September 25, 2025 • 34 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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Section twelve 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
(00:22):
World by Camille Flammarion, Part two, Chapter three. While these
great changes in the planets were taking place, humanity had
continued to advance. For progress is the supreme law terrestrial life,
which began with the rudimentary protozoans without mouths, blind death, mute,
(00:48):
and almost wholly destitute of sensation, had acquired successively the
marvelous organs of sense, and had finally reached its climax
in man, who, having also grown more perfect with the
lapse of centuries, had risen from his primitive savage condition
(01:09):
as the slave of nature, to the position of a
sovereign who ruled the world by mind, and who had
made it a paradise of happiness, of pure contemplation, of knowledge,
and of pleasure. Men had attained that degree of intelligence
which enabled them to live wisely and tranquility. After a
(01:32):
general disarmament had been brought about so rapid an increase
in public riches and so great an amelioration in the
well being of every citizen. Was observed that the efforts
of intelligence and labor, no longer wasted by this intellectual suicide,
(01:53):
had been directed to the conquest of new forces of nature,
and the constant improvement of civilized The human body had
become insensibly transformed, or more exactly transfigured. Nearly all men
were intelligent. They remembered with a smile the childish ambitions
(02:15):
of their ancestors, whose aspiration was to be some one
rather than some thing, and who had struggled so feverishly
for outward show. They had learned that happiness resides in
the soul, that contentment is found only in study, that
love is the son of the heart, that life is
(02:38):
short and ought not to be lived superficially. And thus
all were happy in the possession of liberty of conscience,
and careless of those things which one cannot carry away.
Woman had acquired a perfect beauty. Her form had lost
the fullness of the Greek model and had become more slender.
(03:02):
Her skin was of a translucent whiteness, Her eyes were
illuminated by the light of dreams. Her long and silky hair,
in whose deep chestnut were blended, or the ruddy tints
of the setting sun fell in waves of rippling light.
The heavy animal jaw had become idealized, the mouth had
(03:25):
grown smaller, and in the presence of its sweet smile,
at the sight of its dazzling pearls between the soft
rows of the lips, one could not understand how lovers
could have pressed such fervent kisses upon the lips of
women of earlier times, specimens of whose teeth resembling those
(03:47):
of animals, had been preserved in the museums of ethnography.
It really seemed as if a new race had come
into existence, infinitely superior to that to which Aristotle, Kepler, Victor,
Hugo Phryne, or Diana of Postiers had belonged. Thanks to
(04:11):
the progress in physiology, hygiene, and antiseptic science, as well
as to the general well being and intelligence of the race,
the duration of human life had been greatly prolonged, and
it was not unusual to see persons who had attained
the age of one hundred and fifty years. Death had
(04:33):
not been conquered, but the secret of living without growing
old had been found, and the characteristics of youth were
retained beyond the age of one hundred, but one fatherland
existed on the planet, which, like a chorus heard above
the cords of some vast harmony, marched onward to its
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high destiny, shining in the splendor of intellectual supremacy. The
internal heat of the globe, the light and warmth of
the sun, terrestrial magnetism, atmospheric electricity, interplanetary attraction, the psychic
forces of the human soul, the unknown forces which preside
(05:18):
over destinies. All these science had conquered and controlled for
the benefit of mankind. The only limits to its conquests
were the limitations of the human faculties themselves, which indeed
are feeble, especially when we compare them with those of
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certain extra terrestrial beings. All the results of this vast progress,
so slowly and gradually acquired by the toil of centuries, must,
in obedience to a law mysterious and inconceivable, for the
petty race of man, reach at last their app when
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further advance becomes impossible. The geometric curve which represents this
progress of the race falls as it rises, starting from
zero from the primitive nebulous cosmos, ascending through the ages
of planetary and human history to its lofty summit, to
(06:23):
descend thereafter into a night that knows no morrow. Yes,
all this progress, all this knowledge, all this happiness and glory,
must one day be swallowed up in oblivion, and the
voice of history itself be forever silenced. Life had a beginning,
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it must have an end. The sun of human hopes
had risen, had ascended victoriously to its meridian. It was
now to set and to disappear in endless night. To
what end? Then, all this glory, all this struggling, all
these conquests, all these vanities. If light and life must
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come to an end, Martyrs and apostles in every cause
have poured out blood upon the earth, destined also in
its turn to perish. Everything is doomed to decay, and
death must remain the final sovereign of the world. Have
you ever thought, in viewing a village cemetery, how small
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it is to contain the generations buried there From time?
Immemorable man existed before the last glacial epoch, which dates
back two hundred thousand years, and the Age of Man
extends over a period of more than two hundred and
fifty thousand years. Written history dates from yesterday. Cut and
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Polish flints have been found Ataris, proving the presence of
man on the banks of the Seine long before the
first historic record of the Gauze. The Parisians of the
close of the nineteenth century walk upon ground consecrated by
more than ten thousand years of ancestry. What remains of
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all who have swarmed in this forum of the world.
What is left of the Romans, the Greeks, than the Asiatics,
whose empires lasted for centuries? What remains of the millions
who have existed not even a handful of ashes. A
human being dies every second, or about eighty six thousand
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a day, and an equal number, or to speak more
exactly a little more than eighty six thousand are born daily.
This figure, true for the nineteenth century, applies to a
long period if we increase it proportionately to the time
the population of the globe has increased from epoch to epoch.
(09:06):
In the time of Alexander, there were perhaps a thousand
million living beings on the surface of the Earth at
the end of the nineteenth century, fifteen hundred million in
the twenty second century, two thousand million in the twenty ninth,
three thousand million. At its maximum, the population of the
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globe had reached one hundred thousand million. Then it had
begun to decrease. Of the innumerable human bodies which have lived,
not one remains. All have been resolved into their elements,
which have again formed new individuals. All that fills the
passing day, labour, pleasure, grief and happiness vanishes with it
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into oblivion. Time flies, and the past exists no longer.
What has been has disappeared in the gulf of eternity.
The visible world is vanishing every instant. Only the invisible
is real and enduring. During the ten million years of history,
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the human race, surviving generation after generation as if it
were a real thing, had been greatly modified. From both
a physical and moral point of view. It had always
remained master of the world, and no new race had
aspired to its sovereignty. For races do not come down
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from heaven or rise from hell. No minerva is born
full armed, No venus awakes full grown in a shell
of pearl on the sea shore. Everything grows, and the
human race, with its long line of ancestry, was from
the very beginning the natural result of the vital evolution
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of the planet. Under the law of progress, it had
emerged from the limbo of animalism, and by the continued
action of this same law of progress, it had become
gradually perfected, modified and refined. But the time had come
when the conditions of terrestrial life began to fail, when humanity,
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instead of advancing, was itself to enter upon its downward path.
The internal heat of the globe still considerable in the
nineteenth century, although it had ceased to have any effect
upon surface temperature, which was maintained solely by the Sun,
had slowly diminished, and the Earth had at last become
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entirely cold. This had not directly influenced the physical conditions
of terrestrial life, which continued to depend upon the atmosphere
and solar heat. The cooling of the Earth cannot bring
about the end of the world imperceptibly. From century to century,
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the Earth's surface had become leveled the action of the rain, snow, frost,
and solar heat upon the mountains. The waters of torrents,
rivulets and rivers had slowly carried to the sea the
debris of every continental elevation. The bottom of the sea
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had risen, and in nine million years, the mountains had
almost entirely disappeared. Meanwhile, the planet had grown old faster
than the Sun, the conditions favorable to life had disappeared
more rapidly than the solar light and heat. This conception
of the planet's future conforms to our present knowledge of
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the universe. Doubtless, our logic is radically incomplete purile, even
in comparison with the real and eternal truth, and might
be justly paired with that of two ants talking together
about the history of France, but confessing the modesty which
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befits the finite in presence of the infinite, and acknowledging
our nothingness as compared with the universe. We cannot avoid
the necessity of appearing logical to ourselves. We cannot assume
that the abdication of reason is a better proof of
wisdom than the use of it. We believe that an
(13:30):
intelligent order presides over the universe and controls the destiny
of worlds and their inhabitants, that the larger members of
the Solar System must last longer than the lesser ones,
and consequently, that the life of each planet is not
equally dependent upon the Sun, and cannot therefore continue indefinitely,
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any more than the Sun itself. Moreover, direct toobs of
other confirms this general conception of the universe. The Earth,
an extinct Sun, has called more rapidly than the Sun. Jupiter,
so immense, is still in its youth. The Moon, smaller
(14:16):
than Mars, has reached the more advanced stages of astral life,
perhaps even has reached its end. Mars, smaller than the Earth,
is more advanced than the Earth, and less so than
the Moon. Our planet, in its turn, must die before Jupiter,
and this also must take place before the Sun becomes extinct.
(14:40):
Consider in fact the relative sizes of the Earth and
the other planets. The diameter of Jupiter is eleven times
that of the Earth, and the diameter of the Sun
about ten times that of Jupiter. The diameter of Saturn
is nine times that of the Earth. It seems to us,
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therefore natural to believe that Jupiter and Saturn will endure
longer than our planet, Venus, Mars, or Mercury. Those pigmies
of the system events justified these deductions of science. Dangers
lay in wait for us in the immensity of space.
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A thousand accidents might have befallen us in the form
of comets, extinct or flaming suns, nebulae, et cetera. But
the planet did not perish by an accident. Old age
awaited the Earth as it waits for all other things,
and it grew old faster than the Sun. It lost
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the conditions necessary for life more rapidly than the central
luminary lost its heat and its light. During the long
periods of its vital splendor, when leading the chorus of
the worlds, it bore on its surface and intelligent race
victors over the blind forces of nature. A protecting atmosphere
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beneath which went on all the play of life and happiness,
guarded its flourishing empires. An essential element of nature, water
regulated terrestrial life. From the very beginning. This element had
entered into the composition of every substance, vegetable, animal, and human.
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It formed the active principle of atmospheric circulation. It was
the chief agent in the changes of climate and seasons.
It was the sovereign of the terrestrial state. From century
to century, the quantity of water in the sea, the rivers,
and the atmosphere diminished. A portion of the rain water
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was absorbed by the Earth and did not return to
the sea. For instead of flowing into the sea over
imperable strata and so forming either springs or subterranean and
submarine water coursers, it had filtered deeper within the surface,
insensibly filling every void, every fissure, and saturating the rocks
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to a great depth. So long as the internal heat
of the globe was sufficient to prevent the indefinite descent
of this water and to convert it into vapor, a
considerable quantity remained upon the surface. But the time came
when the internal heat of the globe was entirely dispersed
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in space and offered no obstacle to infiltration. Then the
surface water gradually diminished. It united with the rocks in
the form of hydrates, and thus disappeared from circulation. Indeed,
were the loss of the surface water of the globe
to amount only to a few tents of a millimeter yearly,
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in ten million years, none would remain. This vapor of
water in the atmosphere had made warmth in life possible.
With its disappearance came cold and death. If at present
the aqueous vapor of the atmosphere should disappear, the heat
of the sun would be incapable of maintaining animal and
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vegetable life, life which moreover could not exist inasmuch as
vegetables and animals are chiefly composed of water. At this
point the author provides the following extended footnote. Of all
terrestrial substances, water has the greatest specific heat. It cools
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more slowly than any other. Its specific heat is four
times greater than that of air. When the temperature of
a kilogram of water falls one degree, it raises the
temperature of four kilograms of air one degree. But water
is seven hundred and seventy times heavier than air, so
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that if we compare two equal volumes of water and air,
we find that a cubic meter of water, in losing
one degree of temperature, raises the temperature of seven hundred
and seventy times four or three thousand and eighty cubic
meters of air by the same amount. This is the
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explanation of the influence of the sea in modifying the
climate of continents. The heat of summer is stored in
the ocean and is slowly given out in winter. This
explains why islands and sea shores have no extremes of climate.
The heat of summer is tempered by the breezes, and
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the cold of winter is alleviated by the heat stored
in the water. End of footnote. The invisible vapor of
water distributed through the atmosphere exercises the greatest possible influence
on temperature. In quantity, this vapor seems almost negligible, since
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oxygen and nitrogen alone form ninety nine and one half
percent of the air we breathe, and the remaining one
half of one percent contains besides the vapor of water,
carbonic acid, ammonia, and other substances, there is scarcely more
than a quarter of one percent of aqueous vapor. If
(20:35):
we consider the constituent atoms of the atmosphere, the physicist
tells us that for two hundred atoms of oxygen and nitrogen,
there is scarcely one of water vapor. But this one
atom has eighty times more absorbptive energy than the two
hundred others. The radiant heat of the Sun, after traversing
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the atmosphere, warms the surface of the The heat waves
reflected from the warmed earth are not lost in space.
The aqueous vapor atoms, acting like a barrier, turn them
back and preserve them for our benefits. This is one
of the most brilliant and the most fruitful discoveries of
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modern physics. The oxygen and nitrogen molecules of dry air
do not oppose the radiation of heat. But as we
have just said, one molecule of water vapor possesses eighty
times the absorptive energy of the other two hundred molecules
of dry air, and consequently such a molecule is sixteen
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thousand times more effacious in so far as the conservation
of heat is concerned, so that it is the vapor
of water and not the air properly speaking, which regulates
the conditions of life upon the Earth. If one should
remove this vapor from the surrounding atmosphere, a loss of
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heat would go on at the surface, similar to that
which takes place in high altitudes. For the atmosphere would
then be as powerless to retain heat as a vacuum is.
A cold like that at the surface of the Moon
would be the result. The soil would still receive heat
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directly from the sun, but even during the daytime, this
heat would not be retained, and after sunset the Earth
would be exposed to the glacial cold of space, which
appears to be about two hundred and seventy three degrees
below zero. Thus, vegetable animal and human life would be
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impossible if it had not already become so through the
very disappearance of the water. Certainly, we may and must
admit that water has not been so essential a condition
of life on all the world worlds of space as
it has been upon our own. The resources of nature
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are not limited by human observation. There must be. There
are in the limitless realms of space millions and millions
of suns differing from ours, systems of worlds in which
other substances, other chemical combinations, other physical and mechanical conditions,
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other environments have produced beings absolutely unlike ourselves, living another life,
possessed of other senses, differing in organization from ourselves, far
more than the fish or mollusk of the deep sea
differs from the bird or the butterfly. But we are
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here studying the conditions of terrestrial life, and these conditions
are determined by the constitution of the planet itself. The
gradual filtration of water into the interior of the Earth
keeping pace, with the radiation of the Earth's original heat
into space the slow formation of oxides and hydrates in
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about eight million years, reduced by three fourths the quantity
of water in circulation on the Earth's surface. As a
consequence of the disappearance of continental elevations, whose debris, obeying
passively the laws of gravity, were slowly carried by the rain,
the wind, and the streams to the sea. The Earth
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had become almost level and the seas more shallow. But
as evaporation and the formation of aqueous vapor goes on
only from the surface and does not depend upon the depth,
the atmosphere was still rich in vapor. The conditions of
life upon the planet were then similar to those we
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now observe on Mars, where we see that great ocean
have disappeared or have become mere inland seas of slight depth,
that the continents of vast plains, that evaporation is active,
that a considerable quantity of aqueous vapor still exists, that
rains are rare, that snows abound in the polar regions
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and are almost entirely melted during the summer of each year.
In short, a world still habitable by beings analogous to
those that people the Earth. This epoch marked the apogy
of the human race. Thenceforward, the conditions of life grew
less favorable, and from century to century, from generation to generation,
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underwent marked change vegetable, an animal species, the human race itself, everything,
in short, became transformed. But whereas hitherto these metamorphoses had enriched,
embellished and perfected life, the day had come when decadence
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was to begin. During more than one hundred thousand years,
it was insensible, for the parabolic curve of life did
not suddenly fall away from its highest point. Humanity had
reached a degree of civilization, of intellectual greatness, of physical
and moral well being, of scientific, artistic and industrial perfection,
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incomparably beyond anythink of which we know. For several million years,
the central heat of the globe had been utilized in
winter for general warming purposes by towns, villages, manufactories, and
every variety of industry. When this failing source of heat
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had finally become exhausted, the heat of the sun had
been stored subject to the wants of the race. Hydrogen
had been extracted from sea water. The energy of waterfalls,
and subsequently that of the tides, had been transformed into
light and heat. And the entire planet had become the
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plaything of science, which disposed at will of all its elements.
The human senses perfected to a degree which we should
now qualify as supernatural, and those newly acquired mentioned above become,
with the lapse of time more highly developed. Humanity released
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more and more from the empire of matter, a new
system of alimentation, the spirit governing the body, and the
gross appetites of former times forgotten, the psychic faculties in
perpetual play, acting at a distance over the entire surface
of the globe, communicating under certain conditions with even the
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inhabitants of MoU and venus, apparatus which we cannot imagine
replacing those optical instruments with which physical astronomy had begun
its investigations. The whole world made new in its perceptions
and interests, an enlightened social condition from which envy and jealousy,
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as well as robbery, suffering, and murder, had disappeared. This, indeed,
was a real humanity of flesh and bone, like our own,
but as far above it in intellectual supremacy, as we
are above the simians of the tertiary epoch. Human intelligence
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had so completely mastered the forces of nature that it
seemed as if so glorious an error never could come
to an end. The decrease in the amount of water, however,
commenced to alarm even the most optimistic. The great oceans
had disappeared. The crust of the earth, once so thin
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and mobile, had gradually increased in thickness, and notwithstanding the
internal pressure, the earth had become almost completely solidified. Oscillations
of the surface were no longer possible, for it had
become entirely rigid. The seas which remained were confined to
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the tropics. The poles were frozen. The continents of olden times,
where so many other foci of civilization had shone so brilliantly,
were immense deserts. Step by step, humanity had migrated towards
the tropical zone, still watered by streams, lakes, and seas.
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There were no more mountains, no more condensers of snow.
As the quantity of water and rainfall diminished, and as
the springs failed and the aqueous vapor of the atmosphere
grew less, vegetation had entirely changed its aspect, increasing the
volume of its leaves and the length of its roots,
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seeking in every way to absorb the humidity necessary for life.
Species which had not been able to adjust themselves to
the new conditions had vanished. The rest were transformed. Not
a tree or a plant with which we are familiar
was to be seen. There were no oaks, nor ashes,
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nor elms nor willows, and the landscape bore no resemblance
to that of today. Rudimentary species of cryptogams only survived
like changes had taken place in the animal kingdom. Animal
forms had been greatly modified. The wild species had either
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disappeared or been domesticated. The scarcity of water had modified
the food of Herbivora as well as carnivora. The most
recent species evolved from those which preceded them were smaller,
with less fat and a larger skeleton. The number of
plants had sensibly decreased. Less of the carbonic acid of
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the air was absorbed, and a proportionally greater quantity existed
in the atmosphere. As for the human race, its metamorphosis
was so absolute that it was with an astonishment bordering
on incredulity, that one saw in geological museums fossil specimens
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of men of the twentieth or one hundredth century, with
great brutal teeth and coarse intestines. It was difficult to
admit that organisms so gross could really be the ancestors
of intellectual man. Though millions of years had passed, the
Sun still poured upon the Earth almost the same quantity
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of heat and light. At most, the loss had not
exceeded one tenth. The only difference was that the Sun
appeared a little yellower and a little smaller. The Moon
still revolved about the Earth, but more slowly. Its distance
from the Earth had increased, and its apparent diameter had diminished.
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At the same time, the period of the Earth's rotation
had lengthened. This slower rotatory motion of the Earth, increase
in the distance of the Moon, and lengthening of the
lunar month were the results of the friction of the tides,
whose action resembled that of a break. If the Earth
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and the Moon last long enough and there are still
oceans and tides, calculation would enable us to predict that
the time would come when the periodic time of the
Earth's rotation would finally equal the lunar month, so that
there would be but five and one quarter days in
the year. The Earth would then always present the same
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side to the Moon, but this would require more than
one hundred and fifty million years. The period of which
we are speaking ten million years, is but a fifteenth
of the above, and the time of the Earth's rotation,
instead of being seventy times, was only four and one
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half times greater than it now is, or about one
hundred and ten hours. These long days exposed the Earth
to the prolonged action of the Sun, but except in
those regions where its rays were normal to the surface,
that is to say, in the equatorial zone between the
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two tropical circles, this exposure availed nothing. The obliquity of
the ecliptic had not changed, the inclination of the axis
of the U S Earth being the same about two degrees,
and the changes in the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit
had produced no sensible effect upon the seasons or the climates.
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The human form, food respiration, organic functions, physical and intellectual life, ideas, opinions, religion, science,
language all had changed. Of present man, almost nothing survived.
End of chapter three recording by Steve Chilvers, Norwige, England,
Section twelve 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
(00:22):
World by Camille Flammarion, Part two, Chapter three. While these
great changes in the planets were taking place, humanity had
continued to advance. For progress is the supreme law terrestrial life,
which began with the rudimentary protozoans without mouths, blind death, mute,
(00:48):
and almost wholly destitute of sensation, had acquired successively the
marvelous organs of sense, and had finally reached its climax
in man, who, having also grown more perfect with the
lapse of centuries, had risen from his primitive savage condition
(01:09):
as the slave of nature, to the position of a
sovereign who ruled the world by mind, and who had
made it a paradise of happiness, of pure contemplation, of knowledge,
and of pleasure. Men had attained that degree of intelligence
which enabled them to live wisely and tranquility. After a
(01:32):
general disarmament had been brought about so rapid an increase
in public riches and so great an amelioration in the
well being of every citizen. Was observed that the efforts
of intelligence and labor, no longer wasted by this intellectual suicide,
(01:53):
had been directed to the conquest of new forces of nature,
and the constant improvement of civilized The human body had
become insensibly transformed, or more exactly transfigured. Nearly all men
were intelligent. They remembered with a smile the childish ambitions
(02:15):
of their ancestors, whose aspiration was to be some one
rather than some thing, and who had struggled so feverishly
for outward show. They had learned that happiness resides in
the soul, that contentment is found only in study, that
love is the son of the heart, that life is
(02:38):
short and ought not to be lived superficially. And thus
all were happy in the possession of liberty of conscience,
and careless of those things which one cannot carry away.
Woman had acquired a perfect beauty. Her form had lost
the fullness of the Greek model and had become more slender.
(03:02):
Her skin was of a translucent whiteness, Her eyes were
illuminated by the light of dreams. Her long and silky hair,
in whose deep chestnut were blended, or the ruddy tints
of the setting sun fell in waves of rippling light.
The heavy animal jaw had become idealized, the mouth had
(03:25):
grown smaller, and in the presence of its sweet smile,
at the sight of its dazzling pearls between the soft
rows of the lips, one could not understand how lovers
could have pressed such fervent kisses upon the lips of
women of earlier times, specimens of whose teeth resembling those
(03:47):
of animals, had been preserved in the museums of ethnography.
It really seemed as if a new race had come
into existence, infinitely superior to that to which Aristotle, Kepler, Victor,
Hugo Phryne, or Diana of Postiers had belonged. Thanks to
(04:11):
the progress in physiology, hygiene, and antiseptic science, as well
as to the general well being and intelligence of the race,
the duration of human life had been greatly prolonged, and
it was not unusual to see persons who had attained
the age of one hundred and fifty years. Death had
(04:33):
not been conquered, but the secret of living without growing
old had been found, and the characteristics of youth were
retained beyond the age of one hundred, but one fatherland
existed on the planet, which, like a chorus heard above
the cords of some vast harmony, marched onward to its
(04:54):
high destiny, shining in the splendor of intellectual supremacy. The
internal heat of the globe, the light and warmth of
the sun, terrestrial magnetism, atmospheric electricity, interplanetary attraction, the psychic
forces of the human soul, the unknown forces which preside
(05:18):
over destinies. All these science had conquered and controlled for
the benefit of mankind. The only limits to its conquests
were the limitations of the human faculties themselves, which indeed
are feeble, especially when we compare them with those of
(05:39):
certain extra terrestrial beings. All the results of this vast progress,
so slowly and gradually acquired by the toil of centuries, must,
in obedience to a law mysterious and inconceivable, for the
petty race of man, reach at last their app when
(06:01):
further advance becomes impossible. The geometric curve which represents this
progress of the race falls as it rises, starting from
zero from the primitive nebulous cosmos, ascending through the ages
of planetary and human history to its lofty summit, to
(06:23):
descend thereafter into a night that knows no morrow. Yes,
all this progress, all this knowledge, all this happiness and glory,
must one day be swallowed up in oblivion, and the
voice of history itself be forever silenced. Life had a beginning,
(06:45):
it must have an end. The sun of human hopes
had risen, had ascended victoriously to its meridian. It was
now to set and to disappear in endless night. To
what end? Then, all this glory, all this struggling, all
these conquests, all these vanities. If light and life must
(07:10):
come to an end, Martyrs and apostles in every cause
have poured out blood upon the earth, destined also in
its turn to perish. Everything is doomed to decay, and
death must remain the final sovereign of the world. Have
you ever thought, in viewing a village cemetery, how small
(07:33):
it is to contain the generations buried there From time?
Immemorable man existed before the last glacial epoch, which dates
back two hundred thousand years, and the Age of Man
extends over a period of more than two hundred and
fifty thousand years. Written history dates from yesterday. Cut and
(07:57):
Polish flints have been found Ataris, proving the presence of
man on the banks of the Seine long before the
first historic record of the Gauze. The Parisians of the
close of the nineteenth century walk upon ground consecrated by
more than ten thousand years of ancestry. What remains of
(08:19):
all who have swarmed in this forum of the world.
What is left of the Romans, the Greeks, than the Asiatics,
whose empires lasted for centuries? What remains of the millions
who have existed not even a handful of ashes. A
human being dies every second, or about eighty six thousand
(08:42):
a day, and an equal number, or to speak more
exactly a little more than eighty six thousand are born daily.
This figure, true for the nineteenth century, applies to a
long period if we increase it proportionately to the time
the population of the globe has increased from epoch to epoch.
(09:06):
In the time of Alexander, there were perhaps a thousand
million living beings on the surface of the Earth at
the end of the nineteenth century, fifteen hundred million in
the twenty second century, two thousand million in the twenty ninth,
three thousand million. At its maximum, the population of the
(09:28):
globe had reached one hundred thousand million. Then it had
begun to decrease. Of the innumerable human bodies which have lived,
not one remains. All have been resolved into their elements,
which have again formed new individuals. All that fills the
passing day, labour, pleasure, grief and happiness vanishes with it
(09:54):
into oblivion. Time flies, and the past exists no longer.
What has been has disappeared in the gulf of eternity.
The visible world is vanishing every instant. Only the invisible
is real and enduring. During the ten million years of history,
(10:14):
the human race, surviving generation after generation as if it
were a real thing, had been greatly modified. From both
a physical and moral point of view. It had always
remained master of the world, and no new race had
aspired to its sovereignty. For races do not come down
(10:36):
from heaven or rise from hell. No minerva is born
full armed, No venus awakes full grown in a shell
of pearl on the sea shore. Everything grows, and the
human race, with its long line of ancestry, was from
the very beginning the natural result of the vital evolution
(10:57):
of the planet. Under the law of progress, it had
emerged from the limbo of animalism, and by the continued
action of this same law of progress, it had become
gradually perfected, modified and refined. But the time had come
when the conditions of terrestrial life began to fail, when humanity,
(11:21):
instead of advancing, was itself to enter upon its downward path.
The internal heat of the globe still considerable in the
nineteenth century, although it had ceased to have any effect
upon surface temperature, which was maintained solely by the Sun,
had slowly diminished, and the Earth had at last become
(11:44):
entirely cold. This had not directly influenced the physical conditions
of terrestrial life, which continued to depend upon the atmosphere
and solar heat. The cooling of the Earth cannot bring
about the end of the world imperceptibly. From century to century,
(12:05):
the Earth's surface had become leveled the action of the rain, snow, frost,
and solar heat upon the mountains. The waters of torrents,
rivulets and rivers had slowly carried to the sea the
debris of every continental elevation. The bottom of the sea
(12:25):
had risen, and in nine million years, the mountains had
almost entirely disappeared. Meanwhile, the planet had grown old faster
than the Sun, the conditions favorable to life had disappeared
more rapidly than the solar light and heat. This conception
of the planet's future conforms to our present knowledge of
(12:48):
the universe. Doubtless, our logic is radically incomplete purile, even
in comparison with the real and eternal truth, and might
be justly paired with that of two ants talking together
about the history of France, but confessing the modesty which
(13:08):
befits the finite in presence of the infinite, and acknowledging
our nothingness as compared with the universe. We cannot avoid
the necessity of appearing logical to ourselves. We cannot assume
that the abdication of reason is a better proof of
wisdom than the use of it. We believe that an
(13:30):
intelligent order presides over the universe and controls the destiny
of worlds and their inhabitants, that the larger members of
the Solar System must last longer than the lesser ones,
and consequently, that the life of each planet is not
equally dependent upon the Sun, and cannot therefore continue indefinitely,
(13:55):
any more than the Sun itself. Moreover, direct toobs of
other confirms this general conception of the universe. The Earth,
an extinct Sun, has called more rapidly than the Sun. Jupiter,
so immense, is still in its youth. The Moon, smaller
(14:16):
than Mars, has reached the more advanced stages of astral life,
perhaps even has reached its end. Mars, smaller than the Earth,
is more advanced than the Earth, and less so than
the Moon. Our planet, in its turn, must die before Jupiter,
and this also must take place before the Sun becomes extinct.
(14:40):
Consider in fact the relative sizes of the Earth and
the other planets. The diameter of Jupiter is eleven times
that of the Earth, and the diameter of the Sun
about ten times that of Jupiter. The diameter of Saturn
is nine times that of the Earth. It seems to us,
(15:01):
therefore natural to believe that Jupiter and Saturn will endure
longer than our planet, Venus, Mars, or Mercury. Those pigmies
of the system events justified these deductions of science. Dangers
lay in wait for us in the immensity of space.
(15:22):
A thousand accidents might have befallen us in the form
of comets, extinct or flaming suns, nebulae, et cetera. But
the planet did not perish by an accident. Old age
awaited the Earth as it waits for all other things,
and it grew old faster than the Sun. It lost
(15:43):
the conditions necessary for life more rapidly than the central
luminary lost its heat and its light. During the long
periods of its vital splendor, when leading the chorus of
the worlds, it bore on its surface and intelligent race
victors over the blind forces of nature. A protecting atmosphere
(16:07):
beneath which went on all the play of life and happiness,
guarded its flourishing empires. An essential element of nature, water
regulated terrestrial life. From the very beginning. This element had
entered into the composition of every substance, vegetable, animal, and human.
(16:29):
It formed the active principle of atmospheric circulation. It was
the chief agent in the changes of climate and seasons.
It was the sovereign of the terrestrial state. From century
to century, the quantity of water in the sea, the rivers,
and the atmosphere diminished. A portion of the rain water
(16:52):
was absorbed by the Earth and did not return to
the sea. For instead of flowing into the sea over
imperable strata and so forming either springs or subterranean and
submarine water coursers, it had filtered deeper within the surface,
insensibly filling every void, every fissure, and saturating the rocks
(17:16):
to a great depth. So long as the internal heat
of the globe was sufficient to prevent the indefinite descent
of this water and to convert it into vapor, a
considerable quantity remained upon the surface. But the time came
when the internal heat of the globe was entirely dispersed
(17:36):
in space and offered no obstacle to infiltration. Then the
surface water gradually diminished. It united with the rocks in
the form of hydrates, and thus disappeared from circulation. Indeed,
were the loss of the surface water of the globe
to amount only to a few tents of a millimeter yearly,
(18:00):
in ten million years, none would remain. This vapor of
water in the atmosphere had made warmth in life possible.
With its disappearance came cold and death. If at present
the aqueous vapor of the atmosphere should disappear, the heat
of the sun would be incapable of maintaining animal and
(18:21):
vegetable life, life which moreover could not exist inasmuch as
vegetables and animals are chiefly composed of water. At this
point the author provides the following extended footnote. Of all
terrestrial substances, water has the greatest specific heat. It cools
(18:44):
more slowly than any other. Its specific heat is four
times greater than that of air. When the temperature of
a kilogram of water falls one degree, it raises the
temperature of four kilograms of air one degree. But water
is seven hundred and seventy times heavier than air, so
(19:05):
that if we compare two equal volumes of water and air,
we find that a cubic meter of water, in losing
one degree of temperature, raises the temperature of seven hundred
and seventy times four or three thousand and eighty cubic
meters of air by the same amount. This is the
(19:27):
explanation of the influence of the sea in modifying the
climate of continents. The heat of summer is stored in
the ocean and is slowly given out in winter. This
explains why islands and sea shores have no extremes of climate.
The heat of summer is tempered by the breezes, and
(19:50):
the cold of winter is alleviated by the heat stored
in the water. End of footnote. The invisible vapor of
water distributed through the atmosphere exercises the greatest possible influence
on temperature. In quantity, this vapor seems almost negligible, since
(20:11):
oxygen and nitrogen alone form ninety nine and one half
percent of the air we breathe, and the remaining one
half of one percent contains besides the vapor of water,
carbonic acid, ammonia, and other substances, there is scarcely more
than a quarter of one percent of aqueous vapor. If
(20:35):
we consider the constituent atoms of the atmosphere, the physicist
tells us that for two hundred atoms of oxygen and nitrogen,
there is scarcely one of water vapor. But this one
atom has eighty times more absorbptive energy than the two
hundred others. The radiant heat of the Sun, after traversing
(20:57):
the atmosphere, warms the surface of the The heat waves
reflected from the warmed earth are not lost in space.
The aqueous vapor atoms, acting like a barrier, turn them
back and preserve them for our benefits. This is one
of the most brilliant and the most fruitful discoveries of
(21:18):
modern physics. The oxygen and nitrogen molecules of dry air
do not oppose the radiation of heat. But as we
have just said, one molecule of water vapor possesses eighty
times the absorptive energy of the other two hundred molecules
of dry air, and consequently such a molecule is sixteen
(21:41):
thousand times more effacious in so far as the conservation
of heat is concerned, so that it is the vapor
of water and not the air properly speaking, which regulates
the conditions of life upon the Earth. If one should
remove this vapor from the surrounding atmosphere, a loss of
(22:03):
heat would go on at the surface, similar to that
which takes place in high altitudes. For the atmosphere would
then be as powerless to retain heat as a vacuum is.
A cold like that at the surface of the Moon
would be the result. The soil would still receive heat
(22:23):
directly from the sun, but even during the daytime, this
heat would not be retained, and after sunset the Earth
would be exposed to the glacial cold of space, which
appears to be about two hundred and seventy three degrees
below zero. Thus, vegetable animal and human life would be
(22:45):
impossible if it had not already become so through the
very disappearance of the water. Certainly, we may and must
admit that water has not been so essential a condition
of life on all the world worlds of space as
it has been upon our own. The resources of nature
(23:06):
are not limited by human observation. There must be. There
are in the limitless realms of space millions and millions
of suns differing from ours, systems of worlds in which
other substances, other chemical combinations, other physical and mechanical conditions,
(23:27):
other environments have produced beings absolutely unlike ourselves, living another life,
possessed of other senses, differing in organization from ourselves, far
more than the fish or mollusk of the deep sea
differs from the bird or the butterfly. But we are
(23:47):
here studying the conditions of terrestrial life, and these conditions
are determined by the constitution of the planet itself. The
gradual filtration of water into the interior of the Earth
keeping pace, with the radiation of the Earth's original heat
into space the slow formation of oxides and hydrates in
(24:11):
about eight million years, reduced by three fourths the quantity
of water in circulation on the Earth's surface. As a
consequence of the disappearance of continental elevations, whose debris, obeying
passively the laws of gravity, were slowly carried by the rain,
the wind, and the streams to the sea. The Earth
(24:35):
had become almost level and the seas more shallow. But
as evaporation and the formation of aqueous vapor goes on
only from the surface and does not depend upon the depth,
the atmosphere was still rich in vapor. The conditions of
life upon the planet were then similar to those we
(24:56):
now observe on Mars, where we see that great ocean
have disappeared or have become mere inland seas of slight depth,
that the continents of vast plains, that evaporation is active,
that a considerable quantity of aqueous vapor still exists, that
rains are rare, that snows abound in the polar regions
(25:20):
and are almost entirely melted during the summer of each year.
In short, a world still habitable by beings analogous to
those that people the Earth. This epoch marked the apogy
of the human race. Thenceforward, the conditions of life grew
less favorable, and from century to century, from generation to generation,
(25:45):
underwent marked change vegetable, an animal species, the human race itself, everything,
in short, became transformed. But whereas hitherto these metamorphoses had enriched,
embellished and perfected life, the day had come when decadence
(26:06):
was to begin. During more than one hundred thousand years,
it was insensible, for the parabolic curve of life did
not suddenly fall away from its highest point. Humanity had
reached a degree of civilization, of intellectual greatness, of physical
and moral well being, of scientific, artistic and industrial perfection,
(26:31):
incomparably beyond anythink of which we know. For several million years,
the central heat of the globe had been utilized in
winter for general warming purposes by towns, villages, manufactories, and
every variety of industry. When this failing source of heat
(26:52):
had finally become exhausted, the heat of the sun had
been stored subject to the wants of the race. Hydrogen
had been extracted from sea water. The energy of waterfalls,
and subsequently that of the tides, had been transformed into
light and heat. And the entire planet had become the
(27:14):
plaything of science, which disposed at will of all its elements.
The human senses perfected to a degree which we should
now qualify as supernatural, and those newly acquired mentioned above become,
with the lapse of time more highly developed. Humanity released
(27:36):
more and more from the empire of matter, a new
system of alimentation, the spirit governing the body, and the
gross appetites of former times forgotten, the psychic faculties in
perpetual play, acting at a distance over the entire surface
of the globe, communicating under certain conditions with even the
(27:59):
inhabitants of MoU and venus, apparatus which we cannot imagine
replacing those optical instruments with which physical astronomy had begun
its investigations. The whole world made new in its perceptions
and interests, an enlightened social condition from which envy and jealousy,
(28:20):
as well as robbery, suffering, and murder, had disappeared. This, indeed,
was a real humanity of flesh and bone, like our own,
but as far above it in intellectual supremacy, as we
are above the simians of the tertiary epoch. Human intelligence
(28:41):
had so completely mastered the forces of nature that it
seemed as if so glorious an error never could come
to an end. The decrease in the amount of water, however,
commenced to alarm even the most optimistic. The great oceans
had disappeared. The crust of the earth, once so thin
(29:02):
and mobile, had gradually increased in thickness, and notwithstanding the
internal pressure, the earth had become almost completely solidified. Oscillations
of the surface were no longer possible, for it had
become entirely rigid. The seas which remained were confined to
(29:23):
the tropics. The poles were frozen. The continents of olden times,
where so many other foci of civilization had shone so brilliantly,
were immense deserts. Step by step, humanity had migrated towards
the tropical zone, still watered by streams, lakes, and seas.
(29:46):
There were no more mountains, no more condensers of snow.
As the quantity of water and rainfall diminished, and as
the springs failed and the aqueous vapor of the atmosphere
grew less, vegetation had entirely changed its aspect, increasing the
volume of its leaves and the length of its roots,
(30:09):
seeking in every way to absorb the humidity necessary for life.
Species which had not been able to adjust themselves to
the new conditions had vanished. The rest were transformed. Not
a tree or a plant with which we are familiar
was to be seen. There were no oaks, nor ashes,
(30:31):
nor elms nor willows, and the landscape bore no resemblance
to that of today. Rudimentary species of cryptogams only survived
like changes had taken place in the animal kingdom. Animal
forms had been greatly modified. The wild species had either
(30:52):
disappeared or been domesticated. The scarcity of water had modified
the food of Herbivora as well as carnivora. The most
recent species evolved from those which preceded them were smaller,
with less fat and a larger skeleton. The number of
plants had sensibly decreased. Less of the carbonic acid of
(31:16):
the air was absorbed, and a proportionally greater quantity existed
in the atmosphere. As for the human race, its metamorphosis
was so absolute that it was with an astonishment bordering
on incredulity, that one saw in geological museums fossil specimens
(31:37):
of men of the twentieth or one hundredth century, with
great brutal teeth and coarse intestines. It was difficult to
admit that organisms so gross could really be the ancestors
of intellectual man. Though millions of years had passed, the
Sun still poured upon the Earth almost the same quantity
(32:00):
of heat and light. At most, the loss had not
exceeded one tenth. The only difference was that the Sun
appeared a little yellower and a little smaller. The Moon
still revolved about the Earth, but more slowly. Its distance
from the Earth had increased, and its apparent diameter had diminished.
(32:24):
At the same time, the period of the Earth's rotation
had lengthened. This slower rotatory motion of the Earth, increase
in the distance of the Moon, and lengthening of the
lunar month were the results of the friction of the tides,
whose action resembled that of a break. If the Earth
(32:44):
and the Moon last long enough and there are still
oceans and tides, calculation would enable us to predict that
the time would come when the periodic time of the
Earth's rotation would finally equal the lunar month, so that
there would be but five and one quarter days in
the year. The Earth would then always present the same
(33:08):
side to the Moon, but this would require more than
one hundred and fifty million years. The period of which
we are speaking ten million years, is but a fifteenth
of the above, and the time of the Earth's rotation,
instead of being seventy times, was only four and one
(33:28):
half times greater than it now is, or about one
hundred and ten hours. These long days exposed the Earth
to the prolonged action of the Sun, but except in
those regions where its rays were normal to the surface,
that is to say, in the equatorial zone between the
(33:48):
two tropical circles, this exposure availed nothing. The obliquity of
the ecliptic had not changed, the inclination of the axis
of the U S Earth being the same about two degrees,
and the changes in the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit
had produced no sensible effect upon the seasons or the climates.
(34:12):
The human form, food respiration, organic functions, physical and intellectual life, ideas, opinions, religion, science,
language all had changed. Of present man, almost nothing survived.
End of chapter three recording by Steve Chilvers, Norwige, England,
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