Omega - Camille Flammarion (free ebooks for android txt) 📗

entirely revolutionized. Chemical synthesis had succeeded in producing sugar, albumen, the amides and fats, from the air, water and vegetables, and, by skillfully varying the proportions, in forming the most advantageous combinations of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, so that sumptuous repasts no longer consisted of the smoking remains of slaughtered animals⁠—beef, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, fish and birds⁠—but were served amid the harmonies of music in rooms adorned with plants ever green and flowers ever in bloom, in an atmosphere laden with perfumes. Freed from the vulgar necessity of masticating meats, the mouth absorbed the principles necessary for the repair of organic tissues in exquisite drinks, fruits, cakes and pills.

About the thirtieth century, especially, the nervous system began to grow more delicate, and developed in unexpected ways. Woman was still somewhat more narrow-minded than man, and her mental operations differed from his as before (her exquisite sensibility responding to sentimental considerations before reason could act in the lower cells), and her head had remained smaller, her forehead narrower; but the former was so elegantly placed upon a neck of such supple grace, and rose so nobly from the shoulders and the bust, that it compelled more than ever the admiration of man, not only as a whole, but also by the penetrating sweetness and beauty of the mouth and the light curls of its luxuriant hair. Although comparatively smaller than that of man, the head of woman had nevertheless increased in size with the exercise of the intellectual faculties; but the cerebral circonvolutions had experienced the most change, having become more numerous and more pronounced in both sexes. In short, the head had grown, the body had diminished in size. Giants were no longer to be seen.

Four permanent causes had modified insensibly the human form; the development of the intellectual faculties and of the brain, the decrease in manual labor and bodily exercise, the transformation of food, and the marriage system. The first had increased the size of the cranium as compared with the rest of the body; the second had decreased the strength of the limbs; the third had diminished the size of the abdomen and made the teeth finer and smaller; the tendency of the fourth had been rather to perpetuate the classic forms of human beauty: masculine beauty, the nobility of an uplifted countenance, and the graceful outlines of womanhood. About the two hundredth century of our era, a single race existed, rather small in stature, light colored, in which anthropologists might, perhaps, have discovered some form of Anglo-Saxon and Chinese descent.

Humanity had tended towards unity, one race, one language, one general government, one religion. There were no more state religions; only the voice of an enlightened conscience, and in this unity former anthropological differences had disappeared.

In former ages poets had prophesied that in the marvellous progress of things man would finally acquire wings, and fly through the air by his muscular force alone; but they had not studied the origin of anthropomorphic structure and had forgotten that for a man to have at the same time arms and wings, he must belong to a zoölogical order of sextupeds which does not exist on our planet; for man belongs to the quadrupeds, a type which has been gradually modified. But though he had not acquired new natural organs, he had acquired artificial ones, to say nothing of his physical transformation. He had conquered the region of the air and could soar in the sky by light apparatus, whose motor power was electricity, and the atmosphere had become his domain as it had been that of the birds. It is very probable that if in the course of ages a winged race could have acquired, by the development of its faculties of observation, a brain analogous to that of even the most primitive man, it would have soon dominated the human species and replaced it by a new one⁠—a winged race of the same zoölogical type as the quadrupeds and bipeds. But the force of gravity is an obstacle to any such organic development of the winged species, and humanity, grown more perfect, had remained master of the world.

At the same time, in the lapse of ages, the animal population of the globe had completely changed. The wild species, lions, tigers, hyenas, panthers, elephants, giraffes, kangaroos, as also whales and seals, had become extinct.

II

About the one hundredth century of the Christian era all resemblance between the human race and monkeys had disappeared.

The nervous sensibility of man had become intensified to a marvellous degree. The sense of sight, of hearing, of smell, of touch, and of taste, had gradually acquired a delicacy far exceeding that of their earlier and grosser manifestations. Through the study of the electrical properties of living organisms, a seventh sense, the electric sense, was created outright, so to speak; and everyone possessed the power of attracting and repelling both living and inert matter, to a degree depending upon the temperament of the individual. But by far the most important of all the senses, the one which played the greatest role in men’s relation to each other, was the eighth, the psychic sense, by which communication at a distance became possible.

A glimpse has been had of two other senses also, but their development had been arrested from the very outset. The first had to do with the visibility of the ultra violet rays, so sensitive to chemical tests, but wholly invisible to the human eye. Experiments made in this direction has resulted in the acquisition of no new power, and had considerably impaired those previously enjoyed. The second was the sense of orientation; but every effort made to develop it had proved a failure, notwithstanding the attempt to make use of the results of researches in terrestrial magnetism.

For some time past, the offspring of the once titled and aristocratic classes of society had formed a sickly and feeble race, and the governing body was recruited from among the more virile members