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incipient disposition to other pursuits, they encourage his mathematical bias with a perfect psychological skill.
His brain grows, or at least the mathematical faculties of his brain grow, and the rest of him only so much as is
necessary to sustain this essential part of him. At last, save for rest and food, his one delight lies in the
exercise and display of his faculty, his one interest in its application, his sole society with other specialists in
his own line. His brain grows continually larger, at least so far as the portions engaging in mathematics are
concerned; they bulge ever larger and seem to suck all life and vigour from the rest of his frame. His limbs
shrivel, his heart and digestive organs diminish, his insect face is hidden under its bulging contours. His voice
becomes a mere stridulation for the stating of formula; he seems deaf to all but properly enunciated problems.
The faculty of laughter, save for the sudden discovery of some paradox, is lost to him; his deepest emotion is
the evolution of a novel computation. And so he attains his end.
"Or, again, a Selenite appointed to be a minder of mooncalves is from his earliest years induced to think and
live mooncalf, to find his pleasure in mooncalf lore, his exercise in their tending and pursuit. He is trained to
become wiry and active, his eye is indurated to the tight wrappings, the angular contours that constitute a
'smart mooncalfishness.' He takes at last no interest in the deeper part of the moon; he regards all Selenites not
equally versed in mooncalves with indifference, derision, or hostility. His thoughts are of mooncalf pastures,
and his dialect an accomplished mooncalf technique. So also he loves his work, and discharges in perfect
happiness the duty that justifies his being. And so it is with all sorts and conditions of Selenites--each is a
perfect unit in a world machine....
"These beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall, form a sort of aristocracy in this strange
society, and at the head of them, quintessential of the moon, is that marvellous gigantic ganglion the Grand
Lunar, into whose presence I am finally to come. The unlimited development of the minds of the intellectual
class is rendered possible by the absence of any bony skull in the lunar anatomy, that strange box of bone that
clamps about the developing brain of man, imperiously insisting 'thus far and no farther' to all his possibilities.
They fall into three main classes differing greatly in influence and respect. There are administrators, of whom
Phi-oo is one, Selenites of considerable initiative and versatility, responsible each for a certain cubic content
of the moon's bulk; the experts like the football-headed thinker, who are trained to perform certain special
operations; and the erudite, who are the repositories of all knowledge. To the latter class belongs Tsi-puff, the
first lunar professor of terrestrial languages. With regard to these latter, it is a curious little thing to note that
the unlimited growth of the lunar brain has rendered unnecessary the invention of all those mechanical aids to
brain work which have distinguished the career of man. There are no books, no records of any sort, no
libraries or inscriptions. All knowledge is stored in distended brains much as the honey-ants of Texas store
honey in their distended abdomens. The lunar Somerset House and the lunar British Museum Library are
collections of living brains...
"The less specialised administrators, I note, do for the most part take a very lively interest in me whenever
they encounter me. They will come out of the way and stare at me and ask questions to which Phi-oo will
reply. I see them going hither and thither with a retinue of bearers, attendants, shouters, parachute-carriers,
and so forth--queer groups to see. The experts for the most part ignore me completely, even as they ignore
each other, or notice me only to begin a clamorous exhibition of their distinctive skill. The erudite for the
most part are rapt in an impervious and apoplectic complacency, from which only a denial of their erudition
Chapter 24 111
can rouse them. Usually they are led about by little watchers and attendants, and often there are small and
active-looking creatures, small females usually, that I am inclined to think are a sort of wife to them; but some
of the profounder scholars are altogether too great for locomotion, and are carried from place to place in a sort
of sedan tub, wabbling jellies of knowledge that enlist my respectful astonishment. I have just passed one in
coming to this place where I am permitted to amuse myself with these electrical toys, a vast, shaven, shaky
head, bald and thin-skinned, carried on his grotesque stretcher. In front and behind came his bearers, and
curious, almost trumpet-faced, news disseminators shrieked his fame.
"I have already mentioned the retinues that accompany most of the intellectuals: ushers, bearers, valets,
extraneous tentacles and muscles, as it were, to replace the abortive physical powers of these hypertrophied
minds. Porters almost invariably accompany them. There are also extremely swift messengers with spider-like
legs and 'hands' for grasping parachutes, and attendants with vocal organs that could well nigh wake the dead.
Apart from their controlling intelligence these subordinates are as inert and helpless as umbrellas in a stand.
They exist only in relation to the orders they have to obey, the duties they have to perform.
"The bulk of these insects, however, who go to and fro upon the spiral ways, who fill the ascending balloons
and drop past me clinging to flimsy parachutes are, I gather, of the operative class. 'Machine hands,' indeed, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]