Mellonta tauta.
SOPHOCLES, 
'These things are in the near future.'

UNA. 'Born again?'
MONOS. Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, 'born again'.
These were the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long
pondered, rejecting the explanation of the priesthood, until
Death himself resolved for me the secret.
UNA. Death!
MONOS. How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my words! I
observe, too, a vacillation in your step--a joyous inquietude in
your eyes. You are confused and oppressed by the majestic
novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of Death I spoke. And
here how singularly sounds that word which of old was wont to
bring terror to all hearts--throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!
UNA. Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts. How
often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its
nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss--
saying unto it 'thus far, and no farther!' That earnest mutual
love, my own Monos, which burned within our bosoms--how vainly
did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy in its first upspringing,
that our happiness would strengthen with its strength! Alas! as
it grew, so grew in our hearts the dread of that evil hour which
was hurrying to separate us for ever! Thus, in time, it became
painful to love. Hate would have been mercy then.
MONOS. Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una--mine, mine
for ever now!
UNA. But the memory of past sorrow--is it not present joy?
I have much to say yet of the things which have been. Above all,
I burn to know the incidents of your own passage through the dark
Valley and Shadow.
MONOS. And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her
Monos in vain? I will be minute in relating all--but at what
point shall the weird narrative begin?
UNA. At what point?
MONOS. You have said.
UNA. Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both
learned the propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will
not say, then, commence with the moment of life's cessation--but
commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having
abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless torpor,
and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the passionate
fingers of love.
MONOS. One word first, my Una, in regard to man's general
condition at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of
the wise among our forefathers--wise in fact, although not in the
world's esteem--had ventured to doubt the propriety of the term
'improvement', as applied to the progress of our civilization.
There were periods in each of the five or six centuries
immediately preceding our dissolution, when arose some vigorous
intellect, boldly contending for those principles whose truth
appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterly obvious--
principles which should have taught our race to submit to the
guidance of the natural laws, rather than attempt their control.
At long intervals some master-minds appeared, looking upon each
advance in practical science as a retrogradation in the true
utility. Occasionally the poetic intellect--that intellect which
we now feel to have been the most exalted of all--since those
truths to us were of the most enduring importance could only be
reached by that which speaks in proof-tones to the
imagination alone, and to the unaided reason bears no weight--
occasionally did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther in
the evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in
the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and of
its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct intimation that
knowledge was not meet for man in the infant condition of his
soul. And these men, the poets, living and perishing amid the
scorn of the 'utilitarians'--of rough pedants, who arrogated to
themselves a title which could have been properly applied only to
the scorned--these men, the poets, ponder piningly, yet not
unwisely, upon the ancient days when our wants were not more
simple than our enjoyments were keen--days when was a
word unknown, so solemnly deep-toned was happiness--holy, august,
and blissful days, when blue rivers ran undammed, between hills
unhewn, into far forest solitudes, primeval, odorous, and
unexplored.
Yet these noble exceptions from the general misrule served
but to strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we had fallen upon the
most evil of all our evil days. The great 'movement'--that was
the cant term--went on: a diseased commotion, moral and physical.
Art--the Arts--arose supreme, and, once enthroned, cast chains
upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. Man,
because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature, fell
into child-ish exultation at his acquired and still-increasing
dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked a God in his
own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him. As might be
supposed from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected with
system, and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself in
generalities. Among other odd ideas, that of universal equality
gained ground; and in the face of analogy and of God--in despite
of the loud warning voice of the laws of so visibly
pervading all things in Earth and Heaven--wild attempts at an
omni-prevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang
necessarily from the leading evil--Knowledge. Man could not both
know and succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose,
innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of
furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the
ravages of some loathsome disease. And methinks, sweet Una, even
our slumbering sense of the forced and of the far-fetched might
have arrested us here. But now it appears that we had worked out
our own destruction in the perversion of our , or rather
in the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. For, in
truth, it was at this crisis that taste alone--that faculty
which, holding a middle position between the pure intellect and
the moral sense, could never safely have been disregarded--it was
now that taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to
Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative spirit
and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the which he
justly regarded as an all sufficient education for the soul!
Alas for him and for it!--since both were most desperately needed
when both were most entirely forgotten or despised.<1>

<1> 'It will be hard to discover a better [method of
education] than that which the experience of so many ages has
already discovered; and this may be summed up as consisting in
gymnastics for the body, and for the soul.' --. lib. 2. 'For this reason is a musical education most
essential; since it causes Rhythm and Harmony to penetrate most
intimately into the soul, taking the strongest hold upon it,
filling it with and making the man . . . . He will praise and admire : will
receive it with joy into his soul, will feed upon it, and ' --. lib. 3. Music
had, however, among the Athenians, a far more comprehensive
signification than with us. It included not only the harmonies
of time and of tune, but the poetic diction, sentiment and
creation each in its widest sense. The study of was
with them in fact, the general cultivation of the taste--of that
which recognizes the beautiful--in contra-distinction from
reason, which deals only with the true.

Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how
truly!--; and it is not impossible that the sentiment of the
natural, had time permitted it, would have regained its old
ascendancy over the harsh mathematical reason of the schools.
But this thing was not to be. Prematurely induced by
intemperance of knowledge, the old age of the world drew on.
This the mass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although
unhappily, affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth's
records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of
highest civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate
from comparison of China the simple and enduring with Assyria the
architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, more crafty
than either, the turbulent mother of all Arts. In the history of
these regions I met with a ray from the Future. The individual
artificialities of the three latter were local diseases of the
Earth, and in their individual overthrows we had seen local
remedies applied; but for the infected world at large I could
anticipate no regeneration save in death. That man, as a race,
should not become extinct, I saw that he must be 'born again'.
And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our
spirits daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we
discoursed of the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface of
the Earth, having undergone that purification<1> which alone
could efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself
anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the smiling
waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit dwelling-
place for man:--for man the Death-purged--for man to whose now
exalted intellect there should be poison in knowledge no more--
for the redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but
still for the , man.
UNA. Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos;
but the epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as
we believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely
warrant us in believing. Men lived; and died individually. You
yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and thither your
constant

<1> The word '' seems here to be used with
reference to its root in the Greek , fire.

Una speedily followed you. And though the century which has
since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings us thus together once
more, tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience of
duration, yet, my Monos, it was a century still.
MONOS. Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity.
Unquestionably it was in the Earth's dotage that I died. Wearied
at heart with anxieties which had their origin in the general
turmoil and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some
few days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with
ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook for pain, while
I longed but was impotent to undeceive you--after some days there
came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless
torpor, and this was termed , by those who stood around
me.
Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of
sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the
extreme quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and
profoundly, lying motionless and fully prostrate in a midsummer
noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness, through the
mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without being awakened by
external disturbances.
I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had
ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless.
The senses were unusually active, although eccentrically so--
assuming often each others' functions at random. The taste and
the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment,
abnormal and intense. The rose-water with which your tenderness
had moistened my lips to the last, affected me with sweet fancies
of flowers--fantastic flowers, far more lovely than any of the
old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here blooming around us.
The eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no complete
impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance the balls
could not roll in their sockets--but all objects within the range
of the visual hemisphere were seen with more or less distinction;
the rays which fell upon the external retina, or into the cornea
of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than those which struck
the front or anterior surface. Yet, in the former instance, this
effect was so far anomalous that I appreciated it only as --sound sweet or discordant as the matters presenting
themselves at my side were light or dark in shade--curved or
angular in outline. The hearing at the same time, although
excited in degree, was not irregular in action--estimating real
sounds with an extravagance of precision, not less than of
sensibility. Touch had undergone a modification more peculiar.
Its impressions were tardily received, but pertinaciously
retained, and resulted always in the highest physical pleasure.
Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first
only recognized through vision, at length, long after their
removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight
immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. my
perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the
passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree wrought
into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain there was some
little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or pleasure
none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ear with all
their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every
variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no
more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the
sorrows which gave them birth; while the large and constant tears
which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which
broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And
this was in truth the of which these bystanders spoke
reverently, in low whispers--you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud
cries.
They attired me for the coffin--three or four dark figures
which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed the direct
line of my vision they affected me as ; but upon passing
to my side their images impressed me with the idea of shrieks,
groans, and other dismal expressions of terror, of horror, or of
woe. You alone, habited in a white robe, passed in all
directions musically about me.
The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became
possessed by a vague uneasiness--an anxiety such as the sleeper
feels when sad real sounds fall continuously within his ear--low
distant bell tones, solemn, at long but equal intervals, and
commingling with melancholy dreams. Night arrived; and with its
shadows a heavy discomfort. It oppressed my limbs with the
oppression of some dull weight, and was palpable. There was also
a moaning sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf,
but more continuous, which, beginning with the first twilight,
had grown in strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were
brought into the room, and this reverberation became forthwith
interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound, but
less dreary and less distinct. The ponderous oppression was in a
great measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame of each lamp,
(for there were many,) there flowed unbrokenly into my ears a
strain of melodious monotone. And when now, dear Una,
approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat gently
by my side, breathing odour from your sweet lips, and pressing
them upon my brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and
mingling with the merely physical sensations which circumstances
had called forth, a something akin to sentiment itself--a feeling
that, half appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and
sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulseless heart, and
seemed indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and faded quickly
away, first into extreme quiescence, and then into a purely
sensual pleasure as before.
And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses,
there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In
its exercise I found a wild delight--yet a delight still
physical, inasmuch as the understanding in it had no part.
Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered;
no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. But there seemed to have
sprung up in the brain, of which no words could convey
to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct conception.
Let me term it a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the moral
embodiment of man's abstract idea of . By the absolute
equalization of this movement--or of such as this--had the cycles
of the firmamental orbs themselves, been adjusted. By its aid I
measured the irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, and of
the watches of the attendants. Their tickings came sonorously to
my ears. The slightest deviation from the true proportion--and
these deviations were omni-prevalent--affected me just as
violations of abstract truth are wont, on earth, to affect the
moral sense. Although no two of the time-pieces in the chamber
struck individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no
difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the
respective momentary errors of each. And this--this keen,
perfect, self-existing sentiment of --this sentiment
existing (as man could not possibly have conceived it to exist)
independently of any succession of events--this idea--this sixth
sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first
obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the
threshold of the temporal Eternity.
It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others
had departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited me in
the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I knew by
the tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But, suddenly these
strains diminished in distinctness and in volume. Finally they
ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died away. Forms affected my
vision no longer. The oppression of the Darkness uplifted itself
from my bosom. A dull shock like that of electricity pervaded my
frame, and was followed by total loss of the idea of contact.
All of what man has termed sense was merged in the sole
consciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of
duration. The mortal body had been at length stricken with the
hand of the deadly .
Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness
and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a
lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in
operation upon the flesh, and as the dreamer is sometimes aware
of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una,
I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the
noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious of those
movements which displaced you from my side, which confined me
within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse, which
bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped
heavily the mound upon me, and which thus left me, in blackness
and corruption, to my sad and solemn slumbers with the worm.
And here, in the prison-house which has few secrets to
disclose, there rolled away days and weeks and months; and the
soul watched narrowly each second as it flew, and, without
effort, took record of its flight--without effort and without
object.
A year passed. The consciousness of had grown
hourly more indistinct, and that of mere had, in
great measure, usurped its position. The idea of entity was
becoming merged in that of . The narrow space
immediately surrounding what had been the body, was now going to
be the body itself. At length, as often happens to the sleepers
(by sleep and its world alone is imaged)--at length, as
sometimes happened on Earth to the deep slumberer, when some
flitting light half startled him into awaking, yet left him half
enveloped in dreams--so to me, in the strict embrace of the came light which alone might have had power to
startle--the light of enduring . Men toiled at the grave
in which I lay darkling. They upthrew the damp earth. Upon my
mouldering bones there descended the coffin of Una.
And now again all was void. That nebulous light had been
extinguished. That feeble thrill had vibrated itself into
quiescence. Many had supervened. Dust had returned
to dust. The worm had food no more. The sense of being had at
length utterly departed, and there reigned in its stead--instead
of all things--dominant and perpetual--the autocrats 
and . For which --for that which had
no form--for that which had no thought--for that which had no
sentience--for that which was soulless, yet of which matter
formed no portion--for all this nothingness, yet for all this
immortality, the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours,
co-mates.