William Simpson

“ We hold it to be a demoralizing evil that wealth should be obtained without industry. The quality of mind which you honor under the name of shrewdness, and which seldom hesitates to profit by the losses and even the miseries of others, would find life a burden on account of the odium attached, in any community on our planet. The privilege to build up an individual fortune, by taking from the substance of the whole people in any unlimited degree which an unscrupulous ingenuity can devise, is one of the peculiarities of your civilization. ”

“ The most inspiring and hopeful spectacle in all humanity is an assemblage, wrapt in the devotional exercises of Christianity, listening attentively to the eloquent ministrations of an earnest leader, who pleads the cause of virtue and charity as it is exhibited in the written life and character of the Model Man. The great central story never wearies in interest, and never grows old; a willing sacrifice and suffering for the benefit of mankind. ”

“ Our veneration for the Deity, which is truer and more sincere than yours, arises from a widely different conception. Looking back upon the ages, and what they have brought to us, we perceive that each new development in matter brings an increase of those qualities which give us pleasure to behold. Beginning with the most unattractive shapes, this process of change in organization and symmetry, by an unalterable law of the Creator, bring to us out of the ugliness of the past the beautiful of the present. ”

“ What hint have we, therefore, in all his works, that He has created us otherwise than as a labor of love, and as the fullest expression of an evolutionary skill, which marks all things about us? By what authority, then, are you called to bow yourselves in constant self-abasement before your great Father, who, with parental solicitude, has thrown open the whole Earth for your household, has given you the power of domination over all creatures upon it, and has taught you to make playthings of the very elements which surround you? ”

“ You cannot fail to have observed, as one of the most promising signs of your destiny, that wherever humanity in the midst of civilization is freest from the cares of sustenance supply, it inclines to devote its leisure to a cultivation of the mind. The crudeness and vulgarity of some, and the refinement of others, are entirely due to difference in opportunities of development, and between these two there must always exist a great repulsion. What good can you therefore expect of mankind as a whole, so long as by your methods a few only are vouchsafed the opportunities for knowledge? ”

“ His habiliments are the badges of inferiority in your social scale, and he trudges along on his tiresome, hopeless journey, bearing his condition as one under the prohibition of better things by an inexorable fate. No competency rewards his unremitting toil, though with the skill of his hands he is building the wealth of the world. To the sordid and cunning comes fortune in possessions and estates; while to him comes only the privilege to dwell in another’s house, and to partake of that fare whose chief quality shall be its capacity to restore the wasting energies of his body. ”

“ The glamour of your wealth and the impressiveness of your religion are losing their reverential respect, with the focused light directed upon their doubtful origins. You have inaugurated the beginning of a new faith, with better spiritual foundations, not condemning the world and its society, but loving it, following in the footsteps of the divine presence within its limits, taking a hand in its affairs, and directing them towards the better possibilities in view. ”

“ We have found much in the path of science that would astonish you, and at each discovery the achievement was applauded and echoed from one side of our planet to the other. At each one of these advances we feel ourselves getting nearer to the Deity. A triumph of science with us is a triumph of religion, and while we go on strengthening ourselves, and taking new heart at each step in the direction of knowledge, a like progress with you only brings the superstitious framework upon which your religion is built into decay. ”

“ Such never failing kindness, such lessons of brotherhood, such love for men, such tenderness for children, such consideration [Pg 45] beyond his time for women, and with such a pathetic and suffering end as to capture their emotional natures for all time. And above all bringing the tidings of a hope, that comes to men, as a boat of rescue comes to a storm-tossed ship slowly sinking into the depths; so cherished in Christian households as to become a worshiped member of them, to be defended as one of them, upheld if need be by force of arms and sacrifice of life. ”

“ I wish to impress upon you here, that a tenant, under our government, has even greater security of possession than your land owners. The prevailing sense of justice, and a widespread interest, have established the right of a renter to hold and enjoy, against all competition, his allotment during his life. He has also the right, under our custom, to convey its possession by will; and it is more generally the case on our planet than on yours, that a piece of land is held for generations in the same family. ”

“ You are not to make the mistake by supposing that our society has arrived at the dead level of equality. We have no castes, as you have, holding apart from each other with marked distinctions of wealth. But we have social grades, as you have, with the great difference that each one enjoys unenvied the pleasures within reach; not the least of which is to share the cares as well as the delights of life with each other. The feeling of contempt for one another is entirely unknown among the people of Mars. ”

“ Christianity with this companion, its pure ideal recovered from its ecclesiastical mists, setting out on its new journey through the world, blazing the way for truth instead of suppressing it, conforming itself in all ways to the natural religion of mankind, would become to humanity what the sun is to the earth, comforting the souls of men by its hopes, enlarging their charities by its precepts, and warming into life many a germ of virtue and goodness, which else, would never have blossomed, to shed its moral fragrance on the earth. ”

“ Where the penalty of a straightened financial condition is the forfeiture of everything which makes life desirable, even a denial of the opportunities of association with the better class, and a surrender of offspring to the degradation and contempt which comes of limited knowledge, it may reasonably be expected that the struggle for wealth would be keen. Equally as an incentive also are the innumerable avenues of gain, which are everywhere open for the investment of capital, and the remarkable profits which accrue to keep up the spirit of money-making adventure. ”

“ We look upon our planet with all its appurtenances as a bequest which has been delivered into our keeping for that assistance in progression so plainly the best and most exalted business of our lives, and so unmistakably pleasing to the Supreme Author that every degree of its accomplishment is rewarded by signs of his favor. From our better demonstrated spiritual belief, we derive the inspiration to increase and bestow upon each other the best things of life; while you, under religious promptings from the same high source, condemn yourselves to abstinence and austerity. ”

“ In our philosophy we recognize only two honest ways of accumulating wealth. One is the saving of wages, and the other the profits of capital; and our legislation has been chiefly directed to make the chances of wealth by these two methods as even as possible. To perform this service effectually, our greatest efforts have been directed toward the labor interest. We feel ourselves justified in this, because the welfare of about seven-eighths of our people is connected with this interest; because to the labor class is entirely due the creation and constant renewal of all the wealth on our planet. ”

“ And yet in such a state of general crudity is your own divine essence of reason and thought, that to this day no superstition is too absurd, no sophistry too transparent, and no pretended reform too ill digested to take root and flourish, even to the disintegration of large patches of your social life. So that while no fault can be found with your progress in the handling of the material agents under your control, the opinion is irresistible, from our point of view, that you are assiduously cultivating everything but yourselves. ”

“ The memories of your greatest men are more honored by us than by yourselves. Men go down to their graves yearly among you whose achievements are the admiration and talk of our whole people. He of you who discovered the theory of planetary motion, he who found the law of gravitation, and he also who ascertained the principle of evolution in organic life, are scarcely known upon the Earth, except among the cultivated few; while the whole world of Mars is impressed with the services they have bestowed, and discuss the great and everlasting effects of their work. ”

“ Your theology has degraded you with the belief that you are mendicants, enjoying the favors of life as mere concessions from an all-powerful and exacting master; and that your position in the cosmos bears a close relation to the insignificance of your material bodies, and your feeble power in the stupendous energies which surround you. Your science will elevate you with the knowledge that you are peers in the great universe, and that your stature has no comparative measure for its proportions in the height and breadth of your material world. ”

“ Your passion of hoarding beyond a competency, without purpose except the lust for hoarding, is the offshoot of that instinct in the carnivorous brute, which impels him to refuse to his hungry fellows any portion of his captured carcass, one-tenth of which he cannot consume. This low and brute-born heritage of greed only fails of a better suppression in your society, because you have neglected to entirely remedy, by your political methods, the generally precarious way in which your animal and intellectual wants are supplied. ”

“ And the lesson of it all, and the hopefulness and inspiration of it all is, that wherever mankind dwells, be it in castles or cottages, amid the crowds of cities, or among quiet country fields, there are laurels everywhere among them all for him who will sacrifice himself that others may gain; esteem and veneration among them all for him, whose life is pure, and whose ways are ways of kindness and charity. ”

“ Our religion is consequently more jubilant than solemn. We have no torments in store in it, nor long drawn agonies and mortifications of the flesh. Its only business with death is to smooth its pillow, and to reduce its attendant sorrows to the minimum. To the misfortunes of the present our religion extends its hand of sympathy and material help. To what purpose should it introduce and dwell upon the miseries and sorrows of the past? We let the dead ages rest. We can find nothing in their ashes to compare with the living. ”

“ The enormous proportion of your earnings carried away by rent, although drawn very largely from your business districts, is contributed equally by the whole in the increased cost of all products consumed. Of your one hundred thousand producers, it is safe to say that twenty thousand of them have capital investments. Among these is divided the whole of the surplus of the city’s earnings. The eighty thousand engaged in the business of directly creating wealth are doomed, under your cruel system, to sweat and toil from sun to sun without accumulations. ”

“ One could not find a better indication of the insincerity of your society than this metropolitan journal on your table. Here is a strong editorial commending truth, another a well written homily on honesty, and on the connecting pages, authorized by the same hands, hundreds of advertisements in all shades of deception to catch the unwary. With the gradual decadence of force as a means of preying upon one another, you have so cultivated falsehood to take its place that the life of each individual among you is kept constantly on the watch to protect his interests. ”

“ 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. ”