The Coming Race - Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (free ereaders txt) 📗

of the horizon, fascinated my
eyes, and rendered me for some time an inattentive listener to
the talk of my companion.

Along our way various operations of agriculture were being
carried on by machinery, the forms of which were new to me, and
for the most part very graceful; for among these people art
being so cultivated for the sake of mere utility, exhibits
itself in adorning or refining the shapes of useful objects.
Precious metals and gems are so profuse among them, that they
are lavished on things devoted to purposes the most
92commonplace; and their love of utility leads them to beautify
its tools, and quickens their imagination in a way unknown to
themselves.

In all service, whether in or out of doors, they make great use
of automaton figures, which are so ingenious, and so pliant to
the operations of vril, that they actually seem gifted with
reason. It was scarcely possible to distinguish the figures I
beheld, apparently guiding or superintending the rapid
movements of vast engines, from human forms endowed with
thought.

By degrees, as we continued to walk on, my attention became
roused by the lively and acute remarks of my companion. The
intelligence of the children among this race is marvellously
precocious, perhaps from the habit of having intrusted to them,
at so early an age, the toils and responsibilities of middle
age. Indeed, in conversing with Taee, I felt as if talking
with some superior and observant man of my own years. I asked
him if he could form any estimate of the number of communities
into which the race of the Vril-ya is subdivided.

"Not exactly," he said, "because they multiply, of course,
every year as the surplus of each community is drafted off.
But I heard my father say that, according to the last
report,there were a million and a half of communities speaking
our language, and adopting our institutions and forms of life
and government; but, I believe, with some differences, about
which you had better ask Zee. She knows more than most of the
Ana do. An An cares less for things that do not concern him
than a Gy does; the Gy-ei are inquisitive creatures."

"Does each community restrict itself to the same number of
families or amount of population that you do?"

"No; some have much smaller populations, some have larger-
varying according to the extent of the country they
appropriate, or to the degree of excellence to which they have
brought their machinery. Each community sets its own limit
according to circumstances, taking care always that there shall
93never arise any class of poor by the pressure of population
upon the productive powers of the domain; and that no state
shall be too large for a government resembling that of a single
well-ordered family. I imagine that no vril community exceeds
thirty-thousand households. But, as a general rule, the
smaller the community, provided there be hands enough to do
justice to the capacities of the territory it occupies, the
richer each individual is, and the larger the sum contributed
to the general treasury,- above all, the happier and the more
tranquil is the whole political body, and the more perfect the
products of its industry. The state which all tribes of the
Vril-ya acknowledge to be the highest in civilisation, and
which has brought the vril force to its fullest development, is
perhaps the smallest. It limits itself to four thousand
families; but every inch of its territory is cultivated to the
utmost perfection of garden ground; its machinery excels that
of every other tribe, and there is no product of its industry
in any department which is not sought for, at extraordinary
prices, by each community of our race. All our tribes make
this state their model, considering that we should reach the
highest state of civilisation allowed to mortals if we could
unite the greatest degree of happiness with the highest degree
of intellectual achievement; and it is clear that the smaller
the society the less difficult that will be. Ours is too large
for it."

This reply set me thinking. I reminded myself of that little
state of Athens, with only twenty thousand free citizens, and
which to this day our mightiest nations regard as the supreme
guide and model in all departments of intellect. But then
Athens permitted fierce rivalry and perpetual change, and was
certainly not happy. Rousing myself from the reverie into
which these reflections had plunged me, I brought back our talk
to the subjects connected with emigration.

"But," said I, "when, I suppose yearly, a certain number among
94you agree to quit home and found a new community elsewhere,
they must necessarily be very few, and scarcely sufficient,
even with the help of the machines they take with them, to
clear the ground, and build towns, and form a civilised state
with the comforts and luxuries in which they had been reared."

"You mistake. All the tribes of the Vril-ya are in constant
communication with each other, and settle amongst themselves
each year what proportion of one community will unite with the
emigrants of another, so as to form a state of sufficient size;
and the place for emigration is agreed upon at least a year
before, and pioneers sent from each state to level rocks, and
embank waters, and construct houses; so that when the emigrants
at last go, they find a city already made, and a country around
it at least partially cleared. Our hardy life as children make
us take cheerfully to travel and adventure. I mean to emigrate
myself when of age."

"Do the emigrants always select places hitherto uninhabited and
barren?"

"As yet generally, because it is our rule never to destroy
except when necessary to our well-being. Of course, we cannot
settle in lands already occupied by the Vril-ya; and if we take
the cultivated lands of the other races of Ana, we must utterly
destroy the previous inhabitants. Sometimes, as it is, we take
waste spots, and find that a troublesome, quarrelsome race of
Ana, especially if under the administration of Koom-Posh or
Glek-Nas, resents our vicinity, and picks a quarrel with us;
then, of course, as menacing our welfare, we destroy it: there
is no coming to terms of peace with a race so idiotic that it
is always changing the form of government which represents it.
Koom-Posh," said the child, emphatically, "is bad enough, still
it has brains, though at the back of its head, and is not
without a heart; but in Glek-Nas the brain and heart of the
creatures disappear, and they become all jaws, claws, and
belly."

95"You express yourself strongly. Allow me to inform you that I
myself, and I am proud to say it, am the citizen of a Koom-Posh."

"I no longer," answered Taee, "wonder to see you here so far
from your home. What was the condition of your native
community before it became a Koom-Posh?"

"A settlement of emigrants- like those settlements which your
tribe sends forth- but so far unlike your settlements, that it
was dependent on the state from which it came. It shook off
that yoke, and, crowned with eternal glory, became a Koom-Posh."

"Eternal glory! How long has the Koom-Posh lasted?"

"About 100 years."

"The length of an An's life- a very young community. In much
less than another 100 years your Koom-Posh will be a Glek-Nas."

"Nay, the oldest states in the world I come from, have such
faith in its duration, that they are all gradually shaping
their institutions so as to melt into ours, and their most
thoughtful politicians say that, whether they like it or not,
the inevitable tendency of these old states is towards
Koom-Posh-erie."

"The old states?"

"Yes, the old states."

"With populations very small in proportion to the area of
productive land?"

"On the contrary, with populations very large in proportion to
that area."

"I see! old states indeed!- so old as to become drivelling if
they don't pack off that surplus population as we do ours- very
old states!- very, very old! Pray, Tish, do you think it wise
for very old men to try to turn head-over-heels as very young
children do? And if you ask them why they attempted such
antics, should you not laugh if they answered that by imitating
very young children they could become very young children
themselves? Ancient history abounds with instances of this sort
a great many thousand years ago- and in every instance a very
96old state that played at Koom-Posh soon tumbled into Glek-Nas.
Then, in horror of its own self, it cried out for a master, as
an old man in his dotage cries out for a nurse; and after a
succession of masters or nurses, more or less long, that very
old state died out of history. A very old state attempting
Koom-Posh-erie is like a very old man who pulls down the house
to which he has been accustomed, but he has so exhausted his
vigour in pulling down, that all he can do in the way of
rebuilding is to run up a crazy hut, in which himself and his
successors whine out, 'How the wind blows! How the walls
shake!'"

"My dear Taee, I make all excuse for your unenlightened
prejudices, which every schoolboy educated in a Koom-Posh could
easily controvert, though he might not be so precociously
learned in ancient history as you appear to be."

"I learned! not a bit of it. But would a schoolboy, educated
in your Koom-Posh, ask his great-great-grandfather or
great-great-grandmother to stand on his or her head with the
feet uppermost? And if the poor old folks hesitated- say, 'What
do you fear?- see how I do it!'"

"Taee, I disdain to argue with a child of your age. I repeat,
I make allowances for your want of that culture which a
Koom-Posh alone can bestow."

"I, in my turn," answered Taee, with an air of the suave but
lofty good breeding which characterises his race, "not only
make allowances for you as not educated among the Vril-ya, but
I entreat you to vouchsafe me your pardon for the insufficient
respect to the habits and opinions of so amiable a Tish!"

I ought before to have observed that I was commonly called Tish
by my host and his family, as being a polite and indeed a pet
name, literally signifying a small barbarian; the children
apply it endearingly to the tame species of Frog which they
keep in their gardens.

We had now reached the banks of a lake, and Taee here paused to
97point out to me the ravages made in fields skirting it. "The
enemy certainly lies within these waters," said Taee. "Observe
what shoals of fish are crowded together at the margin. Even
the great fishes with the small ones, who are their habitual
prey and who generally shun them, all forget their instincts in
the presence of a common destroyer. This reptile certainly
must belong to the class of Krek-a, which are more devouring
than any other, and are said to be among the few surviving
species of the world's dreadest inhabitants before the Ana were
created. The appetite of a Krek is insatiable- it feeds alike
upon vegetable and animal life; but for the swift-footed
creatures of the elk species it is too slow in its movements.
Its favourite dainty is an An when it can catch him unawares;
and hence the Ana destroy it relentlessly whenever it enters
their dominion. I have heard that when our forefathers first
cleared this country, these monsters, and others like them,
abounded, and, vril being then undiscovered, many of our race
were devoured. It was impossible to exterminate them wholly
till that discovery which constitutes the