For the sake of peace and quiet Denis had retired earlier on this same
afternoon to his bedroom. He wanted to work, but the hour was a drowsy
one, and lunch, so recently eaten, weighed heavily on body and mind. The
meridian demon was upon him; he was possessed by that bored and hopeless
post-prandial melancholy which the coenobites of old knew and feared
under the name of “accidie.” He felt, like Ernest Dowson, “a little
weary.” He was in the mood to write something rather exquisite and
gentle and quietist in tone; something a little droopy and at the same
time--how should he put it?--a little infinite. He thought of Anne, of
love hopeless and unattainable. Perhaps that was the ideal kind of love,
the hopeless kind--the quiet, theoretical kind of love. In this sad mood
of repletion he could well believe it. He began to write. One elegant
quatrain had flowed from beneath his pen:
“A brooding love which is at most
The stealth of moonbeams when they slide,
Evoking colour’s bloodless ghost,
O’er some scarce-breathing breast or side...”
when his attention was attracted by a sound from outside. He looked down
from his window; there they were, Anne and Gombauld, talking, laughing
together. They crossed the courtyard in front, and passed out of sight
through the gate in the right-hand wall. That was the way to the
green close and the granary; she was going to sit for him again. His
pleasantly depressing melancholy was dissipated by a puff of violent
emotion; angrily he threw his quatrain into the waste-paper basket and
ran downstairs. “The stealth of moonbeams,” indeed!
In the hall he saw Mr. Scogan; the man seemed to be lying in wait. Denis
tried to escape, but in vain. Mr. Scogan’s eye glittered like the eye of
the Ancient Mariner.
“Not so fast,” he said, stretching out a small saurian hand with pointed
nails--“not so fast. I was just going down to the flower garden to take
the sun. We’ll go together.”
Denis abandoned himself; Mr. Scogan put on his hat and they went out arm
in arm. On the shaven turf of the terrace Henry Wimbush and Mary were
playing a solemn game of bowls. They descended by the yew-tree walk.
It was here, thought Denis, here that Anne had fallen, here that he
had kissed her, here--and he blushed with retrospective shame at the
memory--here that he had tried to carry her and failed. Life was awful!
“Sanity!” said Mr. Scogan, suddenly breaking a long silence.
“Sanity--that’s what’s wrong with me and that’s what will be wrong with
you, my dear Denis, when you’re old enough to be sane or insane. In
a sane world I should be a great man; as things are, in this curious
establishment, I am nothing at all; to all intents and purposes I don’t
exist. I am just Vox et praeterea nihil.”
Denis made no response; he was thinking of other things. “After all,”
he said to himself--“after all, Gombauld is better looking than I, more
entertaining, more confident; and, besides, he’s already somebody and
I’m still only potential...”
“Everything that ever gets done in this world is done by madmen,” Mr.
Scogan went on. Denis tried not to listen, but the tireless insistence
of Mr. Scogan’s discourse gradually compelled his attention. “Men such
as I am, such as you may possibly become, have never achieved anything.
We’re too sane; we’re merely reasonable. We lack the human touch, the
compelling enthusiastic mania. People are quite ready to listen to the
philosophers for a little amusement, just as they would listen to a
fiddler or a mountebank. But as to acting on the advice of the men of
reason--never. Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of
reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman.
For the madman appeals to what is fundamental, to passion and
the instincts; the philosophers to what is superficial and
supererogatory--reason.”
They entered the garden; at the head of one of the alleys stood a green
wooden bench, embayed in the midst of a fragrant continent of lavender
bushes. It was here, though the place was shadeless and one breathed
hot, dry perfume instead of air--it was here that Mr. Scogan elected to
sit. He thrived on untempered sunlight.
“Consider, for example, the case of Luther and Erasmus.” He took out
his pipe and began to fill it as he talked. “There was Erasmus, a man
of reason if ever there was one. People listened to him at first--a
new virtuoso performing on that elegant and resourceful instrument, the
intellect; they even admired and venerated him. But did he move them to
behave as he wanted them to behave--reasonably, decently, or at least a
little less porkishly than usual? He did not. And then Luther appears,
violent, passionate, a madman insanely convinced about matters in which
there can be no conviction. He shouted, and men rushed to follow
him. Erasmus was no longer listened to; he was reviled for his
reasonableness. Luther was serious, Luther was reality--like the Great
War. Erasmus was only reason and decency; he lacked the power, being a
sage, to move men to action. Europe followed Luther and embarked on
a century and a half of war and bloody persecution. It’s a melancholy
story.” Mr. Scogan lighted a match. In the intense light the flame was
all but invisible. The smell of burning tobacco began to mingle with the
sweetly acrid smell of the lavender.
“If you want to get men to act reasonably, you must set about persuading
them in a maniacal manner. The very sane precepts of the founders of
religions are only made infectious by means of enthusiasms which to a
sane man must appear deplorable. It is humiliating to find how impotent
unadulterated sanity is. Sanity, for example, informs us that the only
way in which we can preserve civilisation is by behaving decently and
intelligently. Sanity appeals and argues; our rulers persevere in their
customary porkishness, while we acquiesce and obey. The only hope is a
maniacal crusade; I am ready, when it comes, to beat a tambourine with
the loudest, but at the same time I shall feel a little ashamed of
myself. However”--Mr. Scogan shrugged his shoulders and, pipe in hand,
made a gesture of resignation--“It’s futile to complain that things are
as they are. The fact remains that sanity unassisted is useless. What
we want, then, is a sane and reasonable exploitation of the forces of
insanity. We sane men will have the power yet.” Mr. Scogan’s eyes shone
with a more than ordinary brightness, and, taking his pipe out of his
mouth, he gave vent to his loud, dry, and somehow rather fiendish laugh.
“But I don’t want power,” said Denis. He was sitting in limp discomfort
at one end of the bench, shading his eyes from the intolerable light.
Mr. Scogan, bolt upright at the other end, laughed again.
“Everybody wants power,” he said. “Power in some form or other. The sort
of power you hanker for is literary power. Some people want power
to persecute other human beings; you expend your lust for power in
persecuting words, twisting them, moulding them, torturing them to obey
you. But I divagate.”
“Do you?” asked Denis faintly.
“Yes,” Mr. Scogan continued, unheeding, “the time will come. We men
of intelligence will learn to harness the insanities to the service of
reason. We can’t leave the world any longer to the direction of chance.
We can’t allow dangerous maniacs like Luther, mad about dogma, like
Napoleon, mad about himself, to go on casually appearing and turning
everything upside down. In the past it didn’t so much matter; but our
modern machine is too delicate. A few more knocks like the Great War,
another Luther or two, and the whole concern will go to pieces. In
future, the men of reason must see that the madness of the world’s
maniacs is canalised into proper channels, is made to do useful work,
like a mountain torrent driving a dynamo...”
“Making electricity to light a Swiss hotel,” said Denis. “You ought to
complete the simile.”
Mr. Scogan waved away the interruption. “There’s only one thing to be
done,” he said. “The men of intelligence must combine, must conspire,
and seize power from the imbeciles and maniacs who now direct us. They
must found the Rational State.”
The heat that was slowly paralysing all Denis’s mental and bodily
faculties, seemed to bring to Mr. Scogan additional vitality. He talked
with an ever-increasing energy, his hands moved in sharp, quick, precise
gestures, his eyes shone. Hard, dry, and continuous, his voice went
on sounding and sounding in Denis’s ears with the insistence of a
mechanical noise.
“In the Rational State,” he heard Mr. Scogan saying, “human beings will
be separated out into distinct species, not according to the colour of
their eyes or the shape of their skulls, but according to the qualities
of their mind and temperament. Examining psychologists, trained to what
would now seem an almost superhuman clairvoyance, will test each child
that is born and assign it to its proper species. Duly labelled and
docketed, the child will be given the education suitable to members of
its species, and will be set, in adult life, to perform those functions
which human beings of his variety are capable of performing.”
“How many species will there be?” asked Denis.
“A great many, no doubt,” Mr. Scogan answered; “the classification will
be subtle and elaborate. But it is not in the power of a prophet to go
into details, nor is it his business. I will do more than indicate the
three main species into which the subjects of the Rational State will be
divided.”
He paused, cleared his throat, and coughed once or twice, evoking in
Denis’s mind the vision of a table with a glass and water-bottle, and,
lying across one corner, a long white pointer for the lantern pictures.
“The three main species,” Mr. Scogan went on, “will be these: the
Directing Intelligences, the Men of Faith, and the Herd. Among the
Intelligences will be found all those capable of thought, those who know
how to attain a certain degree of freedom--and, alas, how limited, even
among the most intelligent, that freedom is!--from the mental bondage of
their time. A select body of Intelligences, drawn from among those who
have turned their attention to the problems of practical life, will
be the governors of the Rational State. They will employ as their
instruments of power the second great species of humanity--the men of
Faith, the Madmen, as I have been calling them, who believe in things
unreasonably, with passion, and are ready to die for their beliefs and
their desires. These wild men, with their fearful potentialities for
good or for mischief, will no longer be allowed to react casually to
a casual environment. There will be no more Caesar Borgias, no more
Luthers and Mohammeds, no more Joanna Southcotts, no more Comstocks. The
old-fashioned Man of Faith and Desire, that haphazard creature of brute
circumstance, who might drive men to tears and repentance, or who might
equally well set them on to cutting one another’s throats, will be
replaced by a new sort of madman, still externally the same, still
bubbling with a seemingly spontaneous enthusiasm, but, ah, how very
different from the madman of the past! For the new Man of Faith will be
expending his passion, his desire, and his enthusiasm in the propagation
of some reasonable idea. He will be, all unawares, the tool of some
superior intelligence.”
Mr. Scogan chuckled maliciously; it was as though he were taking a
revenge, in the name of reason, on enthusiasts. “From their earliest
years, as soon, that is, as the examining psychologists have assigned
them their place in the classified scheme, the Men of Faith will have
had their special education under the eye of the Intelligences. Moulded
by a long process of suggestion, they will go out into the world,
preaching and practising with a generous mania the coldly reasonable
projects of the Directors from above. When these projects are
accomplished, or when the ideas that were useful a decade ago have
ceased to be useful, the Intelligences will inspire a new generation of
madmen with a new eternal truth. The principal function of the Men of
Faith will be to move and direct the Multitude, that third great species
consisting of those countless millions who lack intelligence and are
without valuable enthusiasm. When any particular effort is required of
the Herd, when it is thought necessary, for the sake of solidarity, that
humanity shall be kindled and united by some single enthusiastic desire
or idea, the Men of Faith, primed with some simple and satisfying creed,
will be sent out on a mission of evangelisation. At ordinary times, when
the high spiritual temperature of a Crusade would be unhealthy, the
Men of Faith will be quietly and earnestly busy with the great work of
education. In the upbringing of the Herd, humanity’s almost boundless
suggestibility will be scientifically exploited. Systematically, from
earliest infancy, its members will be assured that there is no happiness
to be found except in work and obedience; they will be made to believe
that they are happy, that they are tremendously important beings, and
that everything they do is noble and significant. For the lower species
the earth will be restored to the centre of the universe and man to
pre-eminence on the earth. Oh, I envy the lot of the commonality in the
Rational State! Working their eight hours a day, obeying their betters,
convinced of their own grandeur and significance and immortality, they
will be marvellously happy, happier than any race of men has ever been.
They will go through life in a rosy state of intoxication, from which
they will never awake. The Men of Faith will play the cup-bearers at
this lifelong bacchanal, filling and ever filling again with the warm
liquor that the Intelligences, in sad and sober privacy behind the
scenes, will brew for the intoxication of their subjects.”
“And what will be my place in the Rational State?” Denis drowsily
inquired from under his shading hand.
Mr. Scogan looked at him for a moment in silence. “It’s difficult to see
where you would fit in,” he said at last. “You couldn’t do manual work;
you’re too independent and unsuggestible to belong to the larger Herd;
you have none of the characteristics required in a Man of Faith. As for
the Directing Intelligences, they will have to be marvellously clear and
merciless and penetrating.” He paused and shook his head. “No, I can see
no place for you; only the lethal chamber.”
Deeply hurt, Denis emitted the imitation of a loud Homeric laugh. “I’m
getting sunstroke here,” he said, and got up.
Mr. Scogan followed his example, and they walked slowly away down the
narrow path, brushing the blue lavender flowers in their passage. Denis
pulled a sprig of lavender and sniffed at it; then some dark leaves of
rosemary that smelt like incense in a cavernous church. They passed a
bed of opium poppies, dispetaled now; the round, ripe seedheads were
brown and dry--like Polynesian trophies, Denis thought; severed heads
stuck on poles. He liked the fancy enough to impart it to Mr. Scogan.
“Like Polynesian trophies...” Uttered aloud, the fancy seemed less
charming and significant than it did when it first occurred to him.
There was a silence, and in a growing wave of sound the whir of the
reaping machines swelled up from the fields beyond the garden and then
receded into a remoter hum.
“It is satisfactory to think,” said Mr. Scogan, as they strolled slowly
onward, “that a multitude of people are toiling in the harvest fields in
order that we may talk of Polynesia. Like every other good thing in this
world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however,
it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. Let us be
duly thankful for that, my dear Denis--duly thankful,” he repeated, and
knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
Denis was not listening. He had suddenly remembered Anne. She was with
Gombauld--alone with him in his studio. It was an intolerable thought.
“Shall we go and pay a call on Gombauld?” he suggested carelessly. “It
would be amusing to see what he’s doing now.”
He laughed inwardly to think how furious Gombauld would be when he saw
them arriving.