Page:Mars - Lowell.djvu/97

Rh from being a most superior person. A fish doubtless imagines life out of water to be impossible; and similarly to argue that life of an order as high as our own, or higher, is impossible because of less air to breathe than that to which we are locally accustomed, is, as Flammarion happily expresses it, to argue, not as a philosopher, but as a fish.

To sum up, now, what we know about the atmosphere of Mars: we have proof positive that Mars has an atmosphere; we have reason to believe this atmosphere to be very thin,—thinner at least by half than the air upon the summit of the Himalayas,—and in constitution not to differ greatly from our own.