The Message of Science. 77 



matter foster this method of vital expression. There 

 would be little hope of anything much better or longer- 

 lived. The earth is not, in its present condition, a habitat 

 for deathless life. Its inclemency, its extremes of heat 

 and cold, furious winds, hours of darkness, variant elec- 

 trical condition and, more inimical still, its hordes of 

 hostile bacteria, — all are against enduring life-forms. 

 We see, therefore, that in a manner the primary instinct 

 of the early races of man is right ; this earth, unregen- 

 erate, is not the place for imniortal life. Some improved 

 condition is to be sought for that, some promised land, some 

 realm of godhood. Not till. this century has the vision of 

 all these human ages begun to be interpreted. Alchemists 

 had dreamed of a sporadic immortality by magic potations ; 

 but not till now have men come to see that vastly pro- 

 longed life is to be the outcome of brain evolution. 



We look up to the disk of the earth's older sister planet 

 and see its surface spangled with a strangely familiar 

 geometry : parallel " canals," or belts of vegetation, and 

 at the intersection of these canals " oases " which may be 

 the Martian realization of " heaven," from which the 

 germs of disease have been excluded. What interplane- 

 tary rivalry in good works do those "oases" suggest! 

 Will our earth ever turn its face to the gaze of the 

 universe, seamed by such giant engineering ? 



