This state of public opinion, combined with the great amiability of the victim, induced the judges to pass on the criminal a sentence which they must have believed to amount to eternal punishment, namely, penal servitude for life. Life was, at that time, held to be interminable, except by violence; and, inasmuch as the convict in prison was secure from everything of the kind, the sentence could bear no other interpretation. However, at the end of about three years and a-half, the prisoner, without any apparent lawful reason, suddenly evanesced. This event greatly puzzled the community where it occurred; but after the discovery of the Second Law, there was no further mystery about it. The man’s absolute wretchedness at the forlorn prospect before him of everlasting life in jail, was quite sufficient, without his undergoing any other form of physical suffering, to work his deliverance. The negative balance of ten million units was reached in the three years and a half, whereupon he departed into invisibility under the natural operation of the law.
It is obvious that the time which is required to make up the fixed number of metronomic units will depend very much on the degree of the intensity of the suffering undergone. Instances have occurred where a few days of exceedingly acute bodily torture have sufficed to raise the index to the required point. On the other hand, a man who is only suffering from chronic ennui may endure for half a century; the balance against him rising by very slow degrees. It should also be remembered that when a man who has enjoyed a very happy life falls into adversity, he will certainly have much sorrow to endure, before he can hope for deliverance by this beneficent law; for the balance on the positive side (for joy), which will be high, must be reduced quite down to zero before the negative summation begins.
From the above-stated facts the reader will have perceived that the conditions of rational life among the Hesperians differ from those experienced on the earth in several essential points. The most important of these are the three following:—The absence of any reproduction of the species; the exemption of the individual from death, so far as this is the result of natural and necessary causes; and the cyclical waxing and waning of the powers of the bodily organism. Evanescence, though its real nature was unknown, had plainly, for the ancient Hesperians, the same significance as death has for us; the only difference being that, with them, the dissolution of the body was an instantaneous act, instead of being effected, except when accelerated by fire, through the medium of a slow and loathsome process of decay.
CHAPTER V.
Of the causes of the high civilization of Hesperos—Of the relations of the sexes—Of private personal property—Of property in Land; and of the methods of Eviction—Of the Jacks and Masters of all Trades.
When we bear in mind these essential differences of Hesperian life, the rapid development of civilization which took place in the northern hemisphere after the sudden introduction of the rational creation will not appear surprising. So far as I have been able to form an estimate, from the information that has been very freely afforded me, the newly created Hesperians were, both intellectually and morally, much on a par with the average of human beings. But the conditions under which they were placed rendered their advance in civilization incomparably more rapid than anything which a similar species, circumstanced as we are on the earth, could hope to attain.
Their total exemption from the chronic paralysis of the human race which is involved in the incessant passage of the latter through the stages of infancy and childhood, would, by itself, be enough to give the Hesperians such a start in the race as to render competition useless. With us the intelligent man of matured wisdom departs, carrying with him to the grave the greater part of his accumulated stores of knowledge, and all his skill; leaving his successor, the child, to recover them as well as he can. The Hesperian is crossed by no such check; his course is one uninterrupted advance. Thus it came to pass that, after the lapse of a few thousand years, the condition of the northern hemisphere was, as regards every form of advanced civilization, a very long way ahead of anything even dreamed of, much less realized on earth.
It is quite necessary that I should here say a few words on the relations between the sexes in this strange planet. On this difficult subject I have taken abundance of notes from the information I received; information which, I am bound to say, was given me without the slightest reserve. [I suppress all details in these notes, as public opinion, very rightly, does not permit the discussion of such matters.] It is obvious of itself that the permanence of individual life renders the establishment of such a life-contract as marriage an impossibility. Accordingly, the Hesperian relation which most nearly corresponds with the matrimonial institution on earth usually lasts for one of the cyclical periods already described as one of the distinctive peculiarities of Hesperian life. This is, I say, the customary procedure; but the relation is terminable at any time, and at the will of either party concerned. It should, of course, be remembered that, as there are no children, the disastrous consequences which would be the inevitable result of such a state of things on earth do not take place.
As for the institution of private property, the same permanence of individual life gives it quite a different form from that which it assumes under the conditions of death and succession. Personal property, indeed, in our strict sense of the term, can hardly be said to exist at all. There being no real family life—for the mere dwelling together of a childless man and woman can scarcely be called by such a name—a different social unit has been adopted. Three or four persons of each sex usually reside together, thus forming a household numbering six or eight, and ‘property’ has commonly reference to the household so constituted. The reader will see further on that this account of property is only correct for the ancient history of the planet.
With respect to property in land, very great troubles took place in the primitive times; and many ages elapsed before a satisfactory settlement was arrived at. Hesperos is, in comparison with the earth, very sparsely populated. One hundred millions of inhabitants to forty millions of square miles of land, give but an average of two and a-half to each square mile. Now, if we assume that the area of England is about 50,900 square miles—an estimate which does not much differ from the fact—and that the population (A.D. 1730) is somewhere about seven millions, we have above one hundred and thirty-seven to each square mile. In an island of like dimensions in Hesperos—and one such really exists not far from the mainland—there are only 127,250 inhabitants.