Part 3
She might say what she pleased, but her manner was not one that carried much conviction; and later on I saw signs of general indifference to these banks that were not to be mistaken. Their supporters often denied it, but the denial was generally so couched as to add another proof of its existence. In commercial panics, and in times of general distress, the people as a mass did not so much as even think of turning to these banks. A few individuals might do so, some from habit and early training, some from hope of gain, but few from a genuine belief that the money was good; the masses turned instinctively to the other currency. In a conversation with one of the musical bank managers I ventured to hint this as plainly as politeness would allow. He said that it had been more or less true till lately; but that now they had put fresh stained glass windows into all the banks in the country, and repaired the buildings, and enlarged the organs, and taken to talking nicely to the people in the streets, and to remembering the ages of their children and giving them things when they were ill, so that all would henceforth go smoothly.
"But haven't you done anything to the money itself?" said I timidly.
To this day I do not know exactly what the bank-manager said, but it came to this in the end--that I had better not meddle with things that I did not understand.
On reviewing the whole matter, I can be certain of this much only, that the money given out at the musical banks is not the current coin of the realm. It is not the money with which the people do as a general rule buy their bread, meat, and clothing. It is like it; some coins very like it; and it is not counterfeit. It is not, take it all round, a spurious article made of base metal in imitation of the money which is in daily use; but it is a distinct coinage which, though I do not suppose it ever actually superseded the ordinary gold, silver, and copper, was probably issued by authority, and was intended to supplant those metals. Some of the pieces were really of exquisite beauty; and some were, I do verily believe, nothing but the ordinary currency, only that there was another head and name in place of that of the commonwealth. And here was one of the great marvels; for those who were most strongly in favour of this coinage maintained, and even grew more excited if they were opposed here than on any other matter, that the very self-same coin with the head of the commonwealth upon it was of little if any value, while it became exceedingly precious it stamped with the other image.
Some of the coins were plainly bad; of these last there were not many; still there were enough for them to be not uncommon. These were entirely composed of alloy; they would bend easily, would melt away to nothing with a little heat, and were quite unsuited for a currency. Yet there were few of the wealthier classes who did not maintain that even these coins were genuine good money, though they were chary of taking them. Every one knew this, so they were seldom offered; but all thought it incumbent upon them to retain a good many in their possession, and to let them be seen from time to time in their hands and purses. Of course people knew their real value exceedingly well; but few, if any, dared to say what that value was; or if they did, it would be only in certain companies or in writing in the newspapers anonymously. Strange! there was hardly any insinuation against this coinage which they would not tolerate and even applaud in their daily papers; and yet, if the same thing were said without ambiguity to their faces--nominative case verb and accusative being all in their right places, and doubt impossible--they would consider themselves very seriously and justly outraged, and accuse the speaker of being unwell.
I never could understand, neither can I do so now, why a single currency should not suffice them; it would seem to me as though all their dealings would have been thus greatly simplified; but I was met with a look of horror if ever I dared to hint at it. Even those who to my certain knowledge kept only just enough money at the musical banks to swear by, would call the other banks (where their securities really lay) cold, deadening, paralysing, and the like. I noticed another thing moreover which struck me greatly. I was taken to the opening of one of these banks in a neighbouring town, and saw a large assemblage of cashiers and managers. I sat opposite them and scanned their faces attentively. They did not please me; they lacked, with a few exceptions, the true Erewhonian frankness; and an equal number from any other class would have looked happier and better men. When I met them in the streets they did not seem like other people, but had, as a general rule, a cramped expression upon their faces which pained and depressed me.
Those who came from the country were better; they seemed to have lived less as a separate class, and to be freer and healthier; but in spite of my seeing not a few whose looks were benign and noble, I could not help asking myself concerning the greater number of those whom I met, whether Erewhon would be a better country if their expression were to be transferred to the people in general. I answered myself emphatically, no. A man's expression is his sacrament; it is the outward and visible sign of his inward and spiritual grace, or, want of grace; and as I looked at the majority of these men, I could not help feeling that there must be a something in their lives which had stunted their natural development, and that they would have been more healthily-minded in any other profession.
I was always sorry for them, for in nine cases out of ten they were well- meaning persons; they were in the main very poorly paid; their constitutions were as a rule above suspicion; and there were recorded numberless instances of their self-sacrifice and generosity; but they had had the misfortune to have been betrayed into a false position at an age for the most part when their judgment was not matured, and after having been kept in studied ignorance of the real difficulties of the system. But this did not make their position the less a false one, and its bad effects upon themselves were unmistakable.
Few people would speak quite openly and freely before them, which struck me as a very bad sign. When they were in the room every one would talk as though all currency save that of the musical banks should be abolished; and yet they knew perfectly well that even the cashiers themselves hardly used the musical bank money more than other people. It was expected of them that they should appear to do so, but this was all. The less thoughtful of them did not seem particularly unhappy, but many were plainly sick at heart, though perhaps they hardly knew it, and would not have owned to being so. Some few were opponents of the whole system; but these were liable to be dismissed from their employment at any moment, and this rendered them very careful, for a man who had once been cashier at a musical bank was out of the field for other employment, and was generally unfitted for it by reason of that course of treatment which was commonly called his education. In fact it was a career from which retreat was virtually impossible, and into which young men were generally induced to enter before they could be reasonably expected, considering their training, to have formed any opinions of their own. Few indeed were those who had the courage to insist on seeing both sides of the question before they committed themselves to either. One would have thought that this was an elementary principle,--one of the first things that an honourable man would teach his boy to do; but in practice it was not so.
I even saw cases in which parents bought the right of presenting to the office of cashier at one of these banks, with the fixed determination that some one of their sons (perhaps a mere child) should fill it. There was the lad himself--growing up with every promise of becoming a good and honourable man--but utterly without warning concerning the iron shoe which his natural protector was providing for him. Who could say that the whole thing would not end in a life-long lie, and vain chafing to escape?
I confess that there were few things in Erewhon which shocked me more than this.
BIRTH FORMULAE. (CHAPTER XVII. OF EREWHON.)
I heard what follows not from Arowhena, but from Mr. Nosnibor and some of the gentlemen who occasionally dined at the house: they told me that the Erewhonians believe in pre-existence; and not only this (of which I will write more fully in the next chapter), but they believe that it is of their own free act and deed in a previous state that people come to be born into this world at all.
They hold that the unborn are perpetually plaguing and tormenting the married (and sometimes even the unmarried) of both sexes, fluttering about them incessantly, and giving them no peace either of mind or body until they have consented to take them under their protection. If this were not so--this is at least what they urge--it would be a monstrous freedom for one man to take with another, to say that he should undergo the chances and changes of this mortal life without any option in the matter. No man would have any right to get married at all, inasmuch as he can never tell what misery his doing so may entail forcibly upon his children who cannot be unhappy as long as they remain unborn. They feel this so strongly that they are resolved to shift the blame on to other shoulders; they have therefore invented a long mythology as to the world in which the unborn people live, what they do, and the arts and machinations to which they have recourse in order to get themselves into our own world.
I cannot think they seriously believe in this mythology concerning pre- existence; they do and they do not; they do not know themselves what they believe; all they know is that it is a disease not to believe as they do. The only thing of which they are quite sure is that it is the pestering of the unborn, which causes them to be brought into this world, and that they would not be here if they would only let peaceable people alone.
It would be hard to disprove this position, and they might have a good case if they would only leave it as it stands. But this they will not do; they must have assurance doubly sure; they must have the written word of the child itself as soon as it is born, giving the parents indemnity from all responsibility on the score of its birth, and asserting its own pre-existence. They have therefore devised something which they call a birth formula--a document which varies in words according to the caution of parents, but is much the same practically in all cases; for it has been the business of the Erewhonian lawyers during many ages to exercise their skill in perfecting it and providing for every contingency.
These formulae are printed on common paper at a moderate cost for the poor; but the rich have them written on parchment and handsomely bound, so that the getting up of a person's birth formula is a test of his social position. They commence by setting forth, That whereas A. B. was a member of the kingdom of the unborn, where he was well provided for in every way, and had no cause of discontent, &c. &c., he did of his own wanton restlessness conceive a desire to enter into this present world; that thereon having taken the necessary steps as set forth in laws of the unborn kingdom, he set himself with malice aforethought to plague and pester two unfortunate people who had never wronged him, and who were quite contented until he conceived this base design against their peace; for which wrong he now humbly entreats their pardon. He acknowledges that he is responsible for all physical blemishes and deficiencies which may render him answerable to the laws of his country; that his parents have nothing whatever to do with any of these things; and that they have a right to kill him at once if they be so minded, though he entreats them to show their marvellous goodness and clemency towards him by sparing his life. If they will do this he promises to be their most abject creature during his earlier years, and indeed unto his life's end, unless they should see fit in their abundant generosity to remit some portion of his service hereafter. And so the formula continues, going sometimes into very minute details, according to the fancies of family lawyers, who will not make it any shorter than they can help.
The deed being thus prepared, on the third or fourth day after the birth of the child, or as they call it, the "final importunity," the friends gather together, and there is a feast held, where they are all very melancholy--as a general rule, I believe quite truly so--and make presents to the father and mother of the child in order to console them for the injury which has just been done them by the unborn. By and by the child himself is brought down by his nurse, and the company begin to rail upon him, upbraiding him for his impertinence and asking him what amends he proposes to make for the wrong that he has committed, and how he can look for care and nourishment from those who have perhaps already been injured by the unborn on some ten or twelve occasions; for they say of people with large families, that they have suffered terrible injuries from the unborn; till at last, when this has been carried far enough, some one suggests the formula, which is brought forth and solemnly read to the child by the family straightener. This gentleman is always invited on these occasions, for the very fact of intrusion into a peaceful family shows a depravity on the part of the child which requires his professional services.
On being teased by the reading and tweaked by the nurse, the child will commonly fall a-crying, which is reckoned a good sign as showing a consciousness of guilt. He is thereon asked, Does he assent to the formula? on which, as he still continues crying and can obviously make no answer, some one of the friends comes forward and undertakes to sign the document on his behalf, feeling sure (so he says) that the child would do it if he only knew how, and that he will release the present signer from his engagement on arriving at maturity. The friend then inscribes the signature of the child at the foot of the parchment, which is held to bind the child as much as though he had signed it himself. Even this, however, does not fully content them, for they feel a little uneasy until they have got the child's own signature after all. So when he is about fourteen these good people partly bribe him by promises of greater liberty and good things, and partly intimidate him through their great power of making themselves passively unpleasant to him, so that though there is a show of freedom made, there is really none, and partly they use the offices of the teachers in the Colleges of Unreason, till at last, in one way or another, they take very good care that he shall sign the paper by which he professes to have been a free agent in coming into the world, and to take all the responsibility of having done so on to his own shoulders. And yet, though this document is in theory the most important which any one can sign in his whole life, they will have him commit himself to it at an age when neither they nor the law will for many a year allow any one else to bind him to the smallest obligation, no matter how righteously he may owe it, because they hold him too young to know what he is about.
I thought this seemed rather hard, and not of a piece with the many admirable institutions existing among them. I once ventured to say a part of what I thought about it to one of the Professors of Unreason. I asked him whether he did not think it would do serious harm to a lad's principles, and weaken his sense of the sanctity of his word, and of truth generally, that he should be led into entering upon an engagement which it was so plainly impossible he should keep even for a single day with tolerable integrity--whether, in fact, the teachers who so led him, or who taught anything as a certainty of which they were themselves uncertain, were not earning their living by impairing the truth-sense of their pupils. The professor, who was a delightful person, seemed surprised at the view I took, and gave me to understand, perhaps justly enough, that I ought not to make so much fuss about a trifle. No one, he said, expected that the boy either would or could do all that he undertook; but the world was full of compromises; and there was hardly any engagement which would bear being interpreted literally. Human language was too gross a vehicle of thought--thought being incapable of absolute translation. He added, that as there can be no translation from one language into another which shall not scant the meaning somewhat, or enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can render thought without a jarring and a harshness somewhere--and so forth; all of which seemed to come to this in the end, that it was the custom of the country, and that the Erewhonians were a conservative people; that the boy would have to begin compromising sooner or later, and this was part of his education in the art. It was perhaps to be regretted that compromise should be as necessary as it was; still it was necessary, and the sooner the boy got to understand it the better for himself. But they never tell this to the boy.
From the book of their mythology about the unborn I made the extracts which will form the following chapter.
THE WORLD OF THE UNBORN. (PART OF CHAPTER XVII. OF EREWHON.)
The Erewhonians say it was by chance only that the earth and stars and all the heavenly worlds began to roll from east to west, and not from west to east, and in like manner they say it is by chance that man is drawn through life with his face to the past instead of to the future. For the future is there as much as the past, only that we may not see it. Is it not in the loins of the past, and must not the past alter before the future can do so?
They have a fable that there was a race of men tried upon the earth once, who knew the future better than the past, but that they died in a twelvemonth from the misery which their knowledge caused them. They say that if any were to be born too prescient now, he would die miserably, before he had time to transmit so peace-destroying a faculty to descendants.
Strange fate for man! He must perish if he get that, which he must perish if he strive not after. If he strive not after it he is no better than the brutes, if he get it he is more miserable than the devils.
Having waded through many chapters like the above, I came at last to the unborn themselves, and found that they were held to be souls pure and simple, having no actual bodies, but living in a sort of gaseous yet more or less anthropomorphic existence, like that of a ghost; they have thus neither flesh nor blood nor warmth. Nevertheless they are supposed to have local habitations and cities wherein they dwell, though these are as unsubstantial as their inhabitants; they are even thought to eat and drink some thin ambrosial sustenance, and generally to be capable of doing whatever mankind can do, only after a visionary ghostly fashion, as in a dream. On the other hand, as long as they remain where they are they never die--the only form of death in the unborn world being the leaving it for our own. They are believed to be extremely numerous, far more so than mankind. They arrive from unknown planets, full grown, in large batches at a time; but they can only leave the unborn world by taking the steps necessary for their arrival here--which is, in fact, by suicide.
They ought to be a happy people, for they have no extremes of good or ill fortune; never marrying, but living in a state much like that fabled by the poets as the primitive condition of mankind. In spite of this, however, they are incessantly complaining; they know that we in this world have bodies, and indeed they know everything else about us, for they move among us whithersoever they will, and can read our thoughts, as well as survey our actions at pleasure. One would think that this should be enough for them; and indeed most of them are alive to the desperate risk which they will run by indulging themselves in that body with "sensible warm motion" which they so much desire; nevertheless, there are some to whom the _ennui_ of a disembodied existence is so intolerable that they will venture anything for a change; so they resolve to quit. The conditions which they must accept are so uncertain, that none but the most foolish of the unborn will consent to take them; and it is from these and these only that our own ranks are recruited.
When they have finally made up their minds to leave, they must go before the magistrate of the nearest town and sign an affidavit of their desire to quit their then existence. On their having done this, the magistrate reads them the conditions which they must accept, and which are so long that I can only extract some of the principal points, which are mainly the following:--
First, they must take a potion which will destroy their memory and sense of identity; they must go into the world helpless, and without a will of their own; they must draw lots for their dispositions before they go, and take it, such as it is, for better or worse--neither are they to be allowed any choice in the matter of the body which they so much desire; they are simply allotted by chance, and without appeal, to two people whom it is their business to find and pester until they adopt them. Who these are to be, whether rich or poor, kind or unkind, healthy or diseased, there is no knowing; they have, in fact, to entrust themselves for many years to the care of those for whose good constitution and good sense they have no sort of guarantee.
It is curious to read the lectures which the wiser heads give to those who are meditating a change. They talk with them as we talk with a spendthrift, and with about as much success.
"To be born," they say, "is a felony--it is a capital crime, for which sentence may be executed at any moment after the commission of the offence. You may perhaps happen to live for some seventy or eighty years, but what is that, in comparison with the eternity which you now enjoy? And even though the sentence were commuted, and you were allowed to live for ever, you would in time become so terribly weary of life that execution would be the greatest mercy to you. Consider the infinite risk; to be born of wicked parents and trained in vice! to be born of silly parents, and trained to unrealities! of parents who regard you as a sort of chattel or property, belonging more to them than to yourself! Again, you may draw utterly unsympathetic parents, who will never be able to understand you, and who will thwart you as long as they can to the utmost of their power (as a hen when she has hatched a duckling), and then call you ungrateful because you do not love them, or parents who may look upon you as a thing to be cowed while it is still young, lest it should give them trouble hereafter by having wishes and feelings of its own.