But I was reminded that it was in a dream that Edgerly, like myself, had visited Mars, and on awaking had recalled nothing of his experience, just as I should recall nothing of mine. When will man learn to interrogate the dream soul of the marvels it sees in its wanderings? Then he will no longer need to improve his telescopes to find out the secrets of the universe.
“Do your people visit the Earth in the same manner?” I asked my companion.
“Certainly,” he replied; “but there we find no one able to recognize us and converse with us as I am conversing with you, although myself in the waking state. You, as yet, lack the knowledge we possess of the spiritual side of the human nature which we share with you.”
“That knowledge must have enabled you to learn much more of the Earth than we know of you,” I said.
“Indeed it has,” he replied. “From visitors such as you, of whom we entertain a concourse constantly, we have acquired familiarity with your civilization, your history, your manners, and even your literature and languages. Have you not noticed that I am talking with you in English, which is certainly not a tongue indigenous to this planet?”
“Among so many wonders I scarcely observed that,” I answered.
“For ages,” pursued my companion, “we have been waiting for you to improve your telescopes so as to approximate the power of ours, after which communication between the planets would be easily established. The progress which you make is, however, so slow that we expect to wait ages yet.”
“Indeed, I fear you will have to,” I replied. “Our opticians already talk of having reached the limits of their art.”
“Do not imagine that I spoke in any spirit of petulance,” my companion resumed. “The slowness of your progress is not so remarkable to us as that you make any at all, burdened as you are by a disability so crushing that if we were in your place I fear we should sit down in utter despair.”
“To what disability do you refer?” I asked. “You seem to be men like us.”