When I saw Acquilla the next morning, I was shocked by the restlessness
and fatigue in her eyes.
“How did you sleep?” I asked maliciously.
“Badly,” she snapped back, and until the end of breakfast not another
word did she volunteer. However, she continued to stare at me with
such a look of frustrated perplexity that if I had not been secretly
delighted with the success of my artifice, I should have been
embarrassed. As it was, I had trouble in concealing my elation, for my
thoughts were racing. If only a spark of the eternal feminine still
slumbered in Acquilla! What a day it would be for the cause! At the end
of breakfast, she said abruptly:
“Did you mean what you said last night?”
“All or nothing,” I repeated in a way to have excited the admiration of
the empress who had invented the phrase.
Acquilla sprang up nervously and went inside. She was away for over an
hour and I was wondering if she meant to sulk through the day when she
returned, gentleness itself.
“Explain to me about the Dutch Reformed Church,” she said anxiously,
taking my hand in both of hers and looking earnestly in my eyes.
I was in the midst of a fervid eulogy on that bulwark of my ancestors,
when an aeromat poised above us and began to descend. I stopped with an
involuntary wavering of my voice.
“Who do you think has come for you, Bogardus?” she said softly, but
with the intentness of a cat.
The idea came to me that she had brought Dianne back to learn the truth
in a difficult confrontation.
“Not Dianne again!” I said with as much indifference as I could command.
“No--not Dianne,” she replied slowly, not entirely the dupe of my
manner, “nor Dulcina either. This time it is really Doctrina, the head
of the University.” But all at once her antagonism vanished and leaning
close to me, she said hurriedly: “She is the enemy of all males--and
oh, my dear, be careful! Consider every word you say. Beware of every
trap she may put you, for this afternoon you must appear before the
Supreme Council. I should not warn you, I know, but I cannot help it,
my beloved--”
She drew back hastily as Doctrina approached. Whatever reliance, in
my new Casanovian fatuity, I might have put in the strength of my
newly revealed sex appeal, one glance at Doctrina rudely dispelled my
illusions. She marched up the lawn like a procession of one, nodded
to Acquilla and gave me the conventional embrace. But the peck on
my cheeks was more like a bite than a kiss. We disliked each other
intuitively, cordially and immediately.
“Were you anyone of importance in your day?” she demanded, eyeing me
unfavorably.
“Only in the Socratic sense,” I replied humbly.
“I don’t seize the allusion.”
“Socrates, you may remember, claimed he was the wisest of men because
he knew he knew nothing,” I replied, bowing.
I thought this rather neat and disarming, but Doctrina was impermeable.
There was something Prussian in the massiveness of her jowl and the
lantern-like eyes that faced me down.
“Well, perhaps even so we may learn something,” she said, turning to
Acquilla, who was preparing to depart to the aero hospital.
“You will find him not only intelligent,” said Acquilla to give me a
hint, “but most appreciative of the progress we have made.”
“Humph--we shall see,” replied Doctrina, turning on her heel and
gesturing to me to follow.
I raised my eyebrows involuntarily at this abruptness, and caught
the agonized look of Acquilla fixed on me entreatingly. I nodded
encouragingly and followed my new cicerone, resolved to give her no
cause for complaint. After all when one belongs to a cause, discretion
is as necessary as courage.
“What do you know about the position of children in our civilization?”
said Doctrina when we had risen.
I felt as though I stood before an examining board.
“I know that in the pursuit of the noblest object of human life,
the liberation of the individual,” I replied from memory, “you have
abolished marriage and the home!”
“Well, go on,” said Doctrina in a noncommittal voice as I paused for
approval.
“That in order to do away with the evil of motherhood and the clash of
the generations, the children are taken as soon as born and entrusted
to the state.”
“So far, correct,” Doctrina said rather unwillingly, “but you forget--”
“Oh, yes,” I interjected hastily, “the new science likewise frees the
child from the evils of the mother and father complex. We heard a good
deal about that too, in our day,” I added proudly.
“Really? Then why didn’t you act upon it?” said Doctrina, in whom the
repressed mother-in-law instinct that must slumber in every woman, had
turned blood to acid. “Those archaic tribal institutions you clung
to--motherhood and the home, were responsible for all the inhibitions,
abnormalities, psychoneurotics that made you human beings slaves of
prejudices and fears.”
I was seized with a hot indignation and a hasty retort was on my lips
at this blasphemy, but I remembered in time and controlled myself with
difficulty.
“There were happy memories too,” I suggested.
“All unnecessary. The child develops quicker when thrown on his own
initiative and subjected to the stimulation of competition with other
children. We will begin with the state nurseries and the primary
schools,” she added, pointing to a long wooded tract about the middle
of Long Island.
We alighted on a great star-shaped campus, the administration hall
in the center with hospitals like great glass hangars at the apexes.
The new-born infants were being classified and registered according to
their caste, receiving a disk which indicated the strain of the mother
and father, for statistical purposes presumably.
“The child is subjected to the first physical tests immediately,” said
Doctrina. “In the exceedingly rare instances where some unforeseen
conjunction of inherited strains has produced a defection, we of
course, do not permit it to grow up to a life of misery.”
“You suppress it?” I said shuddering.
“Of course,” said Doctrina noticing my emotion. “In your sentimental
day you preferred, in order to save your own sensibilities, to condemn
it to a tragic existence.”
“You will be surprised to know that even in my day such a course had
its male adherents,” I replied defiantly. “But then even in your
scientific breeding, failures do result.”
“Less than one hundredth of one percent,” replied Doctrina. “Strangely
enough, these throwbacks occur in the higher castes.”
“When the intellectual conjunction is too strong?”
“So it appears, for of course, with us the brain has become
tremendously developed. That is one reason why, in the case of the
male, we have found it advisable to perfect the physical vigor at the
expense of the mental.”
I had all I could do not to betray myself at this insolence. As it was,
I could not help saying: “But tell me, why, Doctrina, you are so set
against the male?”
“I was born in a time when the memory of the male catastrophe was still
fresh. I do not theorize. I know. Are you defending that era of tragic
futility?”
“God forbid!” I hastened to reply. “I am only curious. But men of
genius, for I believe that genius still shows itself in my decadent
sex, are not then permitted to breed?”
“On the contrary, but not to mate with those castes which have reached
a high degree of mentality. We find the best results come from a
union with the Cerenes particularly those that live habitually in the
mountains.”
The hospitals though on a grander scale, I found in their material
arrangements much like our own, with the exception of course, of the
ingenuous devices by which light and air were continuously provided.
All the nurses were of the lithe physical type of Acquilla, though the
visiting doctors inclined to the brunette type, not over six feet,
and thinner. Two things struck my attention at once, the absence of
eyeglasses and operating rooms. Surgery, it appeared, had passed out
of general use with the knowledge of the glandular organization of
the body and was only reserved for accidents and the experimental
laboratories. The uniform good eyesight was achieved, first by
selective breeding and more particularly with the discovery of what
might be called ocular calisthenics, exercises by which the eye was
strengthened in youth.
Needless to say, my appearance excited the greatest curiosity, for
the circumstances of my arrival had evidently been widely broadcast.
However, the prestige of Doctrina commanded such universal deference
that all curiosity was within the bounds of good manners.
“The first stage,” said Doctrina, resuming her lecture as we passed
to the kindergarten, “is in the education of the mind how to study.
We discover the aptitude of each child and concentrate on the things
it likes to achieve the ideal of perfection. Later when the mind has
acquired the habit of concentration, we introduce those subjects which
are difficult to it. Needless to say, we consider this period the most
critical and the indications we discover as to the quality and fineness
of the mind are seldom in error. In other words by the age of five it
is possible to make the division of the castes with unfailing accuracy.”
“Yet many great geniuses developed late.”
“In your time yes, from faulty early training and also from the error
of subjecting an abnormal mind to a normal routine. In our practice we
are, of course, aided by the knowledge of the inherited tendencies.
Such children are the object of special attention.”
“Then education is specialization.”
“Not entirely. Only we have reversed the process. We begin, as I said,
by intensive training along lines of natural aptitude in order to
produce the enthusiasm for knowledge. Later sometimes as late as ten or
eleven, we broaden the horizon along the lines of general knowledge.”
“At what period then, do you finish your education?”
Doctrina looked at me in surprise.
“Really, Bogardus, for the clever man you are supposed to be, that is a
strange question.”
I did not perceive immediately the reason for her astonishment, so I
answered, somewhat piqued:
“I do not see anything strange in my perfectly natural curiosity. In my
day we were graduated from college at twenty-two, and spent from two
to six years in supplementary schools if we chose the profession of
medicine or law or architecture.”
“And then you were educated?”
“And then we were educated, yes.”
“In the higher castes we never cease to attend the University,” said
Doctrina crushingly. “As we conceive life as a pursuit of knowledge, we
naturally never cease our studies. Even Acquilla gives ten hours a week
to following the lectures of our greatest teachers.”
“Is this true of all castes?”
“Certainly not. Why should it be? How absurd! The education of
Domesticates is completed at the age of eight; the Cerenes have two
years longer, the Vulcates likewise, the Æsthetes at twelve.”
“What! But you are talking of children!”
“We have abbreviated the period of childhood. In your day you spent
half your life in the simplest preparation of how to live. With us the
age of puberty is the one of complete maturity and the end of primary
education. That,” she added acidly, “would be about the same as your
college matriculation.”
“So childhood has gone too,” I was betrayed into exclaiming.
“Not at all. We give a full five years to it.”
“But, Doctrina,” I persisted, carried away with my resentment, “if
there is no maternal instinct left--”
“I did not say that.”
“But if the mother surrenders her child--”
“These are the real mothers,” said Doctrina with a gesture that
embraced the entire organization. “Because a woman bore a child,
voluntarily or involuntarily, you ascribed to her maternal qualities.
Rubbish! Sentimentality! Bearing of children has nothing to do with
the maternal instinct! A woman is either egocentric or egofugal. In
your day how many women, genuine mothers, were forced to sit and starve
themselves in a lonely spinsterhood?”
“It is true!” I exclaimed involuntarily, “and I say now as I said then,
that the cruelest thing our society did was to deny the right of every
woman who wanted, to have a child!”
Doctrina looked at me with almost a human sympathy and continued in a
less bellicose tone:
“That remark does you honor. Any woman who loves children and wishes
to find her happiness in their upbringing is privileged to enter this
sisterhood. For remark another thing, which the later psycho-analysts
recognized, the maternal instinct is not necessarily confined to one’s
own child, but goes out to all.”
“Even to friends and husbands,” I added smiling. “All this is
undeniably true.”
“More than this we recognize that in man too, this instinct exists and
we permit a teaching brotherhood.”
“Here?” I said, looking about eagerly.
“It is useless,” Doctrina said severely. “The monasteries which are
devoted to the care of the young males from five to ten are never
entered by an outsider except a Minervene of the highest academic rank.
You see,” she added, “that in the treatment of your sex, we strive
to live up to a standard of enlightened justice. What they crave we
supply--with certain limitations.”
I opened my mouth to debate this ex-parte assertion, but again
refrained. My reticence had been rewarded by a friendlier attitude.
Until I had appeared before the Supreme Council and had some inkling of
the treatment to be accorded to me, I decided not to show my hand.
“The Histriones and the Minervenes, being the superior intellectual
castes, never complete their education. But now since we have the time,
on the way to the University, we can stop at our Museum of Archeology.”
At the Museum we found a sizable crowd--all women of course--about the
halls devoted to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My appearance,
needless to say, created such a disturbance among the younger elements
that Doctrina, I believe, seriously considered forcing me to take a
veil. Fortunately a few peremptory commands, delivered in her best
Prussian style, had the effect of clearing the halls.
The Museum, I confess fascinated me, for in a glance I felt myself in
a cemetery of familiar things. The first thing I saw was full-sized
reproduction of a locomotive and a section of rail labelled:
_PRIMITIVE METHOD OF CONVEYANCE_
ABOUT THE YEAR 1976
That the railroad had disappeared before the development of highways
and motor buses, I was prepared to believe, but not to find that the
automobile likewise was a thing of the past which was gone, with
the ship--all cumbersome and unnecessary in this age of amphibian
aeroplanes able to remain stationary at any height or to streak
across the sky with the speed of projectiles. There were life-size
reproductions of the customs and manners of our day, and I must admit,
in comparison with the ease and grace of the modern garment, that at
the sight of the incredible fashions which once afflicted the men of my
day, I had to acknowledge defeat. We had of course, but a moment before
we were forced to depart for the city, or rather the University of New
York.
I found the University laid out on the star-shaped plan which was
evidently their favorite concentration. The avenues were fully a
hundred yards in width and the buildings on that monumental scale which
one sees only at St. Peter’s and the Vatican. In the centre of each
building was an immense dome-shaped theatre which I learned was used
for the reproduction in living pictures of the records of historical
events and astronomical and scientific phenomena. There were at least
a dozen of these star-shaped campuses extending over a great area and
surrounded by grouped quadrangles where the students lived.
What struck me at once was the small number of students, not exceeding
a hundred to each separate college; the uniformity of the type and the
air of extreme seriousness in all their contacts.
“Acquilla told me New York consisted of fifty thousand inhabitants,” I
said turning to Doctrina in surprise. “But from what I see, there are
only a tenth of that number.”
“This represents only the higher University. The industrial city is
across the river and residential New York of course, extends a hundred
miles in every direction.”
“And these students I see, what age can they possibly be?”
“As a rule a girl enters here at the age of twelve and completes her
preliminary general education in two years, when she is allotted her
caste group number according to her capabilities. She then pursues her
higher studies for from five to ten years returning for six months
every fifth year until the age of thirty. At that time if she is of the
Minervene caste she is privileged to return for two hours a day for the
rest of her existence.”
“The University then is not simply the political symbol of the state,
but its social centre as well?”
“Exactly, and there are of course, according to her attainments, inner
circles to which she is privileged to enter. But I have promised to
bring you, Bogardus, to the Academy and we must not be late.”
We had been flying gently over the ground as Doctrina had been
demonstrating the organization of the buildings and now came to light
near one of the charming groves of red woods which lay between the
points of the star. A score of magnificent trees fully one hundred and
fifty feet in height blotted out the warmth of the noonday sun and made
a Parnassian retreat.
“How is it possible,” I exclaimed, “to produce such trees in less than
two centuries?”
“Oh, there have been discoveries in horticulture that will surprise
you,” said Doctrina, enjoying my astonishment. “It is now just as easy
to stimulate the growth of a tree, as it is that of a human being.
These trees you see are not more than fifty years old. But that is
child’s play to what has been done. An acre of farmland now produces
five crops a year by the use of the new nitrates and intensified
cultivation under water. We’ll leave the car here.”
We descended and walked toward the grove. My appearance as usual,
created a commotion and instantly the air above was clouded over by
hundreds of small aeroplanes which hovered over us like the migration
of birds.
“Curious how excited people are over your coming,” said Doctrina,
acidly. “I suppose it is because you are over a hundred and fifty years
older than anyone who has yet come to us.”
Strangely enough this thought had not yet impressed itself on me.
It was true! I was actually two hundred and eighty years old and in
comparison Acquilla with the bloom of her seventy-eight years, was a
mere child! I drew a long breath, stretched myself on the points of my
toes and was reassured by a feeling of extraordinary youth and vitality.
“You are privileged, indeed, Bogardus,” said Doctrina, leading the way
in the grove, “for you are going to meet our great Manfreda and the
Supreme Council of Amazonia, an honor that never before has been given
to a man.”