The Topeka state journal., 1897-07-05
LIFE IN NEAR By PLANETS.
(From the London Spectator)

(From the London SPECTATOR
The discovery of the philosophers
stone, supposing that phrase to imply a
working scheme for transmitting an
inferior metal into gold, would prob
ably produce nothing beyond a period
of terrible economic confusion, or, per-
haps, a vast and disastrous, because
overrapid transfer of property, but the
attainment of certainty that Sentient
beings with corporeal incasements, act
ing by effort and not by pure vOlition,
existed in any one other planet would
only enlarge the range of human
thought and the force of the human
imagination. Such a certainty would
only increase to an extraordinary de-
gree the reverence for the Creator
for we are all so limited that we rev.
erence powers which we see exerted
more than powers which we know in
theory must exist-or would compel ma
terials to revise and widen their
whole theory of the relation of matter
to mind, it being evident that sentence
could exist under conditions hitherto
deemed impossible.
There are certainly millions, and pos
sibly billions, of worlds of which no two
are the same, and if Sentient beings
were found past question in any other
world than ours the presumption that
they existed under a variety of condi-
tfons, and probably, therefore, in va
riety of forms, practically unlimited
would become so violent that to reject
the theory would soon be regarded as
evidence of a foolish, popular habit of
Man has some internal dislike to be-
1ieve that limited beings with sentence
can exist under conditions other than
our own, and habitually assumes that
a world without air is a dead world.
Yet there is no proof that the ether,
which we know to be everywhere, can
not support life, or that circumstances
of which we know nothing may not
modify either it's intolerabIe cold or
the effect of that cold.
In Mars itself there is some potency
at work, which, to the despair for the
moment of terrestrial science, produces
warmth where cold ought to reign per-
manently supreme. 1t is as certain
as any deduction from analogy can be
that air in Mars, though it exists, is
as rare as it would be at the top of a
mountain twice as high as Mount EV-
erett, and that consequently the nor
NAL and permanent degree of cold
ought to be terrible.
The thermal income of Mars is less
than half that of the earth, and its
theoretical mean temperature is con-
sequently-taking into account its low
"albedo" or reflective power per unit of
area-thirty degrees centigrade below
freezing. Yet the actual climate of
Mars is mild. Snow certainly melts
fapidly-that is patent to the telescope
-vapor certainly riSeS-that is clear
from the spectrum analySis-water
flows, and there are indications, if not
proofs, that a sudden vegetation fol-
lows the sudden thawing of the snow.
What warns the air is unknown, but it
is warmed beyond all question of doubt,
and all arguments, therefore, as to the
ineVitableness of cold in other worlds
must be pronounced imperfect, as there
are those which show the impossibility
of sustaining corporea1 life. All we
can say with certainty is that, if SEN
tient beings with corporeal frames eX-
ist in Mars, the relation of the lungs to
the body cannot be Identical with their
relation in man, which, as we are aware
of fishes, is not an impossible exercise
of the imagination.