Chapter XXVI.
After the conversation with Zee just recorded, I fell into a profoundmelancholy. The curious interest with which I had hitherto examined thelife and habits of this marvellous community was at an end. I could notbanish from my mind the consciousness that I was among a people who,however kind and courteous, could destroy me at any moment withoutscruple or compunction. The virtuous and peaceful life of thepeople which, while new to me, had seemed so holy a contrast to thecontentions, the passions, the vices of the upper world, now beganto oppress me with a sense of dulness and monotony. Even the serenetranquility of the lustrous air preyed on my spirits. I longed for achange, even to winter, or storm, or darkness. I began to feel that,whatever our dreams of perfectibility, our restless aspirations towardsa better, and higher, and calmer, sphere of being, we, the mortals ofthe upper world, are not trained or fitted to enjoy for long the veryhappiness of which we dream or to which we aspire.
Now, in this social state of the Vril-ya, it was singular to mark howit contrived to unite and to harmonise into one system nearly all theobjects which the various philosophers of the upper world have placedbefore human hopes as the ideals of a Utopian future. It was a state inwhich war, with all its calamities, was deemed impossible,--a state inwhich the freedom of all and each was secured to the uttermost degree,without one of those animosities which make freedom in the upper worlddepend on the perpetual strife of hostile parties. Here the corruptionwhich debases democracies was as unknown as the discontents whichundermine the thrones of monarchies. Equality here was not a name; itwas a reality. Riches were not persecuted, because they were not envied.Here those problems connected with the labours of a working class,hitherto insoluble above ground, and above ground conducing to suchbitterness between classes, were solved by a process the simplest,--adistinct and separate working class was dispensed with altogether.Mechanical inventions, constructed on the principles that baffled myresearch to ascertain, worked by an agency infinitely more powerful andinfinitely more easy of management than aught we have yet extracted fromelectricity or steam, with the aid of children whose strength wasnever overtasked, but who loved their employment as sport and pastime,sufficed to create a Public-wealth so devoted to the general use thatnot a grumbler was ever heard of. The vices that rot our cities herehad no footing. Amusements abounded, but they were all innocent. Nomerry-makings conduced to intoxication, to riot, to disease. Loveexisted, and was ardent in pursuit, but its object, once secured, wasfaithful. The adulterer, the profligate, the harlot, were phenomena sounknown in this commonwealth, that even to find the words by which theywere designated one would have had to search throughout an obsoleteliterature composed thousands of years before. They who have beenstudents of theoretical philosophies above ground, know that all thesestrange departures from civilised life do but realise ideas which havebeen broached, canvassed, ridiculed, contested for; sometimes partiallytried, and still put forth in fantastic books, but have never cometo practical result. Nor were these all the steps towards theoreticalperfectibility which this community had made. It had been the soberbelief of Descartes that the life of man could be prolonged, not,indeed, on this earth, to eternal duration, but to what he called theage of the patriarchs, and modestly defined to be from 100 to 150 yearsaverage length. Well, even this dream of sages was here fulfilled--nay,more than fulfilled; for the vigour of middle life was preserved evenafter the term of a century was passed. With this longevity was combineda greater blessing than itself--that of continuous health. Such diseasesas befell the race were removed with ease by scientific applications ofthat agency--life-giving as life-destroying--which is inherent in vril.Even this idea is not unknown above ground, though it has generallybeen confined to enthusiasts or charlatans, and emanates from confusednotions about mesmerism, odic force, &c. Passing by such trivialcontrivances as wings, which every schoolboy knows has been tried andfound wanting, from the mythical or pre-historical period, I proceed tothat very delicate question, urged of late as essential to the perfecthappiness of our human species by the two most disturbing and potentialinfluences on upper-ground society,--Womankind and Philosophy. I mean,the Rights of Women.
Now, it is allowed by jurisprudists that it is idle to talk of rightswhere there are not corresponding powers to enforce them; and aboveground, for some reason or other, man, in his physical force, in the useof weapons offensive and defensive, when it come to positive personalcontest, can, as a rule of general application, master women. But amongthis people there can be no doubt about the rights of women, because, asI have before said, the Gy, physically speaking, is bigger and strongerthan the An; and her will being also more resolute than his, and willbeing essential to the direction of the vril force, she can bring tobear upon him, more potently than he on herself, the mystical agencywhich art can extract from the occult properties of nature. Thereforeall that our female philosophers above ground contend for as to rightsof women, is conceded as a matter of course in this happy commonwealth.Besides such physical powers, the Gy-ei have (at least in youth) a keendesire for accomplishments and learning which exceeds that of the male;and thus they are the scholars, the professors--the learned portion, inshort, of the community.
Of course, in this state of society the female establishes, as I haveshown, her most valued privilege, that of choosing and courting herwedding partner. Without that privilege she would despise all theothers. Now, above ground, we should not unreasonably apprehend that afemale, thus potent and thus privileged, when she had fairly hunted usdown and married us, would be very imperious and tyrannical. Not so withthe Gy-ei: once married, the wings once suspended, and more amiable,complacent, docile mates, more sympathetic, more sinking their loftiercapacities into the study of their husbands' comparatively frivoloustastes and whims, no poet could conceive in his visions of conjugalbliss. Lastly, among the more important characteristics of the Vril-ya,as distinguished from our mankind--lastly, and most important on thebearings of their life and the peace of their commonwealths, is theiruniversal agreement in the existence of a merciful beneficent Diety, andof a future world to the duration of which a century or two are momentstoo brief to waste upon thoughts of fame and power and avarice; whilewith that agreement is combined another--viz., since they can knownothing as to the nature of that Diety beyond the fact of His supremegoodness, nor of that future world beyond the fact of its felicitousexistence, so their reason forbids all angry disputes on insolublequestions. Thus they secure for that state in the bowels of the earthwhat no community ever secured under the light of the stars--all theblessings and consolations of a religion without any of the evils andcalamities which are engendered by strife between one religion andanother.
It would be, then, utterly impossible to deny that the state ofexistence among the Vril-ya is thus, as a whole, immeasurably morefelicitous than that of super-terrestrial races, and, realising thedreams of our most sanguine philanthropists, almost approaches to apoet's conception of some angelical order. And yet, if you would takea thousand of the best and most philosophical of human beings you couldfind in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, or even Boston, and place themas citizens in the beatified community, my belief is, that in less thana year they would either die of ennui, or attempt some revolution bywhich they would militate against the good of the community, and beburnt into cinders at the request of the Tur.
Certainly I have no desire to insinuate, through the medium of thisnarrative, any ignorant disparagement of the race to which I belong. Ihave, on the contrary, endeavoured to make it clear that the principleswhich regulate the social system of the Vril-ya forbid them to producethose individual examples of human greatness which adorn the annals ofthe upper world. Where there are no wars there can be no Hannibal, noWashington, no Jackson, no Sheridan;--where states are so happy thatthey fear no danger and desire no change, they cannot give birth to aDemosthenes, a Webster, a Sumner, a Wendell Holmes, or a Butler; andwhere a society attains to a moral standard, in which there are nocrimes and no sorrows from whi
ch tragedy can extract its aliment of pityand sorrow, no salient vices or follies on which comedy can lavish itsmirthful satire, it has lost the chance of producing a Shakespeare, ora Moliere, or a Mrs. Beecher-Stowe. But if I have no desire to disparagemy fellow-men above ground in showing how much the motives that impelthe energies and ambition of individuals in a society of contest andstruggle--become dormant or annulled in a society which aims at securingfor the aggregate the calm and innocent felicity which we presume to bethe lot of beatified immortals; neither, on the other hand, have I thewish to represent the commonwealths of the Vril-ya as an ideal form ofpolitical society, to the attainment of which our own efforts of reformshould be directed. On the contrary, it is because we have so combined,throughout the series of ages, the elements which compose humancharacter, that it would be utterly impossible for us to adopt the modesof life, or to reconcile our passions to the modes of thought amongthe Vril-ya,--that I arrived at the conviction that this people--thoughoriginally not only of our human race, but, as seems to me clear by theroots of their language, descended from the same ancestors as the GreatAryan family, from which in varied streams has flowed the dominantcivilisation of the world; and having, according to their mythsand their history, passed through phases of society familiar toourselves,--had yet now developed into a distinct species with which itwas impossible that any community in the upper world could amalgamate:and that if they ever emerged from these nether recesses into the lightof day, they would, according to their own traditional persuasions oftheir ultimate destiny, destroy and replace our existent varieties ofman.
It may, indeed, be said, since more than one Gy could be found toconceive a partiality for so ordinary a type of our super-terrestrialrace as myself, that even if the Vril-ya did appear above ground, wemight be saved from extermination by intermixture of race. But this istoo sanguine a belief. Instances of such 'mesalliance' would be as rareas those of intermarriage between the Anglo-Saxon emigrants and theRed Indians. Nor would time be allowed for the operation of familiarintercourse. The Vril-ya, on emerging, induced by the charm of a sunlitheaven to form their settlements above ground, would commence at oncethe work of destruction, seize upon the territories already cultivated,and clear off, without scruple, all the inhabitants who resistedthat invasion. And considering their contempt for the institutions ofKoom-Posh or Popular Government, and the pugnacious valour of mybeloved countrymen, I believe that if the Vril-ya first appeared in freeAmerica--as, being the choicest portion of the habitable earth, theywould doubtless be induced to do--and said, "This quarter of the globewe take; Citizens of a Koom-Posh, make way for the development ofspecies in the Vril-ya," my brave compatriots would show fight, and nota soul of them would be left in this life, to rally round the Stars andStripes, at the end of a week.
I now saw but little of Zee, save at meals, when the family assembled,and she was then reserved and silent. My apprehensions of danger from anaffection I had so little encouraged or deserved, therefore, now fadedaway, but my dejection continued to increase. I pined for escape to theupper world, but I racked my brains in vain for any means to effect it.I was never permitted to wander forth alone, so that I could not evenvisit the spot on which I had alighted, and see if it were possible toreascend to the mine. Nor even in the Silent Hours, when the householdwas locked in sleep, could I have let myself down from the lofty floorin which my apartment was placed. I knew not how to command the automatawho stood mockingly at my beck beside the wall, nor could I ascertainthe springs by which were set in movement the platforms that suppliedthe place of stairs. The knowledge how to avail myself of thesecontrivances had been purposely withheld from me. Oh, that I could buthave learned the use of wings, so freely here at the service of everyinfant, then I might have escaped from the casement, regained the rocks,and buoyed myself aloft through the chasm of which the perpendicularsides forbade place for human footing!