CHAPTER XV.

We have, like you, wealth with its self-rewarding luxuries, but its character is very different. Its chosen pleasures and inclinations are unlike yours. Acquisitiveness has no such controlling motives as with you. The hope of social elevation, the anxiety to place the sufferings of poverty beyond reach, and the love of power, are not elements in our desire for gain. As an inducement to the accumulation of wealth, all these motives are supplanted by the one overweening passion for distinguishment which its possession affords, by contributing to the well-being and happiness of others. The even opportunities of life, and the entire absence of poverty as you have it, with its miseries, do away with the most fertile stimulus to individual greed among you; and the strong passion to hoard, which you call avarice, becomes with us, from the singleness of its motives, one of the noblest of our religious aspirations. Whatever luxuries wealth provides for itself are shared by all; and since the nature and form of our society precludes the necessity[Pg 266] of alms-giving, charity, as you understand it, is unknown. The general dissemination of self-pride and independence, as much the result of our religious beliefs as of our political and educational methods, secures us against those evils of indiscriminate charity which are found to paralyze industry everywhere upon the Earth, in its present stage of development.

In our political system we have provided so well for the even and sufficient reward of toil, that our animal requirements, so easily supplied, are never wanting in individual cases to the extent of suffering. In the extremity of invalidism or other misfortune, assistance comes, not in the form of charity as you know it, but as the anxious and sympathetic support of a family to one of its members in distress. The field of benevolence in wealth is, therefore, entirely within the province of education and art; which in accordance with our religious aspirations and beliefs, takes the same form in their furtherance of the purposes of the Deity as your devotional enterprises of promulgating your religious faiths.

Our rich contribute largely from their substance to the purposes of education, with a philanthropy that is greatly intensified by the religious enthusiasm gratified by the[Pg 267] act; but they do not build nor contribute to our temples of worship as yours do, since the attendance upon these is unsolicited and voluntary, and a mere pleasurable gratification of our spiritual hopes and aspirations. Unattended by saving forms and conditions, as with you, the worship within our temples is not considered of consequence to our spiritual welfare. These religious centers, unlike yours, assume no power to condone or compromise with evil. No burdened, unclean conscience comes to them with the hope of absolution, to return again laden with its misdeeds for another purging. No wholesale peculator brings a portion of his evil gains as an atonement for the inflicted miseries of his avaricious career. There is nothing whatever within our temples or surrounding them, but the peace and self conscious satisfaction of the divine co-operation in our efforts to cultivate ourselves, and the praise and glory of our own success forms the spirit of our worship.

Our society being without exclusiveness, and the ostentation of riches a thing unknown, there is no ambition to get beyond the general fare in dwellings. The whole city block, surmounted by its one continuous roof, may be either a single or a number of dwellings, to accord[Pg 268] with the incomes of its occupants. Under our land system the cost of rent is such a small item in the living expenses, that all are enabled to share alike in their housings, and to equally enjoy the benefit of our wholesome sanitary provisions. No one amongst us dwells in a hovel. We labor that the surroundings of all shall be uniformly pleasant and comfortable. With us the suspicion of unseen misery is enough to disturb the pleasures of life. Besides the unpleasant suggestions of discomfit which a rough and incommodious dwelling would arouse, it would be considered by us a painful violation of taste, and a sacrifice of the opportunities of art.

Consequently within the limits of our cities you will not find any external distinction among our dwelling places, to denote the financial standing of their occupants. But as a whole block becomes occasionally occupied by a single family, whose large fortune enables them to enjoy its magnificent proportions, there is not wanting within those luxuries of wealth urged by the prevailing tastes. The establishment becomes the pride and pleasure of its locality. In conformity with all other of the city’s blocks, it has three lofty stories. The lower one on each of its facades consists of a series of Corinthian columns[Pg 269] with highly wrought capitals, resting upon which, and forming the second story elevation, are a line of arches, supporting the flush outer walls of the story above. This story, which is abundantly lighted by its transparent roof, has its exterior surface decorated in bas relief with architraves and cornices designed in our elaborate styles. Every block has an arched and vestibuled main entrance at each of its four corners, over which there rises a tower containing a powerful electric light, illuminating at night the interior as well as the surrounding streets. As our thoroughfares which radiate from the city’s center are straight, and better adapted for business and the industries, they are devoted to these purposes. Consequently, on the circular or concentric streets are located most of our dwellings; the choicest of which, as to location, are those fronting the parks, which, as I have already given you to understand, circumscribe at intervals every neighborhood of the city. It is, then, in these convex or concave fronts, standing on opposite lines of the park belt, that the abodes of wealth are mostly to be found.

You would discover the whole of one of these buildings, except its middle story, devoted to the use of the public, and containing on its first floor a number of class rooms[Pg 270] assigned to a system of teaching to which your kindergartens bear some similarity, and a few others in which the scholars have advanced to a higher grade. The character of the instruction would be indicated by the appliances and implements of industry everywhere to be seen, the busy use of them at intervals by the classes, and the pride and emulation of the scholars, in their struggling efforts toward skill in their handling. In another room you would find a smaller class, the special proteges of the owner, composed of a few, who, by the early manifestations of an unusual promise, were being assisted in their pursuance of some branch of science or art.

Outside of this department of instruction you would find an extensive library, with its reading room attachments ingeniously arranged for convenience, and a large apartment, usually in the center of the building, well lighted from the roof, in which was collected the art treasures, and upon which was lavished by its owner that fondness for the beautiful which becomes him as a member of our society.

The upper story is a public assembly chamber for occasions of rejoicing and pleasure, and is adorned with statuary, fountains, and blooming plants. This grand apartment[Pg 271] is so tempered in warmth by the cheap appliances of our municipality, that it becomes a winter garden during our long, inclement seasons, when the parks are sere and icy.

One of these establishments would suggest to your view an exaggerated estimate of its founder’s wealth. In most cases his income extends but little beyond the support of this enterprise. In his dream of wealth he has achieved the hope of his ambition, and he stops there.

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. Suffering now follows just as close to a miss in your struggles for sustenance, as it did when your skin-clad hunters failed of their game.

Your passion to get and hold is intensified and brutalized[Pg 272] in its lack of regard for the consequences to others, by the large number of artificial necessities only attainable in your society by a considerable accumulation of money, the want of which implies degradation, and a sacrifice of many things that have grown to be dear to life. Every addition to the savings removes to a greater distance that dreaded condition of your civilization, known as poverty. The insatiable character of the hoarding is not unlike the motive of overcaution in a wanderer, who, terrorized by the appearance of a dreaded animal in his path, increases his distance by flight far beyond all possible approach of the dangerous presence.

Your breathless pursuit of wealth, beyond all reasonable limit of obtaining the objects of desire, is induced also by the remarkable opportunities its possession affords to appropriate the earnings of industry. The capacity of your wealth to absorb and control the fruits of toil exists in a geometrical ratio of increase with the greater wealth employed, and the taste of power once felt is seldom appeased, but increases with every money addition. Under your favorable laws, it may extend to the privilege of a single individual exacting the whole surplus earnings of an army of busy workers.

[Pg 273]Through centuries of legislation and usuage you have established various processes, by which wealth is enabled to extract an undue portion of the earnings of industry. Among these processes may be named rates of interest on money graded to the necessities of borrowers, rents gauged by the ability of tenants to pay, monopoly supplies with prices fixed just below the point of compelled abstinence, variations in the value of mediums of exchange, with other unsuppressed agencies promoting frequent change of values for the opportunities of capital and the distress of labor; stupendous aggregations of wealth reversing the laws of economy by advancing the price of necessities on the one hand and depressing the wages of labor on the other; and more successful than all, a system of land proprietorship which permits holders of the Earth’s surface, in addition to their privilege of exacting a large portion of the profits of industry in rent, a further right to pocket, in the form of appreciated values of their land, an unearned share of the collective fruits of the industries which surround them.

Our divergent views of existence are exemplified in the care we have taken to provide for an evener division of the products of industry. With us, property is the[Pg 274] means, and not the end, beyond which there are any number of attainments in life incomparably more desirable and beneficial to society, and our legislation has been directed chiefly to the care and cultivation of these. The great aim of our government has been to provide for the well-being of persons, while it may be said of yours that the most attention has been devoted to the welfare of property; by which is meant its protection and increase, regardless of the manner of its distribution, or the doubtful methods of its extraction from the energies of labor. In the pursuit of this policy you are only perpetuating, without much change, your primitive conditions, when the strong arm gathered the most of the wealth. Your early born instincts do not seem sufficiently evolutionized to co-operate in any undertaking which denies opportunities of the strong over the weak; and the unhappy consequence is a society so mercenary that the general estimate among you is not from any quality which indicates a nearness to the Deity, but principally from the cool numerical calculations of property attachments.

The unity of our spiritual and temporal interests makes it necessary that every government act shall be a religious one. The spirit of kindness, and charity to all[Pg 275] which is the only deserving part of your religions, we have taken as the foundation of all our public acts, and have made it the cornerstone of government itself. Our legislation, if the mere assent to measures recommended can be called by that name, considers first the welfare of persons comprising the whole, subservient to which every possible interest must take its place. And the welfare of persons, in our politico-religious point of view, is dependent upon the proper and equitable rewards of industry; their equal opportunities of acquiring knowledge; an encouragement of their morality by a recognition of their virtues, making it the necessary stepping-stone to their advancement; and the sweeping away of every social form which establishes a sense of inferiority, destroys the pride of self, and institutes that feeling of degradation which is the most prolific source of evil in society.

It is easy to note your tendency in these directions. The barbaric institution of force and its concomitant of fear, as agencies in the management and control of men, is gradually being eliminated from all your progressive governments, and the better methods of assent and co-operation are getting in their salutary work of emancipation. Knowledge is spreading itself among you—no longer a[Pg 276] dessert only upon a few favored tables, but a chief dish under the newly acquired appetites of the many. 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.

Ah, my brother, the coming of your Messiah was both more and less than you have imagined. The era of new and better things in social development is preceded by the gradual decay of old convictions, which have served their time and are no longer useful, except in their place within the catalogue of traditions to mark the progress of thought.

Society assumes its beliefs under an impulse of progression, as much controlled by evolutionary laws as the organic substances of the Earth. No one can teach the world. With a free exercise of its intellectual faculty, it teaches itself. The power of an idea, among the moral forces, is in its corresponding with a proper stage of[Pg 277] development to receive it. A solitary thought is useless, as a moral agent, without its already existing half-formed figments scattered about in society. Its power to move lies in the coalescence of its parts. Ideas and beliefs have been adopted at different stages of your civilization, and have served as great motors to progress, which, ages before, were enunciated without impression. Society rids itself of its rudimentary impressions and beliefs, in much the same manner that an animal, under changing environments, sheds its old organs and develops new ones. Every new belief affecting society is subservient to it, and is only adopted slowly and by degrees. If it be a truth making its way, its final installation is marked by an unquestioned acquiescence and an undisturbed tranquility. If an error, agitation and unrest mark the whole period of its accession.

The coming of your Messiah was more than you have supposed, because grander and more imposing than its assumed supernaturalisms was its enthronement of two central ideas. One was the adoption of the sentiment of brotherhood as a means of adjusting the relations of men with each other, and the other was the inauguration of spiritual hope as a guide in the actions of life. Out of[Pg 278] this beginning has come all that is good in your social progress. The general acceptance of these ideas, as agencies in your civilization, began its work by weakening the old society, and it finally destroyed it by extinguishing the bands of physical force which held it together. The cultivation of these inspirational beliefs in their purity, as they were bestowed upon you by the divine intelligence, would have soon brought to you the same peace and good will that they have shed upon the inhabitants of Mars; but you were not to be indulged so soon in this happy offering. The few who had been dominating the many for ages, appropriating their earnings, and even sacrificing their lives, in a lust for power and wealth, were not to let escape them so fine an opportunity to hold the simple-minded by a new agency, ten-fold more subjugating than the old method of coercion by force. The religious superstition of the age, a mere diversion for the untaught multitude, inert and unpromising, was vitalized by the infusion of these new, humane and spiritual impulses; and, with many added ingeniously contrived supernaturalisms, and an attractive moral code, it was built up into a system and organized into a society which has borne its heavy weight upon your progress,[Pg 279] and spread its dominion more successfully than the war-like legions it supplanted. It has accomplished no good which is not entirely due to the irresistible expansion of the truths it appropriated at its inception out of nature’s evolutionary process of social development, viz., the regard for one another, as a guide in all the actions of life, and that hope eternal which spiritualizes and elevates our existence.

The coming of your Messiah was less than you have believed, because you have mistaken a personality, in which the genius of advanced and salutary doctrines manifested itself, for a part and presence of the Deity himself. As the promulgation of thoughts that were conceived under the inspiration and pressure of a natural force in the process of social development is less than the awful presence and verbal communication of the Deity, so, in the same degree, was the coming of your Messiah less.

But you will have a second coming, my brother, unperverted by the craft of your seers, and uncontaminated with the superstitions of a crude society like the first. It will be of you and a part of you, raising you up to a higher esteem of yourselves, glorifying you as the progenitors[Pg 280] of all good, under a divine and irresistible law of betterment. It will relieve you of the evil thoughts that have condemned and degraded you. The new hope, like a newly discovered strength, will push out in all directions, in the exercise of its salutary work. Instead of discourse and exhortation to the lowly and down trodden, with promises as impossible of denial as of verification, it will lift them upon their feet by the strong hand of a better social method. Like the first coming, its symbolic picture will be carved into monuments, reproduced in all the departments of art, and cherished as the chief reminder of your duties and obligations to the Deity. It will be no symbol of anguish and sorrow, like the first, but in place of it THE DIVINE FIGURE OF A STRONG MAN SUPPORTING AND ENCOURAGING A WEAK ONE. Yes, my brother, you will have a s-e-c-o-n-d c-o-m—

What is all this? I raise myself upon my couch The sun is an hour up. Through my window I see an[Pg 281] enquiring group, marvelling at my tardiness. My cows linger for their milking, and utter their complaints in a gentle lowing. My pet deer stand with their large wondering eyes fixed upon me, and the appearance of my face at the pane has drawn toward me my whole restless and scrabbling flock of poultry, impatient for their morning feed. I look toward the easy chair and it is empty. My celestial visitor has departed.

The End