“The scene is on the top of a peak that overlooks a vast plain. A majestic old man, bearded even as the prophets, stands there looking at the Western sky which the setting sun has turned into an ocean of gold. Island beyond island of cloud swims in that amber sea, each coral tinted and fringed with crimson foam. And as he gazes, the splendid old man is magnificently happy; for is he not the last man left alive on this bad, sad earth, and is he not about to close his eyes on it forever?
“In the twenty-first century, luxury and wickedness had increased to such an extent that the whole world became decadent. The art of flying, brought to such perfection that all travelled by the air, had annihilated space, and the world had become very small indeed. Instead of Switzerland, people went for a week-end skiing to the Pole; the unexplored places were Baedekerized, and the wild creatures that formerly roamed their valleys relegated to the alleys of zoological gardens.
“Behold then, a familiar world, shorn of all mystery; a tamed world, harnessed to the will of man; a sybaritic world, starred with splendid cities and caparisoned with limitless luxury. Its population had increased a thousand fold; its old religions were outgrown; its moral ideas engulfed in a general welter of cynicism and sensuality.
“And out of this dung-heap of degeneracy there arises a sect of pessimists who declare that human nature is innately bad; that under conditions of inordinate luxury, when the most exquisite refinements are within the reach of the poorest, conditions of idleness, when all the work of man is done by machinery, it is impossible for virtue to flourish. War, struggle, rigorous conditions make for moral vigour. Peace, security, enervating conditions result in weakness. The blessings that increase of knowledge had heaped on man were in their very plenitude proving a curse. But alas! it was too late. Never could man go back to the old life of virility. There was only one remedy. It was so easy. Even as far back as the benighted nineteenth century philosophers had pointed it out: let every one cease to have children. Let the race become extinct.
“For one hundred years had the promulgation of this doctrine gone on. From their very cradles the children had been trained to the idea that parenthood was shameful, was criminal, was a sin against the race. The highest moral duty of a couple was to die without issue. The doctrine was easy of dissemination; for even to the remotest parts of the earth all men were highly educated; all nations were gathered in world commonwealth with a world language.
“But accidents will happen; and it had taken a century to reduce the population of the world down to a mere handful. For a score of years all children born had been suppressed and now, as far as was known, only a dozen people remained. On a given day these had sworn to partake of a drug that would ensure them a painless and pleasant death. That day was past; there only remained the chief priest to close the account of humanity.
“He too held the drug that meant his release, and as he gazed his last on a depopulated world his heart was full of exultation. He cursed it, this iniquitous earth, where poor, weak man had been flung to serve his martyrdom. Well, man had outwitted nature; mind had triumphed over matter. Now the end....
“And raising the fatal drug to his lips the last man drained it to the dregs.”
Here ended my prologue: now the story.
“A poor woman, feeling the life stir within her, and loving it in spite of their teaching, had crawled away and hid in the depths of a forest. There she had given birth to a man-child; but, knowing that her boy would be killed, this woman-rebel lurked in the forest, living on its fruits and the milk of its deer. Then at last she ventured to leave her child and revisit the world. Lo! she found that the day of the Great Quietus has passed; there was no more human life on the earth. So she returned to the forest and soon she too perished.