ffirm that if the planets are inhabitable, either
they are inhabited, they have been, or they will be."

"Very well," cried the first ranks of spectators, whose opinion had the
force of law for the others.

"It is impossible to answer with more logic and justice," said the
president of the Gun Club. "The question, therefore, comes to this: 'Are
the planets inhabitable?' I think so, for my part."

"And I--I am certain of it," answered Michel Ardan.

"Still," replied one of the assistants, "there are arguments against the
inhabitability of the worlds. In most of them it is evident that the
principles of life must be modified. Thus, only to speak of the planets,
the people must be burnt up in some and frozen in others according as
they are a long or short distance from the sun."

"I regret," answered Michel Ardan, "not to know my honourable opponent
personally. His objection has its value, but I think it may be combated
with some success, like all those of which the habitability of worlds
has been the object. If I were a physician I should say that if there
were less caloric put in motion in the planets nearest to the sun, and
more, on the contrary, in the distant planets, this simple phenomenon
would suffice to equalise the heat and render the temperature of these
worlds bearable to beings organised like we are. If I were a naturalist
I should tell him, after many illustrious _savants_, that Nature
furnishes us on earth with examples of animals living in very different
conditions of habitability; that fish breathe in a medium mortal to the
other animals; that amphibians have a double existence difficult to
explain; that certain inhabitants of the sea live in the greatest
depths, and support there, without being crushed, pressures of fifty or
sixty atmospheres; that some aquatic insects, insensible to the
temperature, are met with at the same time in springs of boiling water
and in the frozen plains of the Polar Ocean--in short, there are in
nature many means of action, often incomprehensible, but no less real.
If I were a chemist I should say that aerolites--bodies evidently formed
away from our terrestrial globe--have when analysed, revealed
indisputable traces of carbon, a substance that owes its origin solely
to organised beings, and which, according to Reichenbach's experiments,
must necessarily have been 'animalised.' Lastly, if I were a theologian
I should say that Divine Redemption, according to St. Paul, seems