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first symptoms of illness in a worker was held to impair his
efficiency and qualify him for the phosphorous factory. Wages
were permanently high, and as there were no merchants even of
alcohol, whose use was forbidden, every man saved all his
earnings, and died rich. At his death his savings went back to
the community. Taxation was consequently unnecessary. Clothes
were unnecessary and unknown, and the 'bread from heaven' was the
"free gift of God". The dead were thrown to the amphibians. Each
man built his own shelter of the rough stone sponge which
abounded. The word 'house' was used only in Atlas; the servile
race called its huts 'Hloklost' (equivalent to the English word
'home'). Discontent was absolutely unknown. It had not been
considered necessary to prohibit traffic with foreign countries,
as the inhabitants of such were esteemed barbarians. Had a ship
landed men, they would have been murdered to a man, supposing
that Atlas had permitted any approach to its shores. That it
hindered such, and by infallible means, was due to other
considerations, whose nature will form the subject of a
subsequent chapter.
This then is the nature of the plains beneath Atlas, and the
character of the servile race.
.pa
II.
OF THE RACE OF ATLAS
In the city or 'house' which was formed from the crest of
every mountain, dwelt a race not greatly superior in height to
our own, but of vaster frame. The bulk and strength of the bear
is not inappropriate as a simile for the lower classes; the
higher had the enormous chest and shoulders and the lean haunches
of the lion. This strength gave an infallible beauty, made
monstrous by their most inexorable law, that every child who
developed no special feature in the first seven years should be
sacrificed to the Gods. This special feature might be a nose of
prodigious size, hands and wrists of gigantic strength, a gorilla
jaw, an elephant ear--or any of these might entitle its owner to
life:* for in all such variations from the normal they perceived
the possibility of a development of the race. Men and women were
hairy as the ourang-outang and all were closely shaven from head
to foot. It had been found that this practice developed tactile
sensibility. It was also done in reverence to the 'Living Atla',
of which more in its place.
The lower class were few in number. Its function was to
superintend the servile race, to bring the food of the children
to the banqueting-hall, to remove the same, to attend to the
disposition of the 'light-screens', to ensure the continuance of
the race by the begetting, bearing and nourishing of the children.
The priestly class was concerned with the further preparation
of the Zro supplied by the labour-mills, and its impregnation
with phosphorus. This class had much leisure for 'work', a
subject to be explained later.
The High Priests and High Priestesses were restricted in
number to eleven times thirty-three in any one 'house'. To them
were entrusted the final secrets of Atlas, and to them was
confided the conduct of the experiments in which every will was
bound up.*
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