TELEGRAPHING TO MARS.
MR. FRANCIS GALTON, in the Times of this day week, proposes seriously that our astronomers should agree an an attempt to flash sun-signals to Mars for several con- secutive years, in the hope that they might attract attention from the possible inhabitants of Mars, and get us signals back of the same kind. Whether the proposal to send such solar signals to Mars is possible or not can hardly be determined until we have some reason to presume that creatures like our- selves, in something like the same stage of knowledge as ourselves, exist on Mars, and that, we fear, is just what it is quite impossible to conjecture with any confidence sufficiently strong to inspire even a faint hope of success. If there be any truth in the assumption that on the amount of solar heat received at the surface of a planet depends the rate of progress in civilisation, it would be reasonable to suppose that even if such creatures as men exist on the planet Mars, they are not improbably behind us in the stage of their civilisation, and that telescopes may be as unknown to them as they were to our forefathers three or four thousand years ago; while if we assume an analogy of that kind to be illegitimate, then it must be still less legitimate to suppose that there is any analogy at all between our con- dition and theirs, even if they exist. The Martials, if there be Martials in any sense in which there are terrestrials on our own planet, may have no eyes at all; their whole civilisation, if they have any, may depend on senses of which we have absolutely no trace, so that communication between us and them would be a great deal less possible than communication between a fish and a mole, or between a blind man and a deaf mute. The whole idea of communicating with the inhabitants of Mars takes for granted that the Martials are organised more or less like ourselves, and especially in relation to the sense which carries farthest,—that is, the sense of sight. It would be an idle thing to send mere signals for consecutive years to a planet on which, even if there were rational beings, there was no sense of sight; and not very rational if, even though there were a sense of sight akin to our own, there was no power of aiding it by the help of telescopic inventions. Therefore it seems to us that unless the whole conception of communicating with Mars be in the highest degree extrava- gant, we have some reason to assume that the possible Martials are behind, not before us, in their stage of development and civilisation. We know that the tribes upon our earth which live under the most unfavourable conditions as regards heat,—the Esquimaux, for instance, and the Patagonians,—are far behind the inhabitants of the temperate regions in civilisation, and therefore, if we may draw any inferences at all as to the Martials from our own condition, the more probable inference is that, if they exist under circumstances at all like our own, they are, considering their great distance from the sun, centuries behind us rather than at the same stage of evolution, or still less centuries before us. And if we have no right to draw such an inference, then we have still less to reason with the smallest confidence from our own circumstances to theirs. They may, of course, have senses such as we have not even a dream of ; they may be perfectly well acquainted with all that happens not only on our globe, but on all the other planets, and yet quite unable to let us know that they are familiar with our conditions of life, and how they have acquired that knowledge. But if that were so, it would be only too obvious that our conditions of life furnish us with no basis for forming any conjecture at all as to theirs; and in that case it would not only be sanguine, but quite irrational, to attempt to open communications at all. The only shadow of justification for making such an attempt rests on the assumption that we may reason from the analogy of our own condition to theirs; and on that assumption we think it would be only prudent to assume that if such faculties as ours are already developed on the surface of Mars at all, they are likely to be far behind instead of far before our own.
But there is a further question of still more importance in connection with Mr. Galton's proposal. Let it be granted, for the sake of argument, that the Martials have eyes like ours and telescopes like ours, and that we could make them see our sun-flashes, and at last respond to them—how are we to establish any sort of code of communication without being able to establish any sort of association between our sun-flashes and the ideas we want to express ?
Suppose, for example, that we wish to inquire the meaning and character of the long, straight canals on Mars, which have seemed to some of our observers artificial waterways of some kind, if they are not a vast deal too wide to be canals at all, or to ask the origin of those bright protuberances which some of our observers fancy to be artificial lights kindled on purpose to attract the attention of eyes in the nearest of
Mars's planetary neighbours, how are we to set about asking the question, alter we have satisfied ourselves, if we ever can satisfy ourselves, that the Martials see our signals and send us signals in return ? When a human being finds himself amongst other human beings of whose language he is pro- foundly ignorant, he establishes at once some kind of associa- tion between sounds and wants, by the free use of signs. He points to his mouth, and makes the movements which accompany eating to express that he is hungry ; or the movements which accompany drinking to express that he is thirsty ; or he holds up his hands to signify entreaty and supplication; or he points to the East or West to indicate the direction from which he came ; and he care- fully attends to all the sounds which his hosts make, and so manages to associate one sound with food, another with drink, a third with the threatening or pleased expression of the strangers in whose power he finds himself, and a fourth with the word used for the quarter of space from which he has indicated that he had himself come. In that way, a code of intercourse is soon established, upon which some sort of mutual under- standing is gradually built up. But how is any such code to be established with people whom we can neither see nor hear, nor make a sign to of any kind, except the sign from which we infer that they are watching our sun-flashes as well as that we are watching theirs ? Suppose we find that three flashes of ours are answered after a short interval by three flashes of theirs, and that ten flashes of ours are answered after the same interval by ten of theirs, we may then fairly assume that they understand us when we say three or ten, and that they have the faculty of number in common with us. But how are we to get any further? How are we to express a question of any sort, or to indicate the shape of the Martial canals and convey our curiosity, or to ask whether the bright prominences in Mars are artificial lights or glaciers at the tops of moun- tains catching the sunlight ? We do not see how, if Mr. Gaiton had successfully made his first step, he could get any further, unless he could find the means of magnifying indefinitely, and then illuminating intensely, the face of a human being, so as to render it visible in Mars, with some sort of gesture or expression with which definite sun-signals could be associated. And as that of course is,—at present, at all events,—far beyond the range of scientific possibility, it seems to us that even the first step could not be made in arranging any kind of communication beyond that which assures us that number is common to us and to them. Suppose we telegraph two, and then three, and then are answered by five flashes from Mars, that might go to show that two and three make five in Mars as well as in the earth,—which Mr j S Mill was, we suppose, slightly inclined to doubt, though that appears to us a doubt of the most irra- tional kind, which might justify a much deeper doubt, namely, whether the Martials had any capacity for either doubt or certainty. But after telegraphing any number of addition sums, and finding them properly answered from Mars, how are we to get as far as applying the conception of number to any concrete thing ? How are we to ask if Martials have engineers and ships, and electric lights and glaciers, and five senses, and heads and feet, or to convey that we have them, unless we can contrive to send at least some few pictures to Mars and to get a pictorial reply, which is, we take it, at present beyond hope. We do not believe that astronomers will be content to go on flashing sun-signals for years to come to hypothetical Martial observers, only on the chance that, after the lapse of years or centuries, we may have the satisfaction of ascertaining that the faculty of number exists as much in Mars as it does in the earth, and that addition-sums are the same there that they are here, which seems to us already certain, if they have intelligences at all. It is, of course, barely possible that we may be able to discover for ourselves the nature of the so-called canals, which must be hundreds of miles in width, and whether the bright points are points of natural or artificial illumina- tion; and if that could be discovered, we might then gradually learn more ; but until we can clearly discover the form and character of some one Martial structure, living or otherwise, and convel to Mars the impression of some one real object here, we confess that th ere seems to us very little use in flashing sun-signals on the bare chance of proving that elementary arithmetic is understood in Mars as well as here.
Previous page
