For several evenings I could not observe Mars through the telescope without my attention being diverted by many strange fancies. Still, the planet was very beautiful, as it was during all the spring of 1888. Extensive inundations had taken place upon one of its continents, upon Libye, as astronomers had observed before in 1882, and under various circumstances. It was discovered that its meteorology and climatology are not the same as ours, and that the waters which cover about half of the planet's surface are subject to strange displacements and periodical variations, of which terrestrial geography can give no idea. The snow at the boreal pole had greatly diminished,--which proves that the summer on that hemisphere had been quite hot, although less elevated than that of the southern hemisphere. Besides, there had been very few clouds over Mars during the whole series of our observations. But it will be hardly credible that it was not these astronomical facts, however important they might be, and the base of all our conjectures, which most interested me,--it was what the hypnotized man had told me of George and Icléa; the fantastic ideas flitting through my brain prevented me from making a truly scientific observation. I persistently wondered if communication could not exist between two beings very far removed from each other, and even between the living and the dead; and each time I told myself that such a question was of itself unscientific, and showed a positive spirit. [Illustration] Yet, after all, what is what we call "science"? What is not "scientific" in Nature? Where are the limits of positive study? Is the carcase of a bird really a more scientific thing than its lustrous, colored plumage and its song with its subtle tones? Is the skeleton of a pretty woman more worthy of admiration than her structure of flesh and her living form? Is not the analysis of the mind's emotions "scientific"? Is it not scientific to try to find out whether the mind can see to a distance, and in what manner? And then, how much reason is there in this strange vanity, that we imagine that science has told us all; that we know all there is to know; that our five senses are sufficient to appreciate the nature of the universe? From what we can make out among the forces acting about us,--attraction, heat, light, electricity,--does it follow that there may not be other forces which escape us, because we have no senses to perceive them? It is not this hypothesis which is absurd, it is the simplicity of pedants. We smile at the ideas of the astronomers, philosophers, physicians, and theologians of three centuries ago; three centuries hence, will not our successors laugh in their turn at the affirmations of those who pretend to know everything now?