CHAPTER X

When I awoke, Acquilla was standing at the side of my couch. I rubbed my eyes. The room through its glass walls was flooded with an agreeable modified sunlight.

“I must have overslept,” I said.

“You’ve slept a whole day, but now you ought to feel splendidly,” she replied eagerly.

“It’s true. I don’t remember when I’ve felt so alive and keen. And I feel a wolfish appetite.”

“How fast your hair grows,” said Acquilla passing her hand over my face, “and how wiry it is.”

“Don’t tell me that men don’t shave any more!”

“Oh, not for a long while here. In Southern races you occasionally see curious throwbacks. How funny it feels,” she added, again taking liberties with my chin. “You know I rather like it.”

“Acquilla,” I said solemnly, “I am beginning to be worried about my fellow men. What have you done with your brothers?”

“I’m afraid you will be rather upset,” she said, smiling, “but you are so different from the men of today. You are a reasoning creature and will understand, I am sure.”

“I reserve judgment, but meantime I am exceedingly apprehensive.”

We breakfasted out of doors, in a charming little bower of fragrant roses. A machinot waited on us with a dexterity that was little short of uncanny. Twice during the meal Acquilla rose and went into the house, probably to give the orders for the day. Each time true to the precepts of an excellent training, I rose and waited until she resumed her seat.

“Why do you get up so often?” said Acquilla the second time.

“A gentleman in my day always rose when a lady did,” I answered with a touch of asperity. “It was a deference we paid the sex of our mothers. We called it good manners.”

“What a strange idea. You placed women on an inferior scale and flattered them by treating them as your superiors.”

I must confess that after a moment’s deliberation I found no reply adequate.

“What inconceivable sentimentalists you men really were,” continued Acquilla reflectively.

“It was an attitude, of course, that descended from the age of chivalry--the service of the strong towards the weak.”

“All vanity. You preferred that attitude to acknowledging our equality.”

“Well, it seems now the situation is reversed. May I ask what is _your_ attitude to my unfortunate sex?”

This question evidently perplexed Acquilla for reasons I was to learn later. Perhaps she regretted the indiscretion of her previous remarks. But after a moment she replied.

“As a sex, yes, we consider the male inferior, though, of course, we make exceptions in the case of outstanding merit. To a small element who distinguish themselves in the arts and sciences we give modified political rights--chiefly advisory.”

I sat up and stared at her.

“How long since you have taken away the vote from men?”

“Oh, men have been disfranchised for over a century,” said Acquilla carelessly. “The age of reason could not have been achieved in any other way.”

“And they submit to it--tamely?”

“Why not? They are quite happy, I assure you. There are a few radical thinkers among us who have lately raised the cry of votes for men, but this heresy is confined chiefly to the brunettes and the Histriones. It will die out naturally.”

“But the men themselves,” I exclaimed indignantly. “After all, there is the appeal to force.”

“What can they do? They are outnumbered twenty five to one. My dear man, let me urge you to put aside your incurable sentimentality and your traditional way of looking at things, and try to appreciate the age of reason, in which you are now living. Soon, you will see how your males are living and enjoying themselves--and afterwards tell me candidly if we have not solved the sex problem.”

“One man to twenty five women!!” I cried, hearing nothing else. “But then you must have deliberately suppressed, socially murdered--”

“All that was done long ago,” said Acquilla interrupting. “Don’t excite yourself so, Bogardus. How like a man! Emotion should never precede knowledge. How agitated you are before you have even investigated.”

“Is this true everywhere?”

“Naturally. When the male civilization collapsed in the sanguinary World War it would have been a tragic futility to have returned man to power again, wouldn’t it?”

“So it is an Amazon state that we have come to!”

“You have said it. But don’t forget that an Amazon civilization existed three thousand years ago.”

I contained my wrath and asked with new curiosity:

“And this Amazon state, is it modelled on our communistic or despotic theories?”

“You may call it a despotism, but it has certainly nothing to do with communism or socialism.”

“Then democracy has survived?”

“How absurd! You will be quoting to me the sentimentalities of Rousseau and your Declaration of Independence! ‘All men are created free and equal.’”

“Well?”

“My dear Bogardus, that was a male egotism. All men created free and equal! No woman ever really believed that!”

“There you have scored,” I cried laughing. “I must admit that women did _not_ believe that.”

“Exactly, and that is true in our sex, too. Even with our scientific methods of advanced eugenics, we create types but never equalities.”

“Just what then, is the basis of the modern state?”

“You can’t guess? And yet it was written on the walls of history for anyone to recognize. Well, Bogardus, I’ll help you. But first, you had a civilization based on the family. The fatherhead of course.”

“Then the tribal chief.”

“The kinghead, of course. Then oligarchies, democracies, and demagogueries. Now what were they based on? The army, the church or the mob.”

“True,” I admitted, interested in spite of myself.

“But after all, what makes the difference between human beings, the superior mind and the average?”

“Power.”

“In your days power became an artificial inheritance. In our days power is knowledge.”

“Knowledge is power. I remember writing that as a child in a Spencerian copy book, I think,” I said meditatively.

“Our state of course, is founded on the University, as any logical civilization must be. Success is simply the process of elimination. That is what the University accomplishes scientifically and impartially.”

“But then,” I asked, remembering certain remarks, “you are organized on a system of castes.”

“True. We have rejected your democratic sentimentalisms and have returned to the first principle of nature, the survival of the fittest. With that we have adopted Napoleon’s conception of an aristocracy of achievement.”

“Very good,” I said, “and all you say interests me keenly. For Acquilla, you must know that there were many solitary thinkers, even in my day, who held with you. In fact, the British sought to reinvigorate their own aristocracy by the generous introduction of strong new personalities. But the weakness in all such systems is, of course, in the decline in vigor and effort which comes with the generations that inherit. How do you handle the second generation?”

“It is a pleasure to converse with you, Bogardus,” said Acquilla, brightening up. “Truly, you have the mind of a woman. The answer is simple. You have correctly pointed out the danger of all inherited institutions. We have eliminated it.”

“How so?”

“There is no second generation.”

“You--you suppress the children of your aristocracy?” I cried, gazing at her in horror.

“Not exactly. But we have suppressed the family which amounts to the same thing. You see, as our great philosopher, Manfreda, has pointed out in her epochal work which led to the final abolishment of your archaic tribal institutions, not only did the family idea constitute a rebellious element in society but--”

“One moment, I do not quite seize the implication.”

“Oh, you must read Manfreda, the greatest creative thinker of all times. You didn’t understand? But what is the object of the family; the strong must carry with them the weak. The moment a leader begins to provide for his family, his loyalty is to his children and not to the state. The parasitic second generation of which you speak retained artificial power, only by inheritance. Is that plain?”

“As you state it, it’s made plausible.”

“Furthermore, Bogardus, was not the family in itself an institution curiously contrary to the principle of the survival of the fittest?”

“In what way?”

“Was it not generally the weak that preyed upon the strong? In the family as you knew it, how often was the strongest member sacrificed for the incompetents?”

“The idea is a novel one--”

“Reflect.”

“I am reflecting--yes--and many incidents come to my mind that bear out your statement. But--”

“Now you are going to talk morality.”

“I was.”

“Let us postpone morality for the present.”

“I am curious to know how you would define it.”

“Morality is order. Immorality disorder.”

“I like the definition.”

“There is no other possible. So you see until you are conversant with our new institutions and manners, you cannot argue on morality in the terms of the twentieth century, any more than you would have argued then in the terms of the middle ages.”

“To go back a little,” I said, keenly interested, I must confess, “may I ask some questions?”

“Do.”

“You have abolished marriage and the family, I perceive, but how do you handle the question of the children?”

“The determination of sex was solved in the last century. Birth control was in force all over the world long before that.”

“So you permit birth control?” I exclaimed.

“Permit? It is obligatory. As science has diminished the need of labor, we have met the challenge of the machine by successively reducing the population. Anything else would be unscientific. The production of females and males is fixed for each country by the World Commission, of which I am a member. Our decisions are immutable and never disobeyed.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“Fundamental laws are reduced to the smallest number and any wilful infraction is punishable by death. In the case of the resistance of a community we would wipe out that community,” Acquilla concluded calmly.

“Acquilla, when you talk like that you make me shudder.”

“In your day,” replied Acquilla quickly, “you had thousands of laws and expected them all to be broken.”

“But death--”

“The infraction of any law must be punishable by death if there is any necessity for the law.”

“But an unjust law--”

“There are no unjust laws because there is no oppression of the individual. As for the death penalty (which of course, is simply the arrestation of life by means of the Frigidrome) you would be astonished to see how it has simplified the observance.”

“I shall reserve my opinion to our discussion on morality,” I said obstinately. “But to continue; what do you do with the children when they are born?”

“They are removed to the state nurseries immediately and brought up in community.”

“And you never see them?”

“Never.”

“But the children?”

“Science has demonstrated that children to be entirely normal, must be removed from the dangers of the mother or father complex. But Freud and Bertrand Russell, in your day, must have realized that.”

“The mother and father complex, it is true, were held responsible for many things.”

“You see we have really broken up the home in the interest of the children.”

I felt a dizziness in my head and took a long breath.

“What is wrong, dear?” said Acquilla solicitously.

“I am trying to acquire your modern point of view,” I answered feebly. “One thing occurs to me; why go through the torture of childbirth at all?”

“In the first place childbearing has now no discomforts. In the second place it is a duty imposed by the state and finally it has been established that it is a process of nature that is essential to the complete health and mental vigor of a woman.”

“Then all children are treated alike?”

“No, but the children of each caste, yes. For, Bogardus, it would be absurd to say that a child of mine has no greater equipment than the child of a servant.”

“Naturally.”

“Eugenics has taught us to develop inherited characteristics. We breed not only for physical form but for developed tendencies. A great scientist or a philosopher in her offspring, with the proper mating, produces a finer brain, naturally. Nothing more complex in that than breeding for speed in horses or scent in dogs.”

“What then, Acquilla, is the arrangement of castes?”

“The highest caste is called the Minervenes. This comprises the highest types of mind, the scientists, the philosophers, the teachers, the doctors and the governors or administrators.”

“What has become of the lawyers?”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean by lawyers. What were lawyers? Do you mean law makers?”

“On the contrary.” I hesitated before an obvious witticism before replying. “Lawyers interpreted the laws. In my day there were so many laws and so often in conflict that no one ever contemplated any step without recourse to a lawyer.”

“Laws that have to be interpreted. How strange!”

“But how can you leave property without a lawyer to draw up the will?”

“There is no one to leave property to. Everything returns to the state, and the state fixes the income of each according to merit.”

“But surely there are such things as income taxes?”

Acquilla shook her head.

“But in your life don’t you buy or sell?”

“Certainly, but all this is arranged through government agencies.”

“Then there were the corporation lawyers who found the way to accomplish results that were seemingly forbidden by laws.”

“There are no privately owned corporations.”

“But the criminal lawyers--surely there must be someone to represent the individual who is accused of breaking your laws?”

“Why?”

“Well, manifestly someone with the knowledge of the law must advise the accused and plead his case before the jury.”

“My dear Bogardus, criminology is an exact science, as you will see. We have judges but no juries.”

“But the laws of testimony?”

“Confusion, mystification. We simply bring the accused before the judge and ask him one question.”

“What question?”

“Why--‘Are you guilty?’ of course! Who knows better than the accused?”

“Very simple; if all women have forgotten how to lie.”

“But a lie is impossible. We apply the scientific test, the detecto-vibrator, that records the truth or falsity of the answer by the nervous reaction. That principle surely was known in your day.”

“True, but not in use. Manifestly then, there is no need of lawyers. This, I admit cheerfully, is a great progress. Please continue.”

“The Minervenes are, of course, the supreme directing body in the state. Then there are the Histriones who compose all the liberal professions, the writers, musicians, actors, artists and architects. Socially they rank with the Minervenes, but politically they have nothing to do with the direction of the government, except as they may indirectly influence ideas.”

“And they submit to this inferiority?”

“Submit? Inferiority? They claim it as their right to be exempt from any such burden. Why should anyone with a creative gift wish to have her valuable time diverted to the dry routine of government?”

I bowed.

“You have an answer to everything.”

“The third caste is the Vulcates, our great mechanics and engineers. The fourth the Æsthetes, the arbiters of fashions, the decorators, the great culinary artists, all those who study the greatest enjoyment to be had out of life. The fifth are the Cerenes, the agricultural producers, farmers, cattlewomen, dairywomen, wine makers. The sixth caste, the Mercurenes, the artisans and manufacturers, and finally the seventh caste, the Domesticates, the servants, the clerks, and the police.”

“And are these castes rigid? Is there no hope of rising from one caste to another?”

“There is nothing rigid about any of them, Bogardus, because there is no inheritance. A woman’s caste is determined by her education. Opportunity is open to everyone according to their merits. You will see how this works out.

“We are going to visit the University?”

“Now,” said Acquilla, pointing to the open lawn at the bottom of the park, where an aeromat was descending at this moment. “But I have a busy day in Europa and will have to leave you to another guide.”

“Dulcina?” I said with simulated eagerness.

“You are attracted by her. Admit it!”

“I thought her interesting, more so than Carrilla or Dianne, who are amusing but like all artists interested only in themselves,” I replied adroitly. Again I was conscious of a translated personality in the domineering presence of the Minervene, as though the sexes were reversed and I was resorting to the artifices of the weaker.

“Dulcina is even more vain and egotistical,” said Acquilla peremptorily, “and knows nothing outside her own talent.”

“Then it is not Dulcina?”

“Certainly not!”

“Carrilla?”

“It is not Carrilla!”

Before I could venture another guess, my lovely Dianne stepped out of the aeromat and said, “Doctrina has an important meeting and asked me to take her place.”