ition, and wealth are
made to depend on merit alone, ascertained by a mechanism which neither
favouritism, ignorance, nor accident can affect. These laws may for an
instant seem to partake of a democratic tinge; but it will be clearly
perceived that the regulations concerning the institutions of property
and marriage are diametrically opposite to those which have rendered the
theories of Communists so generally hateful.

Many of the Tootmanyoso's reforms resulted from an application of
extraordinary scientific discoveries to the purposes of life. Under the
law which determined that the "right man" should, in the most extensive
sense of the phrase, always be in the "right place," discoveries were
made of which the most acute investigators of earlier times had had no
conception, and the newly-acquired ability of wielding electrical,
mechanical, and other forces had momentous political consequences. Armed
with powers previously unknown, the Tootmanyoso found comparatively easy
the successive steps towards the happiness and well-being of his world,
where a series of insuperable obstacles would have been presented to the
wisest of his predecessors.

Of the physical agencies mentioned in the following pages, that of
electricity will be found especially prominent. Both the knowledge and
the manipulation of electricity have assumed in Montalluyah proportions
far beyond those known to us. The electric fluid is there employed for
the most various purposes: for locomotion, for lightening heavy bodies,
for increasing the power of optical instruments, for the detection and
eradication of the germs of disease, for increasing the efficiency of
musical instruments--in a word, for the advancement of the world in all
that belongs to morality, science, and art.

To some readers the plural form, "Electricities," which frequently
appears in the following pages, might seem a strange innovation. The
Editor therefore states, by way of anticipation, that in certain
important points the electrical science of Montalluyah differs from, if
it is not opposed to, some of the principles accepted here. In
Montalluyah it is an ascertained fact that everything organic or
inorganic possesses an electricity of its own, each kind differing from
the others in one or more important properties. Glimmerings of the
progress effected in electricity and other sciences, including the
knowledge and application of Sun-power, may be deduced from the facts
contained