The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “There social life was rather mixed up. There were numerous divisions of society and the lowest class were what he called ‘slaves’. He convinced us much against our unbelief to accept the astounding fact, that the ‘slaves’ were required to serve their masters as mere animals, without privileges of any sort. Perhaps you cannot conceive of the utter foreignness and absurdity that this statement struck in our minds. We can hardly credit that at one time man could treat any of his fellow men in such a vile way. . . . but then, neither can we conceive of war or crime. Only our ancient records tell us of the one-time existence of those things that bring up in our hearts a vast pity for early man and a sort of small anger that he should have been so queerly constituted. Then, of course, logical reasoning shows that intellect, with its contemporary growth of mere animalism, must pass through cycles of that kind.

  “Well, to get on with the story. They had a religion in those days, a religion that queerly mixed up a creed of ‘brotherhood’ with a worship of a three-part God. The Man from the Dawn was unable himself to clearly explain his odd conception of a ‘three-part God,’ but he told us the idea had been their heritage and was supposed to have originated with a man known as Ewalsus Criss, of pre-ice times. . . .”

  “Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Boswell suddenly.

  “What?” queried Monituperal.

  “Ewalsus Criss is evidently the corruption of our name for the founder of one of our religions, Jesus Christ,” continued Boswell excitedly. “It seems the English language which we speak survived in some small way through that ice-age. Just before you used the word ‘slave’ which is a strictly English word.”

  Boswell and the professor looked at each other in wonder. The earth of a hundred thousand years after them still flourished the Christian Religion and some English and their life was a curious counterpart of the life they had known. Seemingly, the maiden attempts of the twentieth century civilization to abolish and outlaw warfare had failed utterly in their humanitarian aim. The things Monituperal had just told them that he had gotten from the records left by the Man from the Dawn pointed to the depressing fact that thousands of years of advancement after the twentieth century had failed to eliminate human warfare.

  “Does the human race advance so slowly?” asked Boswell bitterly, speaking aloud, but more to himself than to the other two. “My fondest dream of the future when I lived my other life was that surely before many more centuries had passed, warfare would be a thing of the past. My one soothing consolation in that life that grated so harshly with its selfishness, greed, petty conceit, and strife was that beyond a doubt, the people of several generations ahead would live a better life, would know more of true happiness. But you tell us, Monituperal, that even a hundred thousand years after our time there was still crime, disagreement, and worst of all, war with all the horrible ruin that science could bring it in that long period of time.”

  Monituperal shook his head sadly. “My young friend, there is one thing that perhaps you never suspected because of the tiny bit of human history that you could look back to for comparison; that civilization has never gone merely forward—that it advances, declines, rolls down a steep cliff of degeneration, falls to a slough of despair, then builds up again to reach a peak of little higher than the peak before it. If one would prepare a graph of civilization, it would not be a continuously ascending line, but a see-saw course, swinging up to new peaks as the ages go by, but constantly falling between those peaks to sloughs in which much of the previous efforts are rendered useless. With the long record of civilization that we have today, representing the whole of mankind’s history, we are able to see that only too clearly. Each of the peaks of civilization is usually, though not always, just a little higher than the preceding peak; and each of the sloughs is generally, though again not always, a little less deep and dreadful than the preceding slough.

  “Just think once, my friends, if civilization were to rise unfalteringly ever upward to higher attainment; why, in two billion ‘years’ Mankind could be absolute master of the universe. But in actuality, civilization in those many ages has followed a winding path, up and down endlessly, so that the final peak at any one time is not immeasurably above the first peak.

  “Even today”—Monituperal’s voice sank to a painful whisper—“civilization is on the downward grade of one of those retrogressions that ends in a slough that marks the wasted efforts of hundreds of thousands of ‘years’ of former achievements. Civilization, the rise of Mankind, reached its greatest peak about one hundred thousand ‘years’ ago—just before the dread fact became known that Mankind was rapidly becoming a sterile form of life. . . .”

  Monituperal’s face became transformed into that agonizing sorrow that they had seen once before and again a crushing wave of deep sadness, disheartened despair, rolled upon them from all sides. A great people were mourning their doom, and the two men from the past felt their very hearts torn to shreds of aching grief.

  “Since then,” arose Monituperal’s voice in a low wail, “Mankind has fallen disgracefully, gradually, pressed downward by that stunning, bitter fact of absolute extinction. . . .”

  CHAPTER X

  The Story of Mankind

  l Boswell fought against the silence that had become filled with the concentrated sorrow of millions of people who were listening to this Story of Mankind, and spoke,

  “How can you say that, Monituperal?” he asked. “Little as we know of your present life, it is obvious to us that you are yet infinitely higher in the scale of advancement than the civilization of our times.”

  Monituperal opened his eyes which had been closed in the extremity of the emotion he had yielded to; they were once again clear and gravely wise.

  “Yes, my friend, civilization is yet far better than that which you knew. Nevertheless, it embodies a distinct retrogression from the great days our race used to know when children were born and taught and when hearts saw only happiness and greatness for the human race. You must see that because of the gradual succession of higher peaks and of less deep sloughs of civilization, the sloughs of these times are vastly higher than the peaks of your times. In plain words, a degeneration amongst us of today could never sink to the depth that marks the heights of civilization even one hundred million ‘years’ after you. The only effect of our retrogression has been a general rise of dejected indifference, of idle hopelessness. We have suffered degeneration only in that we have ceased to advance. With the gulf of death to our race only a half ‘century’ away, we have been gripped in icy abandon of encouragement to advance. I have mentioned before that at first the threat of extinction, when it became known, inspired Man to instinctive battle against Nature—whom we thought responsible for the dreadful doom. But all our immense powers of science fell short of our aim. We realized then that it was not Nature, whom we had always had as an ally, who had ordained the extinction; but that it was the immovable will of the Higher Power, the creator of the universe, which faced us. From then on we knew the truth. . . .”

  Professor Reinhardt and Boswell looked at each other sadly, expecting the speaker to fall again into one of his moods of crushed, sorrowful silence, but Monituperal suddenly shook himself free of the spell and resumed.

  “Forgive me, my friends from the Dawn, for dwelling overlong on that which it is not good to think about too deeply. Perhaps later, when you know more about our life, you too will grieve that civilization must know an end. At the same time you will be taught our philosophy of consolation—that there is a grand purpose behind the doom that presses us to the abyss of extinction. But now let us get along with the Story of Mankind.

  “Obviously, then, with what we learned from that Man of the Dawn, civilization reached its first peak some thousands of ‘centuries’ after your age. The only achievement, however, seems to have been the first interplanetary contacts. War they still had and with war they must have had infinite suffering, quarreling, and race hatred. Then Nature took a hand, covered the world with ice more
or less completely and crashed to the dust a hundred thousand ‘years’ of human effort. The new civilization that arose began from the slough that followed the first peak, advanced in much the same lines that your civilization did, apparently, even retaining certain of your customs, faults, and traditions.

  “Now we make a skip that will seem enormous to you, but which in the light of present-day history is but a step in time. We skip to the earth of about a million ‘years’ after your time. Quite a time ago—over one hundred thousand ‘years’ to be exact—there was found a square metallic tomb on earth which revealed upon opening twelve men in suspended animation. They were of this next period I will speak about, a million ‘years’ ahead of your ‘twentieth century.’ Now let me ask you, my friends from the Dawn, what you think the world of that time was like as it was revealed to us by these time-travelers?”

  “Why, I can only venture a guess,” answered Professor Reinhardt at a sign from Boswell for him to reply. “I would expect them to be greatly advanced over us; not very different physically, but a great deal intellectually. I would say that war had been eliminated, that all peoples were united under one rule, that there was mass education, that the spirit of brotherhood prevailed, that a good deal of sickness and insanity had been done away with, that there would be machines to do most of the work, and that they would have interplanetary connections.”

  “Have you anything to add, Andrew Boswell?” asked Monituperal.

  “Only that I should expect them still swayed by a mass of tradition from the previous ages,” answered Boswell wisely. “So much that perhaps their life was not much happier or easier than ours, mentally.”

  “That was a good shot, Andrew Boswell,” said Monituperal. “Man’s mind—aside from his pure intellect—has always been powerfully swayed by the memories and traditions of the past. How many times has it proven sadly true that maternal and scientific advancement are unable to bring the same degree of enlightenment to the mind as they do to the practical side of human life. As we of this age can well testify, the average mind of the masses is the most sluggish force known. Advancement in civilization for long ages was always a result of the activity of a few great minds—the mass of people always lagged not only ‘centuries’ but even hundreds of ‘centuries’ behind. They partook of the new things, boasted of their progress to each other, yet left their minds staggering with loads of tradition and clinging to the past. One of the lessons Mankind had to painfully learn was to forget the past and look to the glorious future. And because of Man’s inherent clinging to the past, his mental outlook was always far behind the trend of the times. Each succeeding peak of civilization said, ‘Behold, we have reached the top; we are the acme of civilization,’ despite the past examples of history and despite the imagination of the few gifted ones who saw the truth in a way. Mass psychology, my friends, is a thing by itself; it is a powerful force that does as much to ruin civilization as to build it up. It is sometimes known under the term ‘human nature’ and its greatest defect is immovability. Under the barrier of ‘plenty’ and ‘prosperity’ this human nature becomes a devastating and almost immovable force. One might put it this way: that the bulk of humanity does not reach to things higher, but is pushed upward by the earnest efforts of the few gifted individuals.

  “It simply bears out the complicated laws of recurrent intelligence. You remember how it was that in those experiments with the spores of intelligence, that intellect lay sleeping in all the forms of life till the genus homo came along. There it flashed into life. Likewise, amongst Mankind the type of intellect that looks to the future and advances civilization recurs only at definite intervals in certain individuals. Consequently, history abounds in names, the names of those who most figured in each successive age in turn. Sometimes, all too frequently, the names are not of individuals who advanced civilization, but of individuals who led the way a step or more backward. Even your little history that lay back of your age must have had closely allied steps, both forward and backward. Is it not so?”

  l Both the professor and Boswell nodded and Monituperal continued.

  “So, now that I have prepared you somewhat for the shock of what you will hear about the earth of a million ‘years’ after you, I will tell you what those twelve men revealed. I have tried to show you some of the complications that beset humanity in its rise toward things higher so that you would realize in a vague way how slow is this process of advancement—probably much slower than what you in your minds have imagined—and how much the traditions and heritages of the past effect Mankind.

  “The world of ten thousand ‘centuries’ after your time, my friends, still had war!—still had much unhappiness and petty quarreling!—still had many creeds, religions, and opinions! True, it had many new things that your peoples never dreamed of—a flowering science, interplanetary contacts, and general well-being. But it had not yet uprooted those hard-to-kill remnants of their sizable past. In other words, it was your civilization all over again with a few new touches here and there!”

  Professor Reinhardt and Boswell looked at each other in mute surprise. The latter had been disappointed some time before to hear that the world of one thousand centuries after the twentieth had been so little advanced. Now he hardly knew what to think that a million years afterward had produced so little actual progress. Slowly and dimly, the two men from the Dawn began to perceive what Monituperal had taken pains to suggest—that human progress had really been astonishingly slow. But as Boswell thought it over while Monituperal patiently waited for them to readjust their conceptions, he remembered that it had taken Man some two hundred thousand years from his first appearance on Earth to even discover the secret of fire. In the light of that fact was it so strange that civilization should progress so haltingly?—he thought.

  Monituperal started speaking again. “Now, my friends, we will go ahead with the Story of Mankind. Bear in mind from this one example how little advancement comes about in such lengths of time as a million ‘years.’ From now on I will treat the story as a gradual rise, instead of a continuous rise and fall as it should be. I will touch only the peaks of civilization; the sloughs will have to be understood. Remember that there are several factors that contribute to the back-sliding: upheavals of Nature, the inertia of human nature, periods of prosperity, and the periodic weakening of intellectuality.

  “When men first explored the other planets and satellites and asteroids, they found none of them suitable for permanent habitation. Mars was already dry and thin-aired; Mercury was even worse! Venus was still too hot and humid; and the other major planets and their moon were totally out of the question. So Earth remained for five hundred million ‘years’ the one and only home of Mankind. The other heavenly bodies in the solar system were used merely to yield valuable materials and to become outposts of various kinds. Man was king of the solar system and Earth was his home. The peaks of civilization steadily advanced until after five hundred million ‘years,’ there was little to be wished for. There was great abundance and plenty and happiness, but enough problems to keep things that way to sharpen their minds and prevent the decay of wealth. In that time, Earth periodically burst out in violent eruptions and upheavals. Disastrous though these were, and much as civilization was shaken to its very foundations, Mankind was able to survive them with the minimum of calamity.

  “But this was still the Era of the Dawn. The species of man had changed very little. He had simply expanded and broadened his life. He was still essentially a warlike creature, although wars—they were really revolutions because of the unity of government—were very short and very infrequent. He still had much to learn and much to adjust. Civilization was still imperfect.

  “Then comes the Era of Change as it is called in our history. After those five hundred million ‘years,’ Venus became ideally suited for human life. She was about the same size as Earth, thus exerting a similar force of gravity, had a now thinner and less humid atmosphere, and flourished a new world of non-rational lif
e. In a vast, but regulated, horde, humans swarmed to the new home and began the new life on Venus. But similar as Venus’ conditions were to those of Earth, yet there was enough difference to gradually bring over a change on those humans who dwelt there. In the course of a few hundreds of thousands of ‘years,’ the Venus-born people changed into a new species of human being. And that’s where the trouble began.

  “The new species, with the vast intellectual background that was its inheritance from Earth, evolved into humans much more uniform and on a higher plane of average intelligence than the old species of Earth. Now perhaps you can guess at some of the catastrophes that occurred. Being a different species, they could not inter-marry with the Earth-people. Being of a higher average intelligence and a quite uniform race, they advanced more rapidly that the old species and speedily acquired the lead in inter-world affairs. Earth-people began to resent these things and the resentment grew because of the striking difference in physical form that gradually became apparent. The Venus’ people had larger brain-cases and smaller bodies.

  “Finally the accumulation of ‘centuries’ of widening differences and methods between the two species broke out into war. So you see, my friends, that war was not so easily downed in human affairs as you would think by the use of logical reasoning.

  “This war we will say nothing about, except that it lasted for two ‘centuries’ and ended with complete victory for the new species, the Venus-people. Of the horribleness of it, of the devastating weapons that science was made to produce, of the terrific energies that were hurled from space-ship to space-ship and even from world to world, I will waste not a word in description, although it is all down in our records for your future observance.

  “After the victory of the Venus-people, the old species of Earth gradually died out, as century after century they arose against the victors and even against each other with the age-old war lust in their veins, and were annihilated.