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 ...THE...
  MAN FROM MARS

  HIS MORALS, POLITICS
  AND RELIGION

  BY
  WILLIAM SIMPSON

  THIRD EDITION

  Revised and Enlarged by an Extended Preface and a
  Chapter on Woman Suffrage

  Press of
  E. D. Beattie, 207 Sacramento St.
  San Francisco




Copyright, 1900, by the Author.




  TO THE MEMORY
  OF
  JAMES LICK

  who, by his munificent bequests to

  SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, CHARITY AND EDUCATION

  has indicated in the manner of their disposal, that humanity, wisdom,
  and enlightenment, arising out of the convictions of modern thought,
  which holds these, his beneficiaries to be the noblest and divinest
  pursuits of mankind, and the only possible agencies in the betterment
  of society.

  This Book is reverently inscribed

                                                          BY THE AUTHOR.




PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.


Any one advanced in life who has enjoyed opportunities of knowledge
derived from association with men and books, and who has an inclination
to reach the bottom of things by his own independent thought, is apt to
arrive at conclusions regarding the world and society very different
from those which had been early impressed upon him by his superiors
and teachers. From a suspicion, at first reluctantly accepted, but
finally confirmed beyond a doubt, he finds that he has been deceived
in many things. The discovery arouses no indignation because he
knows that his early instructors were in most cases the victims of
misdirection themselves, and are therefore not to be held accountable
for the promulgation of errors which they had mistaken for truths. His
self-emancipation has so filled his mind with a better hope for the
future of the world, and a higher opinion of his fellow men, that the
delight and satisfaction of the discovery overcomes every sentiment
except pity for those who had been leading him astray, and if the
feeling of condemnation or censure comes to his mind at all, it is only
for those few who live and thrive upon those delusions having their
origin in the past, and whose chief purpose in life is to keep them
alive and to bolster them up among the multitude.

In the new light that has come to him, the world and society have
been transformed to his view and understanding. He discovers goodness
in many places where his teachers had denied its existence, and its
definition has become so changed, under his broader vision, that
humanity seems teeming with it everywhere, and is ruled by it, and
those departments of it most affecting society he observes to be
increasing, and that instead of like an exotic in uncongenial soil,
hard to be retained by mankind, it is perpetuated and cherished by
natural human impulses. He finds, also, that the sum of badness in
the world has been greatly exaggerated by his teachers, and that
those branches of it most interfering with the welfare of society are
gradually being lessened, and are likely to work out their extinction
by the penalties of public disapproval. These convictions make the
world seem a brighter and better dwelling place. They reveal to him
the possibilities of its future, and tend to divert his higher aims
from the obscure paths where tradition had been leading them, into more
fruitful channels. The truth will have at last dawned upon him, bearing
evidences in this age that none but the unenlightened can doubt, that
superstition, during many of the centuries past, has belittled the
world, and has discouraged humanity in improving it, under the mistaken
assumption of the world’s small comparative importance in the great
outcome; the circumstantial particulars, of which, it pretends to hold
by divine revelation. Having rid himself of these beliefs by a process
of reasoning, and the assistance of the available knowledge of his
time, he arrives at the conclusion that the best work of humanity is
not, altogether that taught by the creeds, and that its most divinely
inspired motives are those which tend to increase the knowledge of
worldly things, those which add to the sum of goodness in society by
exhibiting its practical effect toward happiness, and those also which
assist in the great end of equalizing the burdens and enjoyments of
life among all.

Having these conclusions firmly established in his mind, and the
undeserved reverence from early training removed, he becomes
especially fitted to examine these old beliefs, and to pass judgment
upon them, without that taint of blind devotional fervor which the
unremitted teaching of many centuries has rendered current in the
world. He observes of these old beliefs, that during their supremacy,
when their control of society was complete and unquestioned, the
material progress of mankind was least, without any compensating
condition to make up for the darkness, and dead mental activity that
had fallen upon it; except that apparent hypnotic influence from the
doctrines taught, which made men careless of their miseries, and
indifferent to the things of the earth. He observes, further, of
these old beliefs, that as modern knowledge reduces their hold of
authority among men, the world improves as it never did before. Even
charity, kindness, and good will to men, adopted, and long taught as an
inseparable part of them, multiply more rapidly as their weight in the
management of human affairs grow less. From these well attested facts
he arrives at the conviction that those religious societies, founded
upon, and which have for centuries labored to perpetuate these beliefs,
either are not possessed with all the elements of human progress,
or, that having many of such elements, they have others of such
neutralizing and retarding effect as to render the first futile for
such a purpose. That the latter is the case, every year added to his
experience of life removes the doubt, and explains to his understanding
why the religious societies of the world have failed in any great
degree to advance the material and intellectual condition of mankind.

With a moral code, every provision of which plainly indicates the
method of a better social state, these religious societies have
indissolubly associated in their teachings certain doctrinal beliefs,
originating in a semi-barbarous age, and laden with its superstitions,
with that fatal assumption of divine authority which demands their
acceptance every where and for all time. Beliefs of such unbending
rigidity, impossible adaption or amendment, and intolerance of dissent,
on account of their pretended sacred character, that the world has
been kept in a turmoil discussing them since their introduction, and
the more salutary lessons of morality and spiritual hope have been
outranked and submerged by these vain and profitless discussions.
These beautiful and attractive lessons of love, kindness, and charity,
exemplified and taught through a personality, whose gift of genius was
to see, above all other men, the needs of humanity, have attracted
men and women into these religious societies as the hungry are
attracted by stores of food. Once within their lines, and imbued with
the doctrines there found, they see but little abroad in the outside
world but the evil spirit of Sheol. To them, its shadow rests upon
much of the business of life, and with increased obscurity, upon many
of its pleasures. It even shows to them among those humanities which
are without their direction and cue. It is only however among the many
who openly deny their doctrines and authority that the evil spirit is
seen by them in all its hideous and malevolent personality, and their
especial mission is to give battle in that direction. Between he who
doubts, no matter how respectfully, and these religious societies, are
drawn their lines of kindness and charity, and with their sermons of
love, and their protestations of good will to mankind fresh upon them,
they are at any time, transformed, so far as their relations with a
doubter are concerned, into a band of hostile and relentless savages,
with inflictions of punishment, measured in degree by surrounding
enlightenment, from the actual barbaric torture of the savage, to mere
social ostr