midday
Yet so vain is man , and so blinded by his vanity , that no writer , up to the very end of the nineteenth century , expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far , or indeed at all , beyond its earthly level . Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth , with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun , it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time 's beginning but nearer its end . The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour . Its physical condition is still largely a mystery , but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter . Its air is much more attenuated than ours , its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface , and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones . That last stage of exhaustion , which to us is still incredibly remote , has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars . The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects , enlarged their powers , and hardened their hearts .