CHAPTER III.
The king being left thus with the children, applied himself to thought. He directed his rays to one of the children and caused it to stand up, and, following the counsel of the old man, he thought of an action. The action he thought of was that of walking, and he separated it into two acts; the one act moving the right foot, the other act moving the left foot. And he separated the apathy in which the child was into pleasure and pain; pleasure connected with the act of moving the right foot, pain connected with the act of moving the left foot. Immediately the child moved forward its right foot, but the left foot remained motionless. The child had taken the pleasure, but the pain was left; or, since the king had connected the pleasure and pain with two acts, it may be said, had done the pleasant act and left the painful act undone.
After waiting some time to see if the child would move, the king took the pain of moving the left foot; instantly the child moved it, and as soon as it had come to the ground again it moved the right foot, which was the pleasant act. But then it stopped. And by no amount of taking pains in the matter of the left foot could the king get the child into the routine of walking. As soon as he ceased to take the pain of moving the left foot, the child remained with the right foot forward. At last he removed his attention from the movement of the child, and it sunk back again torpor.
The rest of the day the king spent in reflection, and in making experiments with the children. But he did not succeed any better. Whatever action he thought of they went through the pleasant act, but made no sign of going through the painful act.
When darkness came the king perceived the faint luminousness of his rays: unless he had known of them he would hardly have perceived it.
And now he tried a new experiment. He took one of the rays, and, detaching it from the rest, he put it upon the body of one of the children, going out from its body and returning again to its body, so that it went forth from the child and returned to the child again. He then caused the child to stand up, and again tried it with the action of walking. His idea was this: the child required a power of bearing its own pain in order to go through a painful act, and as the rays enabled him to bear their pain, the ray proceeding from the child and coming back to it might enable it to bear its own pain. And now he separated the apathy into pleasure and pain as before. The child moved the right foot, and then when it had moved it, he saw that it actually began to move the left foot. But it did not move it a complete step, and after the next movement of the right foot the left foot did not stir.
Again and again the king tried the children, but his attempts came to nothing. One halting step of the left foot he could get them to go through, but no more.
He spent many hours. Suddenly the cause of his failure flashed upon him. “Of course,” he said to himself, “they don’t move, for I have forgotten to take part of the pain. If they went on moving their left feet they would have no balance of pleasure.”
And he tried one of them again. The child moved the right foot, then began to move the left foot. The king now by means of his rays took part of the pain of the movement of the left foot, and the child completed the step with it. Then of course it moved the right foot, for that was pleasant, and again the king took part of the pain of moving the left foot, and the child completed its second step. It walked.
The difficulty was surmounted. Soon both the children were moving hither and thither like shifting shadows in the night, and the king felt just a shade of pain.
The children would come up to him and talk with him, if he took the difference of pain which made it pleasant for them to do so. But they had no idea of his action on them, for by his taking the difference of pain they found an action pleasant, and felt a motive in themselves to do it, which they did not in the least connect with the being outside themselves to whom they spoke. They looked on him as some one more powerful than themselves, and friendly to them.
As soon as he was assured of the practical success of his plans, the king let the children relapse into their apathy while he thought. He conceived the design of forming with these children a state such as he had known on earth—a state with all the business and affairs of a kingdom, such as he had directed before. The vision of the palace which the old man had shown him rose up. He saw in imagination the fertile fields, with the roads stretching between them; he saw all the varied life of a great state. Accordingly from this time he was continually directing their existence, developing their powers, and learning how to guide them. And just as on first learning to read whole words are learnt which are afterwards split up into letters by the combinations of which other words are formed; so at first he thought of actions of a complicated nature, such as walking, and associated the moments of pleasure and pain with the acts of which such actions were composed. But afterwards he came to regard the simpler actions by the combination of many of which the beings were made to walk, and with the separate acts of these simple actions he associated pleasure and pain.
And at first the beings were conscious of these simple acts and nothing else, but in order that they might carry out more complicated actions, he developed the dim apprehension which they had, and led it on to the consciousness of more complicated actions. The simplest actions became instinctive to these beings, and they went through them without knowing why. But if at any time the king ceased to take the difference of pain, these actions, seemingly automatic as they were, ceased.
At certain intervals the king found his plans inconvenienced. Every now and then the beings went off into a state of apathy. Enough pain was borne for them to make it just worth their while to go through the actions of each routine. But any additional complication or hindrance unforeseen by the king was too much for them, and they sank under it. To remedy this he took in every action a slight portion of pain more than he had done at first. Thus he expended a certain portion of pain-bearing power to give stability to the routines. And the margin of pleasure over pain thus added was felt by the beings as a sort of diffused pleasure in existence, which made them cling to life.
Now in guiding these beings towards the end he wished to obtain, the king had to deal with living moving beings, and beings whose state was continually changing. And this led him to adopt as the type of the activity of these beings not a single action, but a succession of actions of the same kind, coming the one after the other. Thus a being having been given a certain activity, it continued going on in a uniform manner until the king wished to alter it.
Again it was important to keep the beings together, to prevent their being lost in the remote parts of the valley, and consequently the king took, other things being equal, a certain amount of the pain of motion towards the centre, and took none of the pain in any movement away from the centre of the valley. Thus the inhabitants had a tendency to come towards the centre, for there was a balance of pleasure in doing so, and thus they were continually presenting themselves to his notice, and not getting lost.
Of course, if there was any reason why he wanted them away from the centre, the king ceased his bearing of the pain of motion towards the centre, and then they were under the other tendency solely, which he imparted to them, in virtue of his bearing pain in another respect. And in everything that he did the king had regard to the circumstances in which the beings were placed, and the objects which he wanted to obtain. He did not spare any of his pain-bearing power to give them pleasure purely as a feeling, but always united the pleasure he obtained for them by his suffering with some external work.
And as time went on and the number of the inhabitants increased, he introduced greater order and regularity into the numberless activities which he conceived for them. The activities formed regular routines, conditioned by the surroundings of the being and the routines of those around it. A routine did not suddenly cease without compensation; but if the king wished it to stop he let another activity spring up at once in place of it, so that there was no derangement. The beings gradually became more intelligent, so that they could be entrusted with more difficult routines, and carried them out successfully, the king, of course, always taking the difference of pain necessary to make it worth their while. And they even became able to carry out single activities on a large scale, involving the co-operation of many single routines. For they had a sense of analogy, and observing some activity which the king had led them through on a small scale, and in which they had found a balance of pleasure, they were ready to try a similar one on a larger scale.
There was one feature springing from the advanced intelligence of the inhabitants which it is worth while to mention. Many of the possible activities which the beings could go through, instead of consisting of a pleasurable part first and a less painful part afterwards, consisted of a painful part first and a pleasurable part afterwards. This might happen by the particular arrangement of the acts of which the compounded activity consisted, the acts having already moments of pain or pleasure affixed to them, and happening to occur in such dispositions that the first part of the activity was painful, the next part pleasurable.
Now when the intelligence of the inhabitants was developed, the king, by leading them to think of such an activity, could induce them to go through with it. For the idea of the pleasure which would accompany the second part of the activity lightened the pain of the first. And this, combined with the portion of the pain which the king bore, almost counterbalanced the pain connected with the first part of the activity. Thus the beings were enabled to go through the painful part of the activity. But when they came to the second part of the activity the creatures were much disappointed. For by the law of the valley pleasure and pain were equal (except for the small part which the king bore). Now the pleasures of expectation had been so great that when the time came for the act usually associated in their minds with pleasure, the pleasure due had most of it been used up.
From this circumstance a saying arose amongst the inhabitants which was somewhat exaggerated, but which had a kernel of truth in what has just been described. The saying was that “The pleasure for which a labour has been undertaken flies away as soon as the labour has been finished, and nothing is left but to begin a new labour.” And, again, another saying: “The enjoyment of a thing lies in its anticipation, not in its possession.”
All this which has been so briefly described had in reality taken a long time. And now fields were cultivated, better houses were built. The inhabitants of the valley had increased greatly in number, and were divided up into several tribes, inhabiting different parts of the valley. But the most favoured position was the centre, and for the possession of the centre there were contentions and struggles. There the king’s activity in bearing was greatest, and the life was most developed.
All around the outskirts of the valley dwelt the ruder and less advanced people, who were called barbarians and savages by those nearer the centre.