I crossed the court and came to a halt before the Corinthian columns that I had seen; and now I perceived that the pedestal of each contained a bas-relief, a conventionalized figure beneath which was engraved a tribute to some great leader of mankind. The engravings were in the old Roman characters, which seemed to have been retained on statues, coins, and brasses, just as we in our day still inscribed coins and statue pedestals in Latin. I walked around the columns, reading these inscriptions.
The first that caught my eye was in honor of Darwin, and read simply, “The Father of Civilization.”
The next was to Karl Marx. “He interpreted history in the light of materialism, and gave us the social State, with food for all,” I read.
There was one in honor of Wells, “the Prophet of the Race.”
There was one to Weismann, “who gave us immortality, not in a ghostly heaven, but in the germ-plasm.”
The next was to Mendel, who had “interpreted man’s destiny in terms of the pea.” Poor, patient, toiling Abbot, what were you doing in this galaxy?
And there was one to Nietzsche, “the scourge of Jesus of Nazareth, a peasant god.”
CHAPTER XI
THE GODDESS OF THE TEMPLE
The man in blue with the machine badge on his shoulder, who was waiting for me at the entrance, surveyed me with a smile of tolerant amusement.
“You are now at the heart of civilization,” he began. “Let me act as your guide, for I see that you are a stranger. Is it not wonderful to contemplate that here, upon a space of a few hektares, man has erected a monument that shall endure forever! This wing,” he added, “is Doctor Sanson’s domain, while Boss Lembken exercises his priestly function from the People’s House, under the dome.”