It is well worth notice that, at the era of the union, the southern empire, though numerically far inferior to the northern, had reached a very much higher stage of both moral and political development. This superiority is easily explained. For thousands of years the southerners had been acquainted with the true conditions of life; that is to say, they had known that each individual is an indelible unit, in no way to be obliterated; and, therefore, that it is expedient for society to make the best of him. This same knowledge also reacted on the individual, however badly disposed he might have been by nature. He knew perfectly well that he could no more get rid of the society than the society could get rid of him; that, in fact, society was by far the stronger of the two, and, for this reason, it was plainly his interest to conduct himself at least in an inoffensive manner. It was invariably found that such a course of behaviour, steadily maintained for a lengthened period, reacted so strongly on even a malignant character, that, in a century or two, the subject became a worthy member of society. In the northern empire, on the other hand, as it was believed, and indeed with truth, that an undesirable and troublesome neighbour could at any time be suppressed, either by the gallows or some equivalent method, criminal legislation seems to have rather aimed at the extirpation than the reformation of the offender. But after the era of the ship, and subsequent union of the whole planet, all this was very speedily changed. Through the entire period of ten thousand years which, at the time of my arrival, had elapsed since the beginning of the modern history, no revolutionizing discovery had taken place. But, slowly and silently, a change took place in the characters of the Hesperians, which ultimately led to the complete remodelling of the greater part of their social institutions. Evanescence, except as the result of accident, wholly disappeared, for the age of violence was passed, capital punishment was an impossibility, and suicide a fruitless ebullition of temper. The enforced toleration of everyone by everyone else, worked, in the course of ages, as its inevitable result, a greatly increased kindliness of disposition and demeanour; and this was still further helped when progress of time, combined with the absolute fixity of the population, brought about the strange state of things, that each individual was personally acquainted with every other member of the Hesperian multitude. The number of his acquaintances was 99,999,999.