It was not for some time, and until, by repeated trances, if they are to
be so called, my mind became better prepared to interchange ideas with
my entertainers, and more fully to comprehend differences of manners
and customs, at first too strange to my experience to be seized by my
reason, that I was enabled to gather the following details respecting
the origin and history of the subterranean population, as portion of one
great family race called the Ana.
According to the earliest traditions, the remote progenitors of the
race had once tenanted a world above the surface of that in which their
descendants dwelt. Myths of that world were still preserved in their
archives, and in those myths were legends of a vaulted dome in which the
lamps were lighted by no human hand. But such legends were considered by
most commentators as allegorical fables. According to these traditions
the earth itself, at the date to which the traditions ascend, was not
indeed in its infancy, but in the throes and travail of transition
from one form of development to another, and subject to many violent
revolutions of nature. By one of such revolutions, that portion of the
upper world inhabited by the ancestors of this race had been subjected
to inundations, not rapid, but gradual and uncontrollable, in which all,
save a scanty remnant, were submerged and perished. Whether this be
a record of our historical and sacred Deluge, or of some earlier one
contended for by geologists, I do not pretend to conjecture; though,
according to the chronology of this people as compared with that of
Newton, it must have been many thousands of years before the time of
Noah. On the other hand, the account of these writers does not harmonise
with the opinions most in vogue among geological authorities, inasmuch
as it places the existence of a human race upon earth at dates long
anterior to that assigned to the terrestrial formation adapted to the
introduction of mammalia. A band of the ill-fated race, thus invaded by
the Flood, had, during the march of the waters, taken refuge in caverns
amidst the loftier rocks, and, wandering through these hollows, they
lost sight of the upper world forever. Indeed, the whole face of the
earth had been changed by this great revulsion; land had been turned
into sea--sea into land. In the bowels of the inner earth, even now,
I was informed as a positive fact, might be discovered the remains of
human habitation--habitation not in huts and caverns, but in vast cities
whose ruins attest the civilisation of races which flourished before
the age of Noah, and are not to be classified with those genera to which
philosophy ascribes the use of flint and the ignorance of iron.
The fugitives had carried with them the knowledge of the arts they had
practised above ground--arts of culture and civilisation. Their earliest
want must have been that of supplying below the earth the light they had
lost above it; and at no time, even in the traditional period, do the
races, of which the one I now sojourned with formed a tribe, seem to
have been unacquainted with the art of extracting light from gases, or
manganese, or petroleum. They had been accustomed in their former state
to contend with the rude forces of nature; and indeed the lengthened
battle they had fought with their conqueror Ocean, which had taken
centuries in its spread, had quickened their skill in curbing waters
into dikes and channels. To this skill they owed their preservation in
their new abode. “For many generations,” said my host, with a sort
of contempt and horror, “these primitive forefathers are said to have
degraded their rank and shortened their lives by eating the flesh of
animals, many varieties of which had, like themselves, escaped the
Deluge, and sought shelter in the hollows of the earth; other animals,
supposed to be unknown to the upper world, those hollows themselves
produced.”
When what we should term the historical age emerged from the twilight
of tradition, the Ana were already established in different communities,
and had attained to a degree of civilisation very analogous to that
which the more advanced nations above the earth now enjoy. They
were familiar with most of our mechanical inventions, including the
application of steam as well as gas. The communities were in fierce
competition with each other. They had their rich and their poor; they
had orators and conquerors; they made war either for a domain or
an idea. Though the various states acknowledged various forms of
government, free institutions were beginning to preponderate; popular
assemblies increased in power; republics soon became general; the
democracy to which the most enlightened European politicians look
forward as the extreme goal of political advancement, and which
still prevailed among other subterranean races, whom they despised as
barbarians, the loftier family of Ana, to which belonged the tribe I was
visiting, looked back to as one of the crude and ignorant experiments
which belong to the infancy of political science. It was the age of envy
and hate, of fierce passions, of constant social changes more or less
violent, of strife between classes, of war between state and state. This
phase of society lasted, however, for some ages, and was finally brought
to a close, at least among the nobler and more intellectual
populations, by the gradual discovery of the latent powers stored in the
all-permeating fluid which they denominate Vril.
According to the account I received from Zee, who, as an erudite
professor of the College of Sages, had studied such matters more
diligently than any other member of my host’s family, this fluid is
capable of being raised and disciplined into the mightiest agency over
all forms of matter, animate or inanimate. It can destroy like the flash
of lightning; yet, differently applied, it can replenish or invigorate
life, heal, and preserve, and on it they chiefly rely for the cure
of disease, or rather for enabling the physical organisation to
re-establish the due equilibrium of its natural powers, and thereby
to cure itself. By this agency they rend way through the most solid
substances, and open valleys for culture through the rocks of their
subterranean wilderness. From it they extract the light which supplies
their lamps, finding it steadier, softer, and healthier than the other
inflammable materials they had formerly used.
But the effects of the alleged discovery of the means to direct the more
terrible force of vril were chiefly remarkable in their influence upon
social polity. As these effects became familiarly known and skillfully
administered, war between the vril-discoverers ceased, for they brought
the art of destruction to such perfection as to annul all superiority in
numbers, discipline, or military skill. The fire lodged in the hollow
of a rod directed by the hand of a child could shatter the strongest
fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van to the rear of an
embattled host. If army met army, and both had command of this agency,
it could be but to the annihilation of each. The age of war was
therefore gone, but with the cessation of war other effects bearing
upon the social state soon became apparent. Man was so completely at
the mercy of man, each whom he encountered being able, if so willing,
to slay him on the instant, that all notions of government by force
gradually vanished from political systems and forms of law. It is only
by force that vast communities, dispersed through great distances of
space, can be kept together; but now there was no longer either the
necessity of self-preservation or the pride of aggrandisement to make
one state desire to preponderate in population over another.
The Vril-discoverers thus, in the course of a few generations,
peacefully split into communities of moderate size. The tribe amongst
which I had fallen was limited to 12,000 families. Each tribe occupied
a territory sufficient for all its wants, and at stated periods the
surplus population departed to seek a realm of its own. There appeared
no necessity for any arbitrary selection of these emigrants; there was
always a sufficient number who volunteered to depart.
These subdivided states, petty if we regard either territory or
population,--all appertained to one vast general family. They spoke
the same language, though the dialects might slightly differ. They
intermarried; They maintained the same general laws and customs; and so
important a bond between these several communities was the knowledge
of vril and the practice of its agencies, that the word A-Vril was
synonymous with civilisation; and Vril-ya, signifying “The Civilised
Nations,” was the common name by which the communities employing the
uses of vril distinguished themselves from such of the Ana as were yet
in a state of barbarism.
The government of the tribe of Vril-ya I am treating of was apparently
very complicated, really very simple. It was based upon a principle
recognised in theory, though little carried out in practice, above
ground--viz., that the object of all systems of philosophical thought
tends to the attainment of unity, or the ascent through all intervening
labyrinths to the simplicity of a single first cause or principle.
Thus in politics, even republican writers have agreed that a benevolent
autocracy would insure the best administration, if there were any
guarantees for its continuance, or against its gradual abuse of the
powers accorded to it. This singular community elected therefore a
single supreme magistrate styled Tur; he held his office nominally
for life, but he could seldom be induced to retain it after the first
approach of old age. There was indeed in this society nothing to induce
any of its members to covet the cares of office. No honours, no insignia
of higher rank, were assigned to it. The supreme magistrate was not
distinguished from the rest by superior habitation or revenue. On the
other hand, the duties awarded to him were marvellously light and easy,
requiring no preponderant degree of energy or intelligence. There being
no apprehensions of war, there were no armies to maintain; there being
no government of force, there was no police to appoint and direct. What
we call crime was utterly unknown to the Vril-ya; and there were no
courts of criminal justice. The rare instances of civil disputes were
referred for arbitration to friends chosen by either party, or decided
by the Council of Sages, which will be described later. There were
no professional lawyers; and indeed their laws were but amicable
conventions, for there was no power to enforce laws against an offender
who carried in his staff the power to destroy his judges. There were
customs and regulations to compliance with which, for several ages,
the people had tacitly habituated themselves; or if in any instance an
individual felt such compliance hard, he quitted the community and went
elsewhere. There was, in fact, quietly established amid this state,
much the same compact that is found in our private families, in which we
virtually say to any independent grown-up member of the family whom
we receive to entertain, “Stay or go, according as our habits and
regulations suit or displease you.” But though there were no laws such
as we call laws, no race above ground is so law-observing. Obedience to
the rule adopted by the community has become as much an instinct as
if it were implanted by nature. Even in every household the head of it
makes a regulation for its guidance, which is never resisted nor even
cavilled at by those who belong to the family. They have a proverb,
the pithiness of which is much lost in this paraphrase, “No happiness
without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity.”
The mildness of all government among them, civil or domestic, may be
signalised by their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or
forbidden--viz., “It is requested not to do so and so.” Poverty among
the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that property is held in common, or
that all are equals in the extent of their possessions or the size and
luxury of their habitations: but there being no difference of rank or
position between the grades of wealth or the choice of occupations, each
pursues his own inclinations without creating envy or vying; some like
a modest, some a more splendid kind of life; each makes himself happy in
his own way. Owing to this absence of competition, and the limit placed
on the population, it is difficult for a family to fall into distress;
there are no hazardous speculations, no emulators striving for superior
wealth and rank. No doubt, in each settlement all originally had the
same proportions of land dealt out to them; but some, more adventurous
than others, had extended their possessions farther into the bordering
wilds, or had improved into richer fertility the produce of their
fields, or entered into commerce or trade. Thus, necessarily, some
had grown richer than others, but none had become absolutely poor, or
wanting anything which their tastes desired. If they did so, it was
always in their power to migrate, or at the worst to apply, without
shame and with certainty of aid, to the rich, for all the members of
the community considered themselves as brothers of one affectionate and
united family. More upon this head will be treated of incidentally as my
narrative proceeds.
The chief care of the supreme magistrate was to communicate with certain
active departments charged with the administration of special details.
The most important and essential of such details was that connected with
the due provision of light. Of this department my host, Aph-Lin, was
the chief. Another department, which might be called the foreign,
communicated with the neighbouring kindred states, principally for the
purpose of ascertaining all new inventions; and to a third department
all such inventions and improvements in machinery were committed for
trial. Connected with this department was the College of Sages--a
college especially favoured by such of the Ana as were widowed and
childless, and by the young unmarried females, amongst whom Zee was
the most active, and, if what we call renown or distinction was a thing
acknowledged by this people (which I shall later show it is not), among
the more renowned or distinguished. It is by the female Professors
of this College that those studies which are deemed of least use in
practical life--as purely speculative philosophy, the history of remote
periods, and such sciences as entomology, conchology, &c.--are the more
diligently cultivated. Zee, whose mind, active as Aristotle’s, equally
embraced the largest domains and the minutest details of thought, had
written two volumes on the parasite insect that dwells amid the hairs
of a tiger’s* paw, which work was considered the best authority on that
interesting subject.
* The animal here referred to has many points of difference from the
tiger of the upper world. It is larger, and with a broader paw, and
still more receding frontal. It haunts the side of lakes and pools,
and feeds principally on fishes, though it does not object to any
terrestrial animal of inferior strength that comes in its way. It is
becoming very scarce even in the wild districts, where it is devoured
by gigantic reptiles. I apprehended that it clearly belongs to the tiger
species, since the parasite animalcule found in its paw, like that in
the Asiatic tiger, is a miniature image of itself.
But the researches of the sages are not confined to such subtle or
elegant studies. They comprise various others more important, and
especially the properties of vril, to the perception of which their
finer nervous organisation renders the female Professors eminently keen.
It is out of this college that the Tur, or chief magistrate, selects
Councillors, limited to three, in the rare instances in which novelty of
event or circumstance perplexes his own judgment.
There are a few other departments of minor consequence, but all are
carried on so noiselessly, and quietly that the evidence of a government
seems to vanish altogether, and social order to be as regular and
unobtrusive as if it were a law of nature. Machinery is employed to an
inconceivable extent in all the operations of labour within and without
doors, and it is the unceasing object of the department charged with its
administration to extend its efficiency. There is no class of labourers
or servants, but all who are required to assist or control the machinery
are found in the children, from the time they leave the care of their
mothers to the marriageable age, which they place at sixteen for the
Gy-ei (the females), twenty for the Ana (the males). These children are
formed into bands and sections under their own chiefs, each following
the pursuits in which he is most pleased, or for which he feels himself
most fitted. Some take to handicrafts, some to agriculture, some to
household work, and some to the only services of danger to which the
population is exposed; for the sole perils that threaten this tribe are,
first, from those occasional convulsions within the earth, to foresee
and guard against which tasks their utmost ingenuity--irruptions of fire
and water, the storms of subterranean winds and escaping gases. At
the borders of the domain, and at all places where such peril might
be apprehended, vigilant inspectors are stationed with telegraphic
communications to the hall in which chosen sages take it by turns to
hold perpetual sittings. These inspectors are always selected from the
elder boys approaching the age of puberty, and on the principle that at
that age observation is more acute and the physical forces more alert
than at any other. The second service of danger, less grave, is in the
destruction of all creatures hostile to the life, or the culture, or
even the comfort, of the Ana. Of these the most formidable are the vast
reptiles, of some of which antediluvian relics are preserved in our
museums, and certain gigantic winged creatures, half bird, half reptile.
These, together with lesser wild animals, corresponding to our tigers
or venomous serpents, it is left to the younger children to hunt and
destroy; because, according to the Ana, here ruthlessness is wanted,
and the younger the child the more ruthlessly he will destroy. There is
another class of animals in the destruction of which discrimination
is to be used, and against which children of intermediate age are
appointed--animals that do not threaten the life of man, but ravage the
produce of his labour, varieties of the elk and deer species, and
a smaller creature much akin to our rabbit, though infinitely more
destructive to crops, and much more cunning in its mode of depredation.
It is the first object of these appointed infants, to tame the more
intelligent of such animals into respect for enclosures signalised by
conspicuous landmarks, as dogs are taught to respect a larder, or even
to guard the master’s property. It is only where such creatures are
found untamable to this extent that they are destroyed. Life is never
taken away for food or for sport, and never spared where untamably
inimical to the Ana. Concomitantly with these bodily services and tasks,
the mental education of the children goes on till boyhood ceases. It is
the general custom, then, to pass though a course of instruction at
the College of Sages, in which, besides more general studies, the pupil
receives special lessons in such vocation or direction of intellect
as he himself selects. Some, however, prefer to pass this period of
probation in travel, or to emigrate, or to settle down at once
into rural or commercial pursuits. No force is put upon individual
inclination.