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Certain Personal Matters - The Extinction of Man · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty four of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
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  Speaker 1: librevox recording. All librevox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit librevox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Greg Giardano. Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty four, The extinction of Man. It is part
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  Speaker 1: of the excessive egotism of the human animal that the
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  Speaker 1: bare idea of its extinction seems incredible to it a
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  Speaker 1: world without us, it says, as a heady young Cephalepsis
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  Speaker 1: might have said it in the old Silurian Sea. Since
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  Speaker 1: the Cephalepsis and the Cocostoeus, many a fine animal has
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  Speaker 1: increased and multiplied upon the earth, lorded it over land
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  Speaker 1: or sea without rival, and passed at last into the night.
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  Speaker 1: Surely it is not so unreasonable to ask why man
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  Speaker 1: should be an exception to the rule. From the scientific standpoint,
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  Speaker 1: at least, any reason for such exception is hard to find.
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  Speaker 1: No doubt, man is undisputed master at the present time,
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  Speaker 1: at least of most of the land's surface. But so
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  Speaker 1: it has been before with other animals. Let us consider
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  Speaker 1: what late geology has to throw upon this. The great
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  Speaker 1: land and sea reptiles of the Mesozoic period, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: seemed to have been as secure as humanity is now
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  Speaker 1: in their pre eminence. But they passed away and left
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  Speaker 1: no descendants when the new orders of the mammals emerged
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  Speaker 1: from their obscurity. So too the huge Titanothria of the
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  Speaker 1: American continent, and all the powerful mammals of Pleistocene South America,
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  Speaker 1: the saber tooth lion, for instance, and the Macrarchinia, suddenly
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  Speaker 1: came to a finish when they were still almost at
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  Speaker 1: the zenith of their rule. And in no case does
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  Speaker 1: the record of the fossils show a really dominant species
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  Speaker 1: succeeded by its own descendants. What has usually happened in
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  Speaker 1: the past appears to be the emergence of some type
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  Speaker 1: of animal hitherto rare and unimportant, and extinction not simply
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  Speaker 1: of the previously ruling species, but of most of the
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  Speaker 1: forms that are at all closely related to it. Sometimes, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: as in the case of the extinct giants of South America,
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  Speaker 1: they vanished without any considerable rivals, victims of pestilence, famine,
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  Speaker 1: or it may be of that cumulative inefficiency that comes
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  Speaker 1: of a too undisputed life, so that the analogy of
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  Speaker 1: geology at any rate is against this too acceptable view
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  Speaker 1: of man's certain tenure of the Earth for the next
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  Speaker 1: few million years or so. And after all, even now,
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  Speaker 1: man is by no means such a master of the
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  Speaker 1: kingdoms of life as he is apt to imagine the sea,
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  Speaker 1: That mysterious nursery of living things is for all practical
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  Speaker 1: purposes beyond his control. The low water mark is his limit.
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  Speaker 1: Beyond that he may do a little with sang and dredge,
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  Speaker 1: murder of few million herrings a year as they come
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  Speaker 1: in to spawn, butcher his fellow air breath of the
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  Speaker 1: whale or hall now and then an unlucky king crab
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  Speaker 1: or strange sea urchin out of the deep water in
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  Speaker 1: the name of science. But the life of the sea
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  Speaker 1: as a whole knows him not, plays out its slow
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  Speaker 1: drama of change and development unheeding him, and may in
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  Speaker 1: the end a mere idle sport throw up some new
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  Speaker 1: terrestrial denizens, some new competitor for space to live in
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  Speaker 1: and food to live upon, that will sweep him and
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  Speaker 1: all his little contrivances out of existence, as certainly and
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  Speaker 1: inevitably as he is swept away walk bison and dough
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  Speaker 1: do during the last two hundred years, for instance, there
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  Speaker 1: are other Crestacea as a group. The crabs and lobsters
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  Speaker 1: are confined below the high water mark, but experiments in
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  Speaker 1: air breathing are no doubt and progress in this group.
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  Speaker 1: We already have tropical land crabs, and as far as
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  Speaker 1: we know, there is no reason why in the future
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  Speaker 1: these creatures should not increase in size and terrestrial capacity.
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  Speaker 1: In the past, we have the evidence of the fossil
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  Speaker 1: paradoxidia that creatures of this kind may at least obtain
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  Speaker 1: a length of six feet, and considering their intense pugnacity,
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  Speaker 1: a crab of such dimensions would be as formidable a
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  Speaker 1: creature as one could well imagine, and their amphibious capacity
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  Speaker 1: would give them an advantage against us, such as at
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  Speaker 1: present is only to be found in the case of
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  Speaker 1: the alligator or crocodile. If we imagine a shark that
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  Speaker 1: could raid out upon the land, or a tiger that
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  Speaker 1: could take refuge in the sea, we should have a
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  Speaker 1: fair suggestion of what a terrible monster a large predatory
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  Speaker 1: crab might prove, and so far as zoological science goes,
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  Speaker 1: we must at least admit that such a creature is
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  Speaker 1: an evolutionary possibility. Then again, the order of the cephalopods
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  Speaker 1: to which belong to the cuttlefish and the octopus sacred
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  Speaker 1: to Victor you go, may be, for all we can
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  Speaker 1: say to the Kane, an order with the future their kindred.
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  Speaker 1: The gastropods have, in the case of the snail and slug,
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  Speaker 1: learned the trick of air breathing, and not Improbably there
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  Speaker 1: are even now genera of this order that have escaped
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  Speaker 1: the naturalists, or even well known genera whose possibilities in
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  Speaker 1: growth and dietary are still unknown. Suppose some day a
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  Speaker 1: specimen of a new species is caught off the coast
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  Speaker 1: of Kent. It excites remark at a royal society a soiree,
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  Speaker 1: and genders a science note or so a huge octopus.
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  Speaker 1: And in the next year or so, three or four
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  Speaker 1: other specimens come to hand, and the thing becomes familiar. Quote.
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  Speaker 1: Probably a new and larger variety of octopus so and
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  Speaker 1: so hitherto supposed to be tropical end quote, says Professor Gargoyle,
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  Speaker 1: and thinks he is disposed of it. Then convince some
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  Speaker 1: mysterious boating accidents and deaths while bathing. A large animal
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  Speaker 1: of this kind coming into a region of frequent wrecks,
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  Speaker 1: might so easily acquire a preferential taste for human nutriment,
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  Speaker 1: just as the Colorado beetle acquired a new taste for
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  Speaker 1: the common potato and give up its old food plants
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  Speaker 1: some years ago. Then perhaps a school or pack or
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  Speaker 1: flock of octopus gigas would be found busy picking the
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  Speaker 1: sailors off e stranded ship, And then in the course
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  Speaker 1: of a few score years it might begin to stroll
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  Speaker 1: up the beaches and batten on excursionists. Soon it would
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  Speaker 1: be a common feature of the watering places, possibly least
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  Speaker 1: commoner than excursionists. Suppose such a creature were to appear,
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  Speaker 1: and it is we repeat a possibility, if perhaps a
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  Speaker 1: remote one. How could it be fought against? Something might
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  Speaker 1: be done by torpedoes. But so far as our past
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  Speaker 1: knowledge goes and has no means of seriously diminishing the
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  Speaker 1: numbers of any animal of most rudimentary intelligence that made
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  Speaker 1: its fastness in the sea. Even on land, it is
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  Speaker 1: possible to find creatures that, with a little modification, may
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  Speaker 1: become excessively dangerous to the human ascendency. Most people have
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  Speaker 1: read of the migratory ants of Central Africa, against which
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  Speaker 1: no man can stand. On the march, they simply clear
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  Speaker 1: out whole villages, drive men and animals before them, and
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  Speaker 1: headlong route and kill and eat every living creature they
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  Speaker 1: can capture. One wonders why they have not already spread
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  Speaker 1: the area of their devastations, but at present, no doubt
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  Speaker 1: they have their natural checks of ant eating birds or
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  Speaker 1: what not. In the near future, it may be that
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  Speaker 1: the European immigrant, as he sets the balance of life
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  Speaker 1: swinging in his vigorous manner, may kill off these ant
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  Speaker 1: eating animals, or otherwise unwittingly remove the checks that now
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  Speaker 1: keep these terrible little pests within limits. And once they
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  Speaker 1: begin to spread in real earnest, it is hard to
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  Speaker 1: see how their advance could be stopped. A world devoured
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  Speaker 1: by ants seemed incredible now, simply because it is not
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  Speaker 1: within our experience. But a naturalists would have a dull
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  Speaker 1: imagination who could not see in the numerous species of ants,
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  Speaker 1: and in their already high intelligence, far more possibility of
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  Speaker 1: strange developments than we have in the solitary human animal.
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  Speaker 1: And no doubt the idea of the small and feeble
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  Speaker 1: organism of man triumphant and omnipresent, but it seemed equally
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  Speaker 1: incredible to an intelligent mammoth or a paleolithic cave bear.
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  Speaker 1: And finally, there is always the prospect of a new disease.
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  Speaker 1: As yet scientists scarcely touched more than the fringe of
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  Speaker 1: their probabilities associated with minute fungi. They constitute our zymotic diseases.
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  Speaker 1: But the basili have no more settled down into their
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  Speaker 1: final quiescence than of men like ourselves. They are adapting
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  Speaker 1: themselves to new conditions and acquiring new powers. The plagues
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  Speaker 1: of the Middle Ages, for instance, seem to have been
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  Speaker 1: begotten of a strange bacillius engendered under conditions. The sanitary science,
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  Speaker 1: in spite of its panacea of drainage, still admits are
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  Speaker 1: imperfectly understood, and for all we know even now, we
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  Speaker 1: may be quite unwittingly evolving some new and more terrible plague,
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  Speaker 1: a plague that will not take ten or twenty or
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  Speaker 1: thirty percent as plagues have done in the past, but
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  Speaker 1: the entire hundred No. Man's complacent assumption of the future
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  Speaker 1: is too confident, we think, because things have been easy
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  Speaker 1: for mankind as a whole. For a generation or so
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  Speaker 1: we are going on to perfect comfort and security. In
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  Speaker 1: the future. We think that we shall always go to
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  Speaker 1: work at ten, and leave off at four, and have
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  Speaker 1: dinner at seven, forever and ever. But these four suggestions,
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  Speaker 1: out of a host of others, must surely do a
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  Speaker 1: little against his complacency. Even now. For all we can tell,
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  Speaker 1: the coming terror may be crouching for its spring, and
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  Speaker 1: the fall of humanity be at hand. In the case
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  Speaker 1: of every other predominant animal the world has ever seen,
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  Speaker 1: I repeat, the hour of its complete ascendency has been
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  Speaker 1: the eve of its entire overthrow. But if some poor
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  Speaker 1: story writing man ventures to figure the sober probability in
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  Speaker 1: a tale, not a reviewer in London but will tell
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  Speaker 1: him his theme is utterly impossible. And when the thing happens,
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  Speaker 1: one may doubt if even then one will get the
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  Speaker 1: recognition one deserves. And of Chapter twenty four recording by
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  Speaker 1: Greg Giardano, Newport, Ritchie, Florida. Ye