and their view of the quays of Corinth – where they were not permitted to land – did nothing to recommend a more advanced form of living. In fact, the sailors made the voyage with increasing distaste: they called Corinth ‘the terrible city’, objecting to it on moral and aesthetic grounds. Eventually it was arranged for all trading to take place at Stalinopol, a small port some distance from Corinth and at the quietest hour of the night, when they would not be exposed to the whir of dock machinery, the unceasing blare of amplified dance-music, the ugly outlines of waterside buildings, and the garish, raucous, three-dimensioned cartoon-comedies telecast every hour in mid-air over the harbour.
They elevated this regard for their sensibilities into the religious principle ‘nothing without the hand of love’; meaning, that no product or process was acceptable unless love had a part in it. No product, for example, turned out by a machine, however harmless it might appear, whether a jam-pot, a screw-driver or a box of chocolates, had love in it, and neither had any hand-made goods produced for commercial ends only. An important incident in their new mythology was the Secession of the Drones, who left their hive, repudiated the Queen Bee – their Goddess – and went off to live in a privy where they contrived a mechanical Queen Bee and perpetuated un-love. In this myth, the Drones were led by Machna the god of Science, Dobeis the god of Money and Pill the god of Theft. Ben-Yeshu had stressed the need for the re-establishment of the long-defunct theory of sacred monarchy, and for separating the ecclesiastical side of religion from the magical; the latter should be fostered by every possible means. He pointed out that no writer of a
Utopia
had ever applied himself to make good the damage done by Plato, when he banished poets from his Republic and preached a scornful indifference to poetic myth. ‘If we strengthen the poets and let them become the acknowledged legislators of the new world,’ ben-Yeshu wrote confidently, ‘magic will come into its own again, bringing peace and fertility in its train.’
An attempt was made to introduce ‘a mitigated New Cretan system’ into California and New Mexico, but since these mitigations included domestic plumbing, ice-cream machines, watches, rubber-goods and a long list of proprietary drugs, the New Cretans declined to have anything to do with it. Still later they were invited to colonize part of the State of New York on their own terms; but an advance party found it impossible to avoid contact with the press, sightseers and other incidentals of civilization. Nor had they been warned that they would be subject to the State and Federal Laws, as well as to the periodic visits of sanitary and agricultural inspectors, and that a public highway would run through the middle of their territory. They sailed back in their wooden galleys with a report that the climate of North America was too exhilarating, and the soil too denatured by artificial fertilizers, for the successful maintenance of the New Cretan system, even if political conditions were favourable, which they were not.
The
Brief History
was reticent about what happened in the Sophocratic world once the system was well under way in New Crete. There seems to have been a gradual realization that an age had ended and that thenceforth whatever might be done or thought outside New Crete would be anachronistic, since mankind had now been reborn, for better or worse; but with this realization went a good deal of envy, resentment, and even active hostility. However, no serious attempt to wreck the system was made until the Sophocrats lost control, and the people relapsed into savagery; by that time New Crete was strong enough to hold her own against aggressors, not by armed force but by magic – a combined exercise of moral power that debilitated the will of the enemy war-lords and made the soldiers drop their weapons. ‘Three
They elevated this regard for their sensibilities into the religious principle ‘nothing without the hand of love’; meaning, that no product or process was acceptable unless love had a part in it. No product, for example, turned out by a machine, however harmless it might appear, whether a jam-pot, a screw-driver or a box of chocolates, had love in it, and neither had any hand-made goods produced for commercial ends only. An important incident in their new mythology was the Secession of the Drones, who left their hive, repudiated the Queen Bee – their Goddess – and went off to live in a privy where they contrived a mechanical Queen Bee and perpetuated un-love. In this myth, the Drones were led by Machna the god of Science, Dobeis the god of Money and Pill the god of Theft. Ben-Yeshu had stressed the need for the re-establishment of the long-defunct theory of sacred monarchy, and for separating the ecclesiastical side of religion from the magical; the latter should be fostered by every possible means. He pointed out that no writer of a
Utopia
had ever applied himself to make good the damage done by Plato, when he banished poets from his Republic and preached a scornful indifference to poetic myth. ‘If we strengthen the poets and let them become the acknowledged legislators of the new world,’ ben-Yeshu wrote confidently, ‘magic will come into its own again, bringing peace and fertility in its train.’
An attempt was made to introduce ‘a mitigated New Cretan system’ into California and New Mexico, but since these mitigations included domestic plumbing, ice-cream machines, watches, rubber-goods and a long list of proprietary drugs, the New Cretans declined to have anything to do with it. Still later they were invited to colonize part of the State of New York on their own terms; but an advance party found it impossible to avoid contact with the press, sightseers and other incidentals of civilization. Nor had they been warned that they would be subject to the State and Federal Laws, as well as to the periodic visits of sanitary and agricultural inspectors, and that a public highway would run through the middle of their territory. They sailed back in their wooden galleys with a report that the climate of North America was too exhilarating, and the soil too denatured by artificial fertilizers, for the successful maintenance of the New Cretan system, even if political conditions were favourable, which they were not.
The
Brief History
was reticent about what happened in the Sophocratic world once the system was well under way in New Crete. There seems to have been a gradual realization that an age had ended and that thenceforth whatever might be done or thought outside New Crete would be anachronistic, since mankind had now been reborn, for better or worse; but with this realization went a good deal of envy, resentment, and even active hostility. However, no serious attempt to wreck the system was made until the Sophocrats lost control, and the people relapsed into savagery; by that time New Crete was strong enough to hold her own against aggressors, not by armed force but by magic – a combined exercise of moral power that debilitated the will of the enemy war-lords and made the soldiers drop their weapons. ‘Three
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