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. which of the following states the central idea of the paragraph? a. humans were too proud to think life could exist elsewhere. b. intelligent life has been continuously developed around the universe. c. the end of the nineteenth century was lacking in intelligent life. d. writers did not write books about the inhabitants of mars.