by Paul Vibert
“It will be possible to bring the greatest works of the mind to a final period, without being troubled three times a day by the cruel ditto, no wordplay intended. That won’t prevent people from resting, but you’ll see thinkers, artists and lovers entirely given to their dreams of glory, happiness or quasi-divine pleasure, no longer tormented by that vile and cowardly despot that our ancestors called Master Gaster.
“Has nature delivered a light and discreet warning? Pop! One pill, rapidly absorbed, and the machine is working admirably again. Which means that there will no longer be any locomotive or chronometer comparable to the human machine, redesigned, corrected and, above all, simplified by the wise application of triumphant chemistry to human nourishment.
“The heart and the brain—which is to say, thought and flame—will remain, but all the interior tripe from the esophagus to the rectum will gradually disappear, according to the immortal theory of the great Lamarck, Darwin’s veritable French St. Jean-Baptiste. One may say that human beings, thus purified and simplified, will be akin to earthly angels, and will leave the mistake of the Paradise lost with Adam and Eve far behind them.
“It is necessary, in any case, only to see symbols in the naïve tales of theogony, and it will really be the advent of Paradise Regained, and of the Antichrist—which is to say, of stomach-ache and diarrhea forever vanquished by the new chemical life…not to mention that it will prolong the life of the Earth itself, too populated to be able to nourish all its children.”104
“I admit that this new explanation of times to come opens new horizons to me, and gives me a better understanding of a host of points that have been obscure until now in my mind.”
“Say that this future will be tomorrow, for we are about to enter it. Say that you’re convinced.”
“I am.”
“Good—and in 1911, at the next Exposition, in the Bois de Boulogne, I shall invite you to dinner at the chemical restaurant that will be located to the left of the balloon boarding-platform. There will no longer be any table or crockery, but only sofas, incense-burners and exquisite music. There you are—the restaurant of the future! Long live the chemical life!”
“And in the meantime, another glass of champagne?”
“I won’t refuse.”
Author’s note: “Curiously enough, Monsieur J. Holt Schooling has just published an article in The Cosmopolitan in which the following conclusions seem to give abundant reason to my visionary inventor of the Exposition.105 Judge for yourselves, since he affirms that:
“‘Firstly, that the rate of increase of the world’s population leapt from 5.5 million in 1800 to 62.5 million in 1890, which is doubtless a record; secondly, in all the great Aryan nations, that rate of increase is decreasing rapidly106; thirdly, the Teutons (the United States, United Kingdom and Germanic races) are increasing much faster than the Latin races, of which they are already almost double; fourthly, Belgium leads the way with 572 inhabitants per square mile, and Russia is last with 15.’
“M. Schooling considers that the Earth will be ‘full’ when it has a thousand inhabitants per square mile. ‘If,’ he says, ‘we apply to the increasing world population the rate of increase obtained during the 19th century—which is to say, 1% per year—we obtain the following results:
Year
Millions of people
Number of people per square mile
1900
1.600
31
2000
4.328
83
2100
17.706
225
2200
31.662
609
2250
52.073
1001
“‘As there are 52 million square miles of land, the world will be “full” when we have a population of 52 billion individuals-which is to say, in 2250. We have, therefore, another 350 years to wait.”
Life Does Not Exist
The infinitely small, rods in blood and rotifers. Dust of life.
Life is a myth. The triumph of chemistry.
Recently, a young and illustrious physician, specializing in the applications, as various as they are infinite, of electricity to therapeutics—and perhaps a closer friend because of that, because he knows about my profound faith in electricity from the viewpoint of my own work—spend a tranquil evening at my home, between a cigar and a cup of tea (in the plural, of course).
We had a few other good friends there, belonging to the most various intellectual professions, but—an important point of contact—all resolute partisans of the experimental and purely scientific method.
Addressing my friend between two puffs of smoke, I said: “Well, you’ve been appointed director of a laboratory of electricity applied to microbiology; you’ve got everything you wished for—congratulations all round. Before going home, however, tell us something about what led you to your relentless study of microbes and the infinitely small—in broad terms, of course. Has your sagacious, probing, inquisitive and often divinatory mind led you toward the unknown, or simply put you on the track of great scientific discoveries destined to change the world?”
“Since you pose the question so clearly, I’ll reply in the same way: I don’t know whether I shall change the world, but certainly, without false modesty, I believe that I’m on the track of two observations—or, as you generously put it, two discoveries—whose consequences will not fail to render great services.
“The first is likely to relieve human suffering in large measure, since it proves that the majority of diseases are caused and propagated by microbes, and that the majority of these tiny animals can be destroyed by electricity in determined conditions that are unfortunately still unclear. From the moment when we set forth upon the fecund path of the manipulation of static electricity, however, it’s only a matter of time.
“That the everyday application of the therapeutics in question will soon become prolific, I am convinced, but I’m in haste to arrive at the second, purely scientific—or rather philosophical—observation…if only to make you jump…”
“That might be difficult.”
“Well, I’ve arrived in the course of my relentless study of the infinitely small at the profound conviction that life does not exist.107 No, life at the bottom of the scale of beings does not exist, and we are merely victims of an illusion that will dissipate as our means of investigation grow more powerful on a daily basis…”
“As it happens, that’s what I’ve always said and thought myself, based only on reasoning and logic.”
“Here, of course, I can’t enter into great detail, which would only bore you, but take a drop of blood and look at it under a microscope. Before your eyes the rods,108 the microbes, infinitely small creatures, are incessantly dividing and being born, infinitely. They are what were once called, without really knowing what was meant, hematics and leucocytes. Are they alive? There’s good reason to think not.
“And the gelatinous bodies, that entire immense family of rotifers, representing the third order of the class of Rotators, which you allow to become desiccated inert and dead in the dust on some staple at the bottom of your drawer, and which your great-grand-nephews will be able to reanimate centuries later and bring back to apparent life by moistening them—is that really life?”
“No, a thousand times no—life does not exist, and is only a deceptive myth, a charming but false illusion, at least among the lowest fauna on the scale of beings.”
“But what, then, is that appearance of life?”
“Oh, it’s quite simple, and brings us back as ever to the great unique motor of the universe—which is to say, electricity, in one of its three forms, which is heat. Now, all chemical reactions produce heat. When you watch, amazed, the infinite and infinitely rapid births of microbes and resurrections of rotifers, you aren’t witnessing manifestations of animal life, but simply chemical reactions.
“No, my friends, once more, believe me…”
And in a grave and so
lemn voice that I did not recognize, suddenly transfigured by the superior faith in science, intangible and immortal when it is experimental and based on the certainty of observed facts, he slowly let fall these words: “Life does not exist; only chemistry exists.”
An involuntary frisson ran through the assembly and we all had the sensation that we were dead. Suddenly, however, his wife clapped him on the shoulder.
“It’s nearly two o’clock in the morning; we have to go home.”
“Is that life?”109
“I’m only talking about microbes, the infinitely small…”
“But not large animals,” his wife interjected, with a burst of laughter—and the couple left, he grave and she the image of life, young and ardent.
We remained thoughtful for some time before our cold tea, murmuring mechanically, without understanding the fateful words: “Life doesn’t exist; it’s only a dream; chemistry alone is a fecund reality.”
O science, that is surely one of your coups de théâtre, and yet it must be true, and my friend is quite right. Fortunately, we belong to the category of large animals, as my friend’s wife said.
What, after all, do we possess? In any case, it’s so short that the question isn’t worth discussing, for, in the infinity of time and space, our life is as short as the chemical manifestation of a microbe. How, then, can we know whether life is a myth or a reality?
The Art of Dressing Oneself with Clouds
An azure-colored mantle.
Hydrogen coats and oxygen trousers. Electric hats.
Solidified gases. Curious applications of toilette.
For a long time—since childhood, in fact—I was always surprised to read or hear that God appeared to Adam and Eve or Moses dressed in clouds, and all the fairy tales of the Middle Ages seemed hyperbolic when they represented fairies in beautiful azure robes.
I confess, to my shame, that I didn’t understand very well.
As I grew up, however, I leaned that we are able to see, or at least conceive of, all substances in three states: solid, liquid and gas. Theoretically, the good Lord’s robe of clouds and the azure mantles of fairies began to appear slightly less exaggerated to me.
Finally, the Eiffel Tower arrived, then the experiments of Cailletet,110 who, with his long tubes and high atmospheric pressures, succeeded in liquefying gases. This time I understood entirely, and resolved firmly to take another look at the problem, for my own benefit. With the obstinacy of a Breton—I was born in Paris, near the Louvre and the Palais-Royal, not far from the Gare Montparnasse, which leads to Brittany, which is therefore its suburb—I told myself that I would succeed in solidifying gases, and, in consequence, dressing myself like God the Father and the fairies.
Determination was not sufficient, though; I needed to find a practical means of getting there, and it was with the discovery, or rather the invention, of my monster cannon on hydraulic rails, with a tunnel several kilometers long, through a mountain, serving as a barrel, that I contrived the practical application of my idea.
Before firing a shot to set my cart in motion with vertiginous rapidity, I blocked the opening of the exit with an enormous screw-threaded and armored disk and filled he tunnel with some sort of gas.
The first few times, I said to myself: “I’m going to blow up the mountain under force of the pressure,” but bah!—my tunnel-cannon was well-constructed, as I’ve explained in a special chapter, and perfectly resistant to everything.
Then, I only had to unscrew the disk at the opening to find behind it, in a beautifully thick solid layer, the different gases that I had submitted to that preparatory system. Thus, the coat that I am wearing is made of woven hydrogen, perfectly dry, clean and flexible; my trousers are made of oxygen, sewn by machine; and my waistcoat is made of nitrogen, embroidered from the inside by means of a spindle. As for my wife’s azure dress, it’s made of watered and spun carbon dioxide, but won’t asphyxiate anyone, nor even its wearer. To make the gases pass not merely into the liquid, but the solid state, it was sufficient to generate a high enough pressure, which, on this occasion, my cannon furnished victoriously.
I really ran into trouble, though, when I was stubborn enough to try to make myself a hat out of electricity. That was hard, but I succeeded all the same, and this is how I went about it:
I began, one stormy evening, by filling my cannon with compressed nitrogen, with the aid of a powerful mechanical pump, like those producing compressed air for tramways, after which I gradually removed the oxygen by means of chemical reactions that it would take too long to explain here in detail, with the result that my tunnel-cannon was no longer filled by anything but electricity As that was almost a vacuum, I loaded it fully, and finally found, as thick as a Breton housewife’s buckwheat pancake, a great roundel of the celebrated fluid, finally solidified. Here, look at it and touch it, see how admirably soft and supple it is. Well, my hat puts all the panamas in the world in the shade, for it’s made of braided electricity!
This walking-stick is simply made of hydrocarbon, which is neither the cousin nor the neighbor of diamond. As for my gloves, they’re much rarer, for I made them with a little-known atmospheric gas, argon, and I was only able to make them because my hand isn’t very large. I would never have found the material necessary for the gross and heavy hand of an Auvergnat.
I know that my discovery is not yet known, and will disconcert many people; it is, however, curious and real—and how singular! Thus, last summer, one of my friends, whom I had dressed in this fashion, visited my power station; he was clumsy enough to bring the tip of his umbrella into contact with a dynamo, and was immediately surrounded by a thick cloud. We thought he had been killed and rushed to his aid; there was absolutely nothing wrong with him, but the electricity had returned all the substances to a gaseous state, and when the cloud dispersed he was as naked as a worm, which was a considerable temporary inconvenience.
It is evident that a similar accident might happen to you in stormy weather, if lightning struck you, or fell nearby, but that is so rare, and it is, on the other hand, so nice to dress like God and the fairies.
Now, for incredulous individuals, I am at their disposal in the boutique that I have just opened at the Exposition, near the Château d’Eau111—but I ought to warn them that, until further notice, the solidification and weaving of gases is very expensive; I can’t deliver a pair of trousers in woven oxygen for less than thirty thousand francs, or a chiné112 nitrogen coat for less than sixty thousand.
However, I sell hand-stitched Robespierre waistcoats in potassium picrate113 cheaply, at only fifteen thousand francs.
Think about it!
Metempsychosis
An irrefutable demonstration.
Olympe Audouard and the horse that could write.
Amazing experiments.
Thirty years ago, before and after the war, I was well-acquainted with an exceptionally charming and kind woman of letters, Olympe Audouard.114 We met at Dentu’s, if I remember correctly, where I had gone to settle an old account relating to Edmond Reille, my father’s first book, which first appeared in 1856—not exactly yesterday.
Young in appearance, with the visible residue of an incontestable beauty, Olympe Audouard—who ran Le Papillon from a little ground-floor entresol in the Rue Saint-Roch, if my memory can be trusted—was in the second half of her life. She was always sad, and had thrown herself body and soul, with the unreflective and spontaneous fervor of a woman, into the study of the occult sciences and he brutalizing commerce of table-turning.
Why had that beautiful intelligence sunk so low? Because the poor woman had lost—in Marseilles, I think—her only child of ten or twelve, and had never been reconciled to it. After that cruel separation, she only had one goal: to enter into communication with her child and to know the whereabouts of his soul, and even his entire personality. She had consulted all the somnambulists in France and caused large quantities of tables to turn, but until then, her son had never made any response. Meanwhi
le, time was passing.
As she spoke to me often about her preoccupations and hopes, I always sought, with infinite precaution, to dissuade her, as one would have done for a sick mother or big sister.
“Shut up, shut up,” she replied, suddenly nervous. “If I didn’t believe profoundly in metempsychosis, if I didn’t believe that I’d find my son again one day, I feel that I’d go mad.” She began to weep silently, and then went on: “It’s because I know that metempsychosis exists that I have more difficulty in entering into communication with him; otherwise, he’d be a pure spirit, and would have replied a long time ago, given my all-powerful will, through the intermediary of a table or a medium.”
Then the conversation lapsed sadly, for I could hardly clarify that maternal anguish, that obstinate—and, in a sense, voluntary—blindness.
Soon, however, in circumstances as strange as they were unexpected, we were to have proof of the reality of metempsychosis, and that confirmation at least soothed the final years of her life.
Almost immediately after the war, Olympe Audouard numbered among her friends a Russian prince, a worthy fellow, very rich, but a gambler and card-player, who was bound to ruin himself before long at racecourses and casinos, not to mention the wings of small theaters, where he found pink and peevish little animals that cost him even more than horses. One day, he found himself three-quarters ruined, with considerable debts that he could not pay. A single word, and his family would have come to his aid, but a residue of shame prevented him from saying anything, and he calmly blew out his brains.
The stupid death of that worthy fellow, almost a child, hit Olympe very hard, and revived her maternal grief. So, as it was the beginning of summer she went to send a few months in the country, not to escape that grief but to nourish it at her ease.
