruism, at the very name of which time-serving, petty fools now jibe and titter, even as they sneered in ancient Rome at the new Christianity, which is now coming again in the dazzling, all-glorious, white cloud of science. Let them laugh that will, and exalt their old idols, crying that there is this and that which man will never do. “_Upharsin_ is writ on the wall.”

‘Woe unto the false prophets who give tips for races, be they on horses or politicians or religion--’tis all one--for both the horse and the demagogue are doomed to pass away.

‘Woe unto those who live in the trash and rot and folly of gossip and fashion, for their memory will stink in the ages to come.

‘Woe unto the Jew and the Yankee, the Greek and Parsee, the Englishman and Dutchman, the great former of trusts and syndicates, yea, the promoter and swindler, be he who he may, for in the great future history of iniquity his name will not be forgotten.

‘Woe unto you who shall struggle in the last hour to maintain your cracked and decayed old creeds and worn-out fads, screaming that “they all agree perfectly with science, which was sent to support and prove them.”

‘Yea, woe to the old Jerusalem which stoned the prophets, for there shall not be left one stone upon another of all her ancient temples, gambling-dens, policy-offices, stock-exchanges, lupanars or society-newspapers, in human form or literal.

‘Woe unto Jerusalem; and, finally, woe unto myself! For I, too, with all my small writing will be whirled away with the rest, down the back entry of Time into the gutter of semi-forgetfulness, to be carried away into the River of Oblivion. And rightly too; for how would any of us of the present day seem among the glorious ones who are to come? Verily, as a great divine once said of sinners or dissenters in heaven, we should “look like pigs in a parlour.” Therefore let us all go in peace--and be thankful that there will be far better than we are to succeed us!

‘But, “if not impossible it is only possible, at least it will not come in our time,” cries all the world, when science foretells these reforms of the future. Here I am reminded of what was once written by Paul Féval, a muddled romanticist, who, however, in his dunghill of rubbish had at times a pearl, and he said, when speaking of steam as applied to boats and railway trains:

‘“It took many years before that learned and illustrious body, the Admiralty--_la marine de l’état_--took into consideration that force which repelled the wind, and laughed at the strength of currents. It is true that at the same time the Academy professed the opinion that a velocity of ten leagues an hour on a railroad would stifle respiration in a man and kill all who would risk it. Yet it would be foolish to blame our marine or our academics for this--for _le monde est ainsi fait_--such is the world. Every progress afflicts some interest or irritates some vanity.

‘“Ancient wisdom said, ‘If you doubt, consider carefully.’ Modern wisdom cries, ‘If you do not understand, then _hinder_!’ Can we ever enumerate the men and ideas put to death in the name of the idiotic phantom whom sages call IMPROBABILITY?

‘“Horace said that the man must have had a heart triply clad with bronze who first on a frail plank dared all the terrors of a raging stream. It is admirably true. Add to it that the sages of his time would have abused that man with all their might.

‘“And yet in every age those men so wise still cast themselves in vain before the path on which humanity was bound to pass, for spite their spite humanity marched on. Improbability, grotesque scarecrow as it was, recoiled with its fogs before the light. Miracles, once declared impossible, are now seen undisturbed in every street. It was only forty years ago, and now you may find men living on their ‘shares’ whose hands once tried to stop the march of steam.... And if another marvel should arise they would laugh at and abuse it, crying, _Cela ne se peut pas_, it is impossible.... To say now that anything is impossible, a man should have not only a heart shielded by triple bronze, but the tenfold skin of a jackass.”

‘And we should consider all this when any one now dreams of the future, for the true age of ease has only just begun. Certain chemical discoveries made of late years have drawn from all intelligent men of science the opinion that we are advancing very rapidly indeed to a cheap, wholesale production of all scents and flavours in perfection. This means very cheap food of every taste to suit, or the enjoyment of all delicacies--mere imagination or association being set aside. Herein--all consequences being considered--is something stupendous, since enjoyment of taste in food is one of the greatest factors in life, and a great stimulant to industry. When this shall be somewhat relieved, industry will be more at leisure and liberty to devote itself to higher things. “It may be that the Chinaman of the future will run the machines which the Aryan will invent.”’

[16] Since this chapter was written I have observed that a great prophet, W. W. Astor, the author of _Looking Backwards_, noticed this same want of chimneys in the future.

THE EVANISHMENT OF FLAXIUS