BY GODFREY SWEVEN
RIALLARO: THE ARCHIPELAGO OF EXILES
12°. $1.50
LIMANORA: THE ISLAND OF PROGRESS
12°. $1.50
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
New York and London
LIMANORA
THE ISLAND OF PROGRESS
BY
GODFREY SWEVEN
Author of “Riallaro, The Archipelago of Exiles”
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1903
COPYRIGHT, 1903
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Published, June, 1903
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
IT was long before our strange guest could be induced to continue his
narrative. He had seemed to hesitate as he approached the close of
his sojourn in the outer islets of the archipelago. He several times
postponed the story of his exit from it in the projectile. And for
months he left his history hanging in air, and the strange coffin in
which he had been confined executing its parabola from his yacht.
There was some excuse for his delay, for the winter had fled, and the
birds and the flowering trees around us gloried again in song and
colour. He grew restless as the days lengthened, and could not bear to
settle in our shelter by the fiord. All that we saw of him for months
was his occasional flight from precipice to precipice above the sombre
green of the bush. It was as easy for him to flit from knoll to knoll
as it was for us to leap a ditch. He had regained his old bird-like
gait, that to us was noiseless. What he fed on came to be a puzzle, for
he seldom joined us now in our meals; and the old semi-transparency
came into his face.
Weeks and weeks together none of us would see him. Where he went we
knew not, nor had we the heart to follow him and trace his whereabouts.
Now and again he would join one or another of us at our work, and
indicate the direction in which we should tunnel or dig for the richer
layers of wash-dirt. His instinctive sense of the presence of gold
beneath the surface of the earth seemed to us in our blind groping
miraculous. We never found him mistaken in his indications. But we felt
it a kind of desecration to ask him to condescend to such base and
trivial pursuits as the research for wealth. At times his absence was
so prolonged that we thought he had vanished back to the ring of mist,
whence he had come. But a great storm always brought him to our huts
again.
The summer waned into autumn, and the days began to narrow down.
Blasts from the south grew keener; and his flight from us was more
circumscribed. We saw him almost daily. When the winter nights began,
he gave himself up again to memory. He drew towards us in sympathy,
and there were in his narrative fewer and fewer reserves. His English
became fuller and more exact, though time and again he stumbled over
thoughts too subtle to transfuse into so rough and materialistic a
language. Our own interpretations of his descriptions must often have
been mistaken, we are certain, and many passages we have had to omit
because of manifest ambiguity or mistiness of expression.
GODFREY SWEVEN.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE iii
GLOSSARY vii
I.--MY AWAKENING 1
II.--MY EDUCATION 15
III.--SLEEP, REST, AND FLIGHT 25
IV.--HERMITRY 35
V.--JOURNEY TO THE VALLEY OF MEMORIES 51
VI.--FIALUME 63
VII.--LEOMARIE 88
VIII.--RIMLA 99
IX.--OOMALEFA 112
X.--THE FIRLA, OR ELECTRIC SENSE 133
XI.--A CATASTROPHE 149
XII.--OOLOREFA 162
XIII.--THE LILARAN 174
XIV.--CHOKTROO 192
XV.--THE DUOMOVAMOLAN OR COSMOPHONE 219
XVI.--THEIR HEAVEN AND THEIR HELL 230
XVII.--MY EDUCATION CONTINUED 244
POSTSCRIPT 283
BOOK II 287
GLOSSARY
AILOMO--The astrobiological families.
AIROLAN--A sensometer, or instrument for finding the personal
equation of a man.
ALCLIROLAN--Radiographic cinematograph; an instrument
combining microscope, camera in vacuo, and electric power.
ALFARENE--Oxygen shrub.
AMMERLIN--Historoscope.
CIRALAISON--Museum of terrors.
CLEVAMOLAN--Combination of telescope and makrakoust, or
distance-hearer.
CLIMOLAN--Earth-sensor.
CLIROLAN--Instrument that combines electro-microscopy and
photography.
CLIROLANIC--Infinitesimally microscopic.
CORFALEENA--Vacuum-engine car.
DOOMALONA--The hill of farewells.
DUOMOVAMOLAN--Instrument that interprets the music of the
cosmos.
ERFALEENA--Anti-gravitation flight-car.
FALEENA--Ship of the air.
FARFALEENA--Electric faleena.
FAROSAN--Aroma-recorder.
FIALUME--The valley of memories.
FILAMMU--The will-telegraph.
FIRLA--The electric sense.
FIRLALAIN--The firlamaic department of Oomalefa.
FIRLAMAI--The arts of the electric sense.
FIRLAMAIC--Belonging to the arts of the firla.
FIRLAMAN--A musical instrument that appeals to the firla.
FLORAMO--The botanical families.
FLORONAL--The tree of life.
FRALOOMIAMO--The families of pioneers that imagine and
represent the distant future.
GERMABELL--A tree with fruit that makes the muscles and
cartilage more elastic.
IDLUMIAN--Electric steriliser.
IDROLAN--Observer and magnifier of electric impulses.
IDROLINASAN--Machine-reporter of the thoughts and feelings
and words of an assembly.
IDROSAN--Recorder of electric impulses and sensations.
IDROVAMOLAN--Instrument for at once seeing and hearing at
great distances.
ILARIME--Edifice devoted to the arts of smell, taste, and
sound combined.
IMANORA--Centennial review of the civilisation and its
progress.
IMATARAN--The focusser of history.
INAMAR--Instrument for splitting up light into its
constituents.
INASAN--Recorder of luminous impressions.
INOLAN--Measurer of light.
IRELIUM--Iridescent metal applicable to all manner of
purposes by the Limanorans.
LABRAMOR--Alloy of irelium that sponges up and retains
electricity.
LABROLAN--Instrument for drawing electricity from the air and
the clouds.
LAVIDROLAN--Camera-telescope.
LAVOLAN--Revealer of the inner tissues and mechanism.
LEOMARIE--The science and art of earth-seeing.
LEOMO--The families of earth-seers.
LEOMORAN--The earth-perforator.
LENTA--The minutest division of time in Limanora.
LILAMO--The families that watch the security of the island.
LILARAN--The storm-cone.
LILARIE--The science and art of island-security.
LINAMAR--The analyst of sounds.
LINASAN--Recorder and reproducer of sounds.
LINOKLAR--Spectroscopic analyst and recorder of vapours.
LOOMIAMO--Families of pioneers who imagine and represent the
links that connect the present with the distant future.
LOOMIEFA--The theatre of futurition.
MANORA--Decennial review of the progress made by the people.
MARGOL--Electric instrument for blending or reducing the
strength of perfumes, flavours, and sounds.
MINELLA--Edifice for formula-machines.
MIRLAN--Life-lamp for revealing and recording internal
processes for the use of the eye, the ear, and the electric sense.
MOLTA--The Limanoran measure of infinitesimal length.
MONALAN--Electrical distance-analyst.
MORNALAN--Time-telescope.
NAROLLA--Dream-stimulants.
OOARAN--Psychometer.
OOAROMO--Psycho-physiological families.
OOLORAN--The sonarchitect.
OOLOREFA--The hall of sonarchitecture.
OOMALEFA--Halls of nutrition and medication.
OOROLAN--Instrument for transforming form and colour into
melody.
PIRAKNO--Machine for drawing electricity from space.
PIRAMO--The meteorological families.
RIMLA--The centre of force.
SALOSAN--The gustagraph.
SARIFOLAN--Instrument that interprets for sight, hearing, and
the electric sense the graphic records of the mirlan.
SARMOLAN--Cosmic barometer.
SIDRALAN--Biometer.
SIDRALMO--Bio-chemical families.
SIDRAMO--The chemical families.
TERRALONA--The edifice of outlook into heaven and hell.
THINAMAR--Visualiser of sound.
TIRLEOMORAN--Electric earth-perforator.
TREMOLAN--Electric clock indicating the changes of
electricity in various parts of the island.
TREVAMOLAN--Graduated modifier of sound.
VAMOLAN--Makro-mikrakoust.
VIMOLAN--Photo-electric analyser.
ERRATA
Page 31, line 6. _For_ “resistent” _read_ “resistant.”
Page 93, line 16. _For_ “maintained” _read_ “maimed.”
Page 155, line 2. _For_ “I that felt” _read_ “I had felt.”
Page 211, lines 13 and 17. _For_ “somnifractive” _read_
“somnifactive.”
Page 230, line 3. _For_ “onwonted” _read_ “unwonted.”
Page 348, last line. _For_ “rareity” _read_ “rarity.”
Page 369, line 12. _For_ “amosphere” _read_ “atmosphere.”
Page 377, line 5. _For_ “its” _read_ “it.”
Page 440, line 17. _For_ “we the saw” _read_ “we saw the.”
Page 465, line 8 from bottom. _For_ “thought” _read_
“through.”
LIMANORA
BOOK I
The Outer or Material Civilisation
CHAPTER I
MY AWAKENING
I OPENED my eyes in a world no feature of which I could recognise.
Everything around me was of the most dazzling beauty. The walls and
vaulted roof of the room where I lay gleamed like mosaic-work of lit
jewellery. The floors were duller, and yet shone with a coloured
radiance like that in a dew-belled meadow under the light of the
slant-rayed forenoon sun. The light broke up in innumerable points
and corners of the roof into a magnificent display of prismatic
colours, moving and changing every minute. Yet, with all the marvellous
iridescence, there was sufficient shade in the vault and walls to check
the fiery oppression of the sun. I had dreamt of such fairy palaces;
but the dream had ever been abortive or glanced off into something
hideous or appalling. Here was architecture as unlike anything I had
seen upon earth as a dream, and yet it had a grace that no dream had
ever caught.
Nor did I know the material of which this room was formed. It seemed
like ice, yet was never changed by the fire of the sun. It was capable
of being moulded into the most delicate lace-work, and yet could be
made as massive as marble walls of Eastern palaces that were built for
both pleasure and siege. It was in portions as transparent as glass,
and in others frosted with wondrous pictures. And how were those
countless domes and arches and arborescent columns produced with such
ease? How were those airy galleries hung? How were those fragrant
fountains poised so nicely that an infant’s finger seemed capable
of overturning them? Even the gently moving curtains had the same
crystalline character as the walls, now frosted as by the artist of our
winter-mornings, again goldenly dim, or rainbow-hued.
There was a spaciousness that reminded me of the colonnaded aisles
of our great cathedrals. Was I resting in one of the temples of the
island? Was I being consecrated for sacrifice? And yet the dainty
warm nooks, the close-hung curtains, and graceful tapestries so broke
the awe and loneliness of the place as to make me feel that it was
a chamber for a solitary. And I could look out upon the fields and
forests and the far-stretching sea; for every foot of wall had in it
some transparency that with its landscape stood like a picture framed
in the frosted tracery around it. I seemed never to reach the limit of
these varied perspectives and distances. I sank back exhausted on my
perfumed couch, then slowly recovered by aid of the sweetness that
met my every sense. The fragrance that filled the room was like that
of finest garden flowers, and kept changing from one lovely variety to
another, never cloying the sense. Around, too, from unseen sources,
floated sweet music, that now swelled into a chorus, and again fell
into angelic softness. Then a new sensation came to me; with every
breath I seemed to draw in a subtle nourishment and stimulation to
my senses; every minute added to the renewal of my strength. And,
to increase my delighted bewilderment, I gradually felt a new sense
appealed to; every nerve in my body seemed exhilarated, and I felt
capable of heroic actions. Some magnetic influence was raying towards
me through the atmosphere, and a dormant electric faculty seemed
to be awakened in my mind and in my body, producing the effect of
intoxication without its stupor or the numbing of the moral powers. It
was like a beautiful dream without the helplessness of the dreamer.
I felt no delirium or voluptuous languor from the excitement of the
senses. It all led to spiritual vigour, that would have made the body
its prompt ally.
My renewed energies turned my mind to my strange surroundings. I
wondered where the beings were who had built this wondrous palace,
and were now doubtless playing upon my senses. Was it all a dream?
And had I never been shot into the sea with Noola? It seemed as if
my inmost thoughts were at once communicated to my watchers; for
from some direction, out of some niche or doorway I had not noticed,
moved softly a figure, that, in its muscular breadth, large head, and
springy gait, reminded me of Noola. Upon the face a smile shone out
of unfathomed depths of thought and sympathy, and yet the lips were
close as if to forbid speech. It was enough to rest and gaze at the
beautiful expression of the face with its intensity of love and pity in
the eyes. But the features had not that symmetry of outline which we
call beauty in Europe; and the form was not “divinely tall.” The whole
of the attraction lay in the upraying of the soul into the face. It was
like gazing into the limpid waters of a lake; I tried to give speech
to my emotions, but the hand rose gently to the lips in a gesture that
commanded silence, then waved over me, and, as I looked, I fell into a
deep and dreamless sleep.
I knew not how long I had been unconscious; for when I woke I seemed
to be a new man; every faculty tingled with energy; health glowed
through my tissues; I wandered from niche to niche, from arcade to
recess; I climbed the lofty galleries and raised the curtains, shaking
the sweet perfumes from them as they swung in the air; I ran from
transparency to transparency with the delight of a child, and gazed
through each at the ever-varying landscapes that stretched outwards to
the sea. Music, distant and entrancing, floated around me in the air,
with variations and cooling bars of silence, so that it made a subtle
ether circumambient rather than a definite impression on the senses.
Under such conditions what could not I do in life? I remembered the
old weariness and despair that used to cling around me like a shirt of
Nessus even in the morning when I was refreshed with sleep, and the
clogging humours that used to retard my most generous or most energetic
action. In my former life I had moved in a clammy viscous medium that
dragged back my most eager faculties. Now I was built of air, and
stirred lightly as air.
What was it that had accomplished this strange transformation? I had
not felt so in the other islands of the archipelago or even on its
seas. I had not been so exhilarated at my first awaking. How had this
great change come about? Or was it but momentary, to pass away like
other intoxications and leave exhaustion and ache? I began to be
puzzled and to feel the return of the thought that it was perhaps only
a dream after all. How was I to test the matter?
Surely I could not have thought aloud. Yet here from somewhere or other
was moving across the floor the figure that had appeared after my first
trance. I was so awestruck by the noiseless flash of the approach that
I could make no sign of welcome. What could I say to a being who came
so near to what we consider in the old world the supernatural? As soon
as my thoughts touched upon the state of my mind and the circumstances
that surrounded me, my host (should I call him so?) appeared. And,
though my senses, I thought, had acquired preternatural acuteness, not
a sound had I heard of his entrance or of his footsteps across the
chamber.
He seemed to know the perplexity of my thoughts again, for he advanced
with so airy a grace that my eyes were fascinated by the ease of the
motion. And his words came almost like music; I scarcely considered
what he was saying, so beautiful were the tones and manner in which it
was said. “Come, and I shall tell you what has occurred,” was what I
understood. It was in the primary or simplest vocabulary of Limanora,
the vocabulary that Noola had taught me.
He led me by a covered but transparent way into a vaulted chamber, that
seemed to the other as a cathedral to a chapel; for it was pillared
and galleried and aisled with the most transcendent art. But I was
too interested in the story he had to tell to give way to my passive
enjoyment of the scene. He motioned me to ascend with him a platform
that rose above us in a lofty recess at one brightly sunlit corner of
the building. I saw him lean back, and feared that he would fall to
the floor; but with his motion the rich mosaic of the platform opened,
and a rest rose to meet his body which was of the same alabaster-like
texture as the curtains and seemed to shape itself to every curve and
bend of his figure. He stretched out his hand towards me, and before I
knew what he had done I was resting, in an attitude not far from the
upright, on a soft machine like his own. He showed me how to control
this by a knob under my right hand, and then together we flew to the
ceiling and back, wheeled round, swung gently in the air, or remained
still. It moved like a thing of life in sympathy with every desire; a
slight change of the position would relieve any part of the body and
yet leave all the rest supported; any kind of motion was accomplished
on changing the screw that lay in the knob. I afterwards investigated
the mechanism, and was amazed at its simplicity; a few levers,
cunningly mastering all the various combinations of motion, turned on
or off the force needed for the necessary changes. After a few hours’
experience of it, I could find no comparison in nature but the couch
of air on which the albatross seems to rest as it moves. I afterwards
found that a nice management of compressed air was the secret of this
wonderful rest that was neither couch nor chair. As soon as we ceased
to use it, it disappeared as suddenly as it had risen. This accounted
for the complete absence of the furniture that impedes free motion in
our European houses and made me think as I awoke in my chamber of our
great cathedrals with their free floor space.
There in mid-air we lightly hung as if resting on wings; he seemed to
know my anatomy and the points of greatest pressure in any attitude,
and controlled both machine-rests with such adroitness that we swung
hither and thither, changing slowly from the recumbent to the erect
attitude or back again, finding every few minutes a different point of
view of the chamber or of the landscapes that could be seen through
the walls. But I soon grew oblivious to the beauty that stole through
every sense; my whole consciousness was absorbed in watching the
play of the intelligence on his face and listening to his narrative.
I missed many of the links in his story, even though he contrived
to put most of it into the primary and secondary vocabularies, and,
where he was compelled to go beyond them, put so much of his thoughts
into his features that I could almost have gathered it from them.
But I saw the drift of the story, and, when it was over, pieced the
fragments together and found, when afterwards I knew the language and
the civilisation better, I had missed little of the real meaning. I
give it, then, as if it were in his own words, although my intelligence
seemed to stumble at every step in it.
“You wonder at your hospitable reception. But you will not wonder when
you know the change in the condition of our knowledge since Noola was
exiled. He was unhurt by the ricochet of the missiles on the beach. In
the darkness they were ill-aimed, and, though they struck in sand, they
were shattered by the impact and recoiled from the shingle underneath.
He disentangled himself from the wreck and rescued you. But soon the
watchers by the storm-cone were down on the beach and carried you to
our house, whilst they led your comrade to another. You were each
examined by the wise men and the medical families. Your faculties and
emotions and tendencies were all tested, and their various strengths
measured by means of the different kinds of cerebrometers whilst you
slept. Since Noola was exiled a hundred years ago, our knowledge of
the brain and the nerves and their various functions has been applied
in the most practical way to the art of living. Every curve and
convolution of the controlling instrument of the body has its value
and meaning tabulated. Every action, thought, and emotion has had its
physical symbol and locality fixed; and the minutest change in the
strength of any one of these points in the brain or in the nervous
system can be discovered by applying one of the cerebrometers. You will
know what these are some day; but it is enough to say that they can
measure, by means of a delicate apparatus controlled by electricity,
the amount of force that exists in any living tissue; there is a
separate kind for each portion of the brain and each nerve section of
the trunk, and it will move only when near that portion or any living
tissue that has similar properties and powers. Our own magnetic sense,
which has greatly developed since Noola’s banishment, can roughly
gauge the relative strengths of the various faculties and emotions
in any man; and it is deeply thrilled when any thought or passion
is energising in his nature. But it cannot accurately measure the
strength, as these instruments can. We can absolutely trust them, in
testing the character of any human being.
“Noola fully expected to be thrust back, unless he came across his own
relations and friends, to whose pity and sympathy he might appeal.
He trembled in alarm when he was led to the chamber in which he was
to be tested. But it was found that, though his humanity had not
progressed in the lines or with the rapidity that the Limanorans have
developed since his departure, all the atavistic taint had disappeared
from his nature, and the weak elements of his system, love, pity,
tenderness, sympathy, had greatly strengthened. He could no longer by
any possibility side with the warlike and revengeful in human nature.
“But even if he had only kept the evil qualities in abeyance, in the
state they showed before his exile, we should have let him return; for
with his strong desire to keep pace with our advance and his regret
for his retrogression, he would have gladly submitted himself to our
new creative surgery. Our increased knowledge of the functions and
constitution of the brain and nervous system enables us to reduce
or excise any portion that interferes with the development of the
individual. And we can also stimulate or retard the activity of any
part by placing the patient in any of our medicated atmospheres
specially adapted to his circumstances, and making him breathe in the
element required by his system.
“Noola is now supremely happy in the confidence that he is to be
allowed to remain. Every defect in his system has been tested and
measured, and he knows how far he has fallen behind our race. He would
have accepted any conditions, and in order to overtake us is willing to
enter upon a new education,--the abbreviation of the slow and painful
advance of many ages into the hurried pace of a few years. He wishes,
though three hundred years of age, to become a child again and return
to his first century. But his long and painful self-discipline in
Broolyi has shortened the process; and he will soon be able to keep
step with his old comrades. He will be aided in every way by the wise
men, some of whom will give their best wisdom and energies to him.
All the physical arts we have will be brought into play to shorten
his term of probation, our creative surgery and medicine, our arts
for the development of tissue and nerve, our magnetic arts for the
development of the senses, and our ethical arts for the development of
the spiritual sensitiveness.
“For yourself he has pleaded, and, though our wise men have recognised
that you are thousands of years in the rear of our civilisation, and
have confirmed their recognition by scientific measurement of the
forces and elements in you, they have consented to let you remain and
to take your education in hand. It seems an almost impossible task to
contract thousands of years into tens; but they do not despair; for our
system of education has already accomplished this for children born
amongst us, and you have a nature peculiarly open to our educational
influences. You have first of all the passion for progress as strongly
in you as in any of ourselves; and this is the prime essential of our
ethics and civilisation; to it all other passions must yield; from it
flows all that subdues the material world and gives dominance to the
spirit, and makes for righteousness. But with it often go pride and
arrogance. In you was found strongly developed the desire to treat
all good men as equals, whatever difference of capacity or position
or possessions might seem to separate them from you. Had you had even
the slightest tinge of contemptuousness or hauteur in you, you would
have been sternly repelled. To contemn is the mark of an incurably
savage nature, a nature incapable of true knowledge of itself and
of its relations to life. From these two desires come purity of
thought and life, the love of peace, respect for the rights of others
and reverence for what is fine in their personality, and absolute
transparency of nature. This last we ever take to be the shortest
and truest test of a progressive character, the love of truth and
simplicity, complete harmony of word and act with the inmost thought.
As long as a man or a nation lacks this, there can be no real advance;
what seems advance is but a mirage of fame or glory. Accuracy of vision
and of prevision is the first condition of true progress. It was one of
the first things that Noola saw in you, and the first reason he urged
for your retention; you had no desire to conceal your thoughts, so
closely did they tally with your life; you had an overwhelming passion
for truth and for the truthful.
“There was no need to distrust his assertions for we all felt how
genuine he had become; and even sick and unconscious as you were, our
magnetic sense told us that his description of you was correct. But
it has become the custom to test scientifically the nature of every
inhabitant of our island every week, and also at every crisis in his
nature or in the history of the community, in order that any incipient
defect may be at once remedied, and that drastic applications may
never be needed. A complete survey of your character and faculties and
corporeal system was the first step towards your admission into the
community. Everything had to be known, in order that your education
should be mapped out. And the cerebrometers gave us a favourable
report of you. Your body and your working faculties are far in the
rear of ours; you lack transparency of tissue, ethereality of motion;
the material side of you is earthy and ponderous. These elements of
retrogression we shall never be able to eject wholly from your system;
but we shall be able to modify them, and in your children and your
children’s children the body will keep pace with the spirit. The
forwardness of your emotions, of your soul, is what has drawn us to
you; you love the ideal and imaginative more than any but one section
of our community; and you have an intermixture of the finer spiritual
elements such as we have either lost or never had amongst us. We hope
to graft your nature upon one of the divisions or castes of our race
and so produce in the next generation a variety that we need. Your
retention has thus been justified by the highest morality of our
civilisation. We never take any step without reference to the ultimate
aims of our progress: so to improve the breed that our posterity may
feel nearer to the highest life in the universe.
“Your education has indeed already begun. We have assumed from your
highly disciplined and progressive spirit that you would be willing to
submit to those medical methods that shorten the already abbreviative
process of education. It is true that these make an enormous drain upon
the physical strength for a time; and we prefer the ordinary spiritual
methods of training. But you have gained from the open-air employments
in which you have passed your life great stores of bodily health and
vigour. You are still but a child. The period of childhood and tutelage
extends with us to the thirtieth, sometimes to the fiftieth, year,
that of youth to beyond the hundredth. At the time that other men are
preparing to die the natural death of old age, we are just beginning to
feel what it is to live.
“And from some ancestral cause you are developed beyond your years
in some of our ethical lines. You have reached a humility before the
living forces of the universe which is the primary mark of the true
governor of the world. How you have attained so rare a virtue amidst
the pretentious barbarity of civilisation it is not easy to conceive.
There worldliness and arrogance inherit the earth, though there are not
signs wanting that they feel the approaching triumph of its true heirs
and mask as the meeker virtues. In older times they were not ashamed
to show themselves as they really were; for those were the days of
glorified highwaymen who seized the throne of the world. Conquest is
nothing but successful brigandage on a large scale, veneer it over with
diplomacy and historical fame as you will. But for centuries there has
been an uneasy feeling abroad that the humble must come to their rights
some day; and so the gilded brigands have allied themselves with a
religion of the meek and despised, that they may hoodwink mankind into
acquiescence in their ancient dishonesty.
“We banished all the makings of monarchs, aristocracies, and great
men at the purifications of our people. We could see no difference
between these and the worst criminals except one of degree. We measured
their skulls and brains by the rough, unscientific methods we used to
have, and found in them almost no difference from those of murderers
and thieves; and comparing them with the skulls of savages and of
our own far-back ancestry, we found that in the case of both heroes
and criminals the cause of their likeness to each other was their
recoil upon the footsteps of the past, and away from the line of human
progress which leads towards harmony with the higher laws of the
universe.
“Happily for you every trace of such arrogance and contempt and
ambition is absent from your system. You have nothing merely mimetic
in you; you live unashamed and truthful in presence of all that the
world is capable of being. It is one of the surest signs of fear of
threatening annihilation that a species has to simulate the appearance
or the modes of life of another. Hypocrisy in the human race, like
mimicry in the kinds of animals and plants, is the brand of feebleness
and the omen of coming decay and subjugation. We use truth and
sincerity as one of the most inward of tests of a strong and healthy
nature. In the olden days, as in all large and mixed civilisations,
it was difficult to distinguish the imitation virtue from the real,
and when it was discovered it was easy to pardon it and even accept
it as a virtue amid the universal effort at simulation. But when we
had swept out the survivals of primitive and savage times and the
atavistic returns to them, we found that every need of mimetic virtue
had disappeared. The slightest taint of unreality or falsehood in any
of our community is as offensive as carrion; we rise in a body and
have it removed. And we have as keen an enjoyment of sincerity and
truthfulness. Your loyal character at once attracted us to you; we felt
that all germs of moral disease would lose their virulence within its
influence, as germs of physical disease lose theirs in sunshine.”