# Endnotes explained — The Coming Race

> Chapter companion for The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

## What happens

The endnotes provide additional commentary on various topics mentioned in the main narrative, including descriptions of a tiger-like creature in the underworld, references to Max Müller's work on language stratification, the narrator's experience with a vril bath, the Vril-ya's unique timekeeping, a comparison to Nero's musical machine, animal instincts regarding danger, and the Vril-ya's polite phrasing for laws and decrees.

## Themes in this chapter

### Technology and Power

The vril bath's invigorating powers are compared to electricity, highlighting the advanced technology of the Vril-ya.

### Utopian Society and Its Costs

The Vril-ya's polite phrasing for laws, avoiding words implying forcible obligation, reflects their utopian social structure.

## Character check-ins

### The Narrator

Provides personal observations and experiences, such as trying the vril bath and noting the differences between underworld and upper world animals.

## Key lines

> I once tried the effect of the vril bath. It was very similar in its invigorating powers to that of the baths at Gastein, the virtues of which are ascribed by many physicians to electricity; but though similar, the effect of the vril bath was more lasting.

The narrator tested the vril bath and found it akin to the Gastein baths, which are thought to be electrically charged, but the vril bath's effects endured longer.

_Describes the narrator's personal experience with Vril-ya technology._

> Even had it been decreed by the Tur that his College of Sages should dissect me, the decree would have ran blandly thus⁠—'Be it requested that, for the good of the community, the carnivorous Tish be requested to submit himself to dissection.'

Even a decree for the narrator's dissection would be phrased as a polite request for the community's benefit.

_Illustrates the Vril-ya's indirect and courteous language for commands._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_coming_race_se/chapters/endnotes
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_coming_race_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_coming_race_se/chapters