THE BLINDMAN'S WORLD By Edward Bellamy 1898 The narrative to which this note is introductory was found amongthe papers of the late Professor S. Erastus Larrabee, and, as anacquaintance of the gentleman to whom they were bequeathed, I wasrequested to prepare it for publication. This turned out a very easytask, for the document proved of so extraordinary a character that, ifpublished at all, it should obviously be without change. It appears thatthe professor did really, at one time in his life, have an attack ofvertigo, or something of the sort, under circumstances similar to thosedescribed by him, and to that extent his narrative may be founded onfact How soon it shifts from that foundation, or whether it does atall, the reader must conclude for himself. It appears certain that theprofessor never related to any one, while living, the stranger featuresof the experience here narrated, but this might have been merely fromfear that his standing as a man of science would be thereby injured. THE PROFESSOR'S NARRATIVE At the time of the experience of which I am about to write, I wasprofessor of astronomy and higher mathematics at Abercrombie College. Most astronomers have a specialty, and mine was the study of the planetMars, our nearest neighbor but one in the Sun's little family. When noimportant celestial phenomena in other quarters demanded attention, itwas on the ruddy disc of Mars that my telescope was oftenest focused. Iwas never weary of tracing the outlines of its continents and seas, itscapes and islands, its bays and straits, its lakes and mountains. Withintense interest I watched from week to week of the Martial winter theadvance of the polar ice-cap toward the equator, and its correspondingretreat in the summer; testifying across the gulf of space as plainly aswritten words to the existence on that orb of a climate like our own. A specialty is always in danger of becoming an infatuation, and myinterest in Mars, at the time of which I write, had grown to be morethan strictly scientific. The impression of the nearness of this planet, heightened by the wonderful distinctness of its geography as seenthrough a powerful telescope, appeals strongly to the imagination ofthe astronomer. On fine evenings I used to spend hours, not so muchcritically observing as brooding over its radiant surface, till I couldalmost persuade myself that I saw the breakers dashing on the bold shoreof Kepler Land, and heard the muffled thunder of avalanches descendingthe snow-clad mountains of Mitchell. No earthly landscape had the charmto hold my gaze of that far-off planet, whose oceans, to the unpracticedeye, seem but darker, and its continents lighter, spots and bands. Astronomers have agreed in declaring that Mars is undoubtedly habitableby beings like ourselves, but, as may be supposed, I was not in a moodto be satisfied with considering it merely habitable. I allowed nosort of question that it was inhabited. What manner of beings theseinhabitants might be I found a fascinating speculation. The varietyof types appearing in mankind even on this small Earth makes it mostpresumptuous to assume that the denizens of different planets may not becharacterized by diversities far profounder. Wherein such diversities, coupled with a general resemblance to man, might consist, whether inmere physical differences or in different mental laws, in the lack ofcertain of the great passional motors of men or the possession of quiteothers, were weird themes of never-failing attractions for my mind. The El Dorado visions with which the virgin mystery of the New Worldinspired the early Spanish explorers were tame and prosaic compared withthe speculations which it was perfectly legitimate to indulge, when theproblem was the conditions of life on another planet. It was the time of the year when Mars is most favorably situated forobservation, and, anxious not to lose an hour of the precious season, I had spent the greater part of several successive nights in theobservatory. I believed that I had made some original observations asto the trend of the coast of Kepler Land between Lagrange Peninsulaand Christie Bay, and it was to this spot that my observations wereparticularly directed. On the fourth night other work detained me from the observing-chairtill after midnight. When I had adjusted the instrument and tookmy first look at Mars, I remember being unable to restrain a cry ofadmiration. The planet was fairly dazzling. It seemed nearer andlarger than I had ever seen it before, and its peculiar ruddinessmore striking. In thirty years of observations, I recall, in fact, nooccasion when the absence of exhalations in our atmosphere has coincidedwith such cloudlessness in that of Mars as on that night. I couldplainly make out the white masses of vapor at the opposite edges of thelighted disc, which are the mists of its dawn and evening. The snowymass of Mount Hall over against Kepler Land stood out with wonderfulclearness, and I could unmistakably detect the blue tint of the oceanof De La Rue, which washes its base, --a feat of vision often, indeed, accomplished by star-gazers, though I had never done it to my completesatisfaction before. I was impressed with the idea that if I ever made an original discoveryin regard to Mars, it would be on that evening, and I believed that Ishould do it. I trembled with mingled exultation and anxiety, and wasobliged to pause to recover my self-control. Finally, I placed my eyeto the eye-piece, and directed my gaze upon the portion of the planetin which I was especially interested. My attention soon became fixed andabsorbed much beyond my wont, when observing, and that itself implied noordinary degree of abstraction. To all mental intents and purposes Iwas on Mars. Every faculty, every susceptibility of sense and intellect, seemed gradually to pass into the eye, and become concentrated in theact of gazing. Every atom of nerve and will power combined in the strainto see a little, and yet a little, and yet a little, clearer, farther, deeper. The next thing I knew I was on the bed that stood in a corner of theobserving-room, half raised on an elbow, and gazing intently at thedoor. It was broad daylight. Half a dozen men, including several ofthe professors and a doctor from the village, were around me. Some weretrying to make me lie down, others were asking me what I wanted, whilethe doctor was urging me to drink some whiskey. Mechanically repellingtheir offices, I pointed to the door and ejaculated, "President Byxbee--coming, " giving expression to the one idea which my dazed mind atthat moment contained. And sure enough, even as I spoke the door opened, and the venerable head of the college, somewhat blown with climbing thesteep stairway, stood on the threshold. With a sensation of prodigiousrelief, I fell back on my pillow. It appeared that I had swooned while in the observing-chair, the nightbefore, and had been found by the janitor in the morning, my head fallenforward on the telescope, as if still observing, but my body cold, rigid, pulseless, and apparently dead. In a couple of days I was all right again, and should soon haveforgotten the episode but for a very interesting conjecture which hadsuggested itself in connection with it. This was nothing less thanthat, while I lay in that swoon, I was in a conscious state outsideand independent of the body, and in that state received impressionsand exercised perceptive powers. For this extraordinary theory I had noother evidence than the fact of my knowledge in the moment of awakingthat President Byxbee was coming up the stairs. But slight as this cluewas, it seemed to me unmistakable in its significance. That knowledgewas certainly in my mind on the instant of arousing from the swoon. Itcertainly could not have been there before I fell into the swoon. I musttherefore have gained it in the mean time; that is to say, I must havebeen in a conscious, percipient state while my body was insensible. If such had been the case, I reasoned that it was altogether unlikelythat the trivial impression as to President Byxbee had been the only onewhich I had received in that state. It was far more probable that it hadremained over in my mind, on waking from the swoon, merely because itwas the latest of a series of impressions received while outside thebody. That these impressions were of a kind most strange and startling, seeing that they were those of a disembodied soul exercising facultiesmore spiritual than those of the body, I could not doubt. The desireto know what they had been grew upon me, till it became a longing whichleft me no repose. It seemed intolerable that I should have secrets frommyself, that my soul should withhold its experiences from my intellect. I would gladly have consented that the acquisitions of half my wakinglifetime should be blotted out, if so be in exchange I might be shownthe record of what I had seen and known during those hours of which mywaking memory showed no trace. None the less for the conviction of itshopelessness, but rather all the more, as the perversity of our humannature will have it, the longing for this forbidden lore grew on me, till the hunger of Eve in the Garden was mine. Constantly brooding over a desire that I felt to be vain, tantalizedby the possession of a clue which only mocked me, my physical conditionbecame at length affected. My health was disturbed and my rest atnight was broken. A habit of walking in my sleep, from which I hadnot suffered since childhood, recurred, and caused me frequentinconvenience. Such had been, in general, my condition for some time, when I awoke one morning with the strangely weary sensation by whichmy body usually betrayed the secret of the impositions put upon it insleep, of which otherwise I should often have suspected nothing. Ingoing into the study connected with my chamber, I found a number offreshly written sheets on the desk. Astonished that any one shouldhave been in my rooms while I slept, I was astounded, on looking moreclosely, to observe that the handwriting was my own. How much more thanastounded I was on reading the matter that had been set down, the readermay judge if he shall peruse it. For these written sheets apparentlycontained the longed-for but despaired-of record of those hours whenI was absent from the body. They were the lost chapter of my life; orrather, not lost at all, for it had been no part of my waking life, buta stolen chapter, --stolen from that sleep-memory on whose mysterioustablets may well be inscribed tales as much more marvelous than this asthis is stranger than most stories. It will be remembered that my last recollection before awaking in mybed, on the morning after the swoon, was of contemplating the coast ofKepler Land with an unusual concentration of attention. As well as Ican judge, --and that is no better than any one else, --it is with themoment that my bodily powers succumbed and I became unconscious that thenarrative which I found on my desk begins. Even had I not come as straight and swift as the beam of light that mademy path, a glance about would have told me to what part of the universeI had fared. No earthly landscape could have been more familiar. I stoodon the high coast of Kepler Land where it trends southward. A briskwesterly wind was blowing and the waves of the ocean of De La Bue werethundering at my feet, while the broad blue waters of Christie Baystretched away to the southwest. Against the northern horizon, risingout of the ocean like a summer thunder-head, for which at first Imistook it, towered the far-distant, snowy summit of Mount Hall. Even had the configuration of land and sea been less familiar, I shouldnone the less have known that I stood on the planet whose ruddy hue isat once the admiration and puzzle of astronomers. Its explanation I nowrecognized in the tint of the atmosphere, a coloring comparable to thehaze of Indian summer, except that its hue was a faint rose insteadof purple. Like the Indian summer haze, it was impalpable, and withoutimpeding the view bathed all objects near and far in a glamour not to bedescribed. As the gaze turned upward, however, the deep blue of spaceso far overcame the roseate tint that one might fancy he were still onEarth. As I looked about me I saw many men, women, and children. They were inno respect dissimilar, so far as I could see, to the men, women, andchildren of the Earth, save for something almost childlike in theuntroubled serenity of their faces, unfurrowed as they were by any traceof care, of fear, or of anxiety. This extraordinary youthful-nessof aspect made it difficult, indeed, save by careful scrutiny, todistinguish the young from the middle-aged, maturity from advancedyears. Time seemed to have no tooth on Mars. I was gazing about me, admiring this crimson-lighted world, and thesepeople who appeared to hold happiness by a tenure so much firmer thanmen's, when I heard the words, "You are welcome, " and, turning, saw thatI had been accosted by a man with the stature and bearing of middleage, though his countenance, like the other faces which I had noted, wonderfully combined the strength of a man's with the serenity of achild's. I thanked him, and said, -- "You do not seem surprised to see me, though I certainly am to findmyself here. " "Assuredly not, " he answered. "I knew, of course, that I was to meetyou to-day. And not only that, but I may say I am already in a senseacquainted with you, through a mutual friend, Professor Edgerly. He washere last month, and I met him at that time. We talked of you and yourinterest in our planet. I told him I expected you. " "Edgerly!" I exclaimed. "It is strange that he has said nothing of thisto me. I meet him every day. " But I was reminded that it was in a dream that Edgerly, like myself, had visited Mars, and on awaking had recalled nothing of his experience, just as I should recall nothing of mine. When will man learn tointerrogate the dream soul of the marvels it sees in its wanderings?Then he will no longer need to improve his telescopes to find out thesecrets of the universe. "Do your people visit the Earth in the same manner?" I asked mycompanion. "Certainly, " he replied; "but there we find no one able to recognize usand converse with us as I am conversing with you, although myself inthe waking state. You, as yet, lack the knowledge we possess of thespiritual side of the human nature which we share with you. " "That knowledge must have enabled you to learn much more of the Earththan we know of you, " I said. "Indeed it has, " he replied. "From visitors such as you, of whom weentertain a concourse constantly, we have acquired familiarity with yourcivilization, your history, your manners, and even your literature andlanguages. Have you not noticed that I am talking with you in English, which is certainly not a tongue indigenous to this planet?" "Among so many wonders I scarcely observed that, " I answered. "For ages, " pursued my companion, "we have been waiting for you toimprove your telescopes so as to approximate the power of ours, afterwhich communication between the planets would be easily established. Theprogress which you make is, however, so slow that we expect to wait agesyet. " "Indeed, I fear you will have to, " I replied. "Our opticians alreadytalk of having reached the limits of their art. " "Do not imagine that I spoke in any spirit of petulance, " my companionresumed. "The slowness of your progress is not so remarkable to usas that you make any at all, burdened as you are by a disability socrushing that if we were in your place I fear we should sit down inutter despair. " "To what disability do you refer?" I asked. "You seem to be men likeus. " "And so we are, " was the reply, "save in one particular, but there thedifference is tremendous. Endowed otherwise like us, you are destituteof the faculty of foresight, without which we should think our otherfaculties well-nigh valueless. " "Foresight!" I repeated. "Certainly you cannot mean that it is given youto know the future?" "It is given not only to us, " was the answer, "but, so far as we know, to all other intelligent beings of the universe except yourselves. Ourpositive knowledge extends only to our system of moons and planetsand some of the nearer foreign systems, and it is conceivable that theremoter parts of the universe may harbor other blind races like yourown; but it certainly seems unlikely that so strange and lamentablea spectacle should be duplicated. One such illustration of theextraordinary deprivations under which a rational existence may still bepossible ought to suffice for the universe. " "But no one can know the future except by inspiration of God, '9 I said. "All our faculties are by inspiration of God, " was the reply, "but thereis surely nothing in foresight to cause it to be so regarded more thanany other. Think a moment of the physical analogy of the case. Your eyesare placed in the front of your heads. You would deem it an odd mistakeif they were placed behind. That would appear to you an arrangementcalculated to defeat their purpose. Does it not seem equally rationalthat the mental vision should range forward, as it does with us, illuminating the path one is to take, rather than backward, as with you, revealing only the course you have already trodden, and thereforehave no more concern with? But it is no doubt a merciful provision ofProvidence that renders you unable to realize the grotesqueness of yourpredicament, as it appears to us. " "But the future is eternal!" I exclaimed. "How can a finite mind graspit?" "Our foreknowledge implies only human faculties, " was the reply. "It islimited to our individual careers on this planet. Each of us foreseesthe course of his own life, but not that of other lives, except so faras they are involved with his. " "That such a power as you describe could be combined with merely humanfaculties is more than our philosophers have ever dared to dream, " Isaid. "And yet who shall say, after all, that it is not in mercy thatGod has denied it to us? If it is a happiness, as it must be, to foreseeone's happiness, it must be most depressing to foresee one's sorrows, failures, yes, and even one's death. For if you foresee your lives tothe end, you must anticipate the hour and manner of your death, --is itnot so?" "Most assuredly, " was the reply. "Living would be a very precariousbusiness, were we uninformed of its limit. Your ignorance of the timeof your death impresses us as one of the saddest features of yourcondition. " "And by us, " I answered, "it is held to be one of the most merciful. " "Foreknowledge of your death would not, indeed, prevent your dyingonce, " continued my companion, "but it would deliver you from thethousand deaths you suffer through uncertainty whether you can safelycount on the passing day. It is not the death you die, but these manydeaths you do not die, which shadow your existence. Poor blindfoldedcreatures that you are, cringing at every step in apprehension of thestroke that perhaps is not to fall till old age, never raising a cup toyour lips with the knowledge that you will live to quaff it, never surethat you will meet again the friend you part with for an hour, from whose hearts no happiness suffices to banish the chill of anever-present dread, what idea can you form of the Godlike security withwhich we enjoy our lives and the lives of those we love! You havea saying on earth, 'To-morrow belongs to God;' but here to-morrowbelongs to us, even as to-day. To you, for some inscrutable purpose, Hesees fit to dole out life moment by moment, with no assurance that eachis not to be the last. To us He gives a lifetime at once, fifty, sixty, seventy years, --a divine gift indeed. A life such as yours would, Ifear, seem of little value to us; for such a life, however long, is buta moment long, since that is all you can count on. " "And yet, " I answered, "though knowledge of the duration of your livesmay give you an enviable feeling of confidence while the end is far off, is that not more than offset by the daily growing weight with which theexpectation of the end, as it draws near, must press upon your minds?" "On the contrary, " was the response, "death, never an object of fear, as it draws nearer becomes more and more a matter of indifference to themoribund. It is because you live in the past that death is grievous toyou. All your knowledge, all your affections, all your interests, are rooted in the past, and on that account, as life lengthens, it strengthens its hold on you, and memory becomes a more preciouspossession. We, on the contrary, despise the past, and never dwell uponit. Memory with us, far from being the morbid and monstrous growth it iswith you, is scarcely more than a rudimentary faculty. We live whollyin the future and the present. What with foretaste and actual taste, ourexperiences, whether pleasant or painful, are exhausted of interest bythe time they are past. The accumulated treasures of memory, which yourelinquish so painfully in death, we count no loss at all. Our mindsbeing fed wholly from the future, we think and feel only as weanticipate; and so, as the dying man's future contracts, there is lessand less about which he can occupy his thoughts. His interest in lifediminishes as the ideas which it suggests grow fewer, till at the lastdeath finds him with his mind a _tabula rasa_, as with you at birth. Ina word, his concern with life is reduced to a vanishing point before heis called on to give it up. In dying he leaves nothing behind. " "And the after-death, " I asked, --"is there no: fear of that?" "Surely, " was the reply, "it is not necessary for me to say that a fearwhich affects only the more ignorant on Earth is not known at all tous, and would be counted blasphemous. Moreover, as I have said, ourforesight is limited to our lives on this planet. Any speculation beyondthem would be purely conjectural, and our minds are repelled bythe slightest taint of uncertainty. To us the conjectural and theunthinkable may be called almost the same. " "But even if you do not fear death for itself, " I said, "you have heartsto break. Is there no pain when the ties of love are sundered?" "Love and death are not foes on our planet, " was the reply. "There areno tears by the bedsides of our dying. The same beneficent law whichmakes it so easy for us to give up life forbids us to mourn the friendswe leave, or them to mourn us. With you, it is the intercourse you havehad with friends that is the source of your tenderness for them. Withus, it is the anticipation of the intercourse we shall enjoy which isthe foundation of fondness. As our friends vanish from our future withthe approach of their death, the effect on our thoughts and affectionsis as it would be with you if you forgot them by lapse of time. As ourdying friends grow more and more indifferent to us, we, by operation ofthe same law of our nature, become indifferent to them, till at the lastwe are scarcely more than kindly and sympathetic watchers about the bedsof those who regard us equally without keen emotions. So at last Godgently unwinds instead of breaking the bands that bind our heartstogether, and makes death as painless to the surviving as to the dying. Relations meant to produce our happiness are not the means also oftorturing us, as with you. Love means joy, and that alone, to us, instead of blessing our lives for a while only to desolate them lateron, compelling us to pay with a distinct and separate pang for everythrill of tenderness, exacting a tear for every smile. " "There are other partings than those of death. Are these, too, withoutsorrow for you?" I asked. "Assuredly, " was the reply. "Can you not see that so it must needsbe with beings freed by foresight from the disease of memory? All thesorrow of parting, as of dying, comes with you from the backward visionwhich precludes you from beholding your happiness till it is past. Suppose your life destined to be blessed by a happy friendship. If youcould know it beforehand, it would be a joyous expectation, brighteningthe intervening years and cheering you as you traversed desolateperiods. But no; not till you meet the one who is to be your friend doyou know of him. Nor do you guess even then what he is to be to you, that you may embrace him at first sight. Your meeting is cold andindifferent. It is long before the fire is fairly kindled between you, and then it is already time for parting. Now, indeed, the fire burnswell, but henceforth it must consume your heart. Not till they are deador gone do you fully realize how dear your friends were and how sweetwas their companionship. But we--we see our friends afar off comingto meet us, smiling already in our eyes, years before our ways meet. We greet them at first meeting, not coldly, not uncertainly, but withexultant kisses, in an ecstasy of joy. They enter at once into the fullpossession of hearts long warmed and lighted for them. We meet with thatdelirium of tenderness with which you part. And when to us at last thetime of parting comes, it only means that we are to contribute to eachother's happiness no longer. We are not doomed, like you, in parting, totake away with us the delight we brought our friends, leaving the acheof bereavement in its place, so that their last state is worsethan their first. Parting here is like meeting with you, calm andunimpassioned. The joys of anticipation and possession are the only foodof love with us, and therefore Love always wears a smiling face. Withyou he feeds on dead joys, past happiness, which are likewise thesustenance of sorrow. No wonder love and sorrow are so much alikeon Earth. It is a common saying among us that, were it not for thespectacle of the Earth, the rest of the worlds would be unable toappreciate the goodness of God to them; and who can say that this is notthe reason the piteous sight is set before us?" "You have told me marvelous things, " I said, after I had reflected. "Itis, indeed, but reasonable that such a race as yours should look downwith wondering pity on the Earth. And yet, before I grant so much, Iwant to ask you one question. There is known in our world a certainsweet madness, under the influence of which we forget all that isuntoward in our lot, and would not change it for a god's. So far isthis sweet madness regarded by men as a compensation, and more than acompensation, for all their miseries that if you know not love aswe know it, if this loss be the price you have paid for your divineforesight, we think ourselves more favored of God than you. Confess thatlove, with its reserves, its surprises, its mysteries, its revelations, is necessarily incompatible with a foresight which weighs and measuresevery experience in advance. " "Of love's surprises we certainly know nothing, " was the reply. "Itis believed by our philosophers that the slightest surprise would killbeings of our constitution like lightning; though of course this ismerely theory, for it is only by the study of Earthly conditions that weare able to form an idea of what surprise is like. Your power to endurethe constant buffetings of the unexpected is a matter of supremeamazement to us; nor, according to our ideas, is there any differencebetween what you call pleasant and painful surprises. You see, then, that we cannot envy you these surprises of love which you find sosweet, for to us they would be fatal. For the rest, there is no form ofhappiness which foresight is so well calculated to enhance as that oflove. Let me explain to you how this befalls. As the growing boy beginsto be sensible of the charms of woman, he finds himself, as I dare sayit is with you, preferring some type of face and form to others. Hedreams oftenest of fair hair, or may be of dark, of blue eyes or brown. As the years go on, his fancy, brooding over what seems to it the bestand loveliest of every type, is constantly adding to this dream-face, this shadowy form, traits and lineaments, hues and contours, till atlast the picture is complete, and he becomes aware that on his heartthus subtly has been depicted the likeness of the maiden destined forhis arms. "It may be years before he is to see her, but now begins with him oneof the sweetest offices of love, one to you unknown. Youth on Earth is astormy period of passion, chafing in restraint or rioting in excess. Butthe very passion whose awaking makes this time so critical with you ishere a reforming and educating influence, to whose gentle and potentsway we gladly confide our children. The temptations which lead youryoung men astray have no hold on a youth of our happy planet. He hoardsthe treasures of his heart for its coming mistress. Of her alone hethinks, and to her all his vows are made. The thought of license wouldbe treasop to his sovereign lady, whose right to all the revenues ofhis being he joyfully owns. To rob her, to abate her high prerogatives, would be to impoverish, to insult, himself; for she is to be his, andher honor, her glory, are his own. Through all this time that he dreamsof her by night and day, the exquisite reward of his devotion is theknowledge that she is aware of him as he of her, and that in the inmostshrine of a maiden heart his image is set up to receive the incense ofa tenderness that needs not to restrain itself through fear of possiblecross or separation. "In due time their converging lives come together. The lovers meet, gaze a moment into each other's eyes, then throw themselves each onthe other's breast. The maiden has all the charms that ever stirred theblood of an Earthly lover, but there is another glamour over her whichthe eyes of Earthly lovers are shut to, --the glamour of the future. In the blushing girl her lover sees the fond and faithful wife, in theblithe maiden the patient, pain-consecrated mother. On the virgin'sbreast he beholds his children. He is prescient, even as his lips takethe first-fruits of hers, of the future years during which she is tobe his companion, his ever-present solace, his chief portion of God'sgoodness. We have read some of your romances describing love as you knowit on Earth, and I must confess, my friend, we find them very dull. "I hope, " he added, as I did not at once speak, "that I shall not offendyou by saying we find them also objectionable. Your literature possessesin general an interest for us in the picture it presents of thecuriously inverted life which the lack of foresight compels you to lead. It is a study especially prized for the development of the imagination, on account of the difficulty of conceiving conditions so opposed tothose of intelligent beings in general. But our women do not read yourromances. The notion that a man or woman should, ever conceive the ideaof marrying a person other than the one whose husband or wife he or sheis destined to be is profoundly shocking to our habits of thought. Nodoubt you will say that such instances are rare among you, but ifyour novels are faithful pictures of your life, they are at least notunknown. That these situations are inevitable under the conditions ofearthly life we are well aware, and judge you accordingly; but it isneedless that the minds of our maidens should be pained by the knowledgethat there anywhere exists a world where such travesties upon thesacredness of marriage are possible. "There is, however, another reason why we discourage the use of yourbooks by our young people, and that is the profound effect of sadness, to a race accustomed to view all things in the morning glow ofthe future, of a literature written in the past tense and relatingexclusively to things that are ended. " "And how do you write of things that are past except in the past tense?"I asked. "We write of the past when it is still the future, and of course in thefuture tense, " was the reply. "If our historians were to wait till afterthe events to describe them, not alone would nobody care to read aboutthings already done, but the histories themselves would probably beinaccurate; for memory, as I have said, is a very slightly developedfaculty with us, and quite too indistinct to be trustworthy. Should theEarth ever establish communication with us, you will find our historiesof interest; for our planet, being smaller, cooled and was peopled agesbefore yours, and our astronomical records contain minute accountsof the Earth from the time it was a fluid mass. Your geologists andbiologists may yet find a mine of information here. " In the course of our further conversation it came out that, as aconsequence of foresight, some of the commonest emotions of human natureare unknown on Mars. They for whom the future has no mystery can, ofcourse, know neither hope nor fear. Moreover, every one being assuredwhat he shall attain to and what not, there can be no such thing asrivalship, or emulation, or any sort of competition in any respect; andtherefore all the brood of heart-burnings and hatreds, engendered onEarth by the strife of man with man, is unknown to the people of Mars, save from the study of our planet. When I asked if there were not, afterall, a lack of spontaneity, of sense of freedom, in leading lives fixedin all details beforehand, I was reminded that there was no differencein that respect between the lives of the people of Earth and of Mars, both alike being according to God's will in every particular. We knewthat will only after the event, they before, --that was all. For therest, God moved them through their wills as He did us, so that they hadno more dense of compulsion in what they did than we on Earth havein carrying out an anticipated line of action, in cases where ouranticipations chance to be correct. Of the absorbing interest whichthe study of the plan of their future lives possessed for the peopleof Mars, my companion spoke eloquently. It was, he said, like thefascination to a mathematician of a most elaborate and exquisitedemonstration, a perfect algebraical equation, with the glowingrealities of life in place of figures and symbols. When I asked if it never occurred to them to wish their futuresdifferent, he replied that such a question could only have been asked byone from the Earth. No one could have foresight, or clearly believe thatGod had it, without realizing that the future is as incapable of beingchanged as the past. And not only this, but to foresee events was toforesee their logical necessity so clearly that to desire them differentwas as impossible as seriously to wish that two and two made fiveinstead of four. No person could ever thoughtfully wish anythingdifferent, for so closely are all things, the small with the great, woven together by God that to draw out the smallest thread would unravelcreation through all eternity. While we had talked the afternoon had waned, and the sun had sunk belowthe horizon, the roseate atmosphere of the planet imparting a splendorto the cloud coloring, and a glory to the land and sea scape, neverparalleled by an earthly sunset. Already the familiar constellationsappearing in the sky reminded me how near, after all, I was to theEarth, for with the unassisted eye I could not detect the slightestvariation in their position. Nevertheless, there was one wholly novelfeature in the heavens, for many of the host of asteroids which circlein the zone between Mars and Jupiter were vividly visible to the nakedeye. But the spectacle that chiefly held my gaze was the Earth, swimminglow on the verge of the horizon. Its disc, twice as large as that of anystar or planet as seen from the Earth, flashed with a brilliancy likethat of Venus. "It is, indeed, a lovely sight, " said my companion, "although tome always a melancholy one, from the contrast suggested between theradiance of the orb and the benighted condition of its inhabitants. Wecall it 'The Blindman's World. '" As he spoke he turned toward a curiousstructure which stood near us, though I had not before particularlyobserved it. "What is that?" I asked. "It is one of our telescopes, " he replied. "I am going to let you takea look, if you choose, at your home, and test for yourself the powersof which I have boasted;" and having adjusted the instrument to hissatisfaction, he showed me where to apply my eye to what answered to theeye-piece. I could not repress an exclamation of amazement, for truly he hadexaggerated nothing. The little college town which was my home layspread out before me, seemingly almost as near as when I looked downupon it from my observatory windows. It was early morning, and thevillage was waking up. The milkmen were going their rounds, and workmen, with their dinner-pails, where hurrying along the streets. The earlytrain was just leaving the railroad station. I could see the puffs fromthe smoke-stack, and the jets from the cylinders. It was strange not tohear the hissing of the steam, so near I seemed. There were the collegebuildings on the hill, the long rows of windows flashing back the levelsunbeams. I could tell the time by the college clock. It struck methat there was an unusual bustle around the buildings, consideringthe earliness of the hour. A crowd of men stood about the door of theobservatory, and many others were hurrying across the campus in thatdirection. Among them I recognized President Byxbee, accompanied by thecollege janitor. As I gazed they reached the observatory, and, passingthrough the group about the door, entered the building. The presidentwas evidently going up to my quarters. At this it flashed over me quitesuddenly that all this bustle was on my account. I recalled how it wasthat I came to be on Mars, and in what condition I had left affairsin the observatory. It was high time I were back there to look aftermyself. Here abruptly ended the extraordinary document which I found thatmorning on my desk. That it is the authentic record of the conditions oflife in another world which it purports to be I do not expect the readerto believe. He will no doubt explain it as another of the curious freaksof somnambulism set down in the books. Probably it was merely that, possibly it was something more. I do not pretend to decide the question. I have told all the facts of the case, and have no better means forforming an opinion than the reader. Nor do I know, even if I fullybelieved it the true account it seems to be, that it would have affectedmy imagination much more strongly than it has. That story of anotherworld has, in a word, put me out of joint with ours. The readiness withwhich my mind has adapted itself to the Martial point of view concerningthe Earth has been a singular experience. The lack of foresight amongthe human faculties, a lack I had scarcely thought of before, nowimpresses me, ever more deeply, as a fact out of harmony with the restof our nature, belying its promise, --a moral mutilation, a deprivationarbitrary and unaccountable. The spectacle of a race doomed to walkbackward, beholding only what has gone by, assured only of what is pastand dead, ' comes over me from time to time with a sadly fantasticaleffect which I cannot describe. I dream of a world where love alwayswears a smile, where the partings are as tearless as our meetings, anddeath is king no more. I have a fancy, which I like to cherish, thatthe people of that happy sphere, fancied though it may be, represent theideal and normal type of our race, as perhaps it once was, as perhaps itmay yet be again.