V In the Golden Age chapter 5 paragraph 13 among 13 paragraphs
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“However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future
now. So soon as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to make a
resolute attempt to learn the speech of these new men of mine. Clearly that
was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a convenient thing to begin
upon, and holding one of these up I began a series of interrogative sounds
and gestures. I had some considerable difficulty in conveying my meaning.
At first my efforts met with a stare of surprise or inextinguishable
laughter, but presently a fair-haired little creature seemed to grasp my
intention and repeated a name. They had to chatter and explain the business
at great length to each other, and my first attempts to make the exquisite
little sounds of their language caused an immense amount of genuine, if
uncivil, amusement. However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children,
and persisted, and presently I had a score of noun substantives at least at
my command; and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and even the verb
‘to eat.’ But it was slow work, and the little people soon
tired and wanted to get away from my interrogations, so I determined,
rather of necessity, to let them give their lessons in little doses when
they felt inclined. And very little doses I found they were before long,
for I never met people more indolent or more easily fatigued.
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VI The Sunset of Mankind
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“A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that
was their lack of interest. They would come to me with eager cries of
astonishment, like children, but, like children they would soon stop
examining me, and wander away after some other toy. The dinner and my
conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the first time that almost all
those who had surrounded me at first were gone. It is odd, too, how
speedily I came to disregard these little people. I went out through the
portal into the sunlit world again as soon as my hunger was satisfied. I
was continually meeting more of these men of the future, who would follow
me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, and, having smiled and
gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me again to my own devices.
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“The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the
great hall, and the scene was lit by the warm glow of the setting sun. At
first things were very confusing. Everything was so entirely different from
the world I had known—even the flowers. The big building I had left
was situated on the slope of a broad river valley, but the Thames had
shifted, perhaps, a mile from its present position. I resolved to mount to
the summit of a crest, perhaps a mile and a half away, from which I could
get a wider view of this our planet in the year Eight Hundred and Two
Thousand Seven Hundred and One, A.D. For that, I should explain, was the
date the little dials of my machine recorded.
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“As I walked I was watching for every impression that could
possibly help to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which I
found the world—for ruinous it was. A little way up the hill, for
instance, was a great heap of granite, bound together by masses of
aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled heaps, amidst
which were thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like plants—nettles
possibly—but wonderfully tinted with brown about the leaves, and
incapable of stinging. It was evidently the derelict remains of some vast
structure, to what end built I could not determine. It was here that I was
destined, at a later date, to have a very strange experience—the
first intimation of a still stranger discovery—but of that I will
speak in its proper place.
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“Looking round, with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I
rested for a while, I realised that there were no small houses to be seen.
Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household, had vanished.
Here and there among the greenery were palace-like buildings, but the house
and the cottage, which form such characteristic features of our own English
landscape, had disappeared.
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“And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at the
half-dozen little figures that were following me. Then, in a flash, I
perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft hairless
visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb. It may seem strange,
perhaps, that I had not noticed this before. But everything was so strange.
Now, I saw the fact plainly enough. In costume, and in all the differences
of texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from each other, these
people of the future were alike. And the children seemed to my eyes to be
but the miniatures of their parents. I judged then that the children of
that time were extremely precocious, physically at least, and I found
afterwards abundant verification of my opinion.
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“Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I
felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would
expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the
institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere
militant necessities of an age of physical force. Where population is
balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a
blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are
secure, there is less necessity—indeed there is no
necessity—for an efficient family, and the specialisation of the
sexes with reference to their children’s needs disappears. We see
some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was
complete. This, I must remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I
was to appreciate how far it fell short of the reality.
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“While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted
by a pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola. I thought in a
transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then resumed the
thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings towards the top of
the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently miraculous, I was
presently left alone for the first time. With a strange sense of freedom
and adventure I pushed on up to the crest.
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“There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not
recognise, corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust and half
smothered in soft moss, the arm-rests cast and filed into the resemblance
of griffins’ heads. I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view
of our old world under the sunset of that long day. It was as sweet and
fair a view as I have ever seen. The sun had already gone below the horizon
and the west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal bars of purple
and crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in which the river lay
like a band of burnished steel. I have already spoken of the great palaces
dotted about among the variegated greenery, some in ruins and some still
occupied. Here and there rose a white or silvery figure in the waste garden
of the earth, here and there came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or
obelisk. There were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences
of agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.
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“So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I
had seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation was
something in this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a
half truth—or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.)
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“It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane.
The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the first
time I began to realise an odd consequence of the social effort in which we
are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence
enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on
feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life—the true
civilising process that makes life more and more secure—had gone
steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had
followed another. Things that are now mere dreams had become projects
deliberately put in hand and carried forward. And the harvest was what I
saw!
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“After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still
in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but a little
department of the field of human disease, but, even so, it spreads its
operations very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture and horticulture
destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or so of
wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they
can. We improve our favourite plants and animals—and how few they
are—gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now
a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient
breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague
and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is
shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better
organised, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of
the eddies. The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and
co-operating; things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of
Nature. In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of
animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs.
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“This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done
indeed for all Time, in the space of Time across which my machine had
leapt. The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi;
everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant
butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of preventive medicine was
attained. Diseases had been stamped out. I saw no evidence of any
contagious diseases during all my stay. And I shall have to tell you later
that even the processes of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly
affected by these changes.
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“Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in
splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them engaged
in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social nor economical
struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which
constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It was natural on that golden
evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise. The difficulty
of increasing population had been met, I guessed, and population had ceased
to increase.
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“But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to
the change. What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the
cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom: conditions
under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the
wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men,
upon self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of the
family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the
tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, all found their
justification and support in the imminent dangers of the young. Now,
where are these imminent dangers? There is a sentiment arising, and it will
grow, against connubial jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion
of all sorts; unnecessary things now, and things that make us
uncomfortable, savage survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant
life.
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“I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of
intelligence, and those big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my belief
in a perfect conquest of Nature. For after the battle comes Quiet. Humanity
had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had used all its abundant
vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived. And now came the
reaction of the altered conditions.
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“Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that
restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness. Even in
our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to survival,
are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and the love of battle,
for instance, are no great help—may even be hindrances—to a
civilised man. And in a state of physical balance and security, power,
intellectual as well as physical, would be out of place. For countless
years I judged there had been no danger of war or solitary violence, no
danger from wild beasts, no wasting disease to require strength of
constitution, no need of toil. For such a life, what we should call the
weak are as well equipped as the strong, are indeed no longer weak. Better
equipped indeed they are, for the strong would be fretted by an energy for
which there was no outlet. No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I
saw was the outcome of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy of
mankind before it settled down into perfect harmony with the conditions
under which it lived—the flourish of that triumph which began the
last great peace. This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it
takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay.
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“Even this artistic impetus would at last die away—had
almost died in the Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance,
to sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and no
more. Even that would fade in the end into a contented inactivity. We are
kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity, and it seemed to me
that here was that hateful grindstone broken at last!
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“As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this
simple explanation I had mastered the problem of the world—mastered
the whole secret of these delicious people. Possibly the checks they had
devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well, and their
numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary. That would account for
the abandoned ruins. Very simple was my explanation, and plausible
enough—as most wrong theories are!
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VII A Sudden Shock
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“As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the
full moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver light
in the north-east. The bright little figures ceased to move about below, a
noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered with the chill of the night. I
determined to descend and find where I could sleep.
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