Limanora the island of progress
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 unrecognisable. 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 men 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 I had become, and the
account of my various stages of growth during this period, with the
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 aided in these researches into my development
by the accounts of the weekly inspection 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 the life
of a growing being in such a way that, when placed in one of their
lightning-swift representers, the growth would flash before one’s
senses as a continuity. A child would grow as 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 Limanoran
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 imataran, 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 revealed
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
irelium-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
imataran, 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
Limanoran.
All that I had done in the period, or rather all that I had done
productively, I had similarly to picturise 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 proparents 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 whatsoever stood to my credit. I scarcely
needed the precautions; for I had learned during my sojourn amongst
this rigidly sincere and ingenuous 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
neighbours.
Every mature 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 proparents and
guardians were responsible, and they picturised for the imataran 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
decennium, and the pictures of the new features and 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 imataran. I thought at first that the effect would be
too monotonous to be interesting. But, as the spectacle of the Leomo
proceeded, it proved to be a marvellous 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 suggesting difficulties to come, its
additions to the treasury of force and to the civilisation of the race,
its attitude toward the aim of the nation, its pace on the forward
march, its comprehension of the Limanoran 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 focussed 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 decennium 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 develop 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. A magnetic thrill went through us, especially when there
unrolled before us the living picture of the preceding decennium; the
contrast between the two in pace of development was striking. Here and
there of course we recognised 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 each 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 Limanoran 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 anyone who had made a mistake to retrace
his steps. Here it was that the seeming 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 Limanoran 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 Manora, and
acknowledge 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 Manoras 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 none the less 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. Circumscription to a course, if irrevocable, is none the less
incarceration that it is a course selected by ourselves. A Limanoran
never felt 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