Such was the physical achievement of this civilization. Nothing half so
artificial and intricate and prosperous had ever before existed. An
earlier age, indeed, had held before itself some such ideal as this; but
its nationalistic mania prevented it from attaining the necessary
economic unity. This latter-day civilization, however, had wholly
outgrown nationalism, and had spent many centuries of peace in
consolidating itself. But to what end? The terrors of destitution and
ill-health having been abolished, man’s spirit was freed from a
crippling burden, and might have dared great adventures. But
unfortunately his intelligence had by now seriously declined. And so
this age, far more than the notorious ‘nineteenth century’, was the
great age of barren complacency.
Every individual was a well-fed and physically healthy human animal. He
was also economically independent. His working day was never more than
six hours, often only four. He enjoyed a fair share of the products of
industry; and in his long holidays he was free to wander in his own
aeroplane all over the planet. With good luck he might find himself
rich, even for those days, at forty; and if fortune had not favoured
him, he might yet expect affluence before he was eighty, when he could
still look forward to a century of active life.
But in spite of this material prosperity he was a slave. His work and
his leisure consisted of feverish activity, punctuated by moments of
listless idleness which he regarded as both sinful and unpleasant.
Unless he was one of the furiously successful minority, he was apt to be
haunted by moments of brooding, too formless to be called meditation,
and of yearning, too blind to be called desire. For he and all his
contemporaries were ruled by certain ideas which prevented them from
living a fully human life.
Of these ideas one was the ideal of progress. For the individual, the
goal imposed by his religious teaching was continuous advance in
aeronautical prowess, legal sexual freedom, and millionaireship. For the
race also the ideal was progress, and progress of the same unintelligent
type. Ever more brilliant and extensive aviation, ever more extensive
legal sexual intercourse, ever more gigantic manufacture and
consumption, were to be coordinated in an ever more intricately
organized social system. For the last three thousand years, indeed,
progress even of this rude kind had been minute; but this was a source
of pride rather than of regret. It implied that the goal was already
almost attained, the perfection which should justify the release of the
secret of divine power, and the inauguration of an era of incomparably
mightier activity.
For the all-pervading idea which tyrannized over the race was the
fanatical worship of movement. Gordelpus, the Prime Mover, demanded of
his human embodiments swift and intricate activity, and the individual’s
prospect of eternal life depended on the fulfilment of this obligation.
Curiously, though science had long ago destroyed the belief in personal
immortality as an intrinsic attribute of man, a complementary belief had
grown up to the effect that those who justified themselves in action
were preserved eternally, by special miracle, in the swift spirit of
Gordelpus. Thus from childhood to death the individual’s conduct was
determined by the obligation to produce as much motion as possible,
whether by his own muscular activity or by the control of natural
forces. In the hierarchy of industry three occupations were honoured
almost as much as the Sacred Order of Scientists, namely flying,
dancing, and athletics. Every one practised all three of these crafts to
some extent, for they were imposed by religion; but the professional
fliers and aeronautical engineers, and the professional dancers and
athletes, were a privileged class.
Several causes had raised flying to a position of unique honour. As a
means of communication it was of extreme practical importance; and as
the swiftest locomotion it constituted the supreme act of worship. The
accident that the form of the aeroplane was reminiscent of the main
symbol of the ancient Christian religion lent flying an additional
mystical significance. For though the spirit of Christianity was lost,
many of its symbols had been preserved in the new faith. A more
important source of the dominance of flying was that, since warfare had
long ceased to exist, aviation of a gratuitously dangerous kind was the
main outlet for the innate adventurousness of the human animal. Young
men and women risked their lives fervently for the glory of Gordelpus
and their own salvation, while their seniors took vicarious satisfaction
in this endless festival of youthful prowess. Indeed, apart from the
thrills of devotional aerial acrobatics, it is unlikely that the race
would so long have preserved its peace and its unity. On each of the
frequent Days of Sacred Flight special rituals of communal and solo
aviation were performed at every religious centre. On these occasions
the whole sky would be intricately patterned with thousands of planes,
wheeling, tumbling, soaring, plunging, in perfect order and at various
altitudes, the dance at one level being subtly complementary to the
dance at others. It was as though the spontaneous evolutions of many
distinct flocks of redshank and dunlin were multiplied a thousandfold in
complexity, and subordinated to a single ever-developing terpsichorean
theme. Then suddenly the whole would burst asunder to the horizon,
leaving the sky open for the quartets, duets, and solos of the most
brilliant stars of flight. At night also, regiments of planes bearing
coloured lights would inscribe on the zenith ever-changing and
symbolical patterns of fire. Besides these aerial dances, there had
existed for eight hundred years a custom of spelling out periodically in
a dense flight of planes six thousand miles long the sacred rubrics of
the gospel of Gordelpus, so that the living word might be visible to
other planets.
In the life of every individual, flying played a great part. Immediately
after birth he was taken up by a priestess of flight and dropped,
clinging to a parachute, to be deftly caught upon the wings of his
father’s plane. This ritual served as a substitute for contraception
(forbidden as an interference with the divine energy); for since in many
infants the old simian grasping-instinct was atrophied, a large
proportion of the new-born let go and were smashed upon the paternal
wings. At adolescence the individual (male or female) took charge of a
plane for the first time, and his life was subsequently punctuated by
severe aeronautical tests. From middle-age onwards, namely as a
centenarian, when he could no longer hope to rise in the hierarchy of
active flight, he continued to fly daily for practical purposes.
The two other forms of ritual activity, dancing and athletics, were
scarcely less important. Nor were they confined wholly to the ground.
For certain rites were celebrated by dances upon the wings of a plane in
mid air.
Dancing was especially associated with the Negro race, which occupied a
very peculiar position in the world at this time. As a matter of fact
the great colour distinctions of mankind were now beginning to fade.
Increased aerial communication had caused the black, brown, yellow and
white stocks so to mingle that everywhere there was by now a large
majority of the racially indistinguishable. Nowhere was there any great
number of persons of marked racial character. But each of the ancient
types was liable to crop up now and again in isolated individuals,
especially in its ancient homeland. These ‘throw-backs’ were customarily
treated in special and historically appropriate manners. Thus, for
instance, it was to ‘sports’ of definite Negro character that the most
sacred dancing was entrusted.
In the days of the nations, the descendants of emancipated African
slaves in North America had greatly influenced the artistic and
religious life of the white population, and had inspired a cult of
negroid dancing which survived till the end of the First Men. This was
partly due to the sexual and primitive character of Negro dancing,
sorely needed in a nation ridden by sexual taboos. But it had also a
deeper source. The American nation had acquired its slaves by capture,
and had long continued to spurn their descendants. Later it
unconsciously compensated for its guilt by a cult of the Negro spirit.
Thus when American culture dominated the planet, the pure Negroes became
a sacred cast. Forbidden many of the rights of citizenship, they were
regarded as the private servants of Gordelpus. They were both sacred and
outcast. This dual role was epitomized in an extravagant ritual which
took place once a year in each of the great national parks. A white
woman and Negro, both chosen for their prowess in dance, performed a
long and symbolical ballet, which culminated in a ritual act of sexual
violation, performed in full view of the maddened spectators. This over,
the Negro knifed his victim, and fled through the forest pursued by an
exultant mob. If he reached sanctuary, he became a peculiarly sacred
object for the rest of his life. But if he was caught, he was torn to
pieces, or drenched with inflammable spirit and burned. Such was the
superstition of the First Men at this time that the participants in this
ceremony were seldom reluctant; for it was firmly believed that both
were assured of eternal life in Gordelpus. In America this Sacred
Lynching was the most popular of all festivals; for it was both sexual
and bloody, and afforded a fierce joy to the masses whose sex-life was
restricted and secret. In India and Africa the violator was always an
‘Englishman,’ when such a rare creature could be found. In China the
whole character of the ceremony was altered; for the violation became a
kiss, and the murder a touch with a fan.
One other race, the Jews, were treated with a similar combination of
honour and contempt, but for very different reasons. In ancient days
their general intelligence, and in particular their financial talent,
had cooperated with their homelessness to make them outcasts; and now,
in the decline of the First Men, they retained the fiction, if not
strictly the fact, of racial integrity. They were still outcasts, though
indispensable and powerful. Almost the only kind of intelligent activity
which the First Men could still respect was financial operation, whether
private or cosmopolitan. The Jews had made themselves invaluable in the
financial organization of the world state, having far outstripped the
other races because they alone had preserved a furtive respect for pure
intelligence. And so, long after intelligence had come to be regarded as
disreputable in ordinary men and women, it was expected of the Jews. In
them it was called satanic cunning, and they were held to be embodiments
of the powers of evil, harnessed in the service of Gordelpus. Thus in
time the Jews had made something like ‘a corner’ in intelligence. This
precious commodity they used largely for their own purposes; for two
thousand years of persecution had long ago rendered them permanently
tribalistic, subconsciously if not consciously. Thus when they had
gained control of the few remaining operations which demanded
originality rather than routine, they used this advantage chiefly to
strengthen their own position in the world. For, though relatively
bright, they had suffered much of the general coarsening and limitation
which had beset the whole world. Though capable to some extent of
criticizing the practical means by which ends should be realized, they
were by now wholly incapable of criticizing the major ends which had
dominated their race for thousands of years. In them intelligence had
become utterly subservient to tribalism. There was thus some excuse for
the universal hate and even physical repulsion with which they were
regarded; for they alone had failed to make the one great advance, from
tribalism to a cosmopolitanism which in other races was no longer merely
theoretical. There was good reason also for the respect which they
received, since they retained and used somewhat ruthlessly a certain
degree of the most distinctively human attribute, intelligence.
In primitive times the intelligence and sanity of the race had been
preserved by the inability of its unwholesome members to survive. When
humanitarianism came into vogue, and the unsound were tended at public
expense, this natural selection ceased. And since these unfortunates
were incapable alike of prudence and of social responsibility, they
procreated without restraint, and threatened to infect the whole species
with their rottenness. During the zenith of Western Civilization,
therefore, the subnormal were sterilized. But the latter-day worshippers
of Gordelpus regarded both sterilization and contraception as a wicked
interference with the divine potency. Consequently the only restriction
on population was the suspension of the new-born from aeroplanes, a
process which, though it eliminated weaklings, favoured among healthy
infants rather the primitive than the highly developed. Thus the
intelligence of the race steadily declined. And no one regretted it.
The general revulsion from intelligence was a corollary of the adoration
of instinct, and this in turn was an aspect of the worship of activity.
Since the unconscious source of human vigour was the divine energy,
spontaneous impulse must so far as possible never be thwarted. Reasoning
was indeed permitted to the individual within the sphere of his official
work, but never beyond. And not even specialists might indulge in
reasoning and experiment without obtaining a licence for the particular
research. The licence was expensive, and was only granted if the goal in
view could be shown to be an increase of world activity. In old times
certain persons of morbid curiosity had dared to criticize the
time-honoured methods of doing things, and had suggested ‘better’
methods not convenient to the Sacred Order of Scientists. This had to be
stopped. By the fourth millennium of the World State the operations of
civilization had become so intricately stereotyped that novel situations
of a major order never occurred.
One kind of intellectual pursuit in addition to finance was, indeed,
honoured, namely mathematical calculation. All ritual movements, all the
motions of industrial machinery, all observable natural phenomena, had
to be minutely described in mathematical formulae. The records were
filed in the sacred archives of the S.O.S. And there they remained. This
vast enterprise of mathematical description was the main work of the
scientists, and was said to be the only means by which the evanescent
thing, movement, could be passed into the eternal being of Gordelpus.
The cult of instinct did not result simply in a life of ungoverned
impulse. Far from it. For the fundamental instinct, it was said, was the
instinct to worship Gordelpus in action, and this should rule all the
other instincts. Of these, the most important and sacred was the sexual
impulse, which the First Men had ever tended to regard as both divine
and obscene. Sex, therefore, was now very strictly controlled. Reference
to sexuality, save by circumlocution, was forbidden by law. Persons who
remarked on the obvious sexual significance of the religious dances were
severely punished. No sexual activity and no sex knowledge were
permitted to the individual until he had won his (or her) wings. Much
information, of a distorted and perverted nature could, indeed, be
gained meanwhile by observation of the religious writings and practices;
but officially these sacred matters were all given a metaphysical, not a
sexual interpretation. And though legal maturity, the Wing-Winning,
might occur as early as the age of fifteen, sometimes it was not
attained till forty. If at that age the individual still failed in the
test, he or she was forbidden sexual intercourse and information for
ever.
In China and India this extravagant sexual taboo was somewhat mitigated.
Many easy-going persons had come to feel that the imparting of sex
knowledge to the ‘immature’ was only wrong when the medium of
communication was the sacred American language. They therefore made use
of the local patois. Similarly, sexual activity of the ‘immature’ was
permissible so long as it was performed solely in the wild reserves, and
without American speech. These subterfuges, however, were condemned by
the orthodox, even in Asia.
When a man had won his wings, he was formally initiated into the mystery
of sex and all its ‘biologico-religious’ significance. He was also
allowed to take a ‘domestic wife,’ and after a much more severe aviation
test, any number of ‘symbolical’ wives. Similarly with the woman. These
two kinds of partnership differed greatly. The ‘domestic’ husband and
wife appeared in public together, and their union was indissoluble. The
‘symbolic’ union, on the other hand, could be dissolved by either party.
Also it was too sacred ever to be revealed, or even mentioned, in
public.
A very large number of persons never passed the test which sanctioned
sexuality. These either remained virgin, or indulged in sexual relations
which were not only illegal but sacrilegious. The successful, on the
other hand, were apt to consummate sexually every casual acquaintance.
Under these circumstances it was natural that there should exist among
the sexually submerged part of the population certain secret cults which
sought escape from harsh reality into worlds of fantasy. Of these
illicit sects, two were most widespread. One was a perversion of the
ancient Christian faith in a God of Love. All love, it was said, is
sexual; therefore in worship, private or public, the individual must
seek a direct sexual relation with God. Hence arose a grossly phallic
cult, very contemptible to those more fortunate persons who had no need
of it.
The other great heresy was derived partly from the energy of repressed
intellective impulses, and was practised by persons of natural
curiosity, who nevertheless, shared the universal paucity of
intelligence. These pathetic devotees of intellect were inspired by
Socrates. That great primitive had insisted that clear thought is
impossible without clear definition of terms, and that without clear
thinking man misses fullness of being. These his last disciples were
scarcely less fervent admirers of truth than their master, yet they
missed his spirit completely. Only by knowing the truth, they said, can
the individual attain immortality; only by defining can he know the
truth. Therefore, meeting together in secret, and in constant danger of
arrest for illicit intellection, they disputed endlessly about the
definition of things. But the things which they were concerned to define
were not the basic concepts of human thought; for these, they affirmed,
had been settled once for all by Socrates and his immediate followers.
Therefore, accepting these as true, and grossly misunderstanding them,
the ultimate Socratics undertook to define all the processes of the
world state and the ritual of the established religion, all the emotions
of men and women, all the shapes of noses, mouths, buildings, mountains,
clouds, and in fact the whole superficies of their world. Thus they
believed that they emancipated themselves from the philistinism of their
age, and secured comradeship with Socrates in the hereafter.