The Planet Mars — Apparition of Spero — Psychic Communication — The Inhabitants of Mars.

HAD I been the sport of a dream? Had my spirit been really transported to the planet Mars, or was I rather the dupe of a purely imaginary illusion?

The feeling of reality had been so vivid, so intense, and the things I had witnessed were so completely in accord with the scientific notions we already have of the physical nature of Mars, that I could not entertain a doubt on this point, astonished as I still was by my ecstatic journey, and while asking myself a thousand contradictory questions.

The absence of Spero from the vision surprised me somewhat. His memory was still so dear, that it seemed to me that I should have divined his presence had he been there, flown straight to him, seen him, spoken to him, listened to his voice. But was not the subject at Nancy rather himself the sport of his imagination, or of mine, or of that of the experimenter? Besides, even admitting that my two friends were reincarnated on this neighbor planet, I told myself in answer to this question, that it was very possible for two persons to traverse the same city without meeting each other, and with how much more probability the whole world. But it is not assuredly the doctrine of probabilities that must be invoked here, for a feeling of attraction, such as united us, ought to modify the chances of meeting and throw into the balance an element which would predominate over all the rest.

While these thoughts were passing through my mind, I entered my observatory at Jurisy, where I had prepared some electric batteries for the purpose of making an experiment in optics, in connection with the tower of Montlhéry. When I had assured myself that everything was in readiness, I left my assistant to make the signals agreed upon, between the hours of ten and eleven, and I myself set out for the old tower, on which I took my stand an hour later. Night had fallen. From the height of the ancient donjon the horizon forms a perfect circle, visible in its whole circumference, having a radius of from twenty to twenty-five kilometres. A third post of observation, situated at Paris, was in communication with us. The object of the experiment was to learn if the rays of the spectrum all travel with an equal velocity of three hundred thousand kilometres a second. The result proved this to be the case.

The experiments being ended at about eleven o’clock, and it being a glorious starlit night, as soon as I had put my apparatus away safely in the tower, I returned to the terrace above to contemplate the landscape, lighted by the first rays of the rising moon. The air was calm and mild, almost warm. But just as I reached the last step I stood still, petrified with horror. I tried to cry out; but no sound came. Spero — Spero himself was there before me, seated on the parapet. I raised my arms toward Heaven, feeling as if I were going to faint, but he said to me in the sweet voice which I knew so well.

“Can it be that you are afraid of me?”

I had not the strength either to answer or to advance. I ventured, however, to look straight at my friend, who was smiling. His dear face, lighted by the moon, was just as I had seen it before his departure for Christiania, youthful and pleasing, his air thoughtful, his glance keen. I took a step, strongly impelled to rush forward and embrace him. But my courage failed me and I remained where I was, gazing at him.

I had recovered the use of my faculties. “Spero! It is thou!” I cried.

“I was with you during your experiment,” he replied, “and it was I who inspired you with the idea of comparing the extreme violet with the extreme red rays.”

“Can it be possible? Let me look at you, let me touch you.”

I passed my hands over his face, his body, his hair, and I received from them exactly the same impression as if he had been a living being. My reason refused to admit the testimony of my senses, and yet I could not doubt that it was he. No twin brother could be so like him. And then my doubts would have fled at his first words, for he added immediately afterward:

“My body sleeps at this moment in Mars.”

“So then,” I said, “you still live, you continue to exist, and at last you have solved the great problem that tormented you so much. And Iclea?”

“Let us talk together,” he replied. “I have many things to tell you.”

I seated myself beside him on the edge of the parapet of the old tower, and this is what I heard:

Some time after the accident at the Lake of Tyrifiorden he had felt himself awakening as if from a long and profound sleep. He was alone in the darkness of the night on the borders of a lake. He felt himself to be living, but he could neither see nor feel. The air did not strike him. His body was not only light but imponderable. The only thing that seemed to survive in him was his faculty of thinking.

His first idea, on collecting his thoughts, was that he was returning to himself after his fall near the Norwegian lake. But when day dawned he perceived that he was in another world. The two moons revolving rapidly in the heavens in opposite directions, made him think that he was on our neighbor planet, Mars, and it was not long before other proofs came to convince him that this was the case.

He remained there for a certain length of time as a spirit, and found the inhabitants to be an extremely cultivated race, among whom the feminine sex rules supreme, owing to its incontestable superiority over the masculine. The organisms are light and delicate, the density of the body very slight, its weight still less. On this planet force plays only a secondary r?le in nature; fineness of sensation is the determining power. There are a great many species of animals, and several races of human beings. In all those species and all those races the female sex is the more beautiful and the stronger (strength consisting in the superior delicacy of sensation), and this sex it is that rules the world.

His intense desire to learn something of the life that was before him, decided Spero not to remain long a spectator and a spirit, but to be reborn under a corporeal human form, and — having made himself acquainted with the organic condition of this planet — in the female form.

Already, among the terrestrial souls floating about in the atmosphere of Mars, he had recognized (for souls feel each other’s presence), the soul of Iclea, who had followed him, drawn by a ceaseless attraction. She, on her side, had felt herself inclined to an incarnation in a masculine form.

They were thus brought together in one of the most favored lands in this planet; were near each other; predestined to meet each other again in existence, and to share the same emotions, the same thoughts, the same labors. Thus, although the remembrance of their terrestrial existence was obscured and effaced as it were, by the new transformation, a vague feeling of spiritual kinship and a sudden sympathy had drawn them together from the moment of their awakening.Their psychic superiority, the habitual nature of their thoughts, the condition of their minds, accustomed as they were to search for the relation between cause and effect, had bestowed upon both a species of secret clairvoyance that freed them from the general ignorance of their fellow beings. They had loved each other with so sudden a passion; they yielded themselves so completely to the magnetic influences of their re-union, that they soon formed one single being, united as at the moment of their terrestrial separation. They had a remembrance of having already known each other; they were convinced that it was upon the Earth, that neighbor planet that shines in the evening with so bright a light in the sky of Mars, and at times, in their solitary flights above the hills clothed by aerial vegetation, they gazed at “the evening star,” and sought to unite the broken thread of memory.

An unexpected event took place, which explained their reminiscences and showed them that they were not deceived.

The inhabitants of Mars are very superior to those of the Earth in their organization, in the number and fineness of their senses, and in their intellectual faculties.

The fact that in this world, density is very slight, and that the material substances which form the body are less heavy than with us, permits the formation of beings incomparably lighter, more ethereal, more delicate, more sensitive than we are. The fact that the atmosphere supplies nutrition has freed the beings on Mars from the grossness of terrestrial wants.

It is an altogether different state of being. Light there is less intense, that planet being further removed from the Sun than ours, and the optic nerve is more sensitive. Magnetic and electric influences being there extremely powerful, the inhabitants possess senses unknown to terrestrial organisms; senses which place them in communication with those influences. Everything in nature is consistent. Beings everywhere are adapted to their environment. Terrestrial organisms could no more exist on Mars than beings formed to inhabit the atmosphere could live at the bottom of the sea.

In addition to this the superior state, which is the result of these conditions, has developed of itself because of the ease with which intellectual labor is carried on. Nature seems to obey the thought. The architect who wishes to construct a building, the engineer who wishes to change the surface of the ground, whether it be to excavate or to raise it, to cut down mountains or to fill up valleys, has not to contend, as with us, against the density and other drawbacks of matter.

Still more — Martian humanity, being several hundred thousand years older than earthly humanity — has passed before the latter through all the phases of its development.

Our most transcendent triumphs in scientific discovery are only child’s play compared with the scientific knowledge of the inhabitants of that planet.

They have invented, among other things, a sort of tele-photographic apparatus by means of which a roll of stuff receives, as it unrolls, the image of our world, which remains fixed upon it ineffaceably. A vast museum, devoted specially to the planets of the solar system, contains, in chronological order, all those photographic images fixed forever. There may be re-read all the history of the Earth; of France at the time of Charlemagne; Greece, at the time of Alexander; Egypt at the time of Rhameses. By means of the microscope may be seen the minutest historical details, such as Paris during the French Revolution, Rome under the pontificate of Borgia, the Spanish fleet of Christopher Columbus arriving in America, the Franks under Clovis conquering the Gauls, the army of Julius Caesar interrupted in its conquest of England by the tide carrying away its vessels, the troops of King David, the founder of standing armies, as well as the greater number of historical events, all recognizable by certain special characters.

One day, when the two friends were visiting this museum, their reminiscences, vague until now, grew clear, as a dark night is suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning. All at once they recognized Paris as it appeared during the Exposition of 1867. Their recollections took definite shape. Each felt convinced of having lived there at one time, and, their memory stimulated by the vividness of this impression, they were immediately seized by the conviction that they had lived there together. Light gradually broke on their minds, not by flashes, but rather like the gradually increasing light of dawn.

They both called to mind then, as by an inspiration, these words of the Evangelist: “In my Father’s House there are many mansions.”

And those other words of Jesus to Nicodemus: “Verily I say unto you, unless a man be born again he shall not see the Kingdom of God.”

From that day they did not entertain the slightest doubt concerning their anterior terrestrial existence, and were firmly convinced that they should continue on the planet Mars their preceding life. They belonged to the circle of the great minds of every age who know that human life does not cease here, but is continued in the heavens; and who also know that every planet, whether it be the Earth, Mars or any other, is a star in those heavens.

The peculiarity of the transformation of sex, which had appeared to me to have a certain importance, had in reality none, it would seem. Contrary to the opinion generally held among us, he informed me that souls are without sex, and that the destiny of all souls is the same. I learned too that on this planet, less material than our own, the constitution of the body resembles in nothing the constitution of the terrestrial body. Conception and birth take place there in an altogether different manner, which resembles, but in a spiritual form, the fecundation and blooming of a flower. Pleasure is without bitterness. They know nothing there of the heavy burdens we of the Earth bear, nor of the pangs of anguish that we suffer. Everything is more spiritual, more ethereal, more unsubstantial. One might call the Martians thinking and living winged flowers. But indeed there is nothing on Earth by means of a comparison with which we could form a conception of their form and mode of life.

I had listened to the words of the spirit, scarcely daring to interrupt him, lest he should vanish from my gaze as suddenly as he had appeared before it. Remembering my dream, however, which was recalled to my mind by the coincidence of the descriptions he had just given me of the planet, with what I myself had seen, I could not refrain from telling him of my extraordinary vision, and expressing my astonishment at not having seen him in my travels there.

“But,” he answered, “I saw you perfectly well, and you saw me also and spoke to me. For I it was — ”

There was something in the intonation of his voice, as he uttered the last words, that made me suddenly recognize in it the melodious voice of the beautiful Martian who had so much attracted me.

“Yes,” he resumed, “it was I. I tried to make myself known, but dazzled by a spectacle which captivated your eye, you were unable to free yourself from terrestrial sensations; you remained terrestrial and a slave to your senses, and could not succeed in attaining to a true perception of things. Yes, I it was who reached out my arms to you to assist you to descend from the aerial chariot into our dwelling, when you suddenly awoke.”

“But then,” I cried, “if you are indeed that inhabitant of Mars, how is it that you appear to me now under the form of Spero, who is no longer in existence?”

“The impression you receive of me,” he replied, “is produced neither on your retina nor on your optic nerve. I am at this moment in communication with you. I directly influence the seat of sensation in your brain. In reality, my mental being is without form like yours, like that of all spirits. But when I place myself, as at this moment, in direct relation with your thoughts, you can only see me as you have known me. Thus it is in dreams; that is to say, during more than a quarter of your terrestrial life, during twenty years out of seventy, you see, you hear, you speak, you feel with the same sense of reality, the same clearness, the same exactness as during normal life, yet your eyes are closed, your tympanum is insensible to sound, your lips are mute, your arms are stretched out and motionless. Thus it is, also, in the states of somnambulism, hypnotism and suggestion. You see me, you hear me, you touch me through the influence exercised upon your brain. But I no more exist in the form you see than the rainbow exists in the spot where the spectator sees it.”

“Could you then appear to me under your Martian form also?”

“No; at least not unless you were really transported in spirit to that planet. There the mode of communication would be altogether different. Here as we are talking now, everything is subjective with you. The elements of Martian form do not exist in the terrest............