But when he came to explain the nature and circumstances of terrestrial rational life, Van Varken’s hatred of the Yahoos burst out in a description which seems to have filled the Hesperian congregation with horror and dismay. The entrance of the human being into life through the same reproductive process as that of the lower animals; the redundancy of procreative power, in respect of the means of subsistence, which is one of the curses of the race; their helpless infancy; their wretched education; their liability to horrible and torturing diseases; their early extinction by death; the low civilization in which the masses vegetate, leading the lives of cattle; their mutual hatred; their incessant wars—all of these topics, and many more of a similar nature, were expatiated upon by the doctor with a cheerful vehemence which much astounded his audience, and enhanced the contrast between all these abominations and social life in Hesperos. As for the final question—that of the Maker of all—he began by hypocritically expressing his deep regret that his profession as a Doctor of Medicine rendered him but a badly qualified person as an expounder of theology; he also professed an earnest wish that a learned terrestrial Doctor of Divinity could be found to relieve him of such an uncongenial task. The reader will readily appreciate the sincerity of his aspirations after the help of a Yahoo divine. He then proceeded to inform his audience that the inhabitants of the earth, not being included, as the Hesperians, in one vast empire, but being dispersed in a great number of independent nationalities, which varied very much in their degrees of civilization, had formed for themselves equally varying theological systems. That those who were in the lowest grades, either did not recognize the Maker at all, or, if they did recognize him, regarded him as a fiend who was only to be propitiated by offering him bloody sacrifices. That there was another system of religious belief, the followers of which were in a much higher state of civilization than those last spoken of, who held that all true believers (meaning themselves) would be ultimately admitted to a paradise of sensual delights, the most effectual passport being the extirpation, by the sword, of unbelievers (meaning all the rest). That another system, the followers of which were, perhaps, the most numerous of any, taught that the Maker would ultimately grant the boon of cessation of existence to his creatures, but only after they have undergone a long series of transmigrations into other forms of life.