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In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world,
the Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore
without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise from that
difference among men. A young Martian, there can now be
no dispute, was really born upon earth during the war, and
it was found attached to its parent, partially BUDDED off, just
as young lilybulbs bud off, or like the young animals in the
fresh-water polyp.
In man, in all the higher terrestrial animals, such a method
of increase has disappeared; but even on this earth it was
certainly the primitive method. Among the lower animals,
up even to those first cousins of the vertebrated animals, the
Tunicates, the two processes occur side by side, but finally
the sexual method superseded its competitor altogether. On
Mars, however, just the reverse has apparently been the case.
It is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer of
quasi-scientific repute, writing long before the Martian invasion,
did forecast for man a final structure not unlike the
actual Martian condition. His prophecy, I remember, appeared
in November or December, 1893, in a long-defunct publication,
the PALL MALL BUDGET, and I recall a caricature of it in
a pre-Martian periodical called PUNCH. He pointed out--
writing in a foolish, facetious tone--that the perfection of
mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs; the
perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs
as hair, external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer
essential parts of the human being, and that the tendency
of natural selection would lie in the direction of their steady
diminution through the coming ages. The brain alone remained
a cardinal necessity. Only one other part of the
body had a strong case for survival, and that was the hand,
"teacher and agent of the brain." While the rest of the body
dwindled, the hands would grow larger.
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