The Coming Race · Chapter
Chapter XIV explained
The narrator elaborates on the Vril-ya's belief system, particularly their solution to the problem of evil.
What happens
The narrator elaborates on the Vril-ya's belief system, particularly their solution to the problem of evil. They hold that all life, once given by the Supreme Being, is indestructible and progresses through improved forms, retaining a sense of identity. This belief, they argue, is necessary to reconcile the existence of suffering with the perfect justice of an all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful Creator. The narrator connects this philosophy to the work of zoologist Louis Agassiz and notes how this conviction supports the Vril-ya's mild and egalitarian social system.
Themes in this chapter
Religion and Morality Without Conflict
The Vril-ya's theology harmonizes divine justice with the existence of suffering, positing an afterlife for all creatures to resolve the problem of evil without conflict.
The Limits of Human Happiness
The chapter explores how the Vril-ya's belief in universal compensation for suffering underpins their gentle social order, suggesting a framework for happiness beyond earthly limits.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
The narrator explains and reflects on the Vril-ya's theological beliefs, connecting them to upper-world philosophy.
Key passages
“The relations which individual animals bear to one another are of such a character that they ought long ago to have been considered as sufficient proof that no organised being could ever have been called into existence by other agency than by the direct intervention of a reflective mind.”
The way animals relate to each other should have long been seen as clear evidence that no organized creature could have been created except by a thinking mind.
The narrator quotes Louis Agassiz to support the Vril-ya's belief in an immaterial principle in all living beings.
“They hold that wherever He has once given life, with the perceptions of that life, however faint it be, as in a plant, the life is never destroyed; it passes into new and improved forms, though not in this planet (differing therein from the ordinary doctrine of metempsychosis), and that the living thing retains the sense of identity, so that it connects its past life with its future, and is conscious of its progressive improvement in the scale of joy.”
The Vril-ya believe that once God gives life, even to a plant, that life is never destroyed but moves to better forms elsewhere, with the creature retaining its identity and awareness of its own improvement.
This summarizes the Vril-ya's core belief about the indestructibility and progression of life, central to their theodicy.