We had been conversing more than an hour, during which time the rain
had not ceased falling, when Mr. Uwins asked Mr. Midith about the
Marsian theory of _creation_ and _formation_. We were all intensely
eager to hear Mr. Midith’s explanation; even little Celestine’s
curiosity was so aroused by the unassuming, clear, forcible style and
manner of Mr. Midith that her countenance wore a more than usual bright
and pleasing aspect.
“I will tell you, ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr. Midith. “As far as
I have been able to learn during the ten years I have lived on earth,
the fundamental laws of nature, as I have said before, are the same on
earth as they are on Mars. The only difference is, that Mars is further
advanced astronomically and geologically. Mars is older and has had
longer time for development. Dynamics, life, thought, society, and
industry are much better understood by the masses on Mars than they
are understood by the multitude here. Science is further advanced.
With these preliminary remarks I shall give you as nearly as I can,
the desired information; and I hope that you will not feel backward
in asking any questions that may suggest themselves to your minds
while I am endeavoring to give you an explanation of the foundation
upon which all knowledge must be built. You can see from the nature
of the question which you ask me that it requires quite an elaborate
elucidation. All growth and change that has ever taken place in
the universe is based on this question--the question of growth and
development.
“Respecting the origin of man and the formation of the universe, two
theories or doctrines were long current with the Marsites. One, the
scientific doctrine of evolution, which is founded on the principle of
growth and change, governed by fixed laws. The other, the theological
doctrine of ‘special creation’ which is founded on revelation. The
doctrine of evolution assumes that the universe has slowly, through
the lapse of millions of ages, been evolved from previously existing
matter by continuous integration of matter and concomitant dissipation
of motion, and that man gradually and slowly _evolved_ from lower
organisms, and has attained his present form and mental endowments by
the influence of his environment, personal and ancestral. It teaches
that man, as a whole, has been, and is still continually rising in the
scale of existence. It is, therefore, also an encouraging and cheerful
belief.
“The long antiquated doctrine of ‘special creation’ assumed that the
universe was _created_ out of ‘_nothing_’ by an external agency; that
man was created _perfect_ out of clay, somewhat after the fashion that
a potter makes an earthern vessel, and that he fell from his state of
perfection to what we now find him. This was a discouraging, a gloomy
belief, which, if continued, must eventually end in total degradation.”
“What evidence suggested the theory of evolution to the Marsites?”
asked Mrs. Uwins.
“Let us briefly consider a few of them,” continued Mr. Midith.
“A good farmer always reserves the best of his crops for seed. This is
_artificial_ selection; that is, the best and fittest is artificially
reserved by man for seed, which is to produce the next year’s crop.
A stockbreeder reserves the largest, strongest, fleetest and most
symmetrical individuals to propagate the race.
“The horticulturist selects seed from the choicest flowers and fruit.
You see all this is selection, but not natural selection; it is
artificial, as you call it, because it is done by man. Man aids nature,
so to speak; but nature unaided makes just such selection during the
lapse of long ages. In the plant and animal kingdoms, especially
in the lower orders millions must perish in order to give room and
opportunity for a few to live. As long as muscle, and not reason,
is the most advantageous weapon in the struggle for existence, the
strongest, toughest, fleetest and fiercest ones survive and reproduce
the race, and in this manner the superior qualities of the parents are
continually transmitted and added to, in the offspring.
“Organs develop by healthful use and become rudimentary by disuse. The
blacksmith’s arm becomes strong by constant healthful use. The eyes of
moles became rudimentary by disuse. The crabs and fishes in the Mammoth
Cave have lost their eyes entirely by disuse, but the sockets remain
as rudimentary remnants. If we should keep the right arm constantly
out of use, and do all our work with the left, that is, beginning at
childhood, there would be a perceptible difference in the size and
function of the two arms in one generation; and, if this practice were
continued for thousands of generations, use, disuse and heredity would
no doubt aid in bringing about a vast inequality between the active and
inactive arms.
“There are vast transformations taking place before our own eyes, on
earth the same as on Mars, which are wonderful proofs of evolution.
For instance, the frog begins life as a fish and then lungs displace
gills. Butterflies, bees and beetles of all kinds start out as grubs
and undergo wonderful transformations.
“Embryonic (pertaining to the rudiments of an undeveloped plant or
animal) growth furnishes one of the strongest, as well as the most
startling proofs of evolution. Each individual passes through all the
successive stages which have preceded in the line of its tribal history.
“In morphological structure, convincing proofs of evolution are found.
We find fossil remains of animals that have gradually developed in size
from a fox to your modern horse.
“Geologists have partially examined the Marsian crust to a certain
depth, the same as you have examined the earth’s crust, but more
minutely and more thoroughly. Fossils (animal and vegetable remains
imbedded in the rock formation of the earth’s crust) of various kinds
are found in this rock formation composing the crust. Remains of the
most lowly organized plants and animals are found in the lowest strata,
and as we ascend the fossils become more and more complex. And the
present generation of organic beings living on the surface of Mars, or
on the surface of the earth, are more complex and more highly developed
than any fossil remains that have ever been buried on the respective
planets.
“The preceding consideration shows that the fossils testify to the fact
that there has been a slow, but gradual development during the almost
immeasurable eons of time that were required for the formation of these
sedimentary strata that contain the precious ‘Revolution written by the
finger of Time on the Rock of Ages, and by the ink of Death.’”
“What a long, long time must have been required to produce such changes
as you speak of. Have you any idea, Mr. Midith, how long the Marsian
crust was in forming?” asked Viola.
“It is not finished yet,” said Mr. Midith. “It is still forming the
same as ever. The crust is growing thicker every moment by internal
cooling and by external accretion of meteoric dust, etc., and fossils
of the present time are now being buried the same as they were during
all preceding geologic ages.
“Let us, in a few thoughts, endeavor to travel back from the present to
that primitive time, when nature imbedded the first organic remains in
the then forming strata. The proportion of water area to the land was
much greater then than it is at present. There were no high mountains,
because the solid crust was thin, and the doubling or folding up of a
thin crust can not produce a high fold, or mountain, and, therefore,
the Marsian crust, or surface, was at this primitive beginning not so
much diversified by mountains and depressions as it is at present.
It was more nearly spherical, and hence all, or nearly all, covered
with water; and what applies to Mars’ crust undoubtedly applies, under
similar conditions, equally to the surface of all other planets.
“Igneous rocks, as you know, are produced by the gradual cooling of
the heated matter of a planet, moon, or sun. They are formed next to
the internal fire, and can, therefore, contain no fossils. Before
fossils could be imbedded, igneous rocks had to be slowly disintegrated
by the action of heat and cold, wind and wave, rain and drought, and
other atmospheric phenomena. Clay, soil, sand, etc., is nothing but a
pulverized igneous rock.
“After the solid igneous rock gradually became pulverized, the wind,
rain, tide, flood and current had to carry this pulverized igneous
rock, or sand, into the lowest ocean and river beds, where the process
of forming _sedimentary_ (deposited by water), _fossiliferous_,
_stratified_ rock began.
“Here we can clearly see, then, how the remains of perished plants and
animals have been imbedded from time to time in this slowly forming
sedimentary rock. The fossils of the lower strata are the simplest;
those nearest the surface, or the most recently formed, the most
complex. The modern wrecked steamer will be a fossil of the future, the
same as the entombed skeleton of antiquity, or the imbedded canoe of
primitive man, are fossils of the present. The fossils, then, are one
of the strongest proofs of evolution. They indicate a slow but gradual
development of plant and animal life; and as time passes, both here and
on Mars, more and more new links, which bind all things into a grand
whole, imperceptible gradations of development, are being discovered.
“Such, then, are some of the most conspicuous signs which undoubtedly
suggested and strengthened, at every step of advance, the evolution
theory; and also correspondingly weakened and discredited the ‘special
creation’ theory.”
“I have never before taken any stock in evolution,” said Rev. Dudley,
“but I must acknowledge that the testimonies cited by you are very
strong; we see them daily transpiring before our eyes right here on
earth. But allow me to ask you, Mr. Midith, what is your theory of
the fathomless abyss of the starry heavens? I think that part of the
question is not so easily handled as that which treats of the formation
of a planet’s crust.”
“I have so far considered evolution only as affecting the Marsian and
earth’s crusts, and the organic beings living upon them. I endeavored
to make the elucidation as clear as possible by beginning at the
nearest, simplest and most conspicuous evidences. But let us bear in
mind that our earth and Mars are only little nooks, insignificant
motes as compared with the visible universe. We are convinced now that
evolution holds good in the formation and dissolution of heavenly
bodies as well as in the formation of planets’ crusts, and in the
development of organic beings. The planets with their attendant moons
are little solar systems, so to speak, with their moons revolving
around them, which were detached from the planets millions of ages
ago. Saturn has eight moons and an unbroken ring. The sun has planets
revolving around him, the same as the moons revolve around the planets,
and our whole solar system revolves around a center with incredible
velocity. From moon to planet, from planet to sun, from sun to Galaxy
we may travel in our imagination and rest on the ultimate axiom--the
‘persistence of force.’
“We have no reason to believe that there is a gap or break anywhere
in the operation of the so-called nature. No one can tell precisely
where the human leaves off and the animal begins; where the animal
leaves off and the vegetable begins; where the organic leaves off and
the inorganic begins. There is a gradual development from the simple
to the complex, from the lower to the higher, from the inferior to the
superior, from the ignorant to the intelligent, from the cruel to the
gentle; a gradual merging or gradation from one into the other; the
transition at any one point is so slight that it is imperceptible to
the human eye. Allow me to say that there never was a _first_ human
being, no more than there was a first threshing machine. The mouth of
the animal was a very primitive threshing machine; then the mouth and
paws together; then the hand; then the flail, then the hand-thresher;
then the horse-power, and now the steam-thresher; thus we see that
there never was a first thresher, nor was it ever _made_, but gradually
developed and improved to its present structure and capacity; so, too,
with man. The lower organism out of which man, through the lapse of
countless ages, evolved, gradually grew more and more _human like_
from the effects of intercourse with his environment; and this process
is still going on. Man is not finished yet. The same forces that have
brought him from his primitively low plane to his present relatively
high one are elevating him still higher. So we see that man _was_ not
_created_, but _is_ still being created, _evolved_; and so with all
else.
“According to what you call the ‘nebular hypothesis,’ the earth once
filled the entire orbit of the moon. The matter composing the earth
was then in a rare, highly-heated state, revolving around the sun,
from which it was detached and rotated on its axis, which caused the
detachment of the matter out of which the moon was formed.
“The number of atoms composing the earth, as well as the number of
atoms composing the entire solar system, was _practically_ the same
then as it is now. Heat, which is the repellent force, kept the atoms
and molecules so far apart that the matter composing the earth formed
a sphere of nebulous matter, filling the entire orbit of the moon. In
like manner did the sun once fill the entire orbit of the earth, and at
a preceding time the entire orbit of Neptune.
“But some time before this, the earth was even larger than the orbit
of the moon. The nebulous matter now composing the earth and the moon,
which are now two separate bodies, was once all in the same sphere.
By the gradual radiation of heat, the volume, but not the mass,
diminished, and the axial rotation increased until a broad concentric
ring detached itself. The impulse of the moon’s revolutionary motion
was given by the earth’s rotation on its axis.
“All plastic bodies, like a planet, etc., assume a spherical form,
because all particles equally distant from the center are equally
attracted toward the center; and a sphere is the only ‘solid’ in which
these conditions can be fulfilled. A sphere formed from the breaking
up and concentrating of a broad concentric ring, like the rings out
of which planets and moons are formed, must necessarily rotate on its
axis, because the particles which compose the concentric ring had an
unequal revolutionary velocity. Those particles of the ring nearest
the center had a less angular velocity than those particles farthest
away from the center.
“Just as these few bodies constituting our solar system of which I have
spoken _were_ and are affected, so, we believe, have been or will all
heavenly bodies--moons, planets, suns and stars--in all parts of the
universe be affected during the lapse of untold ages.
“From this brief explanation, you will readily see that the Marsites’
conception of creation and _your_ evolution theory are almost exactly
identical. Observation and experience have led the Marsites and the
mundane inhabitants to similar beliefs on these points of creation and
formation.
“It is getting late, and I fear that I shall be intruding on our
time which should be assigned for rest and sleep,” said Mr. Midith.
“I believe, as we have learned in our native home, that we ought to
cultivate regular habits and try to live up to them.”
“Mr. Midith, I think you are just an excellent teacher!” exclaimed
little Celestine. “You _must_ surely stop with us while you are in our
town. I am going to ask you ever so many more questions about your
books, animals, towns, playmates and a thousand other things.”
“Yes, Mr. Midith,” said Rev. Dudley; “if you consider all those things
wrong and cruel that you mentioned to us some time ago, I shall be much
pleased to know how you get along without them, and how you got rid of
them if you once had them like you now find them here.”
“To do without them is much more simple than to have them, as you shall
see further on,” replied Mr. Midith. “Of course, we passed through
all the stages of physical and intellectual evolution that you have
passed through and are now in, and we have also gone much farther
than you have thus far. At one time our social and industrial system
was afflicted with all your present evils and cruelty. We were in
succession cannibals, savages, semi-civilized and are now what we call
civilized. What we will be next we can not tell.”