Page:Meda - a tale of the future.djvu/147

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A TALE OF THE FUTURE.
143

People afflicted with disease are not allowed to marry. Love of parents is strongly developed in our race; and our love for the country of our birth is intense. Parents devote themselves to their children until they have arrived at maturity, and children have the highest veneration for their parents.

"Men and women can compete for all ordinary occupations, and they mix together with the greatest freedom. Yet immorality is unknown, the fact being that intelligence has gained such a control over our people's passions that everything is held subservient to it."

At this stage of my friend's description of his fellows, I ventured to ask, "What object can your people have for which to live and work? They do not eat, therefore, it cannot be for food or the pleasures of the palate. All garments appear to me the same, therefore it cannot be for the love of clothing. They don't seem to use money, therefore it cannot be from a desire to amass wealth." He replied, "You forget, my Specimen, that intellectual food for