Joseph Fraser

“ How one soul animates two bodies I cannot tell; my mental faculties are equally on the alert in both spheres. On Earth I worship in the Church of Scotland; here I attend Thanksgiving every Sabbath morning. I am equally happy in the two kinds of worship. I might have married here; have had to refuse several offers, but for the fact that my earth life is so present and real that I should feel as if guilty of bigamy. My husband in Edinbro' is a good man, but he is not a Martial, or if he is, he knows nothing about it. It seems as if there is something more in man than body and soul. ”

“ Beetling crags, rockeries, islets, grottoes, ferneries, deep lagoons, riverside caves, deep pools, waterfalls, arches, funnels, shelters behind sheets of falling water; all in short, that human ingenuity can design or conceive is there. Here and there models of machinery in motion are placed for the pleasure of the children.
For two weeks our party travelled through the Great Park of Sidonia. Sometimes on one bank of the river, sometimes on the other, and their daily meal was sweetened by the sauce of appetite and their rest ensured by pleasant fatigue. ”

“ There is no such force as gravitation: the planets are held in their respective relationship to each other and to the central sun, the satellites to their planets, our sun to his neighbours, and the stellar systems to each other by a force that acts instantaneously and simultaneously in all parts: that force is electricity. From a distance great enough what we call the universe appears as a solid gem; electricity is the force that welds the ten billion suns into that solid.
Ever since human life began to be civilised men have been trying to harness the various forms of force. ”

“ Put a martial man on Earth and the density of the atmosphere would crush his organs together; his muscles would not enable him to drag along; the moist, hot air would suffocate him, the light would blind him, and though a man on Mars he would appear a dwarf amongst the larger and more burly and muscular earth men. Surely if the Deity has made humans with so much in common and yet so different, he has in other respects adapted them to the worlds they occupy. The human race grows upon its planet as an individual grows. ”

“ These and a thousand other public works, efforts that have made our whole planet a smiling and fertile thing of beauty, have absorbed a vast amount of labor. As it is, each worker follows his occupation about one-seventh of his time, and the number of workers engaged in productive and manufacturing industries are about one-eighth of the population.
One man, tilling the soil, can grow food for fifty, another weaving cloth, can dress three hundred, and four men making boots or hats can cover the extremities of a thousand fellow mortals. ”

“ It took me many months to understand a tithe of what he did with electricity, and yet I found that he had not mentioned a tithe of the uses to which it is put upon our planet.
Bertrand claimed for electricity something more than a first place amongst the forces of nature. Said he:—'We have not to regard wind as one force, water as another, heat and light as two more forces. We have rather to regard electricity as the one great force, and all the rest of the so called forces of nature as various manifestations of and modifications of that one force. ”

“ As it lives on it improves, becomes more sensible, more intelligent, more moral; it purges itself of selfishness and becomes more altruistic. A race life is the same. The race on earth is young yet, it is that of a child. It has not yet learned to talk properly; its nations remind us of children heaping up ridges of sand and saying, 'This is my house,' and fighting if one knocks down a wall and claims two shares. ”

“ For forty years we have travelled the world together, and we have been faithful to each other all the time. Our love was a quiet current on which our lives floated: it has taken death to show me how deep and strong that current is. I had no idea that I could suffer so much. My only hope is that, we may meet again; eternity will be an empty void without her. ”

“ Winter twice as long as an earth winter, and more than twice as severe on a planet that receives only four-ninths as much heat and light as our own. No wonder that Charlie's mother and father are busy storing up food in the larder and getting out and airing the soft, warm winter clothing and out-door wraps. It is a busy time, but no one seems unhappy or anxious. All work cheerfully, as preparing for a season that brings its own pleasures. ”

“ I can visit any workshop or mine, can travel by any public conveyance, can work at any trade, can study any subject at any seat of learning, can use to any extent telegraphic, telephonic, or other means of communication, can see the most sacred and ancient manuscripts and books of the ages that are gone, can visit the observatories, of which we have many, and study the heavens by the aid of the most powerful telescopes to be found in the universe. ”

“ The check to the population of a planet is like the check to an individual. On Earth men grow and reach six feet in height, on Mars they reach but four feet, and yet one is not conscious of his bigness nor the other of his littleness, for each is adapted to his surroundings and circumstances, and what is true of the atom, is true of the whole.'
The doctor paused, and seemed for a moment afraid that her zeal had carried her too far. ”

“ I am not in the Christian's Heaven, for I am not dead; on the contrary I appear to be too much alive; to be living two lives while the majority of the people have to be content with one. There must have been a millenium where I have strayed to; for all the imaginings of the poets and dreamers are more than realized; there is no sin nor sorrow where I live—but I am only two years old and it has taken me nearly four years to reach that age—where am I? ”

“ I had read a deal about the time following upon the 'Black Century,' and of the marvels wrought by the new source of power, and I had seen that the introduction of abundant heat, light and power had so stimulated industry and production that life had become easy and the means of sustaining it had become abundant, with the result that the population doubled in a little more than a century. ”

“ Is the memory of the previous life or lives always obliterated by death and birth or by birth and death, which ever happens first? Do our odd sensations and impressions regarding people and places arise from an imperfect memory of something that we passed through in a previous life? We meet a stranger and at once like or dislike in an unreasoning manner: is that stranger one who has strongly influenced us for good or evil in some previous existence? ”

“ Meanwhile the days go on and the dream that has taken such a hold upon the life of our hero is unfolding itself rapidly. If he is living two lives there is a great difference between them. One is almost devoid of events of note and changes; the other passes into new experiences and fresh knowledge daily. He runs about now and talks and plays with other children and finds something new to see and think about every day. He is a very happy child in dreamland and there he is not conscious of his duality—not yet. ”

“ No class distinction in evening or afternoon gatherings or in public worship. No dust, no heat, no noise nor jar. No grinding toil, no anxiety regarding business, no money, no poverty, no burdensome riches; plenty for all and all nearly as free us water or air. No demands to meet except twenty hours a week of labor and that itself be much a privilege that those to whom it was denied owing to mental or physical incapacity are the only sufferers or nearly so. Women and men are free and equal; a woman, does not resign her name or any social right. ”

“ On the whole I did not like what I saw, and I wonder how my earth half endures it.'
'Still, the civilisation you found in Melbourne is considered high, and its people are reckoned as very progressive.'
'Then why such heat and dust? Why such foul smells? Why so much hurrying and crushing? And why, if they are a civilised people, are they all striving to be first, to get best places, as they did at the railway station? Our crowds are far bigger than theirs, but we never push each other about and speak harshly. We can dispose of our crowd in half the time they can, or less. ”

“ Life in Sidonia. Consciousness.
"YOU think, then, that you could enjoy life in the Great City?"
"I certainly could; it appears to be ever more and more interesting, I have no desire to return to Highton."
The speakers are Charles Frankston and Helen Vance. They are taking an afternoon walk along the Grand Avenue. Hundreds more are indulging in the same kind of recreation. The springy, silent footpaths enable them to move without clatter. The green aisles stretch an illimitable vista before them, broken by shrubs and clumps of sweet smelling and radient flowers. Mars is a paradise of color. ”

“ I have never seen a coal or a piece of firewood; nothing is burnt. Mother touches a knob and we have a warm fire glowing in the stove, another and the room is beautifully lit, although there is no flame and no brilliant point of light visible. Many things appear more perfect in my dreamworld than in my waking one. ”

“ Even those who sit in their sleighs and watch, and those who prefer walking to gliding have all the same happy look, a look that tells of content and happiness, of something more than the mere pleasure of the day. ”

“ My idea was, and is still, that further knowledge in chemical vibrations will double or treble the productiveness of the soil, and both reduce the labor of the agriculturist and increase indefinitely the amount of his productions. Why may we not have two harvests in place of one? Why may we not get chemically from air, water, and earth the foods that plants combine in their organised structures? ”

“ The State is the heir of each generation, and as the lives of all our men and women are honorable and profitable, as we have no criminals and no paupers, and as all work who are permitted to do so, the State gains much by each generation, and can easily afford to sustain teachers and the like, maintain schools and places of amusement in each centre of population, and provide for the wants of worn out workers.
And our workers do not wear out soon. The conditions of life are easy and they are free from worry and almost free from temptation. ”

“ I was struggling in the dark towards some end, and great forces were pitching behind and around me, and I, ever trying to escape, worked in the same direction, until at last I emerged into a blaze of light and a cold air that made me pant and gasp for a long time until I got relief, and cried out loudly for help. ”

“ Possibly the civilisation of the planet upon which he lives much of his time, the planet Mars, is much older and much higher than that of the earth. The people appear to have nothing to worry them, no monetary difficulties, no strife nor unhealthy competition, no contending nationalities, no wars, no crimes. Naturally, being introduced, to such people we want to know more of them, their modes of life, their history, how their lives came to be so fully perfected. ”

“ So far the race has wasted most of its force in fighting for small slices of cultivated land while three-fourths of the earth is yet a wilderness. Arbitration between nations is but commencing, and Federation of a few of the most civilised and powerful nations is but a dream of the future. They are where we were a thousand years before the declaration of Perpetual Peace, and our population has increased fivefold since then. It may yet increase, may even double again and be easily sustained. Science has told us this; nothing is more sensitive than population. ”

“ We, however, cannot consume any of this force. We only detain it and make it work for us on its way. It does not feel the work it does for us any more than the sun feels the effort by which it raises vapor into the air and piles snow upon the mountain top. ”

“ Politically we are self-governed and all laws are made for the benefit of all.'
'But our laws are not made by the people and for them?'
'By whom then, are they made and for whom?' asked my fair instructor. 'The Central Executive of one hundred of the best and most capable men and women on our planet meets twice a week not far from here for the purpose of directing the affairs of the world and for the good of all its dwellers; but that body cannot make a law it can only put laws into operation. ”

“ My studies in medical psychology have taught me that there are three kinds of earth-borns on our planet. First, those who have lived on earth and become fit for introduction, to our higher life, which is to them a kind of heaven and reward for virtuous and religious living; second, those who, while still living on earth, put out a new life and live here also quite unconscious of the old life ”

“ After another run behind father, who gives me the end of a scarf to hold on by, we go to mother and the sleigh and away home.
Our home life seems easy and happy as compared with that of my earlier childhood. Lights and fires give no work. Mother has only one meal to cook. There are no dusty streets, smoke, dirt and dust are almost unknown things. Labor-saving appliances of all kinds are freely used in household work, so that taken altogether the wife and mother has no need to work much longer than the husband and father. The winter evenings we spent very pleasantly. ”

“ Fortunately Bob had been triced up the first, else father would have received twenty more, and been rendered incapable of movement for a week at least. It was a cruel time. For mere trifles, and often for no fault, men were flogged almost to death. A black pall of crime and cruelty overhung the whole land. No wonder that the settlers, a few years later, demanded that freedom from the stain of being a convict settlement. No writer will dare to depict the social life of the time, Marcus Clarke has given some phases of it as applied to Tasmania, and his pages are harrowing in the extreme. ”

“ Naturally, ours is but a little third rate planet, a ragged starveling, cold by reason of its distance from the sun. When all our armies and navies were disbanded the labor market was swamped, and the Grand Federal Government had to consider the problems of labor and bread. It was then that army contingents were sent to the waste places to purify them and make them fertile, and the men worked together and had a common speech, and married and settled on the reclaimed lands, and in time forgot their national prejudices and became one nation. ”