Limanora the island of progress
was open to the influences of sunlight and magnetism and the other
energies that so freely permeated space, and new forms of perception
began to develop over the body, chiefly refined modifications of touch.
The region of the shoulders became especially sensitive to magnetic
indications. The arms and chest monopolised the finer sensations of
muscular force, and especially of strain and push. Their feet came to
gauge with great subtleness the strength and direction of currents of
the wind as they flew through the atmosphere. The spinal region tested
the temperature of the surrounding space better than any other part of
the body, reacting at once to the slightest change in heat or cold.
Another advantage of the half-transparent raiment was the ease with
which the slightest change of emotion or thought could be seen, making
concealment and hypocrisy an impossibility. A third was the aid it
gave the medical elders in their periodical inspections of the health
of each member of the community; with unstrengthened senses they could
detect the smallest obstruction in any of the organs or tissues, so
that a mere passing notice might be enough to report on the health of
the people.
But if the sex-problem had retained its old obtrusiveness, this
seemingly superficial but really important reform in dress would have
been impracticable. Amongst the earliest questions that the Limanoran
scientists faced was the place of sex in the universe. After minute and
wide research they came to the conclusion that it was but an accident
of existence on some worlds. It was not an essential of the propagation
of life; for some species, like bacteria, multiply by mere fission, so
that part of the individual is immortal, and others, like the medusæ,
and ferns, and mosses, alternate asexual with sexual reproduction.
It was manifestly no characteristic of the first and lowliest forms
of life that settled on the earth; in fact large sections of vegetal
life retain the older habit parallel with the new or sexual habit; any
piece of many plants and trees cut off and thrust into the earth will
become a new plant or tree of the same kind without the intervention
of a seed or germinative stage. But the change in habit must have been
introduced into the world not long after the appearance of animal
life upon it; for it is only in the least-highly organised animals
that parthenogenesis appears in any form. Their conjecture was that
sexuality originated from the meeting of the germs of two worlds on
which life had not gone far on the path of evolution. The newcomers
would be unable to adapt themselves and their mode of generation to
the new conditions they had to meet; and where members of the two
types settled side by side in a position isolated from their kind,
the instinct of propagation would evolve out of their proximity a new
mode of generation, that would, from the cross-fertilisation of two
worlds and the combination of the vital energy of both, make a progeny
more vigorous and a development easier and more rapid. The species
that remained faithful to parthenogenetic propagation, and those that
adopted the new mode only partially, fell behind in the evolutionary
race. Sexual generation, uniting in itself the vital principles of two
universes, swiftly improved the qualities of the species that adopted
it and made them dominant upon the earth. Asexual propagation, the
easier and more primitive, gave the advantage in numbers of individuals
to the vegetal and lowly animal species that clung to it, but left them
almost incapable of evolution. On and upwards have passed the dominant
species through the invertebrates and the mammals up to man, guided by
that bi-sexual principle which has in it the stimulus of two types of
life and two universes. Nor did it seem to them contrary to the analogy
that some worlds should have in the life upon them a tri-sexual or
even a quadri-sexual mode of propagation, according to the types of
vital principle which have settled and continued upon them. Wherever
multi-sexual generation holds sway, there life is rarer but swifter,
and evolution carries it into those higher reaches where localisation
of it upon an orb is unnecessary.
It was out of sexuality, they acknowledged, that all the higher phases
of existence upon earth had come, love, friendship, self-sacrifice;
this, too, had given to humanity in its nobler developments the
irrepressible yearning for another and extra-terrene sphere and
another life. A vital principle issuing from a different universe
seemed to have kept within it the memory of its first home if not of
the free existence of space. And in man, at least, this had come to
consciousness of itself and led him to religious reverence and devotion
and the expectation of immortality.
They considered none the less that sex had almost finished its task in
many worlds, and would, in no very distant age, have accomplished all
it could do for the Limanoran race. When a principle of life has done
its task it must retire and give place to something better; else it
would become retrogressive and wholly evil, a mere despot selfishly
stopping all progress. Every race that meant to quicken the pace of
its evolution had to take command of it and guide it to its own higher
ends. It is the prerogative of the nobler types of man to raise nature
above her lower needs; the Limanoran ideal was to develop the creative
power of the human system so far that it might master all the secrets
of life and be able to mould human beings and breathe the breath of
life into them, and thus they would be able to supersede the sexual
mode of propagation.
As it was, they had gone far towards the complete mastery of the sexual
principle, and could mould and guide it to any purpose that the future
of the race demanded. They knew the conditions that would govern any
new human variety they needed in the state just as well as they could
produce new modifications of trees and plants and flowers. They read
the nature of each individual on the island as easily as they could
read a book. But besides this they had in the pedigree-annals in the
valley of memory a complete account of all the possibilities of any
family or any branch of it. From the developments of recent years and
the outlook that they ever kept up far into the future they judged when
some new type of nature would be needed for some post in the community
and gauged exactly the qualities that would have to be blended in order
to produce it. Then turning to the valley of memories, they studied
the characters and possibilities of the various families that had one
or more of those qualities exceptionally developed. By the aid of the
physiological and biological experts they were able to fix the two out
of which the individual parents would have to be chosen; and from their
knowledge of the character and history of every member, the elders of
these two families along with the medical elders were able to indicate
the man and the woman who would exactly fulfil the purpose of the
state. Years were spent on maturing the pair in the directions required
and in entangling their imaginations and affections mutually. None
were allowed to assume the responsibilities of parenthood till they
were matured to their fullest possibility; for they held that all the
essential characteristics of the two natures had to be developed before
the embryo could be produced in its fullest and most virile form.
One of the most singular features of this moulding of posterity was
that they did not always choose the most highly developed to become
the parents of the commonweal. For it had often been found in the
past that the individual who had brought his peculiar faculties or
qualities to the highest state of refinement in his own life had
exhausted the natural wellspring of them, and that he handed them on
in most diminished degree to his children. They often preferred in
their selection of possible parents a member of a family who exhibited
no exceptional energy in the use of its special talent; sometimes
the least active and the least conspicuous were selected. In them
individual work had never overstrained their faculty; it lay fallow for
a generation and was likely to spring forth with exceptional vigour the
next. To this I attributed their acceptance of my own imperfect nature
in their midst and my selection for mating with Thyriel.
When a pair had bred the child that was required, if they were not
conspicuous for wisdom or self-control, it was taken from them and
given to a new pair who became its true parents and trained it in the
direction it ought to take. These proparents were generally more
successful than parents in educating and moulding a character; they
never allowed the bias of natural affinity to affect the future of the
child; the parents, besides being swayed by the pride of parenthood and
the vigour of their affection for it, were too closely akin to it in
qualities and character to view it from an impartial and independent
standpoint; and the proparents were as a rule selected on account of
their contrastive qualities, qualities which would form the complement
to its own.
Though so much care was spent on the choice of the stock, they
considered it far more important to have the citizens of the future
properly trained, and were quite unbending in their insistence that
every child should have the most suitable natures in the community to
educate it, whether these should be its own parents or proparents. Nor
for ages had more than one child been permitted in a household at one
time. If a pair had proved themselves exceptionally successful in the
production and moulding of the two children they owed to the community,
they were allowed to adopt for a lengthened period the profession of
parent, by far the most important, if not really the only, profession
in the island. But they must bring one child up to maturity before they
undertook another. For, they held, there was no problem so complicated,
no duty so responsible, no task so exhausting for every faculty, as the
training of a human being in its earlier stages; to sculpture a new and
noble nature was considered the greatest creative work that a Limanoran
could achieve for the state; the greatest talents that ever appeared
on earth could not be better spent than on the parental profession.
Another and as important reason for the unitary basis of the household
was the moral contagion imperfect natures bring to bear on each
other. Children were never allowed together except under the strictest
supervision; for they soon undid all the work of their guardians, and
confirmed in each other the retrogressive savagery through which they
were passing. Before the Limanorans had come to their full heritage of
scientific knowledge and wise experience, they had allowed for a few
generations households of three or more children together, in order
to keep up the breed. But they soon discovered this feature of their
domestic life to be at the bottom of the slowness of their development,
and abandoned it. After long experience they decided that it was better
worth the while for the race to devote half a century of the life of
the wisest and ablest to the training of one nature than to do any
other work to be found in the universe. The greatest book, the most
illuminating discovery or invention, was as nothing compared with a
living centre of development and progress. Parenthood and proparenthood
well done were considered the greatest claims to gratitude and love,
and to everlasting memory if there were such a thing. For a man and
a woman to have given to the state by fifty years’ work a better
trained, more nobly moulded character, with larger possibilities than
they themselves had was to have done more than if they had discovered