The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📖

of political advancement, and which still prevailed among
other subterranean races, whom they despised as barbarians, the
loftier family of Ana, to which belonged the tribe I was
visiting, looked back to as one of the crude and ignorant
experiments which belong to the infancy of political science.
It was the age of envy and hate, of fierce passions, of
34constant social changes more or less violent, of strife between
classes, of war between state and state. This phase of society
lasted, however, for some ages, and was finally brought to a
close, at least among the nobler and more intellectual
populations, by the gradual discovery of the latent powers
stored in the all-permeating fluid which they denominate Vril.

According to the account I received from Zee, who, as an
erudite professor of the College of Sages, had studied such
matters more diligently than any other member of my host's
family, this fluid is capable of being raised and disciplined
into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate or
inanimate. It can destroy like the flash of lightning; yet,
differently applied, it can replenish or invigorate life, heal,
and preserve, and on it they chiefly rely for the cure of
disease, or rather for enabling the physical organisation to
re-establish the due equilibrium of its natural powers, and
thereby to cure itself. By this agency they rend way through
the most solid substances, and open valleys for culture through
the rocks of their subterranean wilderness. From it they
extract the light which supplies their lamps, finding it
steadier, softer, and healthier than the other inflammable
materials they had formerly used.

But the effects of the alleged discovery of the means to direct
the more terrible force of vril were chiefly remarkable in
their influence upon social polity. As these effects became
familiarly known and skillfully administered, war between the
vril-discoverers ceased, for they brought the art of
destruction to such perfection as to annul all superiority in
numbers, discipline, or military skill. The fire lodged in the
hollow of a rod directed by the hand of a child could shatter
the strongest fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van
to the rear of an embattled host. If army met army, and both
had command of this agency, it could be but to the annihilation
of each. The age of war was therefore gone, but with the
35cessation of war other effects bearing upon the social state
soon became apparent. Man was so completely at the mercy of
man, each whom he encountered being able, if so willing, to
slay him on the instant, that all notions of government by
force gradually vanished from political systems and forms of
law. It is only by force that vast communities, dispersed
through great distances of space, can be kept together; but now
there was no longer either the necessity of self-preservation
or the pride of aggrandisement to make one state desire to
preponderate in population over another.

The Vril-discoverers thus, in the course of a few generations,
peacefully split into communities of moderate size. The tribe
amongst which I had fallen was limited to 12,000 families.
Each tribe occupied a territory sufficient for all its wants,
and at stated periods the surplus population departed to seek a
realm of its own. There appeared no necessity for any
arbitrary selection of these emigrants; there was always a
sufficient number who volunteered to depart.

These subdivided states, petty if we regard either territory or
population,- all appertained to one vast general family. They
spoke the same language, though the dialects might slightly
differ. They intermarried; They maintained the same general
laws and customs; and so important a bond between these several
communities was the knowledge of vril and the practice of its
agencies, that the word A-Vril was synonymous with
civilisation; and Vril-ya, signifying "The Civilised Nations,"
was the common name by which the communities employing the uses
of vril distinguished themselves from such of the Ana as were
yet in a state of barbarism.

The government of the tribe of Vril-ya I am treating of was
apparently very complicated, really very simple. It was based
upon a principle recognised in theory, though little carried
out in practice, above ground- viz., that the object of all
systems of philosophical thought tends to the attainment of
unity, or the ascent through all intervening labyrinths to the
simplicity of a single first cause or principle. Thus in
36politics, even republican writers have agreed that a benevolent
autocracy would insure the best administration, if there were
any guarantees for its continuance, or against its gradual
abuse of the powers accorded to it. This singular community
elected therefore a single supreme magistrate styled Tur; he
held his office nominally for life, but he could seldom be
induced to retain it after the first approach of old age.
There was indeed in this society nothing to induce any of its
members to covet the cares of office. No honours, no insignia
of higher rank, were assigned to it. The supreme magistrate
was not distinguished from the rest by superior habitation or
revenue. On the other hand, the duties awarded to him were
marvellously light and easy, requiring no preponderant degree
of energy or intelligence. There being no apprehensions of
war, there were no armies to maintain; there being no
government of force, there was no police to appoint and direct.
What we call crime was utterly unknown to the Vril-ya; and
there were no courts of criminal justice. The rare instances
of civil disputes were referred for arbitration to friends
chosen by either party, or decided by the Council of Sages,
which will be described later. There were no professional
lawyers; and indeed their laws were but amicable conventions,
for there was no power to enforce laws against an offender who
carried in his staff the power to destroy his judges. There
were customs and regulations to compliance with which, for
several ages, the people had tacitly habituated themselves; or
if in any instance an individual felt such compliance hard, he
quitted the community and went elsewhere. There was, in fact,
quietly established amid this state, much the same compact that
is found in our private families, in which we virtually say to
any independent grown-up member of the family whom we receive
to entertain, "Stay or go, according as our habits and
regulations suit or displease you." But though there were no
laws such as we call laws, no race above ground is so
37law-observing. Obedience to the rule adopted by the community
has become as much an instinct as if it were implanted by
nature. Even in every household the head of it makes a
regulation for its guidance, which is never resisted nor even
cavilled at by those who belong to the family. They have a
proverb, the pithiness of which is much lost in this
paraphrase, "No happiness without order, no order without
authority, no authority without unity." The mildness of all
government among them, civil or domestic, may be signalised by
their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or
forbidden- viz., "It is requested not to do so and so." Poverty
among the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that property is held
in common, or that all are equals in the extent of their
possessions or the size and luxury of their habitations: but
there being no difference of rank or position between the
grades of wealth or the choice of occupations, each pursues his
own inclinations without creating envy or vying; some like a
modest, some a more splendid kind of life; each makes himself
happy in his own way. Owing to this absence of competition,
and the limit placed on the population, it is difficult for a
family to fall into distress; there are no hazardous
speculations, no emulators striving for superior wealth and
rank. No doubt, in each settlement all originally had the same
proportions of land dealt out to them; but some, more
adventurous than others, had extended their possessions farther
into the bordering wilds, or had improved into richer fertility
the produce of their fields, or entered into commerce or trade.
Thus, necessarily, some had grown richer than others, but none
had become absolutely poor, or wanting anything which their
tastes desired. If they did so, it was always in their power
to migrate, or at the worst to apply, without shame and with
certainty of aid, to the rich, for all the members of the
community considered themselves as brothers of one affectionate
and united family. More upon this head will be treated of
incidentally as my narrative proceeds.
38
The chief care of the supreme magistrate was to communicate
with certain active departments charged with the administration
of special details. The most important and essential of such
details was that connected with the due provision of light. Of
this department my host, Aph-Lin, was the chief. Another
department, which might be called the foreign, communicated
with the neighbouring kindred states, principally for the
purpose of ascertaining all new inventions; and to a third
department all such inventions and improvements in machinery
were committed for trial. Connected with this department was
the College of Sages- a college especially favoured by such of
the Ana as were widowed and childless, and by the young
unmarried females, amongst whom Zee was the most active, and,
if what we call renown or distinction was a thing acknowledged
by this people (which I shall later show it is not), among the
more renowned or distinguished. It is by the female Professors
of this College that those studies which are deemed of least
use in practical life- as purely speculative philosophy, the
history of remote periods, and such sciences as entomology,
conchology, &c.- are the more diligently cultivated. Zee,
whose mind, active as Aristotle's, equally embraced the largest
domains and the minutest details of thought, had written two
volumes on the parasite insect that dwells amid the hairs of a
tiger's* paw, which work was considered the best authority on
that interesting subject.

* The animal here referred to has many points of difference from
the tiger of the upper world. It is larger, and with a broader
paw, and still more receding frontal. It haunts the side of lakes
and pools, and feeds principally on fishes, though it does not
object to any terrestrial animal of inferior strength that comes in
its way. It is becoming very scarce even in the wild districts,
where it is devoured by gigantic reptiles. I apprehended that it
clearly belongs to the tiger species, since the parasite animalcule
found in its paw, like that in the Asiatic tiger, is a miniature
image of itself.

But the researches of the sages are not confined to such subtle
or elegant studies. They comprise various others more
39important, and especially the properties of vril, to the
perception of which their finer nervous organisation renders
the female Professors eminently keen. It is out of this
college that the Tur, or chief magistrate, selects Councillors,
limited to three, in the rare instances in which novelty of
event or circumstance perplexes his own judgment.

There are a few other departments of minor consequence, but all
are carried on so noiselessly, and quietly that the evidence of
a government seems to vanish altogether, and social order to be
as regular and unobtrusive as if it were a law of nature.
Machinery is employed to an inconceivable extent in all the
operations of labour within and without doors, and it is the
unceasing object of the department charged with its
administration to extend its efficiency. There is no class of
labourers or servants, but all who are required to assist or
control the machinery are found in the children, from the time
they leave the care of their mothers to the marriageable age,
which they place at sixteen for the