Common-Sense Country

by L. S. Bevington

Common-sense citizens never said “Time is money.” They said that money-minting, money-managing, and money-protecting entail endless waste of time and trouble; that they are an abuse of human faculty, resulting in a great deal of death—bodily, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. Also it was said these and like employments were as nonsensical in their objects as they were vicious in their effects. Money in Common-sense Country had no meaning, any more than it has in a beehive. No one said “Money is power.” Sometimes it was said “Money is weakness.” That was when Common-senseites were speaking of the doings and miseries of the inhabitants of Lunatic Land. (By the way, the word used was not money but mammon.) One objection they had to money, beyond its nonsensicalness, was its tendency—in proportion to the degree of its accumulation in a man’s hand—to sap away his “soul,” his moral individuality, his character. They said, “What can it profit a man to lose his soul, and become a moral paralytic?” They observed also that wherever in Lunatic Land mammon had accumulated in a man’s hand, it had a tendency to put into his other hand a sceptre, a truncheon, a gatling gun, or some other preposterous implement, making of that moral paralytic a lord over two, or five, or ten cities, or markets, or communities—as the case might be.

As there was no mammon, there were none of those dismal things which are eternal essentials where mammon reigns. There were no arsenals, no armies, no police, no spies: no banks, no prisons, no poorhouses: no brothels, no divorce courts, no nunneries, no confessionals: no “rings,” no strikes, no infernal machines, no gallows. Common-sense found no sort of use in any of these queer things. Common-sense knew by hearsay that mammon could not reign without them; but then common sense found no reason whatever for putting up with mammon, or paying its expenses.

There were many stores and depots where anyone who wanted anything for wear, or consumption, or instruction, or pleasure, or any other use, could go, or send and get it, or get it made. He never had to ask “What’s the damage?” because in Common-sense Country damage was objected to. Everyone knew that no one had got what he did not want, because nobody was so insane as to cumber himself with the custody of anything that was of no use or pleasure to him; so that to ask him to give up what was of direct use or pleasure to him would damage him. No one was short of anything, because the world is very fruitful, and human beings are very numerous, very ingenious, and very industrious, and are able and eager to make it more and more fruitful. Wealth in Common-sense Country increased even faster than the population, so that there was more leisure for every new generation born. Whatever was not of direct use to the individuals who produced it, it was to the convenience of these individuals to place in care, and outside custody altogether, so that those to whom it was not superfluous might choose their own time and put it to their own uses. It is only in Lunatic Land that everybody (willingly or not) makes a practice of fining everybody else for the privilege of living alongside of him on the same planet. It takes a hereditary lunatic of many generations’ standing to go shamming about in the roundabout, nonsensically solemn effort to convert man’s natural home into a penal colony, by means of a cunningly devised system of fines all round for being alive and active and wanting to stop so.

In Common-sense Country there were horn ninety-five per cent. fewer idiots, cripples, and otherwise afflicted mortals than are born elsewhere. The few there were, were not felt as a burden; for those of tender hearts found a natural pleasure in doing what could be done to make life tolerable for these sad and ever diminishing exceptions; and of course they were no expense in a land of plenty, where access was free to whatever was wanted, without money and without price.

In Common-sense Country words were true, and purposes single; even newspapers expressed real opinions, and conveyed real information; fun abounded, and nobody preached. Every shade of individuality was respected and made welcome, variety being suggestive as well as interesting. No one wheedled, no one canted, no one flattered, or equivocated, or slandered; because none of these were necessary expedients. There was never anything to fear from either honesty or generosity in that land. People could have food, friends, fun, and freedom without little abject servilities. Every individual was, as a matter of course, left perfectly free on his capable side, while being courteously and gladly aided, by custom and common consent, on his weak side. So that there was nothing to prevent his voluntarily and naturally making common cause with others in the overcoming of common difficulties, and in the acquirement, production, and distribution of all good things.

There was no schism in that country, because there was no Church. There was a great deal of religion, because Common-senseites had time to try their best powers of life and mind on everything, and the more they knew, the deeper depths of sheer wonderfulness did they find beneath the new-won knowledge. They found that life, love, liberty, peace, progress, and everything worth having came as the reward of adherence to certain inexorable, universal laws, inherent in everything; laws in which there was no variableness, nor shadow of turning; and also no respect of persons. They had the intensest interest and zest in getting hold of these laws, and in falling in with them as fast as they became visible; and they never dreamt of making cheap and nasty substitutes for laws in places or cases where none appeared of their own accord. As neither the ignorance nor superstition of their fellows served anyone’s turn in a country where citizens were free and trusted one another, no people in black were kept to purvey either the one or the other, not even to women or to the little children. All black arts were forgotten, and not missed. On the other hand Common-sense Country was rich in prophets, or poets, of the variety known as “born not made.”