te of
existence among the Vril-ya is thus, as a whole, immeasurably more
felicitous than that of super-terrestrial races, and, realising the
dreams of our most sanguine philanthropists, almost approaches to a
poet's conception of some angelical order. And yet, if you would take
a thousand of the best and most philosophical of human beings you could
find in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, or even Boston, and place them
as citizens in the beatified community, my belief is, that in less than
a year they would either die of ennui, or attempt some revolution by
which they would militate against the good of the community, and be
burnt into cinders at the request of the Tur.

Certainly I have no desire to insinuate, through the medium of this
narrative, any ignorant disparagement of the race to which I belong. I
have, on the contrary, endeavoured to make it clear that the principles
which regulate the social system of the Vril-ya forbid them to produce
those individual examples of human greatness which adorn the annals of
the upper world. Where there are no wars there can be no Hannibal, no
Washington, no Jackson, no Sheridan;--where states are so happy that
they fear no danger and desire no change, they cannot give birth to a
Demosthenes, a Webster, a Sumner, a Wendell Holmes, or a Butler; and
where a society attains to a moral standard, in which there are no
crimes and no sorrows from which tragedy can extract its aliment of pity
and sorrow, no salient vices or follies on which comedy can lavish its
mirthful satire, it has lost the chance of producing a Shakespeare, or
a Moliere, or a Mrs. Beecher-Stowe. But if I have no desire to disparage
my fellow-men above ground in showing how much the motives that impel
the energies and ambition of individuals in a society of contest and
struggle--become dormant or annulled in a society which aims at securing
for the aggregate the calm and innocent felicity which we presume to be
the lot of beatified immortals; neither, on the other hand, have I the
wish to represent the commonwealths of the Vril-ya as an ideal form of
political society, to the attainment of which our own efforts of reform
should be directed. On the contrary, it is because we have so combined,
throughout the series of ages, the elements which compose human
character, that it would be utterly impossible for us to adopt the modes
of life, or to reconcile our passions to the modes of thought among
the Vril-ya,--that I ar