History of a World of Immortals without a God / Translated from an unpublished manuscript in the library of a continental university

by Unknown

But, as for the belief itself in the likelihood of extinction of life in the planet, its origin may be easily explained. Soon after the sudden creation, or manifestation, of the Hesperians, the people in contiguous districts began to fraternise with each other. By degrees small communities were formed; rude languages were invented; private property began to be acquired; the advantages of co-operation and division of labour were dimly discerned. But, side by side with these marks of progress, many discouraging symptoms appeared. These, perhaps the inseparable companions of advancing civilization, were simply envy, hatred, jealousy, and all kinds of malice, too often resulting in energetic quarrelling, blows, and wounds.

In one of these early contests one of the combatants, who had armed himself with an exceptionally heavy bludgeon, chanced to strike his antagonist an awful blow on the temple. The result was equally awful. Instead of falling to the ground, stunned by the force of the blow, as had been the usual result under similar circumstances in many previous encounters, the man who had received it simply vanished—instantaneously vanished. Not a trace of him was left, and the Hesperian Cain stood staring at the vacancy which his departed brother had filled, gasping with amazement and consternation at the work he had achieved.

As years went on many similar cases occurred. Occasionally this evanescence took place as the result of an accident; the co-operation of a neighbour, though a common, was not an indispensable antecedent. For instance, if a man fell over a precipice several hundred feet high—and many such are to be found among the mountains—evanescence on reaching the foot of it was invariable.

At length, by the process of comparing a vast number of instances in which this strange phenomenon had been observed, what was called the Law of Evanescence was established, namely, that a certain class of bodily injuries exist, which result in the instantaneous dissolution and disappearance of the recipient. And here I found my medical education of great service in enabling me to understand the nature of this law; for, from the accounts I got of the various causes of evanescence, it became quite clear to me that in almost every case of the occurrence of the phenomenon, what would be called in human beings a mortal lesion is the invariable antecedent; that, in fact, the decomposition of the body, which on the earth takes place slowly, is instantaneously effected in Hesperos.

Having referred to my medical education, I may call the reader’s attention, just in passing, to a difficulty which that education brought very forcibly before my mind. How could there be any science of anatomy in Hesperos? No corpses could be procured for dissection. An amputated arm or leg might be anatomised, but an examination of the structure of any of the vital organs is simply impossible. Just as, in mediæval times, medical students on the earth were obliged to have recourse to the dissection of the lower mammalia, in order to learn their business, so is it now with the Hesperians; and, in both cases, the results arrived at may be useful as the grounds for more or less ingenious hypotheses, but are quite insufficient as a foundation for any science worthy of the name.

But the above account of evanescence as, in all cases, the result of mortal lesion, is not in absolute conformity with the facts of experience. Such lesions are unquestionably, in the vast majority of instances, the real causes of the phenomena. Still, occasionally, though comparatively rarely, cases occur which seem to be irreducible to any such rule, and these, for many ages, were regarded as inexplicable anomalies. However, the law which governs such mysterious cases of evanescence was at last found out, as I shall now proceed to explain.

This important discovery was really the result of the invention of a most ingenious instrument, by means of which the degrees of pain and suffering on the one hand, and of joy and satisfaction on the other, endured or enjoyed by any given individual, during any assigned period, may be accurately measured, their aggregate amount computed, and the balance on either side struck. The machine is constructed somewhat on the principle of Mr. Fahrenheit’s thermometer, but the details of the construction, and of the mode of fixing the unit on which the calculations rest, were not communicated to me; indeed, the Hesperian who gave me a general account of it very frankly assured me—and I find no difficulty in believing him—that to understand its mode of action lies far beyond the range of my merely human faculties. However this may be, it is not easy to see how, without some such invention, the Second Law of Evanescence could have been discovered; but, by the application of this wonderful instrument to a great number of cases, the Law in question was at last established on a sufficiently wide inductive basis.

This Second Law of Evanescence may be stated in a popular form as follows:—Evanescence takes place whenever the total quantity of suffering undergone by anyone, exceeds, by a certain fixed amount, the total quantity of happiness he has enjoyed. This fixed amount when estimated by the Hesperian joy-and-sorrow-metronome, above described, is exactly ten million units of its scale. When this negative balance is reached, the second law acts spontaneously, and the sufferer is thus released from all further misery.

Under the existing conditions of life in Hesperos, it would be hard to over-estimate the importance of this law. For example, only for it there is nothing to prevent a court of justice from sentencing a prisoner to eternal punishment. And, as a matter of fact, one of the very earliest noticed cases of anomalous evanescence was the result of just such a sentence.

The case occurred, about three thousand years after the creation. At that time, states, governments, and courts of justice had been fully established. In one of the larger islands not far from the northern continent, a somewhat turbulent citizen had, in a quarrel commenced by himself, ‘evanesced’ one of his neighbours, a man who happened to be exceedingly popular in the community where he dwelt. Public indignation was thereby excited to a terrible pitch. Cases of violent evanescence, or, as we should call them, murder, were frequent in the earlier periods; but, at the time of this outrage, they were beginning to be regarded with much disfavour. Owing to the absence of reproduction, it was quite plain that, unless this practice was discountenanced, the depopulation of the planet was inevitable; and, inasmuch as the question ‘Is Life worth living?’ had not yet been answered in the negative, it was resolved that the whole force of society should be brought to bear against all violent evanishers.