THE VOYAGE TO TIRRALARIA
I ASKED him to sail round the bluff and communicate with my yacht. But
he would not hear of it. He said that this would endanger the safety of
all, for the Aleofanian king would see at once how elaborate had been
the conspiracy and how treacherous we had been, and he would take every
means to frustrate our departure, or, if we got safely off, to avenge
the insult. I had to accept his reasons, for I was in his power. But I
was sure that there were others; he was afraid that if I got on board my
own ship, Blastemo would persuade me to go off with him to Broolyi; on
the other hand, if he secured me for his island, my fireship would soon
be in Tirralaria too.
I found out afterwards from my sailors that the king had fallen into
great consternation at the firing of the guns, especially when the boats
with his guards made off towards the shore. One of the shot had
opportunely ploughed up the sea not far from their station and had
evidently filled them with panic. My men knew that Garrulesi was waiting
for me on the other side of the point, and they kept firing towards the
beach till they thought that I should be on board. Then, in order to
quiet the fears of the king, they put him and his boy into the yawl, and
pulled him on shore. In his excitement he had forgotten all about
Blastemo, and, before he had regained the upper reaches of the road and
joined his troops, the yacht had lifted anchor, picked up her boat, and
steamed out to sea. They saw my signal on board the falla, and knew that
I was safe. So they followed my instructions and made for Broolyi,
whilst the wind bore us in the opposite direction.
But the shadows thickened, and before night fell we had run into the
shelter of some high land and anchored. The men hung a dirty guttering
lamp in the main room of the high poop, and by its light I could see how
slovenly and foul was the whole cabin. It smelt of fish-oil and of
unnumbered meals past. The floor was littered with garbage, so that I
had to clear a path through it to prevent slipping. I could find no
convenient ledge to sit on that was not embossed with grease and oil. I
was glad to reach the night air again, for it at least helped to
deodorise the deck. I got them to hang me a hammock in the shrouds,
resolved to keep out of the cabin as long as I could.
I was awakened at early dawn by the movements of the seamen, and through
the grey light I saw that we were lying off the bleak, rocky shore of an
islet. We hoisted sail and were off before a whistling wind that sang
violence to come. They had considerable skill in handling the falla, and
we left a long scar behind us across the crests of the emulous waves.
Swift though the current and surge ran with us, we outstripped them,
rising like a sea-bird to the full impulse of the wind. I could tell at
a glance that the ancestors of these seamen had been accustomed to rough
waters through countless ages.
My host came on deck after we were fully under way and at once joined
me. He launched again into eulogies of the socialistic community. I was
at the mercy of his eloquence, and resigned myself to my fate. Yet
before the voyage closed and we ran into port I was rewarded for my
talent of listening. He got weary of tempting my admiration by his
praises, and soon slipped into what looked like fact. He gave me a
picturesque description of the island when its rude outline began to
sierra the horizon. There were miles and miles of lawns and orchards
that terraced the lowlands from the lapping water on the beach to the
roots of the mountains that I saw dim white against the sky rim.
Gleaming rivers streaked the meadows with their silver, or hid beneath
the blossoming or fruiting trees. Here and there they swelled into
sylvan lakes whose surface was spidered into moving gossamer by flocks
of tame sea-birds and by canvas bent on pleasure and ease. Towering
above the tallest trees stood vast temples that seemed in their shining
marbles to outstrip the snowy giants that were every hour revealing to
me more and more of their stupendous proportions.
I piloted him by judicious admiration and questions into a description
of their faith. It seemed to be a polytheism that was practically a
pantheism. Every spirit that existed in the universe apart from body was
equal to every other spirit. As soon as a man died his soul became a
god, as worthy of worship as any other god that had existed from the
beginning. Through the whole of space, and even permeating matter
invisibly, impalpably, gods lived and moved and had their being. They
needed no sustenance, no addition of energy, no extension of space to
live in. The universe was full of them, immortal generators of other
spirits, other gods. It was indeed an Olympus that was so united, so
free from all jealousy and enmity that it formed but one god, just as
the living cells of the human body, though each having its own
individuality, made but one human life. And there was still infinity to
fill. Worlds died every hour, having fulfilled their purpose of
producing all the divine life whereof they were capable. Every hour
worlds were born evolving energy and at last life, which rose by stages
up to the human that dying might be divine. The stellar system is but a
great god-factory. Not an atom that lives is wasted. Everything that
comes into existence rises up and into the nobly human; then the
physical sequence ceases and the divine begins. Death deifies all men;
evil falls away from them with their bodies; and, winged through the
vault, the souls flit, rid of passion and whatsoever clogs pure thought.
They have no desire to materialise again; they have no desires at all.
They can interpenetrate and unite and disunite without the sense of
disunion. They are one with existence that is not bound to what is
matter or has senses. They make the final all; and yet this all
increases every moment with transcendent growth. Its one imperfection is
that it cannot fill the whole of space; its one aspiration is to
colonise infinity. Life is too poor to satisfy it. It must grow for ever
and for ever through new systems and oceans of worlds that evolve
myriads of new gods ready to people the still unmastered regions beyond
its ken. Its energy is not diminished by the stupendous labour at the
unceasing birth of worlds. Every new effort means increased possibility
of energy. It is of the nature of pure spirit to develop its potence of
energy by energising. Once freed of cumbering matter, its life grows
fuller and freer the more it operates on the atoms of the ether to raise
them nearer and nearer to its own nature and being. Nor can it work
except through this laborious ascent; this is the only hierarchy of
life, the only altar-stairs in the universe, whereon being of lower
grade clambers up to godhead. Once the altar is reached there is nothing
but equality. There is only imperfection and perfection in existence. Of
imperfection there are as many gradations as there are kinds of being;
in perfection or godhead there is no differentiation; there degree,
class, distinction cease. For all gods are one in the all. In the stage
just precedent to godhead, in humanity, gradation has begun to vanish.
It is only the adulterate nature that still keeps distinction. The
higher the range of the men the less the difference between them; and at
last death obliterates it; they are perfect in freedom from the
long-obstructive matter, perfect in godhead, united to the all.
This outline of the socialistic religion came on me with the surprise of
one who should see wine flowing in the bed of a torrent instead of
water. I began to have a certain respect for this eternal talker whose
verbal bubbles had suddenly turned to pearls. He stopped just when I had
wished him to go on; and, to tap the same vein, I asked him how his
countrymen worshipped their god.
He came dangerously near to winding up his eloquence clockwork, for he
pointed to the sky and then to the snowy bulwark that loomed along the
horizon; and he straightened himself out and cleared his throat. I
feared the complacent glitter of his eye, and I rushed to the water-vat
and drank. The interruption seemed to switch off his energy from his
almost automatic word machine. He had grown meditative and rested his
head on his hands as he looked over the rail into the sea.
I approached him when I saw his new attitude, and he began in a soft,
reluctant voice: “We are all priests as we are all kings in our
community. To have a hierarchy or even an intermediary who should be
supposed to be in more direct sympathy and communication with the gods
than the rest is the worst of insults to the divine energy of the soul.
To make a special profession of that which is the aim of embodied life
is but to commercialise the divine and embrute the human. The priests
place their feet on the necks of the ignorant, and it is their interest
to reduce all to ignorance. Instead of the equality, which is the true
principle of life, we should have a double tyranny; we should grovel
before our gods, whose superstitions would weigh us to the ground; and
we should have their professional agents introducing the caprice and
imperfection of the human into their yoke. I know not which is the
worse: the purely spiritual slavery of timid, startled worship, or the
mingled slavery of priestcraft that makes the divine mysterious and
terrible in order that the worshippers may bow before it body and soul.
“It was a question with our ancestors when they were apportioning the
wealth they had brought with them to general purposes, whether they
should build temples to their new and universal god or take the dome of
immensity as his shrine. They had brought with them a love of art
devoted to divine service, and a traditionary love of temples as the
symbols of the divine dwelling-place. And yet temples would imply
attendants who would soon raise themselves into a spiritual tyranny.
Whilst there around them was the free ether wherein dwelt members of the
godhead; there above them was the marvellous roof of night frescoed with
worlds. Surely it was better that the chrysalids of gods should live in
the same temple as the gods. There was no sanctuary like that which the
divine had chosen and made for itself. To set apart any portion of it as
a holy of holies would sully the nobleness of its workmanship. Fane
there was none but the universe; and any poor chantry erected by man,
however stupendous it seemed to him with his span of life to build it
in, would be a mockery of the Infinite. How pigmean it would seem
beneath the vault of night, wherein distance was fenced by the
penetrative impotence of human eyes, how atomic when gauged by thought,
the true instrument of worship!
“At first schism threatened over this burning question. But at last yon
steaming censer of the mountains gave the solution. The first night
fell, and they saw a strange glow above the ranges as if it were a fire
amongst the clouds. Superficial thought would fain explain it as the
after-sheen of sunset. But the hours advanced and still the radiance
flushed and faded, flushed and faded, and often with fuliginous and
lurid glare. At times a pillar as of smoke and flame seemed to unite
earth and heaven. Every eye was fixed on the turbid glimmer as it
enhaloed the sombre beauty of the night. The still lingering
superstitions that lurked in the graveyards of many minds took it as a
sign from the world beyond death. In the dusky aisles of night, as they
discussed the theme in low and reverent voices, there spread the
magnetic power of resurgent superstition in a crowd touched with the
mystery of the universe; and before the dawn suffused the sky or flooded
the ancestral recesses of the mind, it was resolved to take this fiery
peak as the altar of their worship.
“But the elements had decided otherwise; the searing, blinding power of
its everlasting snows, the torrid ebullience of its great cup, and the
ruthless fury of the clouds that so often blotted out its heaven, drove
the worshippers to the lowlands; and there the frequent austerity of the
elements, aided by the old love of art, compelled the erection of the
temples you see beginning to fleck the dusky background of the rocks and
forests. But the more progressive section of the community, who favoured
no temple but the open heaven, had their fears as to the future allayed
by a written agreement signed by all that it should be a penal offence
to propose a priesthood or a service for them. Everyone may worship
where he pleases, within these tabernacles made with hands or without in
the pantheon of all men and all gods, in the star-vaulted minster of
infinity.”
It was indeed an impressive sight as we approached and the dim sierra
grew into a stupendous range that overshadowed us; in its midst rose
gigantic the gleaming peak of their fiery monarch dominating all. Above
him hung, as if to shade him from the rude fire of the sun, a great tree
of smoke whose leafage touched the heaven, and majestically swung in the
wind. At its roots the forests and marble fanes were dwarfed. No
eloquence of gesture or of word could make me turn my gaze from him to
them; but a lower bastion of mountains in front moved upwards and
blotted out his serenity. Then I saw the magnitude of the temples,
dwarfing as they did the loftiest trees of the forest.
I asked him where the houses were, and with some reluctance he pointed
off to the right, where nothing could be distinguished. Then my mind ran
on to the symbols of civilised life, and I inquired for the schools and
other educational institutions.
“There are none,” he said. “They are only symbols and nurses of
inequality. After we had abolished caste and class and social
distinctions, we soon came to see that the most offensive of all was
culture, and especially scholarship and learning. Who contemns his
neighbour so much as the pedagogue that knows a language or a series of
facts more than other men? Academic snobbery is the most pernicious,
most galling; for it can immediately put in its proofs of the
superiority it claims; it can rout all but its equal and rival. It is
the most exclusive, most presuming, most irritating. We started with
universities and academies and technical schools, under the impression
that, by making them free to all, we should give all equal privileges.
Before we were through a generation of our new history the fallacy
became transparent. We were rapidly manufacturing a class of
intellectual peacocks, or at least men and women who sneered at the
vulgar herd. By our constitution every citizen was entitled to a certain
minimum of food and clothing in the year. The scholar could always live
on less than this, and, by offering the surplus as payment, he could get
others to perform the mechanical duties of his life. He had what he
wanted in free libraries and laboratories and lectures. So he came to
have an inordinate share of happiness; and in many cases he had an
inordinate scorn for the bulk of the people, who took no advantage of
these privileges. A yearning for books and for exercise of the mind is
anything but natural to most men, and the nation was rapidly sorting
itself out into a small class who were happy and prided themselves on
having everything they wanted, and a majority who envied these their
content and grumbled at the enormous wealth they had accumulated in
their minds. It was true that these men wrote books and made discoveries
and inventions; but what good were their books and facts and machines to
any but themselves? Nobody else used them or wished to use them. They
might talk of the advances of science and the nobleness of art and the
glories of literature. But their talk was unreal to all but their own
narrow circle; for the rest of the people it was like descanting on
colours to the blind.
“The worst was to come; there afterwards grew up a class of sham
scholars and æsthetes and critics who learned the shibboleths of the
scientists and artists and writers, and used these shibboleths as
instruments of offence against what they called outsiders. There were
two primitive languages that had, in earlier ages before the migration
and before the growth of a native literature, taken deep root in
education. These were treated as the marks and symbols of culture; and
their rudiments were laboriously shuffled through and promptly forgotten
by a large section, who thereupon assumed great airs of superiority to
their neighbours. These counterfeit scholars and critics made the two
languages into a fence and stockade that would defy the assaults of the
mob; within it they fell down and worshipped as the gods of the earth
the few who did know them well and could speak them. Most of them had
learned by rote some passages from one or two of the favourite books in
them; and they were accustomed, when they were worsted in any
conversation or discussion, to roll off, relevantly or irrelevantly, one
or the other of these, and thus silence their opponents. Only the mock
scholars ever did this; the real scholars knew too much of these
languages and had too much to occupy their minds otherwise to resort to
such trivial weapons. The contemptuous manners of the charlatans of
culture became insufferable. You would have thought that there was
something divine in these tongues, so fiercely did these bastard
scholars bridle up at any disparagement of them or any comparison of
them with the vernacular.
“The growth of this charlatanism became a serious danger to our
socialistic community, and it was thought that by its removal the danger
would be over. Accordingly it was resolved, only the scholars and their
mimics dissenting, that the study and use of these primitive languages
should be interdicted. The books written in them were burnt,—to the
great joy of the boys and girls in the seminaries,—and it was made a
penal offence to write or speak any word of them. There was much
sophistry used to get round the law, as a good deal of Tirralarian
phraseology was derived from them. But this difficulty was surmounted by
a clearer and more detailed definition, and the cultured hung their
heads defeated.
“It was not for long. Before another generation had passed, the scholars
had invented other claims to pre-eminence, other shibboleths. Now it was
the laws of nature and the laws of beauty that supplied the platform for
scorn of neighbours. The scientists and artists and critics of art
became the small privileged class, who had more than their fair share of
happiness and content. They produced something that seemed to be of more
value than the musty books of the scholars written in languages that
none but themselves could read. And their humours and superiority were
borne with at first for the sake of their discoveries and useful
contrivances and beautiful works. It was they who built the temples and
decorated them with such splendour and filled them with such machines
and expedients for the use and comfort of the citizens. They were few,
and not very obtrusive in their contempt for the multitude, and their
superior airs were counterbalanced by their usefulness.
“This tolerance was a mistake. The idea of having exclusiveness without
detriment to the socialistic principle was only a dream. There sprang up
the fringe of insolent make-believe again. Herds of pretenders to art or
science or criticism flocked into the universities and technical
schools. They gabbled of genius and talent, of principles and laws, of
elements and atoms, of cells and tissues, and of ideals and the spirit
of beauty. The trick was more transparent than the other, for they had
to use the vernacular in their patter; and a good deal of it was
manifest nonsense to the simplest mind, whilst the astuter amongst the
uneducated stripped even their most high-sounding maxims and laws into
the nakedest of truisms. But the empiric scientists and artists and
æsthetes shifted their ground every year and manufactured other and more
mystic phraseology. It was difficult to follow them through their
thickets and labyrinths of gibberish by which they kept off those whom
they were pleased to call the rabble. They became almost as stupidly
contemptuous and insolent as the possession of the rudiments of the most
unintelligible languages could have made them.
“It came to be clear that the old danger to equality had only taken a
new form. The mass of the nation clamoured against the new pretensions
of culture. They would hear of nothing but the abolition of its
factories, as they called the universities and schools of art. What
would come of the principle of socialism if this aristocracy of genius
and talent, brummagem or real, was to be let alone with its capacity to
blow itself out with its limitless vanity about its own importance? No
sane man would answer for the consequences if the wild rage of the
uneducated was allowed to vent itself on this superficial pretence and
shallow scorn. Scholars, scientists, artists, critics, and the parasitic
crew that battened on their results and used them offensively against
the multitude would fall in one great welter of blood. The gentler
section of the community could not look on this risk to their ideal of
society without a shudder. They convened the whole nation, and by an
overwhelming majority it was resolved to abolish the institutions that
fostered science and art, learning and criticism; it became high treason
to establish a library or university, or a school of art or science, or
a seminary of literature or criticism. There were the same attempts as
before to elude the provisions of the law and get round it by quibble
and sophism; but this led only to greater stringency and detail in its
clauses. It was made penal to write a book, or make a scientific
discovery, or invent any contrivance, or produce any work of art; and
you may be quite sure that, with the bulk of the people acting policeman
and spy for the law, it was soon carried into force, and pictures and
statues and books and machines ceased to be made. The insolence and
contempt of the intellectual parasites had no soil to fatten on, and
ultimately vanished from the state.”
He stopped with a snap of the jaw that said plainly: “There now; are you
satisfied? If not, you are a most unreasonable being. Where will you
find a civilisation grander than ours on the face of the earth?”
I was by no means satisfied. He had left one of the main branches of my
question unanswered. He had explained the history of the higher
institutions and the fate of the sciences and art and literature; but I
had asked him about the schools. I still pressed the question.
“Ay, that was another danger to the social constitution. The energy of
talent and genius, and the sham intellectualism chased from one post of
vantage took refuge in another. A pedagogic class sprang up that would
have grown into a most contemptuous and insolent aristocracy. The loud
and haughty arrogance and overbearing dogmatism of the charlatan fringe
of the profession were beginning to impress the bulk of the nation with
disgust and alarm, when there arose a fierce rebellion among the
scholars. The hundreds of mean-spirited empirics that had crept into the
ranks of teachers for the sake of the emoluments in the shape of
prestige and opportunity for the scorn of neighbours had had to resort
to the most tyrannical and cruel methods in order to keep discipline. A
few genuine instructors there were, who were able to cope with the
knavishness of the worst of pupils by means of their strength of
character and power of sympathy and imagination; they always elicited
what was best in the embryo humanity that came into their hands to be
moulded; they could use the laughter and sympathy of the majority to
whip the offensive disposition and will out of the laggards and would-be
rebels; and the latter were cowed and disciplined without any sense of
unfair treatment. But the closing of the channels of science and art and
criticism to the aristocratic quackery, that flows, if unchecked, from
the corrupt fountains of human nature, flooded the profession with
supercilious pretenders. Their scholars easily measured their
intelligence and sincerity, and turned the school-rooms into
pandemonium. The high-flying charlatans conferred together and invented
new and cruel modes of punishment. They introduced a reign of terror
into the schools. The boys and girls formed secret societies which
combined into one great brotherhood all over the island. They drilled in
darkness and armed every member with a catapult and pea-shooter. They
wrote the agreement and signed it in their own blood, and managed to
keep the proposed rebellion shrouded in mystery for five whole days, for
it was strictly confined to those above the age of twelve. But the fear
that it would leak out precipitated the rising; and they drove the
schoolmasters and schoolmistresses out under a fierce fire of peas and
pebbles, till wounded and bleeding the charlatans took refuge up the
mountains amid the snow, or in the waves of the beach, ducking to avoid
the missiles. The rout was most ignominious, and the scholars were able
to dictate their own terms. It was agreed that they should be exempted
from school and family discipline and be admitted to the full
citizenship. For it was seen that the exclusion of children above the
age of twelve from the schools would so reduce the numbers of the
insolent parasites and shams in the profession as to remove the
forefront of the offence.
“But it was found that twelve was a mere artificial limit. Inspired by
the example of their predecessors, the ten-year-olds made a successful
revolution and had the minimum age of citizenship reduced to ten. Still
the pedants were felt to be a most offensively arrogant class; the
smaller their numbers grew, the more they plumed themselves on their
superiority. And every new rebellion against their authority was aided
and abetted by the multitude, who huzzaed as the catapults of the pigmy
forces swept the field and the volleys from their pea-shooters told with
deadly effect, and after the defeat of the pedagogues granted
citizenship to every child of a certain age. Victory followed victory
till at last it seemed a farce to have schools at all. They were turned
into playhouses for stormy or wet weather, and the limit of age was
removed from citizenship. Every child, as soon as his legs would carry
him and his tongue would wag, could come to the conventions of the
people and record his vote. It greatly encouraged marriage and the
increase of families, for a man or woman with a dozen or score of
children had become a power in the state. Thus the last vestige of
privilege disappeared, and with it the last chance of intellectual
charlatanism forming an aristocracy. Every man was like his neighbour,
and for that matter so was every child. Sex, age, genius, talent,
profession, trade had ceased to form the basis of caste. Equality within
the nation had at last been reached.”
There was unspeakable complacence on his face; and yet my look of
interrogation broke it up. I had heard much about the professions and
their history in Tirralaria. I had heard nothing of the medical
profession. I wondered how they guaranteed the healing art.
“Oh, as for that, it disappeared in the earliest jetsam of the
community. Of the charlatans and nose-elevators the privileged doctors
were the worst. They blundered and buried their blunders, and wildly
resented every question. They kept up a mysterious patter that was of
the very essence of aristocracy and privilege. The atmosphere of
superstition that they threw round their old-wives’ remedies imposed
upon men when they were sick; but as soon as they were well their fear
vanished, and they determined to be clear of the empiricism and mummery
of the profession. And at last, after a great plague had laughed at
their charms and talismans and skill, and swept half the nation down to
the worms, their quackery had become too apparent. One third of them had
taken boat and migrated to other islands of the archipelago. Another
third had died of their own plague-nostrums and salves. The remainder
had lost their self-confidence and dogmatism and were willing to
acknowledge that they knew little if any but the simplest diseases, and
to these they applied the herbs and salves that every old woman tried.
The nation took them in their mood of humility and destroyed the fences
round the profession. Everyone was left free to use his own remedies. In
a fit of generosity they handed over the secrets of their trade to the
public, and salves and medicaments and pills and powders were
manufactured wholesale by the state chemists and issued free with
instructions for their use. Whether it was the abolition of the caste or
not, the death-rate has, if anything, decreased, and plagues are no more
frequent than they were before. Everyone who treats another and kills
him is liable to punishment by the state. So, few undertake to
prescribe, and every citizen is responsible for his own treatment. In
times of privilege a doctor was licensed to kill with impunity; he and
his brethren could always throw dust in the eyes of any inquiry by
technical terms and abracadabra. We are rid of that chicanery, and in
health and death-rate we are no worse off than before. So much for
physic.”
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