"Their wonderful modern cities began to decay. The machines which they had built to do their work began to stand idle--and instead of there being more work to do, it seemed that there was less! They began to remove complexities of life; the restless urge to 'advance' into some vague golden age of achievement, died out. They realized that happiness in life did not lie that way; they saw in Pyrena's purple moonlight a greater beauty than all their man-made splendor had ever given. * * * * * "They fell--if you want to call it that--back to simplicity. With the greater knowledge of what they had passed through, with the stress of 'modernity' no longer harrassing them, a new altruism came. A primitive race climbing upward is in no sense comparable. The savage has no knowledge; his simple life is for him one of struggle; the survival of the fittest is the only law he knows. Up to so-called civilization the survival of the fittest governs everything; the Garlands, at their complex, scientific pinnacle of civilized life, were inherently as barbarous as at their savage beginning. "But once they began to revert--ah, then it was very different! They had the knowledge of how to wrest from nature a comfortable existence. As their wants grew fewer, humans looked at each other, not like mistrustful predatory animals, but with a new kindliness. "That is the present condition. The Garlands live now only for happiness. Their life, their government, their whole mode of thought and living, is designed upon a basis of as little struggle for existence as possible. They live for one thing only; to enjoy their world, not as they might mold and change it, but as the Creator made it, and gave it to them. "It is a benign world. Not to my mind, of course, as benign or desirable as our own. But once they began to enjoy it, the Garlands found it very blessed. There are fires within Xenephrene which, for all her wanderings, seem to keep the surface temperature at a pleasant warmth. Food grows readily; rains are frequent. There is, fundamentally, no tendency toward human disease. "The few wants that the Garlands now realize they need for happiness and health are easily supplied. No one works very much; there is plenty of time for pleasure. The struggle for a high civilization was perhaps necessary. It gave an experience of what to accept and what to reject; and a knowledge of how to control the forces of nature. I'll explain that more fully later.