# I: Taking Root Again explained — Last and First Men > Chapter companion for Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. ## What happens The chapter describes the long sojourn of humanity on Venus after the evacuation of Earth. The initial settlers struggle with a hostile climate, atmospheric explosions, and plagues, including a mysterious digestive disease and a nervous system cancer caused by Martian units. Human culture and intelligence decline, leading to the burning of books and a superstition against science. Over millions of years, the fifth human species degenerates, giving rise to the seal-like submen and the Sixth Men. Eventually, geological events create a large island, leading to a new and versatile race and a repetition of Earth's cultural cycles. The chapter ends with a reflection on how humanity's brief spirits are mostly concerned with primitive needs, with only rare moments of deeper insight. ## Themes in this chapter ### Human Nature and Evolution The chapter details the biological and cultural evolution of humanity on Venus, including degeneration and the emergence of new species. ### Suffering and Redemption The settlers endure immense suffering from climate, plagues, and psychological guilt, with little hope of redemption. ### The Limits of Knowledge Humanity's failure to master the Venerian plague and the subsequent loss of scientific knowledge highlight the limits of understanding. ### Cosmic Indifference and Meaning The chapter reflects on the fleeting nature of human civilizations and the rarity of deeper insight against a backdrop of cosmic indifference. ## Character check-ins ### The Fifth Men Their world-order is destroyed, and they degenerate into new species on Venus. ### The Sixteenth Men The narrator, who is one of the Last Men, recounts this history. ### The Martians Their units, which enabled telepathy, cause a cancer in the human nervous system. ### The Venerians Their extermination by the human settlers creates a deep-seated sense of guilt. ### The Sixth Men A new species that emerges from the degenerated fifth species, retaining a terrestrial habit. ## Key lines > The sapling, humanity, transplanted into foreign soil, withers at first almost to the root, slowly readjusts itself, grows into strength and a certain permanence of form, burgeons, season by season, with leaf and flower of many successive civilizations and cultures, sleeps winter by winter, through many ages of reduced vitality, but at length (to force the metaphor), avoids this recurrent defeat by attaining an evergreen constitution and a continuous efflorescence. Humanity, like a transplanted tree, initially struggles and nearly dies on Venus, but gradually adapts, experiencing cycles of cultural flourishing and decline before eventually achieving a more stable state. _This metaphor summarizes the entire arc of human history on Venus._ > But all the while the brief spirits, in whose massed configurations these forms inhered, were intent chiefly on the primitive needs of food, shelter, companionship, crowd-lust, lovemaking, the two-edged relationship of parent and child, the exercise of muscle and intelligence in facile sport. Throughout all the changing civilizations, individual humans were mostly focused on basic survival and simple pleasures, not on profound understanding. _This highlights the contrast between grand historical cycles and the mundane concerns of individual lives._ > Very seldom, only in rare moments of clarity, only after ages of misapprehension, did a few of them, here and there, now and again, begin to have the deeper insight into the world’s nature and man’s. Only rarely, and after long periods of misunderstanding, did a few individuals achieve a deeper understanding of reality. _This emphasizes the rarity of true wisdom and the recurring loss of insight._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/last_and_first_men_se/chapters/i-taking-root-again - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/last_and_first_men_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/last_and_first_men_se/chapters