There comes to us from our remote ages, through tradition and history, an account of some superstitious beliefs, but it has been our good fortune never to have had them built up into a system so overbearing and harmful as yours has been. It cannot be said of us that we ever denounced honest intellectual efforts in any direction, or that we ever regarded the expression of opinions founded on the dictates of reason as crimes, and your punishment of such, with all its atrocious and heart-rending details, serves as a lesson for the whole universe of worlds never to put trust in the smooth tongues and insinuating ways of the seers, for the spirit of fairness and truth is not in them. Your restrictions and punishments of the free expression of thought, inaugurated by the corporate organization of your present religion, and maintained with more or less rigor to the present, has left its blighting effects upon your society by encouraging some of the meanest of your vices. The assumption that one of you shall not have the right to convey to another his opposing convictions upon any religious question is so outrageously unjust, that it never could have been carried out in any other way than by the general belief that it was in accordance with the wishes and purposes of the Almighty. Such a denial of the natural right of mankind could only be enforced when a majority of the multitude became converts to the doctrines which favored it. The leaders of religious persecution, during the centuries of church control, were merely carrying out the wishes of this majority. The spirit of intolerance, once abroad, became the parent of those habits of concealed thought, moral cowardice and hypocricy, which even to the present, so rule among you, that sincerity in expressing religious belief is not universal. In deference to the lingering opinion among a large body of your people that a dissension from old modes of religious thought is displeasing to the Almighty, and dangerous to society, many of you are constantly led to veil their thoughts on these questions, in dread of the social consequences which would follow their frank avowal. Many of skeptical tendencies are thus induced to hide their convictions in fear of disturbing their safe and comfortable positions in society. By silently working the penalty of withholding their political and social support, your great illogical multitude backed by their vigilant church organizations still maintain a terrorism over you. Consequently, your writers are guarded in their lines, your public speakers in their language, your teachers in their instruction, and your statesmen in their legislation, that each shall not get beyond the soundings of orthodox religious belief, while with the knowledge of your time, most of them are conscious in their inner thoughts that they are trimming to avoid truth, in the full knowledge, that to this day upon the earth, the surest human preferment is only for those who support error in this direction.
The most lamentable instances to be found among you of this evasion are your chief institutions of learning. Of all places these should be the first to lead in truth, as they are best provided in all the equipments to find it; yet under the prevailing terrorism their predicament is embarrassing and pitiful. While holding class instructions in evolution, geology, astronomy and kindred sciences, they hesitate to openly deny those scriptural fallacies to which their knowledge is opposed, and the farcical spectacle is daily enacted among many of them of a ceremonious reverence for these fallacies, and at all times an artful evasion of any denial of their truth, every one of which it is their especial business to disprove in the course of instruction.
I hope you will not infer from what I have said that the people of Mars have not great reverence and veneration for the Deity. Indeed, it is the universal belief amongst us, that the animus which is within us to do good to ourselves, and to make pleasant the ways of life among each other, is but the prompting of that divine presence which is leading us aright in the direction of the still better things to come. As we see in all living things a constant development upward toward a state of perfection, and having, of all creatures else, that within us most susceptible and easy of advancement in the universal march, we simply take our place in the line. What we have accomplished in that direction in our government, society, and morals, gives us new heart to further efforts, and if our methods may be of any service to you, I will give you some further account of them.
CHAPTER V.
The people of Mars are impressed with the belief that the governments of the Earth have made no great advance in the benefits and usefulness of their legislation during the last two thousand years. We recognize amongst you, only as movements of progress, some provision, particularly in your own country, for the free education of the people, a few sanitary attentions, and a slight awakening to the interests of your laboring class, as about all worth mentioning. It is true that your governments, after originating themselves with only the simplest duties, have come in time, as your civilization advanced, to take on increased and complicated services. But in the multiplication of their duties, there is unfortunately little to be seen but an extension, in various directions, of their first purposes; which may be briefly stated as a defence of assault from without, and a protection of person and property within. We have come to regard the obligations of government as something beyond these, and this difference of view affords a marked instance of our development and advance.
Our idea of life is, that since it is all we are given to know from the first to the last stages of our consciousness, it is our duty and privilege to improve it, and enjoy it to the fullest innocent and rational extent; and that to this end there can be no separation of the moral and material interests; for it is but an honest acknowledgment to say, that constituted as we all are, the crown of contentment and happiness is only for him who successfully cultivates both. Under this belief, the general supervision of both moral and material affairs is placed in the hands of our government. Church and State are therefore one with us, and it is entirely due to the rationalistic character of our religion that the alliance has proved so conducive to our progress and happiness. There can be no such peaceable and continuous union with you at present, because from the nature of your religious doctrines there must be a conflict of authority; but you will come to it in time, as out of it, more than all else,—as I will endeavor to show,—will come the fullness of your destiny.
Your efforts for the suppression of vice and crime, since the first stages of your history, are futile to a degree that must be appalling to you, and the cause of your failure is due to conditions plainly apparent to us. These conditions are that your governments, for all these centuries, have taken no official cognizance of virtue, and have failed to see that there existed in their patronage of good deeds that tangible reward which would place all ambition for honor and prominence among them on uncompromising terms with evil. You have only attempted to suppress crime by punishment, while the powerful stimulus to virtue which your governments afford of precept and example have been neglected. Although, in your undeveloped state of greed and selfishness, you find it unsafe to trust your material interests in the hands of irresponsible bodies which you call monopolies, yet you bestow the whole keeping and guidance of your morals upon societies and organizations of you fellow men, who are even less responsible to authority than they. Under this state of things, how can you expect anything better than your present chaotic state of religion, and the loose, unguided, unrewarded, and wholly spontaneous morality of your people.
Our government, in the furtherance of its religious duties, has for centuries made a special recognition of the virtues, and particularly those which bestow good upon others, and it is only by the practice of such that public honors are achieved. One of the happiest consequences of this has been, to elevate only the most exemplary of our people to the head of public affairs, and from this comes a confidence and regard between our representatives and people, which you can scarcely appreciate after your experience. Goodness therefore, as we understand it, is the only path to honor, and the necessary high character of all holders of public trust reflects a distinction greater that those of any other positions in life. This in turn, as you may readily perceive, induces a spirit of emulation to reach such elevated places, beyond all considerations of emolument.