Limanora

LIMANORA

BOOK I
The Outer or Material Civilisation

CHAPTER I
MY AWAKENING

I OPENED my eyes in a world no feature of which I could recognise. Everything around me was of the most dazzling beauty. The walls and vaulted roof of the room where I lay gleamed like mosaic-work of lit jewellery. The floors were duller, and yet shone with a coloured radiance like that in a dew-belled meadow under the light of the slant-rayed forenoon sun. The light broke up in innumerable points and corners of the roof into a magnificent display of prismatic colours, moving and changing every minute. Yet, with all the marvellous iridescence, there was sufficient shade in the vault and walls to check the fiery oppression of the sun. I had dreamt of such fairy palaces; but the dream had ever been abortive or glanced off into something hideous or appalling. Here was architecture as unlike anything I had seen upon earth as a dream, and yet it had a grace that no dream had ever caught.

Nor did I know the material of which this room was formed. It seemed like ice, yet was never changed by the fire of the sun. It was capable of being moulded into the most delicate lace-work, and yet could be made as massive as marble walls of Eastern palaces that were built for both pleasure and siege. It was in portions as transparent as glass, and in others frosted with wondrous pictures. And how were those countless domes and arches and arborescent columns produced with such ease? How were those airy galleries hung? How were those fragrant fountains poised so nicely that an infant’s finger seemed capable of overturning them? Even the gently moving curtains had the same crystalline character as the walls, now frosted as by the artist of our winter-mornings, again goldenly dim, or rainbow-hued.

There was a spaciousness that reminded me of the colonnaded aisles of our great cathedrals. Was I resting in one of the temples of the island? Was I being consecrated for sacrifice? And yet the dainty warm nooks, the close-hung curtains, and graceful tapestries so broke the awe and loneliness of the place as to make me feel that it was a chamber for a solitary. And I could look out upon the fields and forests and the far-stretching sea; for every foot of wall had in it some transparency that with its landscape stood like a picture framed in the frosted tracery around it. I seemed never to reach the limit of these varied perspectives and distances. I sank back exhausted on my perfumed couch, then slowly recovered by aid of the sweetness that met my every sense. The fragrance that filled the room was like that of finest garden flowers, and kept changing from one lovely variety to another, never cloying the sense. Around, too, from unseen sources, floated sweet music, that now swelled into a chorus, and again fell into angelic softness. Then a new sensation came to me; with every breath I seemed to draw in a subtle nourishment and stimulation to my senses; every minute added to the renewal of my strength. And, to increase my delighted bewilderment, I gradually felt a new sense appealed to; every nerve in my body seemed exhilarated, and I felt capable of heroic actions. Some magnetic influence was raying towards me through the atmosphere, and a dormant electric faculty seemed to be awakened in my mind and in my body, producing the effect of intoxication without its stupor or the numbing of the moral powers. It was like a beautiful dream without the helplessness of the dreamer. I felt no delirium or voluptuous languor from the excitement of the senses. It all led to spiritual vigour, that would have made the body its prompt ally.

My renewed energies turned my mind to my strange surroundings. I wondered where the beings were who had built this wondrous palace, and were now doubtless playing upon my senses. Was it all a dream? And had I never been shot into the sea with Noola? It seemed as if my inmost thoughts were at once communicated to my watchers; for from some direction, out of some niche or doorway I had not noticed, moved softly a figure, that, in its muscular breadth, large head, and springy gait, reminded me of Noola. Upon the face a smile shone out of unfathomed depths of thought and sympathy, and yet the lips were close as if to forbid speech. It was enough to rest and gaze at the beautiful expression of the face with its intensity of love and pity in the eyes. But the features had not that symmetry of outline which we call beauty in Europe; and the form was not “divinely tall.” The whole of the attraction lay in the upraying of the soul into the face. It was like gazing into the limpid waters of a lake; I tried to give speech to my emotions, but the hand rose gently to the lips in a gesture that commanded silence, then waved over me, and, as I looked, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

I knew not how long I had been unconscious; for when I woke I seemed to be a new man; every faculty tingled with energy; health glowed through my tissues; I wandered from niche to niche, from arcade to recess; I climbed the lofty galleries and raised the curtains, shaking the sweet perfumes from them as they swung in the air; I ran from transparency to transparency with the delight of a child, and gazed through each at the ever-varying landscapes that stretched outwards to the sea. Music, distant and entrancing, floated around me in the air, with variations and cooling bars of silence, so that it made a subtle ether circumambient rather than a definite impression on the senses. Under such conditions what could not I do in life? I remembered the old weariness and despair that used to cling around me like a shirt of Nessus even in the morning when I was refreshed with sleep, and the clogging humours that used to retard my most generous or most energetic action. In my former life I had moved in a clammy viscous medium that dragged back my most eager faculties. Now I was built of air, and stirred lightly as air.

What was it that had accomplished this strange transformation? I had not felt so in the other islands of the archipelago or even on its seas. I had not been so exhilarated at my first awaking. How had this great change come about? Or was it but momentary, to pass away like other intoxications and leave exhaustion and ache? I began to be puzzled and to feel the return of the thought that it was perhaps only a dream after all. How was I to test the matter?

Surely I could not have thought aloud. Yet here from somewhere or other was moving across the floor the figure that had appeared after my first trance. I was so awestruck by the noiseless flash of the approach that I could make no sign of welcome. What could I say to a being who came so near to what we consider in the old world the supernatural? As soon as my thoughts touched upon the state of my mind and the circumstances that surrounded me, my host (should I call him so?) appeared. And, though my senses, I thought, had acquired preternatural acuteness, not a sound had I heard of his entrance or of his footsteps across the chamber.

He seemed to know the perplexity of my thoughts again, for he advanced with so airy a grace that my eyes were fascinated by the ease of the motion. And his words came almost like music; I scarcely considered what he was saying, so beautiful were the tones and manner in which it was said. “Come, and I shall tell you what has occurred,” was what I understood. It was in the primary or simplest vocabulary of Limanora, the vocabulary that Noola had taught me.

He led me by a covered but transparent way into a vaulted chamber, that seemed to the other as a cathedral to a chapel; for it was pillared and galleried and aisled with the most transcendent art. But I was too interested in the story he had to tell to give way to my passive enjoyment of the scene. He motioned me to ascend with him a platform that rose above us in a lofty recess at one brightly sunlit corner of the building. I saw him lean back, and feared that he would fall to the floor; but with his motion the rich mosaic of the platform opened, and a rest rose to meet his body which was of the same alabaster-like texture as the curtains and seemed to shape itself to every curve and bend of his figure. He stretched out his hand towards me, and before I knew what he had done I was resting, in an attitude not far from the upright, on a soft machine like his own. He showed me how to control this by a knob under my right hand, and then together we flew to the ceiling and back, wheeled round, swung gently in the air, or remained still. It moved like a thing of life in sympathy with every desire; a slight change of the position would relieve any part of the body and yet leave all the rest supported; any kind of motion was accomplished on changing the screw that lay in the knob. I afterwards investigated the mechanism, and was amazed at its simplicity; a few levers, cunningly mastering all the various combinations of motion, turned on or off the force needed for the necessary changes. After a few hours’ experience of it, I could find no comparison in nature but the couch of air on which the albatross seems to rest as it moves. I afterwards found that a nice management of compressed air was the secret of this wonderful rest that was neither couch nor chair. As soon as we ceased to use it, it disappeared as suddenly as it had risen. This accounted for the complete absence of the furniture that impedes free motion in our European houses and made me think as I awoke in my chamber of our great cathedrals with their free floor space.

There in mid-air we lightly hung as if resting on wings; he seemed to know my anatomy and the points of greatest pressure in any attitude, and controlled both machine-rests with such adroitness that we swung hither and thither, changing slowly from the recumbent to the erect attitude or back again, finding every few minutes a different point of view of the chamber or of the landscapes that could be seen through the walls. But I soon grew oblivious to the beauty that stole through every sense; my whole consciousness was absorbed in watching the play of the intelligence on his face and listening to his narrative. I missed many of the links in his story, even though he contrived to put most of it into the primary and secondary vocabularies, and, where he was compelled to go beyond them, put so much of his thoughts into his features that I could almost have gathered it from them. But I saw the drift of the story, and, when it was over, pieced the fragments together and found, when afterwards I knew the language and the civilisation better, I had missed little of the real meaning. I give it, then, as if it were in his own words, although my intelligence seemed to stumble at every step in it.

“You wonder at your hospitable reception. But you will not wonder when you know the change in the condition of our knowledge since Noola was exiled. He was unhurt by the ricochet of the missiles on the beach. In the darkness they were ill-aimed, and, though they struck in sand, they were shattered by the impact and recoiled from the shingle underneath. He disentangled himself from the wreck and rescued you. But soon the watchers by the storm-cone were down on the beach and carried you to our house, whilst they led your comrade to another. You were each examined by the wise men and the medical families. Your faculties and emotions and tendencies were all tested, and their various strengths measured by means of the different kinds of cerebrometers whilst you slept. Since Noola was exiled a hundred years ago, our knowledge of the brain and the nerves and their various functions has been applied in the most practical way to the art of living. Every curve and convolution of the controlling instrument of the body has its value and meaning tabulated. Every action, thought, and emotion has had its physical symbol and locality fixed; and the minutest change in the strength of any one of these points in the brain or in the nervous system can be discovered by applying one of the cerebrometers. You will know what these are some day; but it is enough to say that they can measure, by means of a delicate apparatus controlled by electricity, the amount of force that exists in any living tissue; there is a separate kind for each portion of the brain and each nerve section of the trunk, and it will move only when near that portion or any living tissue that has similar properties and powers. Our own magnetic sense, which has greatly developed since Noola’s banishment, can roughly gauge the relative strengths of the various faculties and emotions in any man; and it is deeply thrilled when any thought or passion is energising in his nature. But it cannot accurately measure the strength, as these instruments can. We can absolutely trust them, in testing the character of any human being.

“Noola fully expected to be thrust back, unless he came across his own relations and friends, to whose pity and sympathy he might appeal. He trembled in alarm when he was led to the chamber in which he was to be tested. But it was found that, though his humanity had not progressed in the lines or with the rapidity that the Limanorans have developed since his departure, all the atavistic taint had disappeared from his nature, and the weak elements of his system, love, pity, tenderness, sympathy, had greatly strengthened. He could no longer by any possibility side with the warlike and revengeful in human nature.

“But even if he had only kept the evil qualities in abeyance, in the state they showed before his exile, we should have let him return; for with his strong desire to keep pace with our advance and his regret for his retrogression, he would have gladly submitted himself to our new creative surgery. Our increased knowledge of the functions and constitution of the brain and nervous system enables us to reduce or excise any portion that interferes with the development of the individual. And we can also stimulate or retard the activity of any part by placing the patient in any of our medicated atmospheres specially adapted to his circumstances, and making him breathe in the element required by his system.

“Noola is now supremely happy in the confidence that he is to be allowed to remain. Every defect in his system has been tested and measured, and he knows how far he has fallen behind our race. He would have accepted any conditions, and in order to overtake us is willing to enter upon a new education,—the abbreviation of the slow and painful advance of many ages into the hurried pace of a few years. He wishes, though three hundred years of age, to become a child again and return to his first century. But his long and painful self-discipline in Broolyi has shortened the process; and he will soon be able to keep step with his old comrades. He will be aided in every way by the wise men, some of whom will give their best wisdom and energies to him. All the physical arts we have will be brought into play to shorten his term of probation, our creative surgery and medicine, our arts for the development of tissue and nerve, our magnetic arts for the development of the senses, and our ethical arts for the development of the spiritual sensitiveness.

“For yourself he has pleaded, and, though our wise men have recognised that you are thousands of years in the rear of our civilisation, and have confirmed their recognition by scientific measurement of the forces and elements in you, they have consented to let you remain and to take your education in hand. It seems an almost impossible task to contract thousands of years into tens; but they do not despair; for our system of education has already accomplished this for children born amongst us, and you have a nature peculiarly open to our educational influences. You have first of all the passion for progress as strongly in you as in any of ourselves; and this is the prime essential of our ethics and civilisation; to it all other passions must yield; from it flows all that subdues the material world and gives dominance to the spirit, and makes for righteousness. But with it often go pride and arrogance. In you was found strongly developed the desire to treat all good men as equals, whatever difference of capacity or position or possessions might seem to separate them from you. Had you had even the slightest tinge of contemptuousness or hauteur in you, you would have been sternly repelled. To contemn is the mark of an incurably savage nature, a nature incapable of true knowledge of itself and of its relations to life. From these two desires come purity of thought and life, the love of peace, respect for the rights of others and reverence for what is fine in their personality, and absolute transparency of nature. This last we ever take to be the shortest and truest test of a progressive character, the love of truth and simplicity, complete harmony of word and act with the inmost thought. As long as a man or a nation lacks this, there can be no real advance; what seems advance is but a mirage of fame or glory. Accuracy of vision and of prevision is the first condition of true progress. It was one of the first things that Noola saw in you, and the first reason he urged for your retention; you had no desire to conceal your thoughts, so closely did they tally with your life; you had an overwhelming passion for truth and for the truthful.

“There was no need to distrust his assertions for we all felt how genuine he had become; and even sick and unconscious as you were, our magnetic sense told us that his description of you was correct. But it has become the custom to test scientifically the nature of every inhabitant of our island every week, and also at every crisis in his nature or in the history of the community, in order that any incipient defect may be at once remedied, and that drastic applications may never be needed. A complete survey of your character and faculties and corporeal system was the first step towards your admission into the community. Everything had to be known, in order that your education should be mapped out. And the cerebrometers gave us a favourable report of you. Your body and your working faculties are far in the rear of ours; you lack transparency of tissue, ethereality of motion; the material side of you is earthy and ponderous. These elements of retrogression we shall never be able to eject wholly from your system; but we shall be able to modify them, and in your children and your children’s children the body will keep pace with the spirit. The forwardness of your emotions, of your soul, is what has drawn us to you; you love the ideal and imaginative more than any but one section of our community; and you have an intermixture of the finer spiritual elements such as we have either lost or never had amongst us. We hope to graft your nature upon one of the divisions or castes of our race and so produce in the next generation a variety that we need. Your retention has thus been justified by the highest morality of our civilisation. We never take any step without reference to the ultimate aims of our progress: so to improve the breed that our posterity may feel nearer to the highest life in the universe.

“Your education has indeed already begun. We have assumed from your highly disciplined and progressive spirit that you would be willing to submit to those medical methods that shorten the already abbreviative process of education. It is true that these make an enormous drain upon the physical strength for a time; and we prefer the ordinary spiritual methods of training. But you have gained from the open-air employments in which you have passed your life great stores of bodily health and vigour. You are still but a child. The period of childhood and tutelage extends with us to the thirtieth, sometimes to the fiftieth, year, that of youth to beyond the hundredth. At the time that other men are preparing to die the natural death of old age, we are just beginning to feel what it is to live.

“And from some ancestral cause you are developed beyond your years in some of our ethical lines. You have reached a humility before the living forces of the universe which is the primary mark of the true governor of the world. How you have attained so rare a virtue amidst the pretentious barbarity of civilisation it is not easy to conceive. There worldliness and arrogance inherit the earth, though there are not signs wanting that they feel the approaching triumph of its true heirs and mask as the meeker virtues. In older times they were not ashamed to show themselves as they really were; for those were the days of glorified highwaymen who seized the throne of the world. Conquest is nothing but successful brigandage on a large scale, veneer it over with diplomacy and historical fame as you will. But for centuries there has been an uneasy feeling abroad that the humble must come to their rights some day; and so the gilded brigands have allied themselves with a religion of the meek and despised, that they may hoodwink mankind into acquiescence in their ancient dishonesty.

“We banished all the makings of monarchs, aristocracies, and great men at the purifications of our people. We could see no difference between these and the worst criminals except one of degree. We measured their skulls and brains by the rough, unscientific methods we used to have, and found in them almost no difference from those of murderers and thieves; and comparing them with the skulls of savages and of our own far-back ancestry, we found that in the case of both heroes and criminals the cause of their likeness to each other was their recoil upon the footsteps of the past, and away from the line of human progress which leads towards harmony with the higher laws of the universe.

“Happily for you every trace of such arrogance and contempt and ambition is absent from your system. You have nothing merely mimetic in you; you live unashamed and truthful in presence of all that the world is capable of being. It is one of the surest signs of fear of threatening annihilation that a species has to simulate the appearance or the modes of life of another. Hypocrisy in the human race, like mimicry in the kinds of animals and plants, is the brand of feebleness and the omen of coming decay and subjugation. We use truth and sincerity as one of the most inward of tests of a strong and healthy nature. In the olden days, as in all large and mixed civilisations, it was difficult to distinguish the imitation virtue from the real, and when it was discovered it was easy to pardon it and even accept it as a virtue amid the universal effort at simulation. But when we had swept out the survivals of primitive and savage times and the atavistic returns to them, we found that every need of mimetic virtue had disappeared. The slightest taint of unreality or falsehood in any of our community is as offensive as carrion; we rise in a body and have it removed. And we have as keen an enjoyment of sincerity and truthfulness. Your loyal character at once attracted us to you; we felt that all germs of moral disease would lose their virulence within its influence, as germs of physical disease lose theirs in sunshine.”