The Aerial Valley

by Brian Stableford

  Game is quite abundant in hares, partridges, capercaillies, pigeons, grouse and, in certain seasons, various migratory birds. Prudent measures have nevertheless been taken in respect of the permanent residents to conserve the species. The eagle is the only enemy against which there is no truce.

  Everyone, after the completion of the agricultural excavations, having been occupied in the construction of cabins, our new town was completed in the course of the winter. We followed for its form the plan of the town of Versailles. The governors’ house is on a small eminence from which a row of twelve cabins extended to either side. Those cabins are designed solely for human accommodation. Behind them are the common stables for the animals. That separation, contrary to the custom of the region, which mingles the human species with animals in the same habitation, was preferred because of its salubrity.

  Every cabin is divided into two parts. The beds of the girls are in one, the beds of the boys in the other; it was thought that purity of mores, the most efficacious of all laws, depends principally on modesty and innocence in early age.

  Meals are taken in common in each family, but every Sunday, the governors invite ten inhabitants to their table. These invitations are ordinarily made in the natural and successive order, without distinction of age or sex, unless some circumstance demands a deviation from that habitual order. As the object of those banquets, somewhat similar to that of the seven sages, is to maintain peace, union and virtue by exhortation, praise or reprimands, according to circumstance, the order is sometimes disturbed, but it is unheard of for an individual punished by non-admission to the chiefs’ table in his turn to merit the same mortification for a second time.

  After having provided for the conservation of the society, we occupied ourselves with the temporal end of its members. Death can inspire great thought to the profit of the living. It is in the bosom of a cemetery that the most eloquent lessons in morality sometimes arise. Our sage governors have established, for all individuals without distinction, the law that only applied in Egypt to kings. In consequence, the memory of a person whose career has just ended is subjected to an examination before their body enters its last refuge. An inscription raised over the grave contains the judgment that has been pronounced. Their descendants participate in this world in the recompense or punishment that the judges assign in the other. Virtue is the only stock of nobility, but woe betide the offshoots of that fine stem that bear degenerate fruit; it is degraded pitilessly and relegated, if it is merited, to the lowest class.

  The field of rest is some distance from the village, in a field surrounded by a ditch and a living hedge. Above the entrance gate the words can be read: It is here that human beings quit their terrestrial remains in order to dwell in the celestial domain from which they descended.

  At the birth of every child, a tree is planted in the field of death which bears their name. That marks the spot that they will occupy at the end of their life. They often visit the plant with which they will one day be united forever. They delight, in childhood, in surrounding it with the most beautiful spring flowers; the two of them grow and develop at the same time, and both, perhaps, will conclude their careers together. Thus the terrors of the final moment are appeased, and people become accustomed to seeing the growth, decay and dissolution of the material part of their own being with the same eyes that they observe the successive changes in the tree that bears their name.

  If I were writing a book that was to pass into the world that we have quit, the inhabitants of that world, who have no notion of ours, might ask me with the most ardent curiosity for details of education, marriage, our work, our pleasures, or laws, our costumes, etc. All these different subjects would be the subject-matter of other chapters susceptible of greater interest, but I am writing for the posterity of our Valley, which will be eternally isolated, and an uninterrupted tradition will transmit precise instructions to them on all these subjects. There is, however, one subject that does seem to me to require written information, in order that routine, always a trifle vague, does not take the place of regulation, and that the plan traced will always be followed, and that subject is education.

  The education of our children commences at the age of seven. Until that epoch, where the first glimmers of intellect commonly appear, announced by curiosity, questions and the desire for knowledge, they remain in the sole dependency of their mothers or their relatives. That precious curiosity is then directed toward useful objects. Five of the people most distinguished for their wisdom and knowledge are charge with that responsibility; the first ones named for that purpose were the two governors, the former minister, the old soldier and me.

  From the age of seven until that of eighteen, the male children live under the same roof, eat at the same table and are continually under the gaze of one or more of the five masters. They learn to read and write, and as their intelligence develops, they receive a few elementary notions of physics, geometry, astronomy, geography and history. They are even given an idea of the fine arts, painting and music.

  “What purpose does such instruction serve in a desert?” one might ask in the world, if this writing were known there. Not to make the persons who possesses it shine, I would reply, but to make them happy. The pleasures of the senses are not only extinguished with the senses themselves, but even in the time of their greatest energy they are almost always mingled with bitterness and regret. What a difference there is between that sad enjoyment and that produced by thought! It is there, truly, that the pure and continuous voluptuousness exists that is said to be the lot of angels.

  It is by the energy and elevation of the mind that humans escape the blows of fortune, and even the dolors of the body. It is by that means that they acquire the celestial philosophy of the Stoics, the most perfect class of humans ever to appear on the earth.

  As all the sciences are connected, I have now reached the one that is the principal subject of study of your youth: morality.

  Religion is morality reduced to precepts. As there is only one morality, so there ought to be only one religion. Christianity was made to serve as its model. That institution was so simple and sublime that the entire world would have ended up adopting it if it had not been denatured. We have tried to reestablish the primitive order. The two bases of our doctrine are, as in the earliest times, the love of God above all, and the love of our fellows equal to that we have for ourselves.

  All the consequences of these two principles are developed in our catechism. As it is in the hands of all our inhabitants, there is no need to talk about it. I only think it appropriate to recall the motives for each of those principles. The first, the love of the creator, is a natural sentiment of gratitude for the greatest of all benefits, life. The love of our fellows derives from the very plausible opinion that all humans, being composed of the same substance, and all having the same organs, ought to be considered as being part of the same mass of elements, and that division into various separate molds that form as many distinct individuals dies not destroy that primitive identity; that the sentiment that affects every human being of the wellbeing or distress of another is a confirmation of that identity; and that, in consequence, the love of our neighbor is, strictly speaking, nothing but the love of ourselves.

  The catechism that I have just mentioned informs the rule of all duties, and traces the route of all virtues, but as the first poet of antiquity remarked, for the graces as for reason, actions make more impact on the mind than words. The masters’ concern is, therefore, to make an application of precepts to the various events of life; if ordinary conduct does not furnish enough proofs, they give rise to them; they try to cover, in the short space of youth, the entire career of a human being, and to accumulate in a few moments the vicissitudes of fortune and adversity disseminated in a long sequence of years. Thus, our young people have an apprenticeship in the human estate, and they arrive at that estate already instructed by the best of masters, experience.

  VIII

  One of our recently a
rrived brothers has just terminated his career. He was an old man of ninety-five named Jacques Saintgès, distinguished throughout his life by his temperance, his assiduity in his work, his domestic virtues and his probity. The entire population of the Valley accompanied his mortal remains to their last refuge, but the prescribed examination and judgment could not take place in regard to a man whose life, although so long, only lasted very briefly in our midst. During the funeral march, the consolatory hymn was sung, which softened the tears by giving a hope to the regrets, and an inscription recalled the esteem that he enjoyed constantly in his homeland.

  In this month of February two male children were born three days apart. As we all form a single family, the subjects of joy of one of our brethren are common to all the others, and births are placed in the first rank of public celebrations. Two trees have been planted in the field of souls, and the names of the new-borns engraved on a plank paced beside each tree until they are strong enough to bear the inscription. The days have been celebrated by dances, various games and the exercise of the bow; communal meals crowned the festivities.

  Several of our young men, who have made a choice among the young women of the Valley, desired to consecrate it immediately by marriage, but one of our laws specifies that no one can marry before the first of November or after the first of April. Two motives inspired and protect that disposition. The first is to leave the couple more time to get to know one another well before the engagement; the second is not to interrupt the agricultural labor, and to postpone all individual festivities until the time that nature has marked for repose. A third advantage follows from that delay in the most important act of life, of which the lovers usually only now the value a long time afterwards, and that is the prolongation of desires and hope.

  Dread and hope are two sentiments that seem to be reserved to humans. There is no future for an animal; born to present sensation, it seems deprived of the imagination that rejoices or suffers in an idea, often with more energy than in reality. If the anticipation of pain is a cruel privilege of the human species, that of happiness is a very precious compensation. It would be extravagant to think that it might be possible to extinguish entirely the sentiment of dread while leaving access to our souls for that of hope. Both of them necessarily have the same degree of intensity, and anyone who might die of the fear of harm might also expire of the hope of pleasure. The only thing that is sometimes with the power of human being is to abridge the duration of one and prolong the duration of the other.

  The more than a hoped-for happiness increases in the imagination, however, the more it excites the ardor for enjoyment, and the more difficult it is to postpone the moment. That is why the constraint is salutary, and the tyranny benevolent. Our young people are chagrined and curse the cruelty of the law every day, but in the meantime, their heart is full of the most delightful sentiments; one day, they might experience sharper ones, but never ones as pure and as continuous.

  There were, however, two young people among the number of lovers for whom the delay was an unbearable torment. They were two rivals, both ardent and presumptuous, flattering themselves aloud with the anticipation of a complete victory, and trembling in the silence of solitude with the fear of a shameful defeat. The young woman with whom they were smitten was firmly decided in her choice, but whatever insistence were made, she refused to declare it. The impetuosity of their character made her shiver, and she preferred to impose a silence that tormented them than cause, by explaining herself, the eternal unhappiness of one of the two.

  The governors decided that this case merited an exception; that one was required by the same motive that had dictated the law, the happiness of the interested parties; that the young woman could not declare her choice too soon and that the declaration ought to be made with the greatest solemnity

  In consequence, they invited the young woman, in an assembly of all the inhabitants, to let her heart speak freely. Perceiving that the presence of the two rivals intimidated her and closed her mouth, however, they asked them both to step outside momentarily. When she was able to express herself without fear, she admitted her penchant. The two rivals were then called back in, before whom she was emboldened and confirmed that admission.

  As the future spouses had known one another for a long time, their union was concluded the same day. After having signed the certificate, one of the governors made the rejected lover an exhortation full of sentiment and reason. Our brethren are habituated to hear the voice of heaven in all the circumstances when success has not crowned their desires. But unless one is absolutely insensate, how can it be misunderstood when all the voices of the earth manifest it, and there no longer remains any object of hope? Thus, the same day saw the happiness of two people commence and completed the unhappiness of a third.

  Until now we have made use of hand mills for grinding the wheat, but that process is slow and the flour that it produces is neither clean not fine. Fortunately there were workers among the newcomers instructed in the construction of water-mills; they have succeeded perfectly, and we now have a mill that is easily sufficient for the consumption of the Valley.

  Nothing is more striking in the mountains than a beautiful spring day after the snow, the forests and the ice of winter. We saluted the first one that appeared to us with the liveliest effusion of joy. The governors yielded to the general desire and instituted a solemn feast to celebrate that cheerful epoch of the year. It was allocated to the month of May, without any other fixation than that of the day of the month when the cloudless sky and the radiant sun seem to announce the reconciliation of nature with humankind. At the first rays of the sun that shines on that great day, we all assembled—men, women, children, and the elderly—with the two governors bringing up the rear. With a verdant branch in hand, we made a tour of the Valley, celebrating with hymns and canticles the return of the beneficent star, the father of warmth and life. After a banquet, at which the most intimate and sincere unity reigned, the festival concluded with dances and games.

  Refrain carefully, my friends, from taking our expression regarding the power of the sun too literally. We are firmly convinced that that celestial body is submissive, like the entire universe, to the law of God alone; the sun is merely one of the organs of his benefits. It is to the Supreme Being, the unique creator of all things, that the formation and maintenance of all that exists in nature is due; he alone merits the adoration and homage of the human species.

  After the day of celebration our work of cultivation recommenced. Those labors are pleasures, because they are moderate, and it is to us alone that their fruits belong. The repose that follows them is also a pleasure, and is equally one of the fruits of the labors: an admirable alliance of occupation and wellbeing, of health, the contentment of the soul, and the expansion of all the affectionate sentiments. Sloth and idleness never know such delicious joys!

  That reflection would doubtless be out of place outside the Valley, in those desolate rural areas where chagrin, cares and anxieties are combined with the rudest labors. There, the unfortunate cultivator, half dressed in rags, comes back from the fields covered in sweat, succumbing to fatigue. Coarse black bread, and water that is often muddy, are his only nourishment, while his hungry children utter heart-rending cries and his mind is tormented by taxes, obligations, bailiffs and the barbaric despotism of his landlord. What a state! And those unfortunates are the brothers of the great landowners gorged with riches and honors, all of whose says are spun in gold and silk!

  That disastrous inequality does not exist here. We are all dressed in the same garments, nourished on the same food, and if some of us sometimes devote ourselves to different occupations, it is for the common interest—and as soon as they are finished, they return with pleasure to the amicable cultivation of the fields.

  Thus, in the peace of God, in his powerful blessing, implored every morning by pious canticles as we go to our agreeable labor, in the perpetual presence of his fortifying gaze, having confided to the earth the sustena
nce of our life, the harvest that we have collected surpassed our expectations. We have obtained enough to nourish us for two years; that surplus is necessary in the state of isolation we are in, deprived of the means to substitute for a famine is one occurs.

  The extent of the cultivation that produces the quantity of subsistence in question is proportionate to our population. If the population is augmented, we shall augment the cultivation in the same measure. There would have to be a prodigious increase for all the land in the Valley to need plowing.

  Three people have died; to wit, one man and two women. Henceforth, I shall not mention deaths or births, because we keep a separate register for each object, in which everything concerning the person who is coming into the world or leaving it is inscribed with exactitude. We also have an individual register for marriages. After the opening of the interval devoted to that union, however, three have been celebrated that require further detail than those of dates, names and genealogy.

  The first of these unions was between the children of the two governors. No political union between two crowned heads has excited a keener and more widespread joy. It is not that the slightest division existed between the two families, it was desired that power, thus far shared, should be united in a single individual, such seems to be the desire of nature in all things. Different opinions, and hence several counselors, are required, but what would become of government if decisions were opposed? Reason and public interest are united in favor of simple monarchy, the supreme authority of a single individual. Particular circumstances had caused us to set aside that law, but ulterior events have brought us back to it and we are fixing it permanently in place. The son of Dom Simeon, in marrying the daughter of Dom Antonin, has been named as the sole successor to the government of the Valley.