Underground Man

by Gabriel de Tarde

  But this schism has lasted too long. It is imperative that it should cease. It is time to follow Empedocles, Ulysses, Æneas, Dante, to the gloomy abodes of the underworld, to plunge mankind again in the fountain from which it sprang, to effect the complete restoration of the exiled soul to the land of its birth! (Applause here and there.) Besides, there is but this alternative: life underground or death. The sun is failing us: let us dispense with the sun. The plan, which it remains for me to propose, has been worked out for several months past by the most eminent men. To-day it is finished; it is final. It is complete in all its details. Does it interest you? (On all sides: ‘Read it, read it.’) You will see that with discipline, patience, and courage—yes, courage, I risk this evil-sounding word (‘Risk it, risk it.’) — and above all, with the aid of that splendid heritage of science and art which comes to us from the past, for which we are accountable to the most distant of our descendants, to the boundless universe, and I was going to say, to God (signs of surprise), we can be saved if we will.” (Thunder of applause.)

  The speaker next entered into lengthy details, which it is useless to reproduce here, on the Neo-troglodytism which he pretended to inaugurate as the acme of civilisation, “which had,” said he, “began with caves, and was destined to return to these subterranean retreats, but at a far deeper level.” He displayed designs, quantities and drawings. He had no trouble in proving that, on condition of burrowing sufficiently deep into the ground below, they would find a deliciously gentle warmth, an Elysian temperature. It would be enough to excavate, enlarge, heighten, and extend the galleries of already existing mines in order to render them habitable and comfortable into the bargain. The electric light, supplied entirely without expense by the scattered centres of the fire within, would provide for the magnificent illumination both by day and night of these colossal crypts, these marvellous cloisters, indefinitely extended and embellished by successive generations. With a good system of ventilation, all danger of suffocation or of foulness of air would be avoided. In short, after a more or less long period of settling in, civilised life could unfold anew in all its intellectual, artistic, and fashionable splendour, as freely as it did in the capricious and intermittent light or natural day, and even perhaps more surely.” At these last words, the Princess Lydia broke her fan, by dint of applauding. An objection then came from the right, “With what shall we be fed?” Miltiades smiled disdainfully and replied: “Nothing is simpler. For ordinary drinking purposes we first of all shall have melted ice. Every day we shall transport enormous blocks of it in order to keep the orifices of the crypts free from obstruction, and to supply the public fountains. I may add that chemists undertake to manufacture alcohol from anything, even from mineralised rocks, and that it is the A.B.C. of the grocer’s trade to manufacture wine from alcohol and water. (‘Hear! hear!’ from all the benches). As for food, is not chemistry also capable of manufacturing butter, albumen, and milk from no matter what? Besides, has the last word been said on the subject? Is it not highly probable that before long, if it takes up the matter, it will succeed in satisfying, both on the score of quantity and expense, the desires of the most refined gastronomy? And, meanwhile ... (a voice timidly: ‘Meanwhile?’) Meanwhile does not our disaster itself, by a kind of providential occurrence, place within our reach the best stocked, the most abundant, the most inexhaustible larder that the human race has ever had? Immense stores, the most admirable which have hitherto been laid down, are lying for us under the ice or the snow. Myriads of domestic or wild animais—I dare not add, of men and women (a general shudder of horror) — but at least of bullocks, sheep and poultry, frozen instantaneously in a single mass, are lying here and there in the public markets a few steps away. Let us collect, as long as such work is still possible out of doors, this boundless quarry which was destined to feed for years several hundreds of millions, and which will well suffice, in consequence, to feed a few thousands only for ages, even should they multiply unduly, in despite of Malthus. If stacked in the neighbourhood of the orifice of the chief cavern, they will be easy to get at and will provide a delightful fare for our fraternal love-feasts.”

  Still further objections were formulated from different quarters. They were forcibly disposed of with the same irresistible easy assurance. The conclusion is worthy of a verbatim quotation: “However extraordinary the catastrophe which has befallen us and the means of escape which is left us may seem in appearance, a little reflection will suffice to prove to us that the predicament in which we are, must have been repeated a thousand times already in the immensity of the universe, and must have been cleared up in the same fashion, being inevitably and normally the final phase in the life-drama of every star. The astronomers know that every sun is bound to become extinct; they know, therefore, that in addition to the luminous and visible stars, there are in the heavens an infinitely greater number of extinct and rayless stars which continue endlessly to revolve with their train of planets, doomed to an eternity of night and cold. Well, if this is the case, I ask you: Can we suppose that life, thought, and love, are the exclusive privilege of an infinite minority of solar systems still possessed of light and heat, and deny to the immense majority of gloomy stars every manifestation of life and animation, the very highest reason for their existence? Thus lifelessness, death, the void in movement would be the rule; and life the exception! Thus the nine-tenths, the ninety-nine hundredths, perhaps, of the solar systems, would idly revolve like senseless and gigantic mill-wheels, a useless encumbrance of space. That is impossible and idiotic, that is blasphemous. Let us have more faith in the unknown! Truth, here as everywhere else, is without doubt the antipodes of appearance. All that glitters is not gold. These splendid constellations which attempt to dazzle us are themselves relatively barren. Their light, what is it? A transient glory, a ruinous luxury, an ostentatious squandering of energy, born of illimitable senselessness. But when the stars have sown their wild oats, then the serious task of their life begins, they develop their inner resources. For frozen and sunless without, they literally preserve in their inviolate centres their unquenchable fire, defended by the very layers of ice. There, finally, is to be relit the lamp of life, banished from the surface above. For a last time, therefore, let us look upwards in order there to find hope. Up there innumerable races of mankind under ground, buried, to their supreme joy, in the catacombs of invisible stars, encourage us by their example. Let us act like them, let us like them withdraw to the interior of our planet. Like them, let us bury ourselves in order to rise again, and like them let us carry with us into our tomb, all that is worthy to survive of our previous existence. It is not merely bread alone that man has need of. He must live to think, and not merely think to live.

  Recall the legend of Noah: to escape from a disaster almost equal to our own, and to dispute with it all that the earth had most precious in his eyes; what did he do, though he was but a simple-minded fellow and addicted to drink? He turned his ark into a museum, containing a complete collection of plants and animals, even of poisonous plants, of wild beasts, boa-constrictors, and scorpions, and by reason of this picturesque but incongruous cargo of creatures mutually harmful and seeking one and all to devour each other, of this miscellany of living contradictions which for so long was so foolishly worshipped under the name of Nature, he believed in good faith to have deserved well of the future.

  But we, in our new ark, mysterious, impenetrable, indestructible, shall carry with us neither plants nor animals. These types of existence are annihilated; these rough drafts in creation, these fumbling experiments of Earth in quest of the human form are for ever blotted out. Let us not regret it. In place of so many pairs of animals which take up so much room, of so many useless seeds, we will carry with us into our retreat the harmonious garland of all the truths in perfect accord with one another; of all artistic and poetic beauties, which are all members one of another, united like sisters, which human genius has brought to light in the course of ages and multiplied thereafter in mi
llions of copies: all of which will be destroyed save a single one, which it will be our task to guarantee against all danger of destruction. We shall establish a vast library containing all the principal works, enriched with cinematographic albums. We shall set up a vast museum composed of single specimens of all the schools, of all the styles of the masters in architecture, sculpture, painting, and even music. These are our real treasures, our real seed for future harvests, our gods for whom we will do battle till our latest breath.”

  The speaker stepped down from the platform in the midst of indescribable enthusiasm: the ladies crowded round him. They deputed Lydia to bestow on him a kiss in the name of them all. Blushing with modesty the latter obeyed—a further sign of moral atavism on her part—and the applause redoubled. The thermometers of the shelter rose several degrees in a few minutes.

  It is well to recall to the younger generation these resolute words, between the lines of which they will read the gratitude they owe to the heroic “Scarred face,” who so nearly died with the reputation of a monomaniac. They, too, are beginning to grow enervated and accustomed to the delights of their underground Elysium, to the luxurious spaciousness of these endless catacombs, the legacy of gigantic toil on the part of their fathers, they too, are, inclined to think that all this happened of its own accord, or at least was inevitable, that after all there was no other way of escaping from the cold above ground, and that this simple expedient did not require a great outlay of imagination. Profound error! At its first appearance, the idea of Miltiades had been hailed, and rightly enough, as a flash of genius. But for him, but for his energy, and his eloquence, which was placed at the service of his imagination, but for his force-fulness, his charm, and his perseverance, which seconded his energy, let us add, but for the profound passion that Lydia, the noblest and most valiant of women, had been able to inspire in him, and which increased his heroism tenfold, humanity would have suffered the fate of all the other animal or vegetable species. What strikes us to-day in his discourse is the extraordinary and truly prophetic lucidity with which he sketched in general terms the conditions of existence in the new world. Without doubt, these expectations have been immensely surpassed. He did not forsee, he could not foresee, the prodigious accessions which his original idea has received owing to its development by thousands of auxiliary geniuses. He was far more right than he fancied, like the majority of reformers—who are generally wrongly accused, of being too much wrapt up in their own ideas. But on the whole, never was so magnificent a plan so promptly carried out.

  From that very day all these exquisite and delicate hands set to work, aided, it is true, by incomparable machines. Everywhere, at the head of all the workings, were to be found Lydia and Miltiades. Henceforth inseparable, they vied with one another in ardour; and before a year was out the galleries of the mines had become sufficiently large and comfortable, sufficiently decorated even and brilliantly lighted, to receive the vast and priceless collections of all kinds, which it was their object to place in safety there, in view of the future.

  With infinite precautions they were lowered one after another, bale by bale, into the bowels of the earth. This salvage of the goods and chattels of humanity was methodically carried out. It included all the quintessence of the ancient grand libraries of Paris, Berlin, and London, which had been brought together at Babylon, and then carried for safety into the desert with the rest. The cream of all former museums, of all previous exhibitions of industry and art, was concentrated there with considerable additions. There were manuscripts, books, bronzes, and pictures. What an expenditure of energy and incessant toil, in spite of the assistance of inter-terrestrial forces, had been necessary for packing, transporting, and housing it all! And yet, for the greater part, it was useless to those who voluntarily this task imposed upon themselves. They all knew it. They were well aware that they were probably condemned for the rest of their days to a hard and matter-of-fact existence, for which their lives as artists, philosophers, and men of letters, had scarcely prepared them. But—for the first time—the idea of duty to be done found its way into these hearts, the beauty of self-sacrifice subdued these dilettanti. They sacrificed themselves to the Unknown, to that which is not yet, to the posterity towards which were turned all the desires of their electrified spirits, as all the atoms of the magnetised iron turn towards the pole. It was thus that, at the time when there were still countries, in the midst of some great national peril, a wave of heroism swept over the most frivolous cities. However admirable may have been, at the epoch of which I speak, this collective need of individual self-sacrifice, ought we to be astonished at it, when we know from the treatises on natural history that have been preserved, that mere insects giving the same example of foresight and self-renunciation, used before their death to employ their latest energies to collect provisions useless to themselves, and only useful in the future to their larvæ at their birth.

  IV

  SAVED!

  THE day at length arrived on which, all the intellectual inheritance of the past, all the real capital of humanity having been rescued from the general shipwreck, the castaways were able to go down in their turn, having henceforth only to think of their own preservation. That day which forms, as everyone knows, the starting point of our new era, called the era of salvation, was a solemn holiday. The sun, however, as if to arouse regret, indulged in a few last bursts of sunshine. On casting a final glance on this brightness, which they were never to behold again, the survivors of mankind could not, we are told, restrain their tears. A young poet on the brink of the pit that yawned to swallow them up, repeated in the musical language of Euripides, the farewell to the light of the dying Iphigenia. But that was a short-lived moment of very natural emotion which speedily changed into an outburst of unspeakable delight.

  How great in fact was their amazement and their ecstasy! They expected a tomb; they opened their eyes in the most brilliant and interminable galleries of art they could possibly see, in salons more beautiful than those of Versailles, in enchanted palaces, in which all extremes of climate, rain, and wind, cold and torrid heat were unknown; where innumerable lamps, veritable suns in brilliancy and moons in softness, shed unceasingly through the blue depths their daylight that knew no night. Assuredly the sight was far from what it has since become; we need an effort of imagination in order to represent the psychological condition of our poor ancestors, hitherto accustomed to the perpetual and insufferable discomforts and inconveniences of life on the surface of the globe, in order to realise their enthusiasm, at a moment, when only counting on escaping from the most appalling of deaths by means of the gloomiest of dungeons, they felt themselves delivered of all their troubles, and of all their apprehensions at the same time! Have you noticed in the retrospective museum that quaint bit of apparatus of our fathers, which is called an umbrella? Look at it and reflect on the heart-breaking element, in a situation, which condemned man to make use of this ridiculous piece of furniture. Imagine yourself obliged to protect yourselves against those gigantic downpours which would unexpectedly arrive on the scene and drench you for three or four days running. Think likewise of sailors caught in a whirling cyclone, of the victims of sunstroke, of the 20,000 Indians annually devoured by tigers or killed by the bite of venomous serpents; think of those struck by lightning. I do not speak of the legions of parasites and insects, of the acarus, the phylloxera, and the microscopic beings which drained the blood, the sweat, and the life of man, inoculating him with typhus, plague, and cholera. In truth, if our change of condition has demanded some sacrifices, it is not an illusion to declare that the balance of advantage is immensely greater. What in comparison with this unparalleled revolution is the most renowned of the petty revolutions of the past which to-day are treated so lightly, and rightly so, by our historians. One wonders how the first inhabitants of these underground dwellings could, even for a moment, regret the sun, a mode of lighting that bristled with so many inconveniences. The sun was a capricious luminary which went out and
was relit at variable hours, shone when it felt disposed, sometimes was eclipsed, or hid itself behind the clouds when one had most need of it, or pitilessly blinded one at the very moment one yearned for shade! Every night,—do we really realise the full force of the inconvenience? — every night the sun commanded social life to desist and social life desisted. Humanity was actually to that extent the slave of nature! To think it never succeeded in, never even dreamed of, freeing itself from this slavery which weighed so heavily and unconsciously on its destinies, on the course of its progress thus straitened and confined! Ah! Let us once more bless our fortunate disaster!