Besides these two principal buildings in the metropolis, there were
other public buildings devoted to various purposes. And some of the most
important were colleges devoted to the education of the young
inhabitants.
Now there was in the college of applied sensations a student who, though
outwardly as proficient as the average of his companions, was in reality
the most backward of all. He learned by a kind of rote all the doctrines
they understood, and he could explain apparently how one feeling caused
another. But in himself he had no particle of understanding. He seemed
deficient in the sense of cause and effect which the others had. Of this
the following instance will suffice to show the nature.
The king had, in order to prevent the inhabitants from straying too far
from the metropolis, kept a constant watchfulness over their movements,
and had uniformly taken somewhat of the pain from any effort which they
made to move towards the metropolis, and had not taken any of the pain
in efforts whose tendency was to remove them to a distance from the
metropolis. If there was any purpose to be served in going away from the
metropolis, he took enough pain from these movements to make it worth
the beings’ while to go away from the metropolis. But when other things
were equal, it was a pleasurable thing to go towards the metropolis. The
king made this general inclination, because if it had not been so,
beings lying out of the way of his immediate attention might have
drifted away and gone to the confines of the valley, away from where the
busy life he was calling out was manifested, and so have been lost to
others and themselves. As it was by imparting this general
pleasurableness of moving towards the metropolis he held all the
inhabitants together, and knew the direction in which each would tend,
unless for any special reason he had made it more pleasurable for the
person to move away from the metropolis.
Now, as has been mentioned above, this general tendency had been
observed by the inhabitants; and they knew quite well that every
individual tended towards the metropolis, and was only prevented from
coming into it by strong local interests, or by all available positions
in it or near it being already occupied. If any situation was vacant in
the metropolis, it was easily filled up by those from the surrounding
country, for they all felt this tendency to press in.
Now, the learned men in the valley had long recognized this as one of
the most important laws of the valley. And the students in the college
of applied sensations felt this law to be true law, and anything which
followed from it they felt to be self-evident. But the student of whom
we speak had not this happy, settled feeling with regard to this law. He
could not feel as if it were necessarily true.
One day the head of the college was talking to the foremost
students—those who had nearly finished their course and who would take
their places in the valley shortly—and he said incidentally in the
course of his remarks, that those who were moving away from the
metropolis were as much attracted to it as those who were moving towards
it.
“Why do they move away, then?” asked the backward student, who had by
great diligence, after a long time, plodded his way by force of
remembering by heart into the top class. He forgot his usual caution and
his acquired habit of only asking questions he had heard asked before in
order to refresh his memory with the answers he had heard given before.
The professor frowned at the stupid question. “The supposed being,” he
answered, “while he is attracted to the metropolis in accordance with
the general law, may yet have some stronger inducement at the time to
move away from the metropolis. That he does move away shows of course
that his temporary inducement to move away is stronger than his
permanent attraction towards the metropolis.”
The student said that he was obliged for the explanation. “But——”
“Well?” said the professor.
“The only reason you have for supposing that the being is attracted
towards the metropolis is that he does move towards the metropolis. I
don’t see why you should say it was pleasant for him to move towards the
metropolis when he does not do so.”
“But we know,” said the professor.
“No,” said the student, “you only suppose; because you find it so on a
great many occasions, you suppose it is so always. You are like a savage
who attacks the house of a civilized man. And he tries the window, the
civilized man meets him there; so he tries the door, the civilized man
meets him there; so he goes back to the window, and is met there again.
And he concludes there are two men in the house; and after a time he
concludes there are as many men in the house as there are ways by which
he tries to get in.”
The student had forgotten himself in speaking like this; and the
comparison to a savage, though made in haste and in good part as an
illustration, offended the professor, so he said:
“You do not believe that the law of attraction towards the metropolis is
universal, and affects all the inhabitants?”
“I cannot,” said the student.
“Then you shall go to a place where you will feel it,” said the
professor. “You will go to-morrow to the extreme confines of the valley,
and stop there until you are of a different mind.”
He said this in a superior and gentle manner. But it was a terrible blow
to the prospects of any student to be thus exiled. And yet the professor
was within his strict legal right, and the student knew it. He had
avoided this danger all through his college course, and now it came with
crushing effect on him. For just as long ago in the valley they had had
doctrines about the king, and had punished any one who did not feel them
as true, and who was found out, so now when all the ideas about the king
had been disproved, they had severe regulations about the belief in the
laws. The learned class was a sect of priests, and whoever threatened to
bring confusion and trouble by denying any of the known laws, and to
lead the ignorant people to disregard them and deny them, was subject to
severe punishments. In the case of this student, the error did not so
much matter, because he had committed his offence in the presence of
well-instructed people, who would only smile at his folly. But he had in
his presumption insulted the head of the college, and his punishment was
universally considered to be mild and just. And yet he was not
altogether in the wrong. For it was not as though the king (when he
wanted a being to move away from the metropolis) took as usual a portion
of his effort in going there; and at the same time counterbalanced this
by taking a still larger portion of the pain involved in his moving away
from the metropolis. By no means. When the king willed a man to move
away from the metropolis, he let him start afresh, as it were, according
to the conditions which every being was subject to in the valley—that it
was just as pleasant as painful to move in any way, and he took a
portion of the pain involved in moving away from the city.
Now the student, when he was sent away, tried earnestly to see wherein
he had been wrong. The place where he was exiled was on the confines of
the valley, where a peaceable race of savages lived, engaged in
agriculture. In the quiet, monotonous life of the place he thought over
his whole course of life, but could not obtain any different feeling.
And while thus buried in thought, he fell into the way of going about
with the savages and doing as they did. Much to his surprise, when his
preoccupation of mind passed away, he found himself singularly at home
with them. Their tastes seemed to agree with his. And he came to the
conclusion that he was in reality a savage who by some mistake had been
admitted to the college. Having formed this conclusion, he threw himself
into the life around him heartily. In course of time he won the
confidence of the rude, uncultivated people, and they talked to him
unreservedly.
Many curious traditions were handed down amongst them. There were some
which proceeded from the time when the king had walked and talked with
the children he called into activity. There were others proceeding from
times when there had appeared amongst them one to whom the king had
given some of his rays, so that that person had the power of making the
pain less in actions for others, and of giving them motives to act, and
of rousing them thus to an active state. And all these traditions they
told to the exiled student.
Now their own belief was this. They thought that there was a power over
them, and in this they recognized the king; but how it was that this
power prompted them they did not know. Yet they connected him in some
way with pleasure and pain. They thought it pained him when they had
pleasure, but not in the way in which was really the case. They thought
simply that it was pain to him to see them taking pleasure. They
thought, moreover, that he would, if they displeased him much, take away
all their pleasure and leave them nothing but pain.
Now the student saw clearly some errors, some contradictions in their
belief. For instance, he knew that beings only followed pleasure, and
directly pleasure was equalled by pain, sank into apathy, and then
gradually vanished away. Hence he knew there need be no apprehension of
the power’s acting as they thought. But the thing they said, that their
taking pleasure pained this power, struck him. He did not approve the
results in their life, for it was in consequence very gloomily framed,
though with a good deal of unconscious cheeriness. But he knew as a
scientific fact that there was a constant diminution of feeling; and
since he also knew that beings in the valley did nothing except it was
more pleasant, he concluded that although pleasure and pain might both
be disappearing, still pain must be disappearing to a greater extent.
Now since the feeling did not become nothing, but passed away out of the
perception of the inhabitants, it followed that it must pass to some
being. It did not disappear as feeling, but passed away from the
sensation of the inhabitants. Is there a being, then, he asked
himself—the power of whom these simple folks tell—who bears the
difference of pain, and so makes existence pleasant to us? And is that
the meaning of what they say that our pleasure pains him? Is it just the
truth read backwards—the truth, namely, that by his taking pain we have
pleasures, which they have had handed down to them as this—that our
taking pleasure pains him.
When he had thought thus far he remembered one of his books in which the
ancient beliefs of the valley were discussed. It happened to be one of
the books which he had brought into his exile with him. He took it down,
and in the evening set himself to search through it. And in a footnote
towards the end of the book he read:
“The existence of a power shaping the valley for the good of the beings
in it is clearly disproved. First, by the amount of suffering there is
in the valley. Secondly, by the fewness of the types of life, and the
constant modification of one plan to secure different results—which
would be much better achieved by the use of radically different types
and means. Thirdly, by the absence of any indication of such a power,
except in the traditions of uncultivated tribes.”
When the student had read this he rose up and paced his chamber. For he
saw clearly that if it was in bearing part of the pain that the power of
the being lay, the first of these arguments fell to the ground. The
presence of the pain in the valley would prove that this power took only
some of the pain and not all. As to the second argument, all it would
come to was that the being who, bearing pain, gave existence to the
inhabitants, used economy in his actions—he chose to effect his objects
with the least possible expenditure of means.
Reflecting thus he went out.
Now it may be considered surprising that the king did not communicate in
some way with the student, for by means of his rays he was in possession
of all that had gone on in his mind. But the king had found over and
over again that if he manifested himself to any one of the inhabitants
of the valley, the effect, though good at the immediate time, was most
disastrous for the following time. For the ends he was working towards,
and leading the inhabitants towards, were much greater than any one of
them could grasp or conceive. And the inhabitants, as soon as they had
communication with him, at once thought they knew his final will. And
they were a set most peculiarly stiff in their notions, and with the
kind of sanction which communication with him gave them, even the most
absurd ideas if once conceived took a very long time to eradicate.
So when the student went out into the open air he saw nothing except the
stars, and heard nothing except the wind. The way was so well known to
him, however, that he walked on quickly without stumbling in the
darkness. He had not gone far when he saw a kind of luminousness. Is it
the moon beginning to rise? he thought. But he found he had passed the
light and was leaving it behind. He could not have passed the moon thus.
He went towards the light, and when he had reached it, it seemed like a
slender staff of light. He touched it with his hand, and although he did
not feel anything, yet he could take hold of it, and he walked on with
the slender beam in his hand.
He had not gone very far when in his walk he touched on something lying
in the path. Bending down and touching it with his hand he found that it
was the form of a fellow creature. “He is overcome with fatigue; can I
help him along?” he thought. He rose up to look round, and let the beam
of light which he held in his hand touch the prostrate form. “I wish he
could get up by himself,” he thought. No sooner had he felt this wish
than he had a sensation of pain in his limbs, and the figure rose up.
“I could not move,” it said, “until you came, with all my reasons to get
along; the pain was as much as the pleasure.”
“Who are you?”
“I am a wanderer, and am trying to reach the place where I was born;
they will help me there.”
Now in the valley there was a certain set of people called wanderers,
who had proved themselves unfit for any real work. These, if
inoffensive, were allowed to roam about subsisting on charity. The
student walked alongside this wanderer; and every step the wanderer made
he felt a sensation of pain in his limbs. But the two walked quickly on
till they came to the dwelling he had left so shortly before. The
student led him in and let him rest in his chamber. And then he himself
left the dwelling again, taking with him a few necessaries.