The Sunset of Mankind
“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.
“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.
“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 pagodalike 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.
“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.
“‘Communism,’said I to myself.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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 armrests 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.
“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.)
“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!
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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 selfdevotion, 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.
“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.
“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.
“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!
“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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