The Wanting Seed Read Free Page B

wants to be perfect. He wants to be good. The citizens of a community want to co-operate with their rulers, and so there is no real need to have devices of coercion, sanctions, which will force them to co-operate.Laws are necessary, of course, for no single individual, however good and co-operative, can have precise knowledge of the total needs of the community. Laws point the way to an emergent pattern of social perfection-they are guides. But, because of the fundamental thesis that the citizen’s desire is to behave like a good social animal, not like a selfish beast of the waste wood, it is assumed that the laws will be obeyed. Thus, the Pelagian state does not think it necessary to erect an elaborate punitive apparatus. Disobey the law and you will be told not to do it again or fined a couple of crowns. Your failure to obey does not spring from Original Sin, it’s not an essential part of the human fabric. It’s a mere flaw, something that will be shed somewhere along the road to final human perfection. Is that clear?’ Many of the pupils nodded; they were past caring whether they understood or not. ‘Well, then, in the Pelagian phase or Pelphase, the great liberal dream seems capable of fulfilment. The sinful acquisitive urge is lacking, brute desires are kept under rational control. The private capitalist, for instance, a figure of top-hatted greed, has no place in a Pelagian society. Hence the State controls the means of production, the State is the only boss. But the will of the State is the will of the citizen, hence the citizen is working for himself. No happier form of existence can be envisaged. Remember, however,’ said Tristram, in a thrilling near-whisper, ‘remember that the aspiration is always some way ahead of the reality. What destroys the dream? What destroys it, eh?’ He suddenly big-drummed the desk, shouting in crescendo, ‘Disappointment. Disappointment . DISAPPOINTMENT .’ He beamed. ‘The governors,’ he said, in a reasonable tone,‘become disappointed when they find that men are not as good as they thought they were. Lapped in their dream of perfection, they are horrified when the seal is broken and they see people as they really are. It becomes necessary to try and force the citizens into goodness. The laws are reasserted, a system of enforcement of those laws is crudely and hastily knocked together. Disappointment opens up a vista of chaos. There is irrationality, there is panic. When the reason goes, the brute steps in. Brutality !’ cried Tristram. The class was at last interested. ‘Beatings-up. Secret police. Torture in brightly lighted cellars. Condemnation without trial. Finger-nails pulled out with pincers. The rack. The cold-water treatment. The gouging-out of eyes. The firing-squad in the cold dawn. And all this because of disappointment. The Interphase.’ He smiled very kindly at his class. His class was agog for more mention of brutality. Their eyes glinted, they goggled with open mouths.
    ‘What, sir,’ asked Bellingham, ‘is the cold-water treatment?’

Five
    B EATRICE -J OANNA , the waste of life-giving cold water behind her, entered the open mouth of the Ministry, a mouth that smelled as though it had been thoroughly rinsed with disinfectant. She jostled her way to an office flaunting the word CONDOLENCES . A great number ofbereaved mothers were waiting at the counter, somethose who spoke with the accents of irresponsibility – in festal dress as for a day out, clutching death certificates like passports to a good time. There was the smell of cheap spirit – alc, as it was called – and Beatrice-Joanna saw the coarse skins and blear eyes of inveterate aledrinkers. The day of the pawning of the flat-iron was over; the State condoned infanticide.
    ‘Got sort of sufflicated in the bedclothes. Only three weeks old to the day he was, too.’
    ‘Scalded, mine was. Pulled the kettle right on top of him.’ The speaker smiled with a sort of pride, as though the