Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space and time -- Fiction
Certain forms of terrestrial life are to be met with among the sidereal
humanities. Thus we find in some of them, the same thing that takes
place on the Earth in the ant world, where, on the day of their aerial
unions, all the males die of exhaustion; and again in the world of
bees, where the procreators are pitilessly sacrificed; and amongst
spiders, where they are devoured by their companions unless they can
immediately escape. We find reproduced the habits of a great number
of insects, which never see their offspring, and lay their eggs in
surroundings in which the newly-born will find their first food.
The human body on this Earth owes its form and its state of being to
the atmospheric environment, and to the conditions of density, of
weight, and of nutrition, by means of which terrestrial evolution
operates.
The human being proceeds from the fusion of a microscopic masculine
corpuscle with a minute feminine ovule. This fusion gives birth to a
little cell which is transformed into the embryo, in which gradually
appear the heart, the head, the limbs, and the different organs. The
nervous system of this embryo may be compared to rays of delicate
threads, proceeding from a central point which will become the brain.
Under the influence of the Solar light and of the vibrations of the
air, one of these nerves is developed at its extremity, and forms the
eye. This is undefined at first, and almost blind in an elementary
state, like the eyes of the trilobites and of the fishes of the
Silurian period, but it develops into the admirable eyes of birds, of
the vertebræ, and of man. The senses of smell and taste proceed from
the nerves in the same way. These last two senses, with that of touch,
are the most primitive, the earliest, and the most necessary to life.
There are but two of the senses which place man in communication with
the outer world--sight and hearing,--but the eye is the sole organ
which puts us in communication with the whole universe.
Millions of these little nerve-threads proceed from the brain, through
the body, without producing any other than the five senses, unless we
except certain sensations of touch, which are intimate and personal,
and which have even been described as a sixth sense. You shall hear.
Now there is no reason why that which has taken place and been arrested
on our little planet, should take place and be arrested in the same
fashion elsewhere.
In proof of this I must tell you that I visited, not long since, two
worlds on which human beings have two senses of which we have not any
idea on our Earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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