If we could talk freely with intelligences existing on another world, having a history, social customs and laws, and religious faiths developed absolutely independently from those of this world our conversation would be not only one of surpassing interest to science and the humanities, but what a guide it might prove to statesmen and sociologists!

Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1920, The Habitability of Venus, Mars, and Other Worlds (p. 171)