Limanora the island of progress
made for the purpose, these revealed a microbe of extraordinary
minuteness at work in the tissue. Having found the source of the
mischief, they set themselves to remove it. At first they put the
patient into profound sleep, and, trephining the skull, they cleansed
away under the clirolan all traces of the parasite and its débris. What
they removed they carefully preserved and analysed; then, having found
the chemical elements of the mischievous spawn and their débris, they
reproduced the mixture as a cure of the new and singular disease. For
a time this was administered as an internal medicine; but finding that
it injured other nerve-centres besides those that they intended to
affect, they resolved to apply it only locally, and soon learned how to
avoid the necessity of trephining the skull. They invented an electric
syringe and injector, which caused the mixture to penetrate through
the skull into the part of the brain affected, thus sterilising the
tissues that had to do with speech and making them unattractive as a
feeding-ground for the microbe of loquacity.
The plague soon vanished and the babel ceased. There was comparative
silence throughout the island. Only such words were spoken as were
essential and relevant to the business in hand. It was, indeed,
accepted as the surest mark of the sanity of a nature that it was never
betrayed into speech unless that which conveyed necessary information,
forceful reasoning, or fresh thought. The trite was avoided as
mephitic vapours or an exhausted atmosphere would be. The utterance
of truisms immediately led to a microscopic examination of the brain
of the speaker in expectation of finding disease there. The habit of
expression merely for its own sake and not for what it expressed, for
its beauty or wit or pungency, was considered a sure indication of a
diseased or morbid condition of the brain-tissue, and the sufferer was
at once isolated for treatment, lest he should spread the contagion.
For the whole phenomenon was scientifically investigated, and
precautions were carefully taken against a return of the plague. It
had been noticed that, after any age of exceptional progress, there
generally occurred some epidemic connected with the brain-tissues or
nerve-centres, sometimes appearing in excess of emotion, sometimes in
various forms of feebleness of thought. It was due, they found, to the
comparative exhaustion of the brain and nerves by exceptional strain
upon them. As long as the enthusiasm of the new ideas and rapid advance
inspired the people, they worked with a will, nor ever thought of
sparing any part of their system. The more mature amongst them knew
how to bridle this passion for work, and took the necessary precautions
against its evil effects; from experience they had found out that
they needed more sustenance and more sleep in such periods, and they
knew almost by instinct when to rest and how often, and what halls
of sustenance and medication they should frequent. The young had not
their instincts checked or confirmed by experience, and carried even
the best of movements and impulses to abuse. In spite of inspection and
superintendence they ignored the rules laid down for their guidance,
and took their inspiration to work as better than the wisdom of their
elders, knowing that progress was the ideal and law of their race, and
thinking that everything done for progress was right.
It was thus the young and immature who generally suffered from these
epidemics. The impulse of their enthusiasm carried them far beyond
the limits of fertility of their tissues, and the ebullience of their
delight, as they saw the work grow before their eyes, obscured from
them the gradual exhaustion of their powers. They grew oblivious to
everything but the end they had immediately in view, and thus became
short-sighted in their enthusiasm for progress; they sacrificed the
demands of the future for the sake of the present, and it was difficult
for even the elders at the medical inspection to get at the real state
of the case, such an appearance of new vigour did the impetuosity of
their passion and the tumult in their blood give to their systems.
Only when the wandering germs of emotional disease had fixed on the
exhausted tissue did the result become apparent.
The wide area and serious effects of the plague of verbosity awakened
the medical elders to the necessity of special precautions. A section
of them was organised as a medical police to guard against the invasion
of such pestilences, and to prevent such exhaustion of youthful tissues
as would invite the vagrant germs or fail to repel their attacks. A
science was specialised for this purpose,--the pathology of epidemic
emotions; and a special art grew up to correspond,--the hygiene and
therapeutics of emotional infection.
The elders who attended to this periodically made careful examination
of all the tissue of the immature that had to do with emotion or with
any crude spiritual moods inapt to the control of reason and will.
And it was astonishing how rapid was the growth of the new science
and art in their hands. Delicate instruments were invented responding
to the presence even in the air of deleterious germs that tended to
settle in the nerve-centres. Still finer instruments revealed the state
of the tissues underneath the skull. The symptoms of every disease
of the emotions were classified, and the means of checking each was
investigated scientifically. Before the next period of exceptional
florescence and harvest arrived, the hygiene of all the epidemics that
had been known to follow on ages of great exertion was completely
organised; and it was chiefly an art of prevention rather than of cure.
Precautions were taken by the new section of the medicants against the
abuse of the enthusiasm natural to such a period; they examined the
nerve-tissues of the immature almost daily, and pointed out everyone
that was getting overworked, and the remedies that should be adopted
for checking the evil. The result was that no abuse could proceed for
longer than a day, and no moral or emotional epidemic unless of the
mildest type could settle in the community.
What roused them to such a step as the foundation of a new science and
art was the seriousness with which they viewed the last plague, that
of loquacity. In the series of exilings no evil had given them such
trouble as that of oratory, and they were afraid lest it was about to
return in all its virulence. At first they feared this plague to be a
case of atavism; for those whom it attacked earliest were descendants
of ancestors, or closely related to families, that had been famous in
the far past for power of expression. But it soon spread to strains of
blood that had been marked by great reticence, if not taciturnity, and
ultimately it was completely impartial in its choice of victims. It was
manifest, however, that those who had ancestral oratory in the blood
were first open to the attacks of the plague and were most difficult to
cure; and the phenomenon sent alarm to the very heart of the community.
All the mature citizens and especially the elders looked graver than I
had ever seen them look, even at the prospect of Choktroo’s invasion;
they came nearer to the appearance of dejection than I had imagined
they could come.
The whole matter drove my thoughts to work. When I reflected on the
occasion, the attitude my mind had been accustomed to in my forgotten
life returned, and it seemed to me as if there had been a storm
over nothing. Talkativeness had been one of the commonest features
of the men and women I had known in Europe; and loquacity was as
little noticed as a red head or a pug nose. Indeed the chatterbox was
ranked among the innocents who did little harm except to their own
reputations. It became a complete puzzle to me, when I saw the horror
with which the Limanorans looked on oratory. Had it not been one of
the greatest of the arts of Christendom? Were not the great orators
of my own nation looked upon as little short of inspired, and their
statues placed in the noblest niche of our temple of fame? Did we not
rush by the thousand to hear any one of them, when he was about to
perform, and stand breathless by the hour, laying up for ourselves
fatigue and faintness and asphyxia, merely for the delight of hanging
on his lips? In life he roused hurricanes of enthusiasm; and when he
died thousands who had never known him personally followed him mourning
to the tomb, and on the most revered page of our literature was his
name written. What could be the meaning of so hearty a detestation of
so noble an art on the part of this progressive race?
As usual I had not long to wait for a solution. My bewilderment had
already stirred the curiosity of my proparents and Thyriel; and they
had been watching my thoughts for some time before I put my questions,
simple enough for my young comrade and betrothed to answer. She spent
a whole afternoon that was devoted to flight-exercise, in discussing
and solving my difficulties, and the struggle ended in strengthening my
admiration for this noble people.
Their abhorrence of the vice of oratory was not the growth of any
sudden revolution, or the unreasoning prejudice often originating
amongst a long-established nation in some great personal hatred or fear
now buried in oblivion. It was the result of ages of the most patient
scientific investigation. And it found its way into practice so slowly
that the steps up to the final one are scarcely noticeable on the pages
of their history. It had an inborn prejudice in favour of oratory to
combat, all the deeper that it could not explain itself or its origin.
The reputation of some of the ablest and most influential sections of
the community was based upon the art. The orators of the nation had
acquired a fame almost greater than that of the soldiers. They had been
its leaders and founders; they had developed and mastered its politics;
they had moulded the people at certain crises in their history into a
unity. Their art had been enrolled for ages amongst the noblest they
had. It was the only civilised force which could move great masses to
enthusiasm, or fuse their varied purposes and thoughts together to
form a single ideal and aim. It was the only means their statesmen
had had for accomplishing their schemes, the only stepping-stones by
which their lawyers and preachers and politicians could rise to fame.
It seemed for ages a hopeless task to unseat it from its place in
their civilisation, or eradicate the prejudice in its favour from the
people’s minds.
The wisest Limanorans had watched its evil influence through many ages;
although they had often themselves to make use of it for their purposes
of reform and although some of the best men had been successful in
its employment, yet they were certain that it sapped the finer sense
of truth. So easily could the orator persuade a crowd to accept all
he said as true and noble that he came to think there was little
difference between the true and the false, the noble and the ignoble;
his own aim was all that was of significance, and it was, however
selfish or mean, just as good as anybody else’s aim. He needed as
little to persuade himself of the justice of an evil cause, provided it
was his own, as to persuade an assembly. He had but to isolate certain
facts and phases, and what were antagonistic to them fell into shadow;
the unjust course began to appear just, and those who opposed it were
the enemies of justice and of the orator. It mattered not what side
he took, if only it stirred his interest; he could rouse thousands to
enthusiasm for it by touching their emotions and awakening the passions
that were connected with their own self-interest. This power of moving