IV
Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let
Thy feet, millenniums hence be set
In midst of knowledge, dreamt not yet.
The empire of Hephæstus is expanding before our eyes. His bellows blow through our blast furnaces. His anvils ring in thousands of factories. His engines career over the land, and his steamers over the sea. His internal-combustion cars are strung out along the roadways, and his avions run their furrows through the clouds. Wherever he goes, he lightens the burdens of humanity and gladdens all hearts with his gifts. He brings warmth and light into dark places. He draws mankind closer and closer together. He draws them together without diminishing the distance between them. He simply makes that distance impotent to hold them apart. He enables the city children to leave their slums and gather fresh health in the open country. He gives the grimed city worker fresh clear air wherein to sleep. His lorries, thundering along the highways, tighten the bonds between the farmer who gathers the fruit and the town dweller who consumes it.
Nor is Hephæstus satisfied yet. His task is but half finished. The whole earth must be Vulcanized.
The God of Fire and of Iron hobbles over the broad earth, seeking and finding new paths of advancement towards a better and fuller life.
Man has become less and less limited by his permanent organism, that Body which in the beginning was all he possessed. He has now as many different shapes as ever Proteus had, and he can assume any of them at will. At one time he has the shape of a rowing boat, his arms prolonged seven feet or more till his blades skim the water. Again, his legs will be two wheels, and his body will be like those steeds with fire-breathing nostrils which Hephæstus made for the King of Colchis. Again, the pupil of his eye will grow until its diameter measures 100 inches and then he will sound the depths of the heavens with the power of 100,000 eyes in one. When he goes to war, he throws his “stone” some seventy miles and arms it with vast destruction. He belches forth deadly vapours which choke and strangle his enemies. He becomes an armed slug creeping over all obstacles and destroying as he creeps.
In times of peace he dresses in various garbs to suit his changing occupation. His womenfolk emphasize and glorify their variety of personal presentation and expression. Protea shines in all the colours and shades of the rainbow, and invents new colours and new forms every day, forms of dress, of outline, and of her very bodily figure.
The resignations and renunciations of former ages are forgotten. Music, travel, pictures, education—the luxuries of past generations are the common property of all to-day. That is the sort of Communism which is feasible and reasonable. Take all the luxuries and good things of this life and bring them within reach of all by cheapening their cost of production. Travel at a pound a mile is a luxury. Travel at a penny a mile becomes a “necessity” as soon as people get used to it and take it for granted.
Security and seclusion are privileges cherished by what used to be called the “aristocrats.” Place both within reach of the masses by insurance and by transport facilities. Make all these luxuries and privileges common property. It is not so many centuries ago that a mariner’s compass was bartered for diamonds. To-day it costs a penny. And then we come upon a difficulty. When a thing becomes common property, or so cheap as to be of practically no price, it ceases to be coveted. There is a tendency deep-rooted in the human heart to reach out beyond the things of to-day for something not yet attained. When Communism has shared out the earth, it will ask for the moon. Humanity will never assume a “dead level of mediocrity.” There will always be the Thyroid Type, energetic, inquisitive, sensitive, inventive, and restless. The class of Pathfinders will be recruited from that type. The Pituitary Type will furnish commanders and organizers, while the Adrenal Type will furnish the rank and file. But the intermixture of the various types will bring out special constitutions and varieties in unexpected quarters, and it behoves us to keep “la carrière ouverte aux talents.”
Thus the human army will march forward, led by a Pillar of Fire. Its pace will be constantly accelerated, but we shall hardly be aware of it, for our methods of measuring time will change in the same ratio. A well-made motor-car on a smooth road can hum along sweetly at sixty miles an hour, and its occupants will be less impressed and excited than they would be by the horse careering at 20 miles per hour! And what are all these speeds to the absolutely smooth planetary speed of nineteen miles per second!
It has been asserted that the tremendous powers conferred upon man by machinery have produced the terrific wars of recent times by placing power in the wrong hands. There may be some justice in this, but the amount of destruction is negligible in comparison with the amount of construction and reparation. When Kitchener saved a few hundred casualties at Paardeberg by sparing his men, he lost 10,000 at Bloemfontein by enteric fever. The bloodiest war is sometimes the least costly on balance. The greatest war of all history ended but seven years ago, and already the beaten nations have healed up their wounds and are looking forward to the future with greater confidence than many of the “victorious” nations. Mankind is increasing the rapidity of its nervous reaction to emergencies and injuries. The leucocytes of the body politic set to work sooner and more effectively to heal the damage. Mankind as an organism is daily improving its circulatory system, alias its transport facilities. Its nervous system closely imitates organic nerves by its cables and land-lines, and it improves upon nature by adding wireless communication and resonance to the organic devices of the body.
Mankind is being moulded into a single compact self-contained body on the anvil of Hephæstus. It is still subject to feverish ailments and some chronic diseases. But the general outlines of future development are clearly discernible. There must be pauses and set-backs. The brilliant scientific and artistic development of classical Hellenism was all but lost in the destruction of the Roman civilization. But the Arabs kept the flickering flame alive until Europe awoke from its torpor and lit its torch once more. Since then there has been no turning back. The age of science, discovery, and invention, the age of mechanism and machinery and power, has come and come to stay. Man, liberated from mechanical drudgery by the machine, has time to develop his intellectual and artistic powers. His necessities being supplied by pressing a button, he is liberated to enjoy a more varied existence. If some men and women are still bound to monotonous tasks, it does not necessarily mean unhappiness, for the Pathfinders’ life is one of constant care and much anxiety. Discovery is 90 per cent. failure, and something like a daily routine of regular and monotonous work sometimes appears in the light of a blissful refuge. Besides, the human heart and organism easily falls into a routine in which daily work is hardly felt, being done without conscious effort. This fact is often forgotten by those who envy the life of the organizer and financier, which is one of much risk and anxiety, relieved by an occasional big prize.
The ideal state of things would be attained if those of an adventurous disposition could be given the adventurous part of human activity, and if those who are plodders by nature could be left to do the plodding.
That is a matter for future development, either consciously fostered by wise leaders of our race, or unconsciously evolved from the depths of wisdom hidden below the threshold of the racial consciousness.
But the goal is in sight. The earth is being organized and unified under the ægis of the human race, the protoplasm of this planet, the race which, transcending the mechanism and long-established traditions of its own germ-plasm, enlarged and multiplied its functions until it acquired the use of, fire. Upon that achievement it built an unprecedented form of life, a super-“natural” edifice of infinite power, as yet but dimly realized, but which in its full beauty and perfection will be nothing less than Divine.
The End.
Transcriber’s Notes:
A List of Chapters has been provided for the convenience of the reader, and is granted to the public domain.
Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.