Hatodik fejezet

The dosire, that is, the sickness of the world.

The Author's indignation on behalf of the human race.

The first thing that I asked of my master, Midore, so soon as I could make myself a little — falsely and imperfectly — understood in their tongue, was of course this: to what strange chance I owed my coming to Faremido, where they had come upon me, and how they had found me?

My master related that, with a lung driven by electric rays (so I call the motor which they bear in the upper part of their trunk), they often range abroad through Space, seeking purer and ampler harmonies, and in their journeying they touch upon the atmosphere of foreign planets and star-systems.

His friend, Sido, upon one occasion, grazing the atmosphere of the planet Laszomi (so they call the Earth), discovered with astonishment a shape floating in the atmosphere that seemed an almost intelligent being, at such a height as, according to their knowledge of Laszomi, no matter whatsoever is wont to present itself.

He addressed it, but the being made no answer.

Flying above it, he perceived two dosires within the being that seemed intelligent: the one no longer moved, and was not infectious, but the other still was.

The form of the dosire being interesting and novel, Sido lifted it out from within the being, that he might carry it to Faremido for the purpose of microscopic examination.

This dosire, it appears, should be I, in whom they discovered peculiar, intelligent signs, and whom they now study as a fami-dosire, a living or intelligent sickness.

Hearing these words with the greatest astonishment, I asked my master respectfully what they understood by dosire, and in what measure they believed that I too should be one, or whence they could thus far have any notion of beings resembling me, considering that their being differs so greatly from mine?

And on the other hand, what he understood by "infectious"; for, if I had rightly gathered from his words, his friend had by mistake taken the flying-machine for the intelligent being, and had regarded me, who was within it, as something else.

My master related that Laszomi, the Earth, they have long and well known; that with magnifying-glasses they have long and very minutely examined its surface, and that there is scarcely anything there which has escaped their notice.

(I must here set down that on this occasion he spoke the pure and simple truth; for later they once showed me such a telescope, and, directing it toward the globe of the Earth, at various settings, I may say that not only the houses, but the men and all their doings, I could make out precisely through the glass.)

They had established that upon Laszomi there are no intelligent beings in the Faremidan sense; the more surprising is this, since some few of the materials proper to intelligent beings, such as iron, gold, quicksilver, and many another mineral besides, are to be discovered upon Laszomi also, by the aid of spectral analysis.

On the other hand, they have this long while seen upon the Earth a strikingly great number of moving, and therefore infectious, dosires, in divers forms and of many kinds; it may be supposed that these disease-breeding germs destroyed the possibility of life for the earthly solasis, and this is indeed likely, for everywhere that they discover some being which seems intelligent, one that is of iron or of steel, and is moved by electricity or by heat: there is always the whole host of dosires, that is to say parasites, loitering within it or about it.

To the question why they held me too for a dosire, my master pointed with a smile to those strange plants which, upon the day of my arrival here, had so surprised me, and which I had called man-shaped trees.

He related that these trees are one kind of dosire, that have this long while eked out a wretched existence and battened as parasites in the otherwise healthy soil of Faremido, and that poison the simple and pure elements proper to solasi-manufacture.

A strange compound it is, whose nature their chemists do not yet know, only its destructive and diseased effect; wherever such a dosire appears, the matter decomposes, ill-smelling humors arise, and a shapeless, itching tumor.

By the word dosire they understand in Faremido, in general, a poison, an infectious matter, a parasite; if such a being makes its way in among the parts of a solasi, it stirs up disorder and sickness there: God be thanked, it is very easily destroyed and removed, by the aid of a few acids, being, moreover, itself a corruptible matter, a sick sickness, which brings itself to ruin by those corrosive and destructive substances which it produces and dissolves.

When I, Gulliver, came hither, their first care was to examine me more minutely through the microscope than they had been able to do through the telescope while I yet lived upon the Earth; and they established with regret that I am in essence just such a dosire as is now and then to be met with in their own soil, and as swarms in so many kinds upon the Earth.

The Faremidan savants have even fixed my place in the order of disease-breeding bacteria, and Sido, to whom my discovery is owing, named me a remisolami-sidore, which in an approximate translation signifies a man-mimicking bacillus, such a germ of disease as, being a parasite, takes on properties resembling those of living, inorganic beings, that it may draw the nearer to them; thus it even utters sounds, and in its head-shaped upper part produces a certain matter whose secretion, thought, outwardly resembles their own spiritual products.

That, however, this apart, I am just such a dosire as any other, is proved by the fact that in my composition no valuable matter whatsoever, no metal or mineral, is to be found, and that in consequence I am necessarily a sickness, that is to say, a transient phenomenon (it is curious that in the tongue of the solasis these two words signify one and the same thing), a morbid matter that consumes itself.

Moreover, how correct their supposition was I have myself proved since: they observed that in a certain part of the day a restlessness takes hold of me, and that at such times I seek out one of these Faremidan dosires, and tear off a few of its tumors (he meant fruit), and, gobbling them down, destroy it; it is plain, therefore, that I belong among those secondary beings which can maintain their brief life only by destroying some organism resembling themselves, that they may in turn be destroyed by a following generation.

All this my master delivered quite calmly and coldly; and it is curious that, by a strange chance, the words, as they were made into music, their meaning apart, melted together into so wondrous a melody that, after he had ended his discourse with the word "generation," as with a dying chord, I stood for whole minutes enchanted and speechless, my soul lulled and rocked into a sweet agitation.

Only slowly did this enchantment disperse, that I might then, with horror and indignation, call to mind the meaning of the words, and the whole ignorant and wicked conception by which he had set the place, in nature, of my human kind, and therefore of the citizens of my adored country.

At the same time I felt a joy that here, behold, I might have occasion to refute the false and degrading reports spread abroad concerning us, and to proclaim the glorious and paramount sovereignty of our kind.

What are these machines, these screw-necked and snail-headed pincers and phonographs, I thought within myself haughtily, beside the glorious mystery of life?

I begged my master to hear me out calmly, until we should come to a clear understanding upon a few matters.

I briefly summed up all that I know upon this question: I began with Adam and Eve, but, keeping measure, I endeavored to refrain from prolixity, following throughout the guidance of the modern natural sciences.

I told how bleak and lifeless the globe had been, until Life appeared upon it — I described a prehistoric landscape — with lights flickering in the cooling vapors, seething, unformed metals and minerals rolling in motley waves beneath a copper-colored firmament, volcanoes pouring forth fire, and white billows of smoke thrust up on high.

Then all this grows calm, blue waters cover the ground, the glowing sun shines smilingly down, and in the shallows of the waters something slowly begins to stir.

Strange, new forms show themselves; Life has appeared upon the Earth.

Through millennia it essays, in hundreds upon hundreds of different forms, to establish itself: it takes on the shape of a fish, then fastens wings upon itself and rises into the air; now it has ten legs and many mouths, now it lengthens its neck, that it may reach the fruit of the palms, now it grows a sharp spade before its mouth, that it may grub itself food out of the dust of the earth.

It grows a giant body, that it may bring forth a multitude of offspring; sometimes razor-sharp teeth, that it may defend itself and maintain its species.

At last, after long experimenting, it falls to pondering before one of the forms: a four-handed, wrinkle-faced animal is this, with eyeballs restlessly rolling beneath shaggy brows.

In the hinder part of its head is the marrow, the organ of instinct, which moves its limbs and performs all that is needful for our ancestor, the ape, to remain alive; when the brute reaches toward its eye, it shuts the eye without willing it.

This is the animal that Life chooses out, to fashion from it a perfect being.

The organ of instinct must be developed, that what was hitherto unconscious and mechanical may become conscious, and self-knowing.

A few thousand years, and the work succeeds; in the hollow of the skull there slowly begins to develop the new organ: the organ of Consciousness, which comprehends the outward and inward phenomena, and adapts itself to them not in a dreamlike ignorance, but by the lighted torch of insight and will.

And behold, before us stands Man, Conscious Life, feeling to the full every joy of existence, and bending to his yoke the forces that lie hidden in raw and stupid matter, that he may make the life of the individual ever fairer and happier, and may exult toward the blue and distant sky and the rising sun!