Scientific Romances (First Series)

by Charles Howard Hinton

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.”