John Pratt

“ Niagara Falls, in such a planet, with water approximating the weight of air, would scarcely furnish power for a mill. A rifle ball might be caught in the hand without harm. It is obvious that, with an atmosphere of the density of our own, animal and vegetable life, and every artificial work, representing so many structures of gossamer, would disappear like magic at the first breeze. But no such atmosphere as ours is possible with Mars. ”

“ All this space, and all this time, and all this immortal energy have as yet barely sufficed to develop a few organisms capable of a glimmering comprehension of the forces which have evolved them. All the rest, if the accepted theories of gravitation and light and heat are not wholly illusory or misunderstood, is waste space, waste matter, waste energy. Life is far more rare and far more costly in our solar system than diamonds in the earth. ”

“ This tiny island in space does indeed teem with life; but, if this life were distributed equally through the space given to its production, thousands of miles would intervene between every individual form.
So much for the space and energy expended in the evolution of vitality. The same immense expenditure, the same apparent disproportion discloses itself when we consider the time that has been consumed in the process. Here we are again confronted by figures approximating eternity. Life has existed on the Earth millions of years, and mammalian life hundreds of thousands of years. ”

“ If we suppose the existence of an atmosphere, even no more profound than our own, its weight would be a third that of water, and its pressure 4,500 pounds to the square inch—sufficient to crush a rhinoceros or the boiler of a steam engine. In motion, as a moderate breeze, it would sweep away not only every work of man, but the very hills and mountains. ”

“ At last, then, out of all the vast, the countless myriads of circling orbs that do homage to our sun, only two remain to be considered—the Earth and Venus.
Venus, although too near the sun to render it likely that her tropical regions are habitable by man, is, so far as can be judged from her general physical condition, by no means destitute of life. If there be truth in the nebular hypothesis, Venus is younger than the Earth, and is therefore perhaps not evolutionized as to the highest forms. ”

“ But the mass of this satellite being about a third less than even that of Mars, interposes, and has ever interposed, the same everlasting mechanical obstacles to life there as in Mars. Atmosphere the moon may once have possessed, but it must always have been insufficient for life, insufficient to secure the stability of water, which, even if it continued in a liquid condition, would be swept—so light was it—in vast tides over the highest mountains. For the rest, if there be a man in the moon, it is interesting to know that he weighs less than two pounds, and can jump a mile, more or less. ”

“ Life is impossible in such an atmosphere, as is shown by a far less tenuity at the summits of lofty mountains. But, even if gravitation were not deficient, the distance of Mars from the sun entitles him to considerably less than half our supply of light and heat; a disadvantage immensely aggravated by his very eccentric orbit. Croll has shown how the shifting eccentricity of the earth's orbit, by adding three weeks to the duration of winter, brought about the glacial epochs, and covered nearly the whole earth with ice at various eras. ”

“ Space is boundless, matter is infinite in quantity, and time is limitless, past and to come. Where the treasure is exhaustless, the question of cost is only interesting from a speculative point of view. ”

“ According to this view, attraction is the grand reservoir of the generic energy of the universe, on which all matter may draw when its differentiated force has been dissipated. But, be this as it may, the fruitful union of matter and energy in the infinite past is a stable guarantee that they will never be divorced. ”

“ It is obvious that the whole system of planets, representing so many minute points in space, receive only an almost infinitesimally small proportion of the light and heat evolved by the sun. Some physicists are fond of giving the exact figures, but this is presenting the inconceivable. Siemens has made a very unsatisfactory effort to show that the force is conserved. ”

“ If this be a paradox, it has the peculiarity of being irrefutable, since it is impossible to conceive of any greater eternity than either the past or the future. Assuredly it can not be maintained that the future eternity is greater than the past. Assuming, then, this postulate, and that energy in all phases has been eternal in the past, it follows, with a force that commands unhesitating assent, that it will be eternal in the future. ”

“ Nay, more, the forms and succession of life must be, wherever found, substantially such as we are familiar with. If Venus has human inhabitants, they are not one eyed Cyclops, nor does vegetation bury its leaves in the ground and spread its roots in the air. ”

“ Energy has had one eternity in which to dissipate itself. What one eternity has not sufficed to bring about, will never be consummated. It may be interesting, but it is not essential to the demonstration, to investigate the method by which energy dissipated becomes once more potential. ”

“ Some scientists have of late indulged in presages more despondent than philosophical. According to this school, the dissipation of energy into space will finally result in the death of matter. Matter, being indestructible, will exist forever, but its soul will perish ”

“ Conceive, then, the thermometer in the Martial torrid regions touching 50°, and that even under the hypothesis, rendered impossible by the very laws of gravitation, of an atmosphere as dense as our own! Nothing can be more certain than that there is no liquid in Mars, and no life. ”

“ Vegetation and animalism probably assumed wonderful shapes, and were capable of existing amid conditions not only altogether different from the terrestrial, but altogether incompatible with life on this earth. ”

“ The familiar dream of flying by a mere upward movement of the limbs might easily be realized in Mars, but an 80-ton locomotive would not propel a train of empty cars, and mechanical work of all kinds would be practically impossible. ”

“ This conception, unphilosophical a priori, and indirectly the fruit of the wonder-instinct and that bias inherited, according to Comte, from the theological régime, has been swept away, and the reign of law extended to the mystic dream-lands of the universe. No thinker so loosely hinged now as to imagine life without a certain degree of heat, light, and without oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and all the chemical elements, and that too in protean forms. ”

“ Mercury, with a temperature of boiling water in the frigid zones and red-hot iron at the equator, may be a good place for a Calvinist to send his wicked neighbor, in imagination, but it can not be placed among the list of inhabited worlds. ”

“ But there is a large aspect of the question which, though it seems to have escaped the attention of thinkers, at once sets it at rest, and demonstrates that energy and life are immortal. Bacon says of eternal duration, that, dividing it into past and future, it is of no consequence where we draw the line ”

“ The density of Jupiter being about 1·40 and that of the Earth 5·48, it follows that the attraction exerted by Jupiter is, roughly, 300 times that of the Earth. A man who weighs 150 pounds on the Earth, if transported to Jupiter, would shake the ground with a ponderous tread of 45,000 pounds, or 2212 tons! ”

“ Again, water would weigh fifteen times as much as quicksilver. A moderate wave would shiver to atoms the strongest ironclad, a rivulet would quickly form canons miles deep, and ordinary hailstones would destroy every living thing. ”