forms of government, even the diversity of languages,—all seemed to them very mysterious. On every matter they not only asked me what was the case on earth, but why things were as they were. As I, like most people, had taken things much as I found them, the causes of our social phenomena were very puzzling. In not a few matters, when pressed hard, I had to reply, that all this must be the result of sin, and of man's Fall, and if men were better things could not be in such a state. I must own it was painful to give these strangers so unfavourable an idea of humanity and of our earth, but there was no help for it.
Then we turned to other topics—to the mysteries of Nature, to the laws of death, and pain, and disease. Here new difficulties arose, and I had again to plead the Fall and man's sin. It seemed they knew of no pain, only under certain unfavourable circumstances, e.g., on Saturn, or amid the burning regions of Jupiter, they had felt a certain difficulty of existence; pain—localised pain—they had never felt. I found, however, they were not sure that they would under all circumstances be secured from death, or rather "would have to seek a new form of corporeal existence," as Aleriel put it; but they always had evaded this by precautions, and by their intense and renewable vitality.
