From what our friend Bruno and some ancient spirits of your spirit spheres have related to me it appears that on your planet in a very remote period civilization was in a very advanced state and that a people known as the Chaldeans were learned in astronomy, chemistry and other sciences and also were wonderful seers. That one Aromanes calculated the procession of the equinoxes and the occurrences of eclipses. Sosthene, another Chaldean, with whom I am personally acquainted, calculated very accurately the distances of the planets of our solar system from the Sun and their revolutions about it. Yet many centuries later, through religious intolerance, our dear friend Bruno was burned to death for like assertions. Thus you perceive that the Entoans are not exceptional in not having evolved equally in all directions. Even after the establishment of our national religion, from time to time, daring and irreverent seekers after knowledge attempted to teach the people strange doctrines, subversive of established beliefs. One declared that the shining points in space were worlds like Ento and that Andûman[a:] having created them he perhaps also had peopled them as he had peopled Ento. And, heresy of heresies, one Sivonadas more than hinted that the children of Ento had evolved from lower life forms. Such pernicious teachings could not be tolerated, and effective means were used to efface them. An instance illustrative of attempts to break up the shackles of ecclesiasticism I will at another time relate to you. To you the religious beliefs of the Entoans appear extremely superstitious, as indeed they largely are, yet, if I may draw a conclusion from what I have learned relating to the many faiths of Earth's peoples, I do not perceive that they have, as a whole, come into a truer conception of the Infinite One who is the sum total of all spirituality than have the peoples of this and many other planets. Religious creeds and observances, albeit the expressions of states of civilization, to an extent retroact as restraints, if not actual barriers to progress, and rarely are the spiritual impulses of a people forceful enough to divert into new channels the extreme conservatism of established religions. Thus, though during later centuries the spiritual impulses of the Entoans have been greatly intensified, they tenaciously have clung to their hopeless beliefs as being the only known channel through which their spiritual energy might find expression. Like children learning to walk alone, they have not dared to let go of one support while no other has been within reach.