A sort of divine immobility

If it were true, too, that civilization was a check to excessive natality, this phenomenon itself might make one hope in final equilibrium in the far-off ages, when the earth should be entirely populated and wise enough to live in a sort of divine immobility.

Emile Zola – Fruitfulness (1899)

Zola wrote his novel in part as a counter to Malthusian angst which at the time was very fashionable. His novel was a contrarian hymn to the power of human fruitfulness and the need in his eyes to maintain the French birth rate and populate the whole world with worthy, hard-working families.

It is a highly optimistic book and not one of his best, but within it there is this single, fascinating fancy, an ideal end-game for humanity when the earth should be entirely populated and wise enough to live in a sort of divine immobility.

As a more or less vague ideal this is obviously not new. Equally obviously it comes in a variety of guises. Heaven is presumably a sort of divine immobility. Perhaps Hell is supposed to insist on the horrors of variety. It seems to be the ideal behind many religions and political movements even though it may not be explicitly stated. The wrapper varies but they all promise to deliver the same ideal.

Ironically this seems to be a covert ideal behind modern progressive political notions which apparently envisage an ideal world where everything is settled, everyone is equal and there is no progress whatever. Progressive immobility perhaps. Sounds like an unpleasant disease associated with age. In one sense maybe it is.