Universal greed. There will be no longer anything but a debauch of workmen.
End of the world through the cessation of caloric.
Bouvard sees the future of humanity in a bright light. The modern man is progressive.
Europe will be regenerated by Asia. The historic law that civilisation travels from East to West—the part to be played by China—the two humanities will at length be fused.
Future inventions: modes of travelling. Balloons. Submarine barges with glass windows, in an unchanging calm, the sea’s agitation being only on the surface. Passing travellers shall see the fishes and the landscapes in the ocean’s depths. Animals tamed. All forms of cultivation.
Future of literature (opposite of industrial literature). Future sciences.—How to regulate the force of magnetism.
Paris will become a winter-garden; fruit will be grown on the boulevards; the Seine filtered and heated; abundance of precious stones artificially made; prodigality as to gilding; lighting of houses—light will be stored up, for there are bodies which possess this property, such as sugar, the flesh of certain molluscs, and the phosphorus of Bologna. People will be ordered to cover the fronts of the houses with a phosphorescent substance, and the radiations from them will illuminate the streets.
Disappearance of evil by the disappearance of want. Philosophy will be a religion.
Communion of all peoples. Public fêtes.
People will travel to the heavenly bodies; and when the earth is used up, humanity will set up housekeeping in the stars.