Anatole France is certainly wrong, for no barbarism which the world has ever known ever was so barbarous as the barbarism that went before. If the life of man describes a curve, this is not a circle; he does not interminably return to the same point; rather the curve is a cycloid, ever bending back upon itself and yet slowly moving onwards towards the unknown goal. Anatole France does not, I think, quite deny that, but he is not over-fond of what he calls idle speculation: where his knowledge stops he is inclined to say: “After all, what does it matter to Sirius?”
The island where the penguins lived was evangelised by St Mael, who quite naïvely relates how he navigated to its shores in a stone trough. God served him as rudder and sail. It would have been all right if the saint had not been short-sighted, but he took the penguins for men and baptized them, which gave rise to great trouble in heaven and a wonderful ecclesiastical debate. For St Patrick said that baptism could not avail birds; St Damasius said it could, for Mael was competent; St Guenolé said it could not, because penguins were not conceived in sin; St Augustine thought it could if given in proper form. This caused much ill feeling in Paradise; Tertullian grew quite vicious and said he was sorry that the penguins had no soul, as thus they could not go to hell. The intervention of the Almighty was hailed with unanimous cheers, which St Augustine backed up by begging Him not to give the penguins a soul because, as they could not keep the law, they would burn in hell “in virtue of God’s adorable decrees.” Upon this the disturbance turned to scandal, and to end it the penguins were turned into men.
Then the troubles of the once happy birds began. They were clad and modesty was born. Property arose, and murder. The Catholic Devil had a hand in this and remarked that the murderers were creating rights, constituting property, laying the bases of civilisation, of society and the State. He added that the source of property is force. Later a state formed and the poor only were taxed because they could not resist, and because there were more of them. A freebooter arose: he became a king. His armies went to war and were beloved, for they won. Art appeared; Margaritone foresaw the decadence of ecclesiastical art and, in a horrid dream, something like post-impressionism. The priest, Marbode, visited Virgil in hell; the Latin poet remarked that Dante was rather a bore and that Christ was the god of barbarism. Then history unrolls. There is a revolution (obviously 1789); Trinco (Napoleon) appears and a loyal penguin states that glory cannot cost too much. Modern times give Anatole France a yet greater chance, for he takes us to New Atlantis (America), where commercial wars are executed on contract, because a business people must have a policy of conquest; the European War of 1914, if one dives deep under the crust of patriotism, sounds very like the war of New Atlantis against Third Zealand “where they killed two-thirds of the inhabitants to compel the remaining third to buy from New Atlantis umbrellas and braces.” Plutocracy. Socialism. Royalist agitations, supported by the leaders of the army, the wineshops, the newsboys, the police and the courtesans. All through this section runs the Pyrot case. A traitor (Dreyfus) sold ninety thousand bundles of hay to the foreigner--that is to say, he did not sell them, for they did not exist. Yet General Panther says: “Evidently Pyrot stole them, so all we have to do is to prove it.” To which another General replies: “Arrest Pyrot. Find some evidence; the law demands it.”