An Unknown World

by Pierre de Sélènes

  There the roles of the Diemides concluded. The hierarchy continued in the superior class known as the Meolicenes—which is to say, “people of intelligence.”

  To tell the truth, there were no other distinctions between the two branches of that great people than the nature of the work they did. So long as the work was entirely or primarily material, they remained in the class of Diemides. When the work to which they were devoted demanded the exclusive employment of the faculties of intelligence, they entered the superior class of Meolicenes, and there a progression continued rising to the most elevated rank, occupied by the sages whose vast intellect embrace the principles of all the sciences, the general laws of the universe and the great moral truths that served the humankind in question, already so far advanced on the path of perfection, as a guide.

  As the worship and practice of goodness was, in those elite natures, in harmony with the extent of knowledge, the foremost among the Meolicenes combined the most complete sagacity with the most unalterable virtue. Detached from all the moral flaws and imperfections that might remain in the inferior ranks of human fallibility, they seemed to live in an ethereal atmosphere in which nothing base or impure survived. They were dominant by virtue of the power of the mind, and the almost complete possession of the secrets of nature, which put into their hands forces capable, if necessary, of destroying the world they inhabited, and, above all, by virtue of the serenity of their life and the authority given to them by the constant realization of everything good, honest and just.

  They formed the Supreme Council of magistrates, which ruled that republic of sorts. The Head of State, whose powers were lifelong, was elected by the members of the Council and was always chosen from among them. In that assembly of sages there could be no question of intrigue or vulgar competition; it was always the most worthy who obtained the suffrage of his colleagues. His functions consisted of directing the deliberations of the assembly over which he presided, and of taking, on his own initiative, all the measures that he judged useful to the material and moral development of the entire society. He figured in the first rank of all public ceremonies; he was both the head of the religion and of the city. That double character, august and sacred, and the conviction of everyone that he was the foremost in science, wisdom and virtue, assured him of an authority before which everyone inclined respectfully.

  In that milieu, where social situation was marked by personal value alone, no privilege was reserved for birth; all were born equal, and all were subject to the same proofs. Every child, whether issued from a Diemide or a Meolicene family, was raised until puberty in the boom of that family. Without distinction of sex, they received from the mouths of ages the elements of all the useful or agreeable knowledge that would permit them subsequently to fulfill the roles that nature destined for them. Young men drew therefrom the principles of the sciences that they would have to apply in the various functions that the social hierarchy retained for them. Young women, in whose souls the sentiment of beauty was especially cultivated, formed the culture of the arts there without those aspirations to the ideal ever being able to alter the natural modesty of their sex, which is the charm of life.

  Those who were responsible for distributing information in that fashion, and who had the delicate mission of discerning each pupil’s dominant aptitudes and favoring their development for the greater good of the common interest, were the most honored among the Meolicenes.

  The most important task of all was considered to be that of forming the worship of the good, the beautiful and the true in the souls of future generations.

  For the young women, their lives continued in the domestic hearth until the choice of a spouse removed them from the parental house.

  As no one could think of enriching themselves or raising themselves above others by evil means, and as there was no individual property, everyone received their legitimate share of common funds, and in consequences, there were no transactions, no salaries, and no money of any sort. There could be no question, therefore, of fortune or dowry. Whereas, on Earth, people hurl themselves recklessly in pursuit of rich inheritances, and, without paying any heed to qualities of the mind or heart, only aim for opulent rewards or base expectations, happy and envied when their calculations have succeeded, love alone, confident and disinterested, presided there over unions whose happiness and dignity were simultaneously assured.

  When a reciprocal sympathy brought two people together, when the sincerity of their sentiments, which they could not think of concealing, had consecrated the first movements of the heart, no one bothered to enquire as to the rank of the social scale on which those who wanted to unite and found a new family were placed. On that terrain there was no distinction between Diemides and Meolicenes.

  Furthermore, the functioning of the institutions that regulated lunar humankind rendered the formation of an aristocracy of race impossible; people only inclined before the intellectual and moral superiority acquired by incessant labor and established by numerous and decisive proofs.

  To take account of that, it is necessary to return to the education given to young people. When they entered into adolescence, all of them, without distinction, whether they were the issue of the most elevated of Meolicenes or the humblest of Diemides, to their places in the latter class, and a career of self-improvement and progress opened up before them.

  They all began by being employed in purely manual labor, which only required the use of physical strength. Those kinds of work, however, which were, for the most part, carried out by the machines of which electricity was the inexhaustible motor, also gave them the opportunity to exercise their intelligence and artistic sentiment. Once raw materials had been extracted and put to work, there was no more to do than fashion them, give them definitive form and, whatever the purpose was for which they were intended—from the powerful supports on which railways tracks rested and the blocks that served as foundations for monuments to the most delicate components of complex apparatus and the furniture the equipped sand ornamented dwellings—everything among those eminently well-endowed people took on the forms of an elegant and harmonious variety. Those occupations, moreover, left them abundant leisure time, and while they were working for the common utility, they continued the cultivation of their mind and strove to render themselves worthy of a superior condition.

  The scholars who directed their work and distributed tasks to each of them were also those who guided them in the development of their scientific sand moral education. There was thus a vast family, in which authority was loved and respected because it was always benevolent and just, where obedience was easy and meek, for it did not rest on the fear of a tyrannical or jealous power, but on a reciprocal affection and a constant desire to do well.

  Those scholars, who were also sages, followed everyone’s work with an attentive eye; they judged merit, efforts accomplished and results obtained, and as soon as one of those submissive to their direction had, by means of personal endeavor, augmented the sum of their own knowledge and rendered themselves capable of rendering services of a more elevated kind to society, they designated them to take their place in a superior class.

  And those decisions, solely dictated by the spirit of justice and the sentiment of the common good, were accepted without protest, jealousy or envy. An individual raised in the social scale saw nothing around them but smiling faces and hands extended to congratulate them on their success; so much did conviction reign from the top to the bottom of the society that everything was supposed to tend, and did in fact tend, to the prosperity and happiness of all.

  It was not, however, given to all those who formed the class of Diemides to march at an equal pace along the path of progress that was open to them. Those who, as is natural in any aggregation of humans, were less well-endowed from the viewpoint of intelligence never passed through the inferior steps and never emerged from the ranks of Diemides; but morality, the spirit of order and submission were the same for all of them. And thus was accomplished, in a
regular and constant fashion, without opposition, regret or bitterness, the rational selection that ensured everyone the place that best suited them.

  The condition of women was what one would suppose in a world exempt from passions, paltry ambitions and puerile vanities. Whether the spouse of their choice was a Diemide or a Meolicene, all were equally considered. Furthermore, if distinctions of class and hierarchical degrees existed for men, nothing similar was encountered for women, and the reason for that was simple. There were neither rich people nor poor people; material life, brought back to its simplest expression, reduced to mere child’s pay the domestic concerns that are often so fastidious and repugnant among us. No one was reduced to the servile condition of rendering humiliating services to others. Everyone’s dignity, no matter to what class they belonged, was thus respected, and no one had to suffer the degrading vices that domestic service engenders on Earth: the jealousy, hatred, deception and fraud that are so often hidden beneath complaisance and obsequiousness.

  While men fulfilled their social functions—none was idle or unemployed—women reserved the care of ornamenting and embellishing their dwellings, bringing up children and cultivating in themselves the exquisite sentiment of the arts: drawing and painting, music and the delicate and charming works that heighten the glamour of garments, and adding to their beauty the attractions of adornment.

  The taste that presided over their adaptations was always ruled by an exceedingly accurate sentiment of measure and decency; no one there was given to vanity, ostentation and the need for appearance that so often spoils the most precious qualities of the women of Earth. Their features, regular and pure, did not offer those specimens of painful ugliness that sometimes generate smiles and alienate all sympathy among us. Their faces were imprinted with an attractive gentleness and agreeable good humor. False and unhealthy artistry could not have added anything to it; nature was sufficient for them, and it would never have occurred to them to resort to vain artifice to exaggerate the opulence of their hair, the freshness of heir complexion or the brightness of their gaze.

  They were equally ignorant of the desperate coquetry of women who do not want to grow old, whose frivolous spirit and light heart take fright at the first wrinkle or white hair. The thought of struggling against the laws that preside over the transformation of all beings could not arise in them; they passed without anxiety from youth to maturity and then to old age, always loved, respected and honored. In any case, their faces always retained, even at an advanced age, an evident air of nobility and bounty.

  The frankness and absolute sincerity that were a law of their nature and the condition of their moral superiority rendered impossible in them those perfidious dissimulations, machinations and treasons that have so often caused despair and ruin on Earth. The lies, calumnies, insipid gossip and evil insinuations in which the idle or empty minds of the mundane societies of our inferior world ordinarily take pleasure were completely unknown there.

  The bonds created by nature, consecrated by affection and heightened by great moral dignity were sacred and respected. Every family offered a complete picture of concord and love, in which was reflected the order and harmony that reigned throughout the society.

  Religious beliefs were those that best suited that purified world. From the outset, its inhabitants had been sheltered by the power of their reason from the crude superstitions that have marked among us the slow development of our civilizations. The idea of an infinite Sovereign Intelligence, the source of all things, the center of all being and all beauty, had not need to be incarnated for them initially in the forms of barbaric materialism, gradually to become more abstract and more perfect. It had presented itself to them from the beginning in all its simplicity and unalterable splendor.

  Never had they judged it appropriate to enclose the divinity in temples, nor submit the worship they rendered thereto to manifestations that were often cruel and bloody and sometimes puerile or ridiculous. Everyone, in their interior consciousness, rendered the divinity a free and pure honor, attributing to the Author of all things their joy or sadness, and abandoned themselves, outside of any narrow ritual or liturgy, in all the spontaneity of a conscience that no authority could constrain, to sentiments of gratitude and adoration.

  At certain epochs the Head of State invited all the inhabitants of the lunar world to public ceremonies of a character both patriotic and religious, and it was to that entirely paternal appeal that the exercise of his religious authority was limited. For those ceremonies, which maintained the chain of tradition through successive generations, poets composed songs, inspired hymns, and musicians made the most delightful melodies heard. The memory of those whose genius had endowed humankind with some great and fecund discovery, and sages who had formulated the precepts of a sublime morality, was celebrated there, and the voice of an entire people rose up to the heavens in accents of joy and gratitude.

  Nothing in that worship resembled the theological controversies in which blind fanaticism unleashes its intolerant furies, causing torrents of blood and tears to flow. Nothing, either, paralleled the vain and sterile philosophical disputes in which minds infatuated with their own power lose themselves in the fog of an incomprehensible metaphysics.

  Everything was simple, noble and grand.

  XIV. The Reception

  The day fixed for the reception of the strangers had arrived. It was in the palace where the Head of State resided and the Supreme Council met that the ceremony was to take place, which would consecrate in an imperishable fashion the success of the most audacious enterprise ever undertaken by human creatures. The news of that solemnity had spread throughout the lunar world; everyone was avid to witness it and they were all in accordance in wanting to surround it with an exceptional magnificence.

  The palace stood some distance from the shore where the tranquil waves of the sea came to break, in the center of a vast square bordered with marble porticos, the various colors of which recalled porphyry, portor and Paros marbles, bloodstone and jasper. Around the columns and pillars hung garlands of flowers and foliage in precious metals, marvelously wrought, whose glitter, alternately amber and azure, blended with the colors of the marble they were decorating. Along the entablements and the friezes ran arabesques of the most delicate workmanship.

  Against that background of warm hues the palace stood out vigorously, its white hues attenuated by the multitude of ornaments covering its walls. Generations of artists had succeeded one another in embellishing that sumptuous monument, in which a kind of history of the lunar world was summarized.

  In the center of the edifice a boldly elegant dome rose up, surmounted by a light and slender campanile, delicately perforated. The dome was covered with a lacework of metallic ornaments, whose sculpture allowed the perception through the capricious mesh of the dazzling whiteness they overlaid. It reposed on a series of colonnettes with richly-worked capitals, linked to one another by sculpted arches whose ribs, tormented and interwoven by a sure hand, formed a veritable lace.

  The palace crowned by that dome affected, in its general disposition, the form of a cross with four equal branches. Above the one that was elongated along the axis of the square, a vast terrace extended surrounded by a light balustrade in gold and silver, and also the metal with violet reflections with which our voyagers were already familiar. It was, it will be recalled, on a plate of the metal in question that the mysterious signs were engraved that had given Marcel the idea of launching his superhuman enterprise. Everything was massive, and there again was found the inexhaustible whimsy that curved the metal, like a flexible branch, around the dome and in the gaps between the colonnettes. Above the other three branches of the cross, supported by light arches, stood bold campaniles, less elevated than the one on the central dome, and covered with sculptures.

  All around the edifice extended a portico forming a covered gallery. On the tops of the high columns supporting it, the garlands of flowers and foliage reappeared, where precious enamels, skillfull
y inserted, imitated nature in their bright and varied colors.

  Everywhere that the exigencies of construction had left flat surfaces—the faces of walls, the sides of pilasters, friezes or entablements—the chisels of skillful sculptors had burrowed into the marble to firm polychromatic bas-reliefs, whose characters were depicted with such a realism of attitude and such an intensity of expression that they offered all the appearances of life. Each of those pictures, whose tones were as rich and varied as those of a painting, represented some scene in the history of lunar humankind. But they were not, as among us, scenes of murder and carnage. The fortunate inhabitants of that superior world had been ignorant of war and its horrors for a long time. If, in the early ages of the planet, the avidities inherent in any newborn humankind had armed living beings against one another, the progress of science and mores had caused such fratricidal struggles to be forgotten many centuries ago, and their memory was only conserved in order to avow universal execration thereto.

  Each of the bas-reliefs recalled some great or useful discovery, or some feature of devotion, still alive in the memory and gratitude of humans, the establishment of some sage law, or the memory of individuals illustrious for their services or their virtues. It was like a perpetual education placed before the eyes of the crowd, which maintained a generous competition in all hearts.

  In spite of the profusion of ornaments that covered the palace, it offered in its harmoniously combined general lines an appearance of incredible lightness. Under the porticos, between the columns, air and light had free play, and the edifice rose up like the fantastic palaces glimpsed in dreams, the capricious and changing contours of which the eye can sometimes follow in clouds.