stupor or trance to beautiful music; for music is the one great
recreation of the Martians, and is spontaneous, appearing as a vocal
gift in beings who have never enjoyed its exercise on earth.

"Gradually under the influence of this musical immersion, as under the
bombardment of the phosphorescent rays, a mentality seems developed;
voice and language come, and the soul moves out of the concourse of
listening souls, moved by a desire to do something, into the streets of
the city. This is called, as we might say, the Act Impulse. From that
time on the soul rushes, as it were, to its natural occupation. Its
mentality, aroused by music, becomes full of some sort of aptitude, and
it enters the avenues of its congruous activity as easily, as quickly,
as justly as the growing flower turns toward the Sun wherever it may be.

"Let me present to you the curious scene my eyes encountered as I sat in
the great Chorus Hall. I say my eyes. It is hard perhaps for you to
realize what an organ can be in a creature, so apparently, as we are,
little more than gaseous condensations. The physiology and morphology of
a spirit is not an easy thing to grasp or define. I am yet ignorant upon
many points. But dimly, at least, I may make your natural senses
cognizant of it.

"You have seen faces and forms in clouds. How often you and I from Mount
Cook on the earth have watched their changing and confluent lineaments
in the clouds above the New Zealand Alps. It is the same way with
Martian spirits. They are tenuous fluids, but the individual pervades
them and a material response is evoked, and the light from their
surfaces is so halated, intensified, or reduced as to form a figure with
a head and arms and legs.