The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars: Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey DoddGratacap, L. P. (Louis Pope)
Science
The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars: Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd
Gratacap, L. P. (Louis Pope)
Mars (Planet) -- Fiction; Science fiction
With us, regarding the physical universe as a unit, recognizing the
notes of intelligence of a deep coercive and comprehensive plan involved
throughout, feeling that our human intelligence was the reflex or
microcosmic representation of the planning, upholding mind, that if so,
no conceivable limitation could be placed upon its expansion and
conquests, that further it would be incomprehensible that the colonizing
(so to speak) of the central mind occurred only on one sphere, when it
doubtless might be embodied in other beings, on hundreds or thousands or
millions of other spheres; that continuance of life after death was a
truth; feeling all this, their concomitant influence was to make us
positive that the human mind in an intelligent, satisfactory,
self-illuminating way some day would reach mind everywhere in all its
specific forms; and that the abyss of space would eventually thrill with
the vibrations of conscious communion between remote worlds.
With feelings of this sort excited and reinforced by my father's
passionate hope to learn something of his wife's life after death we
reached Christ Church, New Zealand, in June, 1883.
I may now revert to the line of suggestions that led my father and
myself to locate in Mars the scene, at least, as we surmised in part, of
those phases of a future life which I am now able to reveal with, I
think, positive certainty.
The planet Mars as being the next orb removed from the Sun after our own
world in the advance outward from our solar center, has always attracted
attention. At perihelion, when in opposition with the earth, it is 35
millions of miles from the earth, and its surface, as is well known from
the drawings of Kaiser, the Leyden astronomer, and of Schiaparelli,
Denning, Perrotin and Terby, has apparently revealed an alternation of
land and water which, with the assumption of meteorological conditions,
such as prevail on the earth, has gradually made it easy to think of its
occupation by rational beings as altogether possible.
During the opposition of Mars in 1879-80, Prof. Schiaparelli at Milan
determined for the second time the topography of this planet. The
topography revealed the curious long lines or ribbons, commonly called
canals, which seamed the face of our neighboring planet. In 1882 this
observation was enormously extended. He then showed that there was a
variable brightness in some regions, that there had been a progressive
enlargement since 1879 of his _Syrtis Magna_, that the oblique white
streaks previously seen, continued, and, more remarkable, that there was
a continuous development day after day of the doubling of the canals
which seemed to extend along great circles of the sphere. In 1882
Schiaparelli expected at the evening opposition in 1884 to confirm and
add to these observations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account