Chapter 9 Pt. 1 of Lymanora, the Island of Progress by Godfrey Swevin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. PULITY Pt. 1 I was privileged to hear, or rather be conscious of, the discussion that the question of a Ludmian missionarianism 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 sympathized 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 future-ative 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 sterilizing 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 the Quaker's 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 Babel of human speech to open a pathway from mind to mind. I had slothed off that singular pre-possession of the Western nature in favor 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. Locuacity, instead of being a bar to ideas, was counted as 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 counsel. 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 center. Speech was rather a method of focusing thoughts than one of chasing and criticizing 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 marvelous how rapidly they went through the business in hand by means of these noble silences, broken by occasional reviews. There were no displays of mental or stylistic ledger domain, no appeals to common feeling, no captious criticisms, such as formed 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 pro-parents, 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 families leveling down to the civilization of their converts, than of accomplishing their original purpose, while the arguing, preaching, and persuading implied a Niagara of Babel for centuries. Where would lie the compensation for such a basement of the mind? Now there was no need of condescension. It was a mere matter of common professional work for the physiological families. The glub 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 laminative 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 uneval 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 un-moral powers? As it was, the people 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. In the meantime their own forward march would have to be abandoned. Omniscence alone could deal with the problem of missionaryism, and as things were, the omniscence of nature was dealing with it. For revolution 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 civilization was going to be beneficent or maleficent for the world as a whole. And all missionaryism that was not based on omniscence was striking out a path through a jungle in the darkness. Even the illumine, unless amongst criminals and the morally and intellectually plague-stricken, mind do hear a medial 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 common wheel. 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 Lymanora as sovereignty or state. Though everything moved with the harmony and smoothness of perfect organization, I could never find the organizing 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 Lumiefa 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 armor and weapons they bore allowed of no enemy nearer. 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 newgatory 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 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 recognize 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 Lamanora. 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, pro-parents 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 shown sufficient of the wisdom and virtues of the race to warrant such a privilege. These latter were in training for full inactive 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 Lumeifah. 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 an 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 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 censorous. Flaw-finding Curr 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 his 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 former 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 and organizing 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, molding 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 in 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 abland-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 fullness 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 in 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 malehead 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 every one felt that the race could not possibly, at that particular stage of its progress, attain any clear 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 scene 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 neighbors, recognizing a discord in the mental atmosphere, came in with reconciling magnetism and reason. Everyone was too anxious to have the light of other's 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 or 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 congregations the spirit of the Lymanorn 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 dead or to it, all moved up to the new level. The laws, if those principles 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 recognized the aim of the community and the part he had to fulfill in its advance. Those who were still in a state of pupillage had each two elders as their guarantors and sponsors, who watched the installation of the common spirit into them, or any flaw or discord rapidly made itself felt. Reason was at the back of every word and act of the Lymanorans. 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 advanced and equated some principle that had been taken as axiomatic or reveal the fallacy that lay in some pivot word. Any difference of opinion or 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 the 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 spring into being and flourished. Thoughts and feelings, otherwise healthy and unchained, 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 my omnipotence to the terror they instill. Hence until their doom is near, they are by nature of necessity despotism. To every meeting of the inner council, all active counselors 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 many years of painfully guarded responsibility and debate. Not one of them but looked forward to such 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 of the speech was the burden of the future of the assembly. In fact, their Senate House was arranged so as to be a vast Linnocent itself. Nothing was needed at the end of a meeting but to touch a spring, and the moving, irrelinium strip on which the proceedings imprinted themselves was securely fixed on its role and transferred to the Valley of Memories, there to be late passed in the archives for future reference, and of course, 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 Linnocent that 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 Lyman Orons were marvelous 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 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. Wherever 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 Hydrolinocent, which recorded, in permanence, not merely all that was said or done, but the electric currents which pass from man to man. Whenever they needed to verify a memory of the past, the Erillinium strip of the particular occurrence was brought out of the historical archives and placed in the reversible Hydrolinocent, and the whole scene flashed vividly before the senses. Doubtless this custom of machine recording made the Lyman ornce 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 civilization 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 civilization 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 materialized civilization as real, and the belief acts only for a brief period after it's been impressed upon the mind. The economy of breadth 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 had believed every moment that the omniewatchfulness of the deity were as real as the presence of the speaker in the chamber. There could be no revisal of its hands-sardisings. 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 Lymanoran 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 discussed a scheme or proposal for years. A few minutes would suffice a Lymanoran 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. End of Chapter 9 Part 1 Chapter 9 Part 2 of Lymanoran. The Island of Progress by Godfrey Swevin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. POLITY PART 2 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 favorite 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 has 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 and they are 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 favorite 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 skeptical, 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 the infants. No one ever thought of meeting 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 criticize. 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 into decay before the universal corruption on the one hand, and 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 Lymanorans 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 counsels 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 family that endangered this had to be reviewed and corrected by them. 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 labor, 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 center 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 monopolize it, was to danger the future of the race. Only the wisest and best and the most imbued with limonorn 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 honor the race could bestow. To be trusted by the whole people with the management and distribution 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 Remla. 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 civilization or their ideals or great future be, without this marvelous concentration of naked energy? What would have become of the race? Had a base ambition or an insane caprice entered into the thoughts of any one of their masters of force, while he held the reins of dominion in his hands. It was the duty therefore of every one who was elected to the office, however often he held it, however noble he had proved himself, however trusted he might be by all, to submit himself the hour before he entered Remla 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 urgently enforced as if the tests had often revealed defects. For the master of force held in his hands the key of their civilization and progress. To the elders all private ends and honors 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 Lymanoran. All this safeguarding of the probity and the sanity of the masters of force was therefore accounted 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 the stimulus to development. To be respected and at last reverenced by his neighbors was longed for by every man in the community, and every one had his own special quality and means for gaining such respect and reverence. At the great purgation of the island socialists and thieves private property had not been abolished, but only discredited. The socialists had been willing to erase all other methods of civilization and progress for the sake of the impossible dream, the equalization of property, the thieves had been willing to do the same for the sake of the swift 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 their sustenance been a struggle and aim in the race. They had become too provident to allow population to route run means or demand. There never had been for centuries anyone who needed his neighbor 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 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 disorganize 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 guarantee 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 far more comprehensive and scientific command of the problem of population, and when the communizing 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 neighboring 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 given 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 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 neighbors 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 trained sympathy, beneficence, and humanity. The competition in Lymanora was in giving, not in getting, though getting was one of the conditions and basis 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 guarantee 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 neighbor 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, faring the apathy and languor that fall upon the energies of a socialistic people. They had far higher stimuli to competitive vigor 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 civilization 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 Terellaria, they refused to communize possessions. And a certain sweetness of imagination, of memory, and of harmless romance had tallowed 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 race 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 Lymanorans 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 leveling process could never be final. Communities that made the attempt to plane down human society to a common level and to equalize 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. Lymanorans 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 Tirellaria, 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 equalizing 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 neighbors and rivals, to use them as appeals to envy and jealousy. As a rule it is in small communities and circles and their localities, where every man in almost every moment kicks up against some neighbor, 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 neighbors, a simple and an ambitious life, it is generally found to be almost free from the meaner emotions, envy, jealousy, and their counterparts, the stain, pride, and insolence. Among 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 common wheels is that they are not progressive. They remain centuries in one stage of civilization, and seem to travelers from larger and advancing nations mere savages buried in filth, and enslaved to the despotism of the seasons. But this people consider such superficially embruded communities near 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 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 civilization. Great empires were able to concentrate vast resources, but they spent them all on pomp, administration, and war. Whenever the world is parceled 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 un-warlike 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 nonetheless. Half of mankind would have to be employed in keeping the other half from rebellion against the central power. Huge empires, instead of being guarantees of peace, are direct incentives to war, or at least to a permanent war-like attitude. What has most obstructed human progress on its civilized 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 defense, 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 histronicism and savagery. It attracts the same taste as the prize ring and the theater. Everything that encourages it or develops it stands in the way of the true advance of the human race. There is, they help. 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 the 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 belong to the household in Limonora, 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 free man. 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 pupilage, but the fulfillment 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 at level with limonorn 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 like to make that track sure, and 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 cast. All work was alike honored, and personal worth was a test of the man and of the respect paid him, irrespective of external symbols and representatives of power. And to prevent the supercession of this by any other principle, all the physical forms of toil that might be 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 center of force. It was recognized 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 debris of the various organs and functions of the system. This fitted with the principle that all force should be concentrated in the hands of the government. The most severe physical toil was certain to be that which collected, divided, and adapted the vast accumulations of energy and remla. The duties in the center 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 each day in this vast forage 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 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 evaluate 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 Lymanora, it was in the delight of giving. 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 civilization 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 Lymanorn was in it forever. 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 mold 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 a 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 civilization. As usual I was mistaken in my criticism. I had not looked deeply enough or observed long enough to know the marvelous 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 menorah occurred too often on the lips and in the middle of my neighbors 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 civilization of the period. With all the other newly matured citizens I had to be instructed in the part I was to take in the census. Each day for months I had to denote some hours to tracing out the progress I had made, both in character and in works, and in putting into graphic and easily observed form. I was taught how 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 their aluminum strips, whereupon 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 unrecognizable. 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 them 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 had come, and the account of my various stages of growth during this period, with 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 guided in these researches into my development by the accounts of the weekly inspections 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 life of a growing being in such a way that, when placed in one of their lightning-swift representatives, a growth would flash before one senses as a continuity. A child would grow as if 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 Lyman Oran 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 Imateran, 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 reveal 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 irrelinium 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 Imateran, 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 Lymanoran. All that I had done in the period, or rather all that I had done productively, I had similarly to picturize 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 pro-parents 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 what so ever stood to my credit. I scarcely needed the precautions, for I had learned during my sojourn amongst this rigidly sincere and ingenious 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 neighbors. Every 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 pro-parents and guardians were responsible, and they picturized for the Imateran 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 decenium and the pictures of the new features and the 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 Imateran. I thought at first that the effect would be too monotonous to be interesting. But as the spectacle of the Leomo preceded, it proved to be a marvelous 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 testing difficulties to come, its additions to the Treasury of Force and to the civilization of the race, its attitude toward the aim of the nation, its pace on the forward march, its comprehension of the Lymanuran 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 focused 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 decenium 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 developed 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. The magnetic thrill went through us, especially when they're unrolled before us the living picture of the preceding decenium. The contrast between the two in pace of development was striking. Here and there of course we recognized 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 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 limonor and 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 any one who had made a mistake to retrace his steps. Here it was that the seemingly 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 limonor and 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 menorah, and acknowledged 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 menorahs 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 nonetheless 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. Circumstription to a course, if irrevocable, is nonetheless incarceration that it is a course selected by ourselves. Alimonoran never fell 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 were taken in the choice of surroundings and in training. Misgivings and hesitations all disappeared in the full light of the decennial review. It was marvelous 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 emphasized or exaggerated, all the merits of his work were brought out. He 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 sensorious or capituous criticism. Nor was there anything of that barger of laudation and penetrary which makes mutual admiration society so unwholesome in their effects. All was subdued, gentle, reasonable, wise, and sympathetic, and the most helpful and invigorating of all tonics to every one. 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 toward 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 Lumiefa, 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 if ten thousand years of the whole world's progress had been focused 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 marvelous array of inventions and discoveries, whilst my neighbors 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 and 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 encyclopedia in a few days, or rather is pictorial representation of every feature of the most advanced and intricate civilization. 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 his central principles and their connection with the advance of the race. It looked as if some mastermind 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 feudal skirmishings and endless controversies of 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 obtruse definitions and ambiguities, of their everlasting substitutions of theory for fact. I never felt so conscious of the shortcomings of the civilization which had nurtured me as during the array of limanor and 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 discussions 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 it into 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 menorah, and it was alone 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 civilization by this loosening of any bonds which had begun to be felt, sent it on with exhilaration and vigor for years. There was an air of buoyant freedom and declarity, 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 voluminous 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 more comprehensive and far-reaching evaluation of the resources, the faculty, and the personnel of the race ahead of us. Every tent, the centium there occurred the event of the century, the menorah or propesient 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 otherwise to make the period fixed and of regular recurrence, and tendoceniums formed a space symmetrical with the shorter menorah. The I menorah was thus a centennial review. Tendencies that might be ambiguous in their character under 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 I menorah 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 menorah was above all things. It was rather a revision of aims and destinies, a futureative evaluation of the powers of the race. Not merely the elders, but the whole people were led up to a mound of vision once they could see their future for hundreds of years spread out before them, bounded by the lines their past had drawn. There they would review 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 new 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 Lymanorns 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 relationships of these to the ultimate goal. During the last decade of the century, the Lumiamo and the Fra Lumiamo 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 woke to perceive its way barred by some hill or difficulty, round or over which they could discover no way. Then the members of the Lumiamo who 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 to see no farther than the facts and methods immediately before them. Near the help of the Fra Lumiamo was indispensable. A thousand different way-marks would soon be apparent, and the route of the future development would grow plain. The pioneering families were the heroes of the Aimanora, although most of the hard work belonged to those who watched over the individual science and arts. Nothing could be done without them, and the exhilaration of trust in them and need of their services gave extraordinary vigor to their special faculty. The close of a century was one of the great autums of their literature. Their harvest at that era were marked by fullness and wealth, and the pace of their work gave it exceptional fervor and glow. In the West we should have called the passionate adore 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 favored 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. Lumi Ifa was then the scene of the most striking, prefigurant displays that the human mind could conceive. The resources of limanor and 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 mold 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 Aimanora had the sublimity and transcendent concentration of a great religious departure, whose significance was fully foreseen. End of chapter 10