A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
A MIRTHFUL laugh now comes pleasantly to arouse me from sad reflection. It is from two lads, while their mother smilingly endeavours to restrain them. Before their alcove is a case containing models of steam-engines and electric motors of the twenty-second, twenty-first and twentieth centuries. She has just been explaining concerning our screeching, dirty "iron horses" and the picture of a "few hundreds of miles'" journey in so "wild" a fashion greatly excites their amusement, especially at "the strange noises those semi-barbarians loved to hear around them." I doubt the restoration of their gravity this morning. They listen respectfully while she tells them that but for the intellect which produced those "cumbrous machines, two millions of years ago, our own elegant, convenient noiseless and rapid conveyances would not yet have been arrived at."
But their splendid eyes are dancing with humour at their imaginings of the "journeys in the poor old past, with those strange, funny-looking beings for companions!" and they break out again into a most enlivening laugh. I wish they could know how heartily I join them!
There will be a different expression on their faces tomorrow, when they hear of the frightful sufferings those same "funny wild engines" sometimes caused. In most cases by men's alarming deficiency in forethought and union of particulars, which is daily to be seen both in the higher and lesser duties of their positions.Electric motors are now being discussed. To my uneducated comprehension they appear wondrous specimens of mechanism and superior work, as do many other things here exhibited, the use of which I cannot define. They are entirely unknown to us. But the children—"Children"! I am the only child amongst these young people, though they have so few years compared with mine—they laugh good-naturedly at the efforts of "infant science." The younger one declares, with mirth in his musical voice, that if such "monstrosities" had continued in use up to his time, he "would have petitioned all scientists to combine their intellect for extension of the atmosphere, or for the invention of something by means of which we could journey safely outside it. Otherwise there would never have been room sufficient for all the air travellers of our era."
Then their mother tells them how, by the unswerving law of correlation, inventions began to lose their crude form and imperfections from the time men began to lose their brute vanity. "When they acknowledged, in the justice born of their improved minds, that women were also humans, and not of a lower species—made for man's comfort or amusement—as the strutting, ignorant creatures used to tell each other. They had kept women uncultured on every scientific or mechanical subject, while they gave themselves extraordinary and exclusive privileges for acquirement of all such learning. Then, with their usual faulty logic on most things relating to women, declared she had no mechanical ability or inventive talent, in proof of which assertion they audaciously asked what she had done to evince any! Yet, with all their advantages, very few, out of the countless millions born, rose above what was considered only mediocrity, even in their own egotistical age. Those lamentably foolish men were too blind with self-laudation to see the dormant talent of their women, evidenced in very many minor works throughout the daily menial and severe labour allotted to them. But a time arrived when mechanics, as also every other study, became as essential for women as for men. Then was gloriously proved the fallacy of sex in mind—a tenet hitherto held firmly by men since its foundation by the first vain ape who declared the Infinite Mind was of his sex. Woman's inventive faculty cultivated gave an immense stride in the progress of mechanics; for good, like ill, both acts and re-acts. As universal study went on, more talented people were born to bless human kind to distant ages, and thus continue to the higher and purer future."
It has been a delighting study to trace the effects of their mother's words on the handsome faces of these dear young fellows, becoming more earnestly attentive with each idea she uttered. The enthusiasm which had begun to glow is now softening to compassion, while she tells them that, "notwithstanding none but the most skilled men guided those machines, they frequently collided several hundred feet above the ground, and went crashing through the air—a burning tangled mass! Corpses sometimes fell upon living persons in the streets, adding to the dread scene of cruel deaths."
She pauses; all are sorrowfully silent. After a few seconds she continues in more cheerful tone:
"As you know, such occurrences are now impossible, unless from carelessness of great magnitude. And this our safety we owe to educated woman. One, who had given much time to scientific subjects, suggested the use of the Repelling Current. She and her comrade constructed two air carriages, fitted with the now well-known Repellor; and, each occupying one, bravely made the first trial of their work, to the clamorous delight of all who had sufficient nerve to await the result; though it is recorded that many closed their eyes, and others ran hurriedly away when they saw the vehicles approaching each the other in a direct line and with a speed never previously attained. We know how beautifully the controlled current acts. After several trials had fully proved the accuracy of the invention, the crowd began to realize its value to human life, and simultaneously all uttered a sound of thankfulness, which had a very harmonious effect. Then gratitude stirred every heart there present, and men resolved the now famous carriages should not touch the ground when they descended, but be lovingly received in their arms; and, despite the merry protests of their happy occupants, were so carried in triumph around the city, while thousands followed, singing a popular song on victorious science. Contrast that with those pæans of victory in the long-past murderous times, before woman was known to be a human being! And the procession—how different to the debased congregations, scarcely two millions of years before, following an image of one of their deities, all wildly shouting while dancing with bestial glee and apelike antics about the wretched victims—who were often young girls and boys—about to be sacrified in the holy name of religion! An unholy excuse for murder and cruelty, which lasted, in various forms, to the end of the Christian era. Professedly an era of goodwill! At the end of their unexpected journey, both carriages were heaped with costly gifts, thrown in by the more wealthy of the crowd. Although people were not quite so noble-minded as they are to-day, those two heroic workers in the cause of humanity received the honor due to their enterprise with great humility. Government offered monetary acknowledgment to the inventress. She refused, saying she would feel shame in being paid for the happiness of saving life. Determined to reward her, they appointed her Investigatress of Electric Works, which she likewise refused, because, she said, it would equally shame her to be placed in a higher position than her comrade for a 'mere intuition,' to which she had been enabled to give practical effect only by their combined thought. So both of them were raised to the post. This is the origin of so many of our highest offices now being filled by both woman and man, for it soon became a well-known fact that all thought is more perfect when combined with that of the opposite sex. A truth which, strangely enough, was in the minds of the oldest Pagans of whom we have record; for one of their myths was that humans were originally woman and man joined together; but their chief god found them so powerful thus formed that he severed them—and then followed every earthly disaster."
The recital has made this happy little party very bright. Wottah, the younger boy, prettily thanks his mother for "so pleasant a relief to all those Christian ferocities," and he wonders "how those good people, as the brutes called themselves, would have rewarded our courageous couple."
Smilingly, the lady replies:
"In the early part of that era, when a woman was incautious enough to let men know she was an intellectual being, they called her 'witch,' and (with pathetic hesitancy in her voice) she was either drowned in putrid water or burnt to death. A few centuries later, a woman of culture was simply insulted; not only by the opposing sex, but by those of her own, who were either not so gifted, or had not exercised the power of thought—which is the heritage of all. Later still, men quietly ignored whatever woman did to prove her mental equality, but, at the same time, indefatigably kept before public eyes any intellectual achievement by one of their own sex: and considered they efficiently proved their own superiority when they told her she was inferior. Men of some mental power, but very deficient in integrity, fouled their pens by writing defamatory or fatuous articles scorning woman's righteous appeal for her share in legislation for human kind—which writings, like other unclean things, defiled all who placed credence in them. Those who had most to fear from her discovery of their malpractices went so far as to assert that woman was too deficient in morality and conscientiousness for sharing in the government of the world."
The elder son, reflectively:
"From brutes one ought not to be astonished at meeting with brutality—but in my thought of the unhappy past what so perplexes me is that men who possessed some intellect should have been so obtuse as to keep women in that disastrous state of slavish oppression. Why, even the rude mechanical knowledge they possessed was sufficient to have taught them that no whole can be perfect when only half is cared for; and that it matters not bow beautifully such half be polished and cherished—if to the neglect of the other, the ruin of the entirety must follow."
Looking very affectionately at her noble boy, she replies:
"Your quick perception and apt definition always reward me for the pain of going over the sad past. You are right, dear, the ruin did come, repeatedly. Nation after nation fell. Whole races dwindled in intellect, and sunk irretrievably. Some historians assigned one cause—some, widely differing ones; but male vanity was so strong that it required the extinction of many peoples before the real reason could be understood by men. And then they had to be taught it by the very half whose abstract reasoning and abstract justice was thus proved to have been not only equal—which some of their most learned men denied[1]—but superior to their own. That iniquities should have existed is not perplexing when we reflect that—save in the great few—intellect developed without corresponding increase of integrity and benevolence. Some naturalists say all their contemptible tyranny arose solely from an inherent fear of subjugation—and I think it feasible, because, in the earliest ages, men took as wives—a word signifying servants, or rather slaves—the women whom they captured in battle. Fearing the unfortunate creatures might revolt, and make cause with their own kin, they kept them in cruel subjection, and treated them as if they had been still their enemies. Of course, that tyrannical feeling was transmitted through millions of generations, so it is not difficult to comprehend the enormous length of time which must elapse before it could be obliterated by one of justice. The marvel would have been that out of such a state of vain ignorance the least nobility could ever have arisen, did we not feel the indestructible power of Right. Wonderful in all its works, but not yet understood by our limited minds, though we have now reason enough to know they will be still more developed as evolution further and further unfolds its marvels."
There is no resemblance between the mother of these boys and Frederick's, except in the general expression of truthfulness and reliability. She is more vivacious in her beauty, and ever ready to join in their laughter. Probably this is because her children have not been so difficult to instruct in what appears to be everywhere an unpleasant lesson. They are evidently lads of an advanced intelligence. The knowledge of their relationship to us is received with more philosophical equanimity than I have yet met with; and, except during the relation of any sad anecdote, which she uses to steady their thought, are more inclined to mirth than sorrow. I suppose they are of the more progressive ones of their age.
Wottah's eyes are sparkling with some fresh amusement in his mind, as he says:
"I wonder what we three would now have been, had there never existed any earnest women,—and noble men like our Founder?"
Felix, the elder son, in obedience to a sign from his mother, replies:
"What we should have been? Well, where are only fools and brutes there must be only folly and cruelty. Change being Nature's great abiding law, nothing is inert. If no progress can be effected, a fall must come to recommence the rise:—So I think human kind would have inevitably receded. Possibly tails would have become general again, and at this moment you and I would most probably have been holding to a branch with ours, endeavouring piously to hurt our dear mother, or some other person, with the least possibility of danger to our own valuable selves."
I leave them all merrily laughing at Felix's grave imitation of a lecture.