Project Gutenberg #79003
Last and First Men
Olaf Stapledon
1930Stapledon's sweeping future history of humanity, prepared chapter by chapter from Project Gutenberg HTML.
Project Gutenberg #79003 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for MojiMori from public-domain source metadata
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love would a man spur himself to desperate efforts. Whenever the stake appeared to be mere private advancement, he was apt to prefer peace to enterprise, the delights of sport, companionship, art or intellect, to the slavery of self-regard. And so in the long run, though the Second Men were fortunate in their almost complete immunity from the lust of power and personal ostentation (which cursed the earlier species with industrialism and militarism), and though they enjoyed long ages of idyllic peace, often upon a high cultural plane, their progress towards full self-conscious mastery of the planet was curiously slow.