MAN AS SEEN FROM MARS.

Press, Volume XLI, Issue 6141, 26 May 1885, Page 3

MAN AS SEEN FROM MARS.

[From " Camille Flammarion."] The first two inhabitants of Mara whom I met seemed to consider mc with pity; and when I fancied that I discerned in their way of treating mc a certain cold air of superiority my blood at once took! fire, and with a strong effort at self-restraint I opened my Up 3to say :— " Messieurs, I must inform you that the inhabitants of the earth are not so stupid as you seem to believe." Unfortunately they did not even allow mc to begin the sentence, inasmuch as they had already divined what I was going to say by the molecular vibration of my brain. " Let mc icform you, in the first place," said one of them, " that your planet haa never been developed by reason of the. accident which dates back some ten millions of years. It was in the primary epoch of the terrestrial genesis. There were already plants, and admirable plants, and ia the de-. Ps of the sea, as well ac upon the shores, the first animals hod made their appearance—the molluscs, headless, dumb, and sexlees. •' You know that respiration alone suffices for the ample nourishment of trees, and that your most sturdy oaks, your most gigantic cedars, hove never eaten anything—a circumstance which, j notwithatanding, haa never retarded their growth. An ill chance brought it about that one of the first molluscs had its body traversed by a water-drop denser than the surrounding medium. Perhaps the mollusc thought it was very nice. That was the origin cf the first digestive tube, which organ was destined to exercise so dismal aa influence upon the whole animal world and, at a later epoch, upon hnmanity itself. The first assassin was the mollusc. " Here on this planet we never eat ,* nothing has ever been eaten; nothing c. er will be eaten. Creation has \ been developed gradually, pacifically, nobly, as it commenced. All organisms nourish themselves, or, more correctly speaking,, renew their molecules by the simply act cf respiration, just aa you do your terrestrial trees, each leaf being a little stomach. In your dear native 'world you cannot live a single day except upon the condition cf killing something. The law of life with you is the low of death. Here it never entered anybody's mind to kill even a bird. " You people of the earth are oil more or less butchers. Tour hands ate covered with blood. Your stomachs are gorged with victuals. How con you expect with such gross organisations to have any pure, wholesome; elevated ideas—l will even say cleanly ideas; pardon my frankness!" "What!' I exclaimed, ""you refuse mc even the ability to have a cleanly idea ? Do you think all human beings ore brutes ? Homer, Phidias, Seneca, Virgil, Dante, Columbus, Bacon, Galileo, Pascal, Leonardo, Raphael, Mozart, Beethoven—have none of them ever had an elevated aspiration? You think our bodies gross; but had you ever seen pass by yon Helen, Phryne, Aspasia, Sappho, Cleopatra, Lucretia Borgia, Agnes Sorel, Diana of Poitiers, Marguerite de Valois, Borghese, Talien, Becamier, Georges, and their admirable rivals, you might think differently. Ah! my dear Martian, allow mc in my turn to regret that yon only know the earth from a distance." " There you are mistaken, t inhabited that world of yours for fifty years. That was quite enough for mc, and I aasore yon I shall never return to it. Every thing is a failure, even what appears to yoa most charming." " But,? I resumed," in spite ef all, there are certainly great'mtnds on the uhi.li and admirable beauties." ~ "No, my friend; never can you make peaches grow upon briar*. Befiect that ihe mast delicious terreatrial ; beauties whom you recently referred to are nothing jbut clumsy ttjocster. compared to the aerial women of Mars, who live only

upon the air of our spring days, the perfumes of out flowers, and who are so voluptuously charming, even in the mere quivering of their wings, in the ideal kiss of a mouth which has never eaten anything, that had Dante's Beatrice been like them the immortal Florentine would never have written two cantos of fcis 'Divina Commedia'j he would have begun with Paradise and never .Lave descended therefrom. Know also that our young lads have quite as much inborn scientific knowledge as Pythasoras, Archimedes, Euclid, Keppler, Newton, Laplace, and Darwin, after all their laborious studies. Our twelve senses place ua in direct communication with the universe. Here, at the distance of 100,000.000 leagues, we feel the attraction of the planet Jupiter in passing. We can distinguish with the naked eye the rings of Saturn. We can divine in advance the approach of a comet; and our bodies are impregnated with that solar electricity which keeps all nature in vibration. Here there have never been any founders of empires, nor any international divisions nor wars; but our humanity, from its birth pacific and free from all material wants, has lived in thorough independence of body and mind, in a constant intellectual activity, elevating, itself unceasingly to the knowledge of the truth.