Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/338

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320
A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE.

position, the greatest possible interest in his procedure and prospects. Nor can we doubt that our visit, and all the grand new prospect it opens, has proved the dawn of a fresh life to the little planet; for we everywhere see over his surface what a busy scene of scientific and general progress the last fifty years have been to Mars, as compared with any like period preceding. Railways were just only beginning fifty years ago. So was gas-lighting. There were not yet any telegraph lines, and electric science was quite in its infancy. The vast spectroscopic field had not yet opened to view. How different in all these subjects now! And happily it is all mainly the Marsians' own attainment, as we, as well as other higher-life visitors from outside, have studiously acted upon the higher-life rule of leaving the lower worlds to make their own way in science, in order that social and moral gradations may naturally accompany the scientific. Prior to Black's discovery, which now enables the higher and lower life worlds to intermix, this due graduation in general human progress was undisturbed and uninterfered with in each case. But now there is danger of unduly precipitating the condition of the latter; and consequently a higher-life rule had been already enjoined, to the effect that there should be all possible reserve towards the lower worlds upon the great scientific questions involved in our higher life.

But leaving, for the present, science and such like, which are all well enough at their time, let us turn to the main chance. Evidently much solid business was to be done with Mars, when we each knew the other's ways and wants, and could manage to speak to each other. All this required time; and so all White's