“So you figure it’s all right for me to go on like I am now?” said Pete.
“All right,” Mr. Propter answered, “in the sense that it’s not conspicuously worse than anything else.” Suddenly smiling, “I was glad to hear that Dr. Mulge had got his art school,” he said in another, lighter tone. “Immediately after the Auditorium, too. It’s a lot of money. But I suppose the prestige of being a patron of learning is worth it. And, of course, there’s an enormous social pressure on the rich to make them become patrons of learning. They’re being pushed by shame as well as pulled by the longing to believe they’re the benefactors of humanity. And happily with Dr. Mulge a rich man can have his kudos with safety.
No amount of art schools at Tarzana will ever disturb the status quo. Whereas if I were to ask Jo for fifty thousand dollars to finance research into the technique of democracy, he’d turn me down flat. Why? Because he knows that sort of thing is dangerous. He likes speeches about democracy. (Incidentally, Dr. Mulge is really terrific on the subject.) But he doesn’t approve of the coarse materialists who try to find out how to put those ideals into practice. You saw how angry he got about my poor little sun machine. Because, in its tiny way, it’s a menace to the sort of big business he makes his money from. And it’s the same with these other little gadgets that I’ve talked to him about from time to time. Come and look, if it doesn’t bore you.”
He took them into the house. Here was the little electric mill, hardly larger than a coffee machine, in which he ground his own flour, as he needed it. Here was the loom at which he had learnt and was now teaching others to weave. Next he took them out to the shed in which, with a few hundred dollars’ worth of electrically operated tools, he was equipped to do any kind of carpentry and even some light metal work. Beyond the shed were the still unfinished greenhouses; for the vegetable plots weren’t adequate to supply the demands of his transients. There they were, he added, pointing through the increasing darkness to the lights of a row of cabins.
He could put up only a few of them; the rest had to live in a sort of garbage heap down in the dry bed of the river—paying rent to Jo Stoyte for the privilege. Not the best material to work with, of course. But such misery as theirs left one no choice. They simply had to be attended to. A few had come through undemoralized; and, of these, a few could see what had to be done, what you had to aim at. Two or three were working with him here; and he had been able to raise money to settle two or three more on some land near Santa Suzanna. Mere beginnings—unsatisfactory, at that. Because, obviously, you could not even start experimenting properly until you had a full-fledged community working under the new conditions.
But to set a community on its feet would require money. A lot of money. But rich men wouldn’t touch the work; they preferred art schools at Tarzana. The people who were interested had no money; that was one of the reasons why they were interested. Borrowing at the current commercial rates was dangerous. Except in very favourable circumstances, the chances were that you’d merely be selling yourself into slavery to a bank.
“It isn’t easy,” said Mr. Propter, as they walked back to the house. “But the great point is that, easy or not easy, it’s there, waiting to be done. Because, after all, Pete, there is something to do.”
Mr. Propter went into the bungalow for a moment to turn out the lights, then emerged again on to the porch. Together, the three men walked down the path to the road. Before them the castle was a vast black silhouette punctured by occasional lights.
“There is something you can do,” Mr. Propter resumed; “but only on condition that you know what the nature of the world happens to be. If you know that the strictly human level is the level of evil, you won’t waste your time trying to produce good on that level. Good manifests itself only on the animal level and on the level of eternity. Knowing that, you’ll realize that the best you can do on the human level is preventive. You can see that purely human activities don’t interfere too much with the manifestation of good on the other levels. That’s all. But politicians don’t know the nature of reality. If they did, they wouldn’t be politicians. Reactionary or revolutionary, they’re all humanists, all romantics. They live in a world of illusion, a world that’s a mere projection of their own human personalities. They act in ways which would be appropriate if such a world as they think they live in really existed. But unfortunately it doesn’t exist except in their imaginations. Hence nothing that they do is appropriate to the real world. All their actions are the actions of lunatics, and all, as history is there to demonstrate, are more or less completely disastrous. So much for the romantics.
The realists who have studied the nature of the world know that an exclusively humanistic attitude towards life is always fatal, and that all strictly human activities must therefore be made instrumental to animal and spiritual good. They know, in other words, that men’s business is to make the human world safe for animals and spirits. Or perhaps,” he added turning to Jeremy, “perhaps, as an Englishman you prefer Lloyd George’s phrase to Wilson’s: A home fit for heroes to live in—wasn’t that it? A home fit for animals and spirits, for physiology and disinterested consciousness. At present, I’m afraid, it’s profoundly unfit. The world we’ve made for ourselves is a world of sick bodies and insane or criminal personalities. How shall we make this world safe for ourselves as animals and as spirits? If we can answer that question, we’ve discovered what to do.”
Mr. Propter halted at what appeared to be a wayside shrine, opened a small steel door with a key he carried in his pocket, and, lifting the receiver of the telephone within, announced their presence to an invisible porter, somewhere on the other side of the moat. They walked on.
“What are the things that make the world unsafe for animals and spirits?” Mr. Propter continued. “Obviously, greed and fear, lust for power, hatred, anger . . .”
At this moment, a dazzling light struck them full in the face and was almost immediately turned out.
“What in heaven’s name . . . ?” Jeremy began.
“Don’t worry,” said Peter. “They only want to make sure it’s us, not a set of gangsters. It’s just the searchlight.”
“Just our old friend Jo expressing his personality,” said Mr. Propter, taking Jeremy’s arm. “In other words, proclaiming to the world that he’s afraid because he’s been greedy and domineering. And he’s been greedy and domineering, among other reasons, because the present system puts a premium on those qualities. Our problem is to find a system that will give the fewest possible opportunities for unfortunate people, like Jo Stoyte, to realize their potentialities.”
The bridge had swung down as they approached the moat, and now the boards rang hollow under their feet.
“You’d like Socialism, Pete,” Mr. Propter continued. “But Socialism seems to be fatally committed to centralization and standardized urban mass production all round. Besides, I see too many occasions for bullying there—too many opportunities for bossy people to display their bossiness, for sluggish people to sit back and be slaves.”
The portcullis rose, the gates slid back to receive them.
“If you want to make the world safe for animals and spirits, you must have a system that reduces the amount of fear and greed and hatred and domineering to their minimum, which means that you must have enough economic security to get rid at least of that source of worry. Enough personal responsibility to prevent people from wallowing in sloth. Enough property to protect them from being bullied by the rich, but not enough to permit them to bully. And the same thing with political rights and authority—enough of the first for the protection of the many, too little of the second for domination by the few.”
“Sounds like peasants to me,” said Pete dubiously.
“Peasants plus small machines and power. Which means that they’re no longer peasants, except insofar as they’re largely self-sufficient.”
“And who makes the machines? More peasants?”
“No; the same sort of people as make them now. What can’t be made satisfactorily except by mass production methods, obviously has to go on being made that way. About a third of all production—that’s what it seems to amount to. The other two-thirds are more economically produced at home or in a small workshop. The immediate, practical problem is to work out the technique of that small-scale production. At present, all the research is going to the discovery of new fields for mass production.”
In the Grotto a row of twenty-five-watt electric candles burned in perpetual devotion before the Virgin. Above, on the tennis court, the second butler, two maids and the head electrician were playing mixed doubles by the light of arc lamps.
“And do you figure people will want to leave the cities and live the way you’re telling us, on little farms?”
“Ah, now you’re talking, Pete!” said Mr. Propter approvingly. “Frankly, then,
