Last and First Men · Chapter
III: Material Achievement explained
This chapter describes the material achievements of the First World State, a period of about four thousand years when humanity was a single social unit.
What happens
This chapter describes the material achievements of the First World State, a period of about four thousand years when humanity was a single social unit. It details the urbanization of all continents, the development of aerial communication and architecture, and the use of power sources such as coal, wind, and geothermal energy. The chapter also highlights advances in preventive medicine that eliminated many diseases and improved human well-being, while noting the eventual exhaustion of essential power sources leading to the collapse of this civilization.
Themes in this chapter
Technology and Its Dangers
The chapter highlights the dangers of technological dependence, as the civilization collapses when essential power sources are exhausted, showing the fragility of a society reliant on finite resources.
Society and Collective Identity
The First World State represents a collective identity, with humanity as a single social unit, but this unity is undermined by the lack of mental agility to cope with crisis, leading to collapse.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
The narrator, a Last Man, reflects on the material achievements of the First World State, contrasting them with the more advanced civilization of the Last Men.
- The First Men
The First Men are the subject of this chapter, their civilization and material progress being described in detail.
- The Last Men
The Last Men, including the narrator, look back on the First Men's era with a sense of pathos and comicality, noting the confusion of material development with civilization.
Key passages
“Save for occasional minor local conflicts, easily quelled by the World Police, the race was now a single social unit for some four thousand years.”
Except for small local disputes that were quickly suppressed by the World Police, humanity was unified as one society for about four thousand years.
This establishes the long duration and relative peace of the First World State.
“The whole energy of man was concentrated on maintaining at a constant pitch the furious routine of his civilization, until, after another three thousand years of lavish expenditure, certain essential sources of power were suddenly exhausted.”
All human effort was focused on keeping the intense pace of civilization going, until after three thousand years of wasteful use, key power sources ran out abruptly.
This highlights the unsustainable nature of the civilization and the cause of its collapse.
“The material circumstances of the race at this time would have amazed all its predecessors, even those who were in the true sense far more civilized beings.”
The physical conditions of humanity at that time would have astonished all earlier peoples, even those who were genuinely more civilized.
The narrator emphasizes the impressive material achievements of the First Men, despite their lack of true civilization.
“But to us, the Last Men, there is an extreme pathos and even comicality, not only in this most thorough confusion of material development with civilization, but also in the actual paucity of the vaunted material development itself, compared with that of our own society.”
From the perspective of the Last Men, there is deep sadness and even humor in how the First Men confused material progress with civilization, and in how limited their material achievements were compared to ours.
The narrator contrasts the First Men's view of their own achievements with the more advanced perspective of the Last Men.
“All the continents were urbanized, not of course in the manner of the congested industrial cities of an earlier age, but none the less urbanized.”
Every continent was turned into urban areas, though not like the crowded industrial cities of the past, but still urbanized.
Describes the extent of urbanization in the First World State.
