Thanks to the progress in physiology, hygiene, and antiseptic science, as well as to the general well-being and intelligence of the race the duration of human life had been greatly prolonged, and it was not unusual to see persons who had attained the age of 150 years. Death had not been conquered, but the secret of living without growing old had been found, and the characteristics of youth were retained beyond the age of one hundred.
But one fatherland existed on the planet, which, like a chorus heard above the chords of some vast harmony, marched onward to its high destiny, shining in the splendor of intellectual supremacy.
The internal heat of the globe, the light and warmth of the sun, terrestrial magnetism, atmospheric electricity, inter-planetary attraction, the psychic forces of the human soul, the unknown forces which preside over destinies,—all these science had conquered and controlled for the benefit of mankind. The only limits to its conquests were the limitations of the human faculties themselves, which, indeed, are feeble, especially when we compare them with those of certain extra-terrestrial beings.
All the results of this vast progress, so slowly and gradually acquired by the toil of centuries, must, in obedience to a law, mysterious and inconceivable for the petty race of man, reach at last their apogee, when further advance becomes impossible. The geometric curve which represents this progress of the race, falls as it rises: starting from zero, from the primitive nebulous cosmos, ascending through the ages of planetary and human history to its lofty summit, to descend thereafter into a night that knows no morrow.
Yes! all this progress, all this knowledge, all this happiness and glory, must one day be swallowed up in oblivion, and the voice of history itself be forever silenced. Life had a beginning: it must have an end. The sun of human hopes had risen, had ascended victoriously to its meridian, it was now to set and to disappear in endless night. To what end then all this glory, all this struggling, all these conquests, all these vanities, if light and life must come to an end?
Martyrs and apostles, in every cause, have poured out blood upon the earth, destined also in its turn to perish.