The War of the Worlds

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited?…
Are we or they Lords of the World?…
And how are all things made for man?

At any rate, whether we expect another invasion or not, our views of the human future must be greatly modified by these events. We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space.

The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be
inhabited?… Are we or they Lords of the
World?… And how are all things made for man

Few people real­ise the im­mens­ity of va­cancy in which the dust of the ma­ter­ial uni­verse swims

And be­fore we judge of them too harshly we must re­mem­ber what ruth­less and ut­ter de­struc­tion our own spe­cies has wrought, not only upon an­im­als, such as the van­ished bison and the dodo, but upon its in­ferior races

And we men, the creatures who in­habit this Earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the mon­keys and lemurs to us.

be­wil­der­ing

The sky was what is called a mack­erel sky—rows and rows of faint down-plumes of cloud, just tin­ted with the mid­sum­mer sun­set.

las­sit­ude