The Coming Race

as the ideals of a Utopian future. It was a state in which war, with all its calamities, was deemed impossible — a state in which the freedom of all and each was secured to the utter­most degree, without one of those animosities which make freedom in the upper world depend on the perpetual strife of hostile parties. Here the corruption which debases democra­cies was as unknown as the discontents which undermine the thrones of monarchies. Equality here was not a name; it was a reality. Riches were not persecuted, because they were not envied. Here those problems connected with the labours of a working class, hitherto insoluble above ground, and above ground conducing to such bitterness between classes, were solved by a process the simplest — a distinct and separate working class was dispensed with altogether. Mechanical in­ventions, constructed on the principles that baffled my re­search to ascertain, worked by an agency infinitely more pow­erful and infinitely more easy of management than aught we have yet extracted from electricity or steam, with the aid of children whose strength was never overtasked, but who loved their employment as sport and pastime, sufficed to create a Public-wealth so devoted to the general use that not a grum­bler was ever heard of. The vices that rot our cities here had no footing. Amusements abounded, but they were all inno­cent. No merry-makings conduced to intoxication, to riot, to disease. Love existed, and was ardent in pursuit, but its object, once secured, was faithful. The adulterer, the profligate, the harlot, were phenomena so unknown in this commonwealth, that even to find the words by which they were designated one would have had to search throughout an obsolete literature

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

composed thousands of years before. They who have been stu­dents of theoretical philosophies above ground, know that all these strange departures from civilised life do but realise ideas which have been broached, canvassed, ridiculed, contested for; sometimes partially tried, and still put forth in fantastic books, but have never come to practical result. Nor were these all the steps towards theoretical perfectibility which this com­munity had made. It had been the sober belief of Descartes that the life of man could be prolonged, not, indeed, on this earth, to eternal duration, but to what he called the age of the patriarchs, and modestly defined to be from 100 to 150 years average length. Well, even this dream of sages was here ful­filled — nay, more than fulfilled; for the vigour of middle life was preserved even after the term of a century was passed. With this longevity was combined a greater blessing than it­self — that of continuous health. Such diseases as befell the race were removed with ease by scientific applications of that agency — life-giving as life-destroying — which is inherent in vril. Even this idea is not unknown above ground, though it has generally been confined to enthusiasts or charlatans, and emanates from confused notions about mesmerism, odic force, etc. Passing by such trivial contrivances as wings, which every schoolboy knows has been tried and found wanting, from the mythical or prehistorical period, I proceed to that very delicate question, urged of late as essential to the perfect happiness of our human species by the two most disturbing and potential influences on upper-ground society — Womankind and Phi­losophy. I mean, the Rights of Women.

Now, it is allowed by jurisprudists that it is idle to talk of rights where there are not corresponding powers to enforce them; and above ground, for some reason or other, man, in his physical force, in the use of weapons offensive and defensive, when it come to positive personal contest, can, as a rule of gen­eral application, master women. But among this people there can be no doubt about the rights of women, because, as I have before said, the Gy, physically speaking, is bigger and stronger than the An; and her will being also more resolute than his, and will being essential to the direction of the vril force, she can bring to bear upon him, more potently than he on her­self, the mystical agency which art can extract from the oc­cult properties of nature. Therefore all that our female phi­losophers above ground contend for as to rights of women, is conceded as a matter of course in this happy commonwealth. Besides such physical powers, the Gy-ei have (at least in youth) a keen desire for accomplishments and learning which exceeds that of the male; and thus they are the scholars, the professors — the learned portion, in short, of the community.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

tion by which they would militate against the good of the com­munity, and be burnt into cinders at the request of the Tur.

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would be utterly impossible for us to adopt the modes of life, or to reconcile our passions to the modes of thought among the Vril-ya — that I arrived at the conviction that this people — though originally not only of our human race, but, as seems to me clear by the roots of their language, descended from the same ancestors as the Great Aryan family, from which in var­ied streams has flowed the dominant civilisation of the world; and having, according to their myths and their history, passed through phases of society familiar to ourselves — had yet now developed into a distinct species with which it was impossi­ble that any community in the upper world could amalgam­ate: and that if they ever emerged from these nether recesses into the light of day, they would, according to their own tra­ditional persuasions of their ultimate destiny, destroy and re­place our existent varieties of man.

ernment, and the pugnacious valour of my beloved countrymen, I believe that if the Vril-ya first appeared in free America — as, being the choicest portion of the habitable earth, they would doubtless be induced to do — and said, “This quarter of the globe we take; Citizens of a Koom–Posh, make way for the development of species in the Vril-ya,” my brave compatriots would show fight, and not a soul of them would be left in this life, to rally round the Stars and Stripes, at the end of a week.

We soon found ourselves in the street, and had not got far from the house when we encountered five or six young Gy-ei, who were returning from the fields with baskets full of flow­ers, and chanting a song in chorus as they walked. A young Gy sings more often than she talks. They stopped on seeing us, accosting Taee with familiar kindness, and me with the cour­teous gallantry which distinguishes the Gy-ei in their manner towards our weaker sex.

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

Singling me out, she said, though still with the inimitable deference of manner which I have called ‘chivalrous,’ yet not without a certain abruptness of tone which, as addressed to the weaker sex, Sir Philip Sydney might have termed ‘rustic,’ “Why do you never come to see us?” While I was deliberating on the right answer to give to this unlooked-for question, Taee said quickly and sternly, “Sister, you forget — the stranger is of my sex. It is not for persons of my sex, having due regard for reputation and mod­esty, to lower themselves by running after the society of yours.”