First of all, as Professor FANSEE had always been profoundly interested in questions of religion, and as his first inquiries consequently dealt with this highly important subject, it should be stated that for eighteen centuries and a half the ruling religion on the planet Mars had been the religion of NAZARRO. NAZARRO was a God who, according to the Martians, materialized in human form on the planet Mars. This God preached a gospel of peace, of the curbing of passions, and of equal division of wealth. So the Roamani and the Heebrons, among whom he dwelt, sought to punish His revolutionary agitations by hanging Him on the gallows. Thus the sign of the gallows became a sign of sanctity revered by NAZARRO’S followers, and the emblem of a new faith. The members of the religious sect so created and which for fifteen centuries continued to grow in power were known as the Nazarranos. About the end of the fifteenth century E.N. (the Era of NAZARRO) the trend of civilization commenced to take a somewhat different direction. If the Nazarranos had limited themselves to spreading the precepts of NAZARRO unchanged, our Martian informer thought, all of the inhabitants of Mars would unswervingly have recognized their excellence. But only a few among the Martians were mentally as lofty as had been the Great Nazarrano Teacher. Consequently, when the Nazarranos organized a Nazarrano corporation under the personal direction of certain lower and higher functionaries, these functionaries, supposedly for the honor of NAZARRO, often resorted to methods of which NAZARRO Himself would never have approved. The unavoidable result was that certain Martians seriously began to doubt the superiority of the whole Nazarrano faith.