Scientific Romances (First Series)

by Charles Howard Hinton

In the building on the right hand of the palace met those of the inhabitants who had studied the nature of feeling most deeply, and who from temperament or for other reasons had in their course of study not paid so much attention to whether feelings were painful or pleasurable, but who had studied their amount and regularity of their recurrence. They were the thinkers from whom all the practical inhabitants derived their rules of business. They devised the means and manner of putting into execution what was decided on in the other assembly. They did not often propose any positive enactment themselves, but were always able to show how the proposals of the other council could be carried into effect.

Their power was derived in this manner. The king had connected the feelings of pleasure and pain with certain acts, and had given each being a routine. Now as he himself made use of this routine and combined the routines of different individuals to bring about the results he desired, so also did the rulers of the valley. The routines of the individuals were studied and classified, and if any work was required to be done, those individuals whose routines were appropriate were selected and brought to the required spot. Now to effect this a careful study of the different routines was necessary, and also a knowledge of what stage they were at. For it would be no use bringing an individual whose routine was almost at an end to a work which was just beginning. Hence the most delicate instruments and processes had been devised for measuring the amount of feeling experienced by any individual, whether of pleasure or of pain, and a careful classification had been made of all routines.

But it is best to study the constitution of the state in a regular order, and the questions of pleasure and pain considered as such were esteemed the most important.

The inhabitants knew that they sought pleasure and avoided pain, and the great object was to make their life more pleasurable. Two means were adopted, the banishing of the causes of pain, and the obtaining causes of pleasure.

By causes of pain and pleasure they meant those objects with which the king had associated the feelings of pleasure and pain in the equal and opposite moments into which he had divided their apathy.

But in this respect they were in error to a certain extent, for it was not so much in respect to things as in respect to actions that the king separated their apathy into pleasure and pain. For instance, there was a peculiar species of shell which was found in many parts of the valley, covered with strange and involved lines and marks. Now the king had struck the apathy of the inhabitants into two moments with regard to this shell, one of pain connected with tracing out the twistings and interweavings of the hues on the shell, one of pleasure in contemplating the shell when the twistings and interweavings had been deciphered. Now it was the custom of the inhabitants to call the shell in its undeciphered condition a painful object, in its deciphered condition a pleasant object. And whoever could, would get as many deciphered shells as possible and experience the wave of pleasure in looking at them.

Now in the earlier ages those who deciphered the shells, or did work of a similar kind, had been forced to do it; they were a kind of slaves dependent on the will of their masters, who took away all the pleasures of their life. But in these earlier ages a great danger arose, for when all the pleasure was taken away by their masters, great masses of these slaves sank into apathy, and it seemed as if the valley was sinking into deadness.

Now this was a great terror with the inhabitants whose life was pleasurable, and at length they determined that there should not be any more of these slaves. But each of the inhabitants when he worked for another had to have it made worth his while.

In this way a great diminution took place in the pleasure-giving power of the so-called pleasurable things. For if a man had had it made worth his while to decipher one of these shells, he had had a great deal or nearly all of the pain he spent in doing it counterbalanced by the pleasure given him to induce him to do it. Hence when the shell was handed over there was not much to enjoy in it; for by the law of the valley the pleasure and the pain were equal, and the decipherer, not having gone through so much pain on the whole, there was but little pleasure to be got.

In fact, at this time the fashion of filling the houses of the more powerful of the inhabitants with the so-called pleasurable things had somewhat gone out, and it had passed into a proverb, “It is better to decipher your own shells.”