READ THE NOVEL- Chapters 1-31 - ERBzine

Tarzan on Mars
neither Thern nor Lotharian insisted that she had lived in
another world, that she had died, and that this was her second
life. She related to them the details of her life in Opar,
following which she continued the story of her life on Barsoom.
Her simple explanation of her ability to communicate
with the apes was that she had always been able to do so.
She told them how her cult had begun with the indoctrination
of the intelligent tribe of Churg, the great white ape.
Soon, other tribes of apes accepted Churg as their king, and
a small nation of anthropoids developed under his influence,
all of them recognizing La as the second abstraction they had
ever comprehended, she being the symbol of the first, the
sun. Though La did not attempt to analyze it, Var Koros did
so for the benefit of the others.
"Animal life on Barsoom," he said, "has advanced apace
with human life, as is evidenced by the fact that the lowly
thoat and the calot are receptive to telepathic commands.
Therefore, it would not seem incongruous that some of the
great white apes should be fairly on the threshold of becoming
at least quasi-human. That the desire to imitate men
should have awakened in them and that some should even
have approached the achievement of abstract thought should
not surprise us.
"The subconscious urge for development is latent within
them. So it is that this strangely endowed woman has become
the physical symbolization of the abstract concept of mysticism—which
is naught else but the sublimation of the
primordial into the ethereal. This is the natural law of humanity.
If even the apes are aware of it, think, then, how much
more affected are men! Deny them this natural process of
spiritual sublimation and you will have what Barsoom has
already become—a war torn world, with brother raising his
sword against brother and each individual not knowing what
his other hand will do tomorrow. These great white apes,
therefore, are the very shibboleths of the dilemma which
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