Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [66]
Mars is smaller than Earth, of course; and Zorlin told us, also, that the number of people is smaller in proportion: so that there are never more than can be developed to the highest pitch of wisdom, health, and efficiency there; and he thought we might learn something valuable from this example. Their average of intelligence is very much above the human; and this accords with the law they claim to have discovered, that the inhabited planets are superior in mind and spirit according as they are farther away from the sun.
“We know more of actual natural science than you; as well as of great spiritual truths. We are in constant mental communication with some of the planets. Besides, we learn a great deal from the meteors that fall gently into our atmosphere. These are usually fissured, and contain in their crevices the germs of plant and animal life, which we carefully cultivate and mature; so that we have large park tracts full of wonderful cosmic flora and fauna. The canals that your telescopes have discovered on our planet are, in part, a system of irrigation for these parks. By virtue of our very general and clear communion with the universe, through this and other means, and by our whole mode of living, we are able to convey a good deal of our intelligence to inanimate substances and what you call ‘forces,’ so that they act almost as though by a volition of their own. I am glad to see that you to a certain extent are approaching this plane, although you seem to be hampered by the necessity you feel of accomplishing results by physical and mechanical means. No machinery, however ingenious, and no amount of invention, however marvelous, will ever take the place of willpower and character. Those are the things you will have to cultivate. And you will have to cultivate restraint as opposed to expansion, with its ever-increasing laxity, if you hope to have the world wag really well.”
It is easy to see how this kind of talk, when often repeated, set people into a ferment wherever Zorlin came.
He was treated as a distinguished guest of the nation and of the entire earth; and I traveled in his wake as a mere incidental satellite. My luster as a survivor of my vanished century was eclipsed by his grandeur of interest.
In spite of what he said, I thought the earth had achieved a vast improvement. New York, like the other large cities, was now a barracks for business and storage, but was plentifully provided with shady trees and open places. Most people lived healthily and simply in the country, and could run down to the former metropolis from a distance of hundreds of miles in a very short time when occasion demanded. Here, as in Chicago, many of the tall buildings, or “skyscrapers,” had been made available for landscape gardening, and there were still plenty of them left to house the poor and sick and needy. Afterwards, when I visited London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other European capitals, I found the same state of things, except that their old buildings were lower. Mankind had decided, after long experience and persistent trials, that large cities are unfit to live in; and the human family, when crowded so closely in a limited area, become dirty and nervous, and that its abodes and the very ground on which they stand grow foul and unwholesome. Cities and dwelling-places have been voted down as outposts or annexes of hell.
They were now cleansed, renovated, and made fit for the occupancy of their business garrisons and for laborers and the poor.
Libraries were kept in the cities, and enormous numbers of newly printed duplicate copies of books, ancient and modern, were sent out to subscribers, or sent free to people in the country; or the contents were transmitted to anyone, anywhere, by phonograph and telephone. Similarly, theatrical performances were given publicly in every rural district or in any private house, by kinetoscope or vitascope, with