"Mars is Surely Inhabited," says Prof. Camille Flammarion

It is forty years since I began to study the possibilities of certain planets as habitations. Personally, I am certain that the planet Mars is inhabited. But how shall I prove this to you in a few words?

The question is much more serious, more vast and more complex than certain minds, even scientific ones, seem to consider it. This is largely so because the practical utility of such knowledge is small, and our present generation, brought up to consider only the worth of material interests, wishing primarily to earn money, are content to ignore unknown marvels. But there is an intellectual minority who are not satisfied to remain ignorant.

This intelligent minority know that the terrestrial manifestations of life do not set a limit to its possible forms, and that, elsewhere, our epoch is only a wave in the ocean of ages. As to what constitutes life, we usually recognize only that which exists about us. We believe that an atmosphere identical to ours is everywhere necessary to life; that there must be water composed exactly of two parts of hydrogen to one part of oxygen; a temperature neither too cold nor too hot. Such reasoning by human beings is the sort that fish may indulge in if they are capable of reasoning — unable to understand life out of the water. But nature’s resources are infinite.

In the first place, it would be difficult for any human species to be less intelligent than ours, since we do not even know how to live. Then, again, progress is an absolute law which nothing may resist. Therefore the inhabitants of Mars, older than we, may represent what our humanity will become in several millions of years. Another of their advantages is that they are better placed than we are to throw off more quickly the heaviness of matter. They weigh less, their years are twice as long as on our moving island. To conclude, their climatic conditions seem to be much more agreeable than ours.