Though treated with the greatest kindness and courtesy, I soon found
reason to understand that I was, at least for the present, a prisoner.
My host or his son never failed to invite me each day to spend some
time in the outer enclosure, but never intentionally left me alone
there. On one occasion, when Kevimâ had been called away and I
ventured to walk down towards the gate, my host's youngest child, who
had been playing on the roof, ran after me, and reaching me just as my
foot was set on the spring that opened the gate or outer door, caught
me by the hand, and looking up into my face, expressed by glance and
gesture a negative so unmistakable that I thought it expedient at once
to comply and return to the house. There my time was occupied, for as
great a part of each day as I could give to such a task without
extreme fatigue, in mastering the language of the country. This was a
much simpler task than might have been supposed. I soon found that,
unlike any Terrestrial tongue, the language of this people had not
grown but been made—constructed deliberately on set principles, with
a view to the greatest possible simplicity and the least possible
taxation of the memory. There were no exceptions or irregularities,
and few unnecessary distinctions; while words were so connected and
related that the mastery of a few simple grammatical forms and of a
certain number of roots enabled me to guess at, and by and by to feel
tolerably sure of, the meaning of a new word. The verb has six tenses,
formed by the addition of a consonant to the root, and six persons,
plural and singular, masculine and feminine.
_Singular._ |_Masc._| _Fem._ ||_Plural._ |_Masc._ |_Fem._
--------------|-------|--------||----------|--------|-------
I am | _avâ_ | _ava_ -|| We are | _avau_ | _avaa_
Thou art | _avo_ | _avoo_ || You are | _avou_ | _avu_
He or she is | _avy_ | _ave_ || They are | _avoi_ | _avee_
--------------|-------|--------||----------|--------|-------
The terminations are the three pronouns, feminine and masculine,
singular and plural, each represented by one of twelve vowel
characters, and declined like nouns. When a nominative immediately
follows the verb, the pronominal suffix is generally dropped, unless
required by euphony. Thus, "a man strikes" is _dak klaftas_, but in
the past tense, _dakny klaftas_, the verb without the suffix being
unpronounceable. The past tense is formed by the insertion of _n_
(_avnâ_: "I have been"), the future by _m_: _avmâ_. The imperative,
_avsâ_; which in the first person is used to convey determination or
resolve; _avsâ_, spoken in a peremptory tone, meaning "I _will_ be,"
while _avso_, according to the intonation, means "be" or "thou shalt
be;" i.e., shalt whether or no. _R_ forms the conditional, _avrâ_, and
_ren_ the conditional past, _avrenâ_, "I should have been." The need
for a passive voice is avoided by the simple method of putting the
pronoun in the accusative; thus, _dâcâ_ signifies "I strike," _dâcal_
(me strike) "I am struck." The infinitive is _avi; avyta_, "being;"
_avnyta_, "having been;" _avmyta_, "about to be." These are declined
like nouns, of which latter there are six forms, the masculine in _â,
o, and y,_ the feminine in _a, oo, and e;_ the plurals being formed
exactly as in the pronominal suffixes of the verb. The root-word,
without inflexion, alone is used where the name is employed in no
connection with a verb, where in every terrestrial language the
nominative would be employed. Thus, my guide had named the
squirrel-monkeys _ambau_ (sing. _ambâ_); but the word is declined as
follows:—
_Singular._ _Plural._
_Nominative_ ambâs ambaus
_Accusative_ ambâl ambaul
_Dative, to_ or _in_ ambân ambaun
_Ablative, by_ or _from_ ambâm ambaum
The five other forms are declined in the same manner, the vowel of the
last syllable only differing. Adjectives are declined like nouns, but
have no comparative or superlative degree; the former being expressed
by prefixing the intensitive syllable _ca_, the latter, when used
(which is but seldom) by the prefix _ela_, signifying _the_ in an
emphatic sense, as his Grace of Wellington is in England called _The_
Duke _par excellence_. Prepositions and adverbs end in _t_ or _d_.
Each form of the noun has, as a rule, its special relation to the verb
of the same root: thus from dâc, "strike," are derived _dâcâ_,
"weapon" or "hammer;", _dâco_, a "stroke" or "striking" [as given]
both masculine; _dâca_, "anvil;" _dâcoo_, "blow" or "beating" [as
received]; and _dâke_, "a thing beaten," feminine. The sixth form,
_dâky_, masculine, has in this case no proper signification, and not
being wanted, is not used. Individual letters or syllables are largely
employed in combination to give new and even contradictory meanings to
a root. Thus _n_, like the Latin _in_, signifies "penetration,"
"motion towards," or simply "remaining in a place," or, again,
"permanence." _M_, like the Latin _ab_ or _ex_, indicates "motion
from." _R_ expresses "uncertainty" or "incompleteness," and is
employed to convert a statement into a question, or a relative pronoun
into one of inquiry. _G_, like the Greek _a_ or _anti_, generally
signifies "opposition" or "negation;" _ca_ is, as aforesaid,
intensitive, and is employed, for example, to convert _âfi_, "to
breathe," into _câfi_, "to speak." _Cr_ is by itself an interjection
of abhorrence or disgust; in composition it indicates detestation or
destruction: thus, _crâky_ signifies "hatred;" _crâvi_, "the
destruction of life" or "to kill." _L_ for the most part indicates
passivity, but with different effect according to its place in the
word. Thus _mepi_ signifies "to rule;" _mepil_, "to be ruled;"
_melpi_, "to control one's self;" _lempi_, "to obey." The
signification of roots themselves is modified by a modification of the
principal vowel or consonant, _i.e._, by exchanging the original for
one closely related. Thus _avi_, "exist;" _âvi_, "be," in the positive
sense of being this or that; _afi_, "live;" _âfi_, "breathe." _Z_ is a
diminutive; _zin_, "with," often abbreviated to _zn_, "combination,"
"union." Thus _znaftau_ means "those who were brought into life
together," or "brethren."
I may add, before I quit this subject, that the Martial system of
arithmetic differs from ours principally in the use of a duodecimal
instead of a decimal basis. Figures are written on a surface divided
into minute squares, and the value of a figure, whether it signify so
many units, dozens, twelve dozens, and so forth, depends upon the
square in which it is placed. The central square of a line represents
the unit's place, and is marked by a line drawn above it. Thus a
figure answering to our I, if placed in the fourth square to the left,
represents 1728. In the third place to the right, counting the unit
square in both cases, it signifies ¹⁄₁₄₄, and so forth.
In less than a fortnight I had obtained a general idea of the
language, and was able to read easily the graven representations of
spoken sound which I have described; and by the end of a month (to use
a word which had no meaning here) I could speak intelligibly if not
freely. Only in a language so simple could my own anxiety to overcome
as soon as possible a fatal obstacle to all investigation of this new
world, and the diligent and patient assistance given by my host or his
son for a great part of every day, have enabled me to make such rapid
progress. I had noted even, during the short evening gatherings when
the whole family was assembled, the extreme taciturnity of both sexes;
and by the time I could make myself understood, I was not surprised to
learn that the Martials have scarcely the idea of what we mean by
conversation, not talking for the sake of talking, or speaking unless
they have something to discuss, explain, or communicate. I found,
again, that a new and much more difficult task, though fortunately one
not so indispensable, was still in store for me. The Martials have two
forms of writing: the one I have described, which is simply a
mechanical rendering of spoken words into artificially simplified
visible signs; the other, written by hand, with a fine pencil of some
chemical material on a prepared surface, textile or metallic. The
characters of the latter are, like ours wholly arbitrary; but the
contractions and abbreviations are so numerous that the mastery of the
mere alphabet, the forty or fifty single letters employed, is but a
single step in the first stage of the hard task of learning to read.
In no country on Earth, except China, is this task half so severe as
in Mars. On the other hand, when it is once mastered, a far superior
instrument has been gained; the Martial writing being a most terse but
perfectly legible shorthand. Every Martial can write at least as
quickly as he can speak, and can read the written character more
rapidly than the quickest eye can peruse the best Terrestrial print.
Copies, whether of the phonographic or stylographic writing, are
multiplied with extreme facility and perfection. The original, once
inscribed in either manner upon the above-mentioned _tafroo_ or
gold-leaf, is placed upon a sheet of a species of linen, smoother than
paper, called _difra_. A current of electricity sent through the
former reproduces the writing exactly upon the latter, which has been
previously steeped in some chemical composition; the effect apparently
depending on the passage of the electricity through the untouched
metal, and its absolute interception by the ink, if I may so call it,
of the writing, which bites deeply into the leaf. This process can be
repeated almost _ad libitum_; and it is equally easy to take at any
time a fresh copy upon _tafroo_, which serves again for the
reproduction of any number of _difra_ copies. The book, for the
convenience of this mode of reproduction, consists of a single sheet,
generally from four to eight inches in breadth and of any length
required. The writing intended to be thus copied is always minute, and
is read for the most part through magnifying spectacles. A roller is
attached to each end of the sheet, and when not in use the latter is
wound round that attached to the conclusion. When required for
reading, both rollers are fixed in a stand, and slowly moved by
clockwork, which spreads before the eyes of the reader a length of
about four inches at once. The motion is slackened or quickened at the
reader's pleasure, and can be stopped altogether, by touching a
spring. Another means of reproducing, not merely writings or drawings,
but natural objects, consists in a simple adaptation of the _camera
obscura_. [The only essential difference from our photographs being
that the Martial art reproduces colour as well as outline, I omit this
description.]
While I was practising myself in the Martial language my host turned
our experimental conversations chiefly, if not exclusively, upon
Terrestrial subjects; endeavouring to learn all that I could convey to
him of the physical peculiarities of the Earth, of geology, geography,
vegetation, animal life in all its forms, human existence, laws,
manners, social and domestic order. Afterwards, when, at the end of
some fifty days, he found that we could converse, if not with ease yet
without fear of serious misapprehension, he took an early opportunity
of explaining to me the causes and circumstances of my unfriendly
reception among his people.
"Your size and form," he said, "startled and surprised them. I gather
from what you have told me that on Earth there are many nations very
imperfectly known to one another, with different dress, language, and
manners. This planet is now inhabited by a single race, all speaking
the same tongue, using much the same customs, and differing from one
another in form and size much less widely than (I understand) do men
upon your Earth. There you might have been taken for a visitor from
some strange and unexplored country. Here it was clear that you were
not one of our race, and yet it was inconceivable what else you could
be. We have no giants; the tallest skeleton preserved in our museums
is scarcely a hand's breadth taller than myself, and does not, of
course, approach to your stature. Then, as you have pointed out, your
limbs are longer and your chest smaller in proportion to the rest of
the body; probably because, as you seem to say, your atmosphere is
denser than ours, and we require ampler lungs to inhale the quantity
of air necessary at each breath for the oxidation of the blood. Then
you were not dumb, and yet affected not to understand our language and
to speak a different one. No such creature could have existed in this
planet without having been seen, described, and canvassed. You did
not, therefore, belong to us. The story you told by signs was quickly
apprehended, and as quickly rejected as an audacious impossibility. It
was an insult to the intelligence of your hearers, and a sufficient
ground for suspecting a being of such size and physical strength of
some evil or dangerous design. The mob who first attacked you were
probably only perplexed and irritated; those who subsequently
interfered may have been animated also by scientific curiosity. You
would have been well worth anatomisation and chemical analysis. Your
mail-shirt protected you from the shock of the dragon, which was meant
to paralyse and place you at the mercy of your assailants; the metal
distributing the current, and the silken lining resisting its passage.
Still, at the moment when I interposed, you would certainly have been
destroyed but for your manoeuvre of laying hold of two of your
immediate escort. Our destructive weapons are far superior to any you
possess or have described. That levelled at you by my neighbour would
have sent to ten times your distance a small ball, which, bursting,
would have asphyxiated every living thing for several yards around.
But our laws regarding the use of such weapons are very stringent, and
your enemy dared not imperil the lives of those you held. Those laws
would not, he evidently thought, apply to yourself, who, as he would
have affirmed, could not be regarded as a man and an object of legal
protection."
He explained the motives and conduct of his countrymen with such
perfect coolness, such absence of surprise or indignation, that I felt
slightly nettled, and answered sarcastically, "If the slaughter of
strangers whose account of themselves appears improbable be so
completely a matter of course among you, I am at a loss to understand
your own interference, and the treatment I have received from yourself
and your family, so utterly opposite in spirit as well as in form to
that I met from everybody else."
"I do not," he answered, "always act from the motives in vogue among
my fellow-creatures of this planet; but why and how I differ from them
it might not be well to explain. It is for the moment of more
consequence to tell you why you have been kept in some sense a
prisoner here. My neighbours, independently of general laws, are for
certain reasons afraid to do me serious wrong. While in my company or
in my dwelling they could hardly attempt your life without endangering
mine or those of my family. If you were seen alone outside my
premises, another attempt, whether by the asphyxiator or by a
destructive animal, would probably be made, and might this time prove
successful. Till, therefore, the question of your humanity and right
to the protection of our law is decided by those to whom it has been
submitted, I will beg you not to venture alone beyond the bounds that
afford you security; and to believe that in this request, as in
detaining you perforce heretofore, I am acting simply for your own
welfare, and not," he added, smiling, "with a view to secure the first
opportunity of putting your relation to our race to the tests of the
dissecting table and the laboratory."
"But my story explained everything that seemed inexplicable; why was
it not believed? It was assumed that I could not belong to Mars; yet I
was a living creature in the flesh, and must therefore have come from
some other planet, as I could hardly be supposed to be an inhabitant
of space."
"We don't reason on impossibilities," replied my friend. "We have a
maxim that it is more probable that any number of witnesses should
lie, that the senses of any number of persons should be deluded, than
that a miracle should be true; and by a miracle we mean an
interruption or violation of the known laws of nature."
"One eminent terrestrial sceptic," I rejoined, "has said the same
thing, and masters of the science of probabilities have supported his
assertion. But a miracle should be a violation not merely of the known
but of all the laws of nature, and until you know all those laws, how
can you tell what is a miracle? The lifting of iron by a magnet—I
suppose you have iron and loadstones here as we have on Earth—was, to
the first man who witnessed it, just as complete a violation of the
law of gravity as now appears my voyage through space, accomplished by
a force bearing some relation to that which acts through the magnet."
"Our philosophers," he answered, "are probably satisfied that they
know nearly all that is to be known of natural laws and forces; and to
delusion or illusion human sense is undeniably liable."
"If," I said, "you cannot trust your senses, you may as well
disbelieve in your own existence and in everything around you, for you
know nothing save through those senses which are liable to illusion.
But we know practically that there are limits to illusion. At any
rate, your maxim leads directly and practically to the inference that,
since I do not belong to Mars and cannot have come from any other
world, I am not here, and in fact do not exist. Surely it was somewhat
illogical to shoot an illusion and intend to dissect a spectre! Is not
a fact the complete and unanswerable refutation of its impossibility?"
"A good many facts to which I could testify," he replied, "are in this
world confessed impossibilities, and if my neighbours witnessed them
they would pronounce them to be either impostures or illusions."
"Then," said I, somewhat indignantly, "they must prefer inferences
from facts to facts themselves, and the deductions of logic to the
evidence of their senses. Yet, if that evidence be wanting in
certainty, then, since no chain can be stronger than its weakest
point, inferences are doubly uncertain; first, because they are drawn
from facts reported by sense, and, secondly, because a flaw in the
logic is always possible."
"Do not repeat that out of doors," he answered, smiling. "It is not
permitted here to doubt the infallibility of science; and any one who
ventures to affirm persistently a story which science pronounces
impossible (like your voyage through space), if he do not fall at once
a victim to popular piety, would be consigned to the worse than living
death of life-long confinement in a lunatic hospital."
"In that case I fear very much that I have little chance of being put
under the protection of your laws, since, whatever may be the
impression of those who have seen me, every one else must inevitably
pronounce me non-existent; and a nonentity can hardly be the subject
of legal wrong or have a right to legal redress."
"Nor," he replied, "can there be any need or any right to annihilate
that which does not exist. This alternative may occupy our Courts of
Justice, for aught I know, longer than you or I can hope to live. What
I have asked is that, till these have decided between two
contradictory absurdities, you shall be provisionally and without
prejudice considered as a human reality and an object of legal
protection."
"And who," I asked, "has authority _ad interim_ to decide this point?"
"It was submitted," he answered, "in the first place, to the Astyntâ
(captain, president) who governs this district; but, as I expected, he
declined to pronounce upon it, and referred it to the Mepta (governor)
of the province. Half-an-hour's argument so bewildered the latter that
he sent the question immediately to the Zamptâ (Regent) of this
dominion, and he, after hearing by telegraph the opening of the case,
at once pronounced that, as affecting the entire planet, it must be
decided by the Camptâ or Suzerain. Now this gentleman is impatient of
the dogmatism of the philosophers, who have tried recently to impose
upon him one or two new theoretical rules which would limit the amount
of what he calls free will that he practically enjoys; and as the
philosophers are all against you, and as, moreover, he has a strong
though secret hankering after curious phenomena—it would not do to
say, after impossibilities—I do not think he will allow you to be
destroyed, at least till he has seen you."
"Is it possible," I said, "that even your monarch cherishes a belief
in the incredible or logically impossible, and yet escapes the lunatic
asylum with which you threaten me?"
"I should not escape grave consequences were I to attribute to him a
heresy so detestable," said my host. "Even the Camptâ would not be
rash enough to let it be said that he doubts the infallibility of
science, or of public opinion as its exponent. But as it is the worst
of offences to suggest the existence of that which is pronounced
impossible or unscientific, the supreme authority can always, in
virtue of the enormity of the guilt, insist on undertaking himself the
executive investigation of all such cases; and generally contrives to
have the impossibility, if a tangible one, brought into the presence
either as evidence or as accomplice."
"Well," I rejoined, after a few minutes' reflection, "I don't know
that I have much right to complain of ideas which, after all, are but
the logical development of those which, are finding constantly more
and more favour among our most enlightened nations. I can quite
believe, from what I have seen of our leading scientists, that in
another century it may be dangerous in my own country for my
descendants to profess that belief in a Creator and a future life
which I am superstitious enough to prefer to all the revelations of
all the material sciences."
"As you value your life and freedom," he replied, "don't speak of such
a belief here, save to the members of my own family, and to those with
whom I may tell you you are safe. Such ideas were held here, almost as
generally as you say they now are on Earth, some twelve thousand years
ago, and twenty thousand years ago their profession was compulsory.
But for the last hundred centuries it has been settled that they are
utterly fatal to the progress of the race, to enlightenment, to
morality, and to the practical devotion of our energies to the
business of life; and they are not merely disavowed and denounced, but
hated with an earnestness proportioned to the scientific enthusiasm of
classes and individuals."
"But," said I, "if so long, so severely, and so universally
discountenanced, how can their expression by one man here or there be
considered perilous?"
"Our philosophers say," he replied, "that the attractiveness of these
ideas to certain minds is such that no reasoning, no demonstration of
their absurdity, will prevent their exercising a mischievous influence
upon weak, and especially upon feminine natures; and perhaps the
suspicion that they are still held in secret may contribute to keep
alive the bitterness with which they are repudiated and repressed. But
if they are so held, if there be any who believe that the order of the
universe was at first established, and that its active forces are
still sustained and governed, by a conscious Intelligence—if there be
those who think that they have proof positive of the continued
existence of human beings after death—their secret has been well
kept. For very many centuries have elapsed since the last victim of
such delusions, as they were solemnly pronounced by public vote in the
reign of the four-hundredth predecessor of the present Camptâ, was
sent as incurable to the dangerous ward of our strictest hospital for
the insane."
A tone of irony, and at the same time an air of guarded reserve,
seemed to pervade all my host's remarks on this subject, and I
perceived that for some reason it was so unpleasant to him that
courtesy obliged me to drop it. I put, therefore, to turn the
conversation, some questions as to the political organisation of which
his words had afforded me a glimpse; and in reply he undertook to give
me a summary of the political history of his planet during the last
few hundred generations.
"If," he said, "in giving you this sketch of the process by which our
present social order has been established, I should mention a class or
party who have stood at certain times distinctly apart from or in
opposition to the majority, I must, in the first place, beg you to ask
no questions about them, and in the next not to repeat incautiously
the little I may tell you, or to show, by asking questions of others,
what you have heard from me."
I gave my promise frankly, of course, and he then gave me the
following sketch of Martial history:—
We date events from the union of all races and nations in a single
State, a union which was formally established 13,218 years ago. At
that time the large majority of the inhabitants of this planet
possessed no other property than their houses, clothes, and tools,
their furniture, and a few other trifles. The land was owned by fewer
than 400,000 proprietors. Those who possessed movable wealth may have
numbered thrice as many. Political and social power was in the hands
of the owners of property, and of those, generally connected with them
by birth or marriage, who were at any rate not dependent on manual
labour for their bread. But among these there were divisions and
factions on various questions more or less trivial, none of them
approaching in importance or interest to the fundamental and
irreconcilable conflict sure one day to arise between those who had
accumulated wealth and those who had not. To gain their ends in one or
another of these frivolous quarrels, each party in turn admitted to
political influence section after section of what you call the
proletariat; till in the year 3278 universal suffrage was granted,
every man and woman over the age of twelve years [6] being entitled to
a single and equal vote.
About the same time the change in opinion of which I have spoken had
taken general effect, and the vast majority of the men, at any rate,
had ceased to believe in a future life wherein the inequalities and
iniquities of this might be redressed. It followed that they were
fiercely impatient of hardships and suffering, especially such as they
thought might be redressed by political and social changes. The
leaders of the multitude, for the most part men belonging to the
propertied classes who had either wasted their wealth or never
possessed any, demanded the abolition of private ownership, first of
land, then of movable wealth; a demand which fiercely excited the
passions of those who possessed neither, and as bitterly provoked the
anger and alarm of those who did. The struggle raged for some
generations and ended by an appeal to the sword; in which, since the
force of the State was by law in the hands of the majority, the
intelligent, thrifty, careful owners of property with their adherents
were signally defeated. Universal communism was established in 3412,
none being permitted to own, or even to claim, the exclusive use of
any portion of the planet's surface, or of any other property except
the share of food and clothing allotted to him. One only privilege was
allowed to certain sectaries who still clung to the habits of the
past, to the permanence and privacy of family life. They were
permitted to have houses or portions of houses to themselves, and to
live there on the share of the public produce allotted to the several
members of each household. It had been assumed as matter of course by
the majority that when every one was forced to work there would be
more than enough for all; that public spirit, and if necessary
coercion, would prove as effectual stimulants to exertion and industry
as interest and necessity had done under the system of private
ownership.
Those who relied on the refutation of this theory forgot that with
poor and suffering men who look to no future, and acknowledge no law
but such as is created by their own capricious will and pleasure, envy
is even a more powerful passion than greed. The Many preferred that
wealth and luxury should be destroyed, rather than that they should be
the exclusive possession of the Few. The first and most visible effect
of Communism was the utter disappearance of all perishable luxuries,
of all food, clothing, furniture, better than that enjoyed by the
poorest. Whatever could not be produced in quantities sufficient to
give each an appreciable share was not produced at all. Next, the
quarrels arising out of the apportionment of labour were bitter,
constant, and savage. Only a grinding despotism could compose them,
and those who wielded such despotism for a short time excited during
the period of their rule such fierce and universal hatred, that they
were invariably overturned and almost invariably murdered before their
very brief legal term of office had closed. It was not only that those
engaged in the same kind of labour quarrelled over the task assigned
to each, whether allotted in proportion to his strength, or to the
difficulty of his labour, or by lot equally to all. Those to whom the
less agreeable employments were assigned rebelled or murmured, and at
last it was necessary to substitute rotation for division of labour,
since no one would admit that he was best fitted for the lower or less
agreeable. Of course we thus wasted silver tools in doing the work of
iron, and reduced enormously the general production of wealth. Next,
it was found that since one man's industry or idleness could produce
no appreciable effect upon the general wealth, still less upon the
particular share assigned to him, every man was as idle as the envy
and jealousy of his neighbours would allow. Finally, as the produce
annually diminished and the number of mouths to be fed became a
serious consideration, the parents of many children were regarded as
public enemies. The entire independence of women, as equal citizens,
with no recognised relation to individual men, was the inevitable
outcome, logically and practically, of the Communistic principle; but
this only made matters worse. Attempts were of course made to restrain
multiplication by law, but this brought about inquisitions so utterly
intolerable that human nature revolted against them. The sectaries I
have mentioned—around whom, without adopting or even understanding
their principles, gradually gathered all the better elements of
society, every man of intellect and spirit who had not been murdered,
with a still larger proportion of women—seceded separately or in
considerable numbers at once; established themselves in those parts of
the planet whose less fertile soil or less genial climate had caused
them to be abandoned, and there organised societies on the old
principles of private ownership and the permanence of household ties.
By and by, as they visibly prospered, they attracted the envy and
greed of the Communists. They worked under whatever disadvantage could
be inflicted by climate and soil, but they had a much more than
countervailing advantage in mutual attachment, in freedom from the
bitter passions necessarily excited by the jealousy and incessant
mutual interference inseparable from the Communistic system, and in
their escape from the caprice and instability of popular
government—these societies, whether from wisdom or mere reaction,
submitting to the rule of one or a few chief magistrates selected by
the natural leaders of each community. Moreover, they had not merely
the adhesion of all the more able, ambitious, and intellectual who
seceded from a republic in which neither talent nor industry could
give comfort or advantage, but also the full benefit of inventive
genius, stimulated by the hope of wealth in addition to whatever
public spirit the habits of Communism had not extinguished. They
systematically encouraged the cultivation of science, which the
Communists had very early put down as a withdrawal of energy from the
labour due to the community at large. They had a monopoly of
machinery, of improvement, of invention both in agriculture, in
manufactures, and in self-defence. They devised weapons far more
destructive than those possessed by the old _régime_, and still more
superior to such as, after centuries of anarchy and decline, the
Communists were able to procure. Finally, when assailed by the latter,
vast superiority of numbers was annulled by immeasurable superiority
in weapons and in discipline. The secessionists were animated, too, by
a bitter resentment against their assailants, as the authors of the
general ruin and of much individual suffering; and when the victory
was gained, they not infrequently improved it to the utter destruction
of all who had taken part in the attack. Whichever side were most to
blame in the feud, no quarter was given by either. It was an
internecine war of numbers, ignorance, and anarchy against science and
order. On both sides there still remained much of the spirit generated
in times when life was less precious than the valour by which alone it
could be held, and preserved through milder ages by the belief that
death was not annihilation—enough to give to both parties courage to
sacrifice their lives for the victory of their cause and the
destruction of their enemies. But after a few crushing defeats, the
Communists were compelled to sue for peace, and to cede a large part
of their richest territory. Driven back into their own chaotic misery,
deterred by merciless punishment from further invasion of their
neighbours' dominions, they had leisure to contrast their wretched
condition with that of those who prospered under the restored system
of private ownership, family interest, strong, orderly, permanent
government, material and intellectual civilisation. Machinery did for
the new State, into which the seceding societies were consolidated by
the necessity of self-defence, much more than it had done before
Communism declared war on it. The same envy which, if war had been any
longer possible, would have urged the Communists again and again to
plunder the wealth that contrasted so forcibly their own increasing
poverty, now humbled them to admire and covet the means which had
produced it. At last, after bitter intestine struggles, they
voluntarily submitted to the rule of their rivals, and entreated the
latter to accept them as subjects and pupils. Thus in the 39th century
order and property were once more established throughout the planet.
"But, as I have said, what you call religion had altogether
disappeared—had ceased, at least as an avowed principle, to affect
the ideas and conduct of society or of individuals. The
re-establishment of peace and order concentrated men's energies on the
production of material wealth and the achievement of physical comfort
and ease. Looking forward to nothing after death, they could only make
the best of the short life permitted to them and do their utmost to
lengthen it. In the assurance of speedy separation, affection became a
source of much more anxiety and sorrow than happiness. All ties being
precarious and their endurance short, their force became less and
less; till the utmost enjoyment of the longest possible life for
himself became the sole, or almost the sole, animating motive, the one
paramount interest, of each individual. The equality which logic had
established between the sexes dissolved the family tie. It was
impossible for law to dictate the conditions on which two free and
equal individuals should live together, merely because they differed
in sex. All the State could do it did; it insisted on a provision for
the children. But when parental affection was extinguished, such
provision could only be secured by handing over the infant and its
portion to the guardianship of the State. As children were troublesome
and noisy, the practice of giving them up to public officers to be
brought up in vast nurseries regulated on the strictest scientific
principles became the general rule, and was soon regarded as a duty;
what was at first almost openly avowed selfishness soon justifying and
glorifying itself on the ground that the children were better off
under the care of those whose undivided attention was given to them,
and in establishments where everything was regulated with sole regard
to their welfare, than they could be at home. No law compels us to
send our children to these establishments. In rare cases a favourite
will persuade her lord to retain her pet son and make him heir, but
both the Courts and public opinion discountenance this practice. Some
families, like my own, systematically retain their children and
educate them at home; but it is generally thought that in doing so we
do them a wrong, and our neighbours look askance upon so signal a
deviation from custom; the more so, perhaps, that they half suspect us
of dissenting from their views on other subjects, on which our
opinions do not so directly or so obviously affect our conduct, and on
which therefore we are not so easily convicted of free choice"
[heresy]. Here I inquired whether the birth and parentage of the
children sent to the public establishments were registered, so as to
permit their being reclaimed or inheriting property.
"No," he replied. "Inheritance by mere descent is a notion no longer
favoured. I believe that young mothers sometimes, before parting with
their children, impress upon them some indelible mark by which it may
be possible hereafter to recognise them; but such recognitions seldom
occur. Maternal affection is discountenanced as a purely animal
instinct, a survival from a lower grade of organisation, and does not
generally outlast a ten years' separation; while paternal love is
utterly scouted as an absurdity to which even the higher animals are
not subject. Boys are kept in the public establishments until the age
of twelve, those from ten to twelve being separated from the younger
ones and passing through the higher education in separate colleges.
The girls are educated apart till they complete their tenth year, and
are almost invariably married in the course of the next. At first,
under the influence of the theory of sexual equality, both received
their intellectual instruction in the same classes and passed through
the same examinations. Separation was soon found necessary; but still
girls passed through the same intellectual training as their brothers.
Experience, however, showed that this would not answer. Those girls
who distinguished themselves in the examinations were, with scarcely
an exception, found unattractive as wives and unfit to be mothers. A
very much larger number, a number increasing in every generation,
suffered unmistakably from the severity of the mental discipline to
which they were subjected. The advocates of female equality made a
very hard fight for equal culture; but the physical consequences were
perfectly clear and perfectly intolerable. When a point was reached at
which one half the girls of each generation were rendered invalids for
life, and the other half protected only by a dense stupidity or
volatile idleness which no school punishments could overcome, the
Equalists were driven from one untenable point to another, and forced
at last to demand a reduction of the masculine standard of education
to the level of feminine capacities. Upon this ground they took their
last stand, and were hopelessly beaten. The reaction was so complete
that for the last two hundred and forty generations, the standard of
female education has been lowered to that which by general confession
ordinary female brains can stand without injury to the physique. The
practical consequences of sexual equality have re-established in a
more absolute form than ever the principle that the first purpose of
female life is marriage and maternity; and that, for their own sakes
as for the sake of each successive generation, women should be so
trained as to be attractive wives and mothers of healthy children, all
other considerations being subordinated to these. A certain small
number of ladies avail themselves of the legal equality they still
enjoy, and live in the world much as men. But we regard them as
third-rate men in petticoats, hardly as women at all. Marriage with
one of them is the last resource to which a man too idle or too
foolish to earn his own living will betake himself. Whatever their
education, our women have always found that such independence as they
could earn by hard work was less satisfactory than the dependence,
coupled with assured comfort and ease, which they enjoy as the
consorts, playthings, or slaves of the other sex; and they are only
too glad to barter their legal equality for the certainty of
protection, indolence, and permanent support."
"Then your marriages," I said, "are permanent?"
"Not by law," he replied. "Nothing like what our remote ancestors
called marriage is recognised at all. The maidens who come of age each
year sell themselves by a sort of auction, those who purchase them
arranging with the girls themselves the terms on which the latter will
enter their family. Custom has fixed the general conditions which
every girl expects, and which only the least attractive are forced to
forego. They are promised a permanent maintenance from their master's
estate, and promise in return a fixed term of marriage. After two or
three years they are free to rescind the contract; after ten or twelve
they may leave their husbands with a stipulated pension. They receive
an allowance for dress and so forth proportionate to their personal
attractions or to the fancy of the suitor; and of course the richest
men can offer the best terms, and generally secure the most agreeable
wives, in whatever number they please or think they can without
inconvenience support."
"Then," I said, "the women can divorce themselves at pleasure, but the
men cannot dismiss them! This hardly looks like equality."
"The practical result," he answered, "is that men don't care for a
release which would part them from complaisant slaves, and that women
dare not seek a divorce which can only hand them over to another
master on rather worse terms. When the longer term has expired, the
latter almost always prefer the servitude to which they are accustomed
to an independent life of solitude and friendlessness."
"And what becomes," I asked, "of the younger men who must enter the
world without property, without parents or protectors?"
"We are, after youth has passed, an indolent race. We hardly care, as
a rule, to cultivate our fields or direct our factories; but prefer
devoting the latter half at least of our lives to a somewhat
easy-going cultivation of that division of science which takes hold of
our fancy. These divisions are such as your conversation leads me to
think you would probably consider absurdly minute. A single class of
insects, a single family of plants, the habits of one race of fishes,
suffice for the exclusive study of half a lifetime. Minds of a more
active or more practical bent will spend an equal time over the
construction of a new machine more absolutely automatic than any that
has preceded it. Physical labour is thrown as much as possible on the
young; and even they are now so helped by machinery and by trained
animals, that the eight hours' work which forms their day's labour
hardly tires their muscles. Our tastes render us very anxious to
devolve upon others as soon as possible the preservation and
development of the property we have acquired. A man of moderate means,
long before he has reached his thirtieth [7] year, generally seeks one
assistant; men of larger fortune may want two, five, or ten. These are
chosen, as a rule, by preference from those who have passed the most
stringent and successful collegiate examination. Martial parents are
not prolific, and the mortality in our public nurseries is very large.
I impute it to moral influences, since the chief cause of death is low
vitality, marked nervous depression and want of animal spirits, such
as the total absence of personal tenderness and sympathy must produce
in children. It is popularly ascribed to the over-cultivation of the
race, as plants and animals highly civilised—that is, greatly
modified and bred to an artificial excellence by human agency—are
certainly delicate, unprolific, and especially difficult to rear.
There is little disease in the nurseries, but there is little health
and a deficiency of nervous energy. One fact is significant, however
interpreted, and bears directly on your last question. Since the wide
extension of polygamy, female births are to male about as seven to
six; but the deaths in public nurseries between the first and tenth
years are twenty-nine in twelve dozen admissions in the stronger sex,
and only about ten in the weaker. Read these facts as we may, they
ensure employment to the young men when their education is
completed—the two last years of severe study adding somewhat to the
mortality among them.
"A large number find employment in superintending the property of
others. To give them a practical interest in its preservation and
improvement, they are generally, after a shorter or longer probation,
adopted by their employers as heirs to their estate; our experience of
Communism having taught us that immediate and obvious self-interest is
the only motive that certainly and seriously affects human action. The
distance at which they are kept, and the absolute seclusion of our
family life, enables us easily to secure ourselves against any
over-anxiety on their part to anticipate their inheritance. The
minority who do not thus find a regular place in society are employed
in factories, as artisans, or on the lands belonging to the State. To
ensure their zeal, the last receive a fixed proportion of the produce,
or are permitted to rent land at fixed rates, and at the end of ten
years receive a part thereof in full property. By these means we are
free from all the dangers and difficulties of that state of society
which preceded the Communistic cataclysm. We have poor men, and men
who can live only by daily labour; but these have dissipated their
wealth, or are looking forward at no very distant period to a
sufficient competence. The entire population of our planet does not
exceed two hundred millions, and is not much increased from generation
to generation. The area of cultivable land is about ten millions of
square miles, and half a square mile in these equatorial continents,
which alone are at all generally inhabited, will, if well cultivated
and cared for, furnish the largest household with every luxury that
man's heart can desire. Eight hours' labour in the day for ten years
of life will secure to the least fortunate a reasonable competence;
and an ambitious man, with quick intelligence and reasonable industry,
may always hope to become rich, if he thinks wealth worth the labour
of invention or of exceptionally troublesome work."
"Mars ought, then," I said, "to be a material paradise. You have
attained nearly all that our most advanced political economists regard
as the perfection of economical order—a population nearly stationary,
and a soil much more than adequate to their support; a general
distribution of property, total absence of permanent poverty, and
freedom from that gnawing anxiety regarding the future of ourselves or
our children which is the great evil of life upon Earth and the
opprobrium of our social arrangements. You have carried out, moreover,
the doctrines of our most advanced philosophers; you have absolute
equality before the law, competitive examination among the young for
the best start in life, with equal chances wherever equality is
possible; and again, perfect freedom and full legal equality as
regards the relations of the sexes. Are your countrymen satisfied with
the results?"
"Yes," answered my host, "in so far, at least, that they have no wish
to change them, no idea that any great social or political reforms
could improve our condition. Our lesson in Communism has rendered all
agitation on such matters, all tendency to democratic institutions,
all appeals to popular passions, utterly odious and alarming to us.
But that we are happy I will venture neither to affirm nor to deny.
Physically, no doubt, we have great advantages over you, if I rightly
understand your description of life on Earth. We have got rid of old
age, and, to a great extent, of disease. Many of our scientists
persist in the hope to get rid of death; but, since all that has been
accomplished in this direction was accomplished some two thousand
years back, and yet we continue to die, general opinion hardly concurs
in this hope."
"How do you mean," I inquired, "that you have got rid of old age and
of disease?"
"We have," he replied, "learned pretty fully the chemistry of life. We
have found remedies for that hardening of the bones and weakening of
the muscles which used to be the physical characteristics of declining
years. Our hair no longer whitens; our teeth, if they decay, are now
removed and naturally replaced by new ones; our eyes retain to the
last the clearness of their sight. A famous physician of five thousand
years back said in controversy on this subject, that 'the clock was
not made to go for ever;' by which he meant that human bodies, like
the materials of machines, wore out by lapse of time. In his day this
was true, since it was impossible fully to repair the waste and
physical wear and tear of the human frame. This is no longer so. The
clock does not wear out, but it goes more and more slowly and
irregularly, and stops at last for some reason that the most skilful
inspection cannot discover. The body of him who dies, as we say, 'by
efflux of time' at the age of fifty is as perfect as it was at
five-and twenty. [8] Yet few men live to be fifty-five, [9] and most
have ceased to take much interest in practical life, or even in
science, by forty-five." [10]
"That seems strange," I said. "If no foreign body gets into the
machinery, and the machinery itself does not wear out, it is difficult
to understand why the clock should cease to go."
"Would not some of your race," he asked, "explain the mystery by
suggesting that the human frame is not a clock, but contains, and owes
its life to, an essence beyond the reach of the scalpel, the
microscope, and the laboratory?"
"They hold that it is so. But then it is not the soul but the body
that is worn out in seventy or eighty of the Earth's revolutions."
"Ay," he said; "but if man were such a duplex being, it might be that
the wearing out of the body was necessary, and had been adapted to
release the soul when it had completed its appropriate term of service
in the flesh."
I could not answer this question, and he did not pursue the theme.
Presently I inquired, "If you allow no appeal to popular feeling or
passion, to what was I so nearly the victim? And what is the terrorism
that makes it dangerous to avow a credulity or incredulity opposed to
received opinion?"
"Scientific controversies," he replied, "enlist our strongest and
angriest feelings. It is held that only wickedness or lunacy can
resist the evidence that has convinced a vast majority. By
arithmetical calculation the chances that twelve men are wrong and
twelve thousand [11] right, on a matter of inductive or deductive
proof, are found to amount to what must be taken for practical
certainty; and when the twelve still hold out, they are regarded as
madmen or knaves, and treated accordingly by their fellows. If it be
thought desirable to invoke a legal settlement of the issue, a council
of all the overseers of our scientific colleges is called, and its
decision is by law irrevocable and infallible, especially if ratified
by the popular voice. And if a majority vote be worth anything at all,
I think this modern theory at least as sound as the democratic theory
of politics which prevailed here before the Communistic revolution,
and which seems by your account to be gaining ground on Earth."
"And what," I inquired, "is your political constitution? What are the
powers of your rulers; and how, in the absence of public discussion
and popular suffrage, are they practically limited?"
"In theory they are unlimited," he answered; "in practice they are
limited by custom, by caution, and, above all, by the lack of motives
for misrule. The authority of each prince over those under him, from
the Sovereign to the local president or captain, is absolute. But the
Executive leaves ordinary matters of civil or criminal law to the
Courts of Justice. Cases are tried by trained judges; the old
democratic usage of employing untrained juries having been long ago
discarded, as a worse superstition than simple decision by lot. The
lot is right twelve times in two dozen; the jury not oftener than
half-a-dozen times. The judges don't heat or bias their minds by
discussion. They hear all that can be elicited from parties, accuser,
accused, and witnesses, and all that skilled advocates can say. Then
the secretary of the Court draws up a summary of the case, each judge
takes it home to consider, each writes out his judgment, which is read
by the secretary, none but the author knowing whose it is. If the
majority be five to two, judgment is given; if less, the case is tried
again before a higher tribunal of twice as many judges. If no decision
can be reached, the accused is acquitted for the time, or, in a civil
dispute, a compromise is imposed. The rulers cannot, without incurring
such general anger as would be fatal to their power, disregard our
fundamental laws. Gross tyranny to individuals is too dangerous to be
carried far. It is a capital crime for any but the officers of the
Sovereign and of the twelve Regents to possess the fearfully
destructive weapons that brought our last wars to an end. But any man,
driven to desperation, can construct and use similar weapons so easily
that no ruler will drive a man to such revengeful despair. Again, the
tyranny of subordinate officials would be checked by their chief, who
would be angry at being troubled and endangered by misconduct in which
he had no direct interest. And finally, _personal_ malice is not a
strong passion among us; and our manners render it unlikely that a
ruler should come into such collision with any of his subjects as
would engender such a feeling. Of those immediately about him, he can
and does at once get rid as soon as he begins to dislike, and before
he has cause to hate them. It is our maxim that greed of wealth or
lust of power are the chief motives of tyranny. Our rulers cannot well
hope to extend a power already autocratic, and we take care to leave
them nothing to covet in the way of wealth. We can afford to give them
all that they can desire of luxury and splendour. To enrich to the
uttermost a few dozen governors costs us nothing comparable to the
cost of democracy, with its inseparable party conflicts,
maladministration, neglect, and confusion."
"A clever writer on Earth lately remarked that it would be easy to
satiate princes with all personal enjoyments, but impossible to
satiate all their hangers-on, or even all the members of their
family."
"You must remember," he replied, "that we have here, save in such
exceptional cases as my own, nothing like what you call a family. The
ladies of a prince's house have everything they can wish for within
their bounds and cannot go outside of these. As for dependents, no man
here, at least of such as are likely to be rulers, cares for his
nearest and dearest friends enough to incur personal peril, public
displeasure, or private resentment on their account. The officials
around a ruler's person are few in number, so that we can afford to
make their places too comfortable and too valuable to be lightly
risked. Neglect, again, is pretty sure to be punished by superior
authority. Activity in the promotion of public objects is the only
interest left to princes, while tyranny is, for the reasons I have
given, too dangerous to be carried far."