Limanora

CHAPTER IX
POLITY

I WAS privileged to hear, or rather to be conscious of, the discussion that the question of idlumian-missionaryism underwent. I had now reached the age and stage of my training which gave me the entry as audience to the councils of the race. It would not have been wise to admit to the treatment of difficult and advanced themes natures that were still hemmed in by the limits of long-past ages of history. They could not have sympathised in, or even followed, the attitude taken up by the elders of the people; and they would have gone back from the meeting with minds perplexed and bewildered by questions too complex and futuritive for them to fathom. Many of them would have suffered a warping of their natures from the strain, and this would have meant years of additional training and care to set it right. The exclusion of the immature from the national councils was a matter of educational policy rather than of political necessity.

It was evidently for my own benefit that I was present at the discussion of the sterilising embassy. This was somewhat difficult for me to follow, for my magnetic power and faculties had not been developed enough to interpret the silences between the rare speeches. As I sat, my mind ran back to a Quakers’ meeting to which I had been taken by my mother; then much self-control had been necessary in order to restrain the expression of my amusement; now I felt as if in the presence of gods who needed none of the babble of human speech to open a pathway from mind to mind. I had sloughed off that singular prepossession of the Western nature in favour of verbal intercourse and had ceased to think that silence, where two or three were gathered together, was a mark of inanity, or incompetence, or at least passivity. I remembered with a shudder the awkwardness that accompanied social lockjaw, even where friends met; each grew afraid of the thoughts of the others; none knew what the silence meant; everyone was frantically searching for something that would break the gag without appearing unnatural. Loquacity, instead of being a bar to ideas, was counted an accomplishment; and freedom of speech was one of the great political watchwords. It was only on rare occasions that reserve was not considered a defect.

Now I felt that there was nothing so powerful as these silences in council. The magnetism of thought and feeling was flowing from mind to mind, all the more that there was not a word or sound to interrupt it. Now and again, when the divergence of thoughts was dominant, one of the oldest and wisest would call them in from their different tracks to a common centre. Speech was rather a method of focussing thoughts than one of chasing and criticising them. The speaker would review all the mental discussion and concentrate its lines, so that everyone present might have a view of the whole field from a high point. It was marvellous how rapidly they went though the business in hand by means of these noble silences, broken by occasional reviews. There were no displays of mental or stylistic legerdemain, no appeals to common feeling, no captious criticisms, such as form the staple of a debate in a Western assembly even of the wisest men. Every fallacy that crept into the discussion was unmasked in a gentle, fair, and kindly way. There was no partisanship, no war-whoop of prospective victory, no lash of sarcasm, and they abhorred above all things the sweetness of harangue.

Yet, the absence of Western methods of beating out a subject was a disadvantage for me, who had as yet little of the magnetic penetration or sympathy needed for the appreciation of their meetings. But my deep reverence for the humanity of the elders, and great sympathy for their aims, made up in part for the lack of magnetic interpretation of their thoughts. At the close of the council I talked the matter over with my proparents, and eked out my own observations and reflections on its proceedings and thus came to a just view of the whole discussion.

They were strongly impelled by their love of the human race to the missionary course, which would now be so simple and effective. Missionaryism before meant the hoisting of every separate alien and barbarous nature up to a higher platform, and continuing the process with generation after generation, a gigantic task. There was more chance of the missionaries levelling down to the civilisation of their converts than of accomplishing their original purpose, while the arguing, preaching, and persuading implied a Niagara of babble for centuries. Where would lie the compensation for such abasement of the mind? Now there was no need of condescension; it was a mere matter of common professional work for the physiological families. The glib energy of the old process was evaded and in its place came the need of wide practical knowledge and keen judgment. For tongue-force and subtlety of reasoning were substituted physiological exactness and selective talent. The process was now eliminative rather than directly creative.

But such pleading ignored the true difficulty, the acquisition of so large a knowledge of local and temporal conditions as would enable them to foresee the full effects of the step. How were they to be certain that only the nobler natures would hand themselves on in each race? Streams from the barbarous and evil past might flow through the mothers. Who could guarantee that the reduced numbers of the next generation would be able to accumulate energy quickly enough to keep the mastery of the earth against its unreasoning and unmoral powers? As it was, the peoples were able to fight with the seasons and the forces of climate and weather, and with the exuberance of the plant and animal kingdoms. If their numbers were greatly lessened by the elimination of the coarser natures, would not the balance be destroyed, and the natural enemies of man have the best of it?

Questions like these made them pause. To be able to answer them would need prolonged and minute investigation of the human race and its conditions, perhaps consuming centuries in the task. Meantime their own forward march would have to be abandoned. Omniscience alone could deal with the problem of missionaryism, and as things were, the omniscience of nature was dealing with it. For evolution was proceeding throughout the universe, however slowly. Those races that seemed to be laggards on the upward path were evolving what was needed on their part for the advance of the whole army of creation, and death was ever opening new careers for the vital force of their individuals. It was difficult to tell without complete knowledge of all the conditions whether the spread of a certain faith or phase of civilisation was going to be beneficent or maleficent for the world as a whole. And all missionaryism that was not based on omniscience was striking out a path through a jungle in the darkness. Even the idlumian, unless amongst criminals and the morally and intellectually plague-stricken, might do irremediable injury to the prospects of the human race. The problem of propagandism was, as often before, abandoned as too complicated and too far-reaching for limited knowledge and brain power.

But the discussion gave me an insight into what I had long been curious about, their polity and methods of guiding the course of their commonweal. I had not dared to inquire into the subject lest I should meet with some rebuff, or find that I had been too inquisitive where reverence was needed. Nor had I been able to see much evidence of government or legislation, and had almost come to the conclusion that there was no such thing in Limanora as sovereignty or state. Though everything moved with the harmony and smoothness of perfect organisation I could never find the organising hand.

At last I discovered part, at least, of the machinery of government. There was one assembly or council to which reformers could appeal with their schemes. The whole community often assembled; but it seemed to me that it was more for training, for the reintegration of some faculty or feeling, or for the purification and elevation of the life, than for legislative purposes. The only trace of any approach to selection and decision in these national gatherings was to be found in Loomiefa and in the linguistic assemblies; in the one they practically accepted or rejected some proposed revision of their ideals placed before them in a new book; in the other they decided whether a new word, or the adaptation or application of a word was worthy to live or die, whether a new sense deserved to be kept alive in a form set apart for it, or whether a new distinction was real or merely verbal. I could see that these were the two great functions of a national assembly, to accept or reject a new departure in life or in language, to see that the path into the darkness of the unknown was the right path, and that the verbal armour and weapons they bore allowed of no enemy near. Discovery and advance had their own pitfalls and risks; but the language they used in investigation and research was the most natural ambush of fallacies and the scientific work of a generation might be rendered nugatory by an ambiguous word or phrase. In past time they could point out many ages, which had prided themselves on the marvels of their progress in science and were now regarded as barren and unprogressive; their advance had been apparent and not real, a mere change of nomenclature and not a change of ideas or a discovery of facts. It was natural then that the community, as a whole, should, from the mere instinct of self-preservation, keep the most watchful eye on this unguarded frontier of language, and almost as eager an eye on the regions that lay before them, the ideals they were about to adopt.

I had now been led to see that there was a council for the decision of foreign questions, for it was this that rejected the new idea of the idlumian mission. I soon came to recognise its domestic functions as more important than its policy abroad. The latter occupied its attention only once or twice in a generation. Monthly, almost weekly, it met to agree on questions and schemes which had no connection with the world outside of Limanora. Now that I was inspired to attend its meetings, I felt that it safeguarded the march forward. It never passed a law; and yet its decisions were as clear, as valid, and as universal in their effects as if they had been written out, proclaimed, and printed in a statute-book. All the parents, proparents, and guardians were members of it, and along with them were associated as silent, inactive members the young men and women who had matured and had shown sufficient of the wisdom and virtues of the race to warrant such a privilege. These latter were in training for full and active membership many years before their spirit and influence were felt to have bearing on any decision. On this basis I had been admitted to the meetings.

The scheme of every new book came before this assembly prior to its publication in Loomiefa. Every new departure on the part of any family was brought up by its heads to be tested by the feeling of the council. But it rarely happened that any scheme was rejected; it was, as a rule, only revised and modified. In fact, every parent or guardian was so keenly in sympathy with the spirit and genius of the race that it was almost impossible for any proposal or idea to come from a family in antagonism to the general welfare and feeling. One feature that struck me as marking their meetings was the absence of those searching, flaw-finding criticisms we would have considered absolutely necessary to progress in the West; every modification suggested was an improvement or addition readily welcomed by the author and his family. The council was there to help and develop, and not to be hypercritical or censorious. Every thinker or inventor was eager to bring his work before it; instead of fearing its criticism as an ordeal he knew that his creation would have its true spirit appreciated, and if there was genuine and original work in it, it would meet with its due; whatever was likely to aid the race in its forward march would be welcomed and aided.

Another branch of its duties was the preparation of practical problems and difficulties which were likely to obstruct the national progress till they were solved. The council thought over these as they came up in their minds, and tried to get at their fundamental form or principle. After having ruminated over them for months, or perhaps years, it indicated the family in whose province they lay, and handed them over to it as part of its duty thereafter. In fact, the debatable borderland between family and family was evidently one of its most important spheres. Not that any family ever desired to evade what might be included in its functions or offices, but, on the contrary, was eager to do all that in it lay for the benefit of the race. Often, however, spheres overlapped, so that two different families or individuals were doing the same thing; and it was necessary to define and apportion the duty of each.

In all the meetings and discussions I came gradually to feel that there was a dominating spirit that influenced from behind the scenes. I could see no overt mastery or guidance of the proceedings, yet there was manifest an organising power within its organism. Schemes and problems came before it in lucid order and a definite shape leaving no room for mere idle conjectures. As the treatment of any one proceeded, I could feel the magnetism of strong, harmonious spirits moulding and bending the thoughts. I knew that I was in tutelage, although there was no open dictation or even guidance.

After a time I began to trace the vigorous currents of influence that swept us on with such force, to the oldest men and women in the council, those who in Europe would have been thrust aside as incapable of good advice and as on the borders of second childhood. I could see a tendency on the part of most members to look to them for the cue, when thoughts had begun to wander and part company. They did not claim superior authority, but the deference to their opinion and instincts was spontaneous and palpable, and often grew into the deepest reverence. This would never have awakened the notice of an unsympathetic stranger, so little was the feeling expressed in open word or act.

In this way I learned, before many years’ experience of the council, that there was an inner council or cabinet, consisting of all the elders who had proved themselves able and wise by centuries of discovery, or invention, or penetrative and far-reaching advice. I could discover no formal election to it, everything in the shape of definite constitution or government being manifestly avoided. Age did not form the qualification for this senate although all the senators were men and women who could count their years by hundreds. Many who were older than they still remained outside the charmed circle. It was rather weight of experience, and the fulness of development resulting from it, that admitted. Whosoever by living long had made the most of life in the line of greatest progress was singled out by the reverence paid to his lofty character and expansive wisdom, for the duty of piloting the race. It took years of massive growth in personality and influence to make the community or the man certain that he had been selected by the national spirit. The responsibility was so onerous that the wisest shrank for years from it, fearing they had not developed sufficiently. It was only with reluctance that they at last listened to the call of their fellows and entered the noblest of all senates. None sought the honour, but once undertaken, none attempted to shift the burdens of it onto other shoulders till the nausea of life, indicating the approach of their mortal liberation, came upon them. No one was jealous of their authority or influence; for all knew that these they would have had by virtue of their nature and advance, even if they had no seat in this inner assembly. And every type of family had its representative there, the ablest, the wisest, the noblest, generally the oldest of the group, whether man or woman. For there was great need in its councils of someone minutely familiar with the practical functions and duties of every science and art in the island. Sex made no distinction in the choice; sex was a mere accident in the realm of reason and wisdom; sometimes the greater brain-power and greater moral and intellectual development belonged to the male head of the family, sometimes to the female; and it never entered the minds of this strange people to discount position or influence because of sex.

In all differences of opinion their decision was final. For everyone felt that the race could not possibly at that particular stage of its progress attain to any clearer light upon the subject than this areopagus had attained. The upholders of the clashing views received the decision as coming from a tribunal, the most impartial and the farthest-seeing that could be found on earth. But it was seldom that any division of view came as far as a controversy which needed the influence of the elders. Where two individuals or families began to feel their opinions on any common topic drawing apart, they each made eager efforts to understand the other’s point of view; and their neighbours, recognising a discord in the mental atmosphere, came in with reconciling magnetism and reason. Everyone was too anxious to have the light of others’ thoughts thrown on the matters he had to investigate or consider, to reject in haste a view that differed from his, or to let his own view become unreasoning prejudice. I never perceived among them any of that bickering or heat which so commonly attends a misunderstanding in Europe. Long after arriving in the island I still wondered where their courts of law were; and thought there must be some secret tribunal that dealt summarily with all disputes. I came at last to see that there was no need of courts of justice, for there was never any approach to jarring or litigation; and, most of all, there was no written law to appeal to. It was one of the primary principles of their life that any law that needed committal to writing was either artificial, and so beyond the necessities of the community, or implied a flaw in the nature of the race demanding instant attention. Written law, like overt authority, was an evidence of elements in a community which were alien and had better be eliminated. Hostile individuals or factions made a body of recorded laws, backed up by force, a necessity throughout the nations of the world, and rendered most of them practically unprogressive. Since the great series of purgations the spirit of the Limanoran community, working through the electric sense, had been the master of its unity and progress, and it appeared idle to make or write laws. Every advance it achieved made every individual at once debtor to it; all moved up to the new level. The laws, if those principles which were continually being revised and constantly progressing could be called so, were written in the hearts and natures of the race; every new amendment of them was the natural demand of the racial spirit and passed at once through the elders, the parents, and the guardians into the conscience of all the families and individuals. Every man was a law to himself, in that he knew and fully recognised the aim of the community and the part he had to fulfil in its advance. Those who were still in a state of pupillage had each two elders as their guarantors and sponsors, who watched the instillation of the common spirit into them, and any flaw or discord rapidly made itself felt.

Reason was at the back of every word and act of the Limanorans; a new feature or thought or discovery had to prove itself worthy and real before it was accepted. There was no such thing as an appeal to authority. Everyone knew that he would have to reason out and make clear the nobleness of what he expected others to believe or agree to. It was one of the main functions, the most urgent duty, of the two councils, therefore, to revise the axioms and postulates in which the national reason found its leverage and to see that they never became mere prejudices. Every new advance antiquated some principle that had been taken as axiomatic, or revealed the fallacy that lay in some pivot-word. Any difference of opinion or of point of view generally set the inner council on the alert. Not infrequently they found that one investigator had been misled by a verbal fallacy or a mistaken axiom, whilst the other had in searching laid his mind open to the light of truth. They never rejected as trifling or insignificant any divergence in the views of a common topic, but rather welcomed it as evidence of some long-hidden flaw in the foundations of their reason.

Another striking feature of this inner council was that their meetings were open to all but the young and immature. They would have nothing to do with the secret conclave, which, they held, was the beginning and principle of despotism. Away from the sunlight of truth and open thought the most ghastly spiritual diseases of humanity sprang into being and flourished; thoughts and feelings, otherwise healthy and unashamed, became sickly, morbid, and often venomous. Resolutions passed in secrecy need have no assigned reasons, and are soon passed without discussion and without any reason but the lower private feelings and prejudices of individual members. A mystery is attached to the proceedings of such conclaves that gives well-nigh omnipotence to the terror they instil. Hence until their doom is near they are by nature and of necessity despotism. To every meeting of the inner council all active councillors of the larger assembly were welcomed. But, when present, they kept silence, and preferred to keep silence. Nay, it was considered a special privilege for one of the senate to withhold his thoughts from the discussions; silence for a year or two was the hard-earned reward for years of painfully guarded responsibility in debate. Not one of them but looked forward to such a breathing-time for relaxation, so heavy was the care of the future of the race. To speak was the burden; for speech must be weighty, and the recording linasans automatically treasured it up for future years to shed light and criticism on it.

In fact their senate-house was arranged so as to be a vast linasan itself. Nothing was needed at the end of a meeting but to touch a spring, and the moving irelium-strip, on which the proceedings imprinted themselves, was securely fixed on its roll and transferred to the valley of memories there to be laid past in the archives for future reference, and a fresh strip took its place ready for the next debate. Knowing this each senator weighed his every word with the utmost care. Whatever building was used as a meeting-place for discussion by either the whole of the people or any section of it had its dome constructed in such a way as to serve as a collector and magnifier of sound, so arranged that the sound should not echo back but pass instead into the receiver of a great linasan and at once indelibly record itself, thus making every member of the community set a watch upon his lips and allow only the maturest wisdom to pass them.

The memories of the Limanorans were marvellous in their precision and tenacity. They could ransack the records of any man’s brain in sleep with the greatest minuteness, though they did not care to use this process on anyone beyond the stage of probation and pupillage; it implied something not unlike prying into the secrets of the nature. They knew, too, how inexact the senses are in their reports of what takes place in the world without. Refined and trained as they were, there was always a liability to error. Whenever exactitude of record was required they used machine-reporters which never made mistake except when their gearing was out of order. At all important assemblies and gatherings they had an instrument called an idrolinasan which recorded in permanence not merely all that was said or done, but the electric currents which passed from man to man. Whenever they needed to verify a memory of the past, the irelium-strip of the particular occurrence was brought out of the historical archives and placed in the reversible idrolinasan, and the whole scene flashed vividly before the senses. Doubtless this custom of machine-recording made the Limanorans so watchful of all they said and did and thought; and it was perhaps this as much as any of the wonderful features of their civilisation that quickened the pace of their personal development in more recent years. They made every effort their natures were capable of to think and say and do what was worthy of themselves and their people. Nothing retards the progress of Western civilisation so much as the relaxed habit of life that even the best men and women fall into, when others are not likely to see or hear them. Religion invented the all-watchfulness of God in order to provide a substitute for the consciousness of the eyes and ears of others. But it is too distant and incorporeal to strike a highly materialised civilisation as real; and the belief acts only for a brief period after it has been impressed upon the mind. The economy of breath in churches and of evidence in law courts would be so great if some of those instruments were introduced into the West, that Europe would not know itself within a few years, it would develop and progress intellectually and morally with such rapidity. But the most striking result would appear in politics and legislation. The machine would influence the speech and action of the legislators as powerfully as if they believed every moment that the omni-watchfulness of the deity were as real as the presence of the Speaker in the chamber. There could be no revisal of its hansardisings; every politician would be as true, as reverential, as weighed down with the responsibility of his duties as if he were before the final judgment-seat.

These machines had had a wonderful effect even upon the advanced Limanoran polity. Not even a gesture was wasted in their assemblies. Everything done and said was relevant and weighty. The result was they acted as if they were one man and their meetings were brief and effective; where a Western legislature would discuss a scheme or proposal for years, a few minutes would suffice a Limanoran assembly to get at the heart of it, and accept or reject it. They seldom had to retrace their steps; if they did, the error was due to some mistaken principle accepted in past ages as an axiom, or to some undetected fallacy in a pivot-word. The proposer of the scheme had the responsibility of making every feature and consequence of it clear; he must not, and would not, conceal anything that might militate against its acceptance; he had discussed it fully with his family, and seen in their criticisms and suggestions everything that might be amended. There was, therefore, not a minute lost on defective arrangement or statement.

It was astonishing how rarely the councils had to meet, and how brief their meetings were. And this was the reason why I had been so long in discovering any trace of constitution or polity in their midst. One of their favourite maxims was that an organism to be healthy must work without calling attention to itself. And this is truest of all in politics. The government that is never seen or heard or felt, and yet has no secrecy or need of secrecy about its proceedings, is the most efficacious and wholesome. Those loud democracies which occupy most of their time in discussing themselves and their systems are corrupt already or on the road to corruption. And monarchies that have to parade abroad in threats or expeditions are diseased at home and afraid to become too conscious of their disease. “The minimum of government attains the maximum of development,” was another of their favourite sayings. To keep this sentiment living, they led their youth back to the study of certain periods of their past that they were ashamed of, called the stagnant ages. Some of them had been republican, others monarchic, some religious or superstitious, others rationalistic or sceptical, some warlike, others peaceful. Their one common characteristic was that the state did everything for the subjects; the island was a nursery, the citizens were infants; no one ever thought of taking the initiative in any scheme; whenever anything was needed, the state had to look after it; the chief duty of a citizen was to talk and hold meetings and criticise; to act was beyond his province; the state had to feed and clothe him at last, and to drive him to his work with the lash. It was the lash that disciplined the army, and urged it on to battle. The state had within it or in its service the few who retained activity or energy; and these few knew how to fill their own coffers better than those of the country. Then came disgrace and disaster. Prosperity and patriotism and courage vanished in decay before the universal corruption on the one hand and the senile helplessness on the other. And all that remained fell an easy prey to the first ambitious marauder who invaded the island.

There grew up in the breasts of the Limanorans an instinctive fear of all encroachments of the state on the duties and functions of the family and the individual; and those who formed the inner council were as deeply imbued with this feeling as the rest of the citizens. One of their chief duties was to draw the line with care between what could best be done by the separate units of the state, and what by the state as a whole. They safeguarded the independence of the individual, and encouraged his initiative in order that every tendency to originality should flourish, and that the capability of meeting emergencies should grow stronger and stronger. Every man on the island knew that he must act for himself in innumerable circumstances without waiting for help or counsel. And the women were trained to be similarly self-reliant. Readiness of resource, confidence, and courage were universal characteristics of the people, and they knew from their study of history, as well as if they had mastered it by experience, that dependence on the action of all and interference on the part of the state would gradually destroy these.

It was, of course, the elders who were most keenly alive to this fact. In their councils they defined with the most exceeding care what might be done by them without injury to the habit of presence of mind and spontaneity of action on the part of the individual citizens. What they had chiefly to look after was the future of the race; and everything done by the citizen or the family that endangered this had to be reviewed and corrected by them. But so powerful a private influence had each elder over every individual of his family that interference in this respect was seldom needed. The ideals held before the race sank into the nature of every citizen and guided him in all his actions, if not now in all his thoughts. The matters that needed most deliberation were the revisal or expansion of those ideals, and the selection of pairs for marriage and parenthood; they knew that a mistake in either of these would lead to incalculable evil, and would necessitate, in retracing the step, long years of thought and labour besides the most drastic remedies. The guidance of the great public institutions needed little counsel or interference, but was almost automatic; everyone concerned knew by instinct what he had to do and had its interests so completely at heart that he required no reminder of the details of his duty. The inspection and review of the various departments were rather the task of the expert families, and chiefly of their elders, than of the elders as a whole.

But there was one department for which the inner council or senate was wholly responsible. This was Rimla, or the centre of force. Mechanical power was the one thing, they had all along felt, that must belong to the state and be controlled by the state. All other possessions (wealth, property, reputation) were mere symbols of it. To let it drift into the hands of individuals, who might grasp more than was good for them or even monopolise it, was to endanger the future of the race. Only the wisest and best and the most imbued with Limanoran ideals were ever allowed to control the concentrated force of the island. In fact no one but a member of the inner council could be the master of force, and his term of control was limited to a few hours at a time, for which period he was chosen from day to day from amongst the oldest and most experienced of the nobler-natured. It was the greatest honour the race could bestow. To be trusted by the whole people with the management and distribution of that which was the fulcrum of all progress was to be marked out as one worthy to be divine. When I came to understand this, I saw the meaning of the reverence, almost awe, with which the master of force was pointed out to me on my first visit to Rimla. I had not measured the greatness of his power, or seen that it was far more real and comprehensive than that of any monarch or despot that had ever ruled.

Where would their civilisation or their ideals or great future be without this marvellous concentration of naked energy? What would have become of the race, had a base ambition or an insane caprice entered into the thoughts of anyone of their masters of force while he held the reins of dominion in his hands? It was the duty, therefore, of everyone who was elected to the office, however often he had held it, however noble he had proved himself, however trusted he might be by all, to submit himself the hour before he entered Rimla to the tests of the inner nature and thoughts that the race knew, and this in presence of the oldest of the senate. The workings of his brain and heart were stringently investigated, and after that he was sent to sleep, in order to have his dreams read and interpreted. If any of the tests gave dubious answer, he resigned his office and another was chosen in his place. For almost a generation this had never occurred, yet the precautions were as rigidly enforced as if the tests had often revealed defects. For the master of force held in his hands the key of their civilisation and progress. To the elders all private ends and honours seemed trivial beside the aim of the race, the only divine thing, they thought, that they held in their hearts. To have been able to substitute anything on earth for it even for a moment was to them so absurd and insane as to appear impossible for any Limanoran. All this safeguarding of the probity and the sanity of the masters of force was therefore counted rather as a tribute to the importance of the office than a slur upon the individual.

It was not that private motive or stimulus had been annihilated. On the contrary they considered that the chief spur to progress was the struggle of the individual in competition with his fellows. He who could attain most rapidly to the ideal set immediately before the race was a marked and striking personality. To level all means of advance so as to make them the same for all was to destroy this stimulus to development. To be respected and at last reverenced by his neighbours was longed for by every man in the community, and everyone had his own special faculty and means for gaining such respect and reverence. At the great purgation of the island’s socialists and thieves, private property had not been abolished, but only disgraded. The socialists had been willing to erase all other methods of civilisation and progress for the sake of the impossible dream, the equalisation of property; the thieves had been willing to do the same for the sake of the swift acquisition of their share of it. They kept up an abnormal and morbid appetite for property which raised it completely out of scale and proportion, compared with the other symbols of power and means of advance. It became a disease that perverted their whole view of life, and nothing wholesome could be done till they were expelled. After their expulsion it was found that property lost its importance, and the word “fortune” ceased to be identified with its acquisition. It fell to its natural and true position in the scale of means of development.

The motive that the socialists had most prominently put forward for their schemes, the benefit of their poverty-stricken and starving brethren, had long become too artificial to hoodwink the wiser patriots. Not since the barbarous stage of their past had bare subsistence been a struggle and aim in the race. They had become too provident to allow population to outrun means or demand. There never had been for centuries anyone who needed his neighbour or the state to aid him with food or clothing or other of the vital necessaries. If there had, he would have been too deeply ashamed of his mismanagement of his life, or his improvidence, to allow anyone to know of it. The arrangements of the state and the carefully proportioned size of the population left no room for him to throw the blame on others. The body of the people laughed at the socialists for the patent absurdity of their pretext, and helped the wise leaders to drive them out. Even if this motive had been the real one, to disorganise the whole political and social system, and to throw overboard the aim of the race for the sake of securing a beggarly pittance for feebler folk who ought not to have been brought into the world, and ought not to be allowed to perpetuate their kind, was a monstrous waste of vital power. There had become deeply implanted in them a racial instinct that no step should ever be taken which could in any way weaken or endanger the sense of individual responsibility. They knew that no amount of self-sacrifice, no kind of guaranty of certain subsistence on the part of the workers in the state, would ever make true and good citizens of those who had lost this.

Even when they had come to have a far more comprehensive and scientific command of the problem of population, and when the communising of property would have led to no evil results, they refused to think of such a measure. Every man was allowed to accumulate as much wealth as he desired. But none had now the ambition to accumulate it. And as soon as communication with the neighbouring islands was cut off, commerce ceased, and with it all opportunity for growing opulent. Everyone had enough for his needs, and these were great in a country so rich in resources and devices and so rapid in its development. The family safeguarded the solvency of every member of it, as it guaranteed his capacity to do competent work for the state and for himself. The state demanded nothing that could be called taxation from the citizens; part of their time, ability, and work was all that it required. But it was one of the methods of showing patriotism to give freely to the state.

It was indeed one of the chief reasons for the retention of private property that it allowed of an easy and ever available means of cultivating benevolence. Personal work was a limited thing, and could be given in aid of others only at fixed places and times and in defined quantities. But if it could be concentrated in private possessions, then there was ready at all times and places and in any quantity the power of helping others. Without it generosity and self-sacrifice would have to mourn their petty limitations. With it benignity was ever in exercise, and remained an active and vital habit in the community. If the state possessed all and demanded all, then the citizens were little better than slaves; their virtues had no freedom, no exercise, and were bound to disappear. To get as much as they could, to sate their appetites as fully as they could, was the only competition amongst neighbours in such a condition of affairs. The blessedness of giving help spontaneously would never be experienced and would vanish from the community, and in its train sympathy, beneficence, humanity.

The competition in Limanora was in giving, not in getting, though getting was one of the conditions and bases of giving. It is true that the advance of the race had almost superseded this palpable method of revealing the bounty of the spirit. In former ages, when hypocrisy was still possible, and language and smiles were too cheap and ready a treasury to be wholly trusted as evidence of kindly intent, private property enabled a man to give a trustworthy guaranty of his generosity; the only other things he could sacrifice, work, liberty, life, were too personal and too limited in opportunity to be symbols of a bounteous heart. Now men and women needed no outer symbol to interpret and pledge their thoughts and feelings. Everyone knew the soul of his neighbour as he knew his own, and hypocrisy was a lost art, having been long ago stripped of its motive.

This singular people retained the institution of private property, fearing the apathy and languor that fall upon the energies of a socialistic people. They had far higher stimuli to competitive vigour in the devotion to progress and to the aim of the race, but they were not so foolish as to abandon the more material stimuli. Everything that would contribute to progress they retained, everything that would tend to quicken the pace. Nor were they yet so far away from the more animal stage of their civilisation as to be wholly rid of the fear of its return. Should it return, the other motives, even that of patriotism, would be so shadowy as to be impotent against the deluge of appetite and indolence if the material competitive principle, the system of private property, had been abolished. To avoid the risk of such a doom as had fallen on Tirralaria, they refused to communise possessions. And a certain sweetness of imagination, of memory, and of harmless romance had hallowed the system in their minds; without it they would have felt a distinct depreciation of life that would not have found compensation in any advantage its abolition might have brought.

The evils that seemed to attach to the system in other times and nations attached to all other symbols of power as well: birth, position, influence, reputation, character, talent, opportunity, luck. All that tended to differentiate one man from another and raise him in the scale of the use of power was open to the same charge as the institution of private property. But early in their reforming career the Limanorans had discovered that the evils that seemed to attach to these features of human life were not inherent in them; they arose from the passions of envy and jealousy. As long as these had possession of men’s hearts, the levelling process could never be final.

Communities that made the attempt to plane down human society to a common level, and to equalise all symbols and opportunities of power had an infinite task before them. They really began at the wrong end and struck at the accidental consequences of what they thought an evil, instead of getting to the root and source. The Limanorans had wisely set themselves to bleach their natures of envy and jealousy; and once this was accomplished they found that inequalities amongst them were, instead of being an evil, the greatest good, the keenest stimulus of progress. They smiled at the farce that went on in Tirralaria, a farce that at intervals culminated in tragedy. They saw the inherent futility of all efforts to do away with the occasions of envy and jealousy, instead of eradicating the passions themselves. They compared socialistic and equalising schemes to bailing out the ocean with a sieve.

The disadvantages and abuses of private property and of all inequality in the symbols of power vanish with the opportunity and the desire to flaunt them in the faces of neighbours and rivals, to use them as appeals to envy and jealousy. As a rule it is in small communities and circles and narrow localities, where every man in almost every movement kicks up against some neighbour, that envy and jealousy reach their most virulent development and acquire the greatest refinement in the use of their weapons. But that is in small communities that form parts of wider arenas of ambition, and so learn arrogance and scorn of their surroundings. Where a limited society lives, isolated from alien and ambitious neighbours, a simple and unambitious life, it is generally found to be almost free from the meaner emotions, envy, jealousy, and their counterparts, disdain, pride, and insolence. Amongst them there is little need of coercion or law or government; the more primitive virtues of honesty, truth, loyalty, courage, come to them by nature; the family eradicates or conceals all symptoms of lapse from them, all rebellion against the interests of all. The great drawback to such commonweals is that they are not progressive; they remain centuries in one stage of civilisation, and seem to travellers from larger and advancing nations mere savages buried in filth, and enslaved to the despotism of the seasons. But this people considered such superficially embruted communities nearer to ultimate salvation than the highly refined nations that exhibit a medley of wealth and starvation, militarism and religion. The maximum of government, they held, implied the minimum of progress; for the essentials of spiritual advance are ignored by external administration.

A long experience of all types of body politic, and a minute knowledge and study of the history of the world, had made this people antagonistic to every form of great empire. In their own far past they had known the ambition to incorporate other peoples, and extend the bounds of their dominion over the world. But that was in periods that were stagnant or retrogressive in the essentials of a noble civilisation. Great empires are able to concentrate vast resources; but they spend them all on pomp, administration, and war. Wherever the world is parcelled out into huge nations, there is no chance of freeing them from the slavery of omnivorous armaments. Each is a threat to the freedom of the others, and none dares disarm, or spend her wealth on the arts of peace, lest the others should take advantage of her unwarlike attitude. The only progress continues to be in the size and the equipment of the armies, and in the ingenuity of the instruments of destruction. And, should two or three absorb the others, the military vigilance has to be all the greater. Even if the impossible should occur, and one great empire should absorb the world, the internal militarism would be none the less; half of mankind would have to be employed in keeping the other half from rebellion against the central power. Huge empires, instead of being guaranties of peace, are direct incentives to war, or at least to a permanent warlike attitude.

What has most obstructed human progress on its civilised levels is an inevitable tendency at a certain stage to mass into large aggregates; that is, when there has been considerable accumulation of wealth or an exceptional development of commerce, and protection is needed by the wealthy or the merchants. Then the military element gains the mastery of all natural power, and whilst there occurs a rapid evolution of all forms of aggression and defence and of all the virtues connected with them, there is real retrogression; the spirit dwindles as the outer integuments bloom. Militarism only perpetuates itself and protects nothing but its own ambitions. It is in its last analysis a subtle fusion of histrionicism and savagery; it attracts the same tastes as the prize-ring and the theatre. Everything that encourages it or develops it stands in the way of the true advance of the human race.

There is, they held, no hope for mankind in general, unless this stage of imperial ambitions and aggregations can be overleaped. Back must the world recede from vast empires if it would attain to any nobleness of aim, or any development of the higher elements in man. Its sole salvation lies in small communities covering its surface and remaining free from the taint of imperial effort and militarism. Only when the nation has complete command of the numbers within it through the family, that is, when the nation is small, will patriotism become commensurate with humanity, and the true goal of the human race be the aim of the individual.

The family is the natural unit of administration in a community; and, as long as the heads form the common council that watches the interests and aim of all, it can never come into conflict with national unity and progress. The house and its goods belonged to the household in Limanora; and, although the members of it had equal rights to the livelihood that was counted fullest and best by the community, the individual, if mature, had freedom of action that would surprise a Western freeman; he was the equal of all members of the state; within the aim of the race and the path of its progress he had complete personal initiative; his destiny, it is true, had been shaped for him during his pupillage, but the fulfilment of it was his own; his aims and desires had been implanted and developed and pruned whilst he was passing through childhood and youth, so that he would not in full manhood spontaneously change them, but when he became an independent citizen his methods of fulfilling these were all his own. He had to contribute to the family treasury what was needed to keep it level with Limanoran affluence, and he was generally eager to give more; but all the rest was at his own disposal. The family had many buildings in common; but each full-grown member, whether male or female, had a separate house to retire to. Originality in the family, one of the chief methods in the race for encouraging progress, could never be attained without cultivating originality in the individual. It had a track laid out for it through the future, carefully related to the march of the nation; but it might adopt what means it liked to make that track sure, and it might explore on all sides of it for new ideas and methods and resources. It was the same with the individual within it; he was encouraged to find his own means, and to use his imagination and his other faculties fully and independently, provided he kept his eye on the goal of the family, which was involved in the goal of the race.

All the families were equal in their relations to the state, whatever their occupation or wealth or origin might be. This prevented the family from passing into the rigidity of the caste. All work was alike honoured, and personal worth was the test of the man and of the respect paid him, irrespective of external symbols and representatives of power. And to prevent the supersession of this by any other principle, all the physical forms of toil that might at one time or other be considered offensive, were gathered into the hands of the state, and all men and women had to take their share of them. They were the duties connected with the various public institutions, and especially with the centre of force. It was recognised as a good thing that every man and woman should have physical exercise every day in order to keep the basis of the spirit in the best possible condition, by working off the débris of the various organs and functions of the system. This fitted in with the principle that all force should concentrate in the hands of the government. The most severe physical toil was certain to be that which collected, divided, and adapted the vast accumulation of energy in Rimla. The duties in the centre of force were therefore portioned out day by day and week by week; and every man and woman of the community had to spend a certain portion of time each day in this vast forge of energy. But the lighter work was given to the less muscular, and the youthful had to bear the chief burden; whilst the older, as their share, were occupied chiefly in superintending it. Besides this, every citizen had to take daily part in the work of some one of the public institutions that were not assigned to special families, or in the mechanical and unskilled toil of one of those that were under the care of special families. Thus two or three hours of every citizen’s twenty-four were impounded by the state, much to his bodily and spiritual advantage.

The only contribution in money or kind that the state made compulsory was that which each family exchequer gave for the support of the medical, architectural, and other public professional families. No valid system could have estimated the value of their services either to the state or to the individual; and it was considered impracticable to valuate the benefits received by each family from their work. An amount was fixed, which each had to contribute to every family that had the care of a public institution, or the performance of a public duty. But over and above this amount the voluntary gifts to them were very large. The result was that the treasuries of public and professional families were oftenest the fullest; and they were as ready and as able to give as any. If there was any rivalry amongst the families and individuals in Limanora, it was in the delight of giving.