Chapter 11

Nothing had more perplexed me in seeking to reconcile my sense to the existence of
regions extending below the surface of the earth, and habitable by beings, if dissimilar
from, still, in all material points of organism, akin to those in the upper world, than the
contradiction thus presented to the doctrine in which, I believe, most geologists and
philosophers concur- viz., that though with us the sun is the great source of heat, yet the
deeper we go beneath the crust of the earth, the greater is the increasing heat, being, it is
said, found in the ratio of a degree for every foot, commencing from fifty feet below the
surface. But though the domains of the tribe I speak of were, on the higher ground, so
comparatively near to the surface, that I could account for a temperature, therein, suitable
to organic life, yet even the ravines and valleys of that realm were much less hot than
philosophers would deem possible at such a depth- certainly not warmer than the south of
France, or at least of Italy. And according to all the accounts I received, vast tracts
immeasurably deeper beneath the surface, and in which one might have thought only
salamanders could exist, were inhabited by innumerable races organised like ourselves, I
cannot pretend in any way to account for a fact which is so at variance with the
recognised laws of science, nor could Zee much help me towards a solution of it. She did
but conjecture that sufficient allowance had not been made by our philosophers for the
extreme porousness of the interior earth- the vastness of its cavities and irregularities,
which served to create free currents of air and frequent winds- and for the various modes
in which heat is evaporated and thrown off. She allowed, however, that there was a depth
at which the heat was deemed to be intolerable to such organised life as was known to the
experience of the Vril-ya, though their philosophers believed that even in such places life
of some kind, life sentient, life intellectual, would be found abundant and thriving, could
the philosophers penetrate to it. "Wherever the All-Good builds," said she, "there, be
sure, He places inhabitants. He loves not empty dwellings." She added, however, that
many changes in temperature and climate had been effected by the skill of the Vril-ya,
and that the agency of vril had been successfully employed in such changes. She
described a subtle and life-giving medium called Lai, which I suspect to be identical with
the ethereal oxygen of Dr. Lewins, wherein work all the correlative forces united under
the name of vril; and contended that wherever this medium could be expanded, as it were,
sufficiently for the various agencies of vril to have ample play, a temperature congenial
to the highest forms of life could be secured. She said also, that it was the belief of their
naturalists that flowers and vegetation had been produced originally (whether developed
from seeds borne from the surface of the earth in the earlier convulsions of nature, or
imported by the tribes that first sought refuge in cavernous hollows) through the
operations of the light constantly brought to bear on them, and the gradual improvement
in culture. She said also, that since the vril light had superseded all other light-giving
bodies, the colours of flower and foliage had become more brilliant, and vegetation had
acquired larger growth.

Leaving these matters to the consideration of those better competent to deal with them, I
must now devote a few pages to the very interesting questions connected with the
language of the Vril-ya.

Chapter 12

The language of the Vril-ya is peculiarly interesting, because it seems to me to exhibit
with great clearness the traces of the three main transitions through which language
passes in attaining to perfection of form.

One of the most illustrious of recent philologists, Max Muller, in arguing for the analogy
between the strata of language and the strata of the earth, lays down this absolute dogma:
"No language can, by any possibility, be inflectional without having passed through the
agglutinative and isolating stratum. No language can be agglutinative without clinging
with its roots to the underlying stratum of isolation."- 'On the Stratification of Language,'
Taking then the Chinese language as the best existing type of the original isolating
stratum, "as the faithful photograph of man in his leading-strings trying the muscles of his
mind, groping his way, and so delighted with his first successful grasps that he repeats
them again and again," (Max Muller, p. 13)- we have, in the language of the Vril-ya, still
"clinging with its roots to the underlying stratum," the evidences of the original isolation.
It abounds in monosyllables, which are the foundations of the language. The transition
into the agglutinative form marks an epoch that must have gradually extended through
ages, the written literature of which has only survived in a few fragments of symbolical
mythology and certain pithy sentences which have passed into popular proverbs. With the
extant literature of the Vril-ya the inflectional stratum commences. No doubt at that time
there must have operated concurrent causes, in the fusion of races by some dominant
people, and the rise of some great literary phenomena by which the form of language
became arrested and fixed. As the inflectional stage prevailed over the agglutinative, it is
surprising to see how much more boldly the original roots of the language project from
the surface that conceals them. In the old fragments and proverbs of the preceding stage
the monosyllables which compose those roots vanish amidst words of enormous length,
comprehending whole sentences from which no one part can be disentangled from the
other and employed separately. But when the inflectional form of language became so far
advanced as to have its scholars and grammarians, they seem to have united in extirpating
all such polysynthetical or polysyllabic monsters, as devouring invaders of the aboriginal
forms. Words beyond three syllables became proscribed as barbarous and in proportion
as the language grew thus simplified it increased in strength, in dignity, and in sweetness.
Though now very compressed in sound, it gains in clearness by that compression. By a
single letter, according to its position, they contrive to express all that with civilised
nations in our upper world it takes the waste, sometimes of syllables, sometimes of
sentences, to express. Let me here cite one or two instances: An (which I will translate
man), Ana (men); the letter 's' is with them a letter implying multitude, according to
where it is placed; Sana means mankind; Ansa, a multitude of men. The prefix of certain
letters in their alphabet invariably denotes compound significations. For instance, Gl
(which with them is a single letter, as 'th' is a single letter with the Greeks) at the
commencement of a word infers an assemblage or union of things, sometimes kindred,
sometimes dissimilar- as Oon, a house; Gloon, a town (i. e., an assemblage of houses).
Ata is sorrow; Glata, a public calamity. Aur-an is the health or wellbeing of a man;
Glauran, the wellbeing of the state, the good of the community; and a word constantly in
ther mouths is A-glauran, which denotes their political creed- viz., that "the first principle
of a community is the good of all." Aub is invention; Sila, a tone in music. Glaubsila, as
uniting the ideas of invention and of musical intonation, is the classical word for poetryabbreviated,
in ordinary conversation, to Glaubs. Na, which with them is, like Gl, but a
single letter, always, when an initial, implies something antagonistic to life or joy or
comfort, resembling in this the Aryan root Nak, expressive of perishing or destruction.
Nax is darkness; Narl, death; Naria, sin or evil. Nas- an uttermost condition of sin and
evil- corruption. In writing, they deem it irreverent to express the Supreme Being by any
special name. He is symbolized by what may be termed the heiroglyphic of a pyramid, /\.
In prayer they address Him by a name which they deem too sacred to confide to a
stranger, and I know it not. In conversation they generally use a periphrastic epithet, such
as the All-Good. The letter V, symbolical of the inverted pyramid, where it is an initial,
nearly always denotes excellence of power; as Vril, of which I have said so much; Veed,
an immortal spirit; Veed-ya, immortality; Koom, pronounced like the Welsh Cwm,
denotes something of hollowness. Koom itself is a cave; Koom-in, a hole; Zi-koom, a
valley; Koom-zi, vacancy or void; Bodh-koom, ignorance (literally, knowledge-void).
Koom-posh is their name for the government of the many, or the ascendancy of the most
ignorant or hollow. Posh is an almost untranslatable idiom, implying, as the reader will
see later, contempt. The closest rendering I can give to it is our slang term, "bosh;" and
this Koom-Posh may be loosely rendered "Hollow-Bosh." But when Democracy or
Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into that popular passion or ferocity
which precedes its decease, as (to cite illustrations from the upper world) during the
French Reign of Terror, or for the fifty years of the Roman Republic preceding the
ascendancy of Augustus, their name for that state of things is Glek-Nas. Ek is strife-
Glek, the universal strife. Nas, as I before said, is corruption or rot; thus, Glek-Nas may
be construed, "the universal strife-rot." Their compounds are very expressive; thus, Bodh
being knowledge, and Too a participle that implies the action of cautiously approaching,-
Too-bodh is their word for Philosophy; Pah is a contemptuous exclamation analogous to
our idiom, "stuff and nonsense;" Pah-bodh (literally stuff and nonsense-knowledge) is
their term for futile and false philosophy, and applied to a species of metaphysical or
speculative ratiocination formerly in vogue, which consisted in making inquiries that
could not be answered, and were not worth making; such, for instance, as "Why does an
An have five toes to his feet instead of four or six? Did the first An, created by the All-
Good, have the same number of toes as his descendants? In the form by which an An will
be recognised by his friends in the future state of being, will he retain any toes at all, and,
if so, will they be material toes or spiritual toes?" I take these illustrations of Pahbodh,
not in irony or jest, but because the very inquiries I name formed the subject of
controversy by the latest cultivators of that 'science,'- 4000 years ago.

In the declension of nouns I was informed that anciently there were eight cases (one more
than in the Sanskrit Grammar); but the effect of time has been to reduce these cases, and
multiply, instead of these varying terminations, explanatory propositions. At present, in
the Grammar submitted to my study, there were four cases to nouns, three having varying
terminations, and the fourth a differing prefix.

SINGULAR. PLURAL.

Nom. An, Man, | Nom. Ana, Men.
Dat. Ano, to Man, | Dat. Anoi, to Men.
Ac. Anan, Man, | Ac. Ananda, Men.
Voc. Hil-an, O Man, | Voc. Hil-Ananda, O Men.

In the elder inflectional literature the dual form existed- it has long been obsolete.
The genitive case with them is also obsolete; the dative supplies its place: they say the
House 'to' a Man, instead of the House 'of' a Man. When used (sometimes in poetry), the
genitive in the termination is the same as the nominative; so is the ablative, the
preposition that marks it being a prefix or suffix at option, and generally decided by ear,
according to the sound of the noun. It will be observed that the prefix Hil marks the
vocative case. It is always retained in addressing another, except in the most intimate
domestic relations; its omission would be considered rude: just as in our of forms of
speech in addressing a king it would have been deemed disrespectful to say "King," and
reverential to say "O King." In fact, as they have no titles of honour, the vocative
adjuration supplies the place of a title, and is given impartially to all. The prefix Hil
enters into the composition of words that imply distant communications, as Hil-ya, to
travel.

In the conjugation of their verbs, which is much too lengthy a subject to enter on here, the
auxiliary verb Ya, "to go," which plays so considerable part in the Sanskrit, appears and
performs a kindred office, as if it were a radical in some language from which both had
descended. But another auxiliary or opposite signification also accompanies it and shares
its labours- viz., Zi, to stay or repose. Thus Ya enters into the future tense, and Zi in the
preterite of all verbs requiring auxiliaries. Yam, I shall go- Yiam, I may go- Yani-ya, I
shall go (literally, I go to go), Zam-poo-yan, I have gone (literally, I rest from gone). Ya,
as a termination, implies by analogy, progress, movement, efflorescence. Zi, as a
terminal, denotes fixity, sometimes in a good sense, sometimes in a bad, according to the
word with which it is coupled. Iva-zi, eternal goodness; Nan-zi, eternal evil. Poo (from)
enters as a prefix to words that denote repugnance, or things from which we ought to be
averse. Poo-pra, disgust; Poo-naria, falsehood, the vilest kind of evil. Poosh or Posh I
have already confessed to be untranslatable literally. It is an expression of contempt not
unmixed with pity. This radical seems to have originated from inherent sympathy
between the labial effort and the sentiment that impelled it, Poo being an utterance in
which the breath is exploded from the lips with more or less vehemence. On the other
hand, Z, when an initial, is with them a sound in which the breath is sucked inward, and
thus Zu, pronounced Zoo (which in their language is one letter), is the ordinary prefix to
words that signify something that attracts, pleases, touches the heart- as Zummer, lover;
Zutze, love; Zuzulia, delight. This indrawn sound of Z seems indeed naturally appropriate
to fondness. Thus, even in our language, mothers say to their babies, in defiance of
grammar, "Zoo darling;" and I have heard a learned professor at Boston call his wife (he
had been only married a month) "Zoo little pet."

I cannot quit this subject, however, without observing by what slight changes in the
dialects favoured by different tribes of the same race, the original signification and beauty
of sounds may become confused and deformed. Zee told me with much indignation that
Zummer (lover) which in the way she uttered it, seemed slowly taken down to the very
depths of her heart, was, in some not very distant communities of the Vril-ya, vitiated
into the half-hissing, half-nasal, wholly disagreeable, sound of Subber. I thought to
myself it only wanted the introduction of 'n' before 'u' to render it into an English word
significant of the last quality an amorous Gy would desire in her Zummer.

I will but mention another peculiarity in this language which gives equal force and
brevity to its forms of expressions.

A is with them, as with us, the first letter of the alphabet, and is often used as a prefix
word by itself to convey a complex idea of sovereignty or chiefdom, or presiding
principle. For instance, Iva is goodness; Diva, goodness and happiness united; A-Diva is
unerring and absolute truth. I have already noticed the value of A in A-glauran, so, in vril
(to whose properties they trace their present state of civilisation), A-vril, denotes, as I
have said, civilisation itself.

The philologist will have seen from the above how much the language of the Vril-ya is
akin to the Aryan or Indo-Germanic; but, like all languages, it contains words and forms
in which transfers from very opposite sources of speech have been taken. The very title of
Tur, which they give to their supreme magistrate, indicates theft from a tongue akin to the
Turanian. They say themselves that this is a foreign word borrowed from a title which
their historical records show to have been borne by the chief of a nation with whom the
ancestors of the Vril-ya were, in very remote periods, on friendly terms, but which has
long become extinct, and they say that when, after the discovery of vril, they remodelled
their political institutions, they expressly adopted a title taken from an extinct race and a
dead language for that of their chief magistrate, in order to avoid all titles for that office
with which they had previous associations.

Should life be spared to me, I may collect into systematic form such knowledge as I
acquired of this language during my sojourn amongst the Vril-ya. But what I have
already said will perhaps suffice to show to genuine philological students that a language
which, preserving so many of the roots in the aboriginal form, and clearing from the
immediate, but transitory, polysynthetical stage so many rude incumbrances, s from
popular ignorance into that popular passion or ferocity which precedes its decease, as (to
cite illustrations from the upper world) during the French Reign of Terror, or for the fifty
years of the Roman Republic preceding the ascendancy of Augustus, their name for that
state of things is Glek-Nas. Ek is strife- Glek, the universal strife. Nas, as I before said, is
corruption or rot; thus, Glek-Nas may be construed, "the universal strife-rot." Their
compounds are very expressive; thuat which the Ana have attained forbids the
progressive cultivation of literature, especially in the two main divisions of fiction and
history,- I shall have occasion to show later.

Chapter 13

This people have a religion, and, whatever may be said against it, at least it has these
strange peculiarities: firstly, that all believe in the creed they profess; secondly, that they
all practice the precepts which the creed inculcates. They unite in the worship of one
divine Creator and Sustainer of the universe. They believe that it is one of the properties
of the all-permeating agency of vril, to transmit to the well-spring of life and intelligence
every thought that a living creature can conceive; and though they do not contend that the
idea of a Diety is innate, yet they say that the An (man) is the only creature, so far as their
observation of nature extends, to whom 'the capacity of conceiving that idea,' with all the
trains of thought which open out from it, is vouchsafed. They hold that this capacity is a
privilege that cannot have been given in vain, and hence that prayer and thanksgiving are
acceptable to the divine Creator, and necessary to the complete development of the
human creature. They offer their devotions both in private and public. Not being
considered one of their species, I was not admitted into the building or temple in which
the public worship is rendered; but I am informed that the service is exceedingly short,
and unattended with any pomp of ceremony. It is a doctrine with the Vril-ya, that earnest
devotion or complete abstraction from the actual world cannot, with benefit to itself, be
maintained long at a stretch by the human mind, especially in public, and that all attempts
to do so either lead to fanaticism or to hypocrisy. When they pray in private, it is when
they are alone or with their young children.

They say that in ancient times there was a great number of books written upon
speculations as to the nature of the Diety, and upon the forms of belief or worship
supposed to be most agreeable to Him. But these were found to lead to such heated and
angry disputations as not only to shake the peace of the community and divide families
before the most united, but in the course of discussing the attributes of the Diety, the
existence of the Diety Himself became argued away, or, what was worse, became
invested with the passions and infirmities of the human disputants. "For," said my host,
"since a finite being like an An cannot possibly define the Infinite, so, when he
endeavours to realise an idea of the Divinity, he only reduces the Divinity into an An like
himself." During the later ages, therefore, all theological speculations, though not
forbidden, have been so discouraged as to have fallen utterly into disuse. The Vril-ya
unite in a conviction of a future state, more felicitous and more perfect than the present. If
they have very vague notions of the doctrine of rewards and punishments, it is perhaps
because they have no systems of rewards and punishments among themselves, for there
are no crimes to punish, and their moral standard is so even that no An among them is,
upon the whole, considered more virtuous than another. If one excels, perhaps in one
virtue, another equally excels in some other virtue; If one has his prevalent fault or
infirmity, so also another has his. In fact, in their extraordinary mode of life. there are so
few temptations to wrong, that they are good (according to their notions of goodness)
merely because they live. They have some fanciful notions upon the continuance of life,
when once bestowed, even in the vegetable world, as the reader will see in the next
chapter.

Chapter 14

Though, as I have said, the Vril-ya discourage all speculations on the nature of the
Supreme Being, they appear to concur in a belief by which they think to solve that great
problem of the existence of evil which has so perplexed the philosophy of the upper
world. They hold that wherever He has once given life, with the perceptions of that life,
however faint it be, as in a plant, the life is never destroyed; it passes into new and
improved forms, though not in this planet (differing therein from the ordinary doctrine of
metempsychosis), and that the living thing retains the sense of identity, so that it connects
its past life with its future, and is 'conscious' of its progressive improvement in the scale
of joy. For they say that, without this assumption, they cannot, according to the lights of
human reason vouchsafed to them, discover the perfect justice which must be a
constituent quality of the All-Wise and the All-Good. Injustice, they say, can only
emanate from three causes: want of wisdom to perceive what is just, want of benevolence
to desire, want of power to fulfill it; and that each of these three wants is incompatible in
the All-Wise, the All-Good, the All-Powerful. But that, while even in this life, the
wisdom, the benevolence, and the power of the Supreme Being are sufficiently apparent
to compel our recognition, the justice necessarily resulting from those attributes,
absolutely requires another life, not for man only, but for every living thing of the inferior
orders. That, alike in the animal and the vegetable world, we see one individual rendered,
by circumstances beyond its control, exceedingly wretched compared to its neighboursone
only exists as the prey of another- even a plant suffers from disease till it perishes
prematurely, while the plant next to it rejoices in its vitality and lives out its happy life
free from a pang. That it is an erroneous analogy from human infirmities to reply by
saying that the Supreme Being only acts by general laws, thereby making his own
secondary causes so potent as to mar the essential kindness of the First Cause; and a still
meaner and more ignorant conception of the All-Good, to dismiss with a brief contempt
all consideration of justice for the myriad forms into which He has infused life, and
assume that justice is only due to the single product of the An. There is no small and no
great in the eyes of the divine Life-Giver. But once grant that nothing, however humble,
which feels that it lives and suffers, can perish through the series of ages, that all its
suffering here, if continuous from the moment of its birth to that of its transfer to another
form of being, would be more brief compared with eternity than the cry of the new-born
is compared to the whole life of a man; and once suppose that this living thing retains its
sense of identity when so transformed (for without that sense it could be aware of no
future being), and though, indeed, the fulfilment of divine justice is removed from the
scope of our ken, yet we have a right to assume it to be uniform and universal, and not
varying and partial, as it would be if acting only upon general and secondary laws;
because such perfect justice flows of necessity from perfectness of knowledge to
conceive, perfectness of love to will, and perfectness of power to complete it.
However fantastic this belief of the Vril-ya may be, it tends perhaps to confirm politically
the systems of government which, admitting different degrees of wealth, yet establishes
perfect equality in rank, exquisite mildness in all relations and intercourse, and tenderness
to all created things which the good of the community does not require them to destroy.
And though their notion of compensation to a tortured insect or a cankered flower may
seem to some of us a very wild crotchet, yet, at least, is not a mischievous one; and it may
furnish matter for no unpleasing reflection to think that within the abysses of earth, never
lit by a ray from the material heavens, there should have penetrated so luminous a
conviction of the ineffable goodness of the Creator- so fixed an idea that the general laws
by which He acts cannot admit of any partial injustice or evil, and therefore cannot be
comprehended without reference to their action over all space and throughout all time.
And since, as I shall have occasion to observe later, the intellectual conditions and social
systems of this subterranean race comprise and harmonise great, and apparently
antagonistic, varieties in philosophical doctrine and speculation which have from time to
time been started, discussed, dismissed, and have re-appeared amongst thinkers or
dreamers in the upper world,- so I may perhaps appropriately conclude this reference to
the belief of the Vril-ya, that self-conscious or sentient life once given is indestructible
among inferior creatures as well as in man, by an eloquent passage from the work of that
eminent zoologist, Louis Agassiz, which I have only just met with, many years after I had
committed to paper these recollections of the life of the Vril-ya which I now reduce into
something like arrangement and form: "The relations which individual animals bear to
one another are of such a character that they ought long ago to have been considered as
sufficient proof that no organised being could ever have been called into existence by
other agency than by the direct intervention of a reflective mind. This argues strongly in
favour of the existence in every animal of an immaterial principle similar to that which
by its excellence and superior endowments places man so much above the animals; yet
the principle unquestionably exists, and whether it be called sense, reason, or instinct, it
presents in the whole range of organised beings a series of phenomena closely linked
together, and upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but the
very permanence of the specific differences which characterise every organism. Most of
the arguments in favour of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of
this principle in other living beings. May I not add that a future life in which man would
be deprived of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and moral improvement
which results from the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic world would
involve a lamentable loss? And may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined
worlds and ALL their inhabitants in the presence of their Creator as the highest
conception of paradise?"- 'Essay on Classification,' sect. xvii. p. 97-99.

Chapter 15

Kind to me as I found all in this household, the young daughter of my host was the most
considerate and thoughtful in her kindness. At her suggestion I laid aside the habiliments
in which I had descended from the upper earth, and adopted the dress of the Vril-ya, with
the exception of the artful wings which served them, when on foot, as a graceful mantle.
But as many of the Vril-ya, when occupied in urban pursuits, did not wear these wings,
this exception created no marked difference between myself and the race among whom I
sojourned, and I was thus enabled to visit the town without exciting unpleasant curiosity.
Out of the household no one suspected that I had come from the upper world, and I was
but regarded as one of some inferior and barbarous tribe whom Aph-Lin entertained as a
guest.

The city was large in proportion to the territory round it, which was of no greater extent
than many an English or Hungarian nobleman's estate; but the whole if it, to the verge of
the rocks which constituted its boundary, was cultivated to the nicest degree, except
where certain allotments of mountain and pasture were humanely left free to the
sustenance of the harmless animals they had tamed, though not for domestic use. So great
is their kindness towards these humbler creatures, that a sum is devoted from the public
treasury for the purpose of deporting them to other Vril-ya communities willing to
receive them (chiefly new colonies), whenever they become too numerous for the
pastures allotted to them in their native place. They do not, however, multiply to an
extent comparable to the ratio at which, with us, animals bred for slaughter, increase. It
seems a law of nature that animals not useful to man gradually recede from the domains
he occupies, or even become extinct. It is an old custom of the various sovereign states
amidst which the race of the Vril-ya are distributed, to leave between each state a neutral
and uncultivated border-land. In the instance of the community I speak of, this tract,
being a ridge of savage rocks, was impassable by foot, but was easily surmounted,
whether by the wings of the inhabitants or the air-boats, of which I shall speak hereafter.
Roads through it were also cut for the transit of vehicles impelled by vril. These
intercommunicating tracts were always kept lighted, and the expense thereof defrayed by
a special tax, to which all the communities comprehended in the denomination of Vril-ya
contribute in settled proportions. By these means a considerable commercial traffic with
other states, both near and distant, was carried on. The surplus wealth on this special
community was chiefly agricultural. The community was also eminent for skill in
constructing implements connected with the arts of husbandry. In exchange for such
merchandise it obtained articles more of luxury than necessity. There were few things
imported on which they set a higher price than birds taught to pipe artful tunes in concert.
These were brought from a great distance, and were marvellous for beauty of song and
plumage. I understand that extraordinary care was taken by their breeders and teachers in
selection, and that the species had wonderfully improved during the last few years. I saw
no other pet animals among this community except some very amusing and sportive
creatures of the Batrachian species, resembling frogs, but with very intelligent
countenances, which the children were fond of, and kept in their private gardens. They
appear to have no animals akin to our dogs or horses, though that learned naturalist, Zee,
informed me that such creatures had once existed in those parts, and might now be found
in regions inhabited by other races than the Vril-ya. She said that they had gradually
disappeared from the more civilised world since the discovery of vril, and the results
attending that discovery had dispensed with their uses. Machinery and the invention of
wings had superseded the horse as a beast of burden; and the dog was no longer wanted
either for protection or the chase, as it had been when the ancestors of the Vril-ya feared
the aggressions of their own kind, or hunted the lesser animals for food. Indeed, however,
so far as the horse was concerned, this region was so rocky that a horse could have been,
there, of little use either for pastime or burden. The only creature they use for the latter
purpose is a kind of large goat which is much employed on farms. The nature of the
surrounding soil in these districts may be said to have first suggested the invention of
wings and air-boats. The largeness of space in proportion to the space occupied by the
city, was occasioned by the custom of surrounding every house with a separate garden.
The broad main street, in which Aph-Lin dwelt, expanded into a vast square, in which
were placed the College of Sages and all the public offices; a magnificent fountain of the
luminous fluid which I call naptha (I am ignorant of its real nature) in the centre. All
these public edifices have a uniform character of massiveness and solidity. They
reminded me of the architectural pictures of Martin. Along the upper stories of each ran a
balcony, or rather a terraced garden, supported by columns, filled with flowering plants,
and tenanted by many kinds of tame birds. From the square branched several streets, all
broad and brilliantly lighted, and ascending up the eminence on either side. In my
excursions in the town I was never allowed to go alone; Aph-Lin or his daughter was my
habitual companion. In this community the adult Gy is seen walking with any young An
as familiarly as if there were no difference of sex.

The retail shops are not very numerous; the persons who attend on a customer are all
children of various ages, and exceedingly intelligent and courteous, but without the least
touch of importunity or cringing. The shopkeeper himself might or might not be visible;
when visible, he seemed rarely employed on any matter connected with his professional
business; and yet he had taken to that business from special liking for it, and quite
independently of his general sources of fortune.

The Ana of the community are, on the whole, an indolent set of beings after the active
age of childhood. Whether by temperament or philosophy, they rank repose among the
chief blessings of life. Indeed, when you take away from a human being the incentives to
action which are found in cupidity or ambition, it seems to me no wonder that he rests
quiet.

In their ordinary movements they prefer the use of their feet to that of their wings. But for
their sports or (to indulge in a bold misuse of terms) their public 'promenades,' they
employ the latter, also for the aerial dances I have described, as well as for visiting their
country places, which are mostly placed on lofty heights; and, when still young, they
prefer their wings for travel into the other regions of the Ana, to vehicular conveyances.
Those who accustom themselves to flight can fly, if less rapidly than some birds, yet
from twenty-five to thirty miles an hour, and keep up that rate for five or six hours at a
stretch. But the Ana generally, on reaching middle age, are not fond of rapid movements
requiring violent exercise. Perhaps for this reason, as they hold a doctrine which our own
physicians will doubtless approve- viz., that regular transpiration through the pores of the
skin is essential to health, they habitually use the sweating-baths to which we give the
name Turkish or Roman, succeeded by douches of perfumed waters. They have great
faith in the salubrious virtue of certain perfumes.

It is their custom also, at stated but rare periods, perhaps four times a-year when in
health, to use a bath charged with vril.*

* I once tried the effect of the vril bath. It was very similar in its invigorating powers to
that of the baths at Gastein, the virtues of which are ascribed by many physicians to
electricity; but though similar, the effect of the vril bath was more lasting.
They consider that this fluid, sparingly used, is a great sustainer of life; but used in
excess, when in the normal state of health, rather tends to reaction and exhausted vitality.
For nearly all their diseases, however, they resort to it as the chief assistant to nature in
throwing off their complaint.

In their own way they are the most luxurious of people, but all their luxuries are innocent.
They may be said to dwell in an atmosphere of music and fragrance. Every room has its
mechanical contrivances for melodious sounds, usually tuned down to soft-murmured
notes, which seem like sweet whispers from invisible spirits. They are too accustomed to
these gentle sounds to find them a hindrance to conversation, nor, when alone, to
reflection. But they have a notion that to breathe an air filled with continuous melody and
perfume has necessarily an effect at once soothing and elevating upon the formation of
character and the habits of thought. Though so temperate, and with total abstinence from
other animal food than milk, and from all intoxicating drinks, they are delicate and dainty
to an extreme in food and beverage; and in all their sports even the old exhibit a childlike
gaiety. Happiness is the end at which they aim, not as the excitement of a moment, but as
the prevailing condition of the entire existence; and regard for the happiness of each other
is evinced by the exquisite amenity of their manners.

Their conformation of skull has marked differences from that of any known races in the
upper world, though I cannot help thinking it a development, in the course of countless
ages of the Brachycephalic type of the Age of Stone in Lyell's 'Elements of Geology,' C.
X., p. 113, as compared with the Dolichocephalic type of the beginning of the Age of
Iron, correspondent with that now so prevalent amongst us, and called the Celtic type. It
has the same comparative massiveness of forehead, not receding like the Celtic- the same
even roundness in the frontal organs; but it is far loftier in the apex, and far less
pronounced in the hinder cranial hemisphere where phrenologists place the animal
organs. To speak as a phrenologist, the cranium common to the Vril-ya has the organs of
weight, number, tune, form, order, causality, very largely developed; that of construction
much more pronounced than that of ideality. Those which are called the moral organs,
such as conscientiousness and benevolence, are amazingly full; amativeness and
combativeness are both small; adhesiveness large; the organ of destructiveness (i.e., of
determined clearance of intervening obstacles) immense, but less than that of
benevolence; and their philoprogenitiveness takes rather the character of compassion and
tenderness to things that need aid or protection than of the animal love of offspring. I
never met with one person deformed or misshapen. The beauty of their countenances is
not only in symmetry of feature, but in a smoothness of surface, which continues without
line or wrinkle to the extreme of old age, and a serene sweetness of expression, combined
with that majesty which seems to come from consciousness of power and the freedom of
all terror, physical or moral. It is that very sweetness, combined with that majesty, which
inspired in a beholder like myself, accustomed to strive with the passions of mankind, a
sentiment of humiliation, of awe, of dread. It is such an expression as a painter might
give to a demi-god, a genius, an angel. The males of the Vril-ya are entirely beardless;
the Gy-ei sometimes, in old age, develop a small moustache.

I was surprised to find that the colour of their skin was not uniformly that which I had
remarked in those individuals whom I had first encountered,- some being much fairer,
and even with blue eyes, and hair of a deep golden auburn, though still of complexions
warmer or richer in tone than persons in the north of Europe.

I was told that this admixture of colouring arose from intermarriage with other and more
distant tribes of the Vril-ya, who, whether by the accident of climate or early distinction
of race, were of fairer hues than the tribes of which this community formed one. It was
considered that the dark-red skin showed the most ancient family of Ana; but they
attached no sentiment of pride to that antiquity, and, on the contrary, believed their
present excellence of breed came from frequent crossing with other families differing, yet
akin; and they encourage such intermarriages, always provided that it be with the Vril-ya
nations. Nations which, not conforming their manners and institutions to those of the
Vril-ya, nor indeed held capable of acquiring the powers over the vril agencies which it
had taken them generations to attain and transmit, were regarded with more disdain than
the citizens of New York regard the negroes.

I learned from Zee, who had more lore in all matters than any male with whom I was
brought into familiar converse, that the superiority of the Vril-ya was supposed to have
originated in the intensity of their earlier struggles against obstacles in nature amidst the
localities in which they had first settled. "Wherever," said Zee, moralising, "wherever
goes on that early process in the history of civilisation, by which life is made a struggle,
in which the individual has to put forth all his powers to compete with his fellow, we
invariably find this result- viz., since in the competition a vast number must perish, nature
selects for preservation only the strongest specimens. With our race, therefore, even
before the discovery of vril, only the highest organisations were preserved; and there is
among our ancient books a legend, once popularly believed, that we were driven from a
region that seems to denote the world you come from, in order to perfect our condition
and attain to the purest elimination of our species by the severity of the struggles our
forefathers underwent; and that, when our education shall become finally completed, we
are destined to return to the upper world, and supplant all the inferior races now existing
therein."

Aph-Lin and Zee often conversed with me in private upon the political and social
conditions of that upper world, in which Zee so philosophically assumed that the
inhabitants were to be exterminated one day or other by the advent of the Vril-ya. They
found in my accounts,- in which I continued to do all I could (without launching into
falsehoods so positive that they would have been easily detected by the shrewdness of my
listeners) to present our powers and ourselves in the most flattering point of view,-
perpetual subjects of comparison between our most civilised populations and the meaner
subterranean races which they considered hopelessly plunged in barbarism, and doomed
to gradual if certain extinction. But they both agreed in desiring to conceal from their
community all premature opening into the regions lighted by the sun; both were humane,
and shrunk from the thought of annihilating so many millions of creatures; and the
pictures I drew of our life, highly coloured as they were, saddened them. In vain I boasted
of our great men- poets, philosophers, orators, generals- and defied the Vril-ya to produce
their equals. "Alas," said Zee, "this predominance of the few over the many is the surest
and most fatal sign of a race incorrigibly savage. See you not that the primary condition
of mortal happiness consists in the extinction of that strife and competition between
individuals, which, no matter what forms of government they adopt, render the many
subordinate to the few, destroy real liberty to the individual, whatever may be the
nominal liberty of the state, and annul that calm of existence, without which, felicity,
mental or bodily, cannot be attained? Our notion is, that the more we can assimilate life
to the existence which our noblest ideas can conceive to be that of spirits on the other
side of the grave, why, the more we approximate to a divine happiness here, and the more
easily we glide into the conditions of being hereafter. For, surely, all we can imagine of
the life of gods, or of blessed immortals, supposes the absence of self-made cares and
contentious passions, such as avarice and ambition. It seems to us that it must be a life of
serene tranquility, not indeed without active occupations to the intellectual or spiritual
powers, but occupations, of whatsoever nature they be, congenial to the idiosyncrasies of
each, not forced and repugnant- a life gladdened by the untrammelled interchange of
gentle affections, in which the moral atmosphere utterly kills hate and vengeance, and
strife and rivalry. Such is the political state to which all the tribes and families of the Vrilya
seek to attain, and towards that goal all our theories of government are shaped. You
see how utterly opposed is such a progress to that of the uncivilised nations from which
you come, and which aim at a systematic perpetuity of troubles, and cares, and warring
passions aggravated more and more as their progress storms its way onward. The most
powerful of all the races in our world, beyond the pale of the Vril-ya, esteems itself the
best governed of all political societies, and to have reached in that respect the extreme
end at which political wisdom can arrive, so that the other nations should tend more or
less to copy it. It has established, on its broadest base, the Koom-Posh- viz., the
government of the ignorant upon the principle of being the most numerous. It has placed
the supreme bliss in the vying with each other in all things, so that the evil passions are
never in repose- vying for power, for wealth, for eminence of some kind; and in this
rivalry it is horrible to hear the vituperation, the slanders, and calumnies which even the
best and mildest among them heap on each other without remorse or shame."
"Some years ago," said Aph-Lin, "I visited this people, and their misery and degradation
were the more appalling because they were always boasting of their felicity and grandeur
as compared with the rest of their species. And there is no hope that this people, which
evidently resembles your own, can improve, because all their notions tend to further
deterioration. They desire to enlarge their dominion more and more, in direct antagonism
to the truth that, beyond a very limited range, it is impossible to secure to a community
the happiness which belongs to a well-ordered family; and the more they mature a system
by which a few individuals are heated and swollen to a size above the standard
slenderness of the millions, the more they chuckle and exact, and cry out, 'See by what
great exceptions to the common littleness of our race we prove the magnificent results of
our system!'"

"In fact," resumed Zee, "if the wisdom of human life be to approximate to the serene
equality of immortals, there can be no more direct flying off into the opposite direction
than a system which aims at carrying to the utmost the inequalities and turbulences of
mortals. Nor do I see how, by any forms of religious belief, mortals, so acting, could fit
themselves even to appreciate the joys of immortals to which they still expect to be
transferred by the mere act of dying. On the contrary, minds accustomed to place
happiness in things so much the reverse of godlike, would find the happiness of gods
exceedingly dull, and would long to get back to a world in which they could quarrel with
each other."

​