Chapter VI

Hippolyte Dufresne was warmly congratulated by his friends on his finishing the reading of his story.

Nicole Langelier, applying to him the words of Critias to Triephon, said:

“You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a night.”

“It is not likely,” remarked Joséphin Leclerc, “that the future will be such as you have seen it. I do not wish for the coming of socialism, but I dread it not. Collectivism at the helm would be quite another thing than is imagined. Who was it who said, carrying back his thoughts to the time of Constantine and of the Church’s early triumphs: ‘Christianity is triumphant, but its triumph is subject to the conditions imposed by life on all political and religious parties. All of them, whatever they may be, undergo so complete a transformation in the struggle that after victory there remains of themselves but the name and a few symbols of the last idea’?”

“Must we then give up the idea of knowing the future?” asked M. Goubin.

But Giacomo Boni, who when delving down into a few feet of soil had descended from the present period to the stone age, remarked:

“Upon the whole, humanity changes little. What has been shall be.”

“No doubt,” replied Jean Boilly, “man, or that which we call man, changes little. We belong to a definite species. The evolution of the species is of necessity included in the definition of the species. It is impossible to conceive humanity subsequent to its transformation. A transformed species is a lost species. But what reason is there for us to believe that man is the end of the evolution of life upon the earth? Why suppose that his birth has exhausted the creative forces of nature, and that the universal mother of the flora and fauna should, after having shaped him, become for ever barren. A natural philosopher, who does not stand in fear of his own ideas, H. G. Wells, has said: ‘Man is not final.’ No indeed, man is neither the beginning nor the end of terrestrial life. Long before him, all over the globe, animated forces were multiplying in the depths of the sea, in the mud of the strand, in the forests, lakes, prairies, and tree-topped mountains. After him, new forms will go on taking shape. A future race, born perhaps of our own, but having perchance no bond of origin with us, will succeed us in the empire of the planet. These new spirits of the earth will ignore or despise us. The monuments of our arts, should they discover vestiges of them, will have no meaning for them. Rulers of the future, whose mind we can no more divine than the palæopithekos of the Siwalik Mountains was able to forecast the trains of thought of Aristotle, Newton, and Poincaré.”

THE END

Transcriber’s Note:

Quotation marks have been standardised. Spelling and hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the original publication except as follows:

Page 8
Καὶ εμοιγε δοκειτε ἐπὶ λευκαδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείροων
καταδαρθεντες τοσαῡτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτός
ὄυσης. _changed to_
Καὶ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖτε ἐπὶ λευκάδα πέτρην καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων
καταδαρθέντες τοσαῦτα ὀνειροπολεῖν ἐν ἀκαρεῖ τῆς νυκτὸς
οὔσης.

Page 63
since his tenous substance _changed to_
since his tenuous substance

Page 65
would facedeath for a _changed to_
would face death for a

Page 72
are quarelling over _changed to_
are quarrelling over

Page 111
and by a similiar _changed to_
and by a similar

Page 120
personages of the diologue are _changed to_
personages of the dialogue are

Page 184
it as absurd _changed to_
is as absurd

Page 191
were on the whole androginous in _changed to_
were on the whole androgynous in

Page 201
produced and consumed? _changed to_
produced and consumed.

Page 231
schisms which occured in _changed to_
schisms which occurred in