“My brother,” said he, “you wish me to make a comparison between our society and yours. I can scarcely do so without the risk of giving you pain. With our greater advancement, we look back upon you as travelers over the same rough paths. Your journey is even a more difficult one than ours. In your present state, you appear to us as a world of discord, confusion, and strife. While we were long ago resolved into a single, homogeneous people, you are still divided into nations and countries, unridden yet of the barbarous pride of combat. We have but one religion. Yours are many and antagonistic. I shall briefly make for you the comparison you wish, hoping that it may bring no sense of pain to you, for, to speak the truth, the cruelty, the intense individual selfishness, and the strange superstitions of the inhabitants of the Earth will pass away out of the ages to come.” CHAPTER III. “Comparing your society with ours,” began my celestial visitor, “is like describing the difference between your present intellectual condition, and the state you were in during your cave-dwelling period. In review of your progress, we recognize two chief agencies at work which have regenerated us, viz.: the steady growth of human sympathy, and the fading out of old superstitions. In our advanced development, with the first of these, we have achieved a state of things in our society quite likely beyond your hopes. For instance, that feeling of regard and affinity for each other which is seldom found among you, except in the midst of family ties, we hold one for another among all. If I were to select from among you a domestic circle, the most refined and correct, its disturbance and anxiety from the sorrows and misfortunes of one of its members would scarcely represent the feeling in a body of our people for the misfortunes of any. We are shocked at your cruel indifference to the feelings of one another. When we see one of you sinking by the wayside, by means of one of the evils which you naturally inherit; or overwhelmed, perhaps, with the penalties of a misadventure, and looked upon by his fellows regardless of his smitten condition, we can find no parallel to it among ourselves, except in the traditions that have come to us out of our remote ages.