Limanora

CHAPTER X
THE MANORA AND THE IMANORA

WHAT would have been considered taxes in another state were looked on by the people of this land as voluntary contributions. There had been no formal resolution or written law fixing necessary imposts, but they came rather from the heart of the people, and expressed themselves in what would have been called in other nations public opinion. It was opinion which needed no verbal communication and might be called rather the public magnetism of the race, that unified its customs and feelings, and made a body of written law superfluous.

One feature of their civilisation that puzzled me for many years was the seeming immobility of their public relationships. When a man or woman got into a certain family with its professional duties and prospects, there was no means, it seemed to me, of changing. Once in a certain groove, a Limanoran was in it for ever. His destiny was irrevocable. It is true that the elders took every precaution to choose his parents and ancestry for such a goal, and to mould his tissues and educate his faculties to it. Yet some inspiration might reveal to him a vista into a future better suited to his powers than that which had been fixed for him. It is true that this feature gave great stability and strength to the state. But a people that believed so firmly in liberty, originality, and progress should surely have adopted some more plastic system for their permanent relationships, some status less rigid and immutable for the individual members. It seemed to me more like the iron system of caste than the flexibility of an advancing civilisation.

As usual I was mistaken in my criticism. I had not looked deeply enough, or observed long enough to know the marvellous fabric of their polity, a full knowledge of which meant an experience of several centuries. The immutability was only in appearance and not in reality.

A few years after I had been admitted to some of the privileges of mature citizenship, I began to feel that we were approaching an exceptional time. There was evident a bustle of preparation, a rare quickening of the pace of all work, and an expectancy that pointed to some unusual event. The flight-exercises and the leisure-time were somewhat curtailed, and as much work was put into four weeks as was commonly put into five. Before the year was half over, I began to understand what it meant. The word Manora occurred too often on the lips and in the minds of my neighbours and friends to escape my observation and on inquiry I found it meant the decennial review. Every ten years, one quarter of the year was devoted to a census of the civilisation of the period.

With all the other newly matured citizens, I had to be instructed in the part I was to take in this census. Each day for months I had to devote some hours to tracing out the progress I had made both in character and in works, and in putting it into graphic and easily observed form. I was taught to draw up comparative statistics of the stages I had passed through from year to year for the decennial period, though they considered this a poor and misleading mode of reviewing the past. It was the mere skeleton of the census.

I was supplied from the valley of memory with irelium-strips, whereon had been recorded automatically without my knowledge my thoughts and feelings and words in the various important scenes in which I had taken part. How surprised was I often to observe the mistakes my memory had fallen into! As a witness of some act I had seen, or some discussion I had heard, I would have sworn confidently to the opposite of the truth. As to my own deeds and words and even thoughts and feelings, I was ashamed to see how completely my subsequent life had distorted the record of them; the likeness was often unrecognisable. And I knew well which was wrong; for the machine-reporters were infallible as far as their report went. After my perusal of these automatic records of my life I came to the conclusion that common history must be a tissue of fiction and error wherever it has had to depend on the senses and memory of men for its details. I grew less and less inclined to add anything from memory to my decennial biography, which I drew from these machine-reports. It was as refreshing to study them as if I had been examining pictures and memorials of another’s life. By the time I had done with them, I seemed to know something real of my past; and side by side I was able to place my review of what I had become, and the account of my various stages of growth during this period, with the definiteness and accuracy of one who was analysing scientifically half a dozen different evolutionary specimens of a species. My personality stood out at each different point of its growth as clearly as if it had been that of another man laid under the microscope and in these records I lived my life over again.

But I was still further aided in these researches into my development by the accounts of the weekly inspection of my tissues and faculties kept by the medical families. These were not merely statistical and verbal, but pictorial. The appearance and electric state of every part of my system had been made to impress themselves indelibly in picture-records; and these were now submitted to me for comparison. From the different records set side by side with the electrographs and radiographs of all my animal economy, I was taught how to produce an evolutionary picture of my faculties and organs and tissues.

This was one of the most striking advances in their art. They could combine the pictorial representations of various stages in the life of a growing being in such a way that, when placed in one of their lightning-swift representers, the growth would flash before one’s senses as a continuity. A child would grow as by magic into a matured man or woman as we gazed. A seed would grow into a great tree in the space of a few minutes. The brain or heart or lungs of a Limanoran would pass like a flash through the stages of development that had taken generations to achieve. For spectacular study of the history of any living thing nothing could surpass the imataran, or focusser of history, as the new instrument was called.

From the archives of the medical family I was able to make such a series of pictures of my whole constitution and system as revealed the growth of every faculty and organ and tissue. The rapidity of my development astounded me as I looked over these graphic records of my past. It was like a full-grown man inspecting the photographs and annals of his infancy and childhood. I could not have believed the story of it, had it not been engraved so indubitably on these irelium-strips by the machine-reporters. My own memory had become so foreshortened by the consciousness of my present, and by the disproportionate importance of recent events and conditions that I could have no more implicit trust in its representations of the past. But, when I placed the various series of evolutionary pictures in the imataran, the effect was so magical that I was half-inclined to believe in preference my backward-looking faculty again. In the twinkling of an eye the transparent reflection of myself had grown its ten years’ growth, and I had developed out of an alien into something not unlike a Limanoran.

All that I had done in the period, or rather all that I had done productively, I had similarly to picturise in series, so that every feature that had been in any way developed might reveal itself, and everything that showed stagnation or retrogression might be observed without trouble.

My proparents and the elders of the family superintended and tested my review of my past, and taught me to be unbending in criticism of myself. No feature that seemed to count against my advance was I to shrink from representing in all its nakedness, nor was I through false modesty to depreciate whatsoever stood to my credit. I scarcely needed the precautions; for I had learned during my sojourn amongst this rigidly sincere and ingenuous people to respect the naked truth above all things. Indeed I had come to feel that it was useless to act otherwise than as if my whole system were open to the gaze of my neighbours.

Every mature member of the community had this drastic valuation of his work and strict criticism of himself to make and all were occupied for three months in reducing the annals of their past ten years to focus. For the young and those still under tutelage the proparents and guardians were responsible, and they picturised for the imataran the decennial life of their pupils as well as of themselves.

But over and above this personal work, the elders had to review the growth of the families, institutions, sciences, and arts of which they had the guidance. This they knew well how to do from long practice, and had carefully prepared the records of each separate year of the decennium, and the pictures of the new features and new growths in the departments they superintended. During these three months all they had to do was to focus the growth of the years and arrange the various records in series in such a way as to reveal the development.

When all was ready, each family gathered in its public spectacular hall and viewed the growth of every member of it in the shadows thrown by the imataran. I thought at first that the effect would be too monotonous to be interesting. But, as the spectacle of the Leomo proceeded, it proved to be a marvellous revelation of the vast variety of types in one family, and of the amount of growth that had gone on in the tissues and faculties of every member in different directions.

The growth of the family as a whole was taken first,—its power of coping with new problems and of suggesting difficulties to come, its additions to the treasury of force and to the civilisation of the race, its attitude toward the aim of the nation, its pace on the forward march, its comprehension of the Limanoran ethics and of the general problems of the race, its command over its individual members, and its relationships to the other families and to the state as a whole. The decennial development of the Leomo was graphically focussed in pictures that told their story in a flash even to the least mature.

Massed thus, the advance was felt by all to be surprising, for each had been watching throughout the decennium his own special work or set of faculties, and had been unable to abstract himself sufficiently from his own sphere to gain a just view of the whole family progress. As we saw the science and the art develop before our eyes, the moment’s glance intensified the ten years’ work into a marvel. From a hundred different points of view we watched the advance of the Leomo, and we felt proud that we belonged to such a family; we knew that taken as a whole it had not been wanting in its duty to the race and the aim of the race. A magnetic thrill went through us, especially when there unrolled before us the living picture of the preceding decennium; the contrast between the two in pace of development was striking. Here and there of course we recognised flaws in the work accomplished during our recent period, when seen against the design of the whole. But we gathered from the spectacle fresh hope and energy for the future, and renewed determination to increase the pace still more during the next period.

We shrank a little perhaps from the next stage of the spectacle, for it meant the decennial confession of every one of us all. The family as a whole acted the priest, and before it we each laid the story of our failures and successes, our deeds of virtue and our sins. The ordeal was less trying than I had anticipated, for the critic was lenient and sympathetic. If the lapse was slight, the source of it was tenderly pointed out by the elders and the remedy indicated; and the stronger members formed resolves to lend their strength to the lapser to master his weakness; everything that was possible, he felt sure, would be done to help the laggard faculty or tissue to recoup its powers and bring itself even with the march of the family. If the lapse was great, the case was sympathetically placed before the council of elders, which investigated the question whether it was due to their mistaken choice of a career for the youth (it was generally a youth that failed strikingly), or whether it had come from some changed faculty or tissue in him; if it were the former, he was aided in deciding what change in his career would be best for him; if the latter, he was dealt with as an invalid, and in the hospital for spiritual diseases the curative powers of the nation were applied to his case. Sometimes his disease originated in atavism, and then the most drastic remedies, both physical and spiritual, were brought to bear; sometimes it was found to come from a new microscopic parasite that had floated from some far atmosphere into the Limanoran arena; and then all the wisdom and science of the race had to be brought into requisition to investigate the conditions of the new foe and the possible means of driving it out.

This indeed was the time for anyone who had made a mistake to retrace his steps. Here it was that the seeming rigidity of the system was tempered and rendered flexible and plastic as nature herself. Ten years was but a point in the continuity of the force in a man, in the great expansion of Limanoran life. But it was enough to make sure that a mistake in the choice of a career was real, not merely apparent, and that the longing for another was not a mere caprice. A shorter period would not have been test enough; and the review of all careers prevented undue proportion being given to any individual failure or mistake. It was not infrequent for youths who thought that they had mistaken their career, to change their minds at the Manora, and acknowledge that, all things considered, the wisest course had been chosen for them; they came to see that their work was not so defective as they had imagined, and that they had contributed their due quota to the advance of the family and the race; against the background of the whole science or art in which they toiled, they recovered tone and hope, and the pride they felt in the progress of all stirred them to new exertions in their own special work. It was as much the aim of the elders in these Manoras to give new enthusiasm in the careers that had been chosen as to revise the scheme of careers. The primary aim was to remove the sense of bondage that might grow up in the breasts of any from the feeling of inevitableness and unchangeableness in the development of their lives. It was rare indeed that a real failure ever occurred. But none the less a sense of failure might seize upon a timid or self-depreciative mind, and then the knowledge that there could be no turning back would send it rankling home into the soul. Circumscription to a course, if irrevocable, is none the less incarceration that it is a course selected by ourselves. A Limanoran never felt enslaved to his career. He knew he had made his choice, and that he might make it again if he showed sufficient reason. The result of this atmosphere of complete freedom was that not once in a generation was any career, once deliberately selected, changed. The elders were fully justified in the elaborate choice of ancestry and parents, and in the still more elaborate pains taken in the choice of surroundings and in training. Misgivings and hesitations all disappeared in the full light of the decennial review.

It was marvellous how the magnetic sympathy of the family, as the spectacular confessional spread life after life before the gaze of all, eradicated timidities, and strengthened each member in the path he had chosen. Instead of having his little defects emphasised or exaggerated, all the merits of his work were brought out. I took new courage and hope, as I felt the air of impartial esteem over the excellencies of each member’s development and of sympathetic sorrow and condolence over any evidence of failure or retrogression. Not a sign was there of censorious or captious criticism. Nor was there anything of that barter of laudation and panegyric which makes mutual-admiration societies so unwholesome in their effects. All was subdued, gentle, reasonable, wise, and sympathetic, and the most healthful and invigorating of all tonics to everyone. From what I had looked forward to as an ordeal I came away refreshed and strong, determined to amend everything that could be deemed faulty in my life, and to quicken my pace in marching towards the goal of the race.

The national review of every family’s progress was somewhat similar, except that the larger arena and the greater volume of magnetism in the audience stirred a deeper thrill in the natures of the individual members. It was held in Loomiefa, and it took many days to view the whole spectacle of the nation’s decennial work. Nothing have I ever seen so varied, disciplinal, and impressive. It was as if ten thousand years of the whole world’s progress had been focussed in this valley. Science after science, art after art, graphically displayed all that it had achieved during the period. To me it seemed a universal education; and it strained all my faculties to follow the marvellous array of inventions and discoveries, whilst my neighbours and comrades drank the whole spectacle in with an ease that in other circumstances would have made me envious. It was not the fault of the masters and makers of the display that I followed it with difficulty, for they had made every feature clear even to the least mature. What puzzled me was the logical sequence or interdependence of the various parts of the spectacle. Everything had been worked out so as to reveal its relationship to the whole system and to the aim of the race, and to comprehend it tested all my powers. I felt as if I had to study a great encyclopædia in a few days, or rather its pictorial representation of every feature of the most advanced and intricate civilisation. But even this analogy is inadequate, for the phases of the many-sided progress were not mechanically arranged, but grew out of the central system by a natural and rational magic. The work of every family revealed its central principles and their connection with the advance of the race. It looked as if some master-mind had sat through the years, and watching the nation’s work as it was being accomplished, kept it all in system. We felt that there was one design in the progress of the whole period, and that any feature that stood out in independence marred the symmetry, and needed correction.

I remembered the waste of energy that took place in all intellectual spheres in Europe, and felt ashamed of the contrast. I could have told this people of the futile skirmishings and endless controversies of the men of science and learning, of their duplications of each other’s work with the consequent clutchings after fame, of their assumptions and merely verbal distinctions, of their thickets of abstruse definitions and ambiguities, of their everlasting substitutions of theory for fact. I never felt so conscious of the shortcomings of the civilisation which had nurtured me as during the array of Limanoran decennial progress in sciences and arts.

After the spectacle was over, we returned to our usual employments. But I observed that there were now more frequent meetings of the elders for several months, and at last we had as the result of their discussion of the review and its aspects a considerable rearrangement of our work, and of our positions in the family and in the state. Most proceeded on the path they had been taking during the previous period. But many found themselves now at work more congenial to their temperaments and destinies, and were able to put into it their whole energy rid of the friction that the artificial application of will had meant. The changes occurred almost naturally and spontaneously; each elder returned to his family from the final meeting of the senate over the Manora, and it was known without effort or command or waste of time who had to modify his position and work, and how the modification was to be accomplished.

The impetus given to the civilisation by this loosening of any bonds which had been begun to be felt sent it on with exhilaration and vigour for years. There was an air of buoyant freedom and alacrity, even of mirth amongst the younger, as they spent their best skill and capacity upon the work they had in hand. The pace perceptibly quickened, and at times the nation seemed to advance with the volume and swiftness of a torrent. Discovery and invention became fuller as well as more minute, and the outlook began to take in regions of which they had not thought before.

I soon came to know that there was a more comprehensive and far-reaching evaluation of the resources, the faculty, and the personnel of the race ahead of us. Every tenth decennium there occurred the event of the century, the Imanora or prospicient review. Ten years made too short a period to give a bird’s-eye view of the future as contrasted with the past. Even a century was short enough for the perspective of past and future progress; but it was considered wise to make the period fixed and of regular recurrence, and ten decenniums formed a space symmetrical with the shorter Manora. The Imanora was thus a centennial review. Tendencies that might be ambiguous in their character under a decennial criticism would proclaim themselves evil or good in so long a stretch as a hundred years. Faculties that would still be but in embryo after a course of ten years would be in full maturity when a century had passed. Young men and women, who might still hesitate within a decade as to whether they had chosen their best career, would have found by the Imanora what was their true bent beyond the possibility of mistake.

But it was not meant merely as a review of the past and a rearrangement of positions, as the Manora was above all things. It was rather a revision of aims and destinies, a futuritive evaluation of the powers of the race. Not merely the elders but the whole people were led up to a mount of vision whence they could see their future for hundreds of years spread out before them, bounded by the lines their past had drawn. There they could view in picture the solutions of the problems they had been working at and the final outcome of the lines of development they had been following. They had to decide there and then how far these agreed with the ultimate aim and destiny of the race, and how far they had better modify them, or modify the general aim. Then they had to choose whether their path should turn to the right or left, or should continue onwards as it had continued for a century. The spectacle of their future spread out in living picture and symbol must have been a deeply impressive sight. Every family had prepared a series of tableaux of their possible destinies and the possible developments of their sciences and arts, of the problems they would have to solve, and of their possible solutions, and these were passed in detail before the whole people for criticism and appreciation. It was as if a nation were led to the cave of some great and true prophet, and were shown all that lay before it, whatsoever path it should choose. The Limanorans had before them the choice of a destiny for a hundred years. It was the care of the elders that no ambiguity or disproportion should be admitted into the map of the possible routes that they might take through the future, and that there should be no obscurity in the relationships of these to the ultimate goal.

During the last decade of the century the Loomiamo and the Fraloomiamo were the busiest of all the families in the island. Their exceptional development of imagination made them essential to the preparation of every map of the future. They seemed to be able to see where others found only night and darkness. Each science and art often awoke to perceive its way barred by some hill of difficulty, round or over which they could discover no way; then the members of the Loomiamo who had made special study of its path were called in to point out the possible tracks that might lead past the obstacle. Or again a family would find the way of its science or art untraceable; they would grope blindly about for it and yet see no farther than the facts and methods immediately before them. Here the help of the Fraloomiamo was indispensable; a thousand different way-marks would soon be apparent, and the route of future development would grow plain.

The pioneering families were the heroes of the Imanora, although most of the hard work belonged to those who watched over the individual sciences and arts. Nothing could be done without them, and the exhilaration of trust in them and need of their services gave extraordinary vigour to their special faculty. The close of a century was one of the great autumns of their literature; their harvests at that era were marked by fulness and wealth, and the pace of their work gave it exceptional fervour and glow. In the West we should have called the passionate ardour with which they threw off scheme after scheme, inspiration of the highest order. But they knew the working of their faculty as well as any of the inventors knew the intricacies of their machines. There was nothing mysterious about it. Their clear knowledge of its constitution and of the conditions that favoured its growth made it easy for them to predict when its pace and volume would be torrential, and every preparation was made by the pioneering families to meet the exceptional drain on their energies at the close of every century.

Loomiefa was then the scene of the most striking prefigurant displays that the human mind could conceive. The resources of Limanoran skill and ingenuity were brought to bear on it, and nothing was left undone to impress the event upon the imaginations and memories of the younger, for the elders expected that it would thus mould the natures of the coming generation through the minds of the prospective parents. The world as it might be, if certain lines of development were followed, was pictured in the most impressive way possible; and to this people, it seemed to me, everything was possible. The Imanora had the sublimity and transcendent consecration of a great religious departure, whose significance was fully foreseen.