IN THE YEAR TEN THOUSAND.

                          BY WILLIAM HARBEN.



A. D. 10,000. An old man, more than six hundred years of age, was
walking with a boy through a great museum. The people who were moving
around them had beautiful forms, and faces which were indescribably
refined and spiritual.

“Father,” said the boy, “you promised to tell me to-day about the Dark
Ages. I like to hear how men lived and thought long ago.”

“It is no easy task to make you understand the past,” was the reply.
“It is hard to realize that man could have been so ignorant as he was
eight thousand years ago, but come with me; I will show you
something.”

He led the boy to a cabinet containing a few time-worn books bound in
solid gold.

“You have never seen a book,” he said, taking out a large volume and
carefully placing it on a silk cushion on a table. “There are only a
few in the leading museums of the world. Time was when there were as
many books on earth as inhabitants.”

“I cannot understand,” said the boy with a look of perplexity on his
intellectual face. “I cannot see what people could have wanted with
them; they are not attractive; they seem to be useless.”

The old man smiled. “When I was your age, the subject was too deep for
me; but as I grew older and made a close study of the history of the
past, the use of books gradually became plain to me. We know that in
the year 2000 they were read by the best minds. To make you understand
this, I shall first have to explain that eight thousand years ago
human beings communicated their thoughts to one another by making
sounds with their tongues, and not by mind-reading, as you and I do.
To understand me, you have simply to read my thoughts as well as your
education will permit; but primitive man knew nothing about
thought-intercourse, so he invented speech. Humanity then was divided
up in various races, and each race had a separate language. As certain
sounds conveyed definite ideas, so did signs and letters; and later,
to facilitate the exchange of thought, writing and printing were
invented. This book was printed.”

The boy leaned forward and examined the pages closely; his young brow
clouded. “I cannot understand,” he said, “it seems so useless.”

The old man put his delicate fingers on the page. “A line of these
words may have conveyed a valuable thought to a reader long ago,” he
said, reflectively. “In fact, this book purports to be a history of
the world up to the year 2000. Here are some pictures,” he continued,
turning the worn leaves carefully. “This is George Washington; this a
pope of a church called the Roman Catholic; this is a man named
Gladstone, who was a great political leader in England. Pictures then,
as you see, were very crude. We have preserved some of the oil
paintings made in those days. Art was in its cradle. In producing a
painting of an object, the early artists mixed colored paints and
spread them according to taste on stretched canvas or on the walls or
windows of buildings. You know that our artists simply throw light and
darkness into space in the necessary variations, and the effect is all
that could be desired in the way of imitating nature. See that
landscape in the alcove before you. The foliage of the trees, the
grass, the flowers, the stretch of water, have every appearance of
life because the light which produces them is alive.”

The boy looked at the scene admiringly for a few minutes, then bent
again over the book. Presently he recoiled from the pictures, a
strange look of disgust struggling in his tender features.

“These men have awful faces,” he said. “They are so unlike people
living now. The man you call a pope looks like an animal. They all
have huge mouths and frightfully heavy jaws. Surely men could not have
looked like that.”

“Yes,” the old man replied, gently. “There is no doubt that human
beings then bore a nearer resemblance to the lower animals than we now
do. In the sculpture and portraits of all ages we can trace a gradual
refinement in the appearances of men. The features of the human race
to-day are more ideal. Thought has always given form and expression to
faces. In those dark days the thoughts of men were not refined. Human
beings died of starvation and lack of attention in cities where there
were people so wealthy that they could not use their fortunes. And
they were so nearly related to the lower animals that they believed in
war. George Washington was for several centuries reverenced by
millions of people as a great and good man; and yet under his
leadership thousands of human beings lost their lives in battle.”

The boy’s susceptible face turned white.

“Do you mean that he encouraged men to kill one another?” he asked,
bending more closely over the book.

“Yes, but we cannot blame him; he thought he was right. Millions of
his countrymen applauded him. A greater warrior than he was a man
named Napoleon Bonaparte. Washington fought under the belief that he
was doing his country a service in defending it against enemies, but
everything in history goes to prove that Bonaparte waged war to
gratify a personal ambition to distinguish himself as a hero. Wild
animals of the lowest orders were courageous, and would fight one
another till they died; and yet the most refined of the human race,
eight or nine thousand years ago, prided themselves on the same
ferocity of nature. Women, the gentlest half of humanity, honored men
more for bold achievements in shedding blood than for any other
quality. But murder was not only committed in wars; men in private
life killed one another; fathers and mothers were now and then so
depraved as to put their own children to death; and the highest
tribunals of the world executed murderers without dreaming that it was
wrong, erroneously believing that to kill was the only way to prevent
killing.”

“Did no one in those days realize that it was horrible?” asked the
youth.

“Yes,” answered the father, “as far back as ten thousand years ago
there was an humble man, it is said, who was called Jesus Christ. He
went from place to place, telling every one he met that the world
would be better if men would love one another as themselves.”

“What kind of man was he?” asked the boy, with kindling eyes.

“He was a spiritual genius,” was the earnest reply, “and the greatest
that has ever lived.”

“Did he prevent them from killing one another?” asked the youth, with
a tender upward glance.

“No, for he himself was killed by men who were too barbarous to
understand him. But long after his death his words were remembered.
People were not civilized enough to put his teachings into practice,
but they were able to see that he was right.”

“After he was killed, did the people not do as he had told them?”
asked the youth, after a pause of several minutes.

“It seems not,” was the reply. “They said no human being could live as
he had directed. And when he had been dead for several centuries,
people began to say that he was the Son of God who had come to earth
to show men how to live. Some even believed that he was God himself.”

“Did they believe that he was a person like ourselves?”

The old man reflected for a few minutes, then, looking into the boy’s
eager face, he answered: “That subject will be hard for you to
understand. I will try to make it plain. To the unformed minds of
early humanity there could be nothing without a personal creator. As
man could build a house with his own hands, and was superior to his
work, so he argued that some unknown being, greater than all visible
things, had made the universe. They called that being by different
names according to the language they spoke. In English the word used
was ‘God.’”

“They believed that somebody had made the universe!” said the boy,
“how very strange!”

“No, not somebody as you comprehend it,” replied the father gently,
“but some vague, infinite being who punished the evil and rewarded the
good. Men could form no idea of a creator that did not in some way
resemble themselves; and as they could subdue their enemies through
fear and by the infliction of pain, so did they believe that God would
punish those who did not please him. Some people long ago believed
that God’s punishment was inflicted after death for eternity. The
numerous beliefs about the personality and laws of the creator caused
more bloodshed in the gloomy days of the past than anything else.
Religion was the foundation of many of the most horrible wars. People
committed thousands of crimes in the name of the God of the universe.
Men and women were burned alive because they would not believe certain
creeds, and yet they adhered to convictions equally as preposterous;
but you will learn all these things later in life. That picture before
you was the last queen of England, called Victoria.”

“I hoped that the women would not have such repulsive features as the
men,” said the boy, looking critically at the picture, “but this face
makes me shudder. Why do they all look so coarse and brutal?”

“People living when this queen reigned had the most degrading habit
that ever blackened the history of mankind.”

“What was that?” asked the youth.

“The consumption of flesh. They believed that animals, fowls, and fish
were created to be eaten.”

“Is it possible?” The boy shuddered convulsively, and turned away from
the book. “I understand now why their faces repel me so. I do not like
to think that we have descended from such people.”

“They knew no better,” said the father. “As they gradually became more
refined they learned to burn the meat over flames and to cook it in
heated vessels to change its appearance. The places where animals were
killed and sold were withdrawn to retired places. Mankind was slowly
turning from the habit, but they did not know it. As early as 2050
learned men, calling themselves vegetarians, proved conclusively that
the consumption of such food was cruel and barbarous, and that it
retarded refinement and mental growth. However, it was not till about
2300 that the vegetarian movement became of marked importance. The
most highly educated classes in all lands adopted vegetarianism, and
only the uneducated continued to kill and eat animals. The vegetarians
tried for years to enact laws prohibiting the consumption of flesh,
but opposition was very strong. In America in 2320 a colony was formed
consisting of about three hundred thousand vegetarians. They purchased
large tracts of land in what was known as the Indian Territory, and
there made their homes, determined to prove by example the efficacy of
their tenets. Within the first year the colony had doubled its number:
people joined it from all parts of the globe. In the year 4000 it was
a country of its own, and was the wonder of the world. The brightest
minds were born there. The greatest discoveries and inventions were
made by its inhabitants. In 4030 Gillette discovered the process of
manufacturing crystal. Up to that time people had built their houses
of natural stone, inflammable wood, and metals; but the new material,
being fireproof and beautiful in its various colors, was used for all
building purposes. In 4050 Holloway found the submerged succession of
mountain chains across the Atlantic Ocean, and intended to construct a
bridge on their summits; but the vast improvement in air ships
rendered his plans impracticable.

“In 4051 John Saunders discovered and put into practice
thought-telegraphy. This discovery was the signal for the introduction
in schools and colleges of the science of mind-reading, and by the
year 5000 so great had been the progress in that branch of knowledge
that words were spoken only among the lowest of the uneducated. In no
age of the world’s history has there been such an important discovery.
It civilized the world. Its early promoters did not dream of the vast
good mind-reading would accomplish. Slowly it killed evil. Societies
for the prevention of evil thought were organized in all lands.
Children were born pure of mind and grew up in purity. Crime was
choked out of existence. If a man had an evil thought, it was read in
his heart, and he was not allowed to keep it. Men at first shunned
evil for fear of detection, and then grew to love purity.

“In the year 6021 all countries of the world, having then a common
language, and being drawn together in brotherly love by constant
exchange of thought, agreed to call themselves a union without ruler
or rulers. It was the greatest event in the history of the world.
Certain sensitive mind students in Germany, who had for years been
trying to communicate with other planets through the channel of
thought, declared that, owing to the terrestrial unanimity of purpose
in that direction, they had received mental impressions from other
worlds, and that thorough interplanetary intercourse was a future
possibility.

“Important inventions were made as the mind of humanity grew more
elevated. Thornton discovered the plan to heat the earth’s surface
from its internal fire, and this discovery made journeys to the
wonderful ice-bound countries situated at the North and the South
Poles easy of accomplishment. At the North Pole, in the extensive
concave lands, was found a peculiar race of men. Their sun was the
great perpetually boiling lake of lava which bubbled from the centre
of the earth in the bottom of their bowl-shaped world. And a strange
religion was theirs! They believed that the earth was a monster on
whose hide they had to live for a mortal lifetime, and that to the
good was given the power after death to walk over the icy waste to
their god, whose starry eyes they could see twinkling in space, and
that the evil were condemned to feed the fire in the stomach of the
monster as long as it lived. They told beautiful stories about the
creation of their world, and held that if they lived too near the hot,
dazzling mouth of evil, they would become blinded to the soft,
forgiving eyes of the god of space. Hence they suffered the extreme
cold of the lands near the frozen seas, believing that the physical
ordeal prepared them for the icy journey to immortal rest after death.
But there were those who hungered after the balmy atmosphere and the
wonderful fruits and flowers that grew in the lowlands, and they lived
there in indolence and so-called sin.”

The old man and his son left the museum and walked into a wonderful
park. Flowers of the most beautiful kinds and of sweetest fragrance
grew on all sides. They came to a tall tower, four thousand feet in
height, built of manufactured crystal. Something, like a great white
bird, a thousand feet long, flew across the sky and settled down on
the tower’s summit.

“This was one of the most wonderful inventions of the Seventieth
century,” said the old man. “The early inhabitants of the earth could
not have dreamed that it would be possible to go around it in
twenty-four hours. In fact, there was a time when they were not able
to go around it at all. Scientists were astonished when a man called
Malburn, a great inventor, announced that, at a height of four
thousand feet, he could disconnect an air ship from the laws of
gravitation, and cause it to stand still in space till the earth had
turned over. Fancy what must have been that immortal genius’ feelings
when he stood in space and saw the earth for the first time whirling
beneath him!”

They walked on for some distance across the park till they came to a
great instrument made to magnify the music in light. Here they paused
and seated themselves.

“It will soon be night,” said the old man. “The tones are those of
bleeding sunset. I came here last evening to listen to the musical
struggle between the light of dying day and that of the coming stars.
The sunlight had been playing a powerful solo; but the gentle chorus
of the stars, led by the moon, was inexplicably touching. Light is the
voice of immortality; it speaks in all things.”

An hour passed. It was growing dark.

“Tell me what immortality is,” said the boy. “What does life lead to?”

“We do not know,” replied the old man. “If we knew we would be
infinite. Immortality is increasing happiness for all time; it is” —

A meteor shot across the sky. There was a burst of musical laughter
among the singing stars. The old man bent over the boy’s face and
kissed it. “Immortality,” said he—“immortality must be love immortal.”