“Enough to make themselves very troublesome, and us ridiculous,” returned Mr. Downright. “We are a young nation, Sir John, covering a great surface, with a comparatively small population, and, as you are aware, separated from the other parts of the monikin region by a belt of ocean. In some respects we are like people in the country, and we possess the merits and failings of those who are so situated. Perhaps no nation has a larger share of reflecting and essentially respectable inhabitants than Leaplow; but, not satisfied with being what circumstances so admirably fit them to be, there is a clique among us, who, influenced by the greater authority of older nations, pine to be that which neither nature, education, manners, nor facilities will just yet allow them to become. In short, sir, we have the besetting sin of a young community—imitation. In our case the imitation is not always happy, either; it being necessarily an imitation that is founded on descriptions. If the evil were limited to mere social absurdities, it might be laughed at—but that inherent desire of distinction, which is the most morbid and irritable, unhappily, in the minds of those who are the least able to attain anything more than a very vulgar notoriety, is just as active here, as it is elsewhere; and some who have got wealth, and who can never get more than what is purely dependent on wealth, affect to despise those who are not as fortunate as themselves in this particular. In their longings for pre-eminence, they turn to other states (Leaphigh, more especially, which is the beau ideal of all nations and people who wish to set up a caste in opposition to despotism) for rules of thought, and declaim against that very mass which is at the bottom of all their prosperity, by obstinately refusing to allow of any essential innovation on the common rights. In addition to these social pretenders, we have our political Indoctrinated.”
“Indoctrinated! Will you explain the meaning of the term?”
“Sir, an Indoctrinated is one of a political school who holds to the validity of certain theories which have been made to justify a set of adventitious facts, as is eminently the case in our own great model, Leaphigh. We are peculiarly placed in this country. Here, as a rule, facts—meaning political and social facts—are greatly in advance of opinion, simply because the former are left chiefly to their own free action, and the latter is necessarily trammelled by habit and prejudice; while in the ‘old region’ opinion, as a rule—and meaning the leading or better opinion—is greatly in advance of facts, because facts are restrained by usage and personal interests, and opinion is incited by study, and the necessity of change.”
“Permit me to say, brigadier, that I find your present institutions a remarkable result to follow such a state of things.”
“They are a cause, rather than a consequence. Opinion, as a whole, is everywhere on the advance; and it is further advanced even here, as a whole, than anywhere else. Accident has favored the foundation of the social compact; and once founded, the facts have been hastening to their consummation faster than the monikin mind has been able to keep company with them. This is a remarkable but true state of the whole region. In other monikin countries, you see opinion tugging at rooted practices, and making desperate efforts to eradicate them from their bed of vested interests, while here you see facts dragging opinion after them like a tail wriggling behind a kite. [Footnote: One would think that Brigadier Downright had lately paid a visit to our own happy and much enlightened land. Fifty years since, the negro was a slave in New York, and incapable of contracting marriage with a white. Facts have, however, been progressive; and, from one privilege to another, he has at length obtained that of consulting his own tastes in this matter, and, so far as he himself is concerned, of doing as he pleases. This is the fact, but he who presumes to speak of it has his windows broken by opinion, for his pains! NOTE BY THE EDITOR] As to our purely social imitation and social follies, absurd as they are, they are necessarily confined to a small and an immaterial class; but the Indoctrinated spirit is a much more serious affair. That unsettles confidence, innovates on the right, often innocently and ignorantly, and causes the vessel of state to sail like a ship with a drag towing in her wake.”
“This is truly a novel condition for an enlightened monikin nation.”
“No doubt, men manage better; but of all this you will learn more in the great council. You may, perhaps, think it strange that our facts should preserve their ascendency in opposition to so powerful a foe as opinion; but you will remember that a great majority of our people, if not absolutely on a level with circumstances, being purely practical, are much nearer to this level, than the class termed the endoctrinated. The last are troublesome and delusive, rather than overwhelming.”
“To return to Mr. Wriggle—is his sect numerous?”
“His class flourishes most in the towns. In Leaplow we are greatly in want of a capital, where the cultivated, educated, and well-mannered can assemble, and, placed by their habits and tastes above the ordinary motives and feelings of the less instructed, they might form a more healthful, independent, appropriate, and manly public sentiment than that which now pervades the country. As things are, the real elite of this community are so scattered, as rather to receive an impression FROM, than to impart one TO society, The Leaplow Wriggles, as you have just witnessed, are selfish and exacting as to their personal pretensions, irritably confident as to the merit of any particular excellence which limits their own experience, and furiously proscribing to those whom they fancy less fortunate than themselves.”
“Good heavens!—brigadier—all this is excessively human!”