Mogon-Zwair and Lalugnan, having the misfortune to lie on opposite sides of a line, naturally hate each other; so each country sends its dangerous political criminals into the other, where they usually enjoy high honors and are sometimes elevated to important office under the crown.  I was therefore received in Lalugnan with hospitality and given every encouragement in prosecuting my researches into the history and intellectual life of the people.  They are so extraordinary a people, inhabiting so marvelous a country, that everything which the traveler sees, hears or experiences makes a lively and lasting impression upon his mind, and the labor of a lifetime would be required to relate the observation of a single year.  I shall notice here only one or two points of national character—­those which differ most conspicuously from ours, and in which, consequently, they are least worthy.

With a fatuity hardly more credible than creditable, the Lalugwumps, as they call themselves, deny the immortality of the soul.  In all my stay in their country I found only one person who believed in a life “beyond the grave,” as we should say, though as the Lalugwumps are cannibals they would say “beyond the stomach.”  In testimony to the consolatory value of the doctrine of another life, I may say that this one true believer had in this life a comparatively unsatisfactory lot, for in early youth he had been struck by a flying stone from a volcano and had lost a considerable part of his brain.

I cannot better set forth the nature and extent of the Lalugwumpian error regarding this matter than by relating a conversation that occurred between me and one of the high officers of the King’s household—­a man whose proficiency in all the vices of antiquity, together with his service to the realm in determining the normal radius of curvature in cats’ claws, had elevated him to the highest plane of political preferment.  His name was Gnarmag-Zote.

“You tell me,” said he, “that the soul is immaterial.  Now, matter is that of which we can have knowledge through one or more of our senses.  Of what is immaterial—­not matter—­we can gain no knowledge in that way.  How, then, can we know anything about it?”

Perceiving that he did not rightly apprehend my position I abandoned it and shifted the argument to another ground.  “Consider,” I said, “the analogous case of a thought.  You will hardly call thought material, yet we know there are thoughts.”

“I beg your pardon, but we do not know that.  Thought is not a thing, therefore cannot be in any such sense, for example, as the hand is.  We use the word ‘thought’ to designate the result of an action of the brain, precisely as we use the word ‘speed’ to designate the result of an action of a horse’s legs.  But can it be said that speed exists in the same way as the legs which produce it exist, or in any way?  Is it a thing?”