Limanora the island of progress
generation was any career, once deliberately selected, changed. The
elders were fully justified in the elaborate choice of ancestry and
parents, and in the still more elaborate pains taken in the choice
of surroundings and in training. Misgivings and hesitations all
disappeared in the full light of the decennial review.
It was marvellous how the magnetic sympathy of the family, as the
spectacular confessional spread life after life before the gaze of all,
eradicated timidities, and strengthened each member in the path he had
chosen. Instead of having his little defects emphasised or exaggerated,
all the merits of his work were brought out. I took new courage and
hope, as I felt the air of impartial esteem over the excellencies of
each member’s development and of sympathetic sorrow and condolence
over any evidence of failure or retrogression. Not a sign was there of
censorious or captious criticism. Nor was there anything of that barter
of laudation and panegyric which makes mutual-admiration societies so
unwholesome in their effects. All was subdued, gentle, reasonable,
wise, and sympathetic, and the most healthful and invigorating of all
tonics to everyone. From what I had looked forward to as an ordeal I
came away refreshed and strong, determined to amend everything that
could be deemed faulty in my life, and to quicken my pace in marching
towards the goal of the race.
The national review of every family’s progress was somewhat similar,
except that the larger arena and the greater volume of magnetism in
the audience stirred a deeper thrill in the natures of the individual
members. It was held in Loomiefa, and it took many days to view the
whole spectacle of the nation’s decennial work. Nothing have I ever
seen so varied, disciplinal, and impressive. It was as if ten thousand
years of the whole world’s progress had been focussed in this valley.
Science after science, art after art, graphically displayed all
that it had achieved during the period. To me it seemed a universal
education; and it strained all my faculties to follow the marvellous
array of inventions and discoveries, whilst my neighbours and comrades
drank the whole spectacle in with an ease that in other circumstances
would have made me envious. It was not the fault of the masters and
makers of the display that I followed it with difficulty, for they
had made every feature clear even to the least mature. What puzzled
me was the logical sequence or interdependence of the various parts
of the spectacle. Everything had been worked out so as to reveal its
relationship to the whole system and to the aim of the race, and to
comprehend it tested all my powers. I felt as if I had to study a great
encyclopædia in a few days, or rather its pictorial representation of
every feature of the most advanced and intricate civilisation. But even
this analogy is inadequate, for the phases of the many-sided progress
were not mechanically arranged, but grew out of the central system
by a natural and rational magic. The work of every family revealed
its central principles and their connection with the advance of the
race. It looked as if some master-mind had sat through the years, and
watching the nation’s work as it was being accomplished, kept it all in
system. We felt that there was one design in the progress of the whole
period, and that any feature that stood out in independence marred the
symmetry, and needed correction.
I remembered the waste of energy that took place in all intellectual
spheres in Europe, and felt ashamed of the contrast. I could have told
this people of the futile skirmishings and endless controversies of the
men of science and learning, of their duplications of each other’s work
with the consequent clutchings after fame, of their assumptions and
merely verbal distinctions, of their thickets of abstruse definitions
and ambiguities, of their everlasting substitutions of theory for fact.
I never felt so conscious of the shortcomings of the civilisation which
had nurtured me as during the array of Limanoran decennial progress in
sciences and arts.
After the spectacle was over, we returned to our usual employments. But
I observed that there were now more frequent meetings of the elders for
several months, and at last we had as the result of their discussion of
the review and its aspects a considerable rearrangement of our work,
and of our positions in the family and in the state. Most proceeded
on the path they had been taking during the previous period. But many
found themselves now at work more congenial to their temperaments and
destinies, and were able to put into it their whole energy rid of the
friction that the artificial application of will had meant. The changes
occurred almost naturally and spontaneously; each elder returned to his
family from the final meeting of the senate over the Manora, and it was
known without effort or command or waste of time who had to modify his
position and work, and how the modification was to be accomplished.
The impetus given to the civilisation by this loosening of any bonds
which had been begun to be felt sent it on with exhilaration and
vigour for years. There was an air of buoyant freedom and alacrity,
even of mirth amongst the younger, as they spent their best skill
and capacity upon the work they had in hand. The pace perceptibly
quickened, and at times the nation seemed to advance with the volume
and swiftness of a torrent. Discovery and invention became fuller as
well as more minute, and the outlook began to take in regions of which
they had not thought before.
I soon came to know that there was a more comprehensive and
far-reaching evaluation of the resources, the faculty, and the
personnel of the race ahead of us. Every tenth decennium there occurred
the event of the century, the Imanora or prospicient review. Ten years
made too short a period to give a bird’s-eye view of the future as
contrasted with the past. Even a century was short enough for the
perspective of past and future progress; but it was considered wise to
make the period fixed and of regular recurrence, and ten decenniums
formed a space symmetrical with the shorter Manora. The Imanora was
thus a centennial review. Tendencies that might be ambiguous in their
character under a decennial criticism would proclaim themselves evil
or good in so long a stretch as a hundred years. Faculties that would
still be but in embryo after a course of ten years would be in full
maturity when a century had passed. Young men and women, who might
still hesitate within a decade as to whether they had chosen their best
career, would have found by the Imanora what was their true bent beyond
the possibility of mistake.
But it was not meant merely as a review of the past and a rearrangement
of positions, as the Manora was above all things. It was rather a
revision of aims and destinies, a futuritive evaluation of the powers
of the race. Not merely the elders but the whole people were led up
to a mount of vision whence they could see their future for hundreds
of years spread out before them, bounded by the lines their past had
drawn. There they could view in picture the solutions of the problems
they had been working at and the final outcome of the lines of
development they had been following. They had to decide there and then
how far these agreed with the ultimate aim and destiny of the race,
and how far they had better modify them, or modify the general aim.
Then they had to choose whether their path should turn to the right or
left, or should continue onwards as it had continued for a century. The
spectacle of their future spread out in living picture and symbol must
have been a deeply impressive sight. Every family had prepared a series
of tableaux of their possible destinies and the possible developments
of their sciences and arts, of the problems they would have to solve,
and of their possible solutions, and these were passed in detail
before the whole people for criticism and appreciation. It was as if
a nation were led to the cave of some great and true prophet, and
were shown all that lay before it, whatsoever path it should choose.
The Limanorans had before them the choice of a destiny for a hundred
years. It was the care of the elders that no ambiguity or disproportion
should be admitted into the map of the possible routes that they might
take through the future, and that there should be no obscurity in the
relationships of these to the ultimate goal.
During the last decade of the century the Loomiamo and the Fraloomiamo
were the busiest of all the families in the island. Their exceptional
development of imagination made them essential to the preparation of
every map of the future. They seemed to be able to see where others
found only night and darkness. Each science and art often awoke to
perceive its way barred by some hill of difficulty, round or over
which they could discover no way; then the members of the Loomiamo who
had made special study of its path were called in to point out the
possible tracks that might lead past the obstacle. Or again a family
would find the way of its science or art untraceable; they would
grope blindly about for it and yet see no farther than the facts and
methods immediately before them. Here the help of the Fraloomiamo was
indispensable; a thousand different way-marks would soon be apparent,
and the route of future development would grow plain.
The pioneering families were the heroes of the Imanora, although most
of the hard work belonged to those who watched over the individual
sciences and arts. Nothing could be done without them, and the
exhilaration of trust in them and need of their services gave
extraordinary vigour to their special faculty. The close of a century
was one of the great autumns of their literature; their harvests at
that era were marked by fulness and wealth, and the pace of their work
gave it exceptional fervour and glow. In the West we should have called
the passionate ardour with which they threw off scheme after scheme,
inspiration of the highest order. But they knew the working of their
faculty as well as any of the inventors knew the intricacies of their
machines. There was nothing mysterious about it. Their clear knowledge
of its constitution and of the conditions that favoured its growth
made it easy for them to predict when its pace and volume would be
torrential, and every preparation was made by the pioneering families
to meet the exceptional drain on their energies at the close of every
century.
Loomiefa was then the scene of the most striking prefigurant displays
that the human mind could conceive. The resources of Limanoran skill
and ingenuity were brought to bear on it, and nothing was left
undone to impress the event upon the imaginations and memories of
the younger, for the elders expected that it would thus mould the
natures of the coming generation through the minds of the prospective
parents. The world as it might be, if certain lines of development were
followed, was pictured in the most impressive way possible; and to this
people, it seemed to me, everything was possible. The Imanora had the
sublimity and transcendent consecration of a great religious departure,
whose significance was fully foreseen.
CHAPTER XI
ETHICS
I AFTERWARDS found that Imanora necessarily differed from Imanora
as widely as age from age or man from man, it being as it was the
universal outlook of so progressive a people. What one centennial mount
of vision foresaw as a possibility the next viewed as an accomplished
fact. What one century peered into the darkness to descry, another
brought into the daylight of achievement, and a third antiquated.