Читать книгу Another World: Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah - Benjamin Lumley - Страница 49

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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, assisted 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 passed 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 assent, 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 practitioners, who are not usually called to exercise their skill until a malady has been developed, and has perhaps assumed 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. Nobility, 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 institutions 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 assumed 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 anticipation, 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 illustration 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.