Limanora the island of progress
of foreign questions, for it was this that rejected the new idea of
the idlumian mission. I soon came to recognise 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 Limanora. 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, proparents, 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 had shown
sufficient of the wisdom and virtues of the race to warrant such a
privilege. These latter were in training for full and active 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 Loomiefa. 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 a
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 would 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 censorious. Every thinker 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 its 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 form or
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 an organising 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 moulding 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 and 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 able and 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 fulness 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 and 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 male head 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 everyone
felt that the race could not possibly at that particular stage of
its progress attain to any clearer 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-seeing 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
neighbours, recognising a discord in the mental atmosphere, came in
with reconciling magnetism and reason. Everyone was too anxious to
have the light of others’ 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 of 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
purgations the spirit of the Limanoran 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 debtor to it; all moved up to the new level.
The laws, if those principles which 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
recognised the aim of the community and the part he had to fulfil in
its advance. Those who were still in a state of pupillage had each two
elders as their guarantors and sponsors, who watched the instillation
of the common spirit into them, and any flaw or discord rapidly made
itself felt.
Reason was at the back of every word and act of the Limanorans; 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 advance antiquated some principle that had
been taken as axiomatic, or revealed the fallacy that lay in some
pivot-word. Any difference of opinion or of 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 their 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 sprang into
being and flourished; thoughts and feelings, otherwise healthy and
unashamed, 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