“No.”
“Why?”
“Oh! There was so much inequality in names. Some people were called Montmorency, and they looked down on the Smiths; and the Smythes did not like mixing with the Joneses: so, to save further bother, it was decided to abolish names altogether, and to give everybody a number.”
“Did not the Montmorencys and the Smythes object?”
“Yes – but the Smiths and Joneses were in THE MAJORITY.”
“And did not the Ones and Twos look down upon the Threes and Fours, and so on?”
“At first, yes. But, with the abolition of wealth, numbers lost their value, except for industrial purposes and for double acrostics, and now No. 100 does not consider himself in any way superior to No. 1,000,000.”
I had not washed when I got up, there being no conveniences for doing so in the museum, and I was beginning to feel somewhat hot and dirty. I said:
“Can I wash myself anywhere?”
He said:
“No, we are not allowed to wash ourselves. You must wait until half-past four, and then you will be washed for tea.”
“Be washed!” I cried. “Who by?”
“The State.”
He said that they had found they could not maintain their equality when people were allowed to wash themselves. Some people washed three or four times a day, while others never touched soap and water from one year’s end to the other, and in consequence there got to be two distinct classes, the Clean and the Dirty. All the old class prejudices began to be revived. The clean despised the dirty, and the dirty hated the clean. So, to end dissension, the State decided to do the washing itself, and each citizen was now washed twice a day by government-appointed officials – and private washing was prohibited.
I noticed that we passed no houses as we went along, only block after block of huge, barrack-like buildings, all of the same size and shape. Occasionally, at a corner, we came across a smaller building, labelled “Museum”, “Hospital”, “Debating Hall”, “Bath”, “Gymnasium”, “Academy of Sciences”, “Exhibition of Industries”, “School of Talk”, etc., etc. – but never a house.
I said:
“Doesn’t anybody live in this town?”
He said:
“You do ask silly questions; upon my word, you do. Where do you think they live?”
I said:
“That’s just what I’ve been trying to think. I don’t see any houses anywhere!”
He said:
“We don’t need houses – not houses such as you are thinking of. We are socialistic now; we live together in fraternity and equality. We live in these blocks that you see. Each block accommodates one thousand citizens. It contains one thousand beds – one hundred in each room – and bathrooms and dressing rooms in proportion, a dining hall and kitchens. At seven o’clock every morning a bell is rung, and everyone rises and tidies up his bed. At seven thirty they go into the dressing rooms and are washed and shaved and have their hair done. At eight o’clock breakfast is served in the dining hall. It comprises a pint of oatmeal porridge and half a pint of warm milk for each adult citizen. We are all strict vegetarians now. The vegetarian vote increased enormously during the last century, and their organization being very perfect, they have been able to dictate every election for the past fifty years. At one o’clock another bell is rung, and the people return to dinner, which consists of beans and stewed fruits, with roly-poly pudding twice a week, and plum duff on Saturdays. At five o’clock there is tea, and at ten the lights are put out and everybody goes to bed. We are all equal, and we all live alike – clerk and scavenger, tinker and apothecary – all together in fraternity and liberty. The men live in blocks on this side of the town, and the women are at the other end of the city.”
“Where are the married people kept?” I asked.
“Oh, there are no married couples,” he replied. “We abolished marriage two hundred years ago. You see, married life did not work at all well with our system. Domestic life, we found, was thoroughly anti-socialistic in its tendencies. Men thought more of their wives and families than they did of the State. They wished to labour for the benefit of their little circle of beloved ones rather than for the good of the community. They cared more for the future of their children than for the Destiny of Humanity. The ties of love and blood bound men together fast in little groups instead of in one great whole. Before considering the advancement of the human race, men considered the advancement of their kith and kin. Before striving for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, men strove for the happiness of the few who were near and dear to them. In secret, men and women hoarded up and laboured and denied themselves, so as, in secret, to give some little extra gift of joy to their beloved. Love stirred the vice of ambition in men’s hearts. To win the smiles of the women they loved, to leave a name behind them that their children might be proud to bear, men sought to raise themselves above the general level, to do some deed that should make the world look up to them and honour them above their fellow men, to press a deeper footprint than another’s upon the dusty highway of the age. The fundamental principles of Socialism were being daily thwarted and contemned. Each house was a revolutionary centre for the propagation of individualism and personality. From the warmth of each domestic hearth grew up the vipers, Comradeship and Independence, to sting the State and poison the minds of men.
“The doctrines of equality were openly disputed. Men, when they loved a woman, thought her superior to every other woman, and hardly took any pains to disguise their opinion. Loving wives believed their husbands to be wiser and braver and better than all other men. Mothers laughed at the idea of their children being in no way superior to other children. Children imbibed the hideous heresy that their father and mother were the best father and mother in the world.
“From whatever point you looked at it, the Family stood forth as our foe. One man had a charming wife and two sweet-tempered children; his neighbour was married to a shrew, and was the father of eleven noisy, ill-dispositioned brats – where was the equality?
“Again, wherever the Family existed, there hovered, ever contending, the angels of Joy and Sorrow; and in a world where joy and sorrow are known, Equality cannot live. One man and woman, in the night, stand weeping beside a little cot. On the other side of the lath and plaster, a fair young couple, hand in hand, are laughing at the silly antics of a grace-faced, gurgling baby. What is poor Equality doing?
“Such things could not be allowed. Love, we saw, was our enemy at every turn. He made equality impossible. He brought joy and pain, and peace and suffering in his train. He disturbed men’s beliefs, and imperilled the Destiny of Humanity; so we abolished him and all his works.
“Now there are no marriages and, therefore, no domestic troubles; no wooing, therefore, no heart aching; no loving, therefore no sorrowing; no kisses and no tears.
“We all live together in equality free from the troubling of joy or pain.”
I said:
“It must be very peaceful, but tell me – I ask the question merely from a scientific standpoint – how do you keep up the supply of men and women?”
He said:
“Oh, that’s simple enough. How did you, in your day, keep up the supply of horses and cows? In the spring, so many children, according as the State requires, are arranged for, and carefully bred, under medical supervision. When they are born, they are taken away from their mothers (who, else, might grow to love them), and brought up in the public nurseries and schools until they are fourteen. They are then examined by State-appointed inspectors, who decide what calling they shall be brought up to, and to such calling they are thereupon apprenticed. At twenty they take their rank as citizens, and are entitled to a vote. No difference whatever is made between men and women. Both sexes enjoy equal privileges.”
I said:
“What are the privileges?”
He said:
/> “Why, all that I’ve been telling you.”
We wandered on for a few more miles, but passed nothing but street after street of these huge blocks. I said:
“Are there no shops nor stores in this town?”
“No,” he replied. “What do we want with shops and stores? The State feeds us, clothes us, houses us, doctors us, washes and dresses us, cuts our corns and buries us. What could we do with shops?”
I began to feel tired with our walk. I said:
“Can we go in anywhere and have a drink?”
He said:
“A ‘drink!’ What’s a ‘drink’? We have half a pint of cocoa with our dinner. Do you mean that?”
I did not feel equal to explaining the matter to him, and he evidently would not have understood me if I had; so I said:
“Yes, I meant that.” We passed a very fine-looking man a little further on, and I noticed that he only had one arm. I had noticed two or three rather big-looking men with only one arm in the course of the morning, and it struck me as curious. I remarked about it to my guide.
He said:
“Yes, when a man is much above the average size and strength, we cut one of his legs or arms off, so as to make things more equal; we lop him down a bit, as it were. Nature, you see, is somewhat behind the times, but we do what we can to put her straight.”
I said:
“I suppose you can’t abolish her?”
“Well, not altogether,” he replied. “We only wish we could. But,” he added afterwards, with pardonable pride, “we’ve done a good deal.”
I said:
“How about an exceptionally clever man. What do you do with him?”
“Well, we are not much troubled in that way now,” he answered. “We have not come across anything dangerous in the shape of brainpower for some very considerable time now. When we do, we perform a surgical operation upon the head, which softens the brain down to the average level.
“I have sometimes thought,” mused the old gentleman, “that it was a pity we could not level up sometimes, instead of always levelling down – but of course that is impossible.”
I said:
“Do you think it right of you to cut these people up, and tone them down, in this manner?”
He said:
“Of course, it is right.”
“You seem very cocksure about the matter,” I retorted. “Why is it ‘of course’ right?”
“Because it is done by THE MAJORITY.”
“How does that make it right?” I asked.
“A MAJORITY can do no wrong,” he answered.
“Oh! Is that what the people who are lopped think?”
“They!” he replied, evidently astonished at the question. “Oh, they are in the minority, you know.”
“Yes, but even the minority has a right to its arms and legs and heads, hasn’t it?”
“A minority has NO rights,” he answered.
I said:
“It’s just as well to belong to the Majority, if you’re thinking of living here, isn’t it?”
He said:
“Yes, most of our people do. They seem to think it more convenient.”
I was finding the town somewhat uninteresting, and I asked if we could not go into the country for a change.
My guide said:
“Oh, yes, certainly,” but did not think I should care much for it.
“Oh! But it used to be so beautiful in the country,” I urged, “before I went to bed. There were great green trees, and grassy, wind-waved meadows, and little rose-decked cottages, and—”
“Oh, we’ve changed all that,” interrupted the old gentleman. “It is all one huge market garden now, divided by roads and canals cut at right angles to each other. There is no beauty in the country now whatever. We have abolished beauty: it interfered with our equality. It was not fair that some people should live among lovely scenery, and others upon barren moors. So we have made it all pretty much alike everywhere now, and no place can lord it over another.”
“Can a man emigrate into any other country?” I asked. “It doesn’t matter what country – any other country would do.”
“Oh, yes, if he likes,” replies my companion, “but why should he? All lands are exactly the same. The whole world is all one people now – one language, one law, one life.”
“Is there no variety, no change anywhere?” I asked. “What do you do for pleasure, for recreation? Are there any theatres?”
“No,” responded my guide. “We had to abolish theatres. The histrionic temperament seemed utterly unable to accept the principles of equality. Each actor thought himself the best actor in the world, and superior, in fact, to most other people altogether. I don’t know whether it was the same in your day?”
“Exactly the same,” I answered, “but we did not take any notice of it.”
“Ah! We did,” he replied, “and, in consequence, shut the theatres up. Besides, our White Ribbon Vigilance Society said that all places of amusement were vicious and degrading, and being an energetic and stout-winded band they soon won THE MAJORITY over to their views, and so all amusements are prohibited now.”
I said: “Are you allowed to read books?”
“Well,” he answered, “there are not many written. You see, owing to our all living such perfect lives, and there being no wrong, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, or love, or grief in the world, and everything being so regular and so proper, there is really nothing much to write about – except, of course, the Destiny of Humanity.”
“True!” I said. “I see that. But what of the old works, the classics? You had Shakespeare, and Scott, and Thackeray, and there were one or two little things of my own that were not half-bad. What have you done with all those?”
“Oh, we have burnt all those old works,” he said. “They were full of the old, wrong notions of the old, wrong, wicked times, when men were merely slaves and beasts of burden.”
He said all the old paintings and sculptures had been likewise destroyed, partly for the same reason, and partly because they were considered improper by the White Ribbon Vigilance Society, which was a great power now; while all new art and literature were forbidden, as such things tended to undermine the principles of equality. They made men think, and the men that thought grew cleverer than those that did not want to think; and those that did not want to think naturally objected to this, and being in THE MAJORITY, objected to some purpose.
He said that, from like considerations, there were no sports or games permitted. Sports and games caused competition, and competition led to inequality.
I said:
“How long do your citizens work each day?”
“Three hours,” he answered. “After that, all the remainder of the day belongs to ourselves.”
“Ah! That is just what I was coming to,” I remarked. “Now what do you do with yourselves during those other twenty-one hours?”
“Oh, we rest.”
“What! for the whole twenty-one hours?”
“Well, rest and think and talk.”
“What do you think and talk about?”
“Oh! Oh, about how wretched life must have been in the old times, and about how happy we are now, and… and… oh, and the Destiny of Humanity!”
“Don’t you ever get sick of the Destiny of Humanity?”
“No, not much.”
“And what do you understand by it? What is the Destiny of Humanity, do you think?”
“Oh!… why to… to go on being like we are now, only more so – everybody more equal, and more things done by electricity, and everybody to have two votes instead of one, and—”
“Thank you. That will do. Is there anything else that you think of? Have you got a religion?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And you worship a God?”
> “Oh, yes.”
“What do you call him?”
“THE MAJORITY.”
“One question more – You don’t mind my asking you all these questions, by the by, do you?”
“Oh, no. This is all part of my three hours’ labour for the State.”
“Oh, I’m glad of that. I should not like to feel that I was encroaching on your time for rest, but what I wanted to ask was, do many of the people here commit suicide?”
“No, such a thing never occurs to them.”
I looked at the faces of the men and women that were passing. There was a patient, almost pathetic expression upon them all. I wondered where I had seen that look before; it seemed familiar to me.
All at once I remembered. It was just the quiet, troubled, wondering expression that I had always noticed upon the faces of the horses and oxen that we used to breed and keep in the old world.
No. These people would not think of suicide.
* * *
Strange! How very dim and indistinct all the faces are growing around me! And where is my guide? And why am I sitting on the pavement? And… hark! Surely that is the voice of Mrs Biggies, my old landlady. Has she been asleep a thousand years too? She says it is twelve o’clock – only twelve? – and I’m not to be washed till half-past four; and I do feel so stuffy and hot, and my head is aching. Hulloa! Why, I’m in bed! Has it all been a dream? And am I back in the nineteenth century?
Through the open window I hear the rush and roar of old life’s battle. Men are fighting, striving, working, carving out each man his own life with the sword of strength and will. Men are laughing, grieving, loving, doing wrong deeds, doing great deeds – falling, struggling, helping one another – living!
And I have a good deal more than three hours’ work to do today, and I meant to be up at seven; and – oh dear! – I do wish I had not smoked so many strong cigars last night!
Dreams
The most extraordinary dream I ever had was one in which I fancied that, as I was going into a theatre, the cloakroom attendant stopped me in the lobby and insisted on my leaving my legs behind me.
After-Supper Ghost Stories Page 10
