Edward Sylvester Morse

“ The natural boundaries of oceans and sierras do indeed isolate and impress peculiarities of thought and action upon man, as upon the creatures below him, and for this reason we may with propriety examine the work of our nation in any line of investigation. Never before has the study of animals been raised to so high a dignity as at present. While chemistry could point to its triumphs in the arts, and geology to the revelations of hidden wealth in the rocks, zoology was for the most part a mere adjunct to geology, or a means to thwart the ravages of insects. ”

“ It would be obviously absurd to suggest as a model for our own houses such a structure as a Japanese house. Leaving out the fact that it is not adapted to the rigor of our climate or to the habits of our people, its fragile and delicate fittings if adopted by us, would be reduced to a mass of kindlings in a week, by the rude knocks it would receive; and as for exposing on our public thoroughfares the delicate labyrinth of carvings often seen on panel and post in Japan, the wide-spread vandalism of our country would render futile all such attempts to civilize and refine. ”

“ Immersed in mathematics, trusting in nothing that cannot be measured and reckoned, as a class holding their imagination in abeyance, is it any surprise that they should present an attitude of indifference and even hostility to the work of those who, differently equipped mentally, have attempted a definition and solution of the riddle of the Martian markings? To appreciate how foreign to the studies of an astronomer is the interpretation of the canals of Mars, one has simply to scan the index of any astronomical publication, or the titles of papers in the transactions of astronomical societies. ”

“ The garden, with its shrubs, plats of flowers, stepping-stones leading to the fish-pond filled with lotus and lilies, and the bamboo trellis, is a good specimen of an old garden upon which but little care has been bestowed.
In the cities nothing is more surprising to a foreigner than to go from the dust and turmoil of a busy street directly into a rustic yard and the felicity of quiet country life. On one of the busy streets of Tokio I had often passed a low shop, the barred front of which was never opened to traffic, nor was there ever any one present with whom to deal. ”

“ When one realizes that the stars are at such unimaginable distances that the highest powers of the telescope reveal even the nearest of them only as points of light​—​not as disks​—​and when one further realizes that the satellites of our Sun, even the largest of them, are diminutive globes compared to the vastness of the Sun, it seems unreasonable if not impossible to entertain the idea that none of these remote stars are accompanied by satellites, and that, therefore, this little Sun of ours stands without parallel in the universe. ”

“ They receive a rational one through the theories of Darwin. Without the law of reversion, we are left in blind bewilderment.
While all these facts in overwhelming array testify to the extreme mutability of forms, induced oftentimes by apparently the most trivial of causes, and set at rest the question as to the fixedness of species, they show at the same time the richness of that store from which by natural selection forms may be selected.
Realizing the uniformity of Nature's laws, the human mind bravely asks, "Do these wonderful interpretations throw any light upon the origin of man?" ”

“ Simple and unpretending as the interior of a Japanese house appears to be, it is wonderful upon how many places in their apparently naked rooms the ingenuity and art-taste of the cabinet-maker can be expended. Naturally, the variety of design and finish of the tokonoma and chigai-dana is unlimited save by the size of their areas; for with the sills and upright posts, the shelves and little closets, sliding-doors with their surfaces for the artists' brush, and the variety of woods employed, the artisan has a wide field in which to display his peculiar skill. ”

“ Lowell says of Mars: "What we see hints of the existence of beings who are in advance of, not behind us in the journey of life," and again: "Life on Mars must take on a very different guise from what it wears on the Earth. It is certain there can be no man there​—​that is as certain as anything can be. But this does not preclude a local intelligence equal to, and perhaps easily superior to, our own. We seem to have evidence that something of the sort does exist there at the present moment and has made imprint of its existence far exceeding anything we have left on Mother Earth." ”

“ Unfamiliar as he is with the corner loafer eying every girl that walks by, or with that class which throng our walks with the sole purpose of staring at the girls, who are there for the purpose of being stared at, what must he think of our people when he visits our summer resorts at the seaside and sees a young girl—nay, swarms of them—tripping over the sand under a bright sun, bare-legged, clad only in a single wrapper, which when wet clings to her form and renders her an object of contemplation to a battalion of young men who fringe the beach! ”

“ THERE is no race of people in whose origin we are more interested than in that of the Japanese. Their history going so completely back for nearly two thousand years, their civilization, which in so many respects parallels our own—the various epochs in our history being typified again and again by similar ages in Japan—all excite our deepest interest. ”

“ Science is teaching the world that the ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment, and not authority. She is teaching it to estimate the value of evidence; she is creating a firm and living faith in the existence of immutable moral and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the highest possible aim of an intelligent being. ”

“ On general principles, too, the proposition, that those individuals best adapted to their surroundings survive, need only be stated to be accepted by a reasonable mind. In truth, to deny it would be to deny, as Alphonse de Candolle says, that a round stone would roll down-hill faster and farther than a flat one. Indeed, this eminent botanist affirms that natural selection is neither a theory nor an hypothesis, but the explanation of a necessary fact. The constant physical changes in the past and present condition of the world are incontrovertibly established. ”

“ John, and in the northern part of Maine, one sees the wooden houses of the French Canadians having roofs widely projecting, with the eaves gracefully turning upward, presenting a much prettier appearance than does the stiff angular roof of the New England house.
It is indeed a matter of wonder that some one in building a house in this country does not revert to a thatched roof. Our architectural history shows an infinite number of reversions, and if a thatched roof were again brought into vogue, a new charm would be added to our landscape. ”

“ Until within recent centuries, man has not only believed that he and his kind were the only intelligent creatures in the universe, but that the little round ball on which he lived was the dominant part thereof. So rooted for ages was this conviction that it became fixed in man's mental structure, and hence the survival of the idea that still lingers in the minds of a few to-day. The conclusion was natural, however, for the behavior of the starry heavens and the Sun and the Moon seemed sufficient evidence that man, and the surface upon which he lived, was the centre of the universe. ”

“ Taking the great mass of facts as they are presented to us by astronomers, to what class are we to appeal as to the probability of life in other worlds? What class will form the most rational conclusions? Will it be the circle-squarers, perpetual-motion cranks, spiritualists, survivals of a past who believe the world is flat,3 those who have "anthropomorphic conceptions of the Supreme" and Hebraic conceptions of the origin of things, or will it be those who value observation and experiment, who appreciate the importance of large numbers, and who are endowed with a tithe of imagination? ”

“ A girl who in our country would deem it immodest to appear among the members of her own family in a robe de chambre, and yet under the glare of a bright gas-light, in the midst of scores of strangers, appears with low corsage, is committing an act which to a Turkish woman would appear inexplicable. To a Japanese, the sight of our dazzling ball-rooms, with girls in décolleté dresses, clasped in the arms of their partners and whirling to the sound of exciting music, must seem the wildest debauch imaginable ”

“ It is a common experience in astronomy that an observer may fail to notice in a general scrutiny, some phenomenon which he can see perfectly well when his attention is called to it; when a man has made a discovery, and others are told what to look for, they often see it so easily that they are filled with amazement and chagrin that they never saw it before. ”

“ A Japanese familiar with his airy and barn-like theatres, his public readings under an open tent-like structure, or gatherings in a room in which one or all sides may be open to the air even in mid-winter, would look upon the usual public gatherings of our people in lecture-halls, schoolrooms, and other closed apartments, wherein the air often becomes so foul that people faint and struggle to the door to get a breath of fresh air,—a Japanese, I say, would justly look upon such practices as filthy to the last degree. ”

“ The Martian considers our year too short. In his reflections he says: "During the period in which one of us attains the middle age of fifty years those on Earth have become decrepit old men of ninety-four, if, indeed, they are not already dead."
Seriously, if there is an intelligence in Mars, it must have evolved along the same general lines as intelligence has developed on the Earth. Being an older planet, it must have outgrown many of the vagaries and illusions which still hamper man in his progress here. ”

“ It is a source of amazement to a foreigner to find in the rear of a row of dull and sombre business-houses independent dwellings, with rooms of exquisite taste and cleanliness. I remember, in one of the busiest streets of Tokio, passing through a lithographer's establishment, with the inky presses and inky workmen in full activity, and coming upon the choicest of tiny gardens and, after crossing a miniature foot-bridge, to a house of rare beauty and finish. It is customary for the common merchant to live under the same roof with the shop, or in a closely contiguous building ”

“ It would be a waste of time to attempt an interpretation of the markings of Mars as a result of intelligent effort, if it could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that our globe was not only unique among the bodies which probably accompany the innumerable suns, but was the only body, among them all, sustaining creatures of intelligence. If life exists in other planets of a nature with which we are familiar, then the physical conditions must be similar to those of our own planet. ”

“ Furthermore, in the midst of so much that is evanescent they see the necessity of providing enduring points of interest in the way of little ponds and bridges, odd-shaped stone lanterns and inscribed rocks, summer-houses and rustic fences, quaint paths of stone and pebble, and always a number of evergreen trees and shrubs. We, indeed, have feebly groped that way with our cement vases, jigsaw pavilions green with poisonous compound, and cast-iron fountains of such design that one no longer wonders at the increase of insanity in our midst. ”

“ To enumerate, in the broadest way, the variety of conditions under which life exists here, one has only to enumerate creatures living in the deepest abysses of the ocean; high up on the slopes of the Himalayas; swarming in arctic seas; withstanding the hot glare of a tropical sun; living deep in the ground; breeding in the darkest caves; flourishing in desert regions; thriving in water below freezing, and again in water nearly at the boiling point. ”

“ A BIRD'S-EYE view of a large city in Japan presents an appearance quite unlike that presented by any large assemblage of buildings at home. A view of Tokio, for example, from some elevated point reveals a vast sea of roofs,—the gray of the shingles and dark slate-color of the tiles, with dull reflections from their surfaces, giving a sombre effect to the whole. ”

“ Knowing the many analogies between Mars and the Earth, we are justified in asking what conditions really exist in Mars. Instead of flouting at every attempt to interpret the various and complicated markings of its surface, we should soberly consider any rational explanation of these enigmas from the postulate that the two spheres, so near together in space, cannot be so far apart physically, and from the fact that as intelligence is broadly modifying the appearance of the surface of the Earth, a similar intelligence may also be marking the face of Mars. ”

“ The shingles are nothing more than thick shavings, and curved and warped by the sun are ready to spring into a blaze by the contact of the first spark that falls upon them, and then to be sent flying by a high wind to scatter the fire for miles. ”

“ If one can recall the appearance of forests in the southern and middle part of Maine, say from Bethel or Bangor, fifty years ago, he will remember that from the top of any hill a stretch of dark blue forest was to be seen as far as the eye could reach, and now from the same elevations one can see only an occasional clump of blue forest, while the remaining surface is, according to the season, either bright green, yellow with ripening vegetation, or white with snow, out of which the dark clumps of forest growth are most conspicuous. ”

“ He naturally dislikes the anomaly of a house of the lightest description oftentimes sustaining a roof of the most ponderous character, and fairly loathes a structure that has no king-post, or at least a queen-post, truss; while the glaring absurdity of a house that persists in remaining upright without a foundation, or at least without his kind of a foundation, makes him furious. The mistake made by most writers in criticising Japanese house-structure, and indeed many other matters connected with that country, is that these writers do not regard such matters from a Japanese stand-point. ”

“ The way in which the gatherers of the raw material arrogate to themselves the science of astronomy, relegating the thinkers and generalizers to the limbo of speculation, is as if the book-keepers of a corporation should assume themselves to be the master-minds of the concern and the banker, or financier, at the head of it, a dreamer not worth regarding.
An illustration of the conservativeness of astronomers in regard to planetary markings is shown in their cautious attitude concerning the polar snow caps of Mars. ”

“ Plots of ground that in this country are too often encumbered with coal-ashes, tea-grounds, tin cans, and the garbage-barrel, in Japan are rendered charming to the eye by the simplest means. With cleanliness, simplicity, a few little evergreen shrubs, one or two little clusters of flowers, a rustic fence projecting from the side of the house, a quaintly shaped flower-pot or two, containing a few choice plants,—the simplest form of garden is attained. So much do the Japanese admire gardens, and garden effects, that their smallest strips of ground are utilized for this purpose. ”

“ In the manner of building, one recognizes the propriety of constructive art as being in better taste; and in a Japanese house one sees this principle carried out to perfection. The ceiling of boards, the corner posts and middle posts and transverse ties are in plain sight. The corner posts which support the roof play their part as a decorative feature, as they pass stoutly upward from the ground beneath. A fringe of rafters rib the lower surface of the wide overhanging eaves, and these in turn rest firmly on an unhewn beam which runs as a girder from one side of the verandah to the other. ”

“ But has life appeared in Mars? Tyndall, in graphic words, pictures the rounding of worlds from nebulous haze, and then says, "For eons, the immensity of which overwhelms man's conception, the Earth was unfit to maintain what we call life. It is now covered with visible living things. They are not formed of matter different from that around them. They are, on the contrary, bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh." Mars must come in the same category. ”