In the first place one must clearly understand what was meant by this word progress; he would personally not admit that it meant advancing backwards. If this were established as a premise, it became imperative to ask whether the public were in a fit condition to assimilate this measure of so-called reform. Personally he had grave doubts; he was open to conviction, but his doubts were grave. And a very little smile would part his lips, seeming to say: “Yes, yes, my dear sir; progress—you use the word most glibly, and we all of us admit that it is necessary; but if you suppose that we are going to progress by trusting human nature—well, pardon me, but is there any precedent? One could trust oneself, no doubt, because of one’s sense of duty to one’s deity, but—men at large! If you think a minute you will see that they have practically no sense of duty or responsibility at all. You say you wish to foster it, but, my dear sir, if we foster it, what becomes of—Government? Depend on it, a sense of duty is only the possession of a few who have been trained to have it; and I cannot think it wise to take the slightest risk in a matter of this gravity. The bonds that keep us all together, and me on the top—in my place, the machinery of morals and the State, are being daily loosened by disintegrating forces, and considering that I am here—by natural selection, not by accident—to keep the ship together, I am not exactly likely to help another wave to knock the ship to pieces. ‘It is,’ you say, ‘a question of degree.’ I consider that a very dangerous saying. I have little doubt that all so-called reforms at all times have been ushered in by the use of that expression. You make the fundamental error of overtrusting human nature. Believe me, if you lived here, and saw the machinery of things as closely as I see it, and worked, as I do, in this powerful atmosphere, and knew the worry and the difficulty of changing anything, and the thanklessness of the public that one works for, you would soon get a very different notion of the necessity of what you call reform. You must bear in mind the fact that the State has carefully considered what is best for all, and that I am only an official of the State. And now I have three hours at least before I can get away, of important details (which you, no doubt, despise), connected with the business of the State, and which it is my duty and my pride to transact efficiently; so that you will forgive me if I drop a subject, on which of course I am still open to conviction. Progress, we must all admit, is necessary, but, I assure you, in this case you are making a mistake.”
The little smile died off his lips, and preceding the intruder to the door, he politely opened it. Then, in the marble corridor, he raised his eyes above his visitor’s retiring back. There, with its great red hands on the knees parted beneath a white and flowing robe, sat Power—his deity; and a silent prayer, far too instinctive and inevitable to be expressed in words, rose through the stagnant, dusty atmosphere:
“O great image that put me here, knowing as thou must the failings of my fellow-beings, give me power to see that they do right; let me provide for them the moral and the social diet they require. For, since I have been here, I have daily, hourly, humbly felt more certain of what it is they really want; more assured that, through thy help, I am the person who can give it them. O great image, before thou didst put me here I was not quite certain about anything, but now, thanks be to thee, everything is daily clearer and more definite; and I am less and less harassed by my spirit. Let this go on, great image, till my spirit is utterly at rest, and I am cold and still and changeless as this marble corridor.”
THE HOUSE OF SILENCE
XIII
The House of Silence
Within the circle of the high grey wall is silence.
Under a square of sky cut by high grey buildings nothing is to be seen of Nature but the prisoners themselves, the men who guard the prisoners, and a cat who eats the prison mice.
This house of perfect silence is in perfect order, as though God Himself had been at work—no dirt, no hurry, no lingering, no laughter. It is all like a well-oiled engine that goes—without a notion why. And each human thing that moves within this circle goes, day after day, year after year—as he has been set to go. The sun rises and the sun goes down—so says tradition in the House of Silence.
In yellow clothing marked with arrows the inhabitants are working. Each when he came in here was measured, weighed, and sounded; and, according to the entries made against his number, he received his silent task, and the proper quantity of food to keep his body able to fulfil it. He resumes this silent task each day, and if his work be sedentary, paces for an hour the speckless gravel yard from a number painted on the wall to a number painted on a wall. Every morning, and on Sundays twice, he marches in silence to the chapel, and, in the voice that he has nearly lost, praises the silent God of prisoners; this is his debauch of speech. Then, on his avid ears the words of the preacher fall; and motionless, row on row he sits, in the sensual pleasure of this sound. But the words are void of sense, for the music of speech has drugged his hearing.