Another World Part 1
Another World.
by Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes).
PREFACE.
The fact that there is a plurality of worlds, that, in other words, the planets of our solar system are inhabited, has been so generally maintained by modern astronomers, that it almost takes its place among the truths commonly accepted by the large body of educated persons. As two among the many works, which bear directly on the subject, it will be here sufficient to name Sir David Brewster's 'More Worlds than One, the Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian,' and Mr. B.A.
Proctor's 'Other Worlds than Ours.'
A fragmentary account of some of the ways peculiar to the inhabitants of one of these "star worlds," and of their moral and intellectual condition is contained in the following pages.
When the a.s.sertion is made that the account is derived, not from the imagination, but from an actual knowledge of the star, it will at first receive scant credence, and the reader will be at once inclined to cla.s.s the fragments among those works about imaginary republics and imaginary travels which, ever since the days of Plato, have from time to time made their appearance to improve the wisdom, impose on the credulity, or satirize the follies of mankind.
Nor can the reader's antic.i.p.ated want of faith be deemed other than natural; for, although tests applied daily during a period extending over nearly a lifetime have proved the source of the fragments to be such as is here represented, the Editor feels bound to say that, notwithstanding much confirmatory evidence, many years pa.s.sed and many facts were communicated before all doubts were completely removed from his mind.
One great obstacle to the reader's belief that an authentic description of another world is before him will arise from the circ.u.mstance that the means by which such extraordinary experience was acquired are not included in the sphere of his knowledge, and that any attempt to explain them at present would only increase his incredulity. He would only see one enigma solved by another apparently more insoluble than itself. The Editor, therefore, would call especial attention to the practical value of the revelations here communicated, convinced as he is that they are so replete with instruction to terrestial mankind, that the difficulty of giving credence to them ought not to be augmented by premature disclosures. Ultimately satisfied as to the origin of the fragments, he entreats the reader not, indeed, to surrender, but simply to suspend his judgment until he has carefully examined them, conceiving that, apart from all external proof, they rest upon an intrinsic evidence, the force of which it will be difficult to resist. Nay, he is even of opinion that an impartial student will find it easier to believe in their planetary origin than in their emanating from an ordinary human brain. The practical value of the facts, considered apart from their source, will excuse his request not to be too hastily judged.
The people to whom the fragments relate are, it will be found, not only human, but const.i.tuents of a highly civilized and even polished society.
Their notions of good and evil, of happiness and misery correspond to ours, and though they employ different means, the objects they pursue are the same with those sought by terrestrial philanthropists. Health, education, marriage, the removal of disease, the prevention of madness and of crime, the arts of government, the regulation of amus.e.m.e.nt, the efficient employment of physical forces--themes so often discussed here--have equally occupied the attention of our planetary brethren, although, as will be seen, in the results of our studies we differ not a little. This is not a story of Anthropophagi, or men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, which can merely excite wonder, but a record of actual men, who, widely separated from us in the ocean of s.p.a.ce, are beings with whom we can sympathise much more than with the inhabitants of the uncivilized portions of our own globe.
The reader will now begin to understand what is meant when the Editor calls attention to the practical value of most of his communications, and invites consideration of the fragments, as suggestive of much that concerns the welfare of mankind, the question as to their source being provisionally left open. The man of science, the poet, the metaphysician, the philanthropist, the musician, the observer of manners, even the general reader who merely seeks to be amused, will, it is hoped, find something interesting in the following pages. Let all, therefore, taste the fruit and judge of its flavour, though they do not behold the tree; profit by the diamonds, though they know not how they were extracted from the mine; accept what is found to be wholesome and fortifying in the waters, though the source of the river is unknown.
Lest, in thus expatiating on the value of his communications, the Editor should be thought to have overstepped the bounds of good taste, he would have it perfectly understood that he is not speaking of his own productions, and that whatever the merit of the fragments may be, that merit does not belong to himself. He is an Editor and an Editor only; and he therefore feels himself as much at liberty to express his opinion of the contents of the following pages as the most impartial critic.
He will even admit that he is not blind to their defects and shortcomings. If the fragments had been less fragmentary, and fuller information had been offered on the various subjects which fall under consideration, he would have been better satisfied. Nevertheless, he reflects that it would be hardly reasonable to expect in facts made known under exceptional circ.u.mstances, that fulness of detail which we have a right to demand, when on our own planet we essay to make discoveries at the cost only of labour and research. He looks upon the fragments as "intellectual aerolites," which have dropped here, uninfluenced by the will of man; as varied pieces detached from the ma.s.s of facts which const.i.tute the possessions of another planet, and rather as thrown by nature into rugged heaps than as having been symmetrically arranged by the hand of an artist. Want of unity under these circ.u.mstances is surely excusable.
One observation as to a matter of mere detail. Words, in the language of the Star, are occasionally given in letters which represent the sounds only, and will often be found to resemble words in some of our ancient and modern languages. The very name of the City "Montalluyah," to which all the fragments refer, is apparently compounded of heterogeneous roots, one of Aryan the other of Semitic origin. These seeming accidents, if such they be, must not be attributed to either carelessness or design on the part of the Editor; nor does he attempt to explain them. The reader may, if he please, account for the causes of resemblance by considering that the number of articulate sounds is limited, and that, therefore, the variety of words cannot be altogether boundless; or he may take higher ground, and a.s.sume that in whatever planet spoken, all languages have the Same Divine Origin.
In conclusion: When these revelations or others derived from the same source have succeeded in establishing a confidence between the Editor and his readers, it is more than probable that the secret of the source itself will be disclosed. That disclosure made in due season will bring to light some unprecedented, but most interesting facts, and will establish the important truth, that the soul of man is IMMATERIAL and IMMORTAL.
INTRODUCTION.
By introducing the reader to "Another World," the Editor does not lead him into a region to which the Earth has no affinity. The Planet to which the following fragments refer not only belongs to the same solar system as our own, but also presents like physical aspects. In it, as here, are to be found land and water--mountains, rivers, seas, lakes, hills, valleys, ravines, cataracts alternating with each other; though in consequence of more potent electrical agencies the contrasts between these various objects are frequently abrupt and decided to a degree to which we can here offer no comparison. The other world about to be described is, in fact, essentially another Earth--widely differing, indeed, from ours in its details, but still subjected to the same natural laws. Its inhabitants, like devout persons here, look forward with reverent feeling towards the abode of the blest. To a purely spiritual or angelic region these fragments do not relate.
The name of "Montalluyah," which more immediately belongs to the chief city in the planet, is not incorrectly extended so as to include the entire sphere. This new world is not made up of separate countries and mutually independent states like those of the Earth, but, forming one kingdom, is governed by one supreme Ruler, a.s.sisted by twelve kings inferior to him in rank and power.
The speaker in the fragments (which may almost be said to take the form of an autobiography) was the son of one of the twelve kings, who by his genius and worth became "Tootmanyoso," or supreme Ruler. In the planet his name is mentioned with even more reverence than, by different peoples, is paid to that of Zoroaster, Solon, Lycurgus, or Alfred; but he has this peculiarity that he does not fade, like many other great legislators, into mythical indistinctness, but is himself the exponent of his own polity.
It must not, however, be supposed that this great legislator was the first to rescue his world from mere barbarism. The founder of civilization in Montalluyah seems to have been a very ancient sage named Elikoia, to whom brief reference is made in the following pages. Prior to the reign of our Tootmanyoso the people had pa.s.sed through various stages of civilization, under the guidance of many wise and good men.
Still the polity was defective, for the country remained subject to crime, misery, and disease.
The proverb that "Prevention is better than cure," to which everybody gives unhesitating a.s.sent, but which is often forgotten in practice, lies at the root of most of the reforms, both moral and physical, effected by the Tootmanyoso. The policy of prevention--that is, of destroying maladies of mind and body in the germ, before they had been allowed to spread their poison--was one of his leading principles. Under his influence, the physicians of Montalluyah made it less their duty to cure than to prevent disease, therein differing widely from our pract.i.tioners, who are not usually called to exercise their skill until a malady has been developed, and has perhaps a.s.sumed large proportions.
Under his influence likewise it was thought better to diminish moral evil by extirpating faults in the child, rather than by punishing crimes in the man.
Another prominent feature in the polity of the great Legislator of Montalluyah is the occupation of every person in the intellectual or physical pursuit for which he has been fitted by natural qualifications, developed and fortified by culture. n.o.bility, position, and wealth are made to depend on merit alone, ascertained by a mechanism which neither favouritism, ignorance, nor accident can affect. These laws may for an instant seem to partake of a democratic tinge; but it will be clearly perceived that the regulations concerning the inst.i.tutions of property and marriage are diametrically opposite to those which have rendered the theories of Communists so generally hateful.
Many of the Tootmanyoso's reforms resulted from an application of extraordinary scientific discoveries to the purposes of life. Under the law which determined that the "right man" should, in the most extensive sense of the phrase, always be in the "right place," discoveries were made of which the most acute investigators of earlier times had had no conception, and the newly-acquired ability of wielding electrical, mechanical, and other forces had momentous political consequences. Armed with powers previously unknown, the Tootmanyoso found comparatively easy the successive steps towards the happiness and well-being of his world, where a series of insuperable obstacles would have been presented to the wisest of his predecessors.
Of the physical agencies mentioned in the following pages, that of electricity will be found especially prominent. Both the knowledge and the manipulation of electricity have a.s.sumed in Montalluyah proportions far beyond those known to us. The electric fluid is there employed for the most various purposes: for locomotion, for lightening heavy bodies, for increasing the power of optical instruments, for the detection and eradication of the germs of disease, for increasing the efficiency of musical instruments--in a word, for the advancement of the world in all that belongs to morality, science, and art.
To some readers the plural form, "Electricities," which frequently appears in the following pages, might seem a strange innovation. The Editor therefore states, by way of antic.i.p.ation, that in certain important points the electrical science of Montalluyah differs from, if it is not opposed to, some of the principles accepted here. In Montalluyah it is an ascertained fact that everything organic or inorganic possesses an electricity of its own, each kind differing from the others in one or more important properties. Glimmerings of the progress effected in electricity and other sciences, including the knowledge and application of Sun-power, may be deduced from the facts contained in the fragments. Still, those glimmerings are but as scattered rays of light in the horizon, which, in the belief of the Editor, are mere precursors of other revelations at least equally interesting. It may be said generally that by the fragments here given, showing how the Narrator, uniting in his own person all the highest qualities of a Legislator and a Ruler, occupied himself with the discovery and application of means for the reduction of evils to their smallest possible proportions, not only giving new laws of wondrous grandeur and beauty, but eventually rendering compliance with them easy and even delightful--that by these fragments a truly stupendous polity is but partially revealed.
The Editor has reason to believe, though it cannot be stated with confidence, that Montalluyah is the world known to us as the planet Mars. Even in the following pages indications will be found of physical features harmonizing with observations made here on that planet. On the other hand, there is the seeming objection, that whereas Mars is more distant than the Earth from the Sun, the Sun appears much smaller, and its heat and light are less intense, on the Earth than in Montalluyah.
These facts would, in the first instance, seem to indicate, not a longer, but a shorter distance of Montalluyah from the central luminary, and to point rather to Venus or Mercury than to Mars. But, according to the scientific theories of Montalluyah, the amount of light and heat received from the Sun, and the aspect of that luminary, are governed, not so much by proximity, as by the nature and electricity of the recipient planet and its surrounding atmosphere. In ill.u.s.tration of this point the fact is stated in one of the fragments, that in Montalluyah the power of the telescope is regulated, not by the distance, but by the attractive or repulsive electricity of the planet under observation, and that more power is often required to view a nearer planet than one which is far more distant.
The question as to which of the laws and customs of Montalluyah can be beneficially imitated, wholly or partially, on our Earth, and which of them merely pertain to physical accidents or to a peculiar state of society, will afford matter for reflection. It must not be supposed that, by relating the facts revealed to him, the Editor would recommend all the laws which they suggest as capable of imitation here. Although they are based on the principle of securing happiness to the community, more especially to its worthiest members, he would no more think of recommending them for adoption in their entirety than of upholding the "Swan-Ship" of Montalluyah as a model for the steamers that cross the Atlantic. Nevertheless, he trusts that his record of the "regulations"
of "Another World," even where they do not admit of imitation, may serve to call attention to the evils which they were intended to remedy in Montalluyah, and which certainly nourish in all their bad luxuriance here.
ANOTHER WORLD.
I.
MONTALLUYAH.
"You forsake this earthly form which goes to dust, but you still live on for ever and ever....
"This life is but the shadow of what your future lives will be."
The Heavens are studded with stars, works of an Almighty Creator; their pale rays give but a feeble indication of the glorious brightness of worlds, many peopled by beings of a beauty, goodness, and power excelling all that human understanding can conceive.
By the grace of Him whose might embraces the universe, I will speak of a star where the inhabitants are formed like the people of the Earth, and as the dawn of day gradually discloses earth's marvellous beauties, so shall my revelations throw light on the customs of that star-world for whose well-being I worked with devoted love.
Some of my world's ways will appear strange to you. Remember that they belong to another planet, another country, another people, so that like wise travellers in a distant land, you should for a time lull your own world's prejudice, and accompany me in thought to Montalluyah, for such is the name of the city where I lived.
I was the son of one of the twelve kings called Tshialosoli, rulers of the country.
These Tshialosoli are less powerful than kings in your world, there being a ruler with full power over them and the whole State, who is called in our language "Tootmanyoso," or "The Father of the World."
All my youthful zeal and strength were applied to study and deep reflection. The most able men were appointed to superintend my education. I outstripped my masters.
The extent of my knowledge, judgment, and foresight filled with wonder the most learned and powerful in the land. Their approving praise did but encourage me onwards in the search for knowledge.
People related everywhere how wondrous were the gifts of the heaven favoured student.