Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Isn’t this the greatest rehash of ‘Utopia,’ ‘New Atlantis,’ and ‘City of the Sun’ that you ever imagined?” the professor whispered across me to the banker. “The man is a fraud, and a very bungling fraud at that.”

  “Well, you must expose him, when he gets through,” the banker whispered back.

  But the professor could not wait. He got upon his feet and called out: “May I ask the gentleman from Altruria a question?”

  “Certainly,” the Altrurian blandly assented.

  “Make it short!” Reuben Camp’s voice broke in, impatiently. “We didn’t come here to listen to your questions.”

  The professor contemptuously ignored him. “I suppose you occasionally receive emissaries from, as well as send them to, the world outside?”

  “Yes, now and then castaways land on our coasts, and ships out of their reckonings put in at our ports for water or provision.”

  “And how are they pleased with your system?”

  “Why, I cannot better answer than by saying that they mostly refuse to leave us.”

  “Ah, just as Bacon reports!” cried the professor.

  “You mean in the New Atlantis?” returned the Altrurian. “Yes; it is astonishing how well Bacon in that book, and Sir Thomas More in his Utopia, have divined certain phases of our civilization and polity.”

  “I think he rather has you, professor,” the banker whispered, with a laugh.

  “But all those inspired visionaries,” the Altrurian continued, while the professor sat grimly silent, watching for another chance, “who have borne testimony of us in their dreams, conceived of states perfect without the discipline of a previous competitive condition. What I thought, however, might specially interest you Americans in Altruria is the fact that our economy was evolved from one so like that in which you actually have your being. I had even hoped you might feel that, in all these points of resemblance, America prophesies another Altruria. I know that to some of you all that I have told of my country will seem a baseless fabric, with no more foundation, in fact, than More’s fairy-tale of another land where men dealt kindly and justly by one another, and dwelt, a whole nation, in the unity and equality of a family. But why should not a part of that fable have come true in our polity, as another part of it has come true in yours? When Sir Thomas More wrote that book, he noted with abhorrence the monstrous injustice of the fact that men were hanged for small thefts in England; and in the preliminary conversation between its characters he denounced the killing of men for any sort of thefts. Now you no longer put men to death for theft; you look back upon that cruel code of your mother England with an abhorrence as great as his own. We, for our part, who have realized the Utopian dream of brotherly equality, look back with the same abhorrence upon a state where some were rich and some poor, some taught and some untaught, some high and some low, and the hardest toil often failed to supply a sufficiency of the food which luxury wasted in its riots. That state seems as atrocious to us as the state which hanged a man for stealing a loaf of bread seems to you.

  “But we do not regret the experience of competition and monopoly. They taught us some things in the operation of the industries. The labor-saving inventions which the Accumulation perverted to money-making we have restored to the use intended by their inventors and the Creator of their inventors. After serving the advantage of socializing the industries which the Accumulation effected for its own purposes, we continued the work in large mills and shops, in the interest of the workers, whom we wished to guard against the evil effects of solitude. But our mills and shops are beautiful as well as useful. They look like temples, and they are temples, dedicated to that sympathy between the divine and human which expresses itself in honest and exquisite workmanship. They rise amid leafy boscages beside the streams, which form their only power; for we have disused steam altogether, with all the offences to the eye and ear which its use brought into the world. Our life is so simple and our needs are so few that the hand-work of the primitive toilers could easily supply our wants; but machinery works so much more thoroughly and beautifully that we have in great measure retained it. Only, the machines that were once the workmen’s enemies and masters are now their friends and servants; and, if any man chooses to work alone with his own hands, the state will buy what he makes at the same price that it sells the wares made collectively. This secures every right of individuality.

  “The farm-work, as well as the mill-work and the shop-work, is done by companies of workers; and there is nothing of that loneliness in our woods and fields which, I understand, is the cause of so much insanity among you. It is not good for man to be alone, was the first thought of his Creator when he considered him, and we act upon this truth in everything. The privacy of the family is sacredly guarded in essentials, but the social instinct is so highly developed with us that we like to eat together in large refectories, and we meet constantly to argue and dispute on questions of aesthetics and metaphysics. We do not, perhaps, read so many books as you do, for most of our reading, when not for special research, but for culture and entertainment, is done by public readers, to large groups of listeners. We have no social meetings which are not free to all; and we encourage joking and the friendly give and take of witty encounters.”

  “A little hint from Sparta,” suggested the professor.

  The banker leaned over to whisper to me: “From what I have seen of your friend when offered a piece of American humor, I should fancy the Altrurian article was altogether different. Upon the whole, I would rather not be present at one of their witty encounters, if I were obliged to stay it out.”

  The Altrurian had paused to drink a glass of water, and now he went on: “But we try, in everything that does not inconvenience or injure others, to let every one live the life he likes best. If a man prefers to dwell apart, and have his meals in private for himself alone or for his family, it is freely permitted; only he must not expect to be served as in public, where service is one of the voluntaries; private service is not permitted; those wishing to live alone must wait upon themselves, cook their own food, and care for their own tables. Very few, however, wish to withdraw from the public life, for most of the discussions and debates take place at our mid-day meal, which falls at the end of the obligatory labors, and is prolonged indefinitely, or as long as people like to chat and joke or listen to the reading of some pleasant book.

  “In Altruria there is no hurry, for no one wishes to outstrip another, or in any wise surpass him. We are all assured of enough, and are forbidden any and every sort of superfluity. If any one, after the obligatories, wishes to be entirely idle, he may be so, but I cannot now think of a single person without some voluntary occupation; doubtless there are such persons, but I do not know them. It used to be said, in the old times, that ‘it was human nature’ to shirk and malinger and loaf, but we have found that it is no such thing. We have found that it is human nature to work cheerfully, willingly, eagerly, at the tasks which all share for the supply of the common necessities. In like manner we have found out that it is not human nature to hoard and grudge, but that when the fear, and even the imagination, of want is taken away, it is human nature to give and to help generously. We used to say: ‘A man will lie, or a man will cheat, in his own interest; that is human nature’; but that is no longer human nature with us, perhaps because no man has any interest to serve; he has only the interests of others to serve, while others serve his. It is in no wise possible for the individual to separate his good from the common good; he is prosperous and happy only as all the rest are so; and therefore it is not human nature with us for any one to lie in wait to betray another or seize an advantage. That would be ungentlemanly, and in Altruria every man is a gentleman and every woman a lady. If you will excuse me here for being so frank, I would like to say something by way of illustration which may be offensive if you take it personally.”

  He looked at our little group, as if he were addressing himself more especially to us, and the banker called out, jollily:
“Go on! I guess we can stand it,” and “Go ahead!” came from all sides, from all kinds of listeners.

  “It is merely this: that as we look back at the old competitive conditions we do not see how any man could be a gentleman in them, since a gentleman must think first of others, and these conditions compelled every man to think first of himself.”

  There was a silence broken by some conscious and hardy laughter, while we each swallowed this pill as we could.

  “What are competitive conditions?” Mrs. Makely demanded of me.

  “Well, ours are competitive conditions,” I said.

  “Very well, then,” she returned, “I don’t think Mr. Homos is much of a gentleman to say such a thing to an American audience. Or, wait a moment! Ask him if the same rule applies to women.”

  I rose, strengthened by the resentment I felt, and said: “Do I understand that in your former competitive conditions it was also impossible for a woman to be a lady?”

  The professor gave me an applausive nod as I sat down. “I envy you the chance of that little dig,” he whispered.

  The Altrurian was thoughtful a moment, and then he answered: “No, I should not say it was. From what we know historically of those conditions in our country, it appears that the great mass of women were not directly affected by them. They constituted an altruistic dominion of the egoistic empire, and, except as they were tainted by social or worldly ambitions, it was possible for every woman to be a lady, even in competitive conditions. Her instincts were unselfish, and her first thoughts were nearly always of others.”

  Mrs. Makely jumped to her feet and clapped violently with her fan on the palm of her left hand. “Three cheers for Mr. Homos!” she shrieked, and all the women took up the cry, supported by all the natives and the construction gang. I fancied these fellows gave their support largely in a spirit of burlesque; but they gave it robustly, and from that time on, Mrs. Makely led the applause, and they roared in after her.

  It is impossible to follow closely the course of the Altrurian’s account of his country, which grew more and more incredible as he went on, and implied every insulting criticism of ours. Some one asked him about war in Altruria, and he said: “The very name of our country implies the absence of war. At the time of the Evolution our country bore to the rest of our continent the same relative proportion that your country bears to your continent. The egoistic nations to the north and the south of us entered into an offensive and defensive alliance to put down, the new altruistic commonwealth, and declared war against us. Their forces were met at the frontier by our entire population in arms, and full of the martial spirit bred of the constant hostilities of the competitive and monopolistic epoch just ended. Negotiations began in the face of the imposing demonstration we made, and we were never afterward molested by our neighbors, who finally yielded to the spectacle of our civilization and united their political and social fate with ours. At present, our whole continent is Altrurian. For a long time we kept up a system of coast defences, but it is also a long time since we abandoned these; for it is a maxim with us that where every citizen’s life is a pledge of the public safety, that country can never be in danger of foreign enemies.

  “In this, as in all other things, we believe ourselves the true followers of Christ, whose doctrine we seek to make our life as He made it His. We have several forms of ritual, but no form of creed, and our religious differences may be said to be aesthetic and temperamental rather than theological and essential. We have no denominations, for we fear in this, as in other matters, to give names to things lest we should cling to the names instead of the things. We love the realities, and for this reason we look at the life of a man rather than his profession for proof that he is a religious man.

  “I have been several times asked, during my sojourn among you, what are the sources of compassion, of sympathy, of humanity, of charity with us, if we have not only no want, or fear of want, but not even any economic inequality. I suppose this is because you are so constantly struck by the misery arising from economic inequality and want, or the fear of want, among yourselves, that you instinctively look in that direction. But have you ever seen sweeter compassion, tenderer sympathy, warmer humanity, heavenlier charity than that shown in the family where all are economically equal and no one can want while any other has to give? Altruria, I say again, is a family, and, as we are mortal, we are still subject to those nobler sorrows which God has appointed to men, and which are so different from the squalid accidents that they have made for themselves. Sickness and death call out the most angelic ministries of love; and those who wish to give themselves to others may do so without hinderance from those cares, and even those duties, resting upon men where each must look out first for himself and for his own. Oh, believe me, believe me, you can know nothing of the divine rapture of self-sacrifice while you must dread the sacrifice of another in it. You are not free, as we are, to do everything for others, for it is your duty to do rather for those of your own household!

  “There is something,” he continued, “which I hardly know how to speak of,” and here we all began to prick our ears. I prepared myself as well as I could for another affront, though I shuddered when the banker hardily called out: “Don’t hesitate to say anything you wish, Mr. Homos. I, for one, should like to hear you express yourself fully.”

  It was always the unexpected, certainly, that happened from the Altrurian. “It is merely this,” he said: “Having come to live rightly upon earth, as we believe, or having at least ceased to deny God in our statutes and customs, the fear of death, as it once, weighed upon us, has been lifted from our souls. The mystery of it has so far been taken away that we perceive it as something just and natural. Now that all unkindness has been banished from among us, we can conceive of no such cruelty as death once seemed. If we do not know yet the full meaning of death, we know that the Creator of it and of us meant mercy and blessing by it. When one dies we grieve, but not as those without hope. We do not say that the dead have gone to a better place, and then selfishly bewail them, for we have the kingdom of heaven upon earth already, and we know that wherever they go they will be homesick for Altruria; and when we think of the years that may pass before we meet them again our hearts ache, as theirs must. But the presence of the risen Christ in our daily lives is our assurance that no one ceases to be, and that we shall see our dead again. I cannot explain this to you; I can only affirm it.”

  The Altrurian spoke very solemnly, and a reverent hush fell upon the assembly. It was broken by the voice of a woman wailing out: “Oh, do you suppose, if we lived so, we should feel so, too? That I should know my little girl was living?”

  “Why not?” asked the Altrurian.

  To my vast astonishment, the manufacturer, who sat the farthest from me in the same line with Mrs. Makely, the professor, and the banker, rose and asked, tremulously: “And have — have you had any direct communication with the other world? Has any disembodied spirit returned to testify of the life beyond the grave?”

  The professor nodded significantly across Mrs. Makely to me, and then frowned and shook his head. I asked her if she knew what he meant. “Why, didn’t you know that spiritualism was that poor man’s foible? He lost his son in a railroad accident, and ever since—”

  She stopped and gave her attention to the Altrurian, who was replying to the manufacturer’s question.

  “We do not need any such testimony. Our life here makes us sure of the life there. At any rate, no externation of the supernatural, no objective miracle, has been wrought in our behalf. We have had faith to do what we prayed for, and the prescience of which I speak has been added unto us.”

  The manufacturer asked, as the bereaved mother had asked: “And if I lived so, should I feel so?”

  Again the Altrurian answered: “Why not?”

  The poor woman quavered: “Oh, I do believe it! I just know it must be true!”

  The manufacturer shook his head sorrowfully and sat down, and remained there, looking at the grou
nd.

  “I am aware,” the Altrurian went on, “that what I have said as to our realizing the kingdom of heaven on the earth must seem boastful and arrogant. That is what you pray for every day, but you do not believe it possible for God’s will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven — that is, you do not if you are like the competitive and monopolistic people we once were. We once regarded that petition as a formula vaguely pleasing to the Deity, but we no more expected His kingdom to come than we expected Him to give us each day our daily bread; we knew that if we wanted something to eat we should have to hustle for it, and get there first; I use the slang of that far-off time, which, I confess, had a vulgar vigor.

  “But now everything is changed, and the change has taken place chiefly from one cause — namely, the disuse of money. At first, it was thought that some sort of circulating medium must be used, that life could not be transacted without it. But life began to go on perfectly well, when each dwelt in the place assigned him, which was no better and no worse than any other; and when, after he had given his three hours a day to the obligatory labors, he had a right to his share of food, light, heat, and raiment; the voluntary labors, to which he gave much time or little, brought him no increase of those necessaries, but only credit and affection. We had always heard it said that the love of money was the root of all evil, but we had taken this for a saying, merely; now we realized it as an active, vital truth. As soon as money was abolished the power to purchase was gone, and even if there had been any means of buying beyond the daily needs, with overwork, the community had no power to sell to the individual. No man owned anything, but every man had the right to anything that he could use; when he could not use it, his right lapsed.