he 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.

It must not, however, be supposed that this great legislator was the
first to rescue his world from mere barbarism. The founder of
civilization in Montalluyah seems to have been a very ancient sage named
Elikoia, to whom brief reference is made in the following pages. Prior
to the reign of our Tootmanyoso the people had passed through various
stages of civilization, under the guidance of many wise and good men.
Still the polity was defective, for the country remained subject to
crime, misery, and disease.

The proverb that "Prevention is better than cure," to which everybody
gives unhesitating assent, but which is often forgotten in practice,
lies at the root of most of the reforms, both moral and physical,
effected by the Tootmanyoso. The policy of prevention--that is, of
destroying maladies of mind and body in the germ, before they had been
allowed to spread their poison--was one of his leading principles. Under
his influence, the physicians of Montalluyah made it less their duty to
cure than to prevent disease, therein differing widely from our
practitioners, who are not usually called to exercise their skill until
a malady has been developed, and has perhaps assumed large proportions.

Under his influence likewise it was thought better to diminish moral
evil by extirpating faults in the child, rather than by punishing crimes
in the man.

Another prominent feature in the polity of the great Legislator of
Montalluyah is the occupation of every person in the intellectual or
physical pursuit for which he has been fitted by natural qualifications,
developed and fortified by culture. Nobility, pos