Chapter 7 No.7

CHARACTER-DIVERS-continued.

"Respect those who would enable us to obtain the respect of

others."

In former times the education of our children, even of the most gifted, was entrusted to preceptors who occupied less than secondary positions.

We did not respect or love them much; nay, they were not unfrequently treated with indignity, and yet it was expected that our children would respect and love them and the learning they professed to teach.

All, whether men or women, entrusted with the education of the young are now honoured in Montalluyah, and are high in the State as persons charged to bring about great and valuable results.

The aid given me by the character-divers and preceptors in carrying out my plans was incalculable. Their sagacity selected disciples apt for the duties I required; men with vast powers impelled by good. These men propagated my doctrines, and vigilantly watched their observance, and a new vigorous generation soon sprang up, educated to obey my laws, and further to increase and multiply their beneficent effects.

These moral physicians were chosen at first from men of great sagacity, gentleness, and powers of observation, and of polished manners.[1]

[Footnote 1: In Montalluyah children are supposed to acquire so much by imitation, that the candidate for the office of Djarke and others must possess refined manners; and even the quality of speaking with elegance and accuracy is considered necessary both in them and in the Zicche. The art of speaking and writing with correctness is imperceptibly acquired from the language of the preceptors and other models with whom the boy comes in frequent contact. Grammar, with the exception of a few leading rules, is not needed, and the boy's brain is saved much dry and fruitless labour.]

Young men of special aptitude were soon educated to the office, and it was then that character-divers of marvellous powers sprang up, whose knowledge of the human mind, and skill in diving into the hidden currents of character, became so great that no incipient quality, or defect however minute, could escape their observation.

There is a man whom the sagacity of Vyora discovered, whose wondrous power in his art is the admiration of Montalluyah. The good he has done and the greatness of his work in searching out and developing hidden qualities and genius in children, who to the unskilled eye gave no promise, is celebrated in pictures, in sculpture, and in song, and his portrait is repeated in the highly finished and artistic mosaic pavement of our palaces and dwellings.

We delight to enrich our houses and public places with subjects which daily inspire great and pleasureable thoughts.

The subjects of the tesselated pavements include wise kings, inventors, and discoverers, character-divers and preceptors, physicians, great electricians and chemists; astronomers, men skilfully learned in the power of the sun; men versed in the knowledge of the human mind; eminent painters, sculptors, and architects; men skilled in the properties of birds, beasts, fish, and other living things. Moral qualities are greatly estimated; and we have many portraits of women famous for their virtues, gentleness, and superiority; even of servants distinguished for remarkable cleanliness and other qualities. Every house has its tesselated pavement, more or less elaborate, but always beautifully executed, for all our artists are great, and occupy high positions.

Where a young man evinced qualities which, when tested, showed that he would make but a second-rate artist, the character-divers demonstrated that these youths possessed natural tendencies better fitting them for some other pursuit.

I have in my thoughts at this moment a favourite subject of the artistic pavement;-a man-Zolea by name-who as a boy was inattentive to his studies, while his talent for sketching from nature[1] was so remarkable, that even during school hours, with his eye seemingly on his book, he would occupy himself in sketching those around him. Every one, except the character-divers, thought that Nature intended this boy for a great artist. These demonstrated that as an artist he would never attain a high position; and after observing how he occupied himself in play-hours, and subjecting him to numerous tests, so completely cured him of his want of application and other defects, that he became the wisest and greatest among our kings. He aided me much in the devising and carrying out many things for the well-being of our planet.

[Footnote 1: All students, even beginners, sketch from nature, no other sketching is allowed.]

Had I not been the son of a king I should probably have been educated as a harpist; for even as a child I showed great disposition for the harp, and composed both words and music for my favourite instrument; but my father's chief councillor, a man of great sagacity, saw in me the germ of intellectual powers far beyond those required for the most perfect execution of the harp, and, counselled by this sage, I was led to other studies by judicious treatment, to the doubting surprise of my early tutors.

* * * * *

I will now give you some account of one of the great works begun and ended in my reign.

This work, called 'The Wonder' of my Planet, was by our poets often spoken of as resembling my polity in the strength of its foundation, and in beauty, grandeur, and stability, as a work which, like my laws, they said had saved a world from destruction, and would endure for ever!