COXURIA
“THE wind had risen offshore; but, not long after we weighed anchor, it
fell and we began to drift. When the morning came, we saw that a current
was rapidly bearing us down upon another low island that closely
resembled in its outline the land we had left; but it was evidently very
productive, and here we seemed certain of obtaining supplies. Blastemo
thought it was Coxuria. If it were and if the pigmies that inhabited it
were able to lay aside their everlasting hostilities, there was plenty
to get on the island. We cast anchor therefore and pulled to the shore.
“It was yet early, and on the beach there were but few pigmies, who were
greatly excited at our arrival. Each of the wizened little atomies laid
himself alongside of one of our party when we jumped out of our boats,
and began to prove to him the superiority of some dogma he held. We did
not understand them, and listened in bewildered silence. But the
friendly fervour died out of their manner as soon as it dawned on them
that not a word of their eloquence was understood by us. A shade fell
upon their faces and turned them, with their restless malice and cruel
hate, into miniature maps of hell. They were like little demons as they
consulted together. They chose a representative, who addressed us in
Aleofanian, and Blastemo interpreted. But the faces of the silent
Coxurians grew darker and more scowling; suspicion and hatred gave their
expression to every feature.
“The stuff we listened to was the most absurd jumble of doctrines and
arguments. The orator began by asserting as the first truth of religion
that the gods were between two and three feet in height, and had shapes
exactly like the Coxurians: that needed no proof, so he did not stop to
prove it; the world was agreed upon that. They had never appeared upon
earth except to the saints of Coxuria. With their saliva they had
moistened and leavened a cake that grew in all its essential ingredients
like the bodies they had assumed when they had come amongst men. A
little of this cake was enough to transform everything it touched into
divine material, and there was none of it except in Coxuria. The true
belief was that everything that it touched had this miraculous power of
transformation; only vile heretics could assert the opposite. Yet some
still worse heretics affirmed that only their high-priests who had been
touched by the hands of high-priests who had touched the original saliva
had the true divinising faculty in their hands. Another fanatical sect
held the damning doctrine that it was neither the original saliva nor
the cake that gave the power of miracle, but the words that had come out
of the mouths of the gods when the saliva sputtered on to the cake. He
cursed these heretics with wild vituperation, evidently selected from
their sacred books, and threatened them with everlasting damnation. He
was still more furious in his damnatory eloquence when he came to those
who held that the essence of religion lay in turning the face to the
rising sun in all ceremonies, and clipping all the hair off round the
left ear. All true reverence consisted in modesty towards the gods, who
lived in the sun; and their dazzling brilliance there was intended to
make the worshippers turn away their faces from them. The direction in
which they vanished in the evening in their car of light was that
towards which the reverent face ever should be turned; for by their
fading away and letting the curtain of night be drawn they meant to
encourage the worshipper to look sadly after them. Then, every man knew
that it was the right ear that heard most distinctly; it was this that
was meant by the gods to be uncovered of its natural veil in order to
hear the divine harmonies of the universe. It was appalling to hear any
human lips utter such blasphemy as that the face should be turned to the
east or that the left ear should be unmuffled. No torture was too great
for such heresy.
“He proceeded with other damnatory classifications of Coxurian
religionists, and bit by bit showed how he and his fellow-worshippers
beside him alone were to be saved. He implored us to turn to the true
faith and not be lost for ever. We managed to suppress the smile that
was ever rising to our faces. Then, with a look round, he warned us to
be careful of error even within the true faith. There were mistakes made
even by the best of men. He besought us to avoid the belief that it was
only over the tip of the right ear that the hair was to be cut, or that
the body was not to be bent quite to the ground in worship towards the
west. The whole sense of hearing was meant by the gods to be unbared;
and it was the main part of the body that was to be turned up to the
rising of the sun; reverence could be shown only by turning the eyes
completely away from the dazzling beams of the gods. He was getting more
and more fervid in his denunciations of such errors and others like them
that his fellow-sectarians had fallen into. He and he alone was the
pillar of true religion upon earth; he and he alone would reach the
sphere of the gods; alas for the solitary grandeur of his position in
the universe!
“Suspicion more and more filled the faces of his pigmy supporters. Nor
could we longer keep down the amusement that was pressing upwards within
us. We had just burst into a roar of laughter when there crept down upon
us in his rear a cloud of pigmies armed with the most jagged of lances
and arrows. The effect was magical. Our theological rooster who had
crowed so lustily and his band of our would-be converters turned tail
and fled, yet not without bravado or menacing gestures. The newcomers
went through the same performance as their predecessors, except that
they insisted on the special points of doctrine that marked them off
from all other sects. We could not understand the difference between the
two claimants of our souls. The leader of the second crowd put the
distinction into a single word and pounded the meaning of it into us. He
scowled and explained, preached and exhorted. Not a gleam of
intelligence passed over any of our faces. Their inappeasable hatred of
the sect that had just disappeared over the horizon had no other basis,
it seemed to us, than the unmeaning syllable ‘buzz.’ Their gods when
they appeared on earth had, according to our furious orator, proclaimed
‘fuzz’ as the name of the saving cake; it was a damning error in the
fugitive schismatics to hold that it was ‘buzz-fuzz.’ It looked as if we
were not going to be converted to this saving syllable. The ugly weapons
of conversion were raised more threateningly, but thanks to Blastemo the
awkwardness of the situation was got over. Without consulting us, he
rose and accepted all their statements as the everlasting truths of the
universe, and expressed for us the profoundest loathing of the doctrines
that had before been vented upon us. The scene was turned into one of
jubilation. The ugly weapons were lowered, and the loathsome little imps
ran forward to embrace their converts, as far, at least, as the
minuteness of their bodies would allow. Never at one sweep of their
doctrinal net had so large a haul been made. It seemed to be our size as
much as our numbers that gave them joy; every cubic inch of us freed
from the damning error told in the ultimate sum of salvation. We did not
understand it all till we got on board.”
Here Blastemo broke in with a loud but somewhat awkward laugh. He seemed
to understand something of what was being told.
“We followed them bewildered, as they led us inland with shouts of joy.
But we had not gone far towards their city when a larger troop was
encountered, evidently still more formidable in their doctrinal dislikes
and means of conversion, for our conductors slunk away. Again were we
flooded with oratory, and again Blastemo managed the affair with
delicacy and success, as it seemed to us at the time. The same type of
incident occurred half a dozen times before we reached the town gates.
Our last troop of soul-captors was the largest of all, but dissension
broke out in their midst. It seemed that several understood Aleofanian,
and each of these declared that their orator misstated their creed and
gave us only his special shade of it. They kept whispering to one
another, till at last discontent broke out into a general mêlée. To make
matters worse, most of the bands that had been forced to steal off and
let their convertites slip from their grasp had evidently come to an
understanding and discovered that they had all been deceived by
Blastemo. They united their forces and came down upon us and our convoy,
just at the moment that they were rent with dissensions and ready to
come to blows. In the confusion Blastemo smuggled us into the city, and
out again by another gate, leaving the two parties to fight it out. When
we had got near to our boats he saved us again. We saw the whole mob of
pigmies hurrying over the beach. A few minutes were all we needed to
embark and escape. He uttered words that seemed to paralyse them. It was
a curse upon the most fundamental and sacred part of their creed, a
point on which they had agreed to sink differences. But it was only a
momentary paralysis. They recovered and rushed on again. Again he hurled
amongst them words that we did not understand. The effect was as
strange. They divided up into two hostile groups that set upon each
other with the greatest violence. Before they had seen that it was a
ruse of his and had checked their dissentient fury, we had got far
enough from the shore to be out of reach of their missiles, which now
began to rain into the sea.
“The phrase that had saved us was one on which the island was equally
divided; one set accepted it as the saving part of their creed; the
other abhorred it as the very poison of the soul. Blastemo explained to
us the fundamental difference between the two forces of ‘babbyclootsy’;
but none of us could grasp it, or, if we did, we forgot it at once; it
was far too fine for translation through two languages. We abandoned the
effort. So did we the other niceties of creed that split the Coxurians
up into units. At various stages in their history they had succeeded in
attaining unanimity of opinion for a short time; one party through
greater procreative power or missionary zeal got the upper hand in
numbers and annihilated the minority by what they called “acts of
faith,” processes of slow torture that ended in most cases in death, but
it was only for a short time. They divided up again into two main sects;
within, each was rent almost into units by fierce differences of
opinions; but the differences were sunk in hatred of the opposition.
This same history repeated itself every second generation. Every decade
or so the majority wiped out the dissentient few by the usual process of
faith, and then split up, only to re-coalesce into two almost equal
bodies for temporary belligerent purposes.
“They are very lazy except with their tongues; and so they are very
prolific, as nature almost unaided supplies them with plenty of food.
Their numbers are constantly recruited, too, with outcasts from the
other islands, exiled on account of their passion for religious
dogmatism. But through the ages the Coxurians had gradually grown
smaller and smaller in size, more wizened in countenance, and more
venomous in feelings. Their perpetual internecine feuds would soon have
wiped the miserable imps off the face of the earth but for two
provisions of nature; the arrival of new immigrants made them at times
quicksilver into two masses in order to save the souls of the newcomers;
at other times the exceptional force of will in one or more individuals
produced militant organisation that obliterated minor hatreds. It was a
good thing for the archipelago that there were ever a surviving few,
amongst whom might be placed all the doctrinomaniacs of their various
communities, in order to give issue to the poisonous theological blood.
These exiles would never remain if the island were deserted; as it was
they were welcomed and made much of by the two parties, that their souls
might be saved.”
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