Compared to your Earth, industry on Mars, by the aid of labor-saving devices is perfect: and as a consequence the use of energy is considerable, especially so in the realm of Synthetic Chemistry. But it must be understood that the individual is taught that dependence must be placed rather on one's own dexterity, born of that God-given faculty of Intuition, than on the perfectness of a man-made machine, the creation of finite mind.
For it has so happened to races on other planets that complete degeneration and final extinction has come about by the entire dependence of the individual and afterwards of the entire race, on machinery to do the work required of the individual by the Creator, such dependence finally terminating in almost complete atrophy of the worker's intuitional faculties.
This calamity will surely overtake your future generations if a halt is not called on the over-zealous adoption of automatic machines for most every line of industrial activity. You are now getting to the stage where the most simple and elementary mathematical problems are solved by merely pressing a few buttons or turning a crank, the operator understanding little or nothing of the fundamentals underlying the solution of the problems in hand. This means, in the near future, brain atrophy through disuse.
And so with other lines of industrial activity. Not one among a thousand workers engaged in making shoes can do other than make a heel or perform some simple operation, one of hundreds of units in the completion of a pair of shoes. And perhaps it would be impossible to find one individual whose intuitional faculties were developed to the extent that he could turn out the perfect, completed article.
In order to explain how far we have succeeded on Mars in harnessing a mighty universal force to the end of utilizing the same in turning our factory wheels, lighting our domiciles and giving warmth to our homes in winter, it might not be amiss to state a few facts concerning our knowledge of matter and energy.
We have learned that material life simply amounts to functioning in an Effect world. The Cause world is the Reality which is invisible to all while hampered with a physical body; that all forms of matter are but the manifestation of the same ultimate Essence; that this Essence is but a Divine Impulse—a thrust, as it were, in the Ether. That although we observe with our sensory organs many different kinds of matter, consisting of elements and compounds of elements: if we were able to resolve any of the different forms of matter before us into their ultimate units, these ultimate particles would all turn out to be the same thing, the "Divine Impulses" just mentioned.
Now you can best grasp the idea by imagining yourselves immersed in an Infinite sea of such Divine Impulses, just as a fish is immersed in an ocean of water. Everywhere, all about us, is a teeming maelstrom of motion. There is not a cubic centimeter of space that you can call at rest. All is eternal motion. All is Energy.
And out of this inexhaustible Cosmic Reservoir do we Martians draw our energy. And as the Divine Impulse is the ultimate essence of all matter and all energy, therefore you might imagine matter in its different aspects as Electrical in origin. As Electricity is a manifestation of the Divine Impulse, then the only Reality in the Universe is GOD.
We have learned to utilize this Cosmic Energy by getting into harmony with its origin—GOD—for only through God can true knowledge be obtained.
On your Earth you have devised a very crude method for utilizing Electrical Energy. You expend more energy by burning coal or using water power than you derive from your electrical pump: for a dynamo is nothing more than a pump. Your machines do not generate electrical power for, as stated before you are immersed in an Infinite sea of energy.