code:

Advanced thinkers, like Vashti, had always held it foolish to visit the surface of the
earth. Air-ships might be necessary, but what was the good of going out for mere curiosity
and crawling along for a mile or two in a terrestrial motor? The habit was vulgar and per-
haps faintly improper: it was unproductive of ideas, and had no connection with the habits
that really mattered. So respirators were abolished, and with them, of course, the terrestrial
motors, and except for a few lecturers, who complained that they were debarred access
to their subject-matter, the development was accepted quietly. Those who still wanted to
know what the earth was like had after all only to listen to some gramophone, or to look
into some cinematophote. And even the lecturers acquiesced when they found that a lec-
ture on the sea was none the less stimulating when compiled out of other lectures that had
already been delivered on the same subject. “Beware of first-hand ideas!” exclaimed one
of the most advanced of them. “First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the
physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could
erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then
they will be far removed from that disturbing element — direct observation. Do not learn
anything about this subject of mine — the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think
that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing
thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolu-
tion. Through the medium of these ten great minds, the blood that was shed at Paris and the
windows that were broken at Versailles will be clarified to an idea which you may employ
most profitably in your daily lives. But be sure that the intermediates are many and varied,
for in history one authority exists to counteract another. Urizen must counteract the scepti-
cism of Ho-Yung and Enicharmon, I must myself counteract the impetuosity of Gutch. You
who listen to me are in a better position to judge about the French Revolution than I am.
Your descendants will be even in a better position than you, for they will learn what you
think I think, and yet another intermediate will be added to the chain. And in time” — his
voice rose — “there will come a generation that had got beyond facts, beyond impressions,
a generation absolutely colourless, a generation

‘seraphically free
From taint of personality,’

which will see the French Revolution not as it happened, nor as they would like it to have
happened, but as it would have happened, had it taken place in the days of the Machine.”