THE CHURCH AND JOURNALISM
THE Bureau of Fame had come to be the real shrine of religion. For it
had the power of heaven and hell beyond as well as on this side of the
grave. And one of the most significant changes in the government of
Aleofane in recent times had been the amalgamation of the ministry of
public worship with the department of fame. The church had of course
from the earliest times been a state institution; and in spite of
new-fangled philosophers was likely to continue so. For how could so
subtle a force in human nature as religion be allowed to straggle
lawlessly throughout a nation? Above all things it needed the most
skilful piloting. A church apart from the state, an independent power,
meant the spirit against the body, a divorce unnatural, if not
monstrous. This was the philosophy of the position. And so convinced of
it were the rulers that they allowed less independence of action in the
ecclesiastical than in any other department. The head of the church was
a minister responsible to the government, and they thought it illogical
and feeble to let such an organisation legislate for itself. It was
according to nature, it was the true primitive law, that the state and
the church should be completely one. The idea of their separation was
the result of degeneracy from the golden age. And what anarchy would
ensue from an attempt to realise such a scheme or rather no scheme!
To speak of the separation of church and state in Aleofane was to speak
of human life without breath, of the noon sky without the sun. The
religion had grown to be the inner spirit of government. Never had there
existed so religious a state. It could accomplish nothing except through
its ecclesiastical organisation. It could affect the spirits of all the
nation in any direction it pleased. It is true the people jealously
guarded the traditional creed. But by gradual and impalpable change in
the teachings of the priests or in the ceremonies the national mind
could be bent in any way to suit the governors.
One of the first and most effective changes in the spiritual scheme of
the state had been the gradual degradation of all the great posts in the
church. The princely salaries attached to them were from tenure to
tenure reduced till at last the chief ecclesiastical officers had to
rely on charity for subsistence. The great spiritual influence that
obstinately clung to them drew occasionally men of rank and ability. But
all the common priesthoods fell so low in estimation that at last the
state had to fill them with the milder type of higher-class criminals.
No one would enter voluntarily into what was practically mental slavery
to the government of the time. So, if any marble citizen fell into
habitual and transparent falsehood, or failed before the eyes of all in
some dishonest scheme, or let his fortune imperceptibly leak away and
ceased to conceal the financial minus on which he luxuriously lived, he
was promptly given the choice of the church or journalism; though for
that matter the two had been for centuries amalgamated; they were but
two branches of ecclesiastical business.
For it would have been foolish on the part of so successful a government
to stop one intellectual leak in the nation and leave a wider one
unguarded. It had been always a matter of course that those who could
teach or influence the people with any talent should be the servants of
the state. It came about, therefore, that, as a literature developed,
the church was but journalism through speech and ceremony, journalism
was but the church in writing. They were but two phases of the same
function of the state. And the governors laughed as I told them of the
position of affairs in Europe, where the state was supposed to rule the
church, but had allowed the press complete independence. And they told
me as a close analogy the story of one of their citizens who had soon
drifted into idiocy; a bird of great beauty had flown into his house,
and he resolved to catch it; and to make sure of it he planted a ring of
servants all round the house and shut his doors and locked them, and
opened his windows wide. For some time afterwards, if any one of them
met me, he would with a twinkle of the eye ask me whether the
governments of “Yullup” had ever caught their bird.
There was, I inwardly confessed, a logical thoroughness about leashing
in the service of the state the twin spiritual powers of the church and
the press. But I was pained in my European vanity to find the most
cherished features of our modern civilisation so productive of mirth.
They showed me that the only two logical positions were complete
independence of both the great spiritual powers or complete control of
both; nothing could justify the release of one and the bondage of the
other.
As retaliation for their laughter at our civilisation and its hard-won
fruits I smiled at their employment of criminals as priests and
journalists, and asked them how they could expect to have religion well
taught or truth well disseminated by such characters. They were not to
be beaten—those subtle reasoners; I felt this in the smile of
superiority with which they met mine. They asked me how I could expect
priests who were by their positions and incomes independent of the
state, and bound only by their own caprices or by those of the locality
or circle to which they ministered, to teach the creed of the nation
aright? To secure their salaries or to win reputation, they would launch
into originalities, nay, into absurdities: they would pander to the
predominant passions of their flocks, whilst keeping up the appearance
of teaching the creed. The very contradictoriness of human nature would
drive them in different directions from one another. With the
journalists this would be still more the case, bound as they would be by
no definite creed or set of rules or kind of emotions. How could they be
expected to spread truth when there was no guide or master for them, no
book of truth to appeal to? Nothing could be so productive of mental
chaos as a class of men who without training or guidance or common
consent or a common set of beliefs or principles should be allowed to
pour their vagaries into the minds of the people. Would the nation ever
advance, or keep from degeneracy, if these were to be its daily
teachers, men who would pander to the commonest of popular passions and
tastes, heedless of right or truth or even policy?
And when the state had both religion and journalism in its hands, how
was it to secure the dissemination of what it considered absolute truth
except by complete abeyance of the wills and characters of the
disseminators? Centuries ago they had had a church whose priesthood was
filled by men of the purest life and highest principle and then no one
knew what the creed was; it was torn into shreds; and over its remains
the preachers and theologians trampled like wild colts; there were a
hundred schools and sects within the church, and each claimed for itself
divine authority and divine truth; the people could find no guidance in
faith or in morality; nor dare the state interfere with the extreme
preachings or practices of any division, or even of any individual
priest, for his followers, seeing the nobleness of his life and
believing therefore that he had reached ultimate truth, would gladly die
at the stake for him; and the high-salaried ecclesiastics having once
got into their posts lived a free life without regard for God or man or
government; they became fountains of immorality and discontent; by their
example on the one hand and their luxury on the other, the spiritual
head of the church was powerless; he dared not interfere with the
privileges of his subordinates or even their beliefs; everything was
indeed chaos, and that a chaos of religious enthusiasm.
It was the birth and growth of journalism that taught the state the true
cure for such a diseased condition. Some of the most abandoned but able
men in the nation had sunk so low that no one would trust them; in order
to get something to live on they were driven to take advantage of an
invention that had been recently made; the use of free types had
cheapened printing, and with this and some other means of cheaply
multiplying written productions, they determined to sell at a price
sheets that would amuse the people. They were successful; and the more
they invented lies and filled their sheets with fiction, the more
lucrative it became. All the most accomplished liars of the nation
crowded into it, and it was generally spoken of as the new profession of
lying for the amusement of the people. The fortunes that had begun to be
gained in it and the various attacks made upon men in authority called
the attention of the ministry to the nascent power. And they were only
just in time; a few more years and it would have been too strong for any
state to cope with. They manipulated it with caution; they bought up the
poorest and most unscrupulous of the journalists into what was
practically lifelong servitude to the state, and turned the whole force
of their talents in fabricating untruth against the few that had made
fortunes in the trade; it was not long before these latter were ruined
and had to sell their services to the government. But after a time it
was found that the ablest of the state journalists grew vain of their
powers and showed signs of striking out for themselves. Wages was not a
strong enough lien over the talents of men who had grown conscious of
their hold on the people. The trade was therefore proclaimed a state
monopoly, and all the conceited journalists were weeded out; and into
their places were put the most capable of the marble criminals who had
been condemned to state servitude for life. It was made one of the
rewards of good behaviour amongst convicts; for as journalists they were
allowed to live in some degree of luxury; they had full scope for their
craving for falsehood and dishonesty, and made of these a fine art. The
only condition they had to fulfil was obedience to orders; all their
productions were based on ideas supplied to them by the department and
had to undergo criticism or revision by its officers. The state had them
absolutely in its power; and yet the average of literary talent amongst
them was far higher than when journalism had been free and independent;
in fact a literature of some power, a pure state literature, had
resulted. It was universally acknowledged that genius is essentially
immoral on one or more rules of the moral code and sometimes on all; it
has ever a vein of eccentricity or even madness in it that makes it leap
over the pales of convention or principle or law; and hence in previous
ages it had always been a pariah. At its first escapade it was now
hurried into the fetters of the state, and was soon glad to accept the
comparative freedom of state journalism. Thus the government had
gathered into its service the greatest imaginations of the people, and
through them could mould the nation to what purpose it would.
The success of this conquest of a new-born power and domestication of
the wild spirits of the race pointed out the true secret for remedying
the evils of religion and the church. Eccentricity was rampant in them;
they were ever producing discontent and riot and rebellion; they were
the homes of all that threatened the existence of the state. And yet the
state dared not remove the offending priests, lest it should inflame the
disloyalty of the people who followed them. The most astute of their
statesmen saw the lesson of the conquest of journalism and applied it.
He gradually reduced the salaries of the clergy, basing the policy
chiefly on the ground that those who served God should be humble and
free from the temptations of luxury; another and minor reason was that
during a time of scarcity and depression economy was needed in the
departments of the state. His successors carried out his craft with as
much system and success, and, when the lower clergy had been reduced to
a pittance, crusaded through the journals against the princes of the
church and their luxury. By this time the marble citizens had ceased to
send their children into the ordinary priesthoods, which gave no more
the chance of a career, and all the clergy now belonged to the poorer
classes. The higher posts were in the gift of the government; and it
stripped them one by one of their great revenues and bestowed them thus
lowered upon the common priests who showed themselves obsequious and
obedient. And at last the very headship of the church was surrendered by
the aristocracy, when it had lost its enormous salary and influence. The
state at once created a department of public worship to absorb its
functions. But, without journalism in its hands, it would never have
been able to accomplish so complete a revolution; against it and its
power over the people the church dignitaries were pithless; whilst the
common clergy were too much torn by sectarian opinions to offer a united
front. The later steps of this clever statecraft were easy and rapid.
But religion was not yet turned to its final purpose. Even the poor
priests had their eccentricities, and broke away from state
leading-strings. The unity of church and government was merely nominal,
if this could occur. To make any function of the state real, perfect
discipline is needed. A national army would succumb to the first foe, if
regiments of it, or individual generals, were to follow their own
caprice. And a national church, if it is to be a true engine of the
state, has still more need of exceptionless discipline, inasmuch as it
has to master the spirits of men.
Generation after generation of Aleofanian statesmen turned their best
energies to this problem. Experiment after experiment was tried, but
none succeeded till the policy of government journalism was adopted.
Criminals with a turn for piety—and very few were without it—were
offered the choice of incarceration for life or careers as priests.
Already the people had been inoculated by the journals with the belief
that the stream of divine unction had poured down through the ages quite
irrespective of the channels along which it flowed; it would have been a
hard thing indeed if the evil characters and lives of so many priests in
the past had stopped their transmission of the favour of heaven to their
flocks; long ago would true religion have failed them had it depended on
the officiating ministers of the deity; it would have shown limitation
of God’s omnipotence if He had been supposed unable to send His
inspiration through any person or character. The journalists had indeed
found it easy to press home this doctrine, for the great church
dignitaries, being often men of evil life, had been forced to inculcate
it for many ages, and, being not seldom feeble in intellect, had reduced
their duties down to the mere performance of ceremonies and the reading
of prayers and portions of the sacred books. It was only amongst the
poorest sectaries that the clergy had to use their brains in the way of
reasoning out abstract doctrine into practical precept, or in rousing
their flocks to religious fervour. Their light it was easy to extinguish
or ignore. And all the marble city and its society readily accepted the
change from the dull, uninterested performances of the old dignitaries
to the smart elocution and brilliant histrionic attainments of the
criminals. The state chose these not only for their piety, a common and
superabundant commodity amongst them, but for their grace of speech and
action, and sent them for several years to a great dramatic college,
where every one of the arts of the stage was taught to perfection.
The long-talked-of reamalgamation of the theatre and the church was at
last silently accomplished. What was the use of paying to see a poor
performance in the theatre or concert-room, when they could enter any
church for nothing and see a far more brilliant ceremonial enacted, and
hear far more talented elocution? The minister of public worship
encouraged by rewards the clever rogues, whom he had selected for the
church, to invent new and more interesting modes of conducting the
services, and new and more fascinating ways of chaining the attention of
a crowd. The dramatic companies and public entertainers had to close
their doors and seek employment under the state, and especially in the
Bureau of Fame. The old revenues of the church were spent on magnificent
choirs and instrumental bands, on the training of the musical talent of
the nation for its services, as well as on the training of the criminals
for its priesthood. As a rule the best histrionic ability straggled off
into prison, for it delighted in outraging first convention and then
law; it had a great taste, so my guide informed me, for extravagance and
show, and soon developed a tendency to lying and hypocrisy. And such a
truthful and sincere people had elaborate laws, of course, for the
punishment and constraint of such vices. Thus the state got all the
actor-talent of the marble city into its power. But it had to hire the
musical talents, for they were too vain to have any vice but
quarrelling; they had to be caught by other nets, the nets of gain; it
secured from childhood all who had fine voices or great and original
talent for melodious composition, or the management of musical
instruments, and it trained them elaborately for the service of the
church; the only certain employer was the state, and thus it had a
monopoly of everything musical in the nation.
Elaborate and attractive though the church services in the hands of the
state had grown, they still repelled or sent to sleep a considerable
proportion of the worshippers; for the prelections and sermons had been
left unreformed; they were as old and tedious and uninteresting as they
had been centuries before in the hands of the incapable scions of the
marble citizens. A reforming statesman had recently turned his attention
to this defect; he had founded a great college of oratory, and selected
the best of the cultivated and able criminals to be trained there. It
was found an easier task than had been anticipated. For great gifts of
speech and great powers of moralising were found to run frequently with
immoral and criminal tendencies. And now it was remembered that, under
the freer _régime_ of an olden time, it had been men of the loosest life
who had gained greatest influence over the people and the popular
assemblies; popular orator and scoundrel had in the older language been
synonymous terms; whilst even orator had had a flavour of dishonesty and
untruthfulness, if not libertinism, about it. So the prison officials
saw that it was generally the most untrustworthy of their wards who were
most persuasive in speech, and had to be isolated lest they should
incite to riots and rebellions.
Thus it was found necessary to choose all the future preachers of the
church from the criminals classified as dangerous. But once their
passion for oratory was allowed a safety-valve, once they began their
training in the college, they became comparatively harmless; provided
nothing was left in their way to steal, and no one sufficiently off his
guard for them to deceive or corrupt. When I arrived in Aleofane, the
first batch of oratorical criminals was being draughted into the service
of the church. And I found great commotion amongst the older worshippers
against the innovation; they complained that they and their ancestors
had furnished their sections in the churches as dormitories; and now
they claimed damages from the state as this expenditure had been
rendered useless; just as the music had induced somnolence, they were
roused by the bellowing appeals of these loud-lunged miscreants to
conscience and the loftiest principles of morality; their ancestors had
not thus been disturbed, nor were they going to be; they removed to the
older-fashioned churches where the droning old sermonisers still buzzed;
there they would have peace on holy days to rest; they would be gone to
the final sleep before the ranting crowd had followed them. The younger
set of worshippers were delighted at the change; for they listened now
to lively declamation and vivid and picturesque oratory. Nothing could
surpass the electric effect of some of those preachers on their
audiences; you could hear strong men weep, and women that were usually
marvels of silence cry out in wild ecstasy; thousands would sway as one
soul to the passion of the speaker, or again a ripple of laughter would
freshen over the throng, to be followed by a shadow of pathos like a
summer cloud over corn-fields. I have seen men and women who had entered
the building with smiling faces fall prostrate on the marble floors in
an agony of repentance. It was one of their greatest luxuries in
religion to have those strong emotions. They came to the church
purposely to be moved out of their sluggish routine of feeling; and,
having suffered the wild ecstasy, they had all the enjoyment of
convalescence from the spiritual stroke of paralysis. The hysterical
passions that were often lit by the flame of church oratory were like
strong drink to them amid the level conventions of their daily life.
Nor did the state permit any preacher to pall upon his audience. As soon
as the enthusiasm began to slacken, he was removed to another locality
and church, and another brawny young orator fresh from the collegiate
hulks was launched on his career of appeal to the emotions. The only
danger was that in abandoning himself to the stream of his eloquence he
might depart too far from the written sermon that had been revised by
the state critics and utter something that might clash with state
formulæ. But there were always in his audience guardians who kept their
eye on him and by a threatening look pulled him up. And if he persisted,
his promising career was broken off, for a time at least. The fear of
this was generally sufficient to deter these oratorical and pious
criminals from indulging in unlawful flights. For it was a terrible
punishment for those who had the talent of persuasive talk to be shut up
and have their speech throttled for ever in silent and repulsive cells.
Indeed it was whispered that there had been attempts at suicide on the
part of some budding orators who had so far transgressed as to be
condemned to lifelong absence from the rostrum; whilst some who could
not get their oratorical passions slaked or even recognised have been
known to commit a serious crime and then stir up disturbance in prison
in order to get scope for their power of influencing the emotions of
others.
And it was marvellous to see the fervour of these convict-priests; they
were most eloquent and convincing on the evils of the vice to which they
were most addicted; they knew its subtlety and its fascinations; they
could describe with the most picturesque realism its insidious progress
and its resultant misery; they would enact the scenes of its various
stages and phases with a truth and histrionic power that made the
worshippers shudder. And then the appeals they made to repentance were
really addressed to their own ideal selves; and so fervid and sincere
were they, so full of pathos and melting prayer, that none could resist.
I have heard a vast crowd of Aleofanians of the most righteous lives cry
out in response, as if they had been the most abandoned of sinners.
What could not the state do with its people, when it had command of such
channels into their very hearts! Whatever new purpose it had it subtly
introduced into the sermons and church services, either didactically or
dramatically; songs and hymns and ceremonies were manufactured for it;
gorgeous spectacles were invented and drew crowds to the churches for
months. But never was the purpose allowed to show itself obtrusively; it
penetrated the spirit of these like a delicate perfume. And the people
could not help being fascinated by it, so subtly did it ally itself with
all the sweetest anodynes of care and pain and all the most tempting
delights of the senses. Sweet savours, delicious perfumes, melodious
sounds, the most artistic and beautiful sights soon made the new state
policy the very atmosphere of the inner shrine of memory. And the
priests and church orators touched the springs of emotion with hidden
but concrete presentments of it; they were handsomely rewarded for every
new and successful method they invented of getting it interwoven with
the most popular feelings and the most sacred passions and memories.
But there was an ecclesiastical engine of state that promised to be more
effective than any of these. For ages there had been in the church an
institution that had somewhat fallen into neglect except with morbid
women of the upper classes. They were accustomed to go at stated times
into a box like a horse-stall and whisper the secrets that burdened them
into an aperture like an ear; from this the sound passed by a tube into
the secret chamber of the priests of the church; and there came back to
the ear of the client spiritual advice that would console her in her
difficulties or help her out of them. Neither priest nor worshipper was
supposed to see or know the other; the act and communication were purely
impersonal.
This custom the state revived and expanded, after it had begun to see
what a powerful engine the church could be made. And it grafted it on to
one of its few failures. When it had discovered how useful it might make
criminals, one of its most ingenious and ambitious ministers determined
to annex it to the medical profession. He saw its subtle and secret
power in detail, and thought that, if he could weld this into a unity
and make it an engine of state, it would be almost omnipotent; for the
physician had complete command of his patients, and could make them
believe what he would. He had their spirits and imaginations at a time
when, at the lowest ebb of life’s tide, they were most the prey of
superstition. Whether hypochondriac or really sick, they were at his
mercy, and what he prescribed or even loosely remarked sank deeply into
them. Was not this the very vantage the state needed for riveting its
chains upon the spirits of its subjects? The invalid periods of a man’s
life, and still more those of a woman’s, and the invalid members of a
household, are the very fulcra of the levers of existence. Such points
of spiritual omnipotence should not be in the hands of private bunglers.
The only thing that kept the physicians from ruling the nation was their
mutual jealousy and perpetual disunion.
As a fact it was the state that supported the colleges of medicine and
guaranteed the ability of the licentiates sent out by them. What could
be easier than to go a step farther and make the physicians servants of
the state? Some of the most astute convicts who had tastes in that
direction were selected and trained in the full course of the medical
schools, and sent out to practise with instructions to use their
opportunities for the state. But there could be no check upon their
proceedings as there was over the convict-priests. They revelled in
doing evil, and a most obnoxious practice grew up amongst them. It was
soon noticed that they became most luxurious in their style of living,
and at last the death of several of their patients along with a new
codicil to their wills bequeathing to the convict-doctor large legacies
aroused suspicion and confirmed the long-unheeded outcry that the
professional physicians had raised against them. It was found on close
inquiry that they had milked their richest patients of most of their
fortune, and the more alert and obstinate of them they had drugged into
subservience to their will and then given them euthanasia. No custom
could live in the midst of the odium that this revelation stirred. And
the great statesman had to swallow his ingenious invention and policy.
But he was not content to remain passive under this recoil. He adapted
his contrivance to the ecclesiastical organisation of the state, and
turned his convict-physicians into confessors. They had been chosen to
some extent for their soft, low voices, their refined and feminine
manners, and their insinuating and confidential air. A little more
training in the arts of sophistry and in the subtle distinctions and
precepts of theology would fit them exactly to be spiritual advisers in
the church. To warn them from the use of their posts for purposes of
extortion, their brethren who had gone astray in medicine were severely
punished. And to hold check on their conduct and advice, the
confessional chambers of all the churches were connected by auditory
tubes with the central office of public worship, and every confession
and every consolation could be heard by the minister or his officials if
he liked.
The practice of consultation in the auricular stalls of the church grew
with amazing rapidity. The insinuating young voices, the subtle
consolation, the efficient advice so soothed the perturbed spirits of
the mentally sick that on the slightest commotion in the atmosphere of
their life they rushed again to the ecclesiastical ear. Even the men
began, at first in a shamefaced way, to await a vacancy in the stalls,
afterwards most boldly and as a habit of fashionable life they indulged
in the practice.
It reduced the revenues of the physicians by more than half; and they
could make no outcry against it, for it was more powerful than they. At
last one great financial minister of public worship organised the new
departure; he had all the auricular stalls of all the churches of the
nation connected directly with his central office; and in his presence
all the spiritual advisers sat and received confessions and gave
consolations. He had an army of clerks to insert in the secret
doomsday-book opposite the name of each citizen anything in his or her
confession that seemed of importance, whilst every morning he gave out
the general policy and tone of the advices to be communicated; on
exceptional cases he had always to be consulted at once.
He also offered a percentage on the legacies left by any worshipper to
the church; this was given to the criminal on whose advice it was left.
The department of public worship was coming to be the wealthiest in the
state; for he fitted up the auricular boxes of the church as the most
luxurious boudoirs, where a lady could lounge in the midst of the
sweetest perfumes and music and the most beautiful paintings and
statuary. He even allowed at a large rental auricular stalls to be let
by the month or year to single individuals or families. Hither could the
invalid or convalescent come in her moods of despair or depression and
pour her sorrows into the ear of the soft-voiced comforter who shed, by
his casuistries and gentle persuasiveness, balm upon her spiritual
wounds. At last he permitted auricular tubes to be laid to the private
chambers of confirmed invalids and of the dying, at a large premium. And
this added such enormous sums to the revenue in the shape of legacies
that he reduced the rate. Yet he left it as a policy of the office that
it should never be so far lowered as to bring the privilege within the
reach of those who had but moderate incomes.
Never had such a powerful engine come into the hands of the state; and
every precaution was taken that it should not be abused and that no
secret of this great confession bureau should leak out. But, whenever
any citizen grew restive or obstreperous, an appeal was made to the
pages of the doomsday-book, and some secret found there was applied to
him with the effect that he curled up into unobtrusive silence. The
convict-confessors were, of course, all locked up at night in a
well-sentried building, and by day every action of theirs was under
unseen surveillance.
They still continued their medical studies and duties, and were able to
prescribe through the auditory tubes to whatever patient could give a
clear account of his symptoms. If anyone had symptoms that did not
permit of a clear diagnosis of his disease, he was encouraged to come
into the consulting-room of the office of public worship, and there the
various convict-physicians questioned him and examined him unseen; the
diseased organ or part was placed under powerful microscopes into which
they looked; then the whole staff consulted on his case and gave him
advice accordingly. But these were rare instances; as a rule, the
patients were satisfied with the impersonal advice and acted upon it.
Half the diseases had their source in the mind and only needed spiritual
advice; and most were both mental and physical; none but felt great
benefit from unburdening their spirits and receiving sympathy and
consolation.
Half the confessor-physicians were on duty by night and half by day; and
the former section consisted of the ablest and the most subtle and
persuasive; for it was found that night patients and worshippers needed
more spiritual consolation than day clients. It was during the sleepless
hours of the dark that the soul sank into the abyss of morbid weakness
and often into the paralysis of terror. It was then that it seemed to
absorb the functions of the body and infect them with its own diseases.
It was then that most succumbed to the assaults of sickness, the life
ebbed farthest away and left the sensitive nerves naked to the
irritations of thought and passion. It was then that the great harvest
of bequests was reaped; seized by superstitious fears, by the terrors of
the darkness around and to come, the spirit was ready to abandon the
mere dross of life for a little support on the threshold of the grave,
for a little religion. And the office of public worship never hesitated
to promise all they asked for beyond the final darkness, provided they
paid well for the boon. It was then that the most hideous secrets of
life were whispered into the ear of the church, then that terror drove
the soul into the refuge of complete disburthenment. Even when death was
years off, the feebleness of the morbid or invalid or convalescent
spirit during hours when sleep would not approach laid it open to
assault; for the footfall of the awful destroyer seemed to be heard in
the dread silence. It was then that it sought the consolations of the
auditory tube and opened the flood-gates of repentance into the ear of
the confessor-physician. The morning brought regret for the rash
candour, but the secret was recorded; the office of public worship had
undying power over the fate of the unburthened soul.
By the time I arrived in the island, the physicians felt that their
profession was doomed, that the wily statesman had outwitted them; and
doubtless before many generations most of them would plead to be
admitted into the service of the state. When that occurred they would
have to resign themselves body and soul to it; it would receive none but
those who were completely in its power. Of course there was still much
scope for them in families that would not trust mere impersonal advice
or feared to resign their independence of spirit into the power of an
office of state. They were also much employed in seeing the treatment
recommended by the convict-physicians carried out; and in this they
often retaliated upon the state by contradicting the advice and sowing
doubt of its soundness in the minds of the patients. Doubtless the next
move of the department of public worship would be to blow through
pneumatic tubes into the auricular stalls of the churches, or into the
chambers of the sick the drugs and medical requisites that were
recommended.
By means of these three uses of the talents of convicts the state church
had become a reality and was far more powerful than the press.
Journalism poured suggestion into the public mind; but it was into the
healthy, wide-awake, often recoiling public mind; its reasonings,
eloquence, or imaginative schemes and suggestions were not always
accepted; they had often to lie ungerminated in the soil of the national
spirit for years, till they were forgotten and some new occasion laid
them bare and made them seem to spring up spontaneously. The personality
of the writers though not unfelt was unseen, and so far had the potence
of that which is mysterious; but they could not, like the ecclesiastical
convicts, use the shadowy distance of the world to come in the way of
threats and promises; they could not stir the soil of the present to
immediate harvest with the plough of the future. They had to depend on
the weapons and tools of the average man; they had to reason and
persuade, explain, or appeal to the emotions, as neighbour to neighbour,
except that they had the impersonality and anonymity of confessors and
could gag their opponents in any attempt at reply.
Their power would have seemed enormous, had it not been put into
comparison with the complete state organisation of the church and been
overshadowed by it. They were used as the dogs of war, gathering as they
did into the hands of a minister the loose fangs of irresponsible
gossip, leashed as they were to one purpose and one spirit or policy.
They knew that they had but one master to please, one master who had
their liberty and still more their luxury in his power; and him they
served with all their faculties and especially their faculties of
invention, personal venom, and vituperation. They had no principle, no
scruple except towards him and the government he embodied. If they
entertained the majority, they did not care who suffered. Their first
object was to strengthen the roots of the state, and especially of the
minister of the department; their next was to make the largest number
possible read their articles and paragraphs. If any one of their victims
turned upon them and denied the news about him as a slander, they were
at once made by the head of the department to apologise and explain that
by some mistake the paragraph had slipped out of the pure fiction column
into that of news, and that the name of the citizen had strayed out of
the column of eulogies in transferring type. Where this was impossible
as an explanation, the minister could easily appease the wrath of his
victim by showing him how an especially unscrupulous convict had been
introduced new into the office and had acted on his own responsibility
and ignorance of the rules of revision.
I wondered at so great and virtuous a people enduring such an
institution in their midst. They marvelled at my wonder, and thought of
it as based on the very laws of nature. How could any marble citizen
indulge in such work and retain his self-respect, and how could a state
be accountable for the vagaries of irresponsible writers, whose dignity
and self-respect were lost? The only means of producing a united and
vigorous literature was to make the writers bond to the state. The only
means of keeping it pure and free from attacks on the nation and the
national spirit was to put the journalists body and soul into the hands
of a department, and to make the department responsible for their
productions. This was a provision of nature as soon as such an
institution arose.
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