What Not: A Prophetic Comedy

by Rose Macaulay

Kitty, looking at Chester, saw with surprise that his face was rigid with disgust; he looked as if he were trying not to shudder.

"How you hate them, Nicky," she said curiously.

He said "I do," grimly, and spoke of something else.

But a little later he said abruptly, "I've never told you much about my people, Kitty, have I, or what are called my early years?"

"You wouldn't, of course," she replied, "any more than I should. We're neither of us much interested in the past; you live in the future, and I live in the present moment.... But I should be interested to hear, all the same."

"That imbecile reminded me," Chester said grimly. "I had a twin sister like that, and a brother not very far removed from it. You know that, of course; but you'll never know, no one can ever know who's not experienced it, what it was like.... At first, when I began to do more than just accept it as part of things as they were, it only made me angry that such things should be possible, and frightfully sorry for Joan and Gerald, who had to go about like that, so little use to themselves or anyone else, and so tiresome to me and Maggie (she's my eldest sister; I'd like you to meet her one day). I remember even consulting Maggie as to whether it wouldn't be a good thing to take them out into a wood and lose them, like the babes in the wood. I honestly thought it would be for their own good; I knew I should have preferred it if I had been them. But Maggie didn't agree; she took a more patient line about it than I did; she always does. Then, as I grew older, I became angry with my parents, who had no right, of course, to have had any children at all; they were first cousins, and deficiency was in the family.... It was that that first set me thinking about the whole subject. I remember I asked my father once, when I was about seventeen, how he had reconciled it with his conscience (he was a dean at that time) to do such a thing. I must have been an irritating young prig, of course; in fact, I remember that I was. He very properly indicated to me that I was stepping out of my sphere in questioning him on such a point, and also that whatever is must be sent by Providence, and therefore right. I didn't drop it at once; I remember I argued that it hadn't "been" and therefore had not necessarily been right, until he and my mother made it so; but he closed the conversation; quite time too, I suppose. It was difficult to argue with my father in those days; it's easier now, though not really easy. I think the reduction of the worldly condition of bishops has been good for him; it has put him in what I suppose is called a state of grace. I don't believe he'd do it now, if he lived his life again. However, he did do it, and the result was two deficient children and one who grew up loathing stupidity in the way some few people (conceivably) loathe vice, when they've been brought into close contact with its effects. It became an obsession with me; I seemed to see it everywhere, spoiling everything, blocking every path, tying everyone's hands. The Boer war happened while I was at school.... Good Lord.... Then I went to Cambridge, and it was there that I really began to think the thing seriously out. What has always bothered me about it is that human beings are so astoundingly clever; miraculously clever, if you come to think of it, and compare us with the other animals, so like us in lots of ways. The things we've done; the animal state we've grown out of; the things we've discovered and created—it makes one's head reel. And if we can be clever like that, why not be a little cleverer still? Why be so abysmally stupid about many things? The waste of it.... The world might get anywhere if we really developed our powers to their full extent. But we always slip up somewhere: nothing quite comes off as it should. Think of all these thousands of years of house-managing, and the really clever arrangements which have been made in connection with it—and then visit a set of cottages and see the mess; a woman trying to cook food and clean the house and look after children and wash clothes, all by hand, and with the most inadequate contrivances for any of it. Why haven't we thought of some way out of that beastly, clumsy squalor and muddle yet? And why do houses built and fitted like some of those still exist? If we're clever enough to have invented and built houses at all, why not go one better and do it properly? It's the same with everything. Medical science, for instance. The advances it's made fill one with amaze and admiration; but why is there still disease? And why isn't there a cure for every disease? And why do doctors fail so hopelessly to diagnose anything a little outside their ordinary beat? There it is; we've been clever about it in a way, but nothing like clever enough, or as clever as we've got to be before we've done. The same with statesmanship and government; only there we've very seldom been clever at all; that's still to come. And our educational system ... oh Lord.... The mischief is that people in general don't want other people to become too clever; it wouldn't suit their turn. So the popular instinct for mucking along, for taking things as you find them (and leaving them there), the popular taste for superficial twaddle in literature and politics and science and art and religion is pandered to on its own level....

"But I didn't mean to go off on to all this; I merely meant to tell you what first started me thinking of these things."

"Go on," said Kitty. "I like it. It makes me feel at home, as if I was sitting under you at a meeting.... What I infer is that if your parents hadn't been first cousins and had deficiency in their family, there would have been no Ministry of Brains. I expect your father was right, and whatever is is best.... Of course the interesting question is, what would happen if ever we were much cleverer than we are now? What would happen, that is, besides houses being better managed and disease better treated and locomotion improved and books better written or not written at all, and all that? What would happen to nations and societies and governments, if people in general became much more intelligent? I can't imagine. But I think there'd be a jolly old row.... Perhaps we shall know before long."

"No," said Chester. "We shan't know that. There may be a jolly old row; I daresay there will; but it won't be because people have got too clever; it will be because they haven't got clever enough. It'll be the short-sighted stupidity of people revolting against their ultimate good."

"As it might be you and me."