Limanora the island of progress
in order to make this decision, had as a rule to bring in the help of
taste; for it had remained from the primitive animal stage of man’s
development one of the differentiating marks of sex that the male
had more energy of smell, the female more energy of taste; now that
they had so spiritualised their senses, perfumes formed the quickest
stimulus of the masculine imagination and flavours of the feminine. At
the food vats it was always the Limanoran women who superintended the
flavouring of any compound; whilst it was the men who had most to do
with medicating the atmospheres of the chambers, and men presided in
the chemical laboratories. The historical origin of this distinction,
they thought, was on the one hand the development of the acuteness of
smell in male animals at rutting time, and on the other the power in
dams of recognising their own offspring by licking it with the tongue.
And it was a well-known maxim in their medical families that every
individual had a distinctive odour and taste. They could tell one man
from another in the dark, and even at a considerable distance; and
to touch him with the tongue was to make assurance doubly sure. The
kissing that was so common in the West as a symbol of friendship and
love, like the rubbing of noses amongst less civilised peoples, had as
its origin and basis the recognition of the individual by the taste
or smell. They did not need so close or material an investigation of
the individual to have pleasant memories of friendship aroused. Their
methods and symbols of companionship and love had become more and more
spiritual with the passion itself.
But, preternaturally acute though their senses seemed to me to be, they
would rely upon their decisions no more than the modern scientist of
the West would rely upon his. Error, they held, was ever maiming the
conclusions from reports of the senses, and they took every precaution
in recording or using their own perceptions. Accurate though their
sense-memory was, they had instruments which kept a permanent record
of any report of the senses they meant to use again. Not merely sounds
and sights did they automatically record, but perfumes, and flavours,
and electric impressions. Ages before, the inasan or recorder of
light and the linasan or recorder of sound had been brought to a
high pitch of perfection; all the colours and forms seen in nature,
at whatever distance, could be kept in permanence on irelium-plates
and reproduced to the eye by the insertion of the plates in the
inasan and the reversal of the instrument. So was it with sounds,
however loud or faint; the linasan would tell out to the ear music
or speeches recorded hundreds of years before down to the minutest
tone. By a modification of these two instruments they took record
of the inner structure of things even at cosmic distances, and of
sounds which seemed to be intercepted by vast material obstructions.
The development of the recorders of the other senses had been more
recent; not till perfumes and tastes and electricity had begun to enter
largely into education and the stimulance of memory did the necessity
for such instruments arise. In the earlier times before the purgation
of the race these instruments would have been a temptation to new and
epicurean vices. Now they were nothing if not educational aids. The
farosan or aromagraph enabled the gardeners to arrange the mnemonic
harmonies of flowers as mere sense-memory could never have done; it
could reproduce any subtle perfume or mixture of perfumes that had
ever been experienced in the island. The salosan or gustagraph gave
incalculable aid to the chemical and alimentary families; without its
permanencies of flavour they would have fallen into daily errors in
mingling the atmospheres of the halls of sustenance and medication and
those of Ilarime. By its aid they could recall any of the tastes which
had made substances or compounds pleasing to the palate. But it was the
idrosan or electrograph that was most needed; for the firla or electric
sense had been so recently developed that its reports as to the amount
and quality of any electric impulse were most untrustworthy. Without
the aid of this recorder they could never have compared the electric
impulses of the past with those of the present, nor could they have
been so accurate in measuring the electric powers of various substances.
They knew that the basis of all scientific advance was accurate
measurement. Their old measuring instruments had gradually been
overtaken by their own senses, and had to be replaced by others more
and more refined. In order to make sure that their senses introduced no
personal element into the reports and representations of their various
delicate measurers, they had invented an instrument which for fine
adjustment surpassed all of these. It was the airolan or sensometer,
and by it the medical families in their weekly review of every system
in the community were enabled to find the exact personal equation of
each. It recorded the upper and lower limit of the various sensations,
the limit of endurance, and the vanishing point. Although there was
a great evenness in the development of the senses in the community,
there was yet considerable variation in the delicacy of perception. One
man was keenest in sight, another in hearing, a third in the electric
sense, yet there was a certain constancy or proportion in all the
senses of every man, a proportion varying according to well-ascertained
laws with the hour and the season, the man’s age, and the temperature
and health of his body. The airolan tested, measured, and recorded the
regular variations of each Limanoran’s senses, and thus he was able to
know how far he judged accurately anything he perceived. By its aid
he was able to know the exact point at which he would need to call in
any one of the various mechanical aids to the senses, the magnifiers,
or modifiers, or distance-reducers. By its means they were able to
gauge the proper mixture of colours and proper size in architecture
that would please at certain distances. By its means, too, they could
accurately measure the distance from which any electric or luminous or
somniferous impulse had come, when it struck on the senses.
It was one of the commonplaces of their policy that whatever could
be done by machinery it was waste of skill and energy to do by human
labour and thought; and instruments were generally more exact and
reliable than the senses and active powers of man, however delicately
developed and refined. Of course man’s brain and hand must still guide
and superintend all instruments and machinery, but his interference
with their automatic working was reduced to a minimum, in order that
the discount for personal equation should be as little as possible.
It was not, however, so much for the sake of accuracy of result that
mechanism was substituted for human work, as for the sake of progress.
Every operation and function which could be performed mechanically it
was a slur upon human dignity to do; and at once Limanoran humanity was
relieved from the necessity, and the freed energy was applied to other
and nobler efforts towards progress.
During my education I had noticed again and again with surprise that
mathematics took no part in it. Not once had I heard the subject
mentioned by any of my guides or companions. I remembered the
important place it held in Western curriculums, and wondered how the
various scientific families could manage their abstruse formulæ and
calculations without that science. A people that laid so much stress on
exactitude of research as an essential of all scientific progress were
surely lax to a degree in failing to train their youth in the various
branches of mathematics.
On having my senses tested by the airolan, the thought came uppermost
in my mind again; and my proparents at last took notice of it, perhaps
as the time had arrived for enlightening me on the subject. They led
me to a vast museum-like building, crammed with all kinds of small
and intricate machines, not unlike a kind of patent office, where the
models of new inventions are deposited for examination and comparison.
There was evident in the arrangement a careful classification according
to elaboration and delicacy. In the first section we entered there
were the simplest of machines, having a few levers and cog-wheels, and
a few keys set in a key-board; these were meant for the easier rules
of calculation,--addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
We tested most of them and I saw that they were infallibly accurate;
never once even in the longest and most intricate calculation was there
any error. In fact, these machines had been first invented to avoid
the constant errors that vitiated important results when novices were
set to work them out. It was then found that not only did they rid
calculations of fallibility and the youth of heartless drudgery, but
they enabled the race to advance more rapidly. They set free years
of life, especially in the formative stage, that had been wasted on
mere routine and mechanical work; and, best of all, they allowed the
tissues of young brains to be less rigid. It was noted that, after
the calculating machines were set to work, the youth grew in mental
and especially in imaginative power at twice the old rate. The elders
of the state were amazed at the result, prizing as they had done the
effect of arithmetic in the discipline and education of the young;
indeed, it had been with great regret that they saw the youth relieved
of so disciplinary an exercise; and they even thought of making an
exception to their usual utilitarian state-principle, and training the
boys and girls in rapid calculation, although it would be of so little
use to them in their after-lives. But a few years convinced them of the
serious mistake they had made. The pace of development so suddenly and
greatly quickened in the new generation that the result could be set
down to nothing else than the new freedom from calculations. Their own
faculties and imagination seemed stiff and almost ossified compared
to the ease and flexibility of those of their sons and daughters.
Invention and discovery struck out with unprecedented energy, and the
ethical and emotional phase of imagination grew at a marvellous pace;
new ideal realms were opened out for morality and practical thought.
The experience threw a remarkable light upon a phenomenon which had
puzzled them for generations. After the period of youth the members of
the community had to specialise; and for some undiscoverable reason
those who devoted themselves to mathematics and the working of abstruse
formulæ had been found, able though most of them were, to be the most
rigidly unreasonable in the community; they refused to admit that
they could be mistaken in any of their judgments or even opinions;
nothing would move them,--neither logical argument nor emotional
appeal; they assumed that they had found absolute truth, and refused
to have compromise. In one generation in the far past the mathematical
families had to be exiled, so serious an obstruction had they become to
progress. Again they had been completely renewed, children of the most
noble-minded, freest, and most imaginative families being substituted
for the old members, and trained to fulfil their functions; within a
generation the result was the same; these scions of the finest of the
race became as narrow-minded and obstructive as their predecessors
had been. It seemed to be useless to change the stock, and for some
generations the community accepted their conservatism and obstinacy
as inevitable; they grew accustomed to smiling at the mathematical
families as “the omniscients.”
Why the true cause of this degeneracy had not occurred to such a shrewd