TECHNOLOGY, CLASS-CONFLICT, EMPLOYMENT 613
history. The stewards would have to be past-masters in the technique of
eugenics if they were to succeed in breeding out of Human Nature this
angelically or demonically dynamic spiritual strain; and such mastery
would probably prove to be beyond their capacity, for it could hardly be
achieved without enlisting the aid of a creative intellectual activity which
would be anathema in official circles in Hyampolis. Yet, if the managers
of 'Brave New World' could not contrive to prevent the dynamic strain
in the Spirit of Man from continuing to incarnate itself in a diaspora of
untamed and untamable men and women, the security of their dehuman-
ized commonwealth would never be complete; for the fatal flaw in the
mechanism of a 'Brave New World' was its failure to provide a safety-
valve for a spirit that would endure torture to the death rather than obey
'Brave New World's' first commandment: 'Et surtout, pas trop de zelel'1

The trouble that this spirit was likely to give to the ruling authorities
in an oecumenical Hyampolis was foreshadowed in the history of the
Roman Imperial Government's long losing battle with the Christian
martyrs; for martyrdom was a response to the challenge of a regime that
was keeping the peace at the price of taking the savour out of Human
Life;2 and the attractiveness of Christian martyrdom to zealous souls
under a Roman Imperial dispensation was the more significant in view
of the fact that, under a Roman Peace that was not literally world-wide,
Christian martyrdom was not the only opportunity open to Roman
citizens or subjects for putting all their heart and all their soul and all
their strength and all their mind3 into the service of a cause that was
worthy of being served with a wholehearted devotion. An alternative
career in which they could sacrifice themselves like men instead of lead-
hag the life of human swine was offered to Roman citizens and subjects
in the military police that held the cordon of the Roman Empire's anti-
barbarian frontiers; and the esprit de corps of this magnificent force re-
quired its members to live up to a standard of professional conduct, in
the performance of their military duty,4 which the Christian Church

i Attributed to Voltaire.

* The Roman Empire was, and was intended by its makers and masters to be, a
'Brave New World* inasmuch as its reason d'etre was to prevent the recurrence of War
and Class-Conflict at whatever cost in terms of repression of creativity. The Roman
Imperial Government was suspicious of any move—even on a non-political plane—that
might conceivably disturb the existing equilibrium. This apprehensive, defensive, repres-
sive official attitude is illustrated in the story—ben trovato, se non vero—of the unfor-
tunate subject of the Emperor Tiberius who, after succeeding ill inventing a malleable
kind of unbreakable glass, offered his invention to the Emperor in the hope of receiving
a reward as a public benefactor. The Emperor's reaction was to give orders—after
ascertaining that the secret of the process was, so far, known to no one beyond the
inventor himself—that the new invention should be suppressed and the inventor be put
to death as a dangerous character whose misguided activities were a threat to the stability
of Society because his unbreakable glass, if ever put on the market, would bring about
a catastrophic fall in the prices of the metals and would thereby precipitate an economic
crisis. This story is told by Petronius Arbiter in his Coena Trimal£Mam$> chap. 51; by
the Elder Pliny m his NaturoKs Histona> Book XXXVI, chap. 26 (66), § 1*95; and in a
garbled form by Dio Cassius in bis History of Rome, Book LVII, chap. ax, ad jmem.
The emperor who is the villain of the story is anonymous ('Caesar') in Petronius's ver-
sion, but the other two authorities both name Tiberius. The writer was directed to these
sources by bis sister Professor J. M. C. Toynbee.

3 Luke *. 27. Cp. Matt. xxii. 37. T-hese passages in the Gospels are reminiscences of
Deut. vL 5J ac. 12; aooc. 6.

•* Among the many well-known illustrations of the standard of conduct that was
demanded and attained in the Imperial Roman Army, we may cite the gallantry of the