Across the Zodiac (15 page)

Those who relied on the refutation of this theory forgot that with
poor and suffering men who look to no future, and acknowledge no law
but such as is created by their own capricious will and pleasure, envy
is even a more powerful passion than greed. The Many preferred that
wealth and luxury should be destroyed, rather than that they should be
the exclusive possession of the Few. The first and most visible effect
of Communism was the utter disappearance of all perishable luxuries,
of all food, clothing, furniture, better than that enjoyed by the
poorest. Whatever could not be produced in quantities sufficient to
give each an appreciable share was not produced at all. Next, the
quarrels arising out of the apportionment of labour were bitter,
constant, and savage. Only a grinding despotism could compose them,
and those who wielded such despotism for a short time excited during
the period of their rule such fierce and universal hatred, that they
were invariably overturned and almost invariably murdered before their
very brief legal term of office had closed. It was not only that those
engaged in the same kind of labour quarrelled over the task assigned
to each, whether allotted in proportion to his strength, or to the
difficulty of his labour, or by lot equally to all. Those to whom the
less agreeable employments were assigned rebelled or murmured, and at
last it was necessary to substitute rotation for division of labour,
since no one would admit that he was best fitted for the lower or less
agreeable. Of course we thus wasted silver tools in doing the work of
iron, and reduced enormously the general production of wealth. Next,
it was found that since one man's industry or idleness could produce
no appreciable effect upon the general wealth, still less upon the
particular share assigned to him, every man was as idle as the envy
and jealousy of his neighbours would allow. Finally, as the produce
annually diminished and the number of mouths to be fed became a
serious consideration, the parents of many children were regarded as
public enemies. The entire independence of women, as equal citizens,
with no recognised relation to individual men, was the inevitable
outcome, logically and practically, of the Communistic principle; but
this only made matters worse. Attempts were of course made to restrain
multiplication by law, but this brought about inquisitions so utterly
intolerable that human nature revolted against them. The sectaries I
have mentioned—around whom, without adopting or even understanding
their principles, gradually gathered all the better elements of
society, every man of intellect and spirit who had not been murdered,
with a still larger proportion of women—seceded separately or in
considerable numbers at once; established themselves in those parts of
the planet whose less fertile soil or less genial climate had caused
them to be abandoned, and there organised societies on the old
principles of private ownership and the permanence of household ties.
By and by, as they visibly prospered, they attracted the envy and
greed of the Communists. They worked under whatever disadvantage could
be inflicted by climate and soil, but they had a much more than
countervailing advantage in mutual attachment, in freedom from the
bitter passions necessarily excited by the jealousy and incessant
mutual interference inseparable from the Communistic system, and in
their escape from the caprice and instability of popular
government—these societies, whether from wisdom or mere reaction,
submitting to the rule of one or a few chief magistrates selected by
the natural leaders of each community. Moreover, they had not merely
the adhesion of all the more able, ambitious, and intellectual who
seceded from a republic in which neither talent nor industry could
give comfort or advantage, but also the full benefit of inventive
genius, stimulated by the hope of wealth in addition to whatever
public spirit the habits of Communism had not extinguished. They
systematically encouraged the cultivation of science, which the
Communists had very early put down as a withdrawal of energy from the
labour due to the community at large. They had a monopoly of
machinery, of improvement, of invention both in agriculture, in
manufactures, and in self-defence. They devised weapons far more
destructive than those possessed by the old
régime
, and still more
superior to such as, after centuries of anarchy and decline, the
Communists were able to procure. Finally, when assailed by the latter,
vast superiority of numbers was annulled by immeasurable superiority
in weapons and in discipline. The secessionists were animated, too, by
a bitter resentment against their assailants, as the authors of the
general ruin and of much individual suffering; and when the victory
was gained, they not infrequently improved it to the utter destruction
of all who had taken part in the attack. Whichever side were most to
blame in the feud, no quarter was given by either. It was an
internecine war of numbers, ignorance, and anarchy against science and
order. On both sides there still remained much of the spirit generated
in times when life was less precious than the valour by which alone it
could be held, and preserved through milder ages by the belief that
death was not annihilation—enough to give to both parties courage to
sacrifice their lives for the victory of their cause and the
destruction of their enemies. But after a few crushing defeats, the
Communists were compelled to sue for peace, and to cede a large part
of their richest territory. Driven back into their own chaotic misery,
deterred by merciless punishment from further invasion of their
neighbours' dominions, they had leisure to contrast their wretched
condition with that of those who prospered under the restored system
of private ownership, family interest, strong, orderly, permanent
government, material and intellectual civilisation. Machinery did for
the new State, into which the seceding societies were consolidated by
the necessity of self-defence, much more than it had done before
Communism declared war on it. The same envy which, if war had been any
longer possible, would have urged the Communists again and again to
plunder the wealth that contrasted so forcibly their own increasing
poverty, now humbled them to admire and covet the means which had
produced it. At last, after bitter intestine struggles, they
voluntarily submitted to the rule of their rivals, and entreated the
latter to accept them as subjects and pupils. Thus in the 39th century
order and property were once more established throughout the planet.

"But, as I have said, what you call religion had altogether
disappeared—had ceased, at least as an avowed principle, to affect
the ideas and conduct of society or of individuals. The
re-establishment of peace and order concentrated men's energies on the
production of material wealth and the achievement of physical comfort
and ease. Looking forward to nothing after death, they could only make
the best of the short life permitted to them and do their utmost to
lengthen it. In the assurance of speedy separation, affection became a
source of much more anxiety and sorrow than happiness. All ties being
precarious and their endurance short, their force became less and
less; till the utmost enjoyment of the longest possible life for
himself became the sole, or almost the sole, animating motive, the one
paramount interest, of each individual. The equality which logic had
established between the sexes dissolved the family tie. It was
impossible for law to dictate the conditions on which two free and
equal individuals should live together, merely because they differed
in sex. All the State could do it did; it insisted on a provision for
the children. But when parental affection was extinguished, such
provision could only be secured by handing over the infant and its
portion to the guardianship of the State. As children were troublesome
and noisy, the practice of giving them up to public officers to be
brought up in vast nurseries regulated on the strictest scientific
principles became the general rule, and was soon regarded as a duty;
what was at first almost openly avowed selfishness soon justifying and
glorifying itself on the ground that the children were better off
under the care of those whose undivided attention was given to them,
and in establishments where everything was regulated with sole regard
to their welfare, than they could be at home. No law compels us to
send our children to these establishments. In rare cases a favourite
will persuade her lord to retain her pet son and make him heir, but
both the Courts and public opinion discountenance this practice. Some
families, like my own, systematically retain their children and
educate them at home; but it is generally thought that in doing so we
do them a wrong, and our neighbours look askance upon so signal a
deviation from custom; the more so, perhaps, that they half suspect us
of dissenting from their views on other subjects, on which our
opinions do not so directly or so obviously affect our conduct, and on
which therefore we are not so easily convicted of free choice"
(heresy)
. Here I inquired whether the birth and parentage of the
children sent to the public establishments were registered, so as to
permit their being reclaimed or inheriting property.

"No," he replied. "Inheritance by mere descent is a notion no longer
favoured. I believe that young mothers sometimes, before parting with
their children, impress upon them some indelible mark by which it may
be possible hereafter to recognise them; but such recognitions seldom
occur. Maternal affection is discountenanced as a purely animal
instinct, a survival from a lower grade of organisation, and does not
generally outlast a ten years' separation; while paternal love is
utterly scouted as an absurdity to which even the higher animals are
not subject. Boys are kept in the public establishments until the age
of twelve, those from ten to twelve being separated from the younger
ones and passing through the higher education in separate colleges.
The girls are educated apart till they complete their tenth year, and
are almost invariably married in the course of the next. At first,
under the influence of the theory of sexual equality, both received
their intellectual instruction in the same classes and passed through
the same examinations. Separation was soon found necessary; but still
girls passed through the same intellectual training as their brothers.
Experience, however, showed that this would not answer. Those girls
who distinguished themselves in the examinations were, with scarcely
an exception, found unattractive as wives and unfit to be mothers. A
very much larger number, a number increasing in every generation,
suffered unmistakably from the severity of the mental discipline to
which they were subjected. The advocates of female equality made a
very hard fight for equal culture; but the physical consequences were
perfectly clear and perfectly intolerable. When a point was reached at
which one half the girls of each generation were rendered invalids for
life, and the other half protected only by a dense stupidity or
volatile idleness which no school punishments could overcome, the
Equalists were driven from one untenable point to another, and forced
at last to demand a reduction of the masculine standard of education
to the level of feminine capacities. Upon this ground they took their
last stand, and were hopelessly beaten. The reaction was so complete
that for the last two hundred and forty generations, the standard of
female education has been lowered to that which by general confession
ordinary female brains can stand without injury to the physique. The
practical consequences of sexual equality have re-established in a
more absolute form than ever the principle that the first purpose of
female life is marriage and maternity; and that, for their own sakes
as for the sake of each successive generation, women should be so
trained as to be attractive wives and mothers of healthy children, all
other considerations being subordinated to these. A certain small
number of ladies avail themselves of the legal equality they still
enjoy, and live in the world much as men. But we regard them as
third-rate men in petticoats, hardly as women at all. Marriage with
one of them is the last resource to which a man too idle or too
foolish to earn his own living will betake himself. Whatever their
education, our women have always found that such independence as they
could earn by hard work was less satisfactory than the dependence,
coupled with assured comfort and ease, which they enjoy as the
consorts, playthings, or slaves of the other sex; and they are only
too glad to barter their legal equality for the certainty of
protection, indolence, and permanent support."

"Then your marriages," I said, "are permanent?"

"Not by law," he replied. "Nothing like what our remote ancestors
called marriage is recognised at all. The maidens who come of age each
year sell themselves by a sort of auction, those who purchase them
arranging with the girls themselves the terms on which the latter will
enter their family. Custom has fixed the general conditions which
every girl expects, and which only the least attractive are forced to
forego. They are promised a permanent maintenance from their master's
estate, and promise in return a fixed term of marriage. After two or
three years they are free to rescind the contract; after ten or twelve
they may leave their husbands with a stipulated pension. They receive
an allowance for dress and so forth proportionate to their personal
attractions or to the fancy of the suitor; and of course the richest
men can offer the best terms, and generally secure the most agreeable
wives, in whatever number they please or think they can without
inconvenience support."

"Then," I said, "the women can divorce themselves at pleasure, but the
men cannot dismiss them! This hardly looks like equality."

"The practical result," he answered, "is that men don't care for a
release which would part them from complaisant slaves, and that women
dare not seek a divorce which can only hand them over to another
master on rather worse terms. When the longer term has expired, the
latter almost always prefer the servitude to which they are accustomed
to an independent life of solitude and friendlessness."