September 25, 2025 • 25 mins
Dive into Omega The Last Days of the World, a captivating science fiction novel written by Camille Flammarion in 1894. Set in the 25th century, this thought-provoking tale explores the impending threat of a carbonic-oxide comet on a collision course with Earth. Through its narrative, the novel delves into the philosophical and political ramifications of humanity facing its potential end. (Summary by Wikipedia)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section ten of Omega The Last Days of the World.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Omega The Last Days of the
(00:21):
World by Camere Flammarion, Part two, Chapter one. The events
which we have just described and the discussions to which
they gave rise took place in the twenty fifth century
of the Christian era. Humanity was not destroyed by the
shock of the comet, although this was the most memorable
(00:44):
event in its entire history, and one never forgotten. Notwithstanding
the many transformations which the race has since undergone. The
earth had continued to rotate and the sun to shine.
Children had become old men, and their places had been
filled by others. In the eternal succession of generations, centuries
(01:09):
and ages had succeeded each other, and humanity, slowly advancing
in knowledge and happiness, through a thousand transitory interruptions, had
reached its apergy and accomplished its destiny. But how vast
these series of transformations physical and mental. The population of
(01:33):
Europe from the year nineteen hundred to the year three
thousand had increased from three hundred seventy five to seven
hundred millions, that of Asia from eight hundred seventy five
to one thousand millions, that of the Americas from one
hundred twenty to fifteen hundred millions, that of Africa from
(01:58):
seventy five to two hundred undred millions, that of Australia
from five to sixty millions, which for the total population
of the globe gives an increase of two thousand, ten millions,
and this increase had continued with some fluctuations. Language had
(02:20):
become transformed. The never ceasing progress of science and industry
had created a large number of new words, generally of
Greek derivation. At the same time, the English language had
spread over the entire world. From the twenty fifth to
the thirtieth centuries, the spoken language of Europe was based
(02:43):
upon a mixture of English, of French, and of Greek derivatives.
Every effort to create artificially a new universal language had
failed long before the twenty fifth century war had disappeared,
and it became difficult to conceive how a race which
pretended to knowledge and reason could have endured so long.
(03:08):
The yoke of clever rascals who lived at its expense.
In vain had later sovereigns proclaimed in high sounding words,
that war was a divine institution, that it was the
natural result of the struggle for existence, that it constituted
the noblest of professions, that patriotism was the chief of virtues.
(03:34):
In vain, were battle fields called fields of honor? In vain,
were the statues of the victors erected in the most
populous cities. It was at last observed that, with the
exception of certain ants, no animal species had set an
example of such boundless folly as the human race. That
(03:57):
the struggle for life did not consist in slaughtering one another,
but in the conquest of nature. That all the resources
of humanity were absolutely wasted in the bottomless gulf of
standing armies, And that the mere obligation of military service,
as formulated by law, was an encroachment upon human liberty
(04:21):
so serious that, under the guise of honor, slavery had
been re established. Men perceived that the military system meant
the maintenance of an army of parasites and idlers, yielding
a passive obedience to the orders of diplomats who were
simply speculating upon human credulity. In early times, war had
(04:47):
been carried on between villagers for the advantage and glory
of chieftains, and this kind of petty warfare still prevailed
in the nineteenth century between the villages of Central af Africa,
where even young men and women persuaded of their slavery
were seen at certain times to present themselves voluntarily at
(05:10):
the places where they were to be sacrificed. Reason having
at last begun to prevail, men had then formed themselves
into provinces, and a warfare between provinces arose Athens contending
with Sparta, Rome with Carthage, Paris with Dijon, and history
(05:33):
had celebrated the glorious wars of the Duke of Burgundy
against the King of France, of the Normans against the Parisians,
of the Belgians against the Flemish, of the Saxons, against
the Bavarians, of the Venetians, against the Florentines, et cetera,
(05:53):
et cetera. Later nations had been formed, thus doing away
with provinis, flags and boundaries, but men continued to teach
their children to hate their neighbours, and citizens were accouterred
for the sole purpose of mutual extermination. Interminable wars arose,
(06:16):
wars ceaselessly renewed between France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Russia, Turkey,
et cetera. The development of weapons of destruction had kept
pace with the progress of chemistry, mechanics, aeronautics, and most
of the other sciences, and theorists were to be found,
(06:41):
especially among statesmen, who declared that war was the necessary
condition of progress, forgetting that it was only the sorry
heritage of barbarism, and that the majority of those who
have contributed to the progress of science and industry electricity, physics, mechanics,
(07:02):
et cetera, have all been the most pacific of men.
Statistics had proved that war regularly claimed forty million victims
per century, eleven hundred per day without truce or intermission,
and had made twelve hundred million corpses in three thousand years.
(07:24):
It was not surprising that nations had been exhausted and ruined,
since in the nineteenth century alone, they had expended to
this end the sum of seven hundred thousand million francs.
These divisions, appealing to patriotic sentiments, skillfully kept alive by
(07:45):
politicians who lived upon them long prevented Europe from imitating
the example of America in the suppression of its armies,
which consumed all its vital forces and wasted yearly more
than ten thousand million francs of the resources acquired at
such sacrifice by the laborer, and from forming the United
(08:09):
States of Europe. But though man could not make up
his mind to do away with the tinsel of national vanity,
woman came to his rescue. Under the inspiration of a
woman of spirit, a league was formed of the mothers
of Europe for the purpose of educating their children, especially
their daughters, to a horror of the barbarities of war,
(08:34):
the folly of men, the frivolity of the pretexts which
arrayed nations against each other, the knavery of statesmen who
moved heaven and earth to excite patriotism and blind the
eyes of peoples. The absolute uselessness of the wars of
the past, and of that European equilibrium which was always
(08:58):
disturbed and never establate. The ruin of nations fields, a
battle strewn with the dead and the mangled, who an
hour before lived joyously in the bountiful sun of nature.
Widows and orphans. In short, all the misery of war
was forced upon the mind by conversation, recital and reading.
(09:23):
In a single generation. This rational education had freed the
young from this remnant of animalism and inculcated a sentiment
of profound horror for all, which recalled the barbarism of
other days. Still, governments refused to disarm, and the war
budget was voted from year to year. It was then
(09:47):
that the young girls resolved never to marry a man
who had borne arms, and they kept their vow. The
early years of this league were trying ones, even for
the young girls, for the choice of more than one
fell upon some fine looking officer, and but for the
(10:07):
universal reprobation, her heart might have yielded. There were, it
is true, some desertions, but as those who formed these
marriages were from the outset, despised and ostracized by society,
they were not numerous. Public opinion was formed, and it
(10:29):
was impossible to stem the tide. For about five years
there was scarcely a single marriage or union. Every citizen
was a soldier in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain,
in every nation of Europe. Already for a confederation of states,
(10:50):
but never recoiling before questions represented by the national flag,
the women held their ground. They felt that truth was
on their say, but their firmness would deliver humanity from
the slavery which oppressed it, and that they could not
fail a victory. To the passionate objugations of certain men,
(11:13):
they replied, no, we will have nothing more to do
with fools, and if this state of affairs continued, they
had decided to keep their vow or to emigrate to America,
where centuries before the military system had disappeared. The most
(11:33):
eloquent appeals for disarmament were made at every session to
the Committee of Administrators of the state, formerly called deputies
or senators. Finally, after a lapse of five years, face
to face with this wall of feminine opposition, which day
by day grew stronger and more impregnable, the deputies of
(11:57):
every country, as if animators, by a common motive, eloquently
advocated the cause of women, and that very weak disarmament
was voted in Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Spain. It
was springtime, there was no disorder. Innumerable marriages followed. Russia
(12:20):
and England had hailed aloof from the movement the suffrage
of women in these countries not having been unanimous. But
as all the states of Europe were formed into a
republic the ensuing year, uniting in a single confederated state
on the invitation of the government of the United States
(12:41):
of Europe, these two great nations also decreed a gradual disarmament.
Long before this time, India had been lost to England
and the latter had become a republic. As for Russia,
the monarchical form of government still existed. It was then
(13:01):
the middle of the twenty fourth century, and from that
epoch the narrow sentiment of patriotism was replaced by the
general one of humanity delivery from the ball and chain
of military slavery. Europe had immediately gotten rid of the bureaucracy,
which had also exhausted nations condemned to perish, as it were,
(13:24):
by plethora. But for this a radical revolution was necessary.
From that time on, Europe had advanced, as by magic,
in a marvelous progress. Social, scientific, artistic, and industrial taxation,
diminished by nine tenths, served only for the maintenance of
(13:47):
internal order, the security of life and property, the support
of schools, and the encouragement of new researchers. But individual
initiative was far more effective than the old time official centralization,
which for so many years had stifled individual effort, and
(14:08):
bureaucracy was dead and buried. At last, one breathed freely,
one lived. In order to pay seven hundred thousand millions
every century to citizens withdrawn from all productive work, and
to maintain the bureaucracy, governments had been obliged to increase
(14:29):
taxation to a fearful degree. The result was that everything
was taxed. The air one breathes, the water one drinks,
the light and heat of the sun, bread, wine, and
every article of food, clothing, houses, the streets of cities,
the country roads, animals, horses, oxen, dogs, cats hens, rabbits,
(14:56):
birds in cages, plants, flowers, musical instruments, pianos, organs, violins, zithers, flutes, trumpets,
trades and professions, the married and the unmarried, children, furniture, everything,
absolutely everything, And this taxation had grown until it equalled
(15:21):
the net product of all human labour, with the single
exception of the daily bread. Then all work had ceased.
It seemed thenceforth impossible to live. It was this state
of affairs which led to the great social Revolution of
the International Socialists, of which mention was made at the
(15:43):
beginning of this book, and to others which followed it.
But these upheavals had not definitely liberated Europe from the
barbarism of bygone days, and it was to the Young
Women's League that humanity owes its deliverance. The unification of nations,
of ideas, of languages had brought about also that of
(16:08):
weights and measures. No nation had resisted the universal adoption
of the metric system, based upon the dimensions of the
planet itself. A single kind of money was in circulation.
One initial meridian ruled in geography. This meridian passed through
the observatory of Greenwich, and at its antipodi the day
(16:33):
changed its name at noon. Nations which we call modern
had vanished like those of the past. France had disappeared
in the twenty eighth century after an existence of about
two thousand years. Germany disappeared in the thirty second Italy
in the twenty ninth England had spread over the surface
(16:55):
of the ocean. Meteorology had attained the precision of and
about the thirtieth century the weather could be predicted without terror,
the forests sacrificed to agriculture, and the manufacture of paper
had entirely disappeared. The legal rate of interest had fallen
(17:17):
to one half of one percent. Electricity had taken the
place of steam. Railroads and pneumatic tubes were still in use,
but only for the transportation of freight. Voyagers were made
preferably by dirigible balloons, aeroplanes and airships, especially in the daytime.
(17:41):
This very fact of aerial navigation would have done away
with frontiers, if the progress of reason had not already
abolished them. Constant intercourse between all parts of the globe
had brought about into nationalism, and the absolutely free exchange
of goods and ideas custom houses had been suppressed. The
(18:06):
telephonoscope disseminated immediately the most important and interesting news. A
comedy played at Chicago or Paris, could be heard and
seen in every city of the world. Astronomy had attained
its end, the knowledge of the life of other worlds
(18:26):
and the establishment of communication with them. All philosophy, all
religion was founded upon the progress of astronomy. Marvelous instruments
in optics and physics had been invented. A new substance
took the place of glass and had yielded the most
(18:46):
unexpected results to science. New natural forces had been conquered.
Social progress had been no less great than that of science.
Machines driven by electric uzerte had gradually taken the place
of manual labour. At the same time, the production of
(19:06):
food had become entirely revolutionized. Chemical synthesis had succeeded in
producing sugar, albumene, the amides and fats from the air,
water and vegetables, and by skillfully varying the proportions in
forming the most advantageous combinations of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,
(19:31):
so that sumptuous repasts no longer consisted of the smoking
remains of slaughtered animals beef, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, fish,
and birds, but were served amid the harmonies of music
in rooms adorned with plants evergreen and flowers ever in bloom,
(19:53):
in an atmosphere laden with perfumes. Freed from the vulgar
necessity of masticating meat, the mouth absorbed the principles necessary
for the repair of organic tissues in exquisite drinks, fruits, cakes,
and pills. About the thirtieth century, especially the nervous system,
(20:15):
began to grow more delicate and developed in unexpected ways.
Woman was still somewhat more narrow minded than man, and
her mental operations differed from his, as before her exquisite
sensibility responding to sentimental considerations before reason could act in
(20:36):
the lower cells, and her head had remained smaller, her
forehead narrower. But the former was so elegantly placed upon
a neck of such supple grace, and rose so nobly
from the shoulders and the bust, that it compelled more
than ever the admiration of man, not only as a whole,
(20:59):
but also by the penetrating sweetness and beauty of the
mouth and the light curls of its luxuriant hair. Although
comparatively smaller than that of man, the head of woman
had nevertheless increased in size with the exercise of the
intellectual faculties. But the cerebral circumvolutions had experienced the most change,
(21:24):
having become more numerous and more pronounced in both sexes.
In short, the head had grown, the body had diminished
in size. Giants were no longer to be seen. Four
permanent causes had modified insensibly the human form. The development
(21:45):
of the intellectual faculties and of the brain, the decrease
in manual labour and bodily exercise, the transformation of food,
and the marriage system. The first had increased the size
of the cranium as compared with the rest of the body.
The second had decreased the strength of the limbs. The
(22:07):
third had diminished the size of the abdomen and made
the teeth finer and smaller. The tendency of the fourth
had been rather to perpetuate the classic forms of human beauty,
masculine beauty, the nobility of an uplifted countenance, and the
graceful outlines of womanhood. About the two hundredth century of
(22:30):
our era, a single race existed, rather small in stature,
light colored, in which anthropologists might perhaps have discovered some
form of Anglo Saxon and Chinese descent. Humanity had tended
towards unity, one race, one language, one general government, one religion.
(22:54):
There were no more state religions, only the voice of
an enlightened conscience, and in this unity, former anthropological differences
had disappeared. In former ages, poets had prophesied that in
the marvelous progress of things, man would finally acquire wings
(23:15):
and fly through the air by his muscular force alone.
But they had not studied the origin of anthropomorphic structure,
and had forgotten that for a man to have at
the same time arms and wings, he must belong to
a zoological order of sextepeds, which does not exist on
(23:35):
our planet. For man belongs to the quadrupeds, a type
which has been gradually modified. But though he had not
acquired new natural organs, he had acquired artificial ones, to
say nothing of his physical transformation. He had conquered the
region of the air, and could soar in the sky
(23:56):
by light apparatus whose motor part was electricity, and the
atmosphere had become his domain, as it had been that
of the birds. It is very probable that if, in
the course of ages a winged race could have acquired,
by the development of its faculties of observation, a brain
(24:19):
analogous to that of even the most primitive man, it
would have soon dominated the human species and replaced it
by a new one, a winged race of the same
zoological type as the quadrupeds and bipeds. But the force
of gravity is an obstacle to any such organic development
(24:41):
of the winged species, and humanity, grown more perfect, had
remained master of the world. At the same time, in
the lapse of ages, the animal population of the globe
had completely changed. The wild species lions, tigers, hyaenas, panthers, elephants, giraffes, kangaroos,
(25:06):
as also wales and seals had become extinct. End of
Chapter one recording by Steve Chilvers, Norwich, England,
Section ten of Omega The Last Days of the World.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Omega The Last Days of the
(00:21):
World by Camere Flammarion, Part two, Chapter one. The events
which we have just described and the discussions to which
they gave rise took place in the twenty fifth century
of the Christian era. Humanity was not destroyed by the
shock of the comet, although this was the most memorable
(00:44):
event in its entire history, and one never forgotten. Notwithstanding
the many transformations which the race has since undergone. The
earth had continued to rotate and the sun to shine.
Children had become old men, and their places had been
filled by others. In the eternal succession of generations, centuries
(01:09):
and ages had succeeded each other, and humanity, slowly advancing
in knowledge and happiness, through a thousand transitory interruptions, had
reached its apergy and accomplished its destiny. But how vast
these series of transformations physical and mental. The population of
(01:33):
Europe from the year nineteen hundred to the year three
thousand had increased from three hundred seventy five to seven
hundred millions, that of Asia from eight hundred seventy five
to one thousand millions, that of the Americas from one
hundred twenty to fifteen hundred millions, that of Africa from
(01:58):
seventy five to two hundred undred millions, that of Australia
from five to sixty millions, which for the total population
of the globe gives an increase of two thousand, ten millions,
and this increase had continued with some fluctuations. Language had
(02:20):
become transformed. The never ceasing progress of science and industry
had created a large number of new words, generally of
Greek derivation. At the same time, the English language had
spread over the entire world. From the twenty fifth to
the thirtieth centuries, the spoken language of Europe was based
(02:43):
upon a mixture of English, of French, and of Greek derivatives.
Every effort to create artificially a new universal language had
failed long before the twenty fifth century war had disappeared,
and it became difficult to conceive how a race which
pretended to knowledge and reason could have endured so long.
(03:08):
The yoke of clever rascals who lived at its expense.
In vain had later sovereigns proclaimed in high sounding words,
that war was a divine institution, that it was the
natural result of the struggle for existence, that it constituted
the noblest of professions, that patriotism was the chief of virtues.
(03:34):
In vain, were battle fields called fields of honor? In vain,
were the statues of the victors erected in the most
populous cities. It was at last observed that, with the
exception of certain ants, no animal species had set an
example of such boundless folly as the human race. That
(03:57):
the struggle for life did not consist in slaughtering one another,
but in the conquest of nature. That all the resources
of humanity were absolutely wasted in the bottomless gulf of
standing armies, And that the mere obligation of military service,
as formulated by law, was an encroachment upon human liberty
(04:21):
so serious that, under the guise of honor, slavery had
been re established. Men perceived that the military system meant
the maintenance of an army of parasites and idlers, yielding
a passive obedience to the orders of diplomats who were
simply speculating upon human credulity. In early times, war had
(04:47):
been carried on between villagers for the advantage and glory
of chieftains, and this kind of petty warfare still prevailed
in the nineteenth century between the villages of Central af Africa,
where even young men and women persuaded of their slavery
were seen at certain times to present themselves voluntarily at
(05:10):
the places where they were to be sacrificed. Reason having
at last begun to prevail, men had then formed themselves
into provinces, and a warfare between provinces arose Athens contending
with Sparta, Rome with Carthage, Paris with Dijon, and history
(05:33):
had celebrated the glorious wars of the Duke of Burgundy
against the King of France, of the Normans against the Parisians,
of the Belgians against the Flemish, of the Saxons, against
the Bavarians, of the Venetians, against the Florentines, et cetera,
(05:53):
et cetera. Later nations had been formed, thus doing away
with provinis, flags and boundaries, but men continued to teach
their children to hate their neighbours, and citizens were accouterred
for the sole purpose of mutual extermination. Interminable wars arose,
(06:16):
wars ceaselessly renewed between France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Russia, Turkey,
et cetera. The development of weapons of destruction had kept
pace with the progress of chemistry, mechanics, aeronautics, and most
of the other sciences, and theorists were to be found,
(06:41):
especially among statesmen, who declared that war was the necessary
condition of progress, forgetting that it was only the sorry
heritage of barbarism, and that the majority of those who
have contributed to the progress of science and industry electricity, physics, mechanics,
(07:02):
et cetera, have all been the most pacific of men.
Statistics had proved that war regularly claimed forty million victims
per century, eleven hundred per day without truce or intermission,
and had made twelve hundred million corpses in three thousand years.
(07:24):
It was not surprising that nations had been exhausted and ruined,
since in the nineteenth century alone, they had expended to
this end the sum of seven hundred thousand million francs.
These divisions, appealing to patriotic sentiments, skillfully kept alive by
(07:45):
politicians who lived upon them long prevented Europe from imitating
the example of America in the suppression of its armies,
which consumed all its vital forces and wasted yearly more
than ten thousand million francs of the resources acquired at
such sacrifice by the laborer, and from forming the United
(08:09):
States of Europe. But though man could not make up
his mind to do away with the tinsel of national vanity,
woman came to his rescue. Under the inspiration of a
woman of spirit, a league was formed of the mothers
of Europe for the purpose of educating their children, especially
their daughters, to a horror of the barbarities of war,
(08:34):
the folly of men, the frivolity of the pretexts which
arrayed nations against each other, the knavery of statesmen who
moved heaven and earth to excite patriotism and blind the
eyes of peoples. The absolute uselessness of the wars of
the past, and of that European equilibrium which was always
(08:58):
disturbed and never establate. The ruin of nations fields, a
battle strewn with the dead and the mangled, who an
hour before lived joyously in the bountiful sun of nature.
Widows and orphans. In short, all the misery of war
was forced upon the mind by conversation, recital and reading.
(09:23):
In a single generation. This rational education had freed the
young from this remnant of animalism and inculcated a sentiment
of profound horror for all, which recalled the barbarism of
other days. Still, governments refused to disarm, and the war
budget was voted from year to year. It was then
(09:47):
that the young girls resolved never to marry a man
who had borne arms, and they kept their vow. The
early years of this league were trying ones, even for
the young girls, for the choice of more than one
fell upon some fine looking officer, and but for the
(10:07):
universal reprobation, her heart might have yielded. There were, it
is true, some desertions, but as those who formed these
marriages were from the outset, despised and ostracized by society,
they were not numerous. Public opinion was formed, and it
(10:29):
was impossible to stem the tide. For about five years
there was scarcely a single marriage or union. Every citizen
was a soldier in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain,
in every nation of Europe. Already for a confederation of states,
(10:50):
but never recoiling before questions represented by the national flag,
the women held their ground. They felt that truth was
on their say, but their firmness would deliver humanity from
the slavery which oppressed it, and that they could not
fail a victory. To the passionate objugations of certain men,
(11:13):
they replied, no, we will have nothing more to do
with fools, and if this state of affairs continued, they
had decided to keep their vow or to emigrate to America,
where centuries before the military system had disappeared. The most
(11:33):
eloquent appeals for disarmament were made at every session to
the Committee of Administrators of the state, formerly called deputies
or senators. Finally, after a lapse of five years, face
to face with this wall of feminine opposition, which day
by day grew stronger and more impregnable, the deputies of
(11:57):
every country, as if animators, by a common motive, eloquently
advocated the cause of women, and that very weak disarmament
was voted in Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Spain. It
was springtime, there was no disorder. Innumerable marriages followed. Russia
(12:20):
and England had hailed aloof from the movement the suffrage
of women in these countries not having been unanimous. But
as all the states of Europe were formed into a
republic the ensuing year, uniting in a single confederated state
on the invitation of the government of the United States
(12:41):
of Europe, these two great nations also decreed a gradual disarmament.
Long before this time, India had been lost to England
and the latter had become a republic. As for Russia,
the monarchical form of government still existed. It was then
(13:01):
the middle of the twenty fourth century, and from that
epoch the narrow sentiment of patriotism was replaced by the
general one of humanity delivery from the ball and chain
of military slavery. Europe had immediately gotten rid of the bureaucracy,
which had also exhausted nations condemned to perish, as it were,
(13:24):
by plethora. But for this a radical revolution was necessary.
From that time on, Europe had advanced, as by magic,
in a marvelous progress. Social, scientific, artistic, and industrial taxation,
diminished by nine tenths, served only for the maintenance of
(13:47):
internal order, the security of life and property, the support
of schools, and the encouragement of new researchers. But individual
initiative was far more effective than the old time official centralization,
which for so many years had stifled individual effort, and
(14:08):
bureaucracy was dead and buried. At last, one breathed freely,
one lived. In order to pay seven hundred thousand millions
every century to citizens withdrawn from all productive work, and
to maintain the bureaucracy, governments had been obliged to increase
(14:29):
taxation to a fearful degree. The result was that everything
was taxed. The air one breathes, the water one drinks,
the light and heat of the sun, bread, wine, and
every article of food, clothing, houses, the streets of cities,
the country roads, animals, horses, oxen, dogs, cats hens, rabbits,
(14:56):
birds in cages, plants, flowers, musical instruments, pianos, organs, violins, zithers, flutes, trumpets,
trades and professions, the married and the unmarried, children, furniture, everything,
absolutely everything, And this taxation had grown until it equalled
(15:21):
the net product of all human labour, with the single
exception of the daily bread. Then all work had ceased.
It seemed thenceforth impossible to live. It was this state
of affairs which led to the great social Revolution of
the International Socialists, of which mention was made at the
(15:43):
beginning of this book, and to others which followed it.
But these upheavals had not definitely liberated Europe from the
barbarism of bygone days, and it was to the Young
Women's League that humanity owes its deliverance. The unification of nations,
of ideas, of languages had brought about also that of
(16:08):
weights and measures. No nation had resisted the universal adoption
of the metric system, based upon the dimensions of the
planet itself. A single kind of money was in circulation.
One initial meridian ruled in geography. This meridian passed through
the observatory of Greenwich, and at its antipodi the day
(16:33):
changed its name at noon. Nations which we call modern
had vanished like those of the past. France had disappeared
in the twenty eighth century after an existence of about
two thousand years. Germany disappeared in the thirty second Italy
in the twenty ninth England had spread over the surface
(16:55):
of the ocean. Meteorology had attained the precision of and
about the thirtieth century the weather could be predicted without terror,
the forests sacrificed to agriculture, and the manufacture of paper
had entirely disappeared. The legal rate of interest had fallen
(17:17):
to one half of one percent. Electricity had taken the
place of steam. Railroads and pneumatic tubes were still in use,
but only for the transportation of freight. Voyagers were made
preferably by dirigible balloons, aeroplanes and airships, especially in the daytime.
(17:41):
This very fact of aerial navigation would have done away
with frontiers, if the progress of reason had not already
abolished them. Constant intercourse between all parts of the globe
had brought about into nationalism, and the absolutely free exchange
of goods and ideas custom houses had been suppressed. The
(18:06):
telephonoscope disseminated immediately the most important and interesting news. A
comedy played at Chicago or Paris, could be heard and
seen in every city of the world. Astronomy had attained
its end, the knowledge of the life of other worlds
(18:26):
and the establishment of communication with them. All philosophy, all
religion was founded upon the progress of astronomy. Marvelous instruments
in optics and physics had been invented. A new substance
took the place of glass and had yielded the most
(18:46):
unexpected results to science. New natural forces had been conquered.
Social progress had been no less great than that of science.
Machines driven by electric uzerte had gradually taken the place
of manual labour. At the same time, the production of
(19:06):
food had become entirely revolutionized. Chemical synthesis had succeeded in
producing sugar, albumene, the amides and fats from the air,
water and vegetables, and by skillfully varying the proportions in
forming the most advantageous combinations of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,
(19:31):
so that sumptuous repasts no longer consisted of the smoking
remains of slaughtered animals beef, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, fish,
and birds, but were served amid the harmonies of music
in rooms adorned with plants evergreen and flowers ever in bloom,
(19:53):
in an atmosphere laden with perfumes. Freed from the vulgar
necessity of masticating meat, the mouth absorbed the principles necessary
for the repair of organic tissues in exquisite drinks, fruits, cakes,
and pills. About the thirtieth century, especially the nervous system,
(20:15):
began to grow more delicate and developed in unexpected ways.
Woman was still somewhat more narrow minded than man, and
her mental operations differed from his, as before her exquisite
sensibility responding to sentimental considerations before reason could act in
(20:36):
the lower cells, and her head had remained smaller, her
forehead narrower. But the former was so elegantly placed upon
a neck of such supple grace, and rose so nobly
from the shoulders and the bust, that it compelled more
than ever the admiration of man, not only as a whole,
(20:59):
but also by the penetrating sweetness and beauty of the
mouth and the light curls of its luxuriant hair. Although
comparatively smaller than that of man, the head of woman
had nevertheless increased in size with the exercise of the
intellectual faculties. But the cerebral circumvolutions had experienced the most change,
(21:24):
having become more numerous and more pronounced in both sexes.
In short, the head had grown, the body had diminished
in size. Giants were no longer to be seen. Four
permanent causes had modified insensibly the human form. The development
(21:45):
of the intellectual faculties and of the brain, the decrease
in manual labour and bodily exercise, the transformation of food,
and the marriage system. The first had increased the size
of the cranium as compared with the rest of the body.
The second had decreased the strength of the limbs. The
(22:07):
third had diminished the size of the abdomen and made
the teeth finer and smaller. The tendency of the fourth
had been rather to perpetuate the classic forms of human beauty,
masculine beauty, the nobility of an uplifted countenance, and the
graceful outlines of womanhood. About the two hundredth century of
(22:30):
our era, a single race existed, rather small in stature,
light colored, in which anthropologists might perhaps have discovered some
form of Anglo Saxon and Chinese descent. Humanity had tended
towards unity, one race, one language, one general government, one religion.
(22:54):
There were no more state religions, only the voice of
an enlightened conscience, and in this unity, former anthropological differences
had disappeared. In former ages, poets had prophesied that in
the marvelous progress of things, man would finally acquire wings
(23:15):
and fly through the air by his muscular force alone.
But they had not studied the origin of anthropomorphic structure,
and had forgotten that for a man to have at
the same time arms and wings, he must belong to
a zoological order of sextepeds, which does not exist on
(23:35):
our planet. For man belongs to the quadrupeds, a type
which has been gradually modified. But though he had not
acquired new natural organs, he had acquired artificial ones, to
say nothing of his physical transformation. He had conquered the
region of the air, and could soar in the sky
(23:56):
by light apparatus whose motor part was electricity, and the
atmosphere had become his domain, as it had been that
of the birds. It is very probable that if, in
the course of ages a winged race could have acquired,
by the development of its faculties of observation, a brain
(24:19):
analogous to that of even the most primitive man, it
would have soon dominated the human species and replaced it
by a new one, a winged race of the same
zoological type as the quadrupeds and bipeds. But the force
of gravity is an obstacle to any such organic development
(24:41):
of the winged species, and humanity, grown more perfect, had
remained master of the world. At the same time, in
the lapse of ages, the animal population of the globe
had completely changed. The wild species lions, tigers, hyaenas, panthers, elephants, giraffes, kangaroos,
(25:06):
as also wales and seals had become extinct. End of
Chapter one recording by Steve Chilvers, Norwich, England,
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