Limanora the island of progress
to the proceedings of such conclaves that gives well-nigh omnipotence
to the terror they instil. Hence until their doom is near they are
by nature and of necessity despotism. To every meeting of the inner
council all active councillors 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 years of painfully guarded
responsibility in debate. Not one of them but looked forward to such a
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 linasans automatically treasured it up for future years to
shed light and criticism on it.
In fact their senate-house was arranged so as to be a vast linasan
itself. Nothing was needed at the end of a meeting but to touch
a spring, and the moving irelium-strip, on which the proceedings
imprinted themselves, was securely fixed on its roll and transferred to
the valley of memories there to be laid past in the archives for future
reference, and 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 linasan and 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 Limanorans were marvellous 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 the 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. Whenever 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 idrolinasan which
recorded in permanence not merely all that was said or done, but the
electric currents which passed from man to man. Whenever they needed
to verify a memory of the past, the irelium-strip of the particular
occurrence was brought out of the historical archives and placed
in the reversible idrolinasan, and the whole scene flashed vividly
before the senses. Doubtless this custom of machine-recording made
the Limanorans 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
civilisation 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 civilisation 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 materialised civilisation as real; and
the belief acts only for a brief period after it has been impressed
upon the mind. The economy of breath 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 believed every moment that the
omni-watchfulness of the deity were as real as the presence of the
Speaker in the chamber. There could be no revisal of its hansardisings;
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
Limanoran 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 would discuss a scheme or
proposal for years, a few minutes would suffice a Limanoran 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.
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 favourite 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 is 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
already or 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 favourite
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 sceptical, 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 infants; no one ever thought of
taking 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 criticise; 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 in decay before the
universal corruption on the one hand and the 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 Limanorans 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 councils 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 the family that endangered this had to be
reviewed and corrected by them. But 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 labour 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 centre 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 monopolise it, was to endanger the future of the race.
Only the wisest and best and the most imbued with Limanoran 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 honour the race
could bestow. To be trusted by the whole people with the management
and distribution of 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 Rimla. 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.