The Coming Race · Chapter
Chapter XV explained
The narrator learns about the Vril-ya's beliefs in racial superiority and their view of other races, including humans from the upper world, as inferior.
What happens
The narrator learns about the Vril-ya's beliefs in racial superiority and their view of other races, including humans from the upper world, as inferior. Zee and Aph-Lin discuss the Vril-ya's history of natural selection and their eventual destiny to supplant inferior races. The narrator adopts Vril-ya dress and visits the city, observing their advanced agriculture, commerce, and humane treatment of animals. Zee critiques the competitive, strife-ridden societies of the upper world, contrasting them with the Vril-ya's ideal of serene equality.
Themes in this chapter
Evolution and Species Superiority
Zee describes the Vril-ya's origin through natural selection, where only the strongest survived, leading to their current superiority and belief in eventual domination over upper world races.
Critique of Democracy and American Politics
Aph-Lin and Zee criticize Koom-Posh (democracy) as a system of ignorant rule and perpetual rivalry, contrasting it with the Vril-ya's ideal of serene equality.
The Limits of Human Happiness
Zee argues that true happiness requires the extinction of strife and competition, which the upper world's systems perpetuate, making them incapable of divine tranquility.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Adopts Vril-ya dress and visits the city; discusses upper world society with Zee and Aph-Lin.
- Zee
Explains Vril-ya superiority through natural selection; critiques upper world's competitive systems and predicts eventual Vril-ya domination.
- Aph-Lin
Hosts the narrator; shares Zee's views on the upper world's inferiority and the Vril-ya's ideal of tranquility.
Key passages
“Wherever goes on that early process in the history of civilisation, by which life is made a struggle, in which the individual has to put forth all his powers to compete with his fellow, we invariably find this result— viz. , since in the competition a vast number must perish, nature selects for preservation only the strongest specimens.”
Zee explains that in societies where life is a competitive struggle, only the strongest survive, leading to the natural selection of superior individuals.
This passage outlines the Vril-ya's belief in their own evolutionary superiority.
“The primary condition of mortal happiness consists in the extinction of that strife and competition between individuals, which, no matter what forms of government they adopt, render the many subordinate to the few, destroy real liberty to the individual, whatever may be the nominal liberty of the state, and annul that calm of existence, without which, felicity, mental or bodily, cannot be attained.”
Zee argues that true happiness requires eliminating competition and strife, which otherwise create inequality and destroy peace.
This critique contrasts the Vril-ya's ideal with the competitive societies of the upper world.