Another World Part 20

I may here mention a privilege belonging to every woman of every rank and of every age, viz., that, when a man meets a woman in the street, he is expected to bow, and, unless accompanied by a lady, he must step off the princ.i.p.al path till she has pa.s.sed. Any one omitting either of these marks of respect would be considered vulgar and ill-bred. He would be severely censured, and a repet.i.tion of the offence would render him amenable to more decided punishment.

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BEAUTY.

HEALTH--LONG LIFE--INFANTS.

"A precious gift from Heaven."

"How rare is beauty!" was formerly a common exclamation in Montalluyah.

It _was_ rare indeed; for although children were generally handsome and well formed, the adult too often became misshapen and ill-favoured.

Deformity was the rule, beauty the exception.

Even amongst those who were called handsome there were scarcely any who fulfilled every condition of the beautiful. A critical observer would have found defects in the beauty of the features, in the form, in the foot, the leg, the arm, the hand, the fingers, the teeth, the neck, the throat, the head, the hair, the complexion, the contour, the carriage.

One, and generally more, of the many essentials const.i.tuting the perfection of beauty would be wanting.

Hence, when our great artists required an ideal of beauty in painting or in sculpture, they would take several models, each supplying some beautiful detail not to be found in the rest,--one model furnis.h.i.+ng the features, another the general outline, each a separate limb. So difficult, if not impossible, was it then to find perfection of detail in the same person. Nay, even this expedient did not ensure success; the models differing from each other in size, complexion, and general proportions, complete harmony was rarely obtained, and, judging from our old painting and sculpture, I should say that no ideal was then produced equal to that which in Montalluyah now exists in the living form.

Beauty, formerly the exception, now const.i.tutes the rule, the ill favoured and deformed being more rare than were the handsome in preceding reigns.

To beauty is now added longevity; for, as I have before stated, the duration of human life is extended to a period which formerly would have been thought fabulous. This a.s.sertion will probably be received by you with an incredulity, which will not be diminished when I add that, notwithstanding the great increase in man's years, all his faculties are preserved in a state scarcely less perfect than that of pristine manhood. The eye is not dimmed, there is no deafness, the limbs are strong and agile, the teeth remain free from decay, pleasing to the sight, and valuable for the chief purposes for which they were given. In a word, whatever can contribute to beauty and health in man and woman remains all but intact to the last. Decadence in any particular, if so it may be called, is scarcely less marked than is the almost imperceptible decline by which man descends, or rather ascends, peacefully to another state of existence.

The facts I state would appear less extraordinary, nay, they would be regarded as the natural and inevitable result of an actual state of things, if you knew all that is done and prevented in Montalluyah to protect the health, strength, beauty, and intelligence of the child from its birth, indeed prior to its birth; for with us the care of the mother precedes that of the child. Nor is our care confined to infancy; it is extended to later years, and does not cease until the limbs, both of male and female youth, are developed, and their joints well knitted; until their features and person have received the impress of beauty, and their intelligence is matured to the healthful extent required by nature.

You should also be conversant with the means that are taken to secure the health of the city, the purity of the water and air, and the wholesomeness of food, the extreme cleanliness, and the general precautions taken for the prevention of disease, and of that prostration and waste of vital force by which disease is preceded, accompanied, and followed. You should realise, in thought at least, the blessed results of the employment of all in congenial occupations, and the contentment of each with his lot! You should also be able to realise the ever-multiplying inventions and discoveries resulting from our system, all tending to promote human perfectibility and happiness, every successive step being a.s.sisted by the one preceding, as well as by innumerable co-operations, all tending to one grand result.

You should also bear in mind that these inventions and their resulting forces had originated with and were governed by none but natures p.r.o.ne to good; powerful men from whose organization early education had eliminated the germs of evil propensities.

You should also realise the advantages arising from the fact, that whilst elevating knowledge, and rendering the rich happy in the possession of their wealth, my laws protect those who formerly would have been called poor. As there is no misery resulting from the neglect of society, or from the selfishness or oppression of man, poverty in your sense of the word does not exist. They, who are qualified for a "poor" grade only, are nevertheless the objects of solicitude and care to so great an extent that, whilst under my system the happiness and enjoyments of the rich are greatly increased, the poor are far happier and have keener enjoyments than the rich of former times, when the acquisition of money or its indifferent expenditure was the dominant thought in the minds of all.

You should also appreciate, in part at least, the effects of the numberless sights of beauty everywhere in Montalluyah, within and without, in the houses and the public thoroughfares, all by their influence on the mother, the child, and the adult contributing towards perfection of form, beauty, intelligence, and length of life.

Amongst other things, one result of the labours of the Character-divers must not be forgotten. The mobile countenances of our people are easily impressed with the marks of their emotions, and formerly nothing was more plainly furrowed on the countenance than signs indicating bad pa.s.sions and evil propensities, the eradication of which with the development of good qualities (one of the princ.i.p.al duties of the Character-divers) has had a remarkable effect in adding to loveliness of expression, in improving the features, and even in increasing the elegance and gracefulness of the form and bearing.

Had I been content with a mere ordinary increase of beneficial results, any one or more of the numerous precautions taken would have done much good; but my object was to establish my laws on so broad a foundation that no adverse gale could shake the edifice,--that the laws should be strengthened one by the other, that every one should be interested in observing and supporting inst.i.tutions under which he enjoyed the largest amount of happiness, and that, strange and visionary as it may seem to you, the necessity for punishment might be diminished, and eventually removed.

I should have as little thought of erecting the tall and graceful but huge Mountain Supporter without a broad and solid foundation as of establis.h.i.+ng my laws, all tending as they did to the perfectibility and happiness of the people, without spreading their base in all directions, and taking care that the human instrument through which the soul acts was fortified and prepared to respond to its n.o.ble ends.

I had early perceived that to obtain the desired end, every particular must be studied and provided for, so that all elements of enduring success should be united, and all obstructive elements removed. I felt that no effort, care, or thought would be too great if it would only produce the desired results, by securing health, beauty, intelligence, and long life in man, to the utmost extent that nature permitted.

I felt that the boon of long life would greatly lose its value, even if it could have been otherwise obtained, unless man's forces were economized, and the senses and faculties preserved in health and vigour to the last; that without these the happiness of man in every stage, and even his obedience to my laws, and my power to dispense with punishments, would be greatly impaired. For I had observed that the sufferings and degeneracy of the man would make him discontented, restless, and miserable, notwithstanding the blessings with which Providence had surrounded him.

Discontented men--and discontent and wickedness are not far apart--would have used the new powers for their own wicked purposes, just as formerly they rent the veil that concealed from the uninitiated the secrets of powers in nature; having been admitted under the guise, or rather while in temporary possession of all the great qualities of will, undaunted courage, energy, and perseverance.

Had I not reflected on this danger, I should only have allowed numbers of persons to receive an education which, neglecting the paramount principle of eradicating the faults of men of talent, would have laid them open to the promptings of evil spirits, by whom, perhaps, under the guise of beneficence, they would have been led to use the powers of good for purposes of evil. Our very progress would have given strength to powerful bad men, and my system, in spite of improvements, would have carried within it the cause for its own eventual destruction.

Many beautiful systems had been tried in Montalluyah, but, from inattention to small details, they had perished. The men who used for evil purpose powers given them for good, have unknowingly laboured to their own destruction and that of the highly civilized communities where they dwelt; which have thus been swept from the face of the earth.

They had tasted the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge before they had been thoroughly disciplined in the powers of resistance and of self-denial.

Hence the wholesome food was changed to poison; the sweet waters were made bitter; the stream, which in its fullness bore fertility and refreshment, burst its banks, and carried destruction everywhere.

So was it even with the priests of one of our ancient religions, who had the custody of great secrets intended for good. During a time extending over some generations, they practised the virtues they inculcated, and used their power for a beneficial end. They increased their power by their virtue and goodness; but their successors, from whose natures the minute germs of physical and mental perversity had not been removed, used their increased might for evil purposes, enervating to the governing will, and to the directing powers necessary to guide an irresistible force.

It is known that the results of every act, whether good or evil, will be felt for all time. The result of evil was likened in Montalluyah to a virulent disease, which had its beginning in a minute germ; a good act to an ear of nouris.h.i.+ng corn, that goes on propagating till it has supplied nations with food.

It was not enough that my laws worked with the beauty, regularity, and unity of a well-balanced machine, the parts of which a.s.sisted each other in attaining the immediate object of its construction. The political and social machine possessed also the faculty of acquiring at every movement increased powers of production.

I had satisfied myself that amongst the numerous precautions to be taken to secure the highest degree of beauty, power, and intelligence in adults, on which so much depended, was the care of the infant, and that this should commence from the earliest period, before the features, form, and organization had received the first approaches of enduring outline, since then all would be in a malleable or plastic state, ready to take any impressions caused by accident or design, whether tending to good or evil, to beauty or deformity.

RIDICULE ATTACHING TO THE SUBJECT OF BABIES.

Before my reign eminent men, statesmen, legislators, and philosophers, scarcely _condescended_ to notice such "trifles" as were comprised in the nurture and care of infants. Perhaps in a worldly sense they were right, for those who had attempted to instruct others in these all-pregnant "trifles" had been invariably ridiculed for the interest they took in "babies," and such-like "trivialities," which, in spite of many lessons, the people would not regard as possibly prolific of serious results.

The contempt thus thrown even on eminent men was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as our sages had familiarized the people with the grand truth that the greatest effects are often produced by trifling causes; that out of the little egg came the large eagle of the country, and the huge boa-constrictor; that innumerable mighty operations in nature have their origin in small beginnings; that the narrow rivulet goes on gathering strength till it becomes the Great Cataract; that the minute plague-spot generated the virulent disease; that the acorn produces the oak; that the impaired seed failed to produce goodly fruit; that a small drop of leaven affected a huge ma.s.s. Lessons on the fecundity of little things had indeed grown into commonplace household words.

Besides these lessons of the wise, love and respect for children were mingled with the religions feelings of the people; for Elikoia, the founder of our earliest civilization, was a child when he led the people from idolatry to the wors.h.i.+p of the living G.o.d.

All these considerations, however, were insufficient to s.h.i.+eld great men from the contempt thrown on them and on their words, when they had the courage to let it be known that they occupied themselves with things which, to an ordinary observer, seemed beneath notice.

From the first, however, I had been convinced of the importance of the despised "little" things, and looked not so much to the dimensions of the instrument as to the amount of good or evil it was capable of effecting, having learned by experience that the magnitude of results was often in an inverse ratio to the means employed, more especially when applied in due season.

Soon I discovered that many of the maladies incident to children, to youth, and to adults, owed their origin to the neglect and injudicious treatment of the infant. I had seen numbers of interesting children, with handsome features and well-formed limbs, who in their riper years had become ugly, with ill-favoured features, sallow complexions, bad expressions of countenance, misshapen forms, and crooked limbs. Many who in early years had displayed great intelligence had become positively stupid. It was not that the intelligence had been prematurely developed, but that the organization had been prematurely injured, and the brain-machine rendered incapable of giving proper expression to the yearnings of the soul. None suffered more keenly from early physical neglect than children of genius.

Satisfied that my observations were accurate, and that everything contributing to husband the health, strength, beauty, and intelligence of the child, would likewise contribute to the beauty, happiness, and contentment of the adult, as well as his obedience to my laws, I resolved to occupy myself with what proved to be the very important subject of babies. In meditating on the mode of obtaining the desired results, I considered nothing too insignificant,--not even so "small" a thing as the scratch of a pin, sufficient at all events to make an infant cry. The acts of crying and making wry faces disturb the lines of the plastic clay of the child's countenance, and even the lines of the form. The state of suffering calls off the vital electricity from its duties in other parts of the organisation, and is attended with other inconveniences, slight indeed in immediate perceptible effects, but so powerful in their c.u.mulative and germinating effects as to lead to results which, were they related, would seem incredible.

I must content myself by saying, that although the march of these c.u.mulative effects is not one-tenth as visible as the almost imperceptible movement of the hand that marks the seconds in one of our smallest electrical watches, they nevertheless eventually show in their result great and increasing evils, seriously affecting the child, the youth, the adult, and the man. It would not be too much to say that the traces of an injury, however slight, are never altogether obliterated, whilst every successive injury and deprivation of force renders the sufferer more open to every new inroad.

Although the minute hand of our electric watches moves almost imperceptibly, marking minutes, hours, days, and years, it advances in measured, limited progression; whereas the effects of suffering on the child go on advancing in an increasing--nay, multiplying--ratio, by which, up to a certain point, that of geometrical progression is far exceeded. If you can realise the fact, which in Montalluyah is incontestable, that even a scratch, however slight, will injure a child, it will require little stretch of imagination to form some conception at least of the injury caused to the beauty, form, health, strength, and mind of the adult, by the many diseases and sufferings which were allowed to leave their imprints on the young, impressionable clay and delicate organisation of the infant. Our children were formerly afflicted, like yours, with diseases resembling whooping-cough, croup, measles, small-pox, and other maladies, forming an almost endless list, and although the child survived the attacks and the incidental suffering and waste, the evil consequences could never be effectually removed.

The precautions now taken are very numerous. Many by themselves alone would be productive of great good, but when all are carried out, some contemporaneously, others successively, a result is scarcely less certain than the solution of a mathematical problem, based on accurate premises, save of course in the case of inevitable accidents. My laws provide for the protection of the child from its birth, nay, as I have before stated, prior to its birth; for the protection of the parent precedes that of the child. I knew that if the mother was sickly, or indulged in injurious habits, the child would suffer. I enjoined attention to these laws as a portion of the religious duties of the people. Amongst other things I explained the value of beauty in the human form, and how, when united with other qualities, it tended to the happiness of the individual and the well-being of the world. This I did at length, and in a manner to secure conviction, because it had been the fas.h.i.+on to decry beauty as a matter of minor importance.

At the risk of repeating myself, I a.s.sert that I omitted nothing, however seemingly insignificant, looking as I did upon my system as upon one large continuous volume, in which every page had its value. The absence of a single leaf would somewhat mar the general effect, but still the remaining pages might retain their worth if pregnant with good. On the other hand, if every leaf that was torn out had the effect of loosening the rest, and causing them to be lost, till but a few would be left in the cover, the effect would be far more serious.

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