longer have world-serious war--but in its place we have a scourge, the
effect of which on the modern state is _precisely the same_ as the
effect of war on the ancient, only,--in the end,--far more destructive,
far more subtle, sure, horrible, disgusting. The name of this
pestilence is Medical Science. Yes, it is most true, shudder
--shudder--as you will! Man's best friend turns to an asp in his
bosom to sting him to the basest of deaths. The devastating growth of
medical, and especially surgical, science--that, if you like, for us
all, is "the question of the hour!" And what a question! of what
surpassing importance, in the presence of which all other "questions"
whatever dwindle into mere academic triviality. For just as the ancient
State was wounded to the heart through the death of her healthy sons in
the field, just so slowly, just so silently, is the modern receiving
deadly hurt by the botching and tinkering of her unhealthy children.
The net result is in each case the same--the altered ratio of the total
amount of reproductive health to the total amount of reproductive
disease. They recklessly spent their best; we sedulously conserve our
worst; and as they pined and died of anaemia, so we, unless we repent,
must perish in a paroxysm of black-blood apoplexy. And this prospect
becomes more certain, when you reflect that the physician as we know
him is not, like other men and things, a being of gradual growth, of
slow evolution: from Adam to the middle of the last century the world
saw nothing even in the least resembling him. No son of Paian _he_, but
a fatherless, full-grown birth from the incessant matrix of Modern
Time, so motherly of monstrous litters of "Gorgon and Hydra and
Chimaeras dire"; you will understand what I mean when you consider the
quite recent date of, say, the introduction of anaesthetics or
antiseptics, the discovery of the knee-jerk, bacteriology, or even of
such a doctrine as the circulation of the blood. We are at this very
time, if I mistake not, on the verge of new insights which will enable
man to laugh at disease--laugh at it in the sense of over-ruling its
natural tendency to produce death, not by any means in the sense of
destroying its ever-expanding _existence_. Do you know that at this
moment your hospitals are crammed with beings in human likeness
suffering from a thousand obscure and subtly-ineradicable ills, all of
whom, if left alone, would die almost at once, but ninety in the
hundred of whom will, as it is, be sent forth "cured," like
missionaries of hell, and the horrent shapes of Night and Acheron, to
mingle in the pure river of humanity the poison-taint of their protean
vileness? Do you know that in your schools one-quarter of the children
are already purblind? Have you gauged the importance of your tremendous
consumption of quack catholicons, of the fortunes derived from their
sale, of the spread of modern nervous disorders, of toothless youth and
thrice loathsome age among the helot-classes? Do you know that in the
course of my late journey to London, I walked from Piccadilly Circus to
Hyde Park Corner, during which time I observed some five hundred
people, of whom twenty-seven only were perfectly healthy, well-formed
men, and eighteen healthy, beautiful women? On every hand--with a
thrill of intensest joy, I say it!--is to be seen, if not yet
commencing civilisation, then progress, progress--wide as the
world--toward it: only here--at the heart--is there decadence, fatty
degeneration. Brain-evolution--and favouring airs--and the ripening
time--and the silent Will of God, of God--all these in conspiracy seem
to be behind, urging the whole ship's company of us to some undreamable
luxury of glory--when lo, this check, artificial, evitable. Less death,
more disease--that is the sad, the unnatural record; children
especially--so sensitive to the physician's art--living on by hundreds
of thousands, bearing within them the germs of wide-spreading sorrow,
who in former times would have died. And if you consider that the
proper function of the doctor is the strictly limited one of curing the
curable, rather than of self-gloriously perpetuating the incurable, you
may find it difficult to give a quite rational answer to this simple
question: _why?_ Nothing is so sure as that to the unit it is a
cruelty; nothing so certain as that to humanity it is a wrong; to say
that such and such an one was sent by the All Wise, and must
_therefore_ be not merely permitted, but elaborately coaxed and forced,
to live, is to utter a blasphemy against Man at which even the ribald
tongue of a priest might falter; and as a matter of fact, society, in
just contempt for this species of argument, never hesitates to hang,
for its own imagined good, its heaven-sent catholics, protestants,
sheep, sheep-stealers, etc. What then, you ask, would I do with these
unholy ones? To save the State would I pierce them with a sword, or
leave them to the slow throes of their agonies? Ah, do not expect me to
answer that question--I do not know what to answer. The whole spirit of
the present is one of a broad and beautiful, if quite thoughtless,
humanism, and I, a child of the present, cannot but be borne along by
it, coerced into sympathy with it. "Beautiful" I say: for if anywhere
in the world you have seen a sight more beautiful than a group of
hospital _savants_ bending with endless scrupulousness over a little
pauper child, concentering upon its frailty the whole human skill and
wisdom of ages, so have not I. Here have you the full realisation of a
parable diviner than that of the man who went down from Jerusalem to
Jericho. Beautiful then; with at least surface beauty, like the serpent
_lachesis mutus_; but, like many beautiful things, deadly too,
_in_human. And, on the whole, an answer will have to be found. As for
me, it is a doubt which has often agitated me, whether the central
dogma of Judaism and Christianity alike can, after all, be really one
of the inner verities of this our earthly being--the dogma, that by the
shedding of the innocent blood, and by that alone, shall the race of
man find cleansing and salvation. Will no agony of reluctance overcome
the necessity that one man die, "so that the whole people perish not"?
Can it be true that by nothing less than the "three days of pestilence"
shall the land be purged of its stain, and is this old divine
alternative about to confront us in new, modern form? Does the
inscrutable Artemis indeed demand offerings of human blood to suage her
anger? Most sad that man should ever need, should ever have needed, to
foul his hand in the [Greek: musaron aima] of his own veins! But what
is, is. And can it be fated that the most advanced civilisation of the
future shall needs have in it, as the first and chief element of its
glory, the most barbarous of all the rituals of barbarism--the
immolation of hecatombs which wail a muling human wail? Is it indeed
part of man's strange destiny through the deeps of Time that he one day
bow his back to the duty of pruning himself as a garden, so that he run
not to a waste wilderness? Shall the physician, the _accoucheur,_ of
the time to come be expected, and commanded, to do on the ephod and
breast-plate, anoint his head with the oil of gladness, and add to the
function of healer the function of Sacrificial Priest? These you say,
are wild, dark questions. Wild enough, dark enough. We know how
Sparta--the "man-taming Sparta" Simonides calls her--answered them.
Here was the complete subordination of all unit-life to the well-being
of the Whole. The child, immediately on his entry into the world, fell
under the control of the State: it was not left to the judgment of his
parents, as elsewhere, whether he should be brought up or not, but a
commission of the Phyle in which he was born decided the question. If
he was weakly, if he had any bodily unsightliness, he was exposed on a
place called Taygetus, and so perished. It was a consequence of this
that never did the sun in his course light on man half so godly
stalwart, on woman half so houri-lovely, as in stern and stout old
Sparta. Death, like all mortal, they must bear; disease, once and for
all, they were resolved to have done with. The word which they used to
express the idea "ugly," meant also "hateful," "vile," "disgraceful"
--and I need hardly point out to you the significance of that
fact alone; for they considered--and rightly--that there is no
sort of natural reason why every denizen of earth should not be
perfectly hale, integral, sane, beautiful--if only very moderate pains
be taken to procure this divine result. One fellow, indeed, called
Nancleidas, grew a little too fat to please the sensitive eyes of the
Spartans: I believe he was periodically whipped. Under a system so very
barbarous, the super-sweet, egoistic voice of the club-footed poet
Byron would, of course, never have been heard: one brief egoistic
"lament" on Taygetus, and so an end. It is not, however, certain that
the world could not have managed very well without Lord Byron. The one
thing that admits of no contradiction is that it cannot manage without
the holy citizen, and that disease, to men and to nations, can have but
one meaning, annihilation near or ultimate. At any rate, from these
remarks, you will now very likely be able to arrive at some
understanding of the wording of the advertisements which I sent to the
papers.'
Zaleski, having delivered himself of this singular _tirade_, paused:
replaced the sepulchral relief in its niche: drew a drapery of silver
cloth over his bare feet and the hem of his antique garment of Babylon:
and then continued:
'After some time the answer to the advertisement at length arrived; but
what was my disgust to find that it was perfectly unintelligible to me.
I had asked for a date and an address: the reply came giving a date,
and an address, too--but an address wrapped up in cypher, which, of
course, I, as a supposed member of the society, was expected to be able
to read. At any rate, I now knew the significance of the incongruous
circumstance that the Latin proverb _mens sana etc._ should be adopted
as the motto of a Greek society; the significance lay in this, that the
motto _contained an address_--the address of their meeting-place, or at
least, of their chief meeting-place. I was now confronted with the task
of solving--and of solving quickly, without the loss of an hour--this
enigma; and I confess that it was only by the most violent and
extraordinary concentration of what I may call the dissecting faculty,
that I was able to do so in good time. And yet there was no special
difficulty in the matter. For looking at the motto as it stood in
cypher, the first thing I perceived was that, in order to read the
secret, the heart-shaped figure must be left out of consideration, if
there was any _consistency_ in the system of cyphers at all, for it
belonged to a class of symbols quite distinct from that of all the
others, not being, like them, a picture-letter. Omitting this,
therefore, and taking all the other vowels and consonants whether
actually represented in the device or not, I now got the proverb in the
form _mens sana in ... pore sano._ I wrote this down, and what
instantly struck me was the immense, the altogether unusual, number of
_liquids_ in the motto--six in all, amounting to no less than one-third
of the total number of letters! Putting these all together you get
_mnnnnr_, and you can see that the very appearance of the "m's" and
"n's" (especially when _written_) running into one another, of itself
suggests a stream of water. Having previously arrived at the conclusion
of London as the meeting-place, I could not now fail to go on to the
inference of _the Thames_; there, or near there, would I find those
whom I sought. The letters "mnnnnr," then, meant the Thames: what did
the still remaining letters mean? I now took these remaining letters,
placing them side by side: I got aaa, sss, ee, oo, p and i. Juxtaposing
these nearly in the order indicated by the frequency of their
occurrence, and their place in the Roman alphabet, you at once and
inevitably get the word _Aesopi._ And now I was fairly startled by this
symmetrical proof of the exactness of my own deductions in other
respects, but, above all, far above all, by the occurrence of that word
_"Aesopi."_ For who was Aesopus? He was a slave who was freed for his
wise and witful sallies: he is therefore typical of the liberty of the
wise--their moral manumission from temporary and narrow law; he was
also a close friend of Croesus: he is typical, then, of the union of
wisdom with wealth--true wisdom with real wealth; lastly, and above
all, he was thrown by the Delphians from a rock on account of his wit:
he is typical, therefore, of death--the shedding of blood--as a result
of wisdom, this thought being an elaboration of Solomon's great maxim,
"in much wisdom is much sorrow." But how accurately all this fitted in
with what would naturally be the doctrines of the men on whose track I
was! I could no longer doubt the justness of my reasonings, and
immediately, while you slept, I set off for London.
'Of my haps in London I need not give you a very particular account.
The meeting was to be held on the 15th, and by the morning of the 13th
I had reached a place called Wargrave, on the Thames. There I hired a
light canoe, and thence proceeded down the river in a somewhat zig-zag
manner, narrowly examining the banks on either side, and keeping a
sharp out-look for some board, or sign, or house, that would seem to
betoken any sort of connection with the word "Aesopi." In this way I
passed a fruitless day, and having reached the shipping region, made
fast my craft, and in a spirit of _diablerie_ spent the night in a
common lodging-house, in the company of the most remarkable human
beings, characterised by an odour of alcohol, and a certain obtrusive
_bonne camaraderie_ which the prevailing fear of death could not
altogether repress. By dawn of the 14th I was on my journey again--on,
and ever on. Eagerly I longed for a sight of the word I sought: but I
had misjudged the men against whose cunning I had measured my own. I
should have remembered more consistently that they were no ordinary
men. As I was destined to find, there lay a deeper, more cabalistic
meaning in the motto than any I had been able to dream of. I had
proceeded on my pilgrimage down the river a long way past Greenwich,
and had now reached a desolate and level reach of land stretching away
on either hand. Paddling my boat from the right to the left bank, I
came to a spot where a little arm of the river ran up some few yards
into the land. The place wore a specially dreary and deserted aspect:
the land was flat, and covered with low shrubs. I rowed into this arm
of shallow water and rested on my oar, wearily bethinking myself what
was next to be done. Looking round, however, I saw to my surprise that
at the end of this arm there was a short narrow pathway--a winding
road--leading from the river-bank. I stood up in the boat and followed
its course with my eyes. It was met by another road also winding among
the bushes, but in a slightly different direction. At the end of this
was a little, low, high-roofed, round house, without doors or windows.
And then--and then--tingling now with a thousand raptures--I beheld a
pool of water near this structure, and then another low house, a
counterpart of the first--and then, still leading on in the same
direction, another pool--and then a great rock, heart-shaped--and then
another winding road--and then another pool of water. All was a
model--_exact to the minutest particular_--of the device on the
papyrus! The first long-waved line was the river itself; the three
short-waved lines were the arm of the river and the two pools; the
three snakes were the three winding roads; the two triangles
representing the letter #A# were the two high-roofed round houses; the
heart was the rock! I sprang, now thoroughly excited, from the boat,
and ran in headlong haste to the end of the last lake. Here there was a
rather thick and high growth of bushes, but peering among them, my eye
at once caught a white oblong board supported on a stake: on this, in
black letters, was marked the words, "DESCENSUS AESOPI." It was
necessary, therefore, to go _down_: the meeting-place was subterranean.
It was without difficulty that I discovered a small opening in the
ground, half hidden by the underwood; from the orifice I found that a
series of wooden steps led directly downwards, and I at once boldly
descended. No sooner, however, had I touched the bottom than I was
confronted by an ancient man in Hellenic apparel, armed with the Greek
_ziphos_ and _peltè_. His eyes, accustomed to the gloom, pierced me
long with an earnest scrutiny.
'"You are a Spartan?" he asked at length.
'"Yes," I answered promptly.
'"Then how is it you do not know that I am stone deaf?"
'I shrugged, indicating that for the moment I had forgotten the fact.
'"You _are_ a Spartan?" he repeated.
'I nodded with emphasis.
'"Then, how is it you omit to make the sign?"
'Now, you must not suppose that at this point I was nonplussed, for in
that case you would not give due weight to the strange inherent power
of the mind to rise to the occasion of a sudden emergency--to stretch
itself long to the length of an event; I do not hesitate to say that
_no_ combination of circumstances can defeat a vigorous brain fully
alert, and in possession of itself. With a quickness to which the
lightning-flash is tardy, I remembered that this was a spot indicated
by the symbols on the papyrus: I remembered that this same papyrus was
always placed under the _tongue_ of the dead; I remembered, too, that
among that very nation whose language had afforded the motto, to "turn
up the _thumb_" (_pollicem vertere_) was a symbol significant of death.
I touched the under surface of my tongue with the tip of my thumb. The
aged man was appeased. I passed on, and examined the place.
'It was simply a vast circular hall, the arched roof of which was
supported on colonnades of what I took to be pillars of porphyry. Down
the middle and round the sides ran tables of the same material; the
walls were clothed in hangings of sable velvet, on which, in infinite
reproduction, was embroidered in cypher the motto of the society. The
chairs were cushioned in the same stuff. Near the centre of the circle
stood a huge statue, of what really seemed to me to be pure beaten
gold. On the great ebon base was inscribed the word [Greek: LUKURGOS].
From the roof swung by brazen chains a single misty lamp.
'Having seen this much I reascended to the land of light, and being
fully resolved on attending the meeting on the next day or night, and
not knowing what my fate might then be, I wrote to inform you of the
means by which my body might be traced. 'But on the next day a new
thought occurred to me: I reasoned thus: "these men are not common
assassins; they wage a too rash warfare against diseased life, but not
against life in general. In all probability they have a quite
immoderate, quite morbid reverence for the sanctity of healthy life.
They will not therefore take mine, _unless_ they suppose me to be the
only living outsider who has a knowledge of their secret, and therefore
think it absolutely necessary for the carrying out of their beneficent
designs that my life should be sacrificed. I will therefore prevent
such a motive from occurring to them by communicating to another their
whole secret, and--if the necessity should arise--_letting them know_
that I have done so, without telling them who that other is. Thus my
life will be assured." I therefore wrote to you on that day a full
account of all I had discovered, giving you to understand, however, on
the envelope, that you need not examine the contents for some little
time.
'I waited in the subterranean vault during the greater part of the next
day; but not till midnight did the confederates gather. What happened
at that meeting I shall not disclose, even to you. All was
sacred--solemn--full of awe. Of the choral hymns there sung, the
hierophantic ritual, liturgies, paeans, the gorgeous symbolisms--of the
wealth there represented, the culture, art, self-sacrifice--of the
mingling of all the tongues of Europe--I shall not speak; nor shall I
repeat names which you would at once recognise as familiar to
you--though I may, perhaps, mention that the "Morris," whose name
appears on the papyrus sent to me is a well-known _littérateur_ of that
name. But this in confidence, for some years at least.
'Let me, however, hurry to a conclusion. My turn came to speak. I rose
undaunted, and calmly disclosed myself; during the moment of hush, of
wide-eyed paralysis that ensued, I declared that fully as I coincided
with their views in general, I found myself unable to regard their
methods with approval--these I could not but consider too rash, too
harsh, too premature. My voice was suddenly drowned by one universal,
earth-shaking roar of rage and contempt, during which I was surrounded
on all sides, seized, pinioned, and dashed on the central table. All
this time, in the hope and love of life, I passionately shouted that I
was not the only living being who shared in their secret. But my voice
was drowned, and drowned again, in the whirling tumult. None heard me.
A powerful and little-known anaesthetic--the means by which all their
murders have been accomplished--was now produced. A cloth, saturated
with the fluid, was placed on my mouth and nostrils. I was stifled.
Sense failed. The incubus of the universe blackened down upon my brain.
How I tugged at the mandrakes of speech! was a locked pugilist with
language! In the depth of my extremity the half-thought, I remember,
floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now
perhaps--now--there was silence around me; that _now,_ could my palsied
lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul
rose focussed to the effort--my body jerked itself upwards. At that
moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I _did_
utter something--my dead and shuddering tongue _did_ babble forth some
coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On
the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat,
placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one thing was
clear--I _had_ uttered something--I was saved. With what of strength
remained to me I reached the place where I had left your _calèche_, and
started on my homeward way. The necessity to sleep was strong upon me,
for the fumes of the anaesthetic still clung about my brain; hence,
after my long journey, I fainted on my passage through the house, and
in this condition you found me.
'Such then is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection with
this ill-advised confraternity: and now that their cabala is known to
others--to how many others _they_ cannot guess--I think it is not
unlikely that we shall hear little more of the Society of Sparta.'
THE END