We have learned, too, though rather vaguely, something of the customs of the race, and the life of those who dwell beyond the palace gates. They are not a numerous people and their ways are primitive. Nature provides their food, and their garments are few and simple. Only the construction of their dwellings calls for any serious outlay of toil, and in this they unite as in a festival until the labor is complete. Their harvests are conducted in the same manner, and in these things they are not widely different from our pioneer ancestors, who exchanged labors of the field, and merrily joined in their house-raisings.
Like the people of the Incas, the Antarcticans have no money and no need of it. The lands are held in common, and the harvests yield more than enough for all. Great storehouses hold the surplus, from which any one may be provided in time of need. Famine, war, and the complications of law are unknown. Indeed, the necessity of law here seems slight. For in a land where there can be no concealment, crime must languish and only such laws result as find natural and willing observance.
Although what we regarded as life is very brief here, there is no dread of that which we know as death. Death in fact appears to have no real empire in this land, for Ferratoni assures us that the disembodied intelligence still vibrates to many of those clothed in the physical life, until it passes altogether out of range in its progress toward that great central force, which they believe to be the sun. To Ferratoni this is no surprise. To the rest of us it is a matter of vague wonder, which we have accepted as we have accepted everything else of this mystic land and race.
There are no schools. Education appears to be absorbed through their peculiar faculty of mental communication or “silent speech,” which develops in childhood, and is now almost universal. A few appear to be unable to master it, though their number is much less in proportion to the race than is the number of those who with us are lacking in the musical sense. In fact there seems to be a close analogy, or possibly a relation between mental speech and the musical vibration—those lacking the ear for tune and melody, they tell us, being deficient in the mental perception as well. The number of these is decreasing, however, with each generation, and in a land where the whole atmosphere breathes harmony the false notes must blend out in time, and the chord at last become universal and complete. There is a written language—a sort of symbolic ideograph—but with the perfection of their mental attainments, it has fallen gradually into disuse, and is now mainly employed in ornamental decoration, and for preserving the songs and records of the people.[3]