This time the Professor deigned to smile broadly.
“What do you expect to find? It’s not a question of apparatus, nor of operations, and you have nothing, my dear Monsieur, to fear from me. I only act on skulls that are not yet formed. For the others, alas, I can do nothing, and you’ll have to resign yourself until death to the small mind that you have.”
“I’m in despair, my dear Doctor,” I said, smiling in my turn, “but only up to a point. I know now that your discovery doesn’t affect me directly, that you’re improving future beings; my curiosity is all the more excited, and the interest provoked by your research is so powerful that you can’t refuse to satisfy it. Explain to me, I beg you—in a few words—the principles of your procedure.”
“It’s just that my procedure, as you call it,” said the professor, visibly embarrassed and desirous of cutting the conversation short, “is still in an embryonic state. Then again, in order to go into more detail, I’d have to give you a veritable lecture, using technical terms with which, for the most part, you’re probably not familiar.”
“Master, I confess my ignorance frankly—but let me say that high science is astonishing in its clarity, and I have no doubt that a scientist like you can make himself understood to an ignoramus like me.”
“All right—so much the worse for you; you asked for it. Let’s go into my study.”
Professor Fuss’s study occupied a large, brightly-lit room. Everything there was methodically arranged. Even on the work-desks, there were no scattered papers, manuscripts in confusion, or piles of books. Low bookshelves within arm’s reach and display-cases garnished with skulls and molds of the brain. On the walls, a series of frescoes, not too bad, whose subjects were borrowed from natural history. Comfortable seats almost everywhere, matching the form of the body, permitting the sitter to adopt the negligent poses that American affect.
The professor indicated one of those seats to me, and I sprawled in it. He offered me a cigar, and I lit it. Then he went to perch on a high stool facing me, and tucked his knees under his chin.
“You can easily conclude from what I’ve already said,” he began, “that to improve the human race, one cannot think of utilizing humans as we know them. We must therefore modify them, and by that means create individuals of a superior order—supermen, as that lunatic Nietzsche said, who got the problem backwards. Now, we know that selection, education and different cultures only produce insignificant modifications. A pear-tree, no matter how you treat it, won’t produce melons. What can be done, then? The answer comes quite naturally to mind: since one can’t modify humans after birth, let’s modify them before. We shall thus prepare in the egg the giant race that will succeed in emerging from the narrow circle in which we have been turning, like lamentable squirrels, for forty centuries: a race whose vast minds will be capable of embracing the knowledge of space, time, the universe, nature, matter, mind, life, death and destiny—things that are presently dead letters so far as we’re concerned.”
“They’ll know everything, then?” I said, enthusiastically, sitting up in my chair.
“I can’t guarantee that; I can only affirm that they’ll know infinitely more than we do.”
“Illustrious Professor,” I said, “if you have the possibility of realizing such a prodigy, publish it quickly, everywhere in the entire world! Everyone will be proud to cooperate in what may be called a veritable renaissance. For my part, I declare myself entirely disposed to assist you, according to my means, in the fabrication of supermen. Tell me how.”
From the height of his perch, Professor Fuss looked at me with owlish eyes, and his rictus was aggravated by a mocking laugh.
“Oh, you Frenchman!” he said, as if he were saying, ‘you imbecile!’ “You’re as frivolous and grotesque in your skepticism as in your over-enthusiasms. Do you think it’s sufficient to take such and such a measure to procreate beings of a superior order at will? That would, of course be easy, and my merit, would be slender, given that, since the world has existed, all modes of procreation are known and practiced daily... No, Monsieur, no, the matter isn’t as simple as it appears to you. It requires long preparation, and entire exceedingly delicate operating manual, and can only be applied to rare subjects.”
The words “operating manual” calmed my excitement down completely. I slumped back in my chair, determined this time not to interrupt again, to let the professor continue the revelation of his stupefying discovery to the end.
“Have you heard mention,” he asked me, abruptly, “of marine genesis?”
I made a vague gesture, a sort of flutter, which testified to the perfect bewilderment into which that question put me.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” the terrible little man continued. “It was one of your compatriots who invented the theory,53 and Frenchmen, while they mock our efforts, are generally ignorant of those made in their own land. Well, look at this succession of pictures.” He pointed at a fresco, which, like a danse macabre, ran in a frieze around the room. “First, you see the envelope of our planet as it cools down. Here, it’s sufficient cool to allow life to become manifest. Here is the simple cell that gives rise to more complicated ones. The first algae arrive; our great ancestors the mollusks, reptiles, fish, saurians, and finally mammals. The chain continues, as you can see, all the way to humans, passing from the rudimentary state to an increasing degree of perfection. Perhaps you will think the transition from fish to mammal unjustified, but your compatriot has sagaciously observed that the transition is accomplished every day before our eyes when tadpoles are transformed into toads or frogs. That’s what is known as marine genesis.”
“For my part, Master, I declare that I don’t see anything inconvenient about our being descended from fish. That detail might even explain the tendency that certain individuals have to swim under water, and legitimate such ichthyological terms as serve to designate individuals of either sex whose morality drifts downstream.54 I don’t quite see, however, what relevance these considerations have to the improvement of our species.”
“Don’t makes jokes, and wait—we’ll go into my laboratory. All right?”
The laboratory, into which I went after the Master, was installed in an immense gallery, almost entirely glazed. A dozen laboratory assistants were at work there, some doing histological research, others chemical analyses, others on anatomical preparations, etc. He went along the whole length of the room, darting glances to the right and the left at the work of his assistants, giving instructions as he passed by, and led me to a kind of shelf-unit on which bottles were aligned.
“You see these crystal jars,” he said. “They contain a collection of fetuses going from conception to parturition. If you care to take the trouble to examine them, what will you observe? You’ll observe that the human ovum, fertilized by an infinitesimal worm, successively takes the form of a mollusk, a fish, a tadpole and a quadrumane, etc. Do you grasp the correlation? In nine months, the human seed passes through all the transformations to which the species has been subject in a long sequence of centuries.”
“It’s a reduction of evolution,” I said. “Transformism in two hundred and eighty-some days.”
“Very good,” said Professor Fuss, sketching a bow in my direction, glad to see that, in spite of the narrowness of my skull, I had understood his demonstration. “Now, follow my reasoning carefully.”
“I’ll follow it step by step.”
“In order to arrive at the human condition, therefore, the cell is extraordinarily modified and, so to speak, improved. Who can affirm that it has arrived at the end of it evolution and that we are the definitive form? To formulate that proposition is to display illogicality. What will the superior phases be that we will reach in several thousand centuries? No one can flatter himself that he knows. Perhaps we’ll acquire organs of which I have no knowledge, corresponding to needs of which we have no suspicion. In any case, it’s probable that today’s ‘unknowable’ will no longer be a mystery to us then. Suppose
—which is perfectly permissible—that the difference between humans a hundred thousand years hence and those of today will be similar to that observed between a present human being and the cellule. Now imagine, if you can, what that prodigious being might be!”
And Professor Fuss folded his arms, while directing the fire of his pupils at me.
“I can’t,” I replied, lowering my head. “My brain refuses.”
“Certainly,” he said. “I don’t flatter myself that I can make humankind overstep a separation of so many centuries, but I think I can advance the desperately slow work of nature considerably.”
“Aha!” I exclaimed. “You’re finally getting there!”
“The method is quite simple, as you shall see.”
“Except,” I added politely, “that it was necessary to think of it—Columbus’ egg again!”
“I’ll keep to reasoning that a child could understand. If, in two hundred and eighty-some days, as you out it, a fetus goes through all the cycles of the transformation of the species, in twice two hundred and eighty-some days—about five hundred and seventy—it will go through twice as many. Which is equivalent to saying that it will surpass them by as much. Thus, by prolonging fetal life, we ought logically to obtain products that will be what we would normally become in fifty, or a hundred thousand centuries. Do you understand?”
“I was momentarily confused by the eminent professor’s arithmetic. He savored my bewilderment, twisting his nutcracker chin, and his triumphant rictus seemed to be saying; “Well, my little Frenchman, you weren’t expecting that, were you? You thought I was bluffing, and you made jokes, facetious reporter! Now you’re stuck, my lad, and you can only bow down before my science.”
“Most illustrious Master,” I said, determined not to spare the epithets any longer, “I can’t translate into congruous terms the profound admiration by which I’m penetrated for your conceptions of genius; unfortunately, between your sublime theory and the practice, doesn’t there exist a certain abyss, which one might think unbridgeable?”
“I shall bridge it!” declared Professor Fuss, with impressive assurance.
“Permit me one reflection, however; it seems to me to be difficult to force a tenant to remain in his lodgings once the term of his lease has expired, when he has handed in his notice and wants wholeheartedly to move house.”
“Wrong, Monsieur—a grave error. I already have a quantity of observations proving the contrary. And if I could take you to visit my clinic, I would introduce you to patients whose parturition has been delayed by ten, twenty, thirty, fifty and sixty-six days—but I fear the emotion that might be caused to my patients by the sight of a stranger, and I’ve made it a rule only to let my assistants go into my clinic.” The professor drew me back toward his study. “Besides,” he added, you know more about it than I’ve told anyone else. And I repeat to you that I don’t want to publish my discovery before having carried out more experiments and obtained results as numerous as they are incontestable.”
“And do you already have conclusive evidence?”
“Yes, most certainly. Prolonged fetuses have already given me individuals that are utterly remarkable. For now, it’s necessary to await the products of greater prolongations. The difficulty, you see, isn’t the prolongation, it’s rendering the gestation forceful, active and creative; I’m almost there.”
“I don’t doubt, Master, that you’ll get there soon. And in a short time, your name, as your friend told me, will surpass in glory those of Galileo and Newton.”
“I believe so,” said the professor, sincerely. “For after all, Galileo was only an observer, Newton a calculator, while I’m a creator! They only brought human beings a few parcels of truth; I’m giving them the possibility of knowing everything. They left them human; I’m making them gods!”
With these words, pronounced quite naturally and without emphasis, Professor Fuss gave me to understand that the conversation had gone on long enough, and guided me toward the exit door.
I thanked him for the benevolent welcome he had given me and the signal favor with which he had gratified me, in condescending to explain his discovery in outline, and apologized for having taken up his precious time.
“It wasn’t a waste of time for me,” the little man replied. “You’re going to write an article about my discovery. You’ll treat it lightly, I’m sure—otherwise you wouldn’t be French. But the scientists of your country, who will be able to read between the lines, will learn who the man is that they turned away, and I’ll be avenged for their impertinence. Above all, tell your compatriots that Professor Fuss is not a madman!”
“I promise you that, illustrious Master! Will you now permit me to communicate a doubt that has just occurred to me, regarding the excellence of your method?”
“Go on.”
“Don’t you fear that, by prolonging the gestation to two years, the time necessary for the fetus of an elephant to reach term, that you might reproduce that proboscidean pachyderm? Perhaps we’re the intermediary between the cellule and the elephant?”
Professor Fuss gave me a terrible sideways glance, said, in a dry tone: “Goodbye!” and closed the door in my face.
At the time, I was resentful of the young Yankee for having made me go all the way to Denver Colorado in order to talk to that maniac. Since then, I’ve decided that the adventure ought to take its place in my enquiry. What if there’s some truth in what Professor Fuss told me?
IV. The Pedagogue
Duly well-informed about new methods of manufacture, I set out to document the fashion in which future American generations would be educated. I visited a number of coeducational or specialized schools, more or less devoted to sports, in the East and West of the United States, in which various notions were force-fed to boys and girls until I was exhausted, without succeeding in discovering any pedagogical system that was truly new.
I don’t know why, one day, as I was perusing the eighteenth page of a petty daily newspaper, I was struck by the phrase “intensive culture.” I read the article, thinking that it was a matter of some horticulturalist or market gardener practicing what we in France call “forced culture”—which is to say, forcing a plant to produce more abundantly in less time. After a few lines, I perceived that it was a matter of young human plants. Right away, I had found my story, and the first train took me to Boston, whose suburbs were host to the unique establishment.
It was rather difficult for me to discover the address, and I thought I observed that the exceedingly universitarian city was manifesting a certain aversion to the communication of that kind of information. After long detours, I finally arrived at a massive and ponderous Gothic edifice, which wanted to be imposing but was merely overwhelming. I went in, asked to talk to the director, and, at the sight of my card, was shown into a rather nice waiting-room.
A few moments later, the door opened and I saw coming toward me, tall and sculptural, head held high and chest pushed out, an elegant young woman whose mahogany-colored hair had golden gleams, like a diadem: incessu patuit dea.55 After an “Oho!” of surprise, I silently voiced, on seeing her at closer range, the “Aha!” of a satisfied amateur. Take my word for it, she could have rivaled the most highly-rated professional beauty in the Union. I bowed to her, as I would have done to an empress, and presented her, as a supplication, with a request for an interview with the director of the establishment.
“That’s me,” she replied, in French.
If my surprise on hearing her express herself in my language was considerable, it was no less so on learning that this superb individual—bearing as much resemblance to our schoolmistresses, qualified governesses and other educatresses as an archduchess to a kitchen-maid—was directing the intensive culture of American youth.
“I like the French a great deal,” she continued, with a smile full of benevolence. “All in all, they’re the most interesting products of the decomposition of the Old World. A former student of Radcliffe, I was an assiduous follower of t
he lecture courses given every year at Harvard by your compatriots, and I owe them many joyful moments.”
On thinking about the men, as eminent as they were grave, who had lectured at Harvard in the name of France, I understood that Madame the directress’s gaiety must have been of a very special kind, but, as she seemed satisfied with it, I raised no objection.
“Yes, they have served me as living examples in order to help my students grasp the pretentious and grotesque drone to which knowledge has been reduced in your country.”
“Precisely!” I exclaimed, catching the ball in mid-air. “Recognizing our inferiority, I have come to you to ask you, if it’s not indiscreet, what your methods of education are.”
“There’s no indiscretion; my method is an extremely simple one, within the range of all; it’s sufficient to want to apply it. Sit down.”
I obeyed this injunction passively while she briskly went this way and that, giving orders, and the returned to stand in front of me, tapping her feet like a spirited thoroughbred.
“First of all,” she said, “a few preliminary questions. You’re astonished to see me, Hira Green, a woman, at the head of this college?”
“I admit it.”
“You’re not a feminist?”
I protested my preference for the equality of the sexes; she turned her back on me scornfully.
“No, Monsieur,” she declared, forcefully, “the sexes aren’t equal; you’re repeating a stupidity, and only backward people can sustain such a idea.”
“Oh!”
“Consider, in fact, the progress of society. Once, women were enslaved, and still are in backward countries; they were obliged to obey their husbands. Progressively, they have risen, and have become the equals of men—but the ascensional movement did not stop there; women have overtaken men, and their great superiority is now incontestable. To take account of that, one only has to consider the order of events; men have made strength render all that it could, and it’s now the turn of the mind; now, no one has a finer, livelier, subtler and more perspicacious mind than a woman; it is up to women to guide humankind.
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