“But how is it possible for you, Georges,” I interrupted, “to appear to me in the body you wore on earth?”

“All this,” said Spero, touching his body, “is an illusion.  Do you not recollect my saying that only invisible things are real?  You do not see me with your eyes, or feel me with your hands, as you think you do.  The impression which you have of my presence is born of the influence which my mind is exerting in an invisible way on your mind.  Can’t you understand?  It is a kind of hypnotism.  At the present moment, as I have said, I am lying asleep on Mars, but my spirit is in direct communication with yours.  The form you see sitting beside you on this parapet is only an illusion of your senses.  My soul is speaking to your soul.”

“But could you not,” I said, “give me some description of life on Mars?”

“A dream,” he replied, “would be more vivid than a mere description, though it would only be a shadow of the reality.  For since you have not, my dear friend, our exquisite faculties of knowledge, your mind could not clearly mirror our life.  Hark!  Iclea is awake, and calling me.  I cannot stay any longer.  Shut your eyes, and I will send you a dream.”

I turned to say good-bye, but Spero had vanished.  A deep drowsiness fell upon me, and just as I got off the parapet and found a safer position I fell asleep.

IV.—­The Eternal Progress

I was sitting under a strange tree covered with gigantic red flowers.  In the sky above me were two moons that shed a dim brightness on the lovely and fantastic scenery.  A multitude of radiant shapes fluttered and darted through the air.  They were Martians—­exquisite, aerial, and divinely beautiful figures glowing with luminous tints.  Airy gondolas, which seemed to be fashioned from phosphorescent flowers, passed above my head, and one of them floated down to the tree under which I was lying.  In it were Iclea and Georges, but etherealised beyond the reach of human imagination.

They took me in their flying chariot as day was breaking, and we coursed, with a strange silent interchange of thoughts, over the orange-coloured land of Mars.  I could not understand everything which was communicated to me, now by Iclea and now by Georges; but I perceived that all manual labour on the planet was done by means of machines directed by animals whose intelligence was on a level with my own.  The Martians themselves lived only for the things of the mind; they had twelve senses instead of five, and their bodies, in which electricity played the part that blood does in our systems, were so finely and yet so strongly organised that they possessed an extraordinary power over the forces of nature.  Everything on their world, seas, mountains and rivers were like their wonderful canals, works of art and science.  Nature was completely plastic in their hands.  There was no poverty and no crime.  Deriving their food from the air which they breathe, the Martians were liberated from material cares and immersed in the joys of intellectual pursuits.