“How, then, do you teach the different branches, Mr. Midith, as the pupils grow older?” asked Mr. Uwins.
“I have already explained how we learn our letter, how we learn to print, draw and write.
“Language.—We learn good language, because we hear it continually spoken by our companions, who, in a system like ours, are all well educated and good linguists. We learn to speak by speaking. In a large family like ours, language is very good, and improves rapidly, because there are always sure to be some good linguists who are unconsciously and spontaneously teaching language and grammar to all the rest. Under such conditions you can easily see that we hear scarcely any bad language. We speak fluently and grammatically without particularly studying technical grammar and rhetoric, which, of course, are nothing but the language used by the best speakers and writers of the age in which they live. That is the way we study and learn language, grammar and rhetoric; with a higher development they grow continually more simple. The conditions under our system brings about these favorable and natural opportunities.
“Here, again, we have a vast advantage over you and your system. So many of you are compelled, by want and the fear of want, to work so hard and so long daily, that parents and children are obliged to expend nearly all their vitality to secure the material necessaries of life. Your families are small and many of them are living all alone in the country. The language of parents, under such conditions, must necessarily be very poor and their vocabulary very limited. Children can learn very little good language from such parents. They hear much more bad grammar at home than they get good grammar from the book and school-house, in which it is indeed generally poor enough, too. It is not an easy matter for one to lay aside, in later years, the ‘barnyard’ expressions which he has learned in his childhood and youth. A person that never hears anything but good language, can not use poor language, for language must be learned.”
“But we have many wealthy people who have all the time they want for the study of language, how about them?” asked Mrs. Uwins.
“Those few of your wealthier classes, who hear better language and grammar at home, and who have plenty of time to devote for its acquisition, come in contact with so much bad language that they pick up about as much bad as good language. In this manner there is an immense amount of time and labor wasted here in the study of technical grammar and rhetoric, which would be unnecessary under a properly organized social condition.”
“How do you teach writing, Mr. Midith?” asked Roland.
“I have mentioned elsewhere how we learn to make our letters, and how we keep our record in our time-book when we are yet very young. Our next incentive for writing is our large daily newspaper, issued by every community, as I have explained in my previous narrative. At a very early age children are encouraged to write articles for the paper. All of us, young and old (except infants), are contributors to this paper; and all subjects of human inquiry are discussed. We enjoy complete freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We allow no censor over them. The children have a certain department of the paper allotted to them; and the older people are much interested in the children’s contributions, discussions and explanations. There is a wide, friendly, open field for emulation in these newspaper columns. These newspaper contributions are a great incentive for children, as well as adults, to learn to write well, to express their thoughts concisely, elegantly, forcibly and clearly. The editor makes such slight corrections as he finds in the children’s manuscripts, which are returned to the children, so that they can compare the printed column with the original manuscript. In this easy, practical way, our children learn writing, orthography, language, grammar, rhetoric, style and invention.
“Our next incentive to induce children to write is brought about by our free and convenient system of motor travel. This travel creates a large and wide acquaintance among children as well as among older persons. This extensive acquaintance naturally brings about a great deal of correspondence.
“Many of us are stenographers, and nearly all have a typewriter and a phonograph, which are so improved and simplified now on Mars that you would scarcely know them.
“You see in this way we have many incentives which will induce children and adults of all ages to become proficient in handwriting, typewriting and in composition.
“Mathematics.—In the first place, let us not overlook the fact that our financial, social and industrial organizations have vastly simplified our mathematics. In weights and measures we have adopted something like your metric system. In commercial transactions we have no profit and loss; no stocks and bonds; no premiums and discounts; no commission and brokerage; no stock investments; no insurance, taxes and revenues; no interest, partial payments, true discount, bank discount, exchange, equation of payments; no annual or compound interest; no annuities; no partnership. This does away with nearly all the difficult parts of arithmetic on which your children have to spend years of unproductive and destructive labor.
“Our children learn to count as soon as they can talk. Every one with whom they come in contact is their teacher. Figures and numbers are taught as soon as the child begins to learn its letters. Children also teach one another how to read and write figures and numbers, and how to cipher. During favorable weather the slates in the nurseries and parks are nearly always in use.
“When they grow up to be a little older, they find delight in studying mathematics during part of their leisure time. All the higher mathematics—algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and various other measurements—are well understood by nearly all our men and women. You must not forget, that on account of the Marsites’ intellectual advancement they can learn mathematics with much less labor than they could formerly, or than you can now.
“We have a mathematical department in each family. This department is in charge of one person, the ablest mathematician, who holds his position by virtue of his superior ability or mathematical genius. He is acknowledged teacher by all, simply because he is able to solve difficult problems better than any other member of the family. This teacher is in his department or school-room certain hours of the day, and all who need assistance can go there and get it. We believe, however, that no one should ask for assistance unless it is absolutely necessary. Every one, we think, should solve his own problems, if possible. It makes one original and independent, the most valuable and important characteristic with which a person can be endowed. It often happens that not a pupil is seen in the mathematical department for days at a time. All work their own problems.”
“But, supposing, Mr. Midith, that there would be a young man or a young woman, who would gradually become more proficient than the teacher, what would happen then?” asked Rev. Dudley. “Would the new rival drive the old teacher out?”
At this remark, Mr. Midith smiled and said: “The old teacher would be too glad to resign his position to his rival as soon as the teacher found that he could not assist his rival any more. Even with you, where professors are elected by politicians and where positions are obtained with difficulty, a professor of mathematics would not attempt to hold his position, if he found that he could not teach his students any longer.
“Physiology.—The study of physiology, we make very simple, pleasant and practical. We teach the location, structure and function of the organs of the human body, both of the male and of the female. How a particle of soil in our garden becomes a human tissue by being first assimilated into a vegetable, grain or fruit; how we eat and digest the vegetable, etc.; how the nutritious part of the food is thrown into the circulation of the blood; and how it is then carried and built up into an organ where it is needed, as an eye, a nail, a heart, a bone, or a brain.
“We teach that life is the first thing we receive, the most precious fortune we own, and the last prize we can lose. Life, then, is the standard by which all our acts should be measured. Every act that conduces to the fullness of it is relatively right; and every act that detracts from the fullness of it is relatively wrong. All other things must be subservient to life and health, because without life and health we can not enjoy the greatest happiness, the end of all. To care for our body, then, is the first and most important undertaking. To have this well done by a highly complex being, we must have a thorough knowledge of anatomy and physiology, a knowledge of the laws of life and health and the laws of reproduction. Our aim in physiological education should be to put all our wishes, all our wants, all our desires, and all our passions in tune with the laws of our highest being.
“Eating.—We teach our children by example what to eat and drink and how to eat and drink. We ourselves put into practice what we wish our children to do and what we believe to be most healthful in the way of eating and drinking.
“For instance, the unperverted taste of the inferior animal when it has a sufficient supply and choice of food is an almost unerring guide in making the proper selection of the kind of food it requires. If we should eat poison instead of bread, the selection would be so fatal to life that we would soon die. If we should select such food that cannot be digested and assimilated, even if it is not poisonous, we would soon have to starve. That kind of food, then, which sustains life best, as compared with the efforts required for its production, should be selected.
“We are vegetarians, living exclusively on vegetables, grains and fruits, with the exception of dairy products and eggs. When I first arrived on earth it seemed perhaps as repugnant to me to see people eating steak as it would seem to you to see a cannibal eating human flesh. We shrink from a carcass the same as we shrink from a corpse.”
“But, Mr. Midith, do you believe that man could get along here without a meat diet?” asked Mrs. Uwins. “Do you believe that vegetables, etc., are sufficiently nourishing to sustain the burdens of hard labor imposed upon us here?”
“I am sure I know nothing to the contrary, Mrs. Uwins,” replied Mr. Midith. “Your horse works hard, your cow gives milk, your sheep grows wool, and they all live and grow strong on a vegetable diet. Why should not man do the same? The dentition (teeth) of man, too, according to the testimony of some of your most reliable scientific authorities, is vegetarian. It may be shown that a vegetable diet gives great endurance and strength in man. For example, your bark-gatherers of South America, who carry upon their backs, in a rough country, a burden of over two hundred pounds for a distance of thirty miles or more per day, live exclusively on bananas. The Roman soldiers endured the hardest work on a vegetable diet. The hardworking Spaniards live on black bread, onions and melons. The Chinese live almost exclusively on rice, and can endure much harder work than a negro fed on fat meat.
“There is one other important reason why we are vegetarians. In our opinion, a flesh diet is degenerating, as well as unwholesome. May it not be possible that a human body, built up on the flesh and blood of a carnivorous brute, cannot be expected to contain within itself genuine purity, love and kindness toward others?
“We have also discontinued the use of all intoxicating liquor as a beverage. Experience, not ‘prohibition,’ gradually convinced us that it not only tears down, but never builds up. That the apparent elevated feeling is always followed by a corresponding depression. That an immense amount of unproductive labor has to be expended annually in producing it. That its use caused an untold amount of misery; and that the apparent pleasure of its use is only a slavish desire—an abnormal, physiological derangement—a diseased condition of the system which is continually moving in the direction of delirium tremens in which it will end, if the use is sufficiently excessive and prolonged.
“In your present stage of intellectual development, the evils resulting from the use of intoxicating liquor as a beverage are very apparent. Liquor is an incentive to crime because it stupefies the better feelings. It fills your prisons with criminals, who have been urged on to their dark deeds when under its influence. It deprives countless homes of their joy and brightness. It makes a slave of millions of women and children, who are ruled by a lion of terror. It makes slaves of the drinkers themselves. It wrecks constitutions and furnishes victims for countless premature graves. It squanders wealth, kills useful industry, suppresses kindness, invades purity and stifles thought. It causes filth, jealousy, idleness, poverty and pauperism. The evil effects of its use react on the drinker and reflect on his companions. By the presence of a drunkard, the street and society are turned into a saloon and the home is converted into a dungeon. The drinker’s breath even pollutes the very atmosphere his companions are compelled to breathe.
“We have also long ago discontinued the use of tobacco. We found, as our medical science advanced, that it had a bad, physiological effect on the user’s system. Besides this, we found that it produced many social evils. To chew and snuff, say nothing about smoking, is very filthy. I here sometimes see a man spit tobacco juice on the floor, and sometimes, when the wind is high, he even misses the floor and hits his companion. Very frequently one meets a person here who uses the theater, parlor, postoffice, railroad car and sidewalk as a spittoon. Sometimes his lips, whiskers and mustache are all loaded and fringed with tobacco juice. These loathsome sights are never practiced, nor voluntarily endured by highly cultured individuals.
“Your smoking is also a habit that greatly prevents an orderly social adjustment; for if a smoker, on account of his companions, is prevented from smoking, the smoker himself becomes a slave to his desire. If he smokes in the presence of his companions, he very likely makes slaves of his companions by polluting, with tobacco smoke, the air which his companions are compelled to breathe. And if the smoker and non-smoker do not associate, that tends to divide society into classes, which produces pernicious social effects. All these abnormal habits are unhealthy, wasteful and dangerous on account of fire, etc., filthy, causes offensive breath, and are generally disgusting to others; for these and other reasons we have long discontinued them. I am quite certain that our ladies, who are free and independent, would not tolerate men who indulged in such filthy, offensive habits as the use of stimulants and narcotics produce. Our ancestors, generations ago, came to the conclusion that a healthy body and mind that cannot do its part without being animated by a stimulant or stupefied by a narcotic, is better off in the grave than out of it.
“Thus we gradually select, by long observation and experience, that kind of food and drink which we believe to be most wholesome and nourishing, and which infringe least upon the rights of others; for no one can enjoy the greatest happiness who is surrounded by companions who are miserable. Such are a few of the practical lessons that we teach by example concerning what to eat and drink.
“How to eat.—In eating, we notice that the instinctive desire of the lower animals prompts them always to eat the most desirable food first. This, then, must be the most healthful method of eating; if it were not, nature, by the survival of the fittest, would have forced the animals to reverse their habits of eating, the same as she forces them to live chaste lives.
“We endeavor to establish a healthy, trustworthy appetite in our children by always keeping an abundance of all kinds of our eatable food before them, by giving them complete freedom in the choice of their food and in the time of eating, always letting them eat the most desirable food first. Under these conditions variety, abundance and freedom admirably adjust the appetite in harmony with life and health. There is another point which we should consider well. Excessive labor, to which the vast majority of your people here on earth are doomed for life, implies an excessive digestion and assimilation; for the excessive waste of the body, caused by the excessive physical labor, must be repaired by an excessive quantity of food. By this the function of all the internal organs becomes excessive on account of the excessive physical labor. This is one reason why so many of your people are afflicted with burdensome ailments; why so many have brokendown constitutions, and why so many die premature deaths. Nearly all of your people seem to be old when they are yet young.”
“You say you allow your children complete freedom in the choice of their food, always permitting them to eat the most desirable food first,” said Rev. Dudley. “Do you think a child would ever eat potatoes, if it could get all the pie and cake it wants?”
“Yes, I am sure it would eat something besides pie and cake,” replied Mr. Midith. “You are here laboring under one fundamental mistake, Rev. Dudley. Judging from your words, you are no doubt under the impression that a person naturally prefers one kind of food to some other kind; but that is an error. It is true that some people like one kind of food and some another. You will find some people who think that a horse naturally likes oats better than hay; but this is not true. Let us illustrate:
“A horse, say in a pasture, that is at liberty to go to a load of oats and to a load of hay at any time, beginning as a colt, eats hay with as much relish as oats, and never eats too much of either. It will never eat all the oats and leave all the hay; but a horse that has had hay only for a long time, or that has been kept away from feed too long, will, as a rule, seem to prefer oats, and will also very likely eat to excess when left free. Perhaps the effects of overeating may at first not be apparent; but nevertheless they may be there, and if repeated frequently, will soon become apparent.
“Just so with a person. One who dines at a table that contains all he desires in variety, in quantity and in quality, has no particular preference for any one kind of food, and he will seldom, if ever, eat to excess. His appetite has not been perverted by want nor by arbitrary constraint. Hence our dietetical lessons are the simplest possible. Provide plenty of everything and allow the eater complete freedom and choice, beginning with infancy.
“Now, the conditions here on earth are much different. Let us contemplate them for a few moments. In the first place, a large majority of your families, under your vicious economic system, can afford few of your so-called dainties on their tables. The consequence is that the children, and adults, too, are hankering after eatables which are too costly for them to buy regularly; so that, when they do occasionally buy them, their appetite is so perverted by long abstinence that it is no reliable guide, and overeating is almost invariably the result. Your Christmas and other noted dinners have such an evil effect, too.
“When we notice a child eating that is compelled to eat and drink the lesser desirable food first—for instance, ‘potatoes,’ instead of ‘pie’—its manner of eating is entirely different from what it would be if it had always had an abundance of all kinds of food it wanted, and if it were left free to make its own choice in regard to what it would eat first and what last. You will generally notice that when a parent tells a child, which you frequently see here, that it must eat those potatoes or that bread before it will get the so-called delicious dessert, pie, cookies, etc., it will cram its mouth so full of potato, in order to get them out of the way, that it almost chokes. It hurries the bulkier food down at an unusually rapid rate, so that it may begin at its choice food. This manner of eating prevents a thorough mastication. The food is also swallowed before it is well mixed with saliva. Under this constraint, all the functions of the child are unnatural and imperfect. Your fashion forces your adults to the same unnatural course of eating as the parent forces the child. Hence so many dyspeptics.
“Now let us notice the difference in the course of the child’s action when it is left free to make its own choice what to eat first. This freedom of the child will produce an entirely different course of eating. You will notice, in the first place, that under abundance and freedom the child will show no particular preference for any one kind of food; and, secondly, it will, like the inferior animals, invariably eat the most desirable food first. Your child, when free, would perhaps begin with pie, because pie with you, as a rule, is not as plentiful as potatoes and bread are. In this state of freedom it takes plenty of time for chewing and mixing the food with saliva, because it sees nothing before it which it likes better and which it wants to get after finishing the pie. Perhaps it plays half the time with its knife and fork, enjoying freedom and the pleasure of eating. After it has finished pie, etc., it begins at potatoes, etc. All this time it eats leisurely, instead of gluttonously, as before. In this natural order of selecting food we gain one other important—perhaps the most important—point, which is, that the child is always coming to something that it likes somewhat less well, which will cause it to stop eating just when it has enough.
“There are quite a number of other practices and habits in the manner of eating and drinking here on earth which the Marsites would consider pernicious.
“So many of you eat too fast. Your vicious system of business often allows you scarcely time to eat a meal decently. Instead of masticating the food long enough to moisten it thoroughly with saliva, which is absolutely essential to good digestion, it is often rinsed down with tea and coffee, which is not infrequently taken with every other mouthful of food. This frequent rinsing, or drinking when eating, is very injurious to good digestion. Drinks, such as tea and coffee, appear to me to have a tendency to originate and establish this habit of frequent drinking during the meal. Experience seems to prove that fresh water is the healthiest drink that can be taken, and very few of us use anything else for drinking.
“Delightful feelings during meal times are conducive to good digestion. We, therefore, particularly cultivate delightful conversation during meal times, and make everything appear as happy and enticing as possible. A person is generally cranky when he is hungry and weary. Our tables are always tastily and abundantly laid. Clean linen, finished dishes, flavored food, exquisitely arranged table bouquets, easy chairs and clean, courteous waiters are found in our dining-rooms. We keep an abundance of food, which is prepared by expert cooks; but we do not believe, like you do, in wasting about as much, if not more, of good food than is eaten, which, I believe, is often the case in your ‘first-class hotels’ and in your ‘upper’ society.
“From the foregoing explanation you can clearly see that all the social and industrial features are so intimately connected with and dependent upon one another that a person can not even follow a healthful course of eating and drinking under a viciously arranged social and industrial organization. Without an abundant supply of all kinds of food, we continually hanker for the scarce varieties, and when we occasionally obtain a supply of them, our appetite has been perverted by long abstinence, and overeating is invariably the result. Our economic system produces abundance of varieties of food; you have a scarcity of many articles. A good social system puts no constraint on the child nor on the adult as to the manner of eating, so that the appetite will always be a safe guide. Our day’s labor is so short and our restaurant eating conveniences so perfect that we eat whenever our system calls for it. Your work between meals is so hard and so long that you generally become unduly fatigued, which impairs digestion. Again, we have always plenty of leisure time for eating, while many of you have almost to run and eat. Once more: At table, in our large, comfortable dining-hall, or in our elegantly furnished restaurant, we are always surrounded by mirthful company, both ladies and gentlemen, who appreciate one another’s company, because they are perfectly free and independent of each other, and can select as companions whom they please, while the vast majority of you have to eat in a small, hot kitchen, or in a small, ill-ventilated dining-room, very often surrounded by rude, filthy, ravenous children, and an overworked, pouty husband and wife. I have more than once noticed in your families that not a word was said nor a smile visible during the whole meal time. Such conditions are not very conducive to good digestion and perfect assimilation.
“From the foregoing remarks you will learn that we teach to be natural in our habits of eating and drinking; you are artificial. We develop a healthy appetite by free use; you pervert it by constraint. You make prevalent fashion your guide; we take health for it. Your artificial system tends to cause poverty and disease; our natural system tends to produce health and abundance. Before you can hope to give valuable dietetical instructions you must improve your school-house in that direction. Not until you can supply an abundance of everything for all and give your child free scope to follow its unperverted appetite, can you hope to produce good results in this line of instruction, and all your efforts should be directed in these channels. Your Greek and Latin will never do it; and your paternalism will bring you continually further and further away from the end which you are seeking.”