E. E. Fournier d'Albe

“ In a hundred years the unification of the human race will be complete. The earth and the fulness thereof will be under the full mastery of man. All animal, vegetable and bacterial life will be kept within strict bounds in the interests of humanity. The earth will be under one government, and one language will be written and understood, or even spoken, all over the globe. There will still be different races and perhaps allied nations, but travel and commerce will be free and unfettered, and calamities will be alleviated and dangers met by the united forces of all mankind. ”

“ We owe the truth to a child more than to any adult. Our promises to a child should be as binding as an oath. Tell them fairy tales by all means, but tell them with a voice and expression [50] which inevitably stamps them as such, and makes belief optional.
I cannot see any effective substitute for family life so long as there are children to bring up. Children feed on love as they do on food and fresh air, and no vicarious love can take the place of the natural affection between children and their parents. ”

“ Let nobody think I am unduly optimistic about the future of this earth of ours. The difficulty lies rather in visualizing what recent and current progress, and accelerated progress, must inevitably bring about when continued for a long time. The only doubtful element appears to be whether the magnificent élan vital of our race, which has enabled it to conquer the world, will last through the vast ages to come. ”

“ Worlds were to come true, and an expeditionary force of Martians were to land on the earth with a view to its annexation, then the human race might instantly unite to repel the invader. It would be an inspiring sight to see Japanese and Turks, Abyssinians and Zulus, Eskimos and Swiss, Brazilians and Mexicans and Doughboys, Tahitians and Britishers and Russians, Irish and Egyptians, Persians and Chinese, all vying with each other in devotion and bravery, fighting for their native planet against a ruthless and merciless invader. ”

“ The exhaustion of the coal-fields might slow down progress for a time, but so long as mankind keeps its continuity, its past achievements and its rate of achievement will act as a stimulus and encouragement to further efforts, and new sources of energy will be discovered and utilized.
And so we may feel justified in expecting continual progress for at least a thousand years. Can we imagine the result? A globe laid out like a huge garden, with a climate under perfect control; the internal heat of [86] the earth brought to the surface and utilized as a source of never-failing energy. ”

“ Nobody is conscious of the appalling complexity of his anatomical organization when using his body as a well-poised instrument of thought and intercourse. “The simple life” is not the old-fashioned country life of England or the primitive life of savage humanity. Real simplicity is constituted by the life [82] in which most things are done by pressing a button, and a man can travel across a continent in such comfort that on arrival at his destination all memories of his journey are dimmed or lost, and he can hardly recall having travelled at all. ”

“ Love is still the ruling passion and inspiration of humanity, which enables men and maidens to brave all the trials and dangers of life in unconscious devotion to a future as yet unimagined and unborn. ”

“ Who will dare deny that life in England—to take the nearest example—is happier now than it was even fifty years ago? Some people will sigh for the good old times of the Victorian reign, when money and employment were plentiful, when there was ample leisure for the rich, with pleasant ways of spending it, when masters were masters indeed and servants were loyal, [28] respectful, and dutiful. But in recent times, apart from the tragedy of the Great War, there has been an immense improvement in the life of the average Englishman and his dependents. ”

“ The mere increase of speed in transport, due to the internal-combustion engine, has caused a speeding-up of the whole nervous system and a brightening of the intelligence of all but an insignificant fraction of the population. When the choice lies between the Quick and the Dead, even the most sluggish temperament will put on a spurt, and this continued sprinting across the motor traffic has produced a more agile generation. If such a profound difference can be made in twenty years, what will be the effect of even 200 years of continually accelerated progress? ”

“ Progress and happiness are, as they always have been, secondary considerations. Many minds have regarded one or both of them as unessential. Thus, it is not at all necessary to contemplate an increasing population of the globe. The leadership [15] of the human race can much more effectively be maintained by educating individuals than by increasing their numbers. And as regards happiness, that can safely be left to take care of itself. All progress is progress towards greater happiness. ”

“ Clothing has the effect of enlarging man’s sphere of activity until it covers the entire globe from the poles to the equator. Another advantage is that it emphasizes mental qualities rather than physical qualities. If mere physical beauty were the one essential to human well-being, mankind would have long ago insisted on its being freely displayed—and judged—without the disguise of clothing. ”

“ Anthropologists put the age of the human race roughly at half a million years. In that comparatively long period—long as compared with history, [16] but short as reckoned by geology—man has evolved from an ape-like, tree-dwelling nut-eater into a plodding, illiterate, monosyllabic tiller of the soil, (I take the majority of mankind as representative of its state of progress rather than the élite) . The 500 millennia of human evolution have had but little effect on the human form and the average human character. The brain is somewhat larger generally and the mouth rather less protruding. ”

“ Scientific knowledge is the birthright of every human child. But on that very account, perhaps, it is neither prized nor cherished. In the markets where thoughts are bought and sold, an ounce of illusion is worth a ton of fact. ”

“ But if the mere discouragement of the tribe when faced with new conditions can act directly upon the instinct of procreation, and affect, so to speak, the élan vital of [11] the germ-plasm, then we are faced with the gravest danger to which the human race can be exposed.
For such an effect would be too insidious to be dealt with by public measures. It would be a psychological disease of the most fatal and virulent kind. It might affect the whole human race during some crisis in its fortunes, and might bring about its destruction by the failure of the sex instinct. ”

“ Human rivalry and competition will take other forms. There are many ways of killing men, women and children, besides suffocating them with chlorine. If a tribe is to be exterminated, nobody will be killed, but all its members will be painlessly sterilized by X-rays or some such modern means, so that the next generation will know them no more. It will be more humane than the Biblical [81] expedient of “dashing their children against a stone.”
The mass of interconnections between human nations and individuals will be like a closely-woven fabric. ”

“ The transport of goods and passengers will rapidly gain in speed, comfort, and safety, until the whole earth becomes accessible to all. It will not only become accessible, but also habitable. The tropics, the original cradle of the human race, will once more be reclaimed from our most formidable enemies of [79] the insect-world and the ever-present bacterium. The higher organism will assert its much-contested supremacy over those minute organisms which owe their influence to mere numerical superiority. ”

“ Such a solution, though it may draw some justification from the bee-hive or the ant-heap, is not at all likely to be adopted by the human race of the future. The essential service of Christianity, the kernel which will remain after the mythological and dogmatic accretions have been shed, is to provide mankind with an imagination capable of conceiving and realizing the sufferings of other people and creatures, and the will to remedy or obviate them as far as possible. Through centuries of abuse, neglect and misinterpretation that gift has gradually worked into the mass of civilized humanity. ”

“ Once we are sure that the human race has a reasonable chance of indefinite survival, we can proceed to contemplate the changes, if any, which are likely to take place as the centuries and millennia roll on. ”

“ Almost everywhere science and invention are on the side of the established order. Although every researcher and inventor is, in a sense, a revolutionary, in that his work is likely to produce immense changes in human activity, his general outlook tends towards aristocracy, since he is imbued with the sense of the immense differences in the personal equipment of individuals, which no equalitarian sentimentality will ever wipe out. ”

“ Communication will become closer and more general. Already the earth is a network of lines and cables, linking continent to continent. Soon a speaker will have the earth for his sounding board and his hall of audience, and the privilege of addressing the human race will be prized above a coronation. ”

“ Even now, the digging up of a city road reveals a tangled network of water pipes, electric mains, gas pipes, and drain pipes suggestive of the dissection of an animal body. It is but a faint foreshadowing of what is to come. The substratum of life will become more and more complete as conscious life becomes simpler. ”

“ For in view of the great and increasing power of the human race we hardly need fear any enemies from without. Our destruction, if ever it comes, will come from within. It will come if and when we develop a Will to Die. ”

“ Can we assure to our descendants an indefinitely prolonged future of perpetual progress and ever-increasing happiness?
The answer to these questions is ultimately based upon psychological [6] factors. Human life requires certain physical conditions for its maintenance. It also requires the passive assistance of many forms of animal life and plant life. But Man is, without exception, the most adaptable inhabitant of this globe, and there is little fear of any physical or biological factors bringing about his extinction, provided they change sufficiently gradually. ”

“ Those possibilities have to some extent been realized in the educated few. When we speak of civilization, of modern life and scientific advance, we fix our attention exclusively on the educated élite. In asserting, for instance, that nowadays nobody doubts that the earth is round, we are referring to a very small minority of the human race, composed of perhaps half the adults of Europe and America and Australia, with a small sprinkling of Africans and Asiatics, in all perhaps 10 per cent. ”

“ It so happens that the two greatest States of the world, the British Empire and the United States of America, are also the States whose home countries are freest from national intolerance and race prejudice, both consisting of a mixture of many nationalities. It is to them, as well as France, that we must look for the greatest advances towards the ideal of a world federation. ”

“ We thus get an élite among nations as well as individuals. This élite is, however, based upon force rather than intellectual leadership, owing to the fact that a nation regarded as an organism is in a much more primitive stage of evolution than is a civilized [21] individual. Nations have no morality, no curbs upon their greed, their hatred, their jealousy and vindictiveness. ”

“ If a vote were taken of every man, woman, and child in the world to decide whether the earth is flat or round, there would be a majority of perhaps 9 to 1 in favour of a flat earth.
Again, “everybody” is supposed to [18] know that a whale is not a fish, that it does not spawn or lay eggs, but that it suckles its young like any other mammalian. What proportion of the human race actually does know that simple fact? How many human beings even know that the sun is larger than the moon? ”

“ Dress is, after all, a sort of extension of the physical personality. The body of a naked child at play is the most perfect thing in beauty that can be seen. All its muscles adapt themselves instantly to its activities. ”

“ The general level of education has risen, infectious diseases have been successfully fought, schooling has become brighter and more effective, clothing has become more rational. There is more fresh air and less drudgery. The workman draws a larger share of the product of his effort, and often drives his motor car while his employer goes by train. The workman draws his bloated wage under the protection of his trade union, while the employer lies awake at night wondering how best to keep the works running and find new markets for old. ”

“ We must extend our time scale from centuries to millennia, and from millennia to geological eras. Above all, we must take into account not only the rapid advance of science and invention, but the constant acceleration of that advance.
The consequence of that constant acceleration is that new developments and achievements succeed each other with bewildering rapidity. ”