"As you value your life and freedom," he replied, "don't speak of such a belief here, save to the members of my own family, and to those with whom I may tell you you are safe. Such ideas were held here, almost as generally as you say they now are on Earth, some twelve thousand years ago, and twenty thousand years ago their profession was compulsory. But for the last hundred centuries it has been settled that they are utterly fatal to the progress of the race, to enlightenment, to morality, and to the practical devotion of our energies to the business of life; and they are not merely disavowed and denounced, but hated with an earnestness proportioned to the scientific enthusiasm of classes and individuals." "But," said I, "if so long, so severely, and so universally discountenanced, how can their expression by one man here or there be considered perilous?" "Our philosophers say," he replied, "that the attractiveness of these ideas to certain minds is such that no reasoning, no demonstration of their absurdity, will prevent their exercising a mischievous influence upon weak, and especially upon feminine natures; and perhaps the suspicion that they are still held in secret may contribute to keep alive the bitterness with which they are repudiated and repressed. But if they are so held, if there be any who believe that the order of the universe was at first established, and that its active forces are still sustained and governed, by a conscious Intelligence—if there be those who think that they have proof positive of the continued existence of human beings after death—their secret has been well kept. For very many centuries have elapsed since the last victim of such delusions, as they were solemnly pronounced by public vote in the reign of the four-hundredth predecessor of the present Camptâ, was sent as incurable to the dangerous ward of our strictest hospital for the insane." A tone of irony, and at the same time an air of guarded reserve, seemed to pervade all my host's remarks on this subject, and I perceived that for some reason it was so unpleasant to him that courtesy obliged me to drop it. I put, therefore, to turn the conversation, some questions as to the political organisation of which his words had afforded me a glimpse; and in reply he undertook to give me a summary of the political history of his planet during the last few hundred generations. "If," he said, "in giving you this sketch of the process by which our present social order has been established, I should mention a class or party who have stood at certain times distinctly apart from or in opposition to the majority, I must, in the first place, beg you to ask no questions about them, and in the next not to repeat incautiously the little I may tell you, or to show, by asking questions of others, what you have heard from me." I gave my promise frankly, of course, and he then gave me the following sketch of Martial history:—