There is a
circulating medium, banks and business enterprises, but it is more
veiled, more hidden, less, far less, insistent than with you. A great
socialistic republic is represented in Mars, and the limits of
individual initiative are very narrow. Still they exist.
"One prime element of difference is in the nourishment and the area of
population. The Martian lives only on fruit, and he lives only a few
degrees on either side of the Equator. All the businesses that in your
earth arise from the preparation and sale of meat and all the various
confections, disappear there, and also all the mechanism of house
heating and lighting. Also there are no railroads, but innumerable
canals, which form a labyrinth of waterways, and are fed from the tides
of the great northern and southern seas.
"The business is largely agricultural, but in the cities the pursuit of
knowledge still continues. There is, however, on Mars a much lessened
intellectual activity than on the earth. It is a sphere of simplified
needs and primal feelings exalted by acutely developed love of Music.
Mars is the music planet. There are not on Mars newspapers, journals,
magazines, books. The tireless production of these things on the earth
has but one analogy in Mars, the publication of music scores, the
recitation of poetry and symposia, and the great illustrated journal,
Dia. But these things I will explain later.
"I wandered on that night through the city with other spirits.
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