The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (read more books .TXT) 📕

persecuted, because they were not envied. Here those
problems connected with the labours of a working class,
hitherto insoluble above ground, and above ground conducing to
such bitterness between classes, were solved by a process the
simplest,- a distinct and separate working class was dispensed
with altogether. Mechanical inventions, constructed on the
principles that baffled my research to ascertain, worked by an
agency infinitely more powerful and infinitely more easy of
management than aught we have yet extracted from electricity or
steam, with the aid of children whose strength was never
overtasked, but who loved their employment as sport and
pastime, sufficed to create a Public-wealth so devoted to the
general use that not a grumbler was ever heard of. The vices
that rot our cities here had no footing. Amusements abounded,
but they were all innocent. No merry-makings conduced to
intoxication, to riot, to disease. Love existed, and was
143ardent in pursuit, but its object, once secured, was faithful.
The adulterer, the profligate, the harlot, were phenomena so
unknown in this commonwealth, that even to find the words by
which they were designated one would have had to search
throughout an obsolete literature composed thousands of years
before. They who have been students of theoretical
philosophies above ground, know that all these strange
departures from civilised life do but realise ideas which have
been broached, canvassed, ridiculed, contested for; sometimes
partially tried, and still put forth in fantastic books, but
have never come to practical result. Nor were these all the
steps towards theoretical perfectibility which this community
had made. It had been the sober belief of Descartes that the
life of man could be prolonged, not, indeed, on this earth, to
eternal duration, but to what he called the age of the
patriarchs, and modestly defined to be from 100 to 150 years
average length. Well, even this dream of sages was here
fulfilled- nay, more than fulfilled; for the vigour of middle
life was preserved even after the term of a century was passed.
With this longevity was combined a greater blessing than
itself- that of continuous health. Such diseases as befell the
race were removed with ease by scientific applications of that
agency- life-giving as life-destroying- which is inherent in
vril. Even this idea is not unknown above ground, though it
has generally been confined to enthusiasts or charlatans, and
emanates from confused notions about mesmerism, odic force, &c.
Passing by such trivial contrivances as wings, which every
schoolboy knows has been tried and found wanting, from the
mythical or pre-historical period, I proceed to that very
delicate question, urged of late as essential to the perfect
happiness of our human species by the two most disturbing and
potential influences on upper-ground society,- Womankind and
Philosophy. I mean, the Rights of Women.

Now, it is allowed by jurisprudists that it is idle to talk of
rights where there are not corresponding powers to enforce
144them; and above ground, for some reason or other, man, in his
physical force, in the use of weapons offensive and defensive,
when it come to positive personal contest, can, as a rule of
general application, master women. But among this people there
can be no doubt about the rights of women, because, as I have
before said, the Gy, physically speaking, is bigger and
stronger than the An; and her will being also more resolute
than his, and will being essential to the direction of the vril
force, she can bring to bear upon him, more potently than he on
herself, the mystical agency which art can extract from the
occult properties of nature. Therefore all that our female
philosophers above ground contend for as to rights of women, is
conceded as a matter of course in this happy commonwealth.
Besides such physical powers, the Gy-ei have (at least in
youth) a keen desire for accomplishments and learning which
exceeds that of the male; and thus they are the scholars, the
professors- the learned portion, in short, of the community.

Of course, in this state of society the female establishes, as
I have shown, her most valued privilege, that of choosing and
courting her wedding partner. Without that privilege she would
despise all the others. Now, above ground, we should not
unreasonably apprehend that a female, thus potent and thus
privileged, when she had fairly hunted us down and married us,
would be very imperious and tyrannical. Not so with the Gy-ei:
once married, the wings once suspended, and more amiable,
complacent, docile mates, more sympathetic, more sinking their
loftier capacities into the study of their husbands'
comparatively frivolous tastes and whims, no poet could
conceive in his visions of conjugal bliss. Lastly, among the
more important characteristics of the Vril-ya, as distinguished
from our mankind- lastly, and most important on the bearings of
their life and the peace of their commonwealths, is their
universal agreement in the existence of a merciful beneficent
Diety, and of a future world to the duration of which a century
145or two are moments too brief to waste upon thoughts of fame and
power and avarice; while with that agreement is combined
another- viz., since they can know nothing as to the nature of
that Diety beyond the fact of His supreme goodness, nor of that
future world beyond the fact of its felicitous existence, so
their reason forbids all angry disputes on insoluble questions.
Thus they secure for that state in the bowels of the earth what
no community ever secured under the light of the stars- all the
blessings and consolations of a religion without any of the
evils and calamities which are engendered by strife between one
religion and another.

It would be, then, utterly impossible to deny that the state of
existence among the Vril-ya is thus, as a whole, immeasurably
more felicitous than that of super-terrestrial races, and,
realising the dreams of our most sanguine philanthropists,
almost approaches to a poet's conception of some angelical
order. And yet, if you would take a thousand of the best and
most philosophical of human beings you could find in London,
Paris, Berlin, New York, or even Boston, and place them as
citizens in the beatified community, my belief is, that in less
than a year they would either die of ennui, or attempt some
revolution by which they would militate against the good of the
community, and be burnt into cinders at the request of the Tur.

Certainly I have no desire to insinuate, through the medium of
this narrative, any ignorant disparagement of the race to which
I belong. I have, on the contrary, endeavoured to make it
clear that the principles which regulate the social system of
the Vril-ya forbid them to produce those individual examples of
human greatness which adorn the annals of the upper world.
Where there are no wars there can be no Hannibal, no
Washington, no Jackson, no Sheridan;- where states are so happy
that they fear no danger and desire no change, they cannot give
birth to a Demosthenes, a Webster, a Sumner, a Wendell Holmes,
or a Butler; and where a society attains to a moral standard,
146in which there are no crimes and no sorrows from which tragedy
can extract its aliment of pity and sorrow, no salient vices or
follies on which comedy can lavish its mirthful satire, it has
lost the chance of producing a Shakespeare, or a Moliere, or a
Mrs. Beecher-Stowe. But if I have no desire to disparage my
fellow-men above ground in showing how much the motives that
impel the energies and ambition of individuals in a society of
contest and struggle- become dormant or annulled in a society
which aims at securing for the aggregate the calm and innocent
felicity which we presume to be the lot of beatified immortals;
neither, on the other hand, have I the wish to represent the
commonwealths of the Vril-ya as an ideal form of political
society, to the attainment of which our own efforts of reform
should be directed. On the contrary, it is because we have so
combined, throughout the series of ages, the elements which
compose human character, that it would be utterly impossible
for us to adopt the modes of life, or to reconcile our passions
to the modes of thought among the Vril-ya,- that I arrived at
the conviction that this people- though originally not only of
our human race, but, as seems to me clear by the roots of their
language, descended from the same ancestors as the Great Aryan
family, from which in varied streams has flowed the dominant
civilisation of the world; and having, according to their myths
and their history, passed through phases of society familiar to
ourselves,- had yet now developed into a distinct species with
which it was impossible that any community in the upper world
could amalgamate: and that if they ever emerged from these
nether recesses into the light of day, they would, according to
their own traditional persuasions of their ultimate destiny,
destroy and replace our existent varieties of man.

It may, indeed, be said, since more than one Gy could be found
to conceive a partiality for so ordinary a type of our
super-terrestrial race as myself, that even if the Vril-ya did
147appear above ground, we might be saved from extermination by
intermixture of race. But this is too sanguine a belief.
Instances of such 'mesalliance' would be as rare as those of
intermarriage between the Anglo-Saxon emigrants and the Red
Indians. Nor would time be allowed for the operation of
familiar intercourse. The Vril-ya, on emerging, induced by the
charm of a sunlit heaven to form their settlements above
ground, would commence at once the work of destruction, seize
upon the territories already cultivated, and clear off, without
scruple, all the inhabitants who resisted that invasion. And
considering their contempt for the institutions of Koom-Posh or
Popular Government, and the pugnacious valour of my beloved
countrymen, I believe that if the Vril-ya first appeared in
free America- as, being the choicest portion of the habitable
earth, they would doubtless be induced to do- and said, "This
quarter of the globe we take; Citizens of a Koom-Posh, make way
for the development of species in the Vril-ya," my brave
compatriots would show fight, and not a soul of them would be
left in this life, to rally round the Stars and Stripes, at the
end of a week.

I now saw but little of Zee, save at meals, when the family
assembled, and she was then reserved and silent. My
apprehensions of danger from an affection I had so little
encouraged or deserved, therefore, now faded away, but my
dejection continued to increase. I pined for escape to the
upper world, but I racked my brains in vain for any means to
effect it. I was never permitted to wander forth alone, so
that I could not even visit the spot on which I had alighted,
and see if it were possible to reascend to the mine. Nor even
in the Silent Hours, when the household was locked in sleep,
could I have let myself down from the lofty floor in which my
apartment was placed. I knew not how to command the automata
who stood mockingly at my beck beside the wall, nor could I
ascertain the springs by which were set in movement the
platforms that supplied the place of stairs. The knowledge how
148to avail myself of these contrivances had been purposely
withheld from me. Oh, that I could but have learned the use of
wings, so freely here at the service of every infant, then I
might have escaped from the casement, regained the rocks, and
buoyed myself aloft through the chasm of which the
perpendicular sides forbade place for human footing!


Chapter XXVII.


One day, as I sat alone and brooding in my chamber, Taee flew
in at the