Men had attained that degree of intelligence which enabled them to live wisely and tranquilly. After a general disarmament had been brought about, so rapid an increase in public riches and so great an amelioration in the well-being of every citizen was observed, that the efforts of intelligence and labor, no longer wasted by this intellectual suicide, had been directed to the conquest of new forces of nature and the constant improvement of civilization. The human body had become insensibly transformed, or more exactly, transfigured. Nearly all men were intelligent. They remembered with a smile the childish ambitions of their ancestors whose aspiration was to be some_one_ rather than some_thing_, and who had struggled so feverishly for outward show. They had learned that happiness resides in the soul, that contentment is found only in study, that love is the sun of the heart, that life is short and ought not to be lived superficially; and thus all were happy in the possession of liberty of conscience, and careless of those things which one cannot carry away. Woman had acquired a perfect beauty. Her form had lost the fullness of the Greek model and had become more slender; her skin was of a translucent whiteness; her eyes were illuminated by the light of dreams; her long and silky hair, in whose deep chestnut were blended all the ruddy tints of the setting sun, fell in waves of rippling light; the heavy animal jaw had become idealized, the mouth had grown smaller, and in the presence of its sweet smile, at the sight of its dazzling pearls between the soft rose of the lips, one could not understand how lovers could have pressed such fervent kisses upon the lips of women of earlier times, specimens of whose teeth, resembling those of animals, had been preserved in the museums of ethnography. It really seemed as if a new race had come into existence, infinitely superior to that to which Aristotle, Kepler, Victor Hugo, Phryne, or Diana of Poictiers had belonged. 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.