A Philosophickal Debate

(continued from page 4.)

FARADAY: Ridiculous! Technology has been a boon to the poor. Our factories employ thousands!

WESTWIND: Yes, you employ thousands - but in what kind of work? Have you seen the manufacturing population of Tarant, Professor? You are destroying them with your "employment". I have spent a full working day in the one of your great cotton mills; it is quite an education. I have no great love of the orcish race, but even the most violent-tempered of my elven brethren would not subject them to such tortures.

FARADAY: Ah yes, the tortures of earning an honest wage! We all know how welcome an orc or a half-orc is, in elvish society. Surely any job, however hard, is preferable to ostracism or death?

WESTWIND: Is it? After seeing what your labourers must endure in pursuit of this "honest wage", I think the question is anything but settled.

FARADAY: Stuff and nonsense. The work they are asked to do in factories is but light.

WESTWIND: Yes, perhaps it is light - if measured by the endurance of some three or four minutes. But these workers must go on, in a standing posture, in the poisonous atmosphere of your mills, for a period of 13 hours! And in that time, the foremen give them no more than 15 minutes of rest. The stoutest man in this room could not do it, not even if he did nothing during the whole of that time but stand on his feet and stick pins in a pincushion. Any of you would sink under the burden! And yet you dare to call the work "light", when it given to children--children of the tenderest years?

FARADAY: It may seem harsh to a stranger, Master Westwind, but this is the way of things. Half-orcs must be taught the value of work and kept from mischief. The jobs they do in mills and factories teach them the value of labour. And what is the ultimate result of their exertions? They cause no trouble, and they earn an honest living. They are upright citizens.

WESTWIND: No, sir, "upright" they are not. Under the crushing weight of these labours you mention, they become stunted, crippled, deformed, useless. I speak what I know - I state what I have seen.

FARADAY: I am no expert in the orcish physique, Master Westwind! But perhaps if their forms displease you, it is rather more to the credit of the generally ugly and brutish character of their race, rather than the work they are enjoined to do? In any case, the treatment of workers, you must admit, is a problem of social engineering, and not to be laid at the feet of Technology! Tullan society does not employ Technology…but it is certainly not wholly free of injustice.

WESTWIND: "Social engineering" - there is a term which I have not heard before. And how very apt it is to describe your everyday failures of conscience, here in Tarant! I assure you, Tullan society requires none of your "engineering". Every one in my native city has a status based on his or her own achievements. Our accomplishments are gained fairly by use of our native abilities - those inborn faculties which we are all encouraged to develop from birth.

FARADAY: So you say. Why is it, then, that the ranks of my own Athenaeum and Tarant's Polytechnical Institute are swelling every day with disenchanted apprentices from Tulla?

WESTWIND: I cannot answer for undisciplined individuals, who clearly lacked the strength of character to complete a course of study!

FARADAY: I don't find any of my new students to be lacking in character, Master Westwind. Perhaps what you mean to say is that they lack in patience - the enormous patience required to complete the course of study you mention.

WESTWIND: You may give whatever name you like to the necessary virtue which a pupil must have to become a Master Sorcerer. These students lacked it.

FARADAY: Very well, Master Westwind, I will give that virtue a name: longevity. Some of my students abandoned the Halls of Knowledge and came to me after a mere decade of frustration; others struggled for twenty years or more. The complaint which I have heard, over and over, is that the relatively narrow span of human life was never given any consideration by their Tullan Masters, who would often hold them back for years based on a capricious whim.

WESTWIND: The Mastery of Magick depends on mastery of oneself. Patience is the greatest virtue a mage can cultivate! If these fellows lacked it, their failure should come as no surprise to anyone.

FARADAY: But I do find it surprising, considering how wonderfully these same pupils succeed when given a fair chance by our own professors. Perhaps a mere 40 years of study is nothing to an elf, who will graduate from this ordeal and practice his Art for another 160 years at least, before he meets his Maker. To a human, the same 40 years accounts for most of his life. Even the strongest among us rarely live beyond 80 years.

WESTWIND: The defects of your species are no fault of mine! The fact that humans have difficulty mastering the Art, while they easily master Technology, is no sign that Magick is inferior. Rather it argues for the superiority of Magick!

FARADAY: Tulla argues loud and long in favor of their own "superiority", just as they have always done; but one finds the proof of their claims somewhat harder to come by.

WESTWIND: Nonsense! The proof is all around you. Look at the squalor in which the larger portion of your people live. Look how many of them are crippled by your great machines, poisoned by the vile flux of your mines and factories, or injured in railway accidents - accidents which often occur without a convenient mage nearby to take the blame.

FARADAY: Such incidents are rare. In any case, these are small matters in light of the great benefit which Technology offers to the majority.

WESTWIND: You have yet to demonstrate any great benefit to my satisfaction, Professor. In any case, the toll is terribly high. I wonder if future generations will thank you for felling every great forest, for raping every mountain, for desecrating and sterilizing the rivers, and rendering the very air unbreathable with coal-smoke and cinders?

FARADAY: They may take a dim view of the price we pay for progress, Master Westwind. But I have no doubt that many of them will be wise enough to thank us for lowering the rate of infant mortality by a factor of ten. They may also pause to thank us for making so many great advances in sanitation and medicine, for increasing the rate of literacy a hundred-fold, and for offering future generations a hope of improving one's own lot in life by stint of hard work and dedication.

WESTWIND: This "social mobility" which Tarantians claim is a phantom, in my experience. The masses are more wretched now than they were a hundred years ago; and I am in a position to know.

FARADAY: A phantom, you say? And yet here I stand, born the son of a common blacksmith, and now an eminent professor of Natural Philosophy. Social mobility is no phantom, Master Westwind, but the Age of Magick is fast becoming one. I pray you find some other occupation, when the last spark of Magick in Arcanum dies.

WESTWIND: If that day comes, Professor, you will be sorrier for it than I! A world without Magick is not worth living in. You wish me luck; I wish you the same, and pray that Tarant survives its blind and vainglorious march into the future!