A wise man has said that of the inward senses Phantasie alone is free
upon occasion to escape from her sisters Common Sense and Memory. In
time of sleep it is that Phantasie can so break the meshes that hold
her when the reason is waking; in time of a man’s sleep she wings
whither she will, “producing many monstrous and prodigious things,
especially if she be stirred up by some terrible object, presented to
her by Common Sense or Memory.”
And in my experience the scenes of her most active effort lie not in
the depths of sleep, but about the portal of it. Then, and chiefly at
the dawn, shall Phantasie be found to wing her wildest flight.
In such a morning hour, on the turn of reason’s tide, my airy theatre
of dreams was lighted by a blaze of high noon sun, and I, standing upon
a green hill, looked down at vast plains where they stretched beneath,
and an infinite multitude that thronged them. A people in number like
the sands of the shore swept through the great plain, and the sound of
them was the sound of a stormy sea.
The Kingdoms of the Earth had sent hither these legions, and all
Christendom streamed beneath me. To vanward great armies gleamed,
and the sun made a shining fire of their steel; the companies of the
workers also thundered forward together--the industrial millions that
are the circulating heart’s blood in the veins of Nations. Workers in
iron and brass; wielders of the hammer, the axe, the spade; diggers
and delvers; the men of the soil and the men of the sea--all were here
assembled; and the earth shook beneath the tramp of them; the round
earth groaned under the accumulated weight of the Nations.
In the forefront of this unexampled multitude shone pomp and pageantry,
for there--to the peal of trumpet and the bellowing of great
ordnance--marched mighty ones: kings and rulers of the earth; monarchs
and those that led them; the symbols of power and the banners of power;
the keys of all mundane principalities and creeds held in the hands of
such as Chance throws crest-high on the tides of human authority and
earthly fame.
Forward swept the kings of the earth and all the hosts of them, whilst
I approached a little nearer and became conscious that before the great
wave of this advancing army, walking alone in solemn, solitary state,
there moved three maidens. They led the myriads, as it seemed, and
their white raiment shone like the snow where they went before, and
heeded not the roaring host behind them.
August and queenly they passed together, and their wonderful eyes were
lifted to heaven and full of the dawn; but though their hands were not
free, and I perceived that heavy chains hung upon them, yet moved they
with the bearing of ministering angels; and their feet were light;
and their soft voices were full of joy; while they swept forward as
though to happiness rather than sorrow. Infinitely fair were the three
maidens--pearls before the dusty rabble and rout of humanity that
followed them. Only the very old and the very young wept for them.
The first was clad in white, and her face was pale, yet lighted by an
inner radiance of the Seventh Heaven. She moved with silent step and
answered not when her sisters sang. In her hands, clasped close upon
her breast, was a cross fashioned of one diamond that shone like the
morning star. And so she went in silence, with her grey eyes uplifted
and Peace upon her forehead.
The second was clad in white, and her face shone like the morning, and
the blue harmonies of her unconquerable eyes swept sky and earth. Life
and eternity were wrought into the hem of her garment; immortal was she
and she moved as an Immortal, singing such music as the lark sings in
upper darkness above the first horizontal glimmer of low silver dawns
in spring. Her hands were also clasped upon her bosom, and they held
fast between them a little anchor of gold.
The third maiden was clad in white, and her head was bent, for her soft
hazel eyes swept earth rather than sky, and warm blood throbbed in her
cheek while she spoke with a mother’s music of voice to little children
that ran beside her and wept and lifted their small hands to hers. A
ruby heart was all the adornment that she wore, and it gleamed between
her breasts and rose and fell there.
Concerned to know the meaning of this matter, I descended from my
standpoint, approached the drifting throng, and asked a loud-voiced
son of the people to enlighten my ignorance.
“What,” said I, “is this brave array of the Generations of the Earth?
Whence go they, and who are these Daughters of Light that lead them?”
The man stared with great amazement, and in his turn asked a question.
“From what trance have you awakened?” he inquired. “From what lengthy
sleep have we aroused you that you have yet to learn the meaning of
these armies, and the rite they march to celebrate? Know that you
behold the spectacle of Civilisation about to sacrifice to the new-born
Century. The Age of Utility now dawns, and mankind have agreed that
this world-shaking event shall be celebrated worthily.”
With growing terror I asked the nature of this ceremonial.
“An Age of Utility would surely give to its mechanic gods that of which
itself stood least in need,” I said, not without irony.
“Even so,” the artisan replied, ignorant that I spoke in satire. “See
yonder maidens: we go to immolate them, to burn them and destroy them.
Their work on earth is done; we need them no more; there is no place
for them in the years now about to unfold.”
“Yet they are very fair,” I said; “your fathers weep to see them in
chains; your mothers pity them; your little children hold their hands
and love them.”
“Nevertheless, the adult working world has done with them, and knows
them no more,” he answered. “Their thrones are empty; their time is
past; their subjects are the ancient, the senile, the anile, and the
little ones; but man in the might of his noon-day acknowledges them no
more, for he pays suit and service to new sovereigns.”
“The maidens’ names?” I asked, yet knew full well.
“Faith, Hope, Charity,” he answered. “With the first will vanish
rainbows, and the songs of birds and the colours of flowers, and all
manner of vain things not needful to the welfare of man to-day; with
the second we shall leave idle dreaming and building of cloud castles,
cease from vain climbing on mountain peaks to see the sunrise, hide our
eyes from the unneeded light, and burrow deep in the mud of which we
are made; with the third we shall forget the weakling and the laggard,
the sick and the sorrowful, the halt and the blind. Henceforth only the
Fittest survive, and the race will go to him whose breath is steam,
whose muscles are steel, whose eye flashes with electric secrets, whose
heart is safely frozen under the icy armour of Utility!”
They passed forward where three great pyres arose upon the plain; and
the sky was overcast, while men said that it thundered. But I, in my
dream, knew those awful and remote reverberations now echoing and
re-echoing behind a dawn that had turned to darkness were the laughter
of eternal Nox and primal Chaos, who watched mankind from afar, and
waited for the sacrifice, that they might loose their lightnings and
mighty winds, and take Earth back again to themselves, that ill deed
done.