Hetedik fejezet

The sick world.

Midore is anxious for the life of the Earth.

Consciousness and instinct, a two-headed monster.

The superiority and assurance with which Midore, in answer to my words, spoke of the history of Mankind, surprised me only at the first words.

I was soon obliged to perceive that they know this history, from its outward manifestations, just as well as I myself, nay, it appeared, even better than I.

I would fain summarize briefly the dazzling knowledge which his communications revealed to my wondering mind.

I have already mentioned that the solasis possess magnifying-engines of such a kind that, with their aid, they have these several tens of thousands of years examined the life of my planet, the Earth, down to the minutest particulars, in the same manner as we examine a drop of water with our microscopes.

From Midore's words I now learned, to my astonishment, that they simply regard the planet Earth as a primitive and stunted, degenerated, sick solasi, a being living inorganically, after their own likeness, out of whom there would have come solasis of the very same sort as themselves, but who, some sixty thousand years ago, was attacked by a disease called dosifera: the parasites called dosire, whom I name man and beast, and of which sort there occur, here and there, sporadically, among them too.

But the poor solasi called Earth they so overspread that it grew altogether crippled, and its recovery may yet take a longer time.

He, Midore, who in this assemblage has now lived seventy thousand years in Faremido, had followed the whole process attentively from the very beginning, had seen how the disease arose and how it developed to its present state.

Since he sees that the matter interests me, and gathers from my words that I have even some faint notion of what has passed, he will gladly recount to me his observations; for the fact that I was myself a mere dosire does not preclude my understanding these things to a certain degree, inasmuch as they had already succeeded, in the first months, in placing certain inorganic substances in my brain, which had already in great measure cured it.

This, moreover, is an experimental question, which I shall understand later.

Then Midore told me that he had indeed for some sixty thousand years been examining the solasi called Earth, because this question interested him, and he suspected that something was amiss there.

The organs of the Earth — mountains, fires, waters — developed finely for a time.

At one period he then perceived, with regret, that a great quantity of quite tiny dosire had broken out in one of its folds.

(When I made inquiry, Midore determined this place precisely, and I recognized from his words the region of the Ganges and the Euphrates.)

There was probably little heat and electricity in that place.

(For I must know that heat and electricity, light and sound are the same to the solasi as blood is to us.)

The disease spread apace and by degrees overspread that whole region which I call Asia and he the belly of the Earth.

At that time the solasi called Earth was still healthy enough that he could commune with it in sounds: it complained, indeed, of its disease, and he, Midore, gave it the counsel to let a little warmth into the sick place, for the two of them soon recognized that the dosire is a very wretched and helpless parasite, which a rise of a few degrees of heat, a bare eighty or a hundred degrees, kills and destroys.

But the Earth neglected the matter, and the disease which I call Life spread ever further.

It is curious that once he, Midore, wished to help it, and from an engine serving this purpose he let rays play upon the body of the Earth, to cure it; the rays drew forth hot water from the sick body, and in this water the dosire, the bacteria, perished by the million.

It was very nearly come to this, that he should succeed in extirpating them altogether, and the poor fellow-solasi recover.

At that time he occupied himself very seriously with this question, and by the aid of certain glasses observed the nature and behavior and conditions of life of the dosire; for only thus could there be any question of his utterly extirpating the whole disease-causing species.

When the hot water began to seethe, the dosire fled in terror and ran hither and thither over the surface of the Earth; at this time they may have been at that stage of their development which I have called the Primeval Man or the Primeval Ape, in a word, the Creature of Instinct.

Now these primeval men — said Midore mockingly — behaved very strangely under the working of the hot water: such as did not perish at once fled to the fields — he remembers them well — and there swarmed about, wailing and terrified.

The whole picture stands still clearly before him, just as he observed it through the microscope: from the whirling knot of dosire, snatching after air, there detached itself one strongly developed specimen, which ran to one side, then of a sudden threw up its feelers or arms and pointed upward, toward that quarter whence he, Midore, had let loose the destroying rays upon them, and whence, through the microscope, he looked down upon them.

Yes, it pointed straight into his eye, Midore's; and thereupon the rest also turned that way, then sank down upon the Earth and, with arms lifted upward, kneeling, cried out something toward him.

At that moment the hot water burst forth beneath them, and they all perished.

Since then he has often observed this peculiarity of the dosire: that sometimes, a few minutes before their destruction, they suddenly turn their faces upward, toward the quarter where the solasis dwell, as though they awaited help from that very place whence this destruction proceeds.

Midore then remarked that in time he abandoned this mode of treatment.

For he came to perceive that there was no need of it whatsoever: the dosire, he repeats, being a sick disease, which destroys itself by the aid of that organ which commonly resides in the upper part of the animal, in its head, and which I have called instinct.

It is best, therefore, to await the disease running its course of itself: to await the dosire overspreading the whole Earth and, in the bodily sense, fully developing; whereupon, as experience shows, the organ of instinct performs the rest in any case: the dosire fall upon one another, upon themselves within one another, and destruction sets in, the death of the disease begins.

It came to light that the dosire seek to maintain their life by devouring one another, in a hundred forms; from which it is plain that the whole business cannot last long, even as every engine must perish which takes the substance needful to its life not from without, from a world unlike itself, and transforms it to its purposes, but consumes it from within, in itself, again and again.

A boat, is it not, cannot be moved forward from within, but only if from without, by the aid of oars, I take hold upon the water; the boat of life, too, comes to a stand if it has no oar to sink its root into true being.

In other words: Midore's apprehension, that the parasitic dosire would destroy the poor Earth, would devour it and so triumph over it, proved exaggerated: the dosire used the Earth only to creep forth out of it, and then, thanks to the organ of instinct, fell upon one another.

Thus he was quite easy in his mind concerning the fate of his suffering fellow-solasi, the Earth; he knew beforehand that the dosire, however they might overspread its body for a time, would assuredly perish in the end, and the Earth recover.

True — this he must confess — there was a time when he was seriously alarmed, and believed that the disease was taking a grave and fatal turn: this may have been at that time when, according to my own words, in the brain of the dosire I call man there suddenly began to develop a new organ, that organ which I have called the organ of consciousness.

This organ might indeed have been dangerous to the Earth, for by its aid the dosire called man discovered that the way to remain alive is not for life to destroy itself, but to work up the substance needful to life, with all its faculty, its strength, and its will, out of the inorganic Earth, and to fashion of it something perfect.

This organ began to develop in the brain, within the organ of instinct: it was to be feared that it would fully develop, would suppress the organ of instinct and, rendering it superfluous, would crowd it out for good, would step into its place, would come to know the essence of being and, understanding the imperfection and corruptibility of the organic body, would replace it with the inorganic, abiding substance of the solasi, unexposed to destruction, with gold and minerals, and at last would conquer death; in other words, would cease to be a disease, that is, a transient phenomenon.

Of this one had seriously to beware: by the aid of consciousness this work set in; they began to bore and hew the Earth; they began to use its blood, its heat and electricity, and the dosire grew ever stronger.

Behold, out of the hard substance it was able at last even to make itself wings, so that, tiny worm that it was, it began dangerously to resemble the immortal solasis.

"I tell you," added Midore, "for a time I was seriously anxious that by the aid of consciousness it would triumph over matter and death; but then one day I subjected the tiny body of the dosire to a searching examination, dissected it by the aid of tweezers, and under the magnifier examined the dangerous little brain; and thereupon I was set at ease.

My supposition, that the organ of consciousness had extirpated that of instinct, proved false.

In the imperfect brain of the tiny creature there is an incurable organic defect: an incurable organic disease.

This species cannot live, it must perish; it suffers from a mortal, organic disease which sooner or later will make an end of the whole species.