7

This Leider was a missionary, a species of tourist who sought out other people in order to tell them that they were ignorant and wrongheaded. This occupation, which amounted to little more than insulting strangers, had its basis what the Martians called religion.

Religion was a series of mythologies or fantasies that the Martians created for the purpose of subjugating the females of their species, and occasionally for explaining things they did not understand.

In actual fact, little existed in religion to interest or instruct; it was a record of depravity necessary, though painful, to examine so that a proper judgment of the Martian aboriginal condition may be formed.¹ I shall be the more minute in giving some account here of religion with the design of developing the utter ignorance, the entire destitution, and deep degradation of the Martians; and exhibiting, to some extent, the influence of the Aliens.²

I should also mention here that since the arrival of the Aliens on Earth, the Martians have found many new things to learn and have neglected almost entirely their ancient traditions.³ Religion is now as foreign to the Martians as it was to the Aliens when they first arrived. What we know of religion survives only in the Martian writings, and a few of their traditions. If modern nations find it difficult to convey by teeping just conceptions of Martian institutions, and their influence on Martian character, how vain would it be to expect that they themselves, by the ungainly externalized thinking they called writing, could convey just ideas of what sort of people they were, and what they did.⁴ Writings, indeed, are abundant; but writings are a mass of lies from which it is always difficult to extricate the truth.⁵

Whatever the case, there seems to have been a sense among the Martians that religion was a very virtuous thing. In most cases, their leaders made much of their rigorous adherence to religion, and those who were most religious were often considered most respectable. This is not to say that religion was actually virtuous.

It was rather a system of worldly despotism, better calculated to perpetuate the power of the powerful, than to direct the ideas of the people to concerns of eternal interest or temporal improvement.⁶ Polygamy (implying plurality of wives), fornication, adultery, incest, infant murder, desertion of husbands, wives, parents and children; sorcery, covetousness and oppression, extensively prevailed, and seem hardly to have been forbidden or rebuked by religion.⁷ Indeed, the Aliens were impressed with the evidence that malevolence and falsehood were everywhere the main features of Martian religion.⁸

One of the hallmarks of religion was the construction of idols. These idols, also called churches, were of every variety imaginable, from hideous architectural deformities to the utmost perfection of their art. The features of religion were embodied in these idols: the most desired object in their manufacture being to inspire fear and horror, sentiments which, in a more refined people, would have been converted into disgust.⁹ The Martians devoted a great deal of wealth and labor to the construction and care of these idols, yet they often sat empty. As many of them as they had, religion always demanded more.

The other principal activity of religion was, as I have said, the subjugation of females. The Martians achieved this through a series of fantastic restrictions, which they called sins.

It was sin to be found in a canoe on a holy day; if any one made noise due to flatulence while in public, it was sin; if a person changed their opinion about a matter, it was sin; if a person was found to be annoying in any way, it was sin; if a female enjoyed sexual relations with many men, it was sin; if a female did not enjoy sexual relations, it was sin; if a female did not love her children, sin; if she loved them too much, sin; if a female disagreed with a male, was overweight, did not care for her hair, her fingernails, or the odor of her body, it was sin.¹⁰

To enforce these unreasonable restrictions, the highest penalty was annexed, and it grew up into a bloody system of violence and pollution suited to the lust, pride, and malice of the Martian males, who pretended to claim, in the name of religion, the right to put to death, by their own hands, and to threaten with death by the power of their deities every person who should commit any of these senseless sins.¹¹

Although we have comparatively little evidence of the actual punishment of these sins, historians are unanimous that such harsh penalties must have been enforced—otherwise there is no explanation for why females were so rarely found in positions of power among the Martians, why females always performed the greater share of the labor, and why they allowed themselves to be treated so badly by the males, unless the females were so stupid that the most abominable males gained credence when they claimed to be not only viceregents of a higher deity but veritable gods.¹²

Still, as markets maintain the power of reasonableness in all people to some extent, the vile dogmas of religion were frequently neglected or resisted by a large portion of the community, even where the antiquity and authority of the general system were acknowledged.¹³ The most barbarous beliefs will, at times, yield to the natural instincts of trade; and this religion of theirs, however cruel in theory, often became comparatively mild through lenient application.¹⁴ It seems the Martians as a whole were not very good at following the precepts of their religion.

There was a great deal more to say about religion, but to detail all their various rites and ceremonies would scarcely repay the toil of collecting them and the tediousness of their perusal.¹⁵ We shall naturally be led to say more on this subject, on a future page, and it is time to return from this partial digression.¹⁶