Omega Camille Flammarion (e novels for free TXT) 📖

of the lower class, who, however, were in their turn soon enervated by a worldly life. Subsequently, marriages were regulated on established principles of selection and heredity.

The development of man’s intellectual faculties, and the cultivation of psychical science, had wrought great changes in humanity. Latent faculties of the soul had been discovered, faculties which had remained dormant for perhaps a million years, during the earlier reign of the grosser instincts, and, in proportion as food based upon chemical principles was substituted for the coarse nourishment which had prevailed for so long a time, these faculties came to light and underwent a brilliant development. As a mental operation, thought became a different thing from what it now is. Mind acted readily upon mind at a distance, by virtue of a transcendental magnetism, of which even children knew how to avail themselves.

The first interastral communication was with the planet Mars, and the second with Venus, the latter being maintained to the end of the world; the former was interrupted by the death of the inhabitants of Mars; whereas intercourse with Jupiter was only just beginning as the human race neared its own end. A rigid application of the principles of selection in the formation of marriages had resulted in a really new race, resembling ours in organic form, but possessing wholly different intellectual powers. For the once barbarous and often blind methods of medicine, and even of surgery, had been substituted by those derived from a knowledge of hypnotic, magnetic and psychic forces, and telepathy had become a great and fruitful science.

Simultaneously with man the planet also had been transformed. Industry had produced mighty but ephemeral results. In the twenty-fifth century, whose events we have just described, Paris had been for a long time a seaport, and electric ships from the Atlantic, and from the Pacific by the Isthmus of Panama, arrived at the quays of the abbey of Saint Denis, beyond which the great capital extended far to the north. The passage from the abbey of Saint Denis to the port of London was made in a few hours, and many travellers availed themselves of this route, in preference to the regular air route, the tunnel, and the viaduct over the channel. Outside of Paris the same activity reigned; for, in the twenty-fifth century also, the canal uniting the Mediterranean with the Atlantic had been completed, and the long detour by way of the Straits of Gibraltar had been abandoned; and on the other hand a metallic tube, for carriages driven by compressed air, united the Iberian republic, formerly Spain and Portugal, with western Algeria, formerly Morocco. Paris and Chicago then had nine million inhabitants, London, ten; New York, twelve. Paris, continuing its growth toward the west from century to century, now extended from the confluence of the Marne beyond St. Germain. All great cities had grown at the expense of the country. Agricultural products were manufactured by electricity; hydrogen was extracted from seawater; the energy of waterfalls and tides were utilized for lighting purposes at a distance; the solar rays, stored in summer, were distributed in winter, and the seasons had almost disappeared, especially since the introduction of heat wells, which brought to the surface of the soil the seemingly inexhaustible heat of the Earth’s interior.

But what is the twenty-fifth century in comparison with the thirtieth, the fortieth, the hundredth!

Everyone knows the legend of the Arab of Kazwani, as related by a traveller of the thirteenth century, who at that time, moreover, had no idea of the duration of the epochs of nature. “Passing one day,” he said, “by a very ancient and very populous city, I asked one of its inhabitants how long a time it had been founded. ‘Truly,’ he replied, ‘it is a powerful city, but we do not know how long it has existed, and our ancestors are as ignorant upon this subject as we.’

“Five centuries later I passed by the same spot, and could perceive no trace of the city. I asked a peasant who was gathering herbs on its former site, how long it had been destroyed. ‘Of a truth,’ he replied, ‘that is a strange question. This field has always been what it now is.’ ‘But was there not formerly a splendid city here?’ I asked. ‘Never,’ he answered, ‘at least so far as we can judge from what we have seen, and our fathers have never told us of any such thing.’

“On my return five hundred years later to the same place I found it occupied by the sea; on the shore stood a group of fishermen, of whom I asked at what period the land had been covered by the ocean. ‘Is that question worthy of a man like you?’ they replied; ‘this spot has always been such as you see it today.’

“At the end of five hundred years I returned again, and the sea had disappeared. I inquired of a solitary man whom I encountered, when this change had taken place; and he gave me the same reply.

“Finally, after an equal lapse of time, I returned once more, to find a flourishing city, more populous and richer in monuments than that which I had at first visited; and when I sought information as to its origin, its inhabitants replied: ‘The date of its foundation is lost in antiquity. We do not know how long it has existed, and our fathers knew no more of this than we do.’ ”

How this fable illustrates the brevity of human memory and the narrowness of our horizons in time as well as in space! We think that the Earth has always been what it now is; we conceive with difficulty of the secular changes through which it has passed; the vastness of these periods overwhelms us, as in astronomy we are overwhelmed by the vast distances of space.

The time had come when Paris had ceased to be the capital of the world.

After the fusion of the United States of Europe into a single confederation, the Russian