The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-06-27
THE STARS POPULATION.
If There Are Beings ON Mars They
Have Queer Lungs.
London Spectator.

London Spectator.
The discovery of the philosophers stone,
supposing that phrase to imply a working
scheme for transmitting an inferior metal
into gold, would probably produce nothing
beyond a period of terrible economic con-
fusion, or perhaps, vast and disastrous,
because overrapid, transfer of property, but
the attainment of certainty that sentlent
beings with corporal incaSementS, acting
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 certainty
would either increase 10 an extraordinary
degree the reverence for the Creator-for
we are all so limited that we reverence
powers which we know IN theory must ex-
fst-or would compel materialists to revise
and widen their whole theory or the rela-
ton of matter to mind, 1t being EVIDENT that
sentence could exist under conditions NTH
erto deemed impossible.
There are certainly millions, and possibly
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 conditions and probably there
limited would become so violent that to re-
iect the theory would soon be regarded as
evidence of foolish popular habit OF disbe-
Man has some internal dislike to believe
that limited beings with sentence can ex-
list under conditions other than his own,
and habituaIly assumes that a world with
out air is dead world. Yet there is no
proof that the ether, which we know to be
EVERYWHERE cannot support life or that cir
cumStarces of which we know nothing may
not modify either its intolerable cold or the
effect of that cold.
In Mars itself there is some potency at
work which to the despair for the mo-
ment of terrestrial science, produces
warmth where cold ought to reign perma-
nently supreme. 1t is as certain as any de-
duction from analogy can be that air in
Mars though il exists, is as rarefied as it
would be at the top of a mountain twice
as high as Mount Everett and that conse-
uuently the normal 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 consequently-taking
into account its low "albedo" or reflective
power per unit of area-thirty degrees CEN
tigrade below freezing. Yet the actual eli
mate of Mars is mild. Snow certainly melts
rapidly-that is patent to the telescope
yapor certainly rtses-that is clear from the
spectrum analysis-water flows, and there
are indications, If not proofs. that sudden
vegetation follows the sudden thawing of
the snow What warns the air is unknown,
but it is warmed past all question or doubt,
and all arguments, therefore, as to the in
eVitableness of cold in other worlds must
be pronounced imperfect as are those
which show the impossibility Of sustaining
corporal life. All we can say with GER
tairty Is that, IL sentient beings with cor
poreaI frames exist in Mars. the relation OF
the lungs of 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.