Theos-Talk Archives (January 2004 Message tt00456)

Charles W. Leadbeater on "Mars and Its Inhabitants"

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MARS AND ITS INHABITANTS

The present condition of the planet Mars is by no
means unpleasant. It is a smaller planet than the
Earth and more advanced in age. I do not mean that it
is actually older in years, for the whole chain of
worlds came into existence - not simultaneously indeed
- but within a certain definite area of time. But
being smaller it lives its life as a planet more
quickly. It cooled more rapidly from the nebulous
condition, and it has passed through its other stages
with corresponding celerity. When humanity occupied it
in the third round it was in much the same condition
as is the Earth at the present time - that is to say,
there was much more water than land on its surface.
Now it has passed into comparative old age, and the
water surface is far less than that of the land. Large
areas of it are at present desert, covered with a
bright orange sandwich gives the planet the peculiar
hue by which we so readily recognise it. Like that of
many of our own deserts, the soil is probably fertile
enough if the great irrigation system were extended to
it, as it no doubt would have been if humanity had
remained upon it until now.

The present population, consisting practically of
members of the inner round, is but a small one, and
they find plenty of room for themselves to live
without great effort, in the equatorial lands, where
the temperature is highest and there is no difficulty
as to water. The great system of canals which has been
observed by terrestrial astronomers was constructed by
the second order of moon-men when they last occupied
the planet, and its general scheme is to take
advantage of the annual melting of enormous masses of
ice at the outer fringe of the polar snow-caps. It has
been observed that some of the canals are double, but
the double line is only occasionally apparent; that is
due to the fore-thought of the Martian engineers. The
country is on the whole level, and they had great
dread of inundations; and wherever they thought there
was reason to fear too great an outrush of water under
exceptional circumstances the second parallel canal
was constructed to receive any possible overflow and
carry it away safely. 

The actual canals themselves are not visible to
terrestrial telescopes; what is seen is the belt of
verdure which appears in a tract of country on each
side of the canal only at the time when the water
pours in. Just as Egypt exists only because of the
Nile, so do large districts on Mars exist only because
of these canals. From each of them radiate at
intervals water-ways, which run some miles into the
surrounding country and are then subdivided into
thousands of tiny streamlets, so that a strip of
country a hundred miles in width is thoroughly
irrigated. In this area are forests and cultivated
fields, and vegetation of all sorts stands forth in
the greatest profusion, making upon the surface of the
planet a dark belt which is visible to us even forty
million miles away when the planet is at its nearest
and favourably situated. 

Mars is much farther from the centre of the system
than we are, and consequently the sun appears to its
inhabitants scarcely more than half the size that it
does to us. Nevertheless the climate of the inhabited
portions of the planet is very good, the temperature
during the day at the equator being usually about 70
degrees Fahrenheit, although there are not many nights
of the year when there is not a touch of frost. Clouds
are almost unknown, the sky being for most of the year
entirely clear.The country is therefore to a large
extent free from the unpleasantness of rain or snow.
The Martian day is a few minutes longer than out own
and their year is nearly twice as long as ours, and
the variation of the seasons in the inhabited part is
but slight. In physical appearance the Martians are
not unlike ourselves, except that they are
considerably smaller. The tallest men are not above
five feet in height and the majority are two or three
inches shorter. According to our ideas they are
somewhat broad in proportion, having very great chest
capacity - a fact which may possibly be due to the
rarity of the air and the consequent necessity of deep
breathing in order fully to oxygenate the blood. The
whole civilised population of Mars is one race, and
there is practically no difference in features or
complexion, except that, just as among ourselves,
there are blondes and brunettes, some of the people
having a faintly yellowish skin and black hair, while
the majority have yellow hair and blue or violet eyes
- somewhat Norwegian in appearance. They dress mostly
in brilliant colours, and both sexes wear an almost
shapeless garment of some very soft material which
falls straight down from the shoulders down to the
feet. Generally the feet are bare, though they
sometimes use a sort of metal sandal or slipper, with
a thong round the ankle. 

They are very fond of flowers, of which there is a
great variety, and their towns are built on the
general plan of the garden-city, the houses usually
being one-storeyed only, but built round inner
courtyards and straggling over a great deal of ground.
These houses look exteriorly as though built of
coloured glass, and indeed the material which is used
is transparent, but it is somehow so fluted that while
the persons inside enjoy an almost unimpeded view of
their gardens, no one from outside can see what is
going on in the house. 

The houses are not built up in blocks, but the
material is melted and poured into moulds; if a house
is to be built, a sort of double mould is first made
in metal faced with cement, and then the curious
glass-like substance is melted and poured into this
mould,and when it is cold and hardened the moulds are
taken away, and the house is finished except for a
certain amount of polishing of the surface. The doors
are not exactly like ours, since they have no hinges
or bolts, and are opened and shut by treading on
certain spots in the ground, either without or within.
They do not swing on hinges, but run back into the
walls on each side. All these doors and all furniture
and fittings are of metal. Wood seems to be used
scarcely at all. 

There is only one language in use over the whole
planet, except for the few savage tribes, and this
language, like everything in their world, has not
grown up as ours have done, but has been constructed
to save time and trouble. It has been simplified to
the last possible extent, and it has no irregularities
of any sort. They have two methods of recording their
thoughts. One is to speak into a small box with a
mouthpiece on one side of it, something like that of a
telephone. Each word so spoken is by the mechanism
expressed as a kind of complicated sign upon a little
plate of metal, and when the message has been spoken
the plate falls out and is found to be marked in
crimson characters, which can easily be read by those
who are familiar with the scheme. The other plan is
actually to write by hand, but that is an enormously
more difficult acquirement, for the script is a very
complicated kind of shorthand which can be written as
rapidly as one can speak. It is in this latter script
that all their books are printed, and these latter are
usually in the shape of rolls made of very thin
flexible metal. The engraving of them is extremely
minute, and it is customary to read it through a
magnifier, which is fixed conveniently upon a stand.
In the stand there is machinery which unrolls the
scroll before the magnifier at any desired rate, so
that one read without needing to touch the book at
all. 

On every hand one sees signs of a very old
civilization, for the inhabitants have preserved the
tradition of all that was known when the great
life-wave of humanity occupied the planet, and have
since added to it many other discoveries. Electricity
seems to be practically the sole motive power, and all
sorts of labour-saving machines are universally
employed. 
The people are on the whole distinctly indolent,
especially after they have passed their first youth.
But the comparatively small size of the population
enables them to live very easily. They have trained
various kinds of domestic animals to a far higher
condition of intelligent co-operation than has yet
been achieved upon earth, so that a great deal of
servant's and gardener's work is done by these
creatures with comparatively little direction. 
One autocratic ruler governs the whole planet, but the
monarchy is not hereditary. Polygamy is practised, but
it is the custom to hand over all children to the
State at a very early age to be reared and educated,
so that among the vast majority of the people there is
no family tradition whatever, and no one knows who is
his father and mother. there is no law compelling
this, but it is considered so decidedly the right
thing to do and the best for the children that the few
families who choose to live somewhat more as we do,
and to educate their children at home, are always
regarded as selfishly injuring their prospects for the
sake of what is considered mere animal affection. 
The state is thus in the position of universal
guardian and schoolmaster, and the school authorities
of each district are instructed carefully to sort the
children according to the aptitudes they display, and
their line of life is decided for them in this manner
- a very wide range of choice, however, being allowed
the individual child as he approaches years of
discretion. But children who show at the same time
great intellect and wide general capacity are set
apart from the rest, and trained with a view of
becoming members of the ruling class. 

The King has under him what may be called viceroys of
large districts, and they in turn have under them
governors of smaller districts, and so on down to what
would be equivalent here to the head man of a village.
All these officials are chosen by the King from this
group of specially educated children, and when the
time of his own death is considered to be approaching
it is from them or from among the already appointed
officials that he chooses his successor. 

They have brought their scientific medical studies to
such perfection that disease has been eliminated, and
even the ordinary signs of the approach of old age
have been to a large extent got rid of. Practically no
one appears old, and it would seem that they hardly
feel old; but, after a life somewhat longer than our
own the desire to live gradually fades away, and the
man dies. It is quite customary for a man who is
losing interest and feels that death is approaching
(this corresponds to what we would call a centenarian)
to apply to a certain scientific department which
corresponds to what we might call a school of surgery,
and ask to be put painlessly to death - a request
which is always granted. 

All these rulers are autocratic, each within his own
sphere, but appeal to a higher official is always
possible, though the right is not frequently
exercised, because the people usually prefer to
acquiesce in any fairly reasonable decision rather
than take the trouble involved in an appeal. The
rulers on the whole seem to perform their duties
fairly well, but again one gets the impression that
they do so not so much from any pre-eminent sense of
right or justice as to avoid the trouble that would
certainly ensue from a fragrantly unjust decision. 
one of the most remarkable things about this people is
that they have absolutely no religion. There are no
churches, no temple, no places of worship of any sort
whatever, no priest, no ecclesiastical power. The
accepted belief of the people is what we should call
scientific materialism. Nothing is true but what can
be scientifically demonstrated, and to believe
anything which cannot be so demonstrated is regarded
as not only the height of folly, but even as a
positive crime, because it is considered a danger to
the public peace. 

Martian history in the remote past was not unlike our
own, and there are stories of religious persecutions,
and of peoples whose beliefs were of so uncomfortable
a nature that they forced them not only into feverish
energy for themselves, but also into perpetual
interference with the liberty of thought of other
people. Martian public opinion is quite determined
that there shall never again be any opportunity for
the introduction of disturbing factors of that sort,
and that physical science and the lower reason shall
reign supreme; and though there, as here, events have
occurred which material science cannot explain, people
find it best to say nothing about them. 

Nevertheless on Mars, as in other places, there are a
certain number of people who know better than this,
and many centuries ago a few of these joined
themselves together in a secret brotherhood to meet
and discuss these matters. Very gradually and with
infinite precaution, they took other recruits into
this charmed circle, and so came into existence, in
this most materialistic of worlds, a secret society
which not only believed in superphysical worlds but
knew practically of their existence, for its members
took up the study of mesmerism and spiritualism, and
many of them developed a good deal of power.

At the present time this secret society is very widely
spread, and at the head of it at this moment is a
pupil of one of our Masters. Even now after all these
centuries its existence is not officially known to the
authorities, but as a matter of fact they something
more than a suspicion of it, and they have learned to
fear it. None of its members are actually identified
as such, but many are strongly suspected, and it seems
to have been observed that when any of these strongly
suspected people have in the past been injured or
unjustly put to death, the persons who were concerned
in bringing about that result have invariably died
prematurely and mysteriously, though never in any case
has their death been traceable to any physical-plane
action on the part of the suspected member.
Consequently, although such a belief is no doubt
somewhat of an infringement of the principles of pure
reason by which everything is supposed to be governed,
it has come to be generally understood that it is
safest not to pry too closely into the beliefs of
people who seem to differ in some degree from the
majority, so long as they do not openly make
profession of anything which would be considered
subversive of the good morals of materialism. 
Driven far away from the pleasant equatorial regions
into inhospitable lands and impenetrable forests,
there still exist some remnants of the savage tribes
who are descended from those left behind when the
great life-wave left Mars for the earth. These are
primitive savages at a lower stage than any now living
on the exterior of our earth, though bearing some
resemblance to one of our interior evolutions. 
Some at least of the members of the secret society
have learnt how to cross without great difficulty the
space which separates us from Mars, and have therefore
at various times tried to manifest themselves through
mediums at spiritualist seances, or have been able, by
the methods which they have learnt, to impress their
ideas upon poets and novelists. 

The information which I have given above is based upon
observation and inquiry during various visits to the
planet; yet nearly all of it might be found in the
works of various writers within the last thirty or
forty years, and in all such cases it has been
impressed by someone from Mars, although the very fact
of such impression was (at least in some cases) quite
unknown to the physical writer. 

Of our future home, Mercury, we know much less than of
Mars, for visits to it have been hurried and
infrequent. Many people would think it incredible that
life such as ours could exist on Mercury, with a sun
that appears at least seven times as large as it does
here. The heat, however, is not at all so intense as
would be supposed. I am informed that this is due to a
layer of gas on the outskirts of the Mercurian
atmosphere, which prevents most of the heat from
penetrating. We are told that the most destructive of
all possible storms on Mercury is one which even for a
moment disturbs the stability of this gaseous
envelope. When that happens a kind of whirl-pool is
set up on it, and for a moment a shaft of direct
sunlight comes from the sun through its vortex. Such a
shaft instantly destroys whatever life comes in its
way, and burns up in a moment everything combustible.
Fortunately such storms are rare. The inhabitants whom
I have seen there are much like ourselves, though
again somewhat smaller. 

The influence of gravity both on Mars and Mercury is
less than half what it is on earth, but while on Mars
I did not notice any particular way in which advantage
had been taken of this. I observed on Mercury that the
doors of the houses were quite a considerable height
from the ground, needing what for us would be a
respectable gymnastic feat to reach them, though on
Mercury it is only a slight spring which is required.
All the inhabitants of that planet are from birth
possessed of etheric sight; I remember that the fact
was first brought to my notice by observing a child
who was watching the movements of some crawling
creature; and I saw that when it entered its abode he
was still able to follow its movements, even when it
was deep down under the ground. 

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Quoted from:
http://theos-l.com/archives/199606/tl01020.html

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Daniel H. Caldwell
BLAVATSKY STUDY CENTER/BLAVATSKY ARCHIVES
http://blavatskyarchives.com/introduction.htm

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"...Contrast alone can enable us to appreciate things at 
their right value; and unless a judge compares notes and 
hears both sides he can hardly come to a correct decision."
H.P. Blavatsky. The Theosophist, July, 1881, p. 2
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