Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked RecordGreg, Percy
Science
Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record
Greg, Percy
Science fiction
the planet whose less fertile soil or less genial climate had caused
them to be abandoned, and there organised societies on the old
principles of private ownership and the permanence of household ties.
By and by, as they visibly prospered, they attracted the envy and
greed of the Communists. They worked under whatever disadvantage could
be inflicted by climate and soil, but they had a much more than
countervailing advantage in mutual attachment, in freedom from the
bitter passions necessarily excited by the jealousy and incessant
mutual interference inseparable from the Communistic system, and in
their escape from the caprice and instability of popular
government—these societies, whether from wisdom or mere reaction,
submitting to the rule of one or a few chief magistrates selected by
the natural leaders of each community. Moreover, they had not merely
the adhesion of all the more able, ambitious, and intellectual who
seceded from a republic in which neither talent nor industry could
give comfort or advantage, but also the full benefit of inventive
genius, stimulated by the hope of wealth in addition to whatever
public spirit the habits of Communism had not extinguished. They
systematically encouraged the cultivation of science, which the
Communists had very early put down as a withdrawal of energy from the
labour due to the community at large. They had a monopoly of
machinery, of improvement, of invention both in agriculture, in
manufactures, and in self-defence. They devised weapons far more
destructive than those possessed by the old _régime_, and still more
superior to such as, after centuries of anarchy and decline, the
Communists were able to procure. Finally, when assailed by the latter,
vast superiority of numbers was annulled by immeasurable superiority
in weapons and in discipline. The secessionists were animated, too, by
a bitter resentment against their assailants, as the authors of the
general ruin and of much individual suffering; and when the victory
was gained, they not infrequently improved it to the utter destruction
of all who had taken part in the attack. Whichever side were most to
blame in the feud, no quarter was given by either. It was an
internecine war of numbers, ignorance, and anarchy against science and
order. On both sides there still remained much of the spirit generated
in times when life was less precious than the valour by which alone it
could be held, and preserved through milder ages by the belief that
death was not annihilation—enough to give to both parties courage to
sacrifice their lives for the victory of their cause and the
destruction of their enemies. But after a few crushing defeats, the
Communists were compelled to sue for peace, and to cede a large part
of their richest territory. Driven back into their own chaotic misery,
deterred by merciless punishment from further invasion of their
neighbours' dominions, they had leisure to contrast their wretched
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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