CHAPTER VII. RAPID TRANSIT ON MARS.
Here Thorwald paused and said he should be obliged to leave us a short time to attend to some duty in the management of the vessel. When he returned I remarked that neither he nor his companions seemed to have to work very hard.
“That,” he answered, “is just the thought I want to speak of next, as the doctor has said many earthly troubles arise from severe labor. Here there is no hard work for us. It is all done by some kind of mechanism. Look at the handling of this ship, in which, as you say, no one is burdened. The hard and disagreeable parts of the work are taken out of our hands and are put into the hand of machinery, which in its perfection is almost intelligent. It is so in all departments of work. Inventions looking toward the saving of labor have closely followed each other for so many years that their object is about accomplished, and all the pain and sorrow accompanying daily toil are things of the dead past. Even our animals are relieved from distressing labor and share with us the blessings of an advanced civilization, every heavy weight being raised and every burdensome load being drawn by an arm of steel or aluminum, which neither tires nor feels. We do not need to pity a machine. Why should flesh and blood, whether of dumb beasts or of more intelligent beings, suffer the agony of labor when the work can be better done by mechanical means?
“While speaking of the lower animals I may as well say here that we have no wild beasts. All have been tamed; not merely brought into subjection, but made the friends and companions in a sense of our higher race. Every animal, large and small, has lost its power and will to harm us. The wasp has lost its sting, the serpent its poison, and the tiger its desire to tear. And not only is their enmity to us all gone, but they no longer prey upon each other. Perfect peace reigns in this realm also.”
“What has brought about this highly interesting condition?” I asked. “Was there a natural tendency toward perfection on the part of the beasts?”
“No,” replied Thorwald, “I think not. The change has been accomplished by us. Nothing that has life could help being uplifted by contact with our ever-expanding civilization. We believe the chief factor in working this great betterment in the animal creation has been our success in entirely eliminating flesh as an article of food. We early came to see it was not necessary for ourselves and that without it we were much better prepared to assume the higher duties belonging to our advanced life. We then began to experiment with the animals nearest us. It was a slow and discouraging task at first, but finally we obtained results that gave us hope of success. We found in the course of many years that the digestive organs of the animals on which we were experimenting were gradually becoming accustomed to a vegetable diet. We continued the work, extending it to one class of animals after another, until in time all carnivorous instincts disappeared.”
This interested the doctor exceedingly, and he remarked that he should think there would have been some kinds of animals that would resist all efforts to work such a change in them; but Thorwald answered:
“I have never read of such cases, but if there were any the species must have become extinct, for now, in all this world, no conscious life is taken to support another life. No blood is let for our refreshment and no minutest creature is pursued and slain to appease the appetite of its stronger neighbor.”