omission to perform plain duty brings its own punishment in the shape
of Death, not the casual death of the body but a complete blotting
out and annihilation of the soul, the termination of progressive
personality both now and for ever. This view of their responsibilities
acts as a warning voice in the ear of each councillor, who may ever
be tempted to a possible betrayal of his trust either towards his own
order or towards the Meleagrian people; and it is perhaps this sense
of an automatic obliterating Nemesis that makes the elaborate machine
of Meleagrian state craft work so smoothly in the hands of those who
are alike strictly accountable both as rulers and servants of the
community.
XIII
Although I have described the three estates of the realm as being
clearly delineated by their social boundaries, yet there is one element
of union betwixt them all that I have so far left unnoticed. This I may
call the intellectual bond that in some degree seems to weld together
these three well-defined classes. There is, of course, no literature in
the accepted term amongst the Meleagrians, for they own neither books
nor manuscripts, the power to read and write being vested solely in the
educated hierarchy. On the other hand, the brains of the people are at
least as quick and comprehensive as are those of Earth-dwellers, whilst
the tenacity of memory in the more gifted individuals is amazing.
In our English life, even in this generation of compulsory popular
education, it is no uncommon thing to meet with persons in the humbler
ranks of society who despite all these modern boasted advantages have
for one reason or another failed to acquire or to remember the arts of
reading and writing. Some proportion of such illiterates is undoubtedly
of inferior mentality, but a large fraction also consists of persons
whose minds are conspicuously acute and retentive. Again and again when
on the Earth have I been struck by the marked ability of invention and
memory displayed by certain individuals who cannot decipher a journal
nor write a letter. On the other hand, the mass of the semi-educated,
who are all voracious readers of the trashy or unwholesome printed
stuff of the present time, are appallingly, hopelessly ignorant of
all things that are worth learning or remembering. In Meleager, with
its literary limitations, intellect is shown not in a smattering of
ill-digested education, but in natural taste, in the exercise of
memory, and in exceptional powers of invention. One reads in works
belonging to the past of the _improvvisatori_ of Italy, of the bards of
mediæval Wales, of the minnesinger of Germany, of the troubadours of
Provence, and it is this obsolete type of self-culture that dominates
and guides the aspiring Meleagrian mind. There exists hardly a family
or household in each estate that does not possess at least one member
who is born with a definite taste or instinct for mental prowess,
which is shown in his capacity to learn and retain in youth the myths