CHAPTER XXIV

What the Books Revealed

Amid all the excitement of my return to Archeon, my establishment in new quarters and my meeting with Xanocles, I had not forgotten Aelios’ advice to visit the library at the first opportunity. Nor had I forgotten my official duties as Historian of the Upper World, nor the necessity for acquiring more, explicit knowledge of undersea customs before I could hope to interpret my own country to the Atlanteans. Hence I was determined to accomplish a double object: to prepare myself for my prescribed work and at the same time to gratify my curiosity by an extensive course of reading.

As soon as I was fully settled in my new apartment, I set out for the main government library--and with highly interesting and even startling results. I found the building without difficulty: a many-domed edifice of granite and white chalcedony, located in a large flower-bordered square near the center of town. Had I not been able to identify it from the descriptions, I might have recognized it by the streams of people constantly filing in and out, giving me the feeling that it was the business heart of the city.

Yet my first impressions of the library were bewildering in the extreme. Not only was the building one of the largest I had seen (covering not less than five or six acres) but the volumes it harbored were amazing in their profusion and variety. My first surprise was at the discovery that there were no railings, fences or locked doors, as in all other libraries I had known. Here the visitor was admitted without question to every room and corridor; my second surprise--and a far greater one--was caused by the queer arrangement of the books. For the volumes were catalogued and stocked, not alphabetically, but chronologically; there was a gallery reserved for each century of Atlantean history, down to the seventh century B. S.; and within the galleries, the books were arranged by authors and subjects in a way that impressed me as utterly novel. In a niche among the books, for example, one would observe the bust of a stern-browed, bearded man; and, coming close, one would note that this was the poet Sargos; and just below the bust one would find the complete collection of the poet’s works, as well as the commentaries upon them. Or, in another corner of the room, one would pause to admire the painting of a crowded ancient seaport; and the inscription below the painting would tell one that this was the vanished maritime city of Therion; and just beneath this inscription would be the books wherein Therion was pictured and discussed.

In a way, the building reminded me of a museum as much as of a library, for, in addition to the paintings and statues, each gallery was featured by furniture, rugs, vases, tapestries and decorations that corresponded with the original date of the books. The effect of oddity was enhanced by the fact that the volumes themselves, while in many cases modern reprints, were not infrequently bound in the style of their first editions; and the total impression was most curious and interesting, considering the contrasting sizes and the numberless shades and colors of the books, and the various grades of silk, parchment and artificial leather in which they were attired.

Yet the appearance of the books was the least noteworthy fact about them. Their sheer abundance was a source of unceasing astonishment to me--it seemed as if every era in Atlantean history had been a literary one. As nearly as I could determine, there had been an average of several hundred books a year which had been thought worthy of preservation--and the high period of productivity had already endured for twenty-five centuries! Nor were the favored works merely stored up in dusty shelves where they might remain forever unnoticed--every book of the scores which I opened had been well thumbed, and the crowds constantly browsing along the alcoves and aisles gave evidence that literary interest was not purely a thing of the past.

It was not long before I myself felt inclined to emulate those enthusiasts. Seated in company with twenty or thirty Atlanteans before the long marble table that adorned the most modern of the galleries, I began to taste the contents of several books I had selected at random; and so delightful did they prove, that it was four or five hours before I had any thought of leaving.

* * * * *

While all the books which I inspected proved richly diverting, the one that interested me most was a little volume entitled “Social Life in the Thirty-first Century.” When I recall today the unusual size of the type and the extreme simplicity of the style, I feel sure that the book was designed for an immature audience; but this fact did not then occur to me, and I found the work admirably suited to my needs. Questions that had been perplexing me ever since my arrival in Atlantis were now explained, in a manner that dispersed all doubts; and I found myself possessed of a clearer conception than ever before of Atlantean ideas and institutions.

I had been wondering, for example, about the statue-like palace wherein Rawson and I had been imprisoned; I was now informed that this, “The Temple of the Stars,” was among the oldest buildings in Atlantis, having been erected just before the Submergence so that the people might bring back to mind at will the aspect of the skies. I had been wondering, likewise, about the “Hall of Public Enlightenment,” that amber-hued and sapphire theatre in which I had lately witnessed several debates; I now read that such a building had been erected centuries before in each of the Atlantean cities as a place of popular assemblage, a sort of forum, wherein the people might decide upon public questions; and I also learned that any citizen might attend the meetings there, that any might take part in the discussions, and that it was at such popular gatherings that the few laws of the country were proposed and the most important problems weighed and settled.

The discussion of the Halls of Public Enlightenment naturally paved the way for a description of the political system and government of the Sunken World. “The State of Atlantis,” I read, “is neither a monarchy, an oligarchy, nor a republic. It is a Commonality, which means that all things are possessed in common by the people and all activities shared among them. At the head of the Atlantean State is the High Chief Adviser, whose principle duty is by way of counseling the people, but who decides certain specified minor questions confronting the Atlantean State and is empowered to assume dictatorial authority in case of a national crisis (although such a crisis has never occurred since the riots of the second century A. S., following the passage of the Milares Compulsory Population Law).

“Like all the other officials of Atlantis, the High Chief Adviser assumes his position neither by appointment nor by heredity nor by election, but by Automatic Selection; or, in other words, he has taken office after defeating all rivals in a series of debates and rigorous competitive examinations. His term of office is indefinite, but every three years he is expected to prove his fitness by engaging in contests with qualified aspirants for the Advisorship; and unless he can still outdo all opponents, a new chief executive is installed.”

It would have seemed to me that such a system would have detracted from the dignity of the High Chief Adviser; but the book informed me that, on the contrary, it added to his dignity, since he was assured of holding office on a basis of merit only. In fact, he was bound to keep fit and even to improve himself while in office; and most High Chief Advisers did actually remain so well qualified that they stayed in power for an average term of thirty years. Indeed, Icenocles (the incumbent at the time of the publication of the book) had already ruled for forty-five years, and now, at the mature age of one hundred and seven, he still regularly put all competitors to shame.

* * * * *

All this, of course, told me nothing about Atlantean law-making, law enforcement and the administration of justice. Therefore I eagerly read on, and found many of my questions speedily answered. To my astonishment, I learned that there was no such thing as a legislature or a law-making group in Atlantis!--and yet such bodies were not unknown to the native political theory. “Ancient experience has taught us,” said the book, “that representative government usually represents only some particular faction. And in a community whose members are few and all of whose citizens are intelligent, there is no necessity for delegated authority. Local statutes and ordinances were abolished in Atlantis at the time of the Submergence; and the few national laws are proposed in any of the cities in the Hall of Public Enlightenment. Having been debated and approved by an assemblage of a hundred citizens or more, the measure is submitted to a referendum of all the Atlanteans after the lapse of thirty days--and a majority vote will suffice for its passage.

“At the head of each city is a Local Adviser, selected in the same manner as the High Chief Adviser; and, aided by a corps of from five to fifteen assistants also chosen competitively, he decides those questions not settled in the popular assemblies,--questions such as the amount of energy to be devoted to the erection of new buildings, the time and nature of local festivals, the regulation of local hygienic problems, the number of public physicians required to attend the ill and aged, and a dozen other matters of practical and artistic concern. Equally important theoretically, though in actual practice far less so, is the court of eleven judges which presides in each town, settling all disputes among citizens and reprimanding the law-breakers. No doubt there were frequently such persons as law-breakers three thousand years ago, when these courts were planned, but today such offenders are virtually unknown, for the only crimes are those of impulse and passion, and these are exceedingly rare--fortunately, the congenital criminals have been wiped out along with lunatics and morons by our rigorous birth selection. Occasionally, indeed, some diseased person will break some unwritten rule of society, such as that against trapping or slaying fishes or small animals; but the government hospitals care for such unfortunates, just as they care for the criminals of impulse, and not infrequently effect a cure. As for disputes among individuals, they are as obsolete as embezzlement or highway robbery, for now that the ownership of property has been abolished, what is there left to quarrel about? And so for the most part our courts endure somewhat as the appendix endures in the human body--mere anachronistic reminders of an age that is no more.”

At a single sitting I read my book from cover to cover. Even aside from what I have already mentioned, the facts that it told me were innumerable and highly varied: how the great golden lamps of Atlantis were electrically lighted and were switched on and off at specified intervals by country-wide clockwork; how all Atlanteans, old and young, ill and healthy, were cared for by the State, so that no man was weighed down with dependents; how disease had been almost wiped out, since all the commoner noxious germs had been conquered; how religion in the organized sense had ceased to exist, for the reason that each man was expected to arrive at his own philosophy; how the temples that littered the country were without theological meaning, but were sanctuaries of beauty whereto any one might come at any time to worship amid the solitude of his own thoughts; how education was one of the prime pursuits of the people, and was participated in by all from childhood to old age, but was never undertaken by the mob method popular in the upper world.

From the few pages that the author of the “Social Life” devoted to the latter subject, I feel sure that the Atlanteans would have been horrified at our system of herding forty or fifty children together in subjection to a glowering pedagogue: their theory was that personal and friendly contact with the teacher was the important thing, and so their boys and girls were taught in small groups, and never for many hours a day, nor with more than a minimum of restraint upon their natural spirits, nor in a specified and unvarying place, for as often as not their school-room was a marble colonnade or the court of a temple or even the open fields. And, in the same way, the higher education among the Atlanteans (except in the case of scientific work requiring laboratory training) was much less formal than among us. There were no such things as universities or university degrees, but men and women of recognized wisdom and learning were chosen to commune with the young and discuss with them the problems of life, much as Socrates did when he presided among his disciples; and these “Guardians of the Mind,” as they were called, would counsel and direct their young charges, and guide them in that reading which constituted their primary source of information.

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