"We shall take with us all those whom by any means--by the beauty of women, the splendor of arms, the ancient dresses, the ancient music, the ancient dances--we have been able to awaken from their torpor. They amount in all to no more than a thousand or so of young men and as many maidens. As for the rest, they are sunk in a lethargy so deep that we have been unable to rouse them. They are already very near to the condition which you desire. "Yet I know not. These poor dull brains may be swiftly and suddenly fired with some contagion which may at any time ruin your calculations and destroy the boasted Triumph. Do not rely too much upon the Torpor of this apparently helpless herd. You had at the beginning a grand weapon with which to enslave them. You could keep them alive, and you could save them from disease--if only they were obedient. If they once get beyond the recollection or the fear of either, what will you do? "We go"--he paused, and looked round the room, filled with the eager faces which brought the Past back to me--futile eagerness! ever pressing on, gaining nothing, sinking into the grave before there was time to gain anything! That had come back--that! "We go," he repeated--his face had long been so melancholy that one hardly knew him for the same man, so triumphant was it now--"we go to repair the mistakes of many, many years. We go to lead Mankind back into the ancient paths. It was not altogether you, my friends, who destroyed Humanity; it was mainly the unfortunate Discovery of the German Professor. We were working admirably in the right direction; we were making life longer, which was then far too short; we were gradually preventing diseases, which had been beyond the control of our wisest men; we were, by slow degrees, in the only true way--through the Revelation of Nature--feeling our way to Health and Prolongation of Life. Yet, whatever happened, whatever we might discover, the First Law of Life--which we did not understand--was that to all things earthly there must come an End. "Then happened the event by which that End was indefinitely postponed. "Again, I say, I blame not you so much as the current of events which bore you along. It seemed logical that everybody, able or imbecile, weak or strong, healthy or sickly, skilled or incompetent, should alike reap the Fruits of the Great Discovery. If he did so, he was also entitled to his equal share in the world's goods. This was the Right of Man, put forward as if there could be no question at all about it. Every child was to inherit an equal share of everything. It was a false and a mischievous claim. What every child inherited was the right of fighting for his share, without danger of injustice or oppression. And the next step, after the Slaughter of the Old, was the forbidding of more births. What that has done for the world, look round and see for yourselves in the torpor of the women and the apathy of the men.