In this direction, the most unexpected is perhaps what we should most expect. Under the increasing tension of the mind on the surface of the globe, we may begin by asking seriously whether life will not perhaps one day succeed in ingeniously forcing the bars of its earthly prison, either by finding the means to invade other inhabited planets or (a still more giddy perspective) by getting into psychical touch with other focal points of consciousness across the abysses of space. The meeting and mutual fecundation of two noospheres is a supposition which may at first seem slightly crazy, but which after all is merely extending psychical phenomena a scope no-one would think of denying to material phenomena. Consciousness would thus finally conduct itself by a synthesis of planetary units. The Phenomenon of Man