A commencement of lassitude appears to be boring the audience, whose members are utterly uninterested in geological considerations, and want to hear something else. Estimating that the preamble is long, several ladies are shifting in their seats and fanning themselves. The explorer pays no heed. He continues calmly.
That a Europe, or Europides, existed is therefore probable. One can even assert that, to some extent, the discovery of the Gorilloid that we have brought back is a further argument in favor of the thesis.
In fact, Messieurs, a constant harmony reigns in nature between all the various manifestations of life; animals and vegetables alike exist in a direct relationship with the environment they inhabit. You know that, and every one of you has been able to observe it many times over while taking walks. Species, in the animal kingdom as well as the vegetable, corresponding to the climates of their respective regions, are appropriated by them, in a sense denouncing them. Regions that are damp or dry, cold or hot, elevated or low-lying, have their particular flora and fauna.
Now, that law of appropriation is manifest in many other effects, less familiar but no less logical; what is true for temperatures, altitudes or hygrometric conditions is also true for space: the proportions of extent exercise their influence on forms of life, and that influence imposes itself like that of any other ambient condition. The population of islands cannot and does not resemble that of continents; they have their own inhabitants and always will. Large herbivores correspond to abundant pasture; fast-moving animals such as deer, reindeer or horses suppose the deployment of large surfaces, without which they would not be able to live or develop normally—and, let us also say, without which they could not be born. A bird with a large wingspan is conclusive evidence of distance, as a fish is conclusive evidence of water.
If, therefore, we encounter, in insular points, the fossils of species that I shall call continental, we can affirm without hesitation that the islands were formerly an integral part of a continent, from which they were separated by some cataclysm.
Such is precisely the case with the Alpians that we have just explored. Our collection of fossils, gathered among the rocks of the boreal region, attests to the existence in those desolate regions of a once-prosperous continent. You can, at your leisure, examine these specimens of fossil bones, which the ice has conserved for us over several thousand centuries, and which will subsequently be classified at the Museum. But henceforth, and most of all, the strange simian that you will shortly contemplate, the last survivor of a world, will appear to you and cannot fail to appear to you, as the witness of a lost continent, and perhaps of a level of culture that seems to have been quite advanced, not only physically but also intellectually.
Movements. The explorer addresses a few whispered words to his assistant, who steps back. Prolonged agitation in the auditorium.
Before then. . . .
Various movements. Murmurs.
Messieurs, I understand your legitimate impatience, and it flatters me, as a proof of the powerful interest that you are kind enough to attach to my discovery, but the presentation of the Human cannot usefully be made if it is not preceded by an osteological examination of earlier specimens: the skeletons of yesterday, rather than the living specimen of today, will permit us to judge the degree of advancement reached by the race in the times of its prosperity. I shall pass over that study as rapidly as possible, in order to return to it in a future lecture, but it is impossible for me to omit it, however anxious I am to please you!
The professor steps back to the tables on which the fossil bones are placed.
Messieurs I tell you that the Gorilloid, to which we have given the name Human, was not an unconscious brute. The dimensions of his skull prove it, no less than the opening of his facial angle. Among all the animal species that are or have been alive, only one facial angle is as widely open: ours.
Various sensations. The scientist, his arm outstretched, lifts up a human skull and displays its profile triumphantly. His attitude, a trifle over-theatrical, is emphatic, and some people seem inclined to consider it provocative; that impression is accentuated when the lecturer, turning to a blackboard standing behind him, shows thereon the human angle and the gorillan angle, which are identical. Pointing to them each in turn he says:
Theirs, then; ours, now. It’s the same.
Prolonged movements.
The dentition, analogous to ours, attests an omnivore; this mammal held itself, as we do, in a vertical position, only utilizing its hind limbs for walking; it was a bimane!
Sensations.
Finally, the presence of certain osseous apophyses, the detailed study of which I shall not impose upon you, undeniably proves the progressive atrophy of organs once possessed by the first specimens of the species, but which gradually disappeared as the race was refined—such as, for example, the vestige of a caudal appendage, which the Human skeleton presents, as ours does.
Murmurs, protests. The professor affects not to hear them, pauses briefly, and continues:
We therefore find ourselves, without a doubt, in the presence of an advanced, civilized, albeit degenerate, species, which occupied, before ours, continents anterior to ours: a superior species like our own, perhaps capable of abstract thought, and perhaps having had arts and sciences like ours!
I shall have said everything about this point, Messieurs, when I have added to these summary remarks the assertion of one fact, and one only, which doubtless seems to you rich in possible deductions: these bones have now been collected in a native state in the soul of the Quinary epoch, as were those of the animals we found; they were buried in tombs of carved stone. Humans buried their dead!
Prolonged sensation.
Thus, Messieurs, Humans lived in society. Furthermore, they built. An agglomeration of sand and calcareous matter, compressed between the stones of tombs, which serves to hold them together, clearly appears to be, not a natural product, but the work of an intentional fabrication. Thus, Humans possessed industries. Living in society—as proved by the association of the tombs—they were able to group their houses like their tombs, and constitute cities . . . don’t laugh, Messieurs, I’m not affirming it yet, but I say that they could: the hypothesis, although not demonstrated, is at least plausible, and logic authorizes it! When we have searched the sea-bed—and we will search it, the Europic Sea, where the cities are submerged, as I am convinced they are, for want of proof to the contrary—and have brought back into the light those miserable remains of a vanished epoch, of a doomed species, then, doubtless, you will no longer be laughing. The irony of incredulity—which is to say, of ignorance—will be forced to admit, with us, with reason, and with common sense, the one art that supposes all the arts, that the possibility of one renders all the others possible and necessary, if there is time enough to attain them, and that it is evidence of a retrograde mind, in no way noble but merely closed, in no way proud but simply vain, to refuse to conceive the possibility of races that are, or once were, equal to ours.
Enthusiastic applause from some benches. Whistles. Protests. The applause is redoubled. Tumult.
The honor of Gorillakind. . . .
New interruption. Animal cries. The professor makes as if to withdraw. In the face of that threat, calm is gradually reestablished.
Messieurs, I am not polemicizing here; I am practicing science. There are some who are scornful of my thinking, who have been able momentarily to attribute to me the malevolent intention of offending the susceptibilities of others. I respect all beliefs, in the desire to see mine respected in return, and I do not consider that the verities acquired regarding the evolution of animal species are incompatible with any notion of the divinity, or that they cast a slur on legally recognized religions. I repeat that I am not making a political point here. . . .
Applause.
. . . and I deem that the honor of the gorillan species cannot reside in a jealous exclusivism, but, on the contrary, in the glory of thinking and seeking the truth, whatever it m
ay be, on any subject whatsoever.
Dogmas inform us that the World was created for us and for us alone. Let us leave the dogmas there, I shall not dispute them; but let us at least recognize that, if such a conviction has been able to arise in our minds, analogous minds might have had it before us, and might have it after us. Who knows what the Alpian Bimanes of whom these are the relics, the Humans, might have thought about these matters? Who knows whether this Gorilloid species had not arrived at its full development, while our ancestors, still primitive, were living in the caves of the prehistoric age, and who can tell whether its members might have professed, in our regard, an exclusivism analogous to the one on which we now pride ourselves in our turn? Who can tell whether they might not have had, like us, dogmas and gods, faith in their immortal souls?
Gentlemen, let us not pass judgment on things unknown, for fear of making temeritous judgments. The beings I am showing you might have believed themselves to be great. They are no longer. Respect their ashes! A few thousand centuries ago, the creatures that I have discovered thought, loved, suffered and desired, but it now requires the science of another race merely to establish that they existed!
These beings, superior to all known animals, reigned over themselves and over the globe, in the distant epochs when the habitable portion of our planet had not yet been reduced to the intertropical zone. Their domain was vaster than ours, but perhaps their notion of good and evil was identical to ours. How did they disappear? The law of evolution that had fashioned them logically, degenerated them logically, and when environmental conditions ceased to be in harmony with the species’ organism, they logically died out.
When, shortly, we compare these two skeletons with the survivor that you are going to see, you will comprehend the slow regression of a grandeur that has attenuated, a strength that is exhausted, a race that is on the brink of extinction.
Applause. The professor turns and makes a sign to his assistant, who receives his instructions and leaves the room. The session is suspended briefly. Animated dialogues in the hall.
The assistants return, carrying a sort of cubic cage on a stretcher, covered with a sheet; they deposit it on a large table next to the podium and hang a placard on it: DO NOT TOUCH.
Lively movement of curiosity. Silence is completely reestablished. Opera-glasses are aimed at the veiled cage. The professor approaches and slowly lifts the edge of the sheet. He leans toward the cage, shaking his head in an amicable manner, as if to reassure the captive beast.
He opens the door of the cage.
The Human appears.
On the invitation of the professor, who encourages it with a hand gesture, the Human crosses the threshold and advances across the table.
Cries of surprise, followed by words rapidly exchanged in low voices.
The Human is clad in an ample bearskin cloak. It measures about one meter ten. Its head, enormous and pale, is speckled—its face as well as his head—with sparse hairs, dirty white in color. The blinking eyes, which seem to be those of an albino, are protected by long white lashes. Its expression is one of fright. Its torso and limbs are invisible beneath the draped cloak.
The professor leans toward the specimen and gently, by means of gestures, invites it to take off its cloak. The animal is visibly reluctant. In spite of the specimen’s resistance, the professor proceeds to undress it himself.
A further cry of astonishment goes up in the auditorium.
The Human is completely naked; its upper body is weak and flat, as if crushed, but the abdomen is swollen and sticks out. The arms, extraordinarily short, terminate in minuscule hands with spatulate fingers. The short and knock-kneed limbs have enormous attachments. The entire body, dull gray in color, is striated with white hairs similar to those on the face.
The Human, embarrassed under the gazes of the crowd, turns its head to the right and the left, anxiously, as if seeking a refuge.
The opera-glasses study it; the dialogues become more animated. In many places a scarcely-scientific laughter shakes the powerful shoulders of aristocratic Gorillas. The ladies, keenly amused by the examination of the grotesque little male, whisper among themselves. A few scientists, who have come on to the stage, touch the Human, open its mouth, tap it on the back, work its joints, and examine the texture of its skin and the nuances of its hair with magnifying glasses.
*
II.
The Last Couple
When it is reckoned that scientific and worldly curiosity has had time to satisfy itself, Professor Sffaty asks for the stage to be cleared, and returns to the table on which the two fossilized human skeletons are laid. He stands behind it.
By his attitude, he makes it understood that he is going to speak. Calm is gradually reestablished in the audience. The assistants shout: “Silence, please!”
People cough. They settle down.
The professor drinks some water.
The silence is complete.
The professor speaks:
A first glance was sufficient, Mesdames and Messieurs, for you to observe the evident kinship between this small creature and our race, and I ask for no more proof for that than your cry of surprise—but we shall return to that delicate question later.
The second observation that imposes itself is that of a singularly notable difference between this ultimate specimen of a species and the two fossil skeletons that you are about to see, and which are themselves fundamentally different from one another.
Three individuals, three epochs! The first, four thousand centuries old. . . .
Sensations.
. . . goes back to the Quaternary period, in the course of which Humans seem to have been the veritable monarchs of the globe. The second skeleton, much more recent, dates from the Quinary epoch; it is a specimen of degeneration, which marks an intermediate stage between the glorious human here to my right and the rebrutalized human here to my left, the last survivor.
I shall spare you, Mesdames, the eminently instructive comparative study of these three types. Merely note the fundamental uniformity of the three modes: the animal is one, always the same, but gulfs of time separate the three individuals; between them, the work of degeneration has taken effect. In the same way that the species, in the course of centuries, and by virtue of an uninterrupted series of transformations, was able to obtain the full development of its organs and faculties, and to raise itself to a highly advanced state of culture, so it was able—I will gladly say that it was obliged—in continuing along the same path, to overshoot the target, while it still believed itself to be following it; having already reached the summit, it was necessary for it to complete its journey and descend again, while it imagined itself to be still climbing because it never stopped marching!
Every organism has a limit of development, which it cannot surpass; when it has completed the sequence of its schema, it stops, and from then on, any further effort only accelerates the fatal and inevitable disorganization. The force that developed it becomes the force that disaggregates it; stone, subjected to too much pressure, crumbles; metal evaporates; a planet dissolves; a plant becomes etiolated; a species degenerates; a kingdom falls apart; a rope breaks! All power has an end; all expansion a term. That extreme of possible resistance is called the critical point.
Messieurs, the weakness of species is not being able to stop at the critical point; minerals cling to it better than plants, which transgress it less than animals; of all the last-named, the most intelligent are the most injurious to themselves, because the notion of their capability incites them to employ their latent strength in a way that exceeds the norm; in attempting to live more, to live to excess, they kill themselves. Perhaps we should be led to conclude that the viability of races is in inverse proportion to the consciousness they have of themselves, and that consciousness of strength is a mortal peril for any being that possesses it.
What we can, at least, affirm as certain is that the state of perfection resides in Harmony; that alone regulates the world and eng
enders life; the equilibrium of forces constitutes perfect beauty, the only beauty, and also the indispensable condition of all existence. When one of the forces becomes excessive, the equilibrium is broken, and the work belongs henceforth to death. To desire to go beyond is to aspire to destruction; to surpass natural limits is to return to oblivion.
Where are the limits? Our Reason searches for them but does not know them; Art sometimes divines them, and Science sometimes defines them, but our certainties are restricted. We go on nevertheless, and effort towards the better sometimes leads us toward the worse, with the result that we often deteriorate that which was worth more before our coming, and history informs us that in many reforms, our confidence in the hope of edifying that which might be merely ends up degrading that which was.
Repeated applause.
I am only speaking here, Messieurs, from an abstract point of view, and I beg you not to see allusions in my discourse that are not there. We are not examining, at present, the burning social questions of the gorilla species, but the past conditions of the human species, and I say that this bimane, once arrived at its most noble development—which is to say, the perfect equilibrium between its psychic strengths and its physical strengths, was able to aspire to an exaggerated development thereof, and sought it to its own detriment.
An abuse of its thinking faculties, insufficiently equilibrated by the use of its muscular faculties, produced a cerebral hypertrophy concomitant with the atrophy of its limbs. Is it not permissible to suppose that this superior species, in the momentum of intellectual labor and nervous vibration, was unable to stop, and that it has deliberately killed itself, without wishing to comprehend, intoxicated as it was by the conquering power of its genius?
Scientific Romance Page 35