Another World: Fragments of the Star City of Montalluyah

By introducing the reader to "Another World," the Editor does not lead him into a region to which the Earth has no affinity. The Planet to which the following fragments refer not only belongs to the same solar system as our own, but also presents like physical aspects. In it, as here, are to be found land and water--mountains, rivers, seas, lakes, hills, valleys, ravines, cataracts alternating with each other; though in consequence of more potent electrical agencies the contrasts between these various objects are frequently abrupt and decided to a degree to which we can here offer no comparison. The other world about to be described is, in fact, essentially another Earth--widely differing, indeed, from ours in its details, but still subjected to the same natural laws. Its inhabitants, like devout persons here, look forward with reverent feeling towards the abode of the blest. To a purely spiritual or angelic region these fragments do not relate.

The name of "Montalluyah," which more immediately belongs to the chief city in the planet, is not incorrectly extended so as to include the entire sphere. This new world is not made up of separate countries and mutually independent states like those of the Earth, but, forming one kingdom, is governed by one supreme Ruler, assisted by twelve kings inferior to him in rank and power.

The speaker in the fragments (which may almost be said to take the form of an autobiography) was the son of one of the twelve kings, who by his genius and worth became "Tootmanyoso," or supreme Ruler. In the planet his name is mentioned with even more reverence than, by different peoples, is paid to that of Zoroaster, Solon, Lycurgus, or Alfred; but he has this peculiarity that he does not fade, like many other great legislators, into mythical indistinctness, but is himself the exponent of his own polity.

In the construction of the Mountain Supporter you will have perceived that we were greatly aided by our extended knowledge of electricity.

Before my reign, although electricity was used for some purposes, the existence of varieties in electricity, and the manifold uses to which their wondrous powers could be applied, were unknown.

Electricity was not then utilised for locomotion either on land or sea, or for raising ponderous bodies to an immense height, or in the various products of manufacture and art, or, in short, for any of the almost innumerable purposes where the various electricities are now employed, either separately or in combination. This could not well be otherwise; for beyond a contrivance like your Leyden jar, for collecting "air electricity," no means of collecting, still less concentrating, electricity of any kind then existed.

The belief once generally entertained was, that there were but two electricities, or rather two varieties of the same electricity, one repellent and the other attractive, answering in a measure to your terms of positive and negative. Some, indeed, thought that several different kinds existed; but the renowned electricians--truly great men, for they had opened the gates of science--proclaimed that all electricities were in reality one and the same, modified only by accidents.

They referred to certain phenomena always resembling each other in whatever way the electricity producing them might be generated; and they argued, with an appearance of truth, that the electricity which produced these similar phenomena must be one and the same: for, asked they, are not like causes indicated by like effects? The principle was right, but, as was subsequently shown, the application and the conclusion were wrong. The error had arisen from the fact that electricities of every kind possess certain properties in common: thus, air electricity enters into the composition of them all. These common properties produce phenomena varying only in degree, but so similar to each other that, in the absence of further knowledge, the electricians concluded that their theory was correct, and, in consequence, many valuable discoveries were retarded for centuries.