“Then the great law has triumphed and of course you inoculate for every human ailment now—is it not so?” I inquired.
He smiled again.
“Ailments? No. The need for that has long since vanished. Humanity has no ailments now. The extremity of human life has been proved to stand at one hundred and forty-five years, three months, two weeks, one day, four hours, six minutes, and thirteen and two-fifths of a second. Everybody attains to that age as a matter of course. Then we stop, or cease, or, as you might say, die. Inoculation, pursued through the centuries, has banished every physical ill but Death itself; and that has no terrors at a hundred and forty-five. The hour of extinction once known, an orderly exit naturally follows. But surely you must have wakened from or be walking in a dream? I shall hear you speak of small-pox presently—indeed you have done so—and those other long-vanished curses bred out of the black night of man’s first ignorance. To-day, however, Inoculation has climbed heights beyond your primitive imagination, my friend; to-day—upon this glad anniversary—the rising generation, after having been from childhood subject to the study and scrutiny of our wisest ones, receives its finishing touch, its crown, its keystone—each man, each woman according to their need. We inoculate for character now! Think of all that means, if your intellect has a power sufficiently vivid to do so. To-day we celebrate the stupendous discovery that rose naturally out of Jenner’s sublime achievement. Evolution, proceeding through the ages, has brought us face to face with the fact, and thus, having counteracted heredity and stamped out disease, man proceeded into the subtler psychological field of human character and temperament. To-day we create disposition and mould mind. Education has done all that education can do for the generation you behold passing in its youthful glory before you; now the necessary correctives of character will be administered by inoculation.”
“You can add or subtract, give or take away!” I cried; and he admitted that it was so and gazed curiously at my enthusiasm.
“You are excited,” he said. “I am fortunate to have witnessed such a phenomenon. The emotion of excitement has been removed from human nature for three or four hundred years. Yet I warn you: it shortens life.”
“Never mind that; tell me more, much more!” I begged.
“Well,” he continued kindly, “the truth is that man begins to know a little here and there. He would seem to be on the right track—but only just groping at the beginning of it. Of course you can perceive how Mental Inoculation works. Given a character, the problem is where to improve it. For generations all physical cowards were inoculated with Courage: therefore physical cowardice is practically unknown; a rash soul we tinge with Caution; one prone to hoard, receives the diluted virus of Thriftlessness; a fanatical character is dosed with Common Sense; and so forth. Indeed, Common Sense is a panacea. It is certain that we should again relapse into the chaos of a thousand years ago but for our stock of that. I who speak to you was inoculated with Charity. There were fears that by some streak of atavism I might repeat the errors of a selfish great-great-great-grandfather.”
“Do you inoculate with Truth?” I asked.
“Ah! the truth about Truth is at last determined; but only quite recently. Human Nature has not reached the power to grasp Absolute Truth. It exists, but no psychological chemist has ever succeeded in securing it. A race of empirics still seek for it in secret; but they are as mad as the alchemists of the prime. No, when Truth is reached, æons hence, the world will come to an end and the chain be completed. From the amorphous life-cell, from the protoplasm to Truth——but we need not pursue that. Let me return to Inoculation Day. Upon that notable anniversary each young human life receives a sort of compensating balance to character; and the result is such a high level of understanding, patience, self-control and general regularity that the human race already begins to approach the blissful perfection of a machine in its regularity and rapid progress.”
“And we used to say that, come what come may, human nature still remained unalterable!”