“‘To the residents of Manatitla of foreign birth! As it is our matured desire to emancipate the people native to our country from their own degrading habits, and the deleterious example of those derived from extraneous source, we herewith announce the corrective enactments we have devised for the collective well being and happiness of all within our advisorial control. As it is manifest, from the conclusive evidence of creative design, that mankind are in bodily and functional alliance with all the different grades of animality, through the representative agency of omnivorous instinct; it is also as clearly evident that his endowed superiority resides in his privileged capacity for self control, with an ultimate intention equally apparent. For a rational realization of this saving clause, an easy estimate can be made of all the tangible sources of happiness held by human kind independent of the body’s instincts. As upon these depend our hopes of happiness in life, in premonition of immortality, it is imperative with all to hold them in reciprocal cultivation for the confluent control—in subjection—of the passions inherent with the vital functions of animality. As woman, the endowed source and mother of our race, when free from the attaint of man’s selfish invention, expresses a natural repugnance to everything opposed to purity and goodness, and in the full fruition of her endowment is reverenced as the germ ideal of immortality; we have through her a direct indication of the immortal source of happiness bestowed with creative intention for the local option of mankind. In negative assurance, that purity and goodness is the endowed source of happiness; woman when lost to their sustenance, becomes hopelessly degraded, sinking with loathsome taint below the vilest brute, and utterly lost to the instinctive ties of affection, will not hesitate to sacrifice mother, husband, sister, and child to the poisonous lust of her reptile selfishness.
“‘That the cause of this ferocious degeneration, which has the power of transforming woman from the glorious ideal of immortality, into an object too repulsive for her destroyer to find in his vocabulary words of beastly vulgarity sufficiently strong in the odor of putrefactive designation for expressing in comparison the foulness of his scorn, is derived from man’s insatiate devisement, cannot be denied! For the exampled amendment of this woful cause of degeneration, we have provided family censors, and nurses, in sufficient number for present requirement, whose duty it will be to hold in check parental indiscretions, and mutations incited from the instinctive variations of fondness and petulance. With the close of the second year, the provisorial charge of the family censor and nurse will be transferred with the infant to the national school of the department in which they reside, their guardian duties continuing until the seventh year, at the commencement of which the child is matriculated as a pupil, with full scholastic adoption by the censors and teachers. For the additional furtherance of our system, subserving for the vindication of creative indications for the elimination of our immortal endowment, we have separated the sexes that in the process of educational attainment they may remain free from the natural temptations inherent with instinct.
“‘The benefits conferred by our national system of education you have realized in the peaceful confidence and unity imparted in after association; also the sequent inseparable unity of our marriage conjunctions. In truth, they are happily too apparent to be gainsaid. So that in accepting our hospitality as guests, you cannot avoid, in courtesy, a willing recognition of our rights of freehold preëmption, for preserving our habits and customs of purity and goodness, intact from the infringements of foreign attaint; or question the justice of our privilege of enforcing their observance; or in default, question our corrective enactments devised for the culprit’s realization of practical liabilities incurred by the transgressor. These will be strictly enforced. But that there may be no cavilings, with the hue and cry of barbarous excess in punishment, we have provided accommodations adapted to the specie degradation of the lower orders of animal instinct, of sufficient capacity for associate occupation by human emulators of bestiality in kind; through all the gradations from the omnium gatherum ‘swine,’ blood thirsty ‘tiger,’ down to the reptile conservators of poison. For the correction of women who have lapsed from their vocation of conservators of purity and goodness, into the incipient stages of gadding and gossiping detraction, we have provided cage apartments for their mutual accommodation with birds representing their kind, in the hopping vent of thoughtless words. We have provided for initiatory correction pavonias (animalculan peacocks) for the exemplar admonition of the vain-glorious; and jab-boracidas (jackdaws and magpies) for the likeness of gossipping repeaters; for the loud mouthed and strepitant clackitas (parrots and cockatoos), and for the ‘fashionable’ imitators, simia curios (female monkeys). These, as occasion may require, will extend invitations to their ‘likes’ of the human sex to attend their levées, which will be subject to the auditorial outside inspection of the public, if morbid curiosity should prompt witnesses to the ordeal of misery. These provisos and corrective conceptions have been devised for, and proved to be of universal benefit, with the evidence of well attested experience; and we desire your coöperation, as guests, for the perfection of our system designed for the advancement of purity and goodness. But shall strenuously insist that your children shall become participants in the privileges conferred by our system of education.’”
As you will readily conceive, this proclamation of Desiderata and his associates caused the fulmination of bitter invectives and threats of vengeance, which served to vindicate the wisdom of the predicated precautions. But the writers of the period state that in a few generations the influence for good extended to savage tribes, who petitioned for admission of their children into our national schools. The improvement was so marked in its demonstration of a realizing source of happiness, that but three centuries elapsed from the period of organization, before the foreign nationalities were peacefully absorbed, their subjects becoming educated citizens of Manatitla.
With the illustrative sketch that I have given of Manatitla’s transition period of extension, you, and the readers of the historiographer’s transcript, will readily understand the inceptive source and stages that premised the establishment of our practical system of education. But owing to the limited number of words and terms for the expression of purity and goodness, with their practical variations, in your languages, we are of necessity obliged to use them in frequent repetition.
CHAPTER XIII.
At this stage, M. Hollydorf interrupted the Dosch, with the assurance that he was fully convinced not only of the actual existence of animalculan humanity, but of the tangible wisdom of Manatitlan providence, shown in their inauguration of rational system for educational discernment, necessary for the fulfillment in life of happy intention. “But the difficulty of making the home society realize by letter the multiplying wonders in the course of our discoveries, puzzles my invention for a credible method of imparting the information without subjecting my sanity and integrity to impeachment. If you can, in your wisdom, resolve me how I may absolve myself with credit in my official correspondence, I shall certainly feel grateful.”
The Dosch smilingly assured him that he had no occasion for fear, as the sensational novelty of truthful record, with a little auramental aid rendered by the Manatitlans in the substitution of thought, would suffice for the ready adoption and belief of his report, as a marvelous indication of the age, in evidence of rapid progression under German lead. With this closing advisorial suggestion the Dosch and his companions departed for Maniculæ.
The abstracted mood, fitful and irrelevant conversation, with the daily convocations of the four conservators of the Manatitlan secret, in the house under the northern temple’s eastern wall, did not fail to attract the wondering curiosity of their associates. But as M. Hollydorf had emancipated the members of the corps from field duty, they found no lack of pleasing occupation in rendering useful aid to the Heracleans. Doctor Baāhar had enlisted the padre, for a quid pro quo, in the pursuit of butterflies; the two curators of sound engaged in herding and woodland pursuits; Jack and Bill, under Heraclean and Kyronese instruction, engaged in “navigating” a small garden plot in the latifundium, with amusing success, while Viscouswitzs, the artist, wooed the Indian maids of the Vermejo tribe.
The Dosch, in continuation of his historical sketch of the Manatitlans, passed to the period noted as the Heraclean epoch.