Doingasyoulike

Continuing on the transformation theme:  in the nineteenth century, a series of attacks on political economy made the case of transformation (downwards --> devolution) as a consequence of (wrong) choices.  Perhaps the best example of this transformation message comes in the seemingly innocent tale by Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies:  A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby.  In it, a fairy tells Tom (the chimney sweep) and Ellie this story of the Doasyoulikes, who fail to work for a living:

and there were the remnant of the Doasyoulikes, doing as they liked, as before.They were too lazy to move away from the mountain; so they said, If it has blown up once, that is all the more reason that it should not blow up again. And they were few in number: but they only said, The more the merrier, but the fewer the better fare. However, that was not quite true; for all the flapdoodle-trees were killed by the volcano, and they had eaten all the roast pigs, who, of course, could not be expected to have little ones. So they had to live very hard, on nuts and roots which they scratched out of the ground with sticks. Some of them talked of sowing corn, as their ancestors used to do, before they came into the land of Readymade ; but they had forgotten how to make ploughs (they had forgotten even how to make Jews' harps  by this time), and had eaten all the seed-corn which they brought out of the land of Hardwork years since; and of course it was too much trouble to go away and find more. So they lived miserably on roots and nuts, and all the weakly little children had great stomachs, and then died.

“Why," said Tom, " they are growing no better than savages.”

“And look how ugly they are all getting,” said Ellie.

“Yes ; when people live on poor vegetables instead of roast beef and plum-pudding, their jaws grow large, and their lips grow coarse, like the poor Paddies who eat potatoes.”

Having chosen not to work, the Doasyoulikes first become "Irish".  In the next 500 years, they devolve more and lose the ability to reason and speak (which, as Adam Smith argued, are requisite for exchange).  Kingsley's readers would not miss the Man and Brother reference:

      And in the next five hundred years they were all dead and gone, by bad food and wild beasts and hunters; all except one tremendous old fellow with jaws like a jack who stood full seven feet high; and M. Du Chaillu came up to him, and shot him, as he stood roaring and thumping on his breast. And he remembered that his ancestors had once been men, and tried to say, “Am I not a man and a brother?” but had forgotten how to use his tongue; and then he had tried to call for a doctor, but he had forgotten the word for one.  So all he said was “Ubbobboo!” and died.

Comments

[David Levy]

There is a marvelously helpful review of Water-Babies in the Times which makes the point that Water-Babies blends Darwin and Carlyle in the transformational enterprise.

Kingsley's "ex cathedra opinion" on the then raging American Civil War -- of which the Carlylean sneer at 'a man and a brother' has to be one -- was judged by the Times as a blemish.