V. I.

Lenin

168

To:   HIS MOTHER [1]

P.S. Today I read an amusing newspaper article on the inhabitants of Mars in connection with a new English book
by Lowell, Mars and Its Canals . Lowell is an astronomer
who has worked for a long time in a special observatory
which, I believe, is the best in the world (in America).

It is a scientific work. It argues that Mars is inhabitable,
that the canals are a miracle of engineering, that people
on that planet must be two and two-thirds the size of our
people here, and that they, furthermore, have trunks and
are covered with feathers or animal skins and have four
or six legs. Hmm... the author [2] cheated us by describing
the Martian beauties only in part , according to the principle that “... the deceit that elevates is dearer to us than
a host of vulgar truths”. [3]

A new story by Gorky has been published— The Last .

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Notes:
[1]
The letter to which this is the postscript has been lost.— Ed

.

[2]
A. Bogdanov, author of the novel Krasnaya Zvezda (The Red
Star).— Ed .

[3]
These words are from Alexander Pushkin’s The Hero .