’So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation was something in this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a half-truth—­or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.)

’It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane.  The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind.  For the first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged.  And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough.  Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness.  The work of ameliorating the conditions of life—­the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure—­had gone steadily on to a climax.  One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another.  Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward.  And the harvest was what I saw!

’After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of to-day are still in the rudimentary stage.  The science of our time has attacked but a little department of the field of human disease, but even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently.  Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they can.  We improve our favourite plants and animals—­and how few they are—­gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle.  We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands.  Some day all this will be better organized, and still better.  That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies.  The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating; things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature.  In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs.

’This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done indeed for all Time, in the space of Time across which my machine had leaped.  The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi; everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither.  The ideal of preventive medicine was attained.  Diseases had been stamped out.  I saw no evidence of any contagious diseases during all my stay.  And I shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes.

’Social triumphs, too, had been effected.  I saw mankind housed in splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them engaged in no toil.  There were no signs of struggle, neither social nor economical struggle.  The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone.  It was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise.  The difficulty of increasing population had been met, I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.