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The Certaintyof a FutureLife in Mars
_Being the Posthumous Papers of_
BRADFORD TORREY DODD
EDITED BYL.P. GRATACAP
BRENTANO'S1903
PARISCHICAGOWASHINGTONNEW YORK
PREFACE BY EDITOR.
The extraordinary character of the story here published, which somepeculiar circumstances have fortunately, I think, put into my hands,will excite a curiosity as vivid as the incidents of the narratives arethemselves astonishing and unprecedented. To satisfy, as far as I can, afew natural inquiries which must be elicited by its publication, I begto explain how this unusual posthumous paper came into my possession.
It was written by Bradford Torrey Dodd, who died at Christ Church, NewZealand, January, 1895, after a lingering illness in which consumptiondeveloped, which was attributed to the exposure he had experienced inreceiving some of the wireless messages his singular history details. Iwas not acquainted with Mr. Dodd, but some information, acquired sincethe reception of his manuscript, has completely satisfied me, that,however interpreted, Mr. Dodd did not intend in it the perpetration ofa hoax. His scientific ability was undoubtedly remarkable, and the factsthat his father and himself worked in an astronomical station nearChrist Church; that his father died; that his acquaintance with theDodans was a reality; that he did receive messages at a wirelesstelegraphic station; that he himself and his assistants fully accreditedthese messages to extra-terrestrial sources, are, beyond a doubt, easilyverified.
A mutual friend brought me Mr. Dodd's papers, which I looked over withincreasing amazement, culminating in blank incredulity. On rereadingthem and considering the usefulness of giving them to the public, I havebeen influenced by two motives, the desire to satisfy the ferventlyexpressed wish of the writer himself and the reasonable belief that ifthey are preposterously improbable their publication can only furnish anew and temporary and quite harmless diversion, and that if Mr. Dodd'sexperiment shall be in some future day successfully repeated his claimsto distinction as the first to open this marvelous field ofinvestigation will have been honorably and invincibly protected.
L.P. GRATACAP.
CONTENTS.
Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd
Note by Mr. August Bixby Dodan
Note by the Editor
The Planet Mars--By Giovanni Schiaparelli
POSTHUMOUS PAPERS
OF
BRADFORD TORREY DODD.
THE CERTAINTY
OF
A FUTURE LIFE IN MARS.
CHAPTER I.
In the confusion of thought about a future life, the peculiar factsrelated in the following pages can certainly be regarded as helpful.Spiritualism, with its morbid tendencies, its infatuation and deceit,has not been of any substantial value in this inquiry. It may afford tothose who have experienced any positive visitation from another world avery comforting and indisputable proof. To most sane people it is ahumiliating and ludicrous vagary.
At the conclusion of a life spent rather diligently in study, and inassociation especially with astronomical practice and physicalexperiments, I have, in view of certain hitherto unpublished facts,decided to make public almost incontrovertible evidence that in theplanet Mars the continuation of our present life, in some instances, hasbeen discovered by myself. I will not dwell on the astonishment I havefelt over these discoveries, nor attempt to describe that felicity ofconviction which I now enjoy over the prospect of a life in anotherworld.
My father was the fortunate possessor of a large fortune, which freedhim of all anxieties about any material cares, and left him to pursuethe bent of his inclination. He became greatly interested in physicalscience, and was also a patron of the liberal arts. His home was storedwith the most beautiful products of the manufacturer's skill in fictilearts, and on its walls hung the most approved examples of the painter'sskill. The looms of Holland and France and England furnished him withtheir delicate and sumptuous tapestries, and the Orient covered hisfloors with the richest and most prized carpets of Daghestan andTrebizond, and of Bokhara.
But even more marked than his love for art was his passion for physicalscience. His opportunities for the indulgence of this taste wereunlimited, and the reinforcement of his natural aptitude by his greatmeans enabled him to carry on experiments upon a scale of the mostmagnificent proportions. These experiments were made in a largebuilding which was especially built for this object. It contained everyfacility for his various new designs, and in it he anticipated manyadvances in electrical science and in mechanical devices, which havemade the civilization of our day so remarkable. I recall distinctly as aboy his ingenious approximation to the telephone, and even the recentadvances in wireless telegraphy, which has been the instrumentality bywhich my own researches in the field of interplanetary telegraphy havebeen prosecuted, had been realized by himself.
It was in the midst of a life almost ideally happy that the blow fellwhich drove him and myself, then a boy and his only child, into aretirement which resulted in the discoveries I am about to relate. Myfather's devotion to my mother was an illustration of the most beautifuland tender love that a man can bear toward a woman. It was adoration.Though his mind was employed upon the abstruse questions of physicswhich he investigated, or edified by new acquisitions in art, all hisknowledge and all his pleasure seemed but the means by which heendeavored to gain her deeper affection. She indeed became his companionin science, and her own just and well regulated taste constantlyfurnished him new motives for adding to his wide accumulations of art.
I can recall with some difficulty the day when with my father in a roomimmediately below the bedroom in which my mother was confined he awaitedthe summons of the doctors to see his wife for the last time. It was arainy day, the clouds were drifting across a dull November sky. Throughan opening in the trees then leafless, the Hudson was visible, even thenflaked with ice, while an early snow covered the sloping lawn andwhitened the broad-limbed oaks. I remember indistinctly his leading meby the hand through the hallway up the stairs, and softly whispering tome to be quite still, entered the large room dimly lit where my mother,attended by a nurse and a doctor, lay on the white bed. I remember beingkissed by her and then being led from the room by the nurse. My fatherdoubtless lingered until all was over, and the dear associate of hislife, whose tenderness and charity had made all who approached hergrateful, whose genial and appreciative mind had supplied the stimulusof recognition he needed for his own studies, passed away. After that Iseemed dimly to recall a period of extreme loneliness when I was left incharge of a private instructor, while my father, as I later learned,bewildered by his great loss, and temporarily driven into a sort ofmadness, wandered in an aimless track of travel over the United States.
On his return the sharp recurrence to the scenes of his former happinessrenewed the bitterness of his spirit, and he reluctantly concluded toabandon his home. His own thoughts had not as yet clearly formed anydecision in his mind as to where he would go or what he would do. It wasinevitable, however, that he should revert to his scientificinvestigations. He found in them a new solace and distraction, but eventhen his passion for research would not have sufficed to adequately meethis desperate desire to escape his grief, if in a rather singular mannerthere had not come to him an intimation of the possibilities of somesort of communication with my mother through these very investigationsin electricity and magnetism in which he had been engaged.
I had become quite inseparable from him. He found in me many suggestionsin face and manner of my mother, and particularly he was interested inmy peculiar lapses into meditation and introspection whi
ch in many wayssuggested to him a similar habit in her. On one occasion when, as washis wont, before we finally left the old home at Irvington, he had takenme in the summer evenings to the top of the observatory, then situatedabout half a mile west of the Albany road, we had both been silentlywatching the sun sink into a bank of golden haze, and the black band ofthe Palisades passing underneath like a velvet zone of shadow, I turnedto my father and in a sudden access of curiosity said:
"Father, if mother had gone to the Sun, would she speak to us now with aray of light?"
My father smiled patiently, half amused, and then standing and lookingat the sun's disk, disappearing behind the Jersey hills, said, "My son,it was a curious thought of a well-known French writer, Figuer, who losthis son, who was very dear to him, that his soul with armies and hostsof other souls, had departed to the sun and that they made the light andheat of this great luminary, and this wise man felt some comfort in thethought that the heat and light of the sun as he felt himself bathed inradiance and warmth were emanations from his boy, and his eyes and bodyseemed then in a figurative, and yet to him, very real way,communicating with his boy. You smile. I know it is with interest. Letme read to you from Figuer's singular book what he has written aboutit."
He disappeared and left me also standing and looking upward at a faintwreath of cloud, tinged in rosiness, which floated almost in thezenith. I was then about eleven years old, precocious for my years andgifted with a sympathy for occult and difficult subjects that becameonly intensified through the peculiar concentrated companionship I hadfrom day to day, and month to month enjoyed with my father.
This narrative may be inadvertently classed with those ephemeralfictions in which the reader is constantly conscious that the dialogueand the incidents are veritable creations. It may here be asked howcould I recall with any literalness the conversations and events of atime so long past. I do not pretend or wish it to be thought that theseinterviews with my father are here literally related. That, of course,is beyond the limits of reasonable probability. But I do insist that inthe following pages the occurrences described are very faithfultranscripts of those connected with the peculiar inquiry and experimentsmy father and myself began, and brought to a startling conclusion.Although conducted in the form of an imaginative story the reader isimportuned to give them his most implicit credence.
My father soon returned with the small volume of Figuer and read, Iimagine, that passage which runs as follows in Chapter XIII:
"Since the sun is the first cause of life on our globe; since it is, aswe have shown, the origin of life, of feeling, of thought; since it isthe determining cause of all organized life on the earth--why may we notdeclare that the rays transmitted by the sun to the earth and the otherplanets are nothing more or less than the emanations of these souls?that these are the emissions of pure spirits living in the radiant starthat come to us, and to dwellers in the other planets, under the visibleform of rays?
"If this hypothesis be accepted, what magnificent, what sublimerelations may we not catch a glimpse of, between the sun and the globesthat roll around him; between the Sun and the planets there would be acontinual exchange, a never broken circle, an unending 'come and go' ofbeamy emissions, which would engender and nourish in the solar worldmotion and activity, thought and feeling, and keep burning everywherethe torch of life.
"See the emanations of souls that dwell in the Sun descending upon theearth in the shape of solar rays. Light gives life to plants, andproduces vegetable life, to which sensibility belongs. Plants havingreceived from the Sun the germ of sensibility transmit it to animals,always with the help of the Sun's heat. See the soul germs enfolded inanimals develop, improve little by little, from one animal to another,and at last become incarnated in a human body. See, a little later, thesuperhuman succeed the man, launch himself into the vast plains ofether, and begin the long series of transmigrations that will graduallylead him to the highest round of the ladder of spiritual growth, whereall material substance has been eliminated, and where the time has comefor the soul thus exalted, and with essence purified to the utmost, toenter the supreme home of bliss and intellectual and moral power; thatis the Sun.
"Such would be the endless circle, the unbroken chain, that would bindtogether all the beings of Nature, and extend from the visible to theinvisible world."
From that moment, moved more and more by the strangeness of the fancy,which evidently fascinated him, he buried himself in the indulgence ofthe thought of the possibility of some sort of communication with hiswife. Singularly and fortunately he did not have recourse to thefruitless idiocy of spiritualism, nor engage in that humiliatingintercourse with illiterate humbugs who personate the minds of men andwomen almost too sacred to be even for an instant associated in thoughtwith themselves.
In 1881 electrical science had well advanced toward those perfectedtriumphs which give distinction to this century. Electric lighting waswell understood, the Jablochkoff and Jamin lamps were then in use, theincandescent and Maxim light, or arc light were employed, and indeed thepanic caused by Edison's premature announcement of the solution of theincandescent system of lighting had then preceded by two years, theexcellent results of Mr. Swan in England in the same field. Edison'sfirst carbon light and his original phonograph were exhibited toward theend of 1880 in the Patent Museum at South Kensington.
The daily News of New York in April of 1881 published the victory of theEdison Electric Lighting Company over the Mayor's veto in words that maybe read to-day with considerable interest. It said "the company willproceed immediately to introduce its new electric lamps in the officesin the business portion of the city around Wall Street. It consists of asmall bulbous glass globe, four inches long, and an inch and a half indiameter, with a carbon loop which becomes incandescent when theelectric current passes through. Each lamp is of sixteen candle powerwith no perceptible variation in intensity. The light is turned on oroff with a thumb screw. Wires have already been put into fortybuildings."
My father had anticipated the incandescent light in its fuller laterdevelopment and had used, before it was announced by Prof. Avenarius ofAustria, a method of dividing the electric current, by the insertion ofa polariser in a secondary circuit connected with each lamp, a method,it need not be said to electricians, now utterly obsolete.
The rooms of our physical laboratory at Irvington were almost all lit byelectric lamps constructed somewhat on the principle of Edison's, butusing platinum wires, and the old residents of that village may recallthe singular, lonely house half hidden in broad sycamores, sending outits electric radiance late at night while my father and frequentlymyself, then a boy of thirteen years, worked at experimental problems inphysics.
My father gave my precocity for science a very successful impetus andleft me at his death fully in possession of the ideas and projects hecherished. Amongst these projects, one partially realized, was theacceleration of plant growth by means of electric light, and heating byelectricity.
Dr. Siemens of England, it may be recalled, had very ingeniouslyexperimented upon the influence of the electric light upon vegetation.In a paper read by that distinguished man before the Society ofTelegraph Engineers in June, 1880, he referred to his conclusion that"electric light produces the coloring matter, chlorophyll, in the leavesof plants, that it aids their growth, counteracts the effects of nightfrosts, and promotes the setting and ripening of fruit in the open air."
I find in an old note book of my father's, dated 1879, "chlorophyllousmatter in leaves encouraged by electric energy, presumably by the bluerays." In heating and cooking by electricity my father had made someprogress though he had not in 1880 employed his time in this direction.
Perhaps more remarkable than anything else presenting my father's greatscientific ingenuity was his improvements of the dynamo and theinvention of a new successful small traction engine.
In 1880 the complete distinction between alternating and direct currentshad not been made, and the device of a successful converter, for the
change of the former comparatively inert to the latter's dynamiccondition, only dreamed of. Yet in my father's notebook I find thissuggestive sentence: "It seems possible to devise an apparatus whichwould deliver from an alternating circuit a direct current to a directcurrent circuit."
I have dwelt somewhat upon my father's scientific acquirements andgenius in order to impress upon the reader the strictly legitimatetraining I received in scientific procedure, and I have instancedsomewhat the status of his scientific development in 1880, because itwas at that time that he concluded to leave Irvington and locate hislaboratory and observatory elsewhere. And for the sake of hisastronomical interests he determined to find some place peculiarly wellfitted, on account of its atmospheric advantages, for astronomicalobservations. It is necessary likewise to recall some of the facts thenknown to astronomers and my father's own theories, in order to weaveinto a logical sequence the incidents leading up to my positivedemonstration of a future life for some of our race in the planet Mars.
Astronomy had a great charm for my mother. Her enthusiasm was sooncommunicated to my father who found his wealth was a requisite inestablishing the observatory he had erected at Irvington and in itsequipment. Telescopes are expensive playthings.
The Lick Observatory was begun in 1880 and my father throughcorrespondence with the directors of the University of California hadlearned many of the details pertaining to this great project. Influencedby the splendid prospects of this undertaking my father determined ifpossible to surpass it. He wrote to Fiel of Paris and expected to beable to secure an objective of 4 feet diameter, exceeding that of theLick Observatory by one foot, a hopeless and as it proved an utterlyabortive design. He spent an entire year in New York after leavingIrvington examining the various possible locations for his newobservatory. The requisites were nearness to the equator, an equableclimate, elevation and a clear atmosphere. During this year my fatherheard that Prof. Hertz of Berlin had generated waves of magnetism andthat it was hoped that these might ultimately prove efficacious as ameans of direct communication between distant points without theintroduction of wire conductors.
This thought of communicating with distant points without fixedconductors greatly impressed my father and led him along a line ofspeculation upon which finally rested my own success in securing themessages detailed in this book from the planet Mars.
I recall that one evening in the winter of 1881 while he was yet engagedin making preparations for his departure from the United States to NewZealand, which he finally chose for the erection of his laboratories,and especially his observatory, I heard him read with the greatestsatisfaction of the attempt made in the siege of Paris to bring thebesieged French into telegraphic communication with the Provinces bymeans of the River Seine.
It was proposed to send powerful currents into the River Seine frombatteries near the German lines and to receive in Paris upon delicategalvanometers, such an amount of their current as had not leaked away inthe earth. Profs. Desains, Jamin, and Berthelot were interested in theseexperiments, although the suggestion had been made by M. Bourbouze, andafter some interruptions when the attempt was to be carried out, thearmistice of Jan. 14, 1871, brought their preparations to a close.
How often my father spoke of these attempts, and half smilingly on oneoccasion as we watched the starry skies "thick inlaid with patterns ofbright gold" said to me: "It seems to me within the reach of possibilityto attain some sort of connection with these shining hosts. If we mustassume that the disturbances on the Sun's surface effect magnetic stormson ours, it is quite evident that a fluid of translatory power orconsistency exists between the earth and the sun, then also between allthe planetary inhabitants of space, and I cannot see why we may not hopesome day to realize a means of communication with these distant bodies.How inspiring is the thought that in some such way upon the basis of anabsolutely perfect scientific deduction we might be brought intoconversational alliance with these singular and orderly creations, andactually look upon their scenes and lives and history, and bring toourselves in verbal pictures a presentation of their marvellousproperties."
I think it was on this occasion that my father expressed his thoughtupon some form of interplanetary telegraphy in a manner that left it inmy own mind a very impressive and majestic idea. He had read at somelength the address of Sir William Armstrong before the BritishAssociation in 1863, when that distinguished observer speaks of thesympathy between forces operating in the sun, and magnetic forces in theearth and remarks the phenomenon seen by independent observers inSeptember, 1859. The passage, easily verified by the reader, was to thiseffect:
"A sudden outburst of light, far exceeding the brightness of the sun'ssurface was seen to take place, and sweep like a drifting cloud over aportion of the solar surface. This was attended by magnetic disturbancesof unusual intensity and with exhibitions of aurora of extraordinarybrilliancy. The identical instant at which the effusion of light wasobserved was recorded by an abrupt and strongly marked deflection in theself-registering instruments at Kew."
My father then pausing and walking impetuously across the roomdeclaimed, as it were, his views:
"Here we are, a group of limited intelligent beings circumscribed by aboundless space, and placed upon a speck of matter which is whirledaround the sun in an endless captivity, bound by this inexorable law ofgravitation, like a stone in a sling. About us in this ethereal oceanfloats a host of similarly made orbs, perhaps, in thousands of cases,inhabited by beings throbbing with the same curiosity as our own toreach out beyond their sphere, and learn something of the nature of theanimated universe which they may dimly suspect lies about them in theother stars. Why must it not be part of this immeasurable design whichbrought us here, that we shall some day become part of a celestialsymposium; that lines of communication, invisible but incessant, shallthread in labyrinths of invisible currents these dark abysses, and bringus in inspiring touch with the marvels and contents of the entireuniverse."
He turned to me and gazing intently at my upturned face which I am surereflected his own in its enthusiasm and delight, continued: "You, myson, and I, will put this before us as a possible achievement and workincessantly for that end. Prof. Hertz has generated these magneticwaves; we will; and by means of some sort of a receiver endeavor to findout a clue to _wireless telegraphy_." These closing remarkable wordswere actually used by my father, and in view of the marvellousrealization of Marconi's hopes in that direction, as well as my ownstupendous success in reaching the inhabitants of Mars, was a distinctprophecy.
It was a few months later that my father completed all of hisarrangements in regard to the disposition of his investments, andperfected the necessary arrangements for being constantly supplied withfunds by his bankers in New York. He also had agreed upon the apparatusto be forwarded, expecting to be largely supplied at Sydney in new SouthWales, as it was from this point he intended to sail or steam to NewZealand. Much of the equipment for his observatory was to come fromParis, and he relied upon intelligent assistance both in Sydney andChrist Church, in New Zealand, for the erection and furnishment of hisvarious houses.
He finally concluded to place his station on Mount Cook at an elevationof 1,000 feet upon a well protected plateau, which was described to himby a Mr. Ashton who had extensive acquaintance and some five years'experience in New Zealand. We found this position ideal, and in theperfection of all the conditions necessary for our experiments possessedby it, made the realization at that time utterly unsuspected by eitherof us, of our final designs, commensurately more simple.
I left New York with my father filled with a curious expectancy. Iseemed to cherish no regret at leaving my childhood's home. I only felta vague wondering delight to go abroad and see strange and new things.My seclusion with my father had developed in me a singular inaptitudefor companionship with boys of my own age, and furthermore from theinfluence of his rather poetic and dreaming nature, I began to show ahalf wistful intensity of interest in things occult, mysterious anddifficult. We left New York
in 1882, and it was then that I read fordiversion in my long ride to California, Colonel Olcutt's EsotericBuddhism.
The whole central fancy of reincarnation affected me deeply. But Imodified the idea as displayed by Blavatsky and Theosophists generally.From a long familiarity with the stars, in conjunction with theinevitable creative and anthropomorphic sensibility of youth, I began tothink that this reincarnation did not occur on the earth, but had itsstages of transmutation placed elsewhere. In short, I amused myselfincessantly with placing the poets in one star, the novelists inanother, the scientists in a third, the mechanicians in a fourth, and ineach I imagined a Utopia. A very little mature thought and the mostordinary observation of plain men, men who at 20 have far more practicalsense than I possess to-day, would have demonstrated the hopelessness ofthis arrangement, and the deplorable social chaos it would have led to.
I think, however, that along this line of feeling I grew more and morein sympathy with my father's dimly expressed hopes to achieve somethingtangible in the way of interstellar or planetary communication. So thatgradually he, by reason of a desire that slowly invaded every emotionalrecess of his being, and I, through the vagaries of an imaginative mindreached successively an intense conviction that we should work in thisdirection.
There was much in our scientific work also that encouraged a certainhigh mindedness and liberty of speculation, a careless audacity beforethe most difficult tasks. The resolution of matter into a phase ofenergy, the interpretation of light as an electric phenomenon, themysteries of the electric force itself, the peculiar hypotheses aboutthe force of gravitation, lead men, studying these subjects, and endowedwith speculative tendencies to conceive, moved also by a quasisensational desire to reach new results, that the most extravagantachievements are possible to science.
With us, regarding the physical universe as a unit, recognizing thenotes of intelligence of a deep coercive and comprehensive plan involvedthroughout, feeling that our human intelligence was the reflex ormicrocosmic representation of the planning, upholding mind, that if so,no conceivable limitation could be placed upon its expansion andconquests, that further it would be incomprehensible that the colonizing(so to speak) of the central mind occurred only on one sphere, when itdoubtless might be embodied in other beings, on hundreds or thousands ormillions of other spheres; that continuance of life after death was atruth; feeling all this, their concomitant influence was to make uspositive that the human mind in an intelligent, satisfactory,self-illuminating way some day would reach mind everywhere in all itsspecific forms; and that the abyss of space would eventually thrill withthe vibrations of conscious communion between remote worlds.
With feelings of this sort excited and reinforced by my father'spassionate hope to learn something of his wife's life after death wereached Christ Church, New Zealand, in June, 1883.
I may now revert to the line of suggestions that led my father andmyself to locate in Mars the scene, at least, as we surmised in part, ofthose phases of a future life which I am now able to reveal with, Ithink, positive certainty.
The planet Mars as being the next orb removed from the Sun after our ownworld in the advance outward from our solar center, has always attractedattention. At perihelion, when in opposition with the earth, it is 35millions of miles from the earth, and its surface, as is well known fromthe drawings of Kaiser, the Leyden astronomer, and of Schiaparelli,Denning, Perrotin and Terby, has apparently revealed an alternation ofland and water which, with the assumption of meteorological conditions,such as prevail on the earth, has gradually made it easy to think of itsoccupation by rational beings as altogether possible.
During the opposition of Mars in 1879-80, Prof. Schiaparelli at Milandetermined for the second time the topography of this planet. Thetopography revealed the curious long lines or ribbons, commonly calledcanals, which seamed the face of our neighboring planet. In 1882 thisobservation was enormously extended. He then showed that there was avariable brightness in some regions, that there had been a progressiveenlargement since 1879 of his _Syrtis Magna_, that the oblique whitestreaks previously seen, continued, and, more remarkable, that there wasa continuous development day after day of the doubling of the canalswhich seemed to extend along great circles of the sphere. In 1882Schiaparelli expected at the evening opposition in 1884 to confirm andadd to these observations.
My father had read Schiaparelli's announcements with absorbed interest.They fed his burning fancies as to the extension of our present life,and offered him a sort of scientific basis (without which he wasinclined to view all eschatology as superficial) for the belief that wemay attain in some other planet an actual prolonged second existence.
His great reverence for Sir William Herschell was indisputable. Hequoted Herschell's own words with appreciation. These pregnant sentenceswere as follows:
"The analogy between Mars and the earth is perhaps by far the greatestin the whole solar system. Their diurnal motion is nearly the same, theobliquity of their respective ecliptics not very different; of all thesuperior planets the distance of Mars from the sun is by far thenearest, alike to that of the earth; nor will the length of the Martialyear appear very different from what we enjoy when compared to thesurprising duration of the years of Jupiter, Saturn and the GeorgianSidus. If we then find that the globe we inhabit has its polar regionfrozen and covered with mountains of ice and snow, that only partiallymelt when alternately exposed to the sun, I may well be permitted tosurmise that the same causes may probably have the same effect on theglobe of Mars; that the bright polar spots are owing to the vividreflection of light from frozen regions; and that the reduction of thesespots is to be ascribed to their being exposed to the sun."
"In the light of these larger analogies," my father would continue, "whyare we not further permitted to conclude that there is a more intimateand minute correlation. Why can not we predicate that under similarclimatic and atmospheric vicissitudes, with a very probably similar oridentical origin with our globe, this planet Mars, now burning red inthe evening skies, possesses life, an organic retinue of forms like ourown, or at least involving such primary principles as respiration,assimilation and productiveness, as would produce some biologicalaspects not extremely differing from those seen in our own sphere.
"If we imagine, as we are most rationally allowed to, that Mars hasundergone a progressive secularization in cooling, that contraction hasacted upon its surface as it has on ours, that water has accumulated inbasins and depressed troughs, that atmospheric currents have beenstarted, that meteorological changes in consequence have followed, andthat the range of physical conditions embraces phases naturally verymuch like those that have prevailed in our planet, how can it beintelligently questioned that from these very identical circumstances,an order of life has not in some way arisen."
My father had an interesting habit of snapping his fingers on both handstogether over his head when he declaimed in this way, always circlingabout the room in a rapid stride. I remember he stopped in front of meand continued in a strain something like this:
"For myself I am convinced that there has been an evolution in the orderof beings from one planet to another, that there is going on a stream oftransference, from one plane of life here to planes elsewhere, and thatthe stream is pouring in as well as out of this world, and that it maybe, in our case, pouring both ways, that is, we may be losingindividuals into lower grades of life as well as emitting them tohigher. See, what economy!
"Instead of wasting the energies of imagination to account for thedestinations of millions upon millions of human beings, the countlesshost that has occupied the surfaces of this earth through all thehistoric and prehistoric ages, we can, upon this assumption, reduce thenumber of individuals immensely, allowing that spirits are constantlyarriving, constantly departing, and that the sum total in the solarsystem remains perhaps nearly fixed, just as in the electrolysis ofwater we have hydrogen rising at one electrode and oxygen at the otherby transmission of atoms of hydrogen and atoms of oxygen toward eachele
ctrode through the water itself, in opposite directions, while for asensible time the mass of water remains unchanged.
"Let us suppose that in Mercury some form of mental life exists, that itis individualized, that it expresses the physical constants of thatglobe, that its mentality has reached the point where it can make use ofthe resources of Mercury, can respond to its physical constants so faras they awaken poetry or art or religion or science. Suppose that thislife is one of extreme forcefulness, of stress and storm, like someprehistoric condition on our globe, but invested with more intellectualattributes than the same ages on our earth required or possessed,perhaps reaching a permanent condition not unlike that depicted in theNiebelungen Lied or the Sagas of the North. It might be called the_brawn_ period. Then the spirits born upon our planet or on any otherplanet in an identical condition, would find after death theirdestination in Mercury, where they could evolve up to the point wherethey might return to as, or to some other planet fitted for a higherlife.
"Then Venus, we may imagine, succeeding Mercury, carries a higher type,an emotional life, though of course I am not influenced by heraccidental name, in suggesting it. Here in Venus, a period perchanceresembling a mixture of the pagan Grecian life and the troubadour lifeof Provence may prevail and again to it have flown the spirits which inour planet only touch that development, which from Venus flow to us,those adapted for the religious or intellectual phase we present. ThisVenus life might be called the _sense_ period.
"And now our world follows, with its scientific life which probablyrepresents its normal limit. Beyond this it will not go. As we havedeveloped through a _brawn_ and _sense_ period to our present stage, soin Mercury and Venus, ages have prevailed of development whicheventuated in their final fixed stages at brawn and sense. In Venus,too, the brawn stage preceded the sense period. In us both have precededthe scientific stage. There has been, may we not think, constantinterchanges between these planets of such lives as survive materialdissolution, and they have found the _nidus_ that fits them in each.Souls leaving us in a brawn _epoch_ have fled to Mercury, souls leavingus in a _sense_ epoch have fled to Venus, and all souls in Mercury orVenus, ready for reincarnation in a _scientific_ epoch, have come to us.
"But there is an important postulate underlying this theory. It is, thatupon each planet the possibilities of development just attain to themargin of the next higher step in mental evolution. That is, that onMercury the period of brawn develops to the possibility of the period ofsense without fully exemplifying it, so in Venus the period of sensedevelops to the possibility of the period of science without attainingit, and in our world the period of science develops to the period of_spirit_, without, in any universal way, exhibiting it.
"These are steps progressively represented, I may imagine, in theplanets. And, in the further progress outward, we reach the planet Mars.Let us place here the period of spirit. On Mars is accomplished insociety, and accompanied by an accomplishment in its physical features,also, of those ideals of living which the great and good unceasinglylabor to secure for us here and unceasingly fail to secure. O my child,if we could learn somehow to get tidings from that distant sphere, ifonly the viewless abyss of space between our world and Mars might bebridged by the _noiseless and unseen waves of a magnetic current_."
We reached Christ Church in June, in 1883, and for one year were mostbusy in completing the station we had selected, in receiving apparatus,getting our observatory built and a useful, but not large telescopemounted.
The position taken by us was attractive. It was upon a high hill, aglacial mound which had been smoothed upon its upper surface into a longand broad plain. The prospects from this position were exceedinglybeautiful. Christ Church was some ten miles distant and the irregularshores northward outlined by ribbons of breaking waves lay upon theseaward margin of our vision, while the broken intermediate landscape,with interrupted agricultural domains and forests was in front of us andfar above us rose the grander peaks of the New Zealand Alps, a constantcharm through the changing atmosphere, now brought near to us throughthe optical refraction of the clear air, and again veiled and shadowedand removed into spectral evanescent forms. The picture was intenselyinteresting and like all commanding views where the most expressiveelements of scenery are combined, the remote sea, reflecting every moodof light and color, and the snowy peaks carrying to us the opalineglories of rising or setting sun was a comparison that stimulated andcontrolled the spectator with its wonderful charm and strength andpoetic changes.
To me whose emotional nature, inherited from a mother gifted withdelicate tastes and a refined enthusiasm for the beautiful had beencuriously discouraged by association with my father's scientificpursuits, this lively panorama constantly fed my dreams with pleasingpictures.
My life has been an isolated and repressed one, except for the oneincident I am about to bequeath to posterity. I had not enjoyed the playof youthful companions except in a fugitive way, I had not gone toschool nor passed three years of muscular and buoyant activity in theusual pastimes and pleasures of childhood. I had a precocious nature andit had been unfolded in an atmosphere of strictly intellectual ideas. Mymother had been a constant joy to me during the short years of her lifeon earth, but somehow by reason of sickness I had not enjoyed even herendearment as I might have.
So in my father and his aspirations, and the later hopes of his excitedand passionate longing to regain some trace of my mother, my life fromfour years of age was actually and potentially concentrated. My fathercherished me with a great consuming love. He saw in me therepresentation in face and partially in temperament of his wife. Helavished on me every care. Yet because of his eager affection, and hiscomplete suspense from social connections I was made too largelydependent on him alone. I lived in his companionship only. Myconversation became prematurely advanced in terms and principles, and mychildish confidence was nurtured by nothing less wonderful than booksand theories, experiments and dissertations.
The wonderful beauty of our new surroundings, the strangeness of oursudden removal from America, the long distances travelled, awoke in menew thoughts and I readily surrendered myself at times to the incoherentstruggles of my nature, to find someone, something, more responsive tomy young feelings than essays on magnetism, and a man, father though hewas, immersed in demonstrations and problems. It was then that thisdistant picture in the days of the fragrant and reviving springtime,filled me with unutterable and touching ecstacy.
My father, as I had said, fully intended to arrive at some definiteconclusions as to the possibilities of wireless telegraphy. At one endof the grassy plain I have alluded to, our chief stations were erectedand, at the distance of two miles, almost at the other extremity, weplaced a smaller station. Our whole work was to achieve telegraphiccommunication between these points without wires. At night my fatherbent his telescopic gaze upon the heavens, and as the earth approachedopposition to Mars in 1884 I remember his eagerness and his repeatedadjurations that if we failed in the task in his lifetime I shoulddevote my life, separated from all other occupations and indulgences, tocarrying on his designs.
At first he only dimly intimated his great ambition, the union of ourworld with others by magnetic waves, but as it slowly assumed atheoretical certainty he talked more and more boldly of this portentousand transforming possibility.
I cannot refrain from noticing another important scientific activity ofmy father's. It was the use of photography in stellar measurement. As iswell known to photographers, in 1871 Dr. R.L. Maddox used gelatine inplace of collodion from which innovation rose the present system of dryplate photography. My father had always felt the greatest interest inthe use of photography in astronomy. He was acquainted with the splendidwork done by Chapman for Rutherford, New York, in his careful andexquisite photographs of the moon. As early as 1850 Whipple of Bostonmade photographs of the stars.
It was, however, the incomparable advantages, furnished in speed, bythe dry plate photography which made my father realize early as anyone,the bou
ndless possibilities thus opened in human attainment for thepenetration of the Sidereal firmament. He had made a great number ofphotographs at Irvington, and the photographic laboratory was a charmingillustration of my father's ingenuity and precision. At Mt. Cook weenjoyed a marvellously clear atmosphere for work of this sort, andamongst the first thoughts of my father was to provide the mostsatisfactory means for the continuance of our stellar photography.Besides our visual telescope we had a photographic telescope which wasused, instead of connecting the visual lens on one and the sameinstrument, as in the Lick Observatory.
The innovations introduced by photography have revolutionized theprocesses of stellar measurement. Instead of the laborious task ofmeasuring the stars through the telescope, the photographic plate can bestudied at ease as a correct and identical chart of the heavens and theresults thus obtained placed at the disposal of astronomers. My fatherappreciated this and amongst his numerous projects of scientificusefulness the preparation of photographs of the stars fully occupiedhis mind.
We had no Meridian Circle, as it was less in the direction of thedetermination of the position of stars than in the elucidation of thesurfaces of planets, that my father's astronomical predilections lay.Our telescope was a refractor and had an objective of two feet diameter.It was firmly supported on a trap rock pedestal. The eye pieceadjustment was unusually successful, and the remarkable freedom of theobjective from any traces of spherical or chromatic aberration gave usan image of surprising clearness. The photographic results wereadmirable. I imagine few more satisfactory photographs of the face ofMoon have been made than those we secured, so far at least as definitionis concerned, and the detail within the limits of our powers ofmagnification.
The telescope was very slowly installed and it was well in 1885 beforewe were able to use it for either observation or photography.
As the surprising messages detailed in the following pages came by meansof wireless telegraphy, I will dwell for an instant for the benefit ofthe non-scientific reader, upon the investigations made by my father andmyself in this subject.
The installation of a wireless telegraphic station is not necessarilydifficult. The progress made since my father and myself began theseexperiments has been, of course, considerable, and yet so far as I amable to ascertain the new devices in this direction were largelyanticipated by us. The tuning of wireless messages by which theinterception of messages is prevented was certainly forestalled by us,though in the communications with Mars herein detailed the ordinary[_non-syntonic_.--Editor] receiver was employed.
We employed an induction coil, emitted a wave by a spark, and had a wirerod [_antenna_.--Editor] which was in turn part of an induction coil.This was the sender (transmitter) and we could regulate the wave lengthso that a receiving wire adjusted for such a wave could only receive it.[There seems to be implied in these words an arrangement known as theSlaby-Arco system, which American readers have had described for them byM.A. Frederick, Collins, Sci. Amer., March 9 and Dec. 28,1901.--Editor.] The receiver consisted of iron filings in which latercarbon particles were added.
My father died in 1892 and we had not at the time of his death learnedof Popoff's microphone-coherer in which steel filings were mixed withcarbon granules. The magnetic waves received at first by us presumablyfrom Mars, and later, as the communications indisputably show, from thatplanet, were taken upon a Marconi receiver, or what was practicallythat.
My father became more and more interested in the direction ofinterplanetary research by means of the magnetic wave. He arguedvehemently, buoyed up by his increasingly augmented hopes as our ownexperiments improved, that the electric wave through space moving in anethereal fluid of the extremest purity would progress more rapidly thanin our atmosphere, that the tension of such waves would be greater, thatthey could be so "heaped up" as he expressed it--(_In the Slaby-Arcosystem an apparatus is employed consisting of a Ruhmkorff coil with acentrifugal mercury interrupter, by which a steeper wave front of thedisruptive discharge is secured_.--Editor)--that their reception overthe almost impassable distances of space would be made possible.
This idea of piling up the waves was suggested by purely physicalanalogies. The enormous waves generated by severe storms upon the oceantravel farther than the smaller waves, and are less consecutivelydissipated by the resistance of the water, the traction of its moleculesand the occasional diversion of cross disturbances from other centers.
Again some experiments made invacuo upon a limited scale seemed to showthe accuracy of his predictions. Through a glass tube one foot indiameter and ten feet long we sent magnetic waves both when the tubewas filled with air and when it was exhausted. Our means of measuringthe time required in both cases were quite inadequate--perhaps there wasno appreciable difference--but the records in the latter case, securedupon a Morse register, were unmistakably more vigorous and audible.
At last our various results had reached a point where we felt justifiedin extending the limits of our investigations. We had up to this timeonly tried our messages between the two stations upon the plateau of Mt.Cook. My father now proposed that I go to Christ Church, install asender (transmitter) and send messages to him at the observatory. I didso and the experiment was convincing. The day before I was ready totransmit a message I had attended an attractive church service--it wastoward the close of Lent in the year 1889--and as my father was entirelyunprepared for the account I proposed to give him of the function, Ithought its correct transmission would afford an indubitable proof ofour success. I wrote out the description. It was received by my fatherwith only ten imperfect interpretations in a list of 1,000 words.
From this time forward our plans for erecting a receiver in theobservatory were pushed to a completion. We had discovered thenecessity of elevation for the senders (transmitters) and receivers forlong distance work, and a tall mast, fifty feet in height, was put up atthe observatory, which--needlessly I think--was to serve as theterrestrial station for the reception of those viewless waves which myfather thought might be constantly breaking unrecorded upon theinsensitive surfaces of our earth.
The eventful night came. It was August, 1890. Mars was then inopposition. The evening had been extremely beautiful. Nature united inher mood the most transporting contradictions of temperament. It wasAugust and the day had been marked by changes of almost tropicalseverity, although, as we were south of the equator (the latitude ofChrist Church is S. 44 degrees) August was, with us, mid-winter. Athunderstorm had broken upon us in the morning, itself an unusualmeteorological phenomenon, and the downpour of black rain, shutting offthe views and enclosing us in a torrential embrace of floods, had lastedan hour when it passed away, and the Sun re-illumined the wideglistening scene. The line of foam from the breakers along the remoteshore, yet lashing with curbing crests the inlets, promontories, andislands, was readily seen; the northern Alps shone in their erminerobes, greatly lengthened and deepened by the season's snows, the washedcountry side below us was a patch work of rocks and fields and denudedforestland. Christ Church like a vision of whiteness sprang out to thewest upon our vision, and immediately about us the mingling rivuletspoured their musical streams through and over the icy banks of halfconsolidated snow.
As night came up, the stars seemed almost to pop out in theirappropriate places, like those stellar illusions that appear soappropriately upon the theatrical stage, and the low lying moon sent itsflickering radiance over the yet unsubdued waters. It was the time ofthe opposition of Mars which brings that planet nearest to us. As iswell known to astronomers, the perihelion of Mars is in the samelongitude in which the earth is on August 27; and when an oppositionoccurs near that date, the planet is only 35 millions of miles from theearth, and this is the closest approach which their bodies can evermake.
Our magnetic receiver had been placed in position, the Morse registerwas attached; the whole apparatus was in one of the upper rooms of theobservatory, in proximity with the telescope through whose glass fordays we had watched the approach of our sister planet.
As the nightsettled down upon us we had taken our seats for a few instants at atable in a lower room engaged in one of those innumerable desultorytalks upon our project and their, even to us, somewhat problematiccharacter. Everything connected with that evening, apart from its havingbeen carefully recorded in my diary and notebooks, is very distinctlyremembered by me. I recall my father reading from a letter to Nature,May 15, 1884, by Mr. W.F. Denning, discussing "The Rotation Period ofMars." From my note-book I find the passage literally transcribed:
It read--"Notwithstanding his comparatively small diameter and its slowaxial motion, the planet Mars affords especial facilities for the exactdetermination of the rotation period. Indeed, no other planet appears tobe so favorably circumstanced in this respect, for the chief markings onMars have been perceptible with the same definiteness of outline andcharacteristics of form through many succeeding generations, whereas thefeatures, such as we discern on the other planets, are either temporary,atmospheric phenomena, or rendered so indistinct by unfavorableconditions as to defy measurement and observation. Moreover, it may betaken for granted that the features of Mars are permanent objects on theactual surface of the planet, whereas the markings displayed by ourtelescopes on some of the other planetary members of our system are mereeffects of atmospheric changes, which, though visible for several yearsand showing well defined periods of rotation cannot be accepted asaffording the true periods. The behavior of the red spot on Jupiter mayclosely intimate the actual motion of the sphere of that planet, butmarkings of such variable, unstable character can hardly exhibit anexact conformity of motion with the surface upon which they are seen tobe projected. With respect to Mars' case, it is entirely different. Nosubstantial changes in the most conspicuous features have been detectedsince they were first confronted with telescopic power and we do notanticipate that there will be any material difference in their generalconfigurations.
"The same markings which were indistinctly revealed to the eyes ofFontana and Huyghens in 1636 and 1659 will continue to be displayed tothe astronomers of succeeding generations, though with greater fullnessand perspicuity owing to improved means. True, there may possibly bevariations in progress as regards some of the minor features, for it hasbeen suggested that the visibility of certain spots has varied in amanner which cannot be satisfactorily accounted for on ordinarygrounds. These may possibly be due to atmospheric effects on the planetitself, but in many cases the alleged variations have doubtless beenmore imaginary than real. The changes in our own climate are so rapidand striking, and occasion such abnormal appearances in celestialobjects that we are frequently led to infer actual changes where nonehave taken place; in fact, observers cannot be too careful to considerthe origin of such differences and to look nearer home for some of thediscordances which may have become apparent in their results."
It was just as he finished reading this extract that the shrillfluttering call of the maxy bird was heard from the bare branches of apoplar near the station, and in the next instant, in that intense quietthat succeeds sometimes a sudden unexpected and acute accent, the Morseregister was audible above us, clicking with a continuity and evident_intention_ that, weighted as we were with vague sensational hopes, drewthe blood from our faces, and seemed almost like a voice from the redorb then glowing in the southeastern sky. We sprang together up thestairs to the operating-room and saw with our eyes the moving lever ofthe little Morse machine. We had made ourselves familiar with theordinary telegraphic codes, the international Telegraphic Code and thatin use in Canada and the United States. They were useless. Thesuccession of short or long intervals was entirely different and themessage, if message it was, defied our persistent efforts attranslation. The disturbance of the register continued some three hours,and though we were unmistakably in communication with some externalregulated and _intentional_ source of magnetic impulses we werehopelessly confused as to their meaning.
I can never forget our excitement. We were certainly the recipient ofexact careful conscious messages. Their terrestrial origin, strange andincredible as it might appear, did not seem likely, for the two codes sogenerally in use were not represented in it. Could it be--the thoughtseemed to stop the beating of our hearts--could it be that we had indeedreceived an extra-terrestrial communication? The register of the dotsand dashes cannot be all reproduced here, though a very long record ofthem, indeed almost complete, was made by myself. During the whole timethat the register moved hardly a word of conversation escaped our lips.We were fixed in mute amazement. We were full of unexpressed imaginings,which were told, however in my father's face, so flushed with eagerness,as with half-parted lips he bent over the instrument or interrupted hisattention by walking to the window and gazing far out into the heavens.
The record we obtained is here reproduced, in part, as the whole wouldoccupy altogether too much space. I am interested in giving it as it mayeffectually remain a proof of my sincerity in this matter, and will, Ihave the firm conviction, be repeated in the future, not exactly or atall, as I have written it, but some message similarly received willcorroborate the statement here made, and the still further marvellousfacts I am yet to relate.
The record I will select for reproduction is as follows:
. . . - . . .-- . . . - - - . - - . . . - . . .. . - - - - . . . . . - - - . . . . . . . . . .- - . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - . . . - - . . . - - - - - . . . . . . . - -- . . - . . . - - - - - . . . . . . . - - . -. . . . - - - . . . - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- . . . - . . . - - - . . . - . . . - . . .- - - - - . . . . - - - . . . . - - - -