Ignorantia

Still I lay dreaming and saw these three continue their journey through that long and narrow land with the rocks upon their left and

The change from classical to scientific education strengthens our Ignorance

the swamps on their right. They had much talk on the way of which I have remembered only snatches since I woke. I remember that they passed ignorantia some miles beyond her sister Superbia and that led the pilgrims to question their Guide as to whether the Ignorance of the Tough-minded and the Clevers would some day be cured. He said there was less chance of that now than there had ever been: for till recently the Northern people had been made to learn the languages of Pagus "and that meant", said the Guide, "that at least they started no further from the light than the old Pagans themselves and had therefore the chance to come at last to Mother Kirk. But now they are cutting themselves off even from that roundabout route."

"Why have they changed?" asked one of the others.

"Why did the shadow whom you call Sensible leave his old house and go to practise _________¹⁶⁹ in a hotel? Because his Drudge revolted. The same thing is happening all over the plateau and in Mammon's country: their slaves are escaping further north and becoming dwarfs, and therefore the masters are turning all their attention to machinery, by which they hope to be able to lead their old life without slaves. And this seems to them so important that they are suppressing every kind of knowledge except mechanical knowledge. I am speaking of the sub-tenants. No doubt the great landowners in the back-ground have their own reasons for encouraging this movement."

"There must be a good side somewhere to this revolution," said Vertue. "It is to solid--it looks too lasting--to be a mere evil. I cannot believe that the Landlord would otherwise allow the whole face of nature and the whole structure of life to be so permanently and radically changed."

The Guide laughed. "You are falling into their own error," he said, "the change is not radical, nor will it be permanent. That idea depends on a curious disease which they have all caught--an inability to disbelieve advertisements. To be sure, if the machines did what they promised, the change would be very deep indeed. Their next war, for example, would change the state of their country from disease to death. They are afraid of this themselves--though most of them are old enough to know by experience that a gun is no more likely than a toothpaste or a cosmetic to do the things its makers say it will do. It is the

Though the Machine Age, for good or ill, will do less than is expected of it

same with all their machines. Their labour-saving devices multiply drudgery; their aphrodisiacs make them impotent: their amusements bore them: their rapid production of food leaves half of them starving, and their devices for saving time have banished leisure from their country. Their will be no radical change. And as for permanence--consider how quickly all machines are broken and obliterated. The black solitudes will some day be green again, and of all cities that I have seen these iron cities will break most suddenly."

And the Guide sang:

"Iron will eat the world's old beauty up.

Girder and grid and gantry will arise,

Iron forest of engines will arise,

Criss-cross of iron crotchet. For your eyes

No green or growth. Over all, the skies

Scribbled from end to end with boasts and lies.

(When Adam ate the irrevocable apple, Thou

Saw'st beyond death the resurrection of the dead.)

"Clamour shall clean put out the voice of wisdom,

The printing-presses with their clapping wings,

Fouling your nourishment. Harpy wings,

Filling your minds all day with foolish things,

Will tame the eagle Thought: till she sings

Parrot-like in her cage to please dark kings.

(When Israel descended into Egypt, Thou

Didst purpose both the bondage and the coming out.)

"The new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought,

And fools crying, Because it has begun

It will continue as it has begun!

The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run

Faster for ever. The old age is done,

We have new lights and see without the sun.

(Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea,

Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?)"

Lechery means not simply forbidden pleasure

CHAPTER SEVEN

Luxuria

After this, John looked up and saw that they were approaching a concourse of living creatures beside the road. Their way was so long and desolate (and he was footsore too) that he welcomed any diversion, and he cast his eyes curiously upon this new thing. When he was nearer he saw that the concourse was of men, but they lay about in such attitudes and were so disfigured that he had not recognized them for men: moreover, the place was to the south of the road, and therefore the ground was very soft and some of them were half under water and some hidden in the reeds. All seemed to be suffering from some disease of a crumbling and disintegrating kind. It was doubtful whether all the life that pulsated in their bodies was their own: and soon John was certain, for he saw what seemed to be a growth on a man's arm slowly detach itself under his eyes and become a fat reddish creature, separable from the parent body, though it was in no hurry to separate itself. And once he had seen that, his eyes were opened and he saw the same thing happening all around him, and the whole assembly was but a fountain of writhing and reptilian life¹⁷⁰ quickening as he watched and sprouting out of the human forms. But in each form the anguished eyes were alive, sending to him unutterable messages from the central life which survived, self-conscious, though the self were but a fountain of vermin. One old cripple, whose face was all gone but the mouth and eyes, was sitting up to receive drink from a cup which a woman held to his lips. When he had as much as she thought good, she snatched the cup from his hands and went on to her next patient. She was dark but beautiful.

"Don't lag," said the Guide, "this is a very dangerous place. You had better come away. This is Luxuria."

But John's eyes were caught by a young man to whom the witch had just come in her rounds. The disease, by seeming, had hardly begun with him: there was an unpleasant suspicion about his fingers--some-

But loss of the man's unity

thing a little too supple for joints--a little independence of his other movements--but, on the whole, he was still a well-looking person. And as the witch came to him the hands shot out to the cup, and the man drew them back again: and the hands went crawling out for the cup a second time, and again the man wrenched them back, and turned his face away, and cried out:

"Quick! The black, sulphurous, never quenched,

Old festering fire begins to play

Once more within. Look! By brute force I have wrenched

Unmercifully my hands the other way.

"Quick, Lord! On the rack thus, stretched tight,

Nerves clamouring as at nature's wrong.

Scorched to the quick, whipp'd raw--Lord, in this plight

You see, you see no man can suffer long.

"Quick, Lord! Before new scorpions bring

New venom--ere fiends blow the fire

A second time--quick, show me that sweet thing

Which, 'spite of all, more deeply I desire."

And all the while the witch stood saying nothing, but only holding out the cup and smiling kindly on him with her dark eyes and her dark, red mouth. Then, when she saw that he would not drink, she passed on to the next: but at the first step she took, the young man gave a sob and his hands flew out and grabbed the cup and he buried his head in it: and when she took it from his lips clung to it as a drowning man to a piece of wood. But at last he sank down in the swamp with a groan. And the worms where there should have been fingers were unmistakable.

"Come on," said Vertue.

They resumed their journey, John lagging a bit. I dreamed that the witch came to him walking softly in the marshy ground by the roadside and holding out the cup to him also: when he went faster she kept pace with him.

"I will not deceive you," she said. "You see there is no pretence. I am not trying to make you believe that this cup will take you to your