THE GODDESS OF THE TEMPLE
The man in blue with the machine badge on his shoulder, who was waiting
for me at the entrance, surveyed me with a smile of tolerant amusement.
“You are now at the heart of civilization,” he began. “Let me act as
your guide, for I see that you are a stranger. Is it not wonderful to
contemplate that here, upon a space of a few hektares, man has erected a
monument that shall endure forever! This wing,” he added, “is Doctor
Sanson’s domain, while Boss Lembken exercises his priestly function from
the People’s House, under the dome.”
He led me within the portico and through a swing door on the north side
of the building. I found myself within a circular chamber like a
hospital theater, with marble seats rising almost to the roof around a
small central platform, on which were a crystal table, a large silver
tank, and a cabinet with glass doors, through which I could see surgical
appliances.
“This is the Animal Vivisection Bureau,” said my guide. “It is not open
to the public while demonstrations are being given. The Council does not
permit the laity to acquire medical knowledge. We have several hundred
dogs constantly kenneled beneath, in the sound-proof rooms; they are
born there and, in general, die here.”
“You use only dogs?” I asked.
“At present, yes. Their trustfulness and docility make them the best
subjects, for we are demonstrating to our classes the nature and
symptoms of pain. Now here—”
I followed him through another swing door into a similar room, but at
least twice the size.
“This is the Vivisection Bureau,” he continued, taking his stand beside
a table of reddish marble mottled with blue veins, with a cup-like
depression at the head. “The people call it, jocularly, of course, the
Rest Cure Home. You can guess why. Criminals and other suitable subjects
are never lacking for experimentation. Doctor Sanson is said to be
making investigations which will prove of a revolutionary nature. Then,
the supply of moron children appears to be inexhaustible. Again, of
course, there is the annual Surgeons’ Day, when we round up the
populace. The date being movable, the ignorant are kept in a state of
wholesome apprehension. But let us follow that throng.”
Through the glass of the swing door I perceived a large crowd pouring
into another part of the building, following in the wake of an old man,
perhaps eighty years of age, who was being conducted by two of the
blue-coated guards. Behind him trailed a little rat-faced man in blue,
who glanced furtively about him with a smile of bravado. We went with
the mob into a third chamber.
It was about the size of the second, and in the center was a large
structure of steel, with a swing door. The brass rail which surrounded
it kept back the spectators, who lined it, heaving and staring, and
uttering loud exclamations of interest and delight. The room was filled
with the nauseating stench of an anaesthetic.
One of the guards raised a drop-bar in the rail, and the old man passed
through and walked with firm steps toward the steel structure. His white
beard drifted over his breast, his blue eyes were fixed hard, and he had
the poise of complete resignation. At the door he turned and addressed
the spectators.
“It’s a bad world, and I am glad to go out of it,” he said. “I remember
when the world was Christian. It was a better world then.”
He passed through, and the anaesthetic fumes suddenly became
intensified. I heard the creak as of a chair inside the structure, a
sigh, and the soft dabbing of a wet sponge. That was all, and the mob,
struck silent, began to shuffle, and then to murmur. I saw the rat-faced
man slinking away.
“This,” said my guide, “is popularly called the Comfortable Bedroom. The
old man can no longer produce his hektone and a quarter monthly, and his
grandson, who has the right to take over the burden, has just been
mated. Most of our old qualify for life in senility, but no doubt he
dissipated his credit margin in youth. Again, many prefer to go this
way. Now if he had been a woman he would have been accredited thirty
hektones for each child supplied to the State. That is Doctor Sanson’s
method of assuring productivity.”
But I broke from the man in horror, forcing my passage through the
crowd, which was dispersing already. I ran on through hall after hall,
approaching the central part of the building, until I was again blocked
by a crowd, this time of young men and women in blue, who were reading a
lengthy list of letters and figures, suspended high in the center of
this chamber. Most of these young people were in pairs, and, as they
read, they nudged each other and exchanged facetious phrases.
But one pair I saw who, with clasped hands, turned wretchedly away and
passed back slowly toward the entrance.
“This is more cheerful than the Comfortable Bedroom,” murmured a voice
at my side.
The new speaker was a dapper young fellow with a small, pert mustache
and an air of insinuating familiarity. He placed his hand upon my arm to
detain me as I started to move away.
“The kindly Council, which relieves old age of the burden of life, also
provides that the life to come shall be as efficient for productivity as
possible,” he said. “I see you are a stranger and may not know that
these young people are here to learn the names of their mates.”
“Do you mean that the Council decides whom each man or woman is to
marry?” I asked.
“To mate? Yap, in ordinary cases. There is no mating for one-fourth of
the population—that is to say, those of the morons whose germ-plasm
contains impure dominants, and who are yet capable of sufficient
productivity to be permitted to reach maturity. Grade 2, the ordinary
defectives, who number another fourth of the people, are at present
mated, though Doctor Sanson will soon abolish this practice. The sexes
of this class are united in accordance with their Sanson rating, with a
view to eliminating the dominants.”
“And these are defectives of what you call Grade 2?” I asked.
“No, these are all Grade 1 defectives,” he answered, regarding me with
amusement. “Defectives such as us. We number forty-five per cent of the
population and form the average type. They are free to choose within
limits. The Council prepares periodically lists of young men and young
women in whom the deficiencies are recessive, and those on one side of
the list may mate with any of those upon the other side. Monogamy is,
however, frowned upon. I suppose you, in your country, never heard of
this plan?”
“Yes, it used to be called the totem, or group marriage, and was
confined to the most degraded savages on earth, the Aborigines of
Australia,” I answered. But the little man, who had evidently not heard
of Australia, only looked at me blankly. A rush of people toward the
next hall carried us apart, and, not loath to lose my companion, I
followed the crowd, to find myself in the immense central auditorium,
within which orators were addressing the people from various platforms.
Upon that nearest me a lecturer was holding forth with the enthusiasm of
some Dominican of old.
“Produce! Produce!” he yelled, with wild gesticulations. “Out with the
unproductive who cannot create a hektone and a quarter monthly! Out with
the moron! Out with the defective! Out with the unadaptable! Out with
the weak! Out with him who denies the consubstantiality of Force and
Matter! No compromise! Sterilize, sterilize, as Doctor Sanson demands of
you! There are defectives in the shops today, spreading the moron
doctrines of Christianity. There are asymmetries and variations from the
Sanson norm, cunningly concealed, legacies of malformations from
degenerate ancestors, impure germ-plasm that menaces the future of the
human race. Let us support Sanson, citizens! Go through the city with
sickle and pruning-hook for the perfect race of the future, in the name
of democracy! Praise the great Boss!”
“Hurrah!” shrieked the mob enthusiastically.
“Will you not go up and see the Temple goddess?” whispered a voice in my
ear.
I started, but I could not discern the speaker. I looked up. On either
side of the auditorium a high staircase of gleaming marble led to a
gallery which surrounded it. Doors were set in the wall of this in many
places, and above were more stairs and more galleries, tier above tier.
At the head of each stairway one of the guards was posted. He stood
there like a statue, picturesque in his blue uniform, which made a
splotch of color against the white marble wall.
“Go up and ask no questions,” whispered somebody on my other side; and
again I turned quickly, but none of those near me seemed to have spoken.
I went up the stairway, passing the guard, who did not stop or question
me. As I stopped in the gallery, high above the auditorium, a door
opened, and there came out a man of extreme age, dressed in white, with
a gold ant badge on either shoulder. He propped himself upon a staff,
and stood blinking and leering at me, and wagging his head like a
grotesque idol.
“A stranger!” he exclaimed. “So you have come to see the goddess of the
Ant Temple! Would you like to stand upon the altar platform and see her
face to face? It only costs one hektone, but it is customary to offer a
gratuity to the assistant priest.”
I thrust the money into the shaking hand that he stretched out to me. At
that moment I did not know whether I was still free, or whether this was
that peremptory summons to the Council of which David had warned me. I
realized that the spies who had dogged my path were all links in some
subtle scheme.
The old man preceded me into a large room on the south side of the
auditorium, beyond which I saw another door. This seemed to be a
robing-room for the priests, for white garments with the gold ant badge
hung from the walls, which were covered with mirrors, from each of which
the horrible old face grimaced at me.
“You are to go through that door,” said the old man, pointing to the far
end of the room. “It is a great privilege to look upon the face of the
goddess. Not everyone may do so, but you are not an ordinary man, are
you?”
He shot a penetrating glance at me.
“Thus the Messiah will look upon her when he comes,” he continued. “At
least, so runs the prophecy, and remember, you may be he, for it is
foretold that he will come unknowing his mission. But wait!”—for I was
hastening toward the door—“you must put on a priest’s robes. It is not
proper for a layman to look upon the goddess.”
He indicated a white robe with the ant badge that hung on a table beside
me.
“Don’t be in a hurry,” he mumbled. “It is a great pleasure to me to talk
with strangers from remote countries. Where do you come from? You look
like a man of the last century, come back to life. How the barbarians of
that period would stare if they could see our civilization!”
“What is this Temple?” I inquired. “Do men worship an ant, and are you
its priest?”
He chuckled and leered at me. “Oh, no, I am a very humble old man,” he
answered. “I am only an assistant priest. Boss Lembken is the Chief
Priest. And you ask about the Ant? The people worship it, but it is not
known whether they see it as the symbol of labor, or whether they think
it is a god. The religious ideas of the people were always a confused
and chaotic jumble, even in the old days of Christianity. But the Ant is
only the transition stage from God to Matter. We know there is no God,
nothing but Matter, and man is born of Matter and destined to be
resolved into it. But the people are still ignorant, and it keeps them
calm, to have an ant to pray to. Besides, if there were not the Ant they
would turn to Christianity again and set back the clock of progress.
“I remember Christianity well. In my young days it used to be a power. I
used to go to church,” he cackled. “Not that I believed in God, any more
than the rest. Only the aristocrats and the intellectuals did that. I
didn’t believe in the Devil either, but I do now. Do you know the
Devil’s name? It is human nature.”
I remained speechless beneath the spell that the wretch cast over me.
“Yes, the Devil is human nature,” he resumed. “For it would thwart
progress forever, groveling before its idol of a soul. But already, when
I was a young man, only the intellectuals believed in Christianity. Once
it had been the masses. But Science proved that there was nothing but
Matter, and the momentum of the materialistic impulse was too strong for
the reviving faith. The aristocrats should have guarded their faith
instead of letting the people rise to control. But they were fools. They
set up in little rival bodies when Christ prayed for them to be one.
They permitted divorce when He said no. They tried to compromise with
Him, all except Rome and barbarous Russia, and that is why St. Peter’s
still stands as a Cathedral while St. Paul’s is the Ant Temple. I
remember it all.
“Christ knew. He knew they would go under if they tried to sail with the
wind. When Science said there were no miracles they cut out the
miracles. And when the visionary Myers made his generation think there
might be miracles after all, they put some of them back again, but very
cautiously. They didn’t know that the people weren’t going to follow
them into rationalism and then out again. Nobody was going to believe
when the leaders themselves didn’t believe.
“When He taught them how to heal the sick they preferred to mix His
prescription with drugs. They couldn’t believe in one thing and they
couldn’t believe in the other. He told them to leave Caesar’s things to
Caesar, and they went into politics. They tried to bargain with
Socialism when it became strong, but it wouldn’t have anything to do
with them. Then they preached housing reform and a good living, when He
praised poverty and told them to preach resignation. They couldn’t obey
in anything; they thought they knew better; they tried to follow the
times after they split into pieces; of course they went under.”
“Is there no Christianity anywhere?” I asked.
“In your native Russia,” he jeered. “In St. Peter’s, because the Italian
Province segregates the evil to keep it under observation. In Cologne,
because the bishop learned the secret of the Ray. And in the defectives’
shops. They say they have the Scriptures hidden in there, but the
Council has put dozens to the torture and has never found them. It is
hard to clear the human mind of its inherited rubbish. After the
Revolution, Christianity continued to be taught among other myths. But
it aroused anti-social instincts. Christians were the enemies of human
progress. They used to go into the Rest Cure Home and ask to be
vivisected in place of the wretched morons there. You can’t build up a
progressive civilization out of people like that. So the teaching was
made a capital offense. That was after we burned the bishops.”
“What!” I cried.
“Death by burning came to us from the great trans-Atlantic democracy,
you know,” he said, leering at me. “Europe had forgotten it. But we set
up the stakes again. I saw Archbishop Tremont, of York, and the Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Westminster burned side by side in the ruins of
Westminster Hall. Then there was Bonham, of London, and Bethany, of
Manchester, and Dean Cross, of Chichester; we put them in plaster of
paris and unslaked lime first. The morons could have fled to
Skandogermania, which was not free then. But they went, all three, into
the Council Hall, and preached to the Council. That was in Boss Rose’s
time. So they had to go. And they blessed us while their bones were
crackling. You can’t make a progressive nation out of people like that.”
I hurried toward the door. I pushed it open, and it swung back
noiselessly behind me.
Within the vastness of the Temple I heard a murmur rise, a wail of
misery that made the ensuing silence more dreadful still. For here I
encountered only thick gloom and emptiness, and soundless space, as
though some veil of awful silence had been drawn before the tabernacle
of an evil god. My knees shook as I advanced, clutching the rail beside
my hand.
I found myself upon a slender bridge that seemed to span the vault. It
widened in the center to a small, square, stone-paved enclosure, like a
flat altar-top, surrounded by a close-wrought grille that gleamed like
gold. I halted here, and, looking down, saw, far beneath, a throng whose
white faces stared upward like masks. Again that chant arose, and now I
heard its burden:
“We are immortal in the germ-plasm; make us immortal in the body before
we die.”
Then something beneath me began to assume shape as my eyes grew used to
the obscurity. It was a great ant of gold, five hundred tons of it,
perhaps, erected on a great pedestal of stone; where should have been
the altar of the Savior of the world, there the abominable insect
crawled, with its articulated, smooth body, and one antenna upraised.
The symbol was graven clear. This was the aspiration of mankind, and to
this we had come, through Science that would not look within, through a
feminism that had sought new, and the progressive aims of ethical
doctrinaires that had discarded the old safeguards; Christ’s light yoke
of well-tried moral laws, sufficient to centuries; through all the
fanatic votaries of a mechanistic creed; polygamy and mutilation, and
all the shameful things from which the race had struggled through
suffering upward. All the old evils which we had thought exorcised
forever had crept in on us again, out of the shadows where they had lain
concealed.
I stood there, sick with horror, clinging to the rail.
How far from gentle St. Francis and St. Catherine, and all the gracious
spirits of the dead and derided ages, progress had moved! Were those
things false and forgotten, those saintly ideals which had shone like
lamps of faith through the night of the world? Was this the truth and
were those nothing?
I heard a sobbing in the shadows beneath. I looked down and perceived,
immediately before the Ant, an aged man prostrate. He muttered; and,
though I heard no words that I could understand, I realized that, in his
blind, helpless way, he was groping toward the godhead.
Then I looked up and saw something that sent the blood throbbing through
my head and drew my voice from me in gasping breaths.
At the edge of the platform on which I stood, out of the gloom, loomed
the round body of the second cylinder. And inside, through the face of
unbroken glass, I saw the sleeping face of Esther, my love of a century
ago.
The cap of the cylinder was half unscrewed.