An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars

by Henri de Parville

  The references are to Wilhelm Beer (1797-1850), Johan Heinrich von Mädler (1794-1874) and John Phillips (1800-1874); Parville’s text misrenders the second name as “Moedler” and the third as “Johns Philips.”

  46 In fact, Uranus comes next in the orbital sequence, and clearly did so in the earlier table showing the relative intensities of solar radiation; this seems to be a simple error born of carelessness.

  47 Parville: “Mr. Ziegler presumably did not know at this time that Monsieur E. Frémy, Professor of Chemistry at the Museum and the Ecole Polytechnique, and member of the Académie, had generously put his laboratory at the disposal of the heterogenists, when all other doors were closed to them. We do not know M. Frémy’s opinions on spontaneous generation, but we can make the observation to Mr. Ziegler that and academician of the Institut de France had dared to extend a hand to the heterogenists when, not only were they not defended, but were still rejected from all professions by orthodox science.” This initial reference here is to Edmond Frémy (1814-1894). The people ranked on the conventional side of the debate alongside Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) are Henri Milne-Edwards (1800-1885) and Antoine-Jérome Balard (1802-1876). Pasteur’s great rival in the debate regarding spontaneous generation, Félix-Archimede Pouchet (1800-1872), was the director of the Museum of Natural History in Rouen; Nicolas Joly and Charles Musset collaborated on papers in support of his thesis.

  48 Parville: “Modern physicists do indeed attribute every chemical combination to an actual collision of atoms or molecules. Everyone knows that the impact of a bullet striking a target determines the heat generated, because the annihilated motion is transformed into heat. Heat and motion are, in effect, different manifestations of a single cause. Now, if a chemical combination generates heat, it is precisely because of the impact of molecules upon one another. The combustion of carbon in oxygen is a phenomenon of the same order as a body falling to Earth; a diamond that burns in oxygen only catches fire by virtue of the fall of oxygen atoms upon it. One could calculate the heat produced if one knew the velocity of atoms, their mass and their rate of progress.

  “The observation might be made that the heat produced by the impact of a body falling to Earth is out of all proportion to that produced in the previous experiment of atomic impacts. The response is simple. To establish a comparison, it is necessary to put identical conditions in place. Atoms of carbon and oxygen hurl themselves upon one another from a large relative distance. Let us, therefore, imagine lifting up a body far enough from the Earth for attraction to become almost negligible, as is the case with atoms; calculation will then demonstrate that the speed of the fall will be such that it generates twice as much heat as the combustion of an equal weight of pure carbon. One cannot, therefore, any longer be astonished by the temperature produced by the impact of atoms upon one another.

  “The aggregation of an ensemble of atoms thus generates a great deal of heat and motion. That is the origin of life, when the atoms are appropriate and the quantity of motion of the surrounding body is susceptible to harmonic stimulation.”

  49 This notion of self-transformation is central to the idea of evolution developed by Charles Darwin’s most famous predecessor, Jean-Baptiste de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829), in his Philosophie zoologique (1809), which proposed that the vital force which Lamarck imagined to be the essence of life had an innately progressive element. In his philosophy, every organism is constantly striving to improve itself by enhancing its adaptation to its environment; the notion that acquired characteristics had to be inherited—which is now seen as the aspect of Lamarckism that contrasts it crucially with the modern synthesis of Darwinism and genetics—was a mere corollary of this fundamental assumption. Mr. Ziegler—his opinion clearly endorsed Parville—remains a diehard Lamarckian, apparently considering natural selection as unworthy of mention, let alone serious consideration. French evolutionary theory continued in this same nationalistic vein for some time; Henri Bergson (1859-1941) eventually revived and repackaged the idea of an innately progressive élan vital in L’évolution creatrice (1907) in calculated opposition to the seemingly-irresistible tide of Darwinist conviction. Ziegler and Parville are thus steering a course between the polarized opinions of Pouchet and Pasteur, attempting an eclectic selection of their ideas. Given this, Ziegler’s eventual abrupt modification of the apparent tendency of his view—which even Parvillle calls a “volte-face”—is not at all surprising.

  50 Parville: “Let us summarize in this regard what Mr. Tyndall, professor of physics at the Royal Institution, said in one of his excellent lectures: The Sun, which is to say, the source of heat, of quantity of motion, is the universal hearth of organic and animal life. It works to fabricate plants and animals. It has been said that the atoms of different substances, when they combine, fall upon one another in the manner of a body falling to Earth. In the same way that one can lift a body off the ground, one can separate atoms that have combined. Thus, the universally familiar carbonic acid gas results from the fall of molecules of oxygen on molecules of carbon. This compound is gaseous and spreads into the atmosphere. It can disappear, when one draws apart its constituent molecules and renders intact the atoms of carbon and oxygen that formed it. Carbonic acid, in fact, furnishes vegetables with the carbon that enters into their make-up. Solar light separates the atoms, liberating the oxygen that serves animal life, and introduces the carbon into the constitutive aggregation of the ligneous fibre.

  “Also, when a ray of sunlight penetrates a forest, the quantity of heat that will be rendered by the ray will not be exactly equal to the quantity received. A portion will have been employed in fabricating trees. It should be noted that the solar ray only excites the organic molecules and remains insufficient to act mechanically on inorganic molecules; here again the principle proposed by Ziegler is perceptible.

  “Is not the fact marvellous in itself? Consider that luminous ray which slips coquettishly from branch to branch through the verdure. Perhaps you think it good for nothing—what a mistake! Good for nothing! But it is what makes the tree; it is what makes the forest in the midst of which you are strolling, that charming bush, those little birds that are pecking within it, seemingly thanking it with their joyful song. Oh, if poets knew everything that is beautiful and sublime in the golden ray that illuminates their souls, they would never dare rhyme again and would fall silent, mute with admiration before the grandeur of the spectacle and the incomparable splendour of the work—but poets claim that science and the poem are poles apart, alas!”

  The reference is to John Tyndall (1820-1893), one of many distinguished scientists who carried forward the tradition of public lectures at the Royal Institution while further developing the ideas of their founder, Michael Faraday. Tyndall had not yet published a book in 1865, when this note was written—Parville was presumably present at the actual lectures—but he went on to establish a considerable career as a popularizer as well as a researcher; if the final comment in Parville’s note was Tyndall’s, it was probably a conscious echo of Robert Hunt’s Poetry of Science (1848).

  51 Parville: “While Mr. Ziegler was imparting these new views, a knowledgeable French traveller, Monsieur Trémaux, was bringing strong arguments in favour of the same thesis to the Institut de France, and the two naturalists were certainly unaware of the analogy of pinion that bound them together.

  “M. Trémaux, in a remarkable and oft-remarked series of memoirs, had proposed this law: it is the geological and physical environment that makes the species. The least advanced human beings belong to the most ancient terrains, and also to the least favourable climates. Inversely, the most advanced human beings belong to the lands in which the least space offers the greatest variety of terrain, allowing the predominance of the most recent, and—again as a corollary—to the most favourable climate and other secondary causes.

  “Do we not find in this simple law the key to the divergences that separate the unitary school and the partisans of the diversity of the origin
of species? Fixity, variability, degeneration—the formula holds in every case. Go to live in modern terrains, improvement; remain in place, fixity; settle primitive regions, degeneration. Is that not the scale of naturalists, with its steps taken upwards or downwards?

  “M. Trémaux has accumulated proofs. We shall cite a few examples. The Sudan has rather wretched inhabitants. Let us look at its geological constitution. Primitive terrains almost everywhere, with gold mines. Australia, so rich in mines, is formed almost entirely of eruptive rocks; its population is very degraded and even blacker than their neighbors even though they are outside the tropics. In southern Africa, the Bechuans and the Bakaas visited by Dr. Livingstone are scarcely favored; their land is constituted by Silurian rocks and mountains of black basalt. In the valley of the Zambesi the soil becomes fertile; the populations are ameliorated. The geological map of Europe shows us that the largest surface of primitive terrain corresponds to Lapland, which also has the most inferior people. On the other hand, are not the most favored countries France, Italy, Greece, the eastern part of Spain and the north-east of England?

  “The peoples of the southern hemisphere are inferior to the corresponding peoples of the northern hemisphere; in the same way, the inhabitants of most islands are less advanced than others. It is sufficient, in fact, to cast one’s eyes over a geological map to observe that there again the regions under consideration belong to the most ancient terrains.

  “Let us remind ourselves of a fact perceived by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, that the degree of domestication of animals is proportional to the degree of civilization of the humans who possess them. It is obvious, in fact, that humans and animals living on the same ground are necessarily advanced or retarded to the same degree, according to the geological formations.

  “Such is the terrain, such are its human beings.”

  The references are to the architect and amateur ethnographer Pierre Trémaux (1818-1895), who published an elaborate account of his travels in Africa in 1862, and the famous naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1805-1861).

  52 Parville: “We find confirmation of this in what we see every day. Do not the species of our contemporary trees vary with latitude—which is to say, with external forces, with terrains; which is to say, with the materials of the globe? Who does not know, besides, that certain species can only live in given latitudes? The external forces are, in fact, insufficient in the cold regions or too excessive in the hot regions to permit life to develop.”

  53 Parville: “This fact has been explained recently by a French academician, Monsieur Boussingault. It is sufficient to observe that the germ is not the seed. A seed that has germinated in darkness evidently loses its weight, but the plant gains less weight than the seed loses. To explain the anomaly it was necessary to compare the embryo to the plant and it was seen that the plant weighed more than the embryo. This takes nothing away from Mr. Ziegler’s reasoning. The seed nourishes and feeds the embryo, and when its materials are used up, the plant dies.” The reference is to the agricultural chemist Jean-Baptiste Boussingault (1802-1887), whose name is misrendered as “Bisingault” in Parville’s text.

  54 This assumption turned out to be erroneous; cellulose is a definitive constituent of plant tissue.

  55 Parville: “Mr. Ziegler’s opinion is completely at odds with that of French physiologists. For Monsieur Flourens, the growth of an animal will be complete when the epiphyses are fixed to the bones. In man that is at 20 years. It is therefore necessary, in the reckoning of the celebrated author, to multiply the duration of growth by five to calculate the lifespan. A horse grows, according to him, for four or five years; its lifespan is 20 to 25, etc. Mr. Ziegler undoubtedly means by the duration of growth the entire time in which the animal does not decrease. On that basis, he might well be right, and it would be sufficient to double rather than quintuple that duration to calculate the real existence.”

  The reference is to the physiologist Pierre-Jean-Marie Flourens (1794-1867). The calculations made by Ziegler and Flourens both lack merit, although—as Ziegler’s and Parville’s attempts to dismiss the equine exception clearly testify—Ziegler’s is even less plausible than Flourens. Once the vitalist hypothesis was firmly rejected and physiologists stopped thinking in terms of a quantifiable life force, the whole question of making calculations of this sort became redundant.

  56 Parville: “Let us add in support of this thesis that our body renews itself incessantly, that the one we shall have tomorrow is not the one we have today, and yet our Self remains exactly the same. If our ideas are modified as years go by, it is precisely because, as the constituent molecules vary, impressions must vary in consequence.”

  57 Parville: “We know that light is merely the motion of the outermost atoms of bodies transmitted by the intermediary of independent atoms in space.” For a long time, following various classical sources, it was thought that sight was a matter of active transmission as well as reception; Ziegler and Parville evidently still share this perspective.

  58 In Parville’s text the use of the pronoun elle at this point merely reflects the fact that the noun personne is feminine rather than specifying the sex of the person concerned—a crucial linguistic difference between French and English that often causes some slight difficulty to translators. As Parville obviously has a female other in mind in this instance, however—he is, in effect, providing a quasi-scientific explanation for “love at first sight”—it is entirely appropriate to use “she” rather than substituting the neutral but grammatically dubious “they.” I have adopted the same policy in the following argument regarding what would now be called hypnotism, because 19th century “magnetism” was usually a matter of male magnetizers influencing female subjects.

  59 Parville’s belief in “somnambulism”—what would nowadays be called hypnotism—was apparently based on experience. An article of his translated for the Pall Mall Gazette in the 1890s recalls an occasion during his American expedition when he allegedly put a number of Native Americans into a somnambulistic state, in which they imitated his actions and gestures slavishly.

  60 Although only a handful of asteroids were discovered in the first half of the 19th century new ones were reported every year from 1847 onwards, so it was widely accepted by 1864 that there might well be thousands or millions of them, many of which must be too small for telescopic detection, and that these were the most probable source of meteorites.

  61 The transplantation of crops from one part of the world to another, and the consequent establishment of colonial plantations, was a highly significant component of global commercial enterprise in the 18th and 19th centuries; botanical gardens proliferated in support of such endeavors in both Europe and America, and “acclimatization societies” undertook intensive studies of the practicality of such transplantations in order to facilitate colonial enterprises.

  62 “Happy is he who knows the causes of things.” The line is from Virgil’s Georgics.

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