As the year 1859 E.N. on Mars corresponds exactly with the year 1859 A.D. on earth, it may readily be seen that at the time of Professor FANSEE’S intercourse with our neighboring planet, the Darviniano faith had prevailed only for a little over half a century. Of course, new faiths, new religions, new philosophies, cannot ripen to completeness in so short a lapse of time. Hence, in order to satisfy their emotional longings and moral desires, the Martians continued to resort to the Nazarrano manuscripts, adopting meanwhile the intellectual views of the Darvinianos, and trying as best they could to harmonize the two systems of thought. But try as they might, they were ever and again confronted by disturbing contradictions. This inevitably gave rise to an unsettled emotional condition, which our Martian informer indeed seemed deeply to deplore, but which--in his clearly expressed opinion--would beyond doubt make way for a renewed era of moral stability and mental ease, so soon as the Darviniano faith had been made more nearly complete--and hence more satisfactory--by an infusion of the emotional element. Having in this way concisely explained the religious situation on the whirling Canal-globe, our informant, who evidently was an erudite philosopher delegated for this purpose, suddenly changed the subject in order that he might acquaint us with the principal international political events that had occurred on Mars during the Nazarrano era. To our astonishment we received the unmistakable impression that the social conditions on the earthlike planet are as yet extremely primitive. It seems that, in ancient times, those groups of Martians who inhabited territories surrounded by mountains and forests or bordered by oceans and rivers, were forced to consider these natural boundaries as insurmountable barriers, and that these barriers made their communication with other groups of Martians almost impossible. Each of these groups was thus for many long centuries constrained to lead an isolated existence. The tribes that occupied one valley never came in contact with the inhabitants of other valleys. One group of Martians would dwell at one side of some large forest; on the other side some other group would be struggling along; but the two groups never met to interchange their views or to learn in what way the other had increased the comforts of life. Naturally, therefore, each group developed a language and crude civilization of its own, and the result was the division of the inhabitants of Mars into separate nations, each with its own peculiar customs and ideals.