Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/301

 life world falls to the latter's charge, until, through science attainment, that heretofore outside world has entered the higher life. Thus we ourselves had been under charge of Venus until, by our knowledge of the duplication we entered the higher life; and now we, in our turn, had acceded to the charge of Mars. Accordingly we braced ourselves up to our new duties, which mainly consisted in a friendly watch over our lower and outside brother, and the occasional expenditure of a testing message, as with Venus, on past occasions, towards ourselves. Mars, as being smaller than the earth, had attained equilibrium earlier; but any advantage in that way was more than counterbalanced by our larger size and our greater heat and light, our pace being faster, after we had once begun. And again, those orbs which, as mostly happened, had equilibriated with a surplus of uncombined gases to form an enveloping atmosphere, and of watery or other vaporous elements to form rivers and seas, presented in due time the varied phenomena of life and mind. But our knowledge, although now so far advanced beyond that of previous centuries, is yet, by no means, quite complete in all these questions.

The accession of a new world to the higher life is always the occasion of great and general rejoicing, and of a good deal of energy-expenditure all about, in dispersing the joyful and exciting news. In our case, a goodly sized world, with many millions of millions of human beings, had been added to the census of the higher life. We received at once the congratulations of our nearest neighbours. Mercury and Vulcan, both of which, as well as Venus, had long