He turned blue at the wingtips and disappeared as another angel approached me.
This one was quietly but appropriately dressed in cellophane, synthetic rubber and stainless steel,
But his mask was the blind mask of Ares, snouted for gasmasks.
He was neither soldier, sailor, farmer, dictator, nor munitions-manufacturer.
Nor did he have much conversation, except to say,
"You will not be saved by General Motors or the prefabricated house.
You will not be saved by dialectic materialism or the Lambeth Conference.
You will not be saved by Vitamin D or the expanding universe.
In fact, you will not be saved."
Then he showed his hand:
In his hand was a woven, wire basket, full of seeds, small metallic and shining like the seeds of portulaca;
Where he sowed them, the green vine withered, and the smoke and the armies sprang up.
It is well known that I uphold a radically aristrocratic interpretation of history. Radically, because I have never said that human society
ought
to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society
is
always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristrocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not the State.Jose Ortega y Gasset,
The Revolt of the Masses
Aristocracy literally means "rule of the best." Plato and Aristotle classed states as "aristocratic" if the most powerful offices were elective and unpaid. There was a considerable "aristocratic" element in the governments of the original founding states of the U.S.; it is only in very recent times that all property, educational, and literacy requirements were removed from electoral qualification.
A poll tax is "aristocratic" in that it imposes a duty and burden on those who wish to vote. Poll taxes were used as a means of excluding blacks from voting in the old south, and have thus acquired a terrible reputation; but anything can be abused. I have often wondered: just what
is
so horrified about charging, say, fifty dollars a year for the privilege of voting? And why
shouldn't
literacy, and residence in the community be required? For that matter, is it so evil that only taxpayers be allowed to vote in property tax elections?
John Stuart Mill certainly thought that no recipient of unearned public funds should be allowed the franchise. Republics, we are told, last until the voters realize they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury; after which the many despoil the few; the indolent plunder the industrious; and the state begins to dissolve.
Indeed: that kind of dissolution very often generates an emperor. Those who come after generally long for the older days of aristocracy and republic. It is easy enough to idealize aristocracy. After all: don't we
want
the best to rule? And certainly the achievements of aristocratic states have been great indeed.
The Roman Republic was nakedly an aristocracy long after all offices were thrown open to patrician and plebian alike. Most public offices were not paid; and to hold the highest office, one had to enter the "cursus honorum," a series of positions which had the effect of allowing only the experienced in the highest positions of the state—but allowed only those who had private means to get that experience.
C. Northcote Parkinson tells us:
"Viewed as a structure or mechanism, the Roman constitution seems complex, confused, and unworkable. It had, to all appearances, too many legislatures, too many independent officials, too many elections, and too many rules. No distinction was ever made between legislative, executive, and judicial functions, nor even between military and civil. It worked, nevertheless, to some purpose. Rome was governed, in effect, by a class of men of similar birth, similar training, similar experience, and (one might add) similar limitations. They all understood each other very well and probably reached agreement privately before Senate even met. The magistrates could have nullified the powers of Senate. But why should they? They were magistrates only for a time, and thereafter Senators for life. The Senators might have obstructed the work of those in office. But why should they? They had all been in office themselves. Senators might have become dangerously divorced from the people at large. But it was not altogether closed to talent, not entirely insensitive to upper middle class opinion. The people, finally, might have found some means to demand a share in government. But the Roman ruling class was a true aristocracy. Its members were respected for their courage and ability, not merely envied for their wealth. Of the aristocrats, every one had served in the field without disgrace, every one had legal and administrative training, every one had served as executive and judge. They affected, moreover, a Spartan simplicity in dress and manner, resting their influence merely on birth, reputation, and known achievement. They were able, between them, to conquer the known world."
(The Evolution of Political Thought
, Viking Press, 1964).
The Roman model has been consciously copied: in Britain during the period of the Napoleonic wars; and to a lesser extent in the infant United States.
That is one remembered aristocracy. We have, buried within western history, another: the memory of Arthur and the Round Table; Charlemagne and his paladins; the valiant fight of civilization against a long night of barbarism and decay.
Rank Hath Its Privileges; but how great should those privileges be? What price aristocracy?
I first read this story in high school. It disturbed me a lot, for it presents the clash of two valid ideas. I have remembered this story for thirty years; certainly reason enough to include it here.
It was an hour or so after sunset on a heavy September night. I was sitting alone in the high-ceilinged main room of the temple, reading by the light of a five-foot candelabrum. The corners of the room were dark as always; the white tree trunks outside the window seemed to catch more of the light than the piles of books which lined the walls.
The silence was broken by a loud but patient knocking at the door.
"Who would enter?" I called.
"Jim Jenkins. See the Elder Stevan."
I laid down my book. "Enter, Jim Jenkins." He came in and stood just a few yards inside the door, blinking at the candlelight. Jenkins was in his late forties, graying, but still one of the best farmers in the Village. Like all the Folk he had a round and almost chinless face, and just now its gray-shot eyebrows were drawn together in uncertainty. He stood just at the limit of the candles' light and shifted from one foot to another.
"What would you ask the Elder Stevan?"
"Elder Stevan," he said, "Paul Pomroy wants to marry my daughter."
"Your daughter—"
"Grace Jenkins."
I searched my memory. I had not seen the girl since she last came to the Temple, several years before. "Bring me the Record, Jim Jenkins."
With clumsy respect, he crossed the room, got the high, thin book and, holding it in both hands, brought it to me. "She's young," I said, after a moment.
Jim Jenkins looked troubled. "Paul Pomroy wants to marry my daughter," he repeated.
I considered. He sounded pretty insistent, and it behooved me as a priest of Truth to recognize a fact, preferably in advance. Besides, there was definitely a percentage in my doing Jenkins a favor at this point. I spoke, sternly. "You have room for Pomroy and Grace in your house?"
"Yes."
"Jim Jenkins, they may marry, but because Grace is young they live and work with you for one year."
"Yes, Elder Stevan." He turned, thinking the interview was over.
But it wasn't. There was my very necessary percentage to collect—very necessary indeed, at this particular time. And I couldn't have asked for a better one to collect it from than him. "Jim Jenkins! You know Old Red has gone to the west with Buddy Hoey and others to forage. How long have they been gone?"
"Ten days, more."
"Thirteen days. You know they went against the word of the Elder?"
He half-whispered, "Yes."
"Do you expect the Elder will punish them when they come back?"
He frowned a little, apparently suspecting a trick. "Yes, Elder Stevan."
"The others in the Village—do they expect it also?"
"Some do."
"Do they wish it?"
"The Word of the Elder—" He bowed as my parents had taught him.
"The Word of the Elder will be given when Old Red comes back. But those who do not wish to see Old Red punished, Jim Jenkins?"
He stood a moment, absently scratching one hairy forearm against his hip, then answered, "The other day two of the Folk said something against the Elder, for Old Red. Tony Shelton heard. I told Tony Shelton and Paul Pomroy and Tim Marvic to beat them up. They beat them up."
"Why didn't the Elder hear of this?"
"The two didn't tell the Elder. They knew Tony Shelton heard them. They said something against the Elder."
"But why didn't
you
tell the Elder? You did wrong, Jim Jenkins. You should not beat up men like those two. You should tell the Elder."
"Yes. I hear other Folk say something the same, I tell the Elder Stevan."
I let him go without asking him the names of the two dissidents. I was more than satisfied. It couldn't have worked out better if I'd planned it. Jenkins was one of the Folk whom I could trust, and now that I could count on him and his friends to form the beginnings of a spy system I felt easier about the situation.
A spy system in the Village was something new, but so was Old Red's action in leaving on a foraging party without my sanction. That was new, and unpleasant. I was alone, the only Elder, and now that the routine of obedience to the Word had been broken I was none too sure of what to expect.
I entered the information of Grace Jenkins' wedding in the Record, then stood up and slowly walked to the window. The chalky white trunks of the long-dead oak grove stood motionless between me and the night. As a child, here in the Temple, I had once thought of them as guards protecting the Elders' home; now I found myself wishing, whimsically, that each of them had at least a bow and arrows in its hand.
The foraging party returned several nights later. The first thing I noticed when the leaders of the party were brought to me was not Old Red, or Buddy Hoey, or anything connected with them. The first thing I noticed was the girl.
She was a prisoner who had been taken on the expedition. She was dressed in a cloak of animal skins of some sort, quite different from the rough woven clothes of the Villagers. But that was not the only difference. There was her firm-jawed oval face, with its arched brows—it took me a moment to place the nature of the difference.
She was human. She was the first human I'd seen since my father's death years before. Human—not Folk!
I addressed Old Red. "Tell of the people you found."
"To west and north, near the river. Had no houses, not much clothes, only deerskins, other skins. Had beards. Meat, but no leather, had no cows to keep. Many dogs."
"About how many people were there in the tribe?"
"Twenty, thirty, more." He frowned and shrugged. "We caught them."
"You surprised them—at night?"
"Yes. But dogs barked, they got away. They thought we were more than them, they ran away. We killed some. None of us killed. We took meat and—her." He indicated the tall, black-haired girl beside him. "Tried to take dogs. Good dogs."
Then I asked the question that was uppermost in my mind. "Were all the people like the Folk?"
"Didn't see faces of all of them."
"But of those you saw—?"
Again he nodded at the prisoner. "She was the only one like the Elders." (
Like the Elders,
I thought.
Well, he was the first to say it.
) "The others like us."
"Was she a prisoner from some other tribe?"
The girl herself answered. "I child of Chief. Name Barbi."
She was part of this Folk tribe, then. That was something to puzzle over later. But something else was brought home to me by her words. They were spoken in English, of course, but they were spoken so exactly with the intonation of the Village that I realized suddenly where the Chief and his tribe must have come from. During the time when my parents were Elders, shortly after the Folk had been taught the use of the bow and arrow, a number of Folk had left on hunting trips and never returned. They must now be the "Chief" and his men. Let's see—if this Barbi had been born soon after they left the Village, that would make her eighteen now; about right.
I put it up to Old Red. "These people may be those who left the Village in the Elder David's time. Did you see any faces of men you knew?"
Obviously the idea was new to him, for he was taken off guard and made one of his rare slips. "Yes, Elder Stevan," he said. "I thought it were the same. We punished them for going from the Elder—"
I laughed harshly. The laugh was well done. He stopped.
I questioned him further. It seemed he and Hoey really knew very little more about the tribe. For the rest, they had found few houses along the way, but there was one large cache of canned goods; they had not made many attempts at hunting; there had been considerable woodland in the territory they covered, but mostly prairie; enough water.
My questions were over. I stared at Old Red and Buddy Hoey. Hoey dropped his eyes, preferring the sight of his unshod toes to my face. The two Folk guards and Barbi watched curiously. Except for the sputtering of one of the thick bayberry candles beside me, the room was still.
I had to name the transgressors' penalty. It couldn't be as stiff as I'd planned, because the party had been too successful; at the same time I couldn't go too easy in punishing a disobedience of the Word of the Elder. I improvised, and hoped the four Folks wouldn't notice my scanning their faces. "Until harvest next year, those of the foraging party will clean the barn." That, they would not like. "And each of them gets forty lashes; in public, next rest day. Fifty for Old Red, and Buddy Hoey." That was enough. "You did very wrong, and the forfeit is small. Another time it will be much more.