Lumen

by Camille Flammarion

  THIRD CONVERSATION

  HOMO HOMUNCULUS

  [Sidenote: Clouds no impediment to vision.]

  QUAERENS. I have listened to you with interest, Lumen, without, Iown, being entirely convinced that all you have told me is actuallyreal. Indeed it is difficult to believe that it is possible to seewith absolute certainty all the things of which you speak. When, forinstance, there are clouds across your field of view, you cannot seeclearly what passes on the Earth. The same objection obtains for theinterior of houses.

  [Sidenote: Light a vibration of ether.]

  LUMEN. You are mistaken, my friend. The undulations of ether passthrough obstacles that you would believe impenetrable. Clouds areformed of molecules between which rays of light frequently pass. In thecontrary case, there are here and there vistas or gaps, across whichone can only see obliquely. The case is very rare when nothing can bedistinguished. Besides, light is not what it appears to be; it is avibration of ether, and there are other ways of seeing than by meansof the retina and the optic nerve.

  The vibrations of ether are perceptible to senses other than those youpossess. Therefore, if this be your sole objection, it is, I must say,far from being an insurmountable one.

  QUAERENS. You have a special faculty for resolving all doubts. Perhapsthis is one of the gifts granted to spiritual beings. I have beenobliged successively to admit, that you have been transported toCapella with a swiftness exceeding that of light; that you reachedanother world as a spirit; that your soul is liberated from the flesh;that your ultra-earthly perception is able to distinguish from thatheight all that passes here; that you can advance or recede in spaceaccording to your fancy; and lastly, that the clouds themselves are noobstacles to your clearly seeing the surface of our globe. It must beowned that these are grave difficulties indeed.

  LUMEN. You are very material, my old friend! Should you be verysurprised if I undertook to prove to you that all these difficultiesexist only in name, and that all the objections which oppose themselvesto your conception of phenomena are the effects of ignorance?

  What should you think if I affirmed that no one has a single true ideaof what takes place upon the Earth, and that man utterly fails tounderstand nature?

  QUAERENS. In the name of all the indisputable truths of modern science,I should dare to think that you were trying to impose upon me.

  [Sidenote: The marvels of spectral analysis.]

  [Sidenote: Piercing nature of the soul's sight.]

  LUMEN. God forbid! Listen to me, my friend. The marvellous discoveriesof contemporary science ought to enlarge the sphere of yourconceptions. You have just discovered spectral analysis! By thismethodic examination of a simple ray of light shot from a far-off star,you learn what are the elements which compose this inaccessible starand feed its brilliancy. This knowledge, my brother, is of more valuethan all the conquests of Alexander, of Caesar, and of Napoleon, thanall the discoveries of Ptolemy, of Columbus, of Gutenberg, than all thebooks of Moses and of Confucius. Only think, trillions of leagues spanthe abyss which separates us from Sirius, from Arcturus, from Vega,from Capella, from Castor and Pollux, and it is now possible to analysethe substances which constitute these suns, just as accurately as ifyou could take them in your hand and submit them to the crucible ofthe laboratory! How then can you refuse to admit that, by processeswhich are unknown to you, the soul's sight can be sufficiently piercingto see clearly a bright far-off world, and to distinguish even itssmallest details? Does not the telegraph carry in an inappreciablemoment your thought from Europe to America through the depths of theocean? Cannot two people converse in a low voice at a distance ofthousands of leagues, and still you hesitate to admit the truth of mynarrations, because you do not altogether comprehend them? But can youexplain how the telegraphic message is transmitted? No, you cannot.Cease then to retain doubts which have not even the merit of beingscientific.

  QUAERENS. My objections, learned master, have not any other end in viewthan to elicit fresh light upon the subject. I am far from denying thetruth of all you tell me, and I but seek to form a rational and exactidea of it.

  [Sidenote: The inadequacy of the earthly senses.]

  LUMEN. Be assured, my friend, I do not take any offence at yourobjections. My only desire is to develop and enlarge the sphere of yourconceptions. I can at this very instant open your eyes to see the utterinadequacy of your terrestrial faculties, and the fatal poverty ofpositive science itself, by inviting you to reflect that the causes ofyour impressions are solely modes of motion, and that what is proudlytermed _science_ is only a very _limited organic perception_.

  [Sidenote: The limitations of the senses.]

  Light by which your eyes see--sound by which your ears hear--aredifferent forms of motion by which you are impressed; odours, flavours,&c., are emanations which strike upon your olfactory nerve or touchyour palate; these are solely vibratory motions which are transmittedto your brain. You can only appreciate a few of these movements throughthe senses you possess, principally those of sight and hearing. You, inyour simplicity, believe that you see and hear nature? Nothing of thekind. All you do is to receive some of the movements in activity uponyour sublunary atom. That is all. Beyond the impressions you receivethere are an infinitely greater number unperceived by you.

  QUAERENS. Pardon, master, but this new aspect of nature is notsufficiently clear for me to understand it. Would you....

  [Sidenote: The extent of the gamut _re_ vibrations of sound.]

  [Sidenote: The extent of the vibrations of light.]

  LUMEN. This aspect is indeed new to you, but attentive reflection willenable you to grasp it. Sound is formed by vibrations in the air whichstrike upon the membrane of the tympanum and give you the impression ofvarious tones. Man does not hear all sounds. When the vibrations aretoo slow (below forty a second), the sound is too low; your ear cannotcatch it. When the vibrations are too rapid (above 36,000 a second),the sound is too sharp; your ear cannot receive it. Above and belowthese two limits, therefore, human beings do not perceive them. Thesevibrations exist, however, and are perceived by creatures of otherkinds, as, for example, certain insects. The same rules apply to light.The different aspects of light, the shades and colours of objects, areequally due to the vibrations which strike upon the optic nerve andgive you the impression of the different degrees of intensity in light.Man does not by any means see all that is visible. When the vibrationsare too slow (under 458 billions a second), light is too feeble; youreye sees nothing. When the vibrations are too rapid (over 727 billionsa second), light outruns your organic faculty of perception and isinvisible to you. Above and below these two limits the vibrations ofether still exist, and are perceived by other beings. You do not knowtherefore, nor can you receive, any impressions except those that canbe made to vibrate upon the two chords of your organic lyre, calledrespectively the optic nerve and the auditory nerve.

  Imagine for one instant the extent of all the sights and sounds whichare not perceptible to you. All the undulatory movements that exist inthe universe between the figures of 36,000 and those represented by458,000,000,000,000 in the same unity of time, can neither be heard norbe seen by you, and remain utterly unknown to you.

  [Sidenote: Man deaf to the concert of universal harmonies by reason ofhis limitations.]

  Try to measure that distance! Contemporary science is beginning topenetrate a little into this invisible world, and you know that ithas just calculated the vibrations below 458 billions (these are thecaloric invisible rays) and the vibrations above 727 billions (theseare the chemical rays, also equally invisible to the human eye).Scientific methods can enlarge the sphere of the perceptions but alittle; you remain isolated in the midst of infinitude. Moreover,an endless number of other vibrations exist in nature which have no_correspondence_ with your organisation, and therefore cannot bereceived by you, _consequently you remain for ever utterly ignorant ofthem_. Did you possess other strings to your lyre--ten, a hundred, athousand--the harmony of nature could more completely tran
slate itselfto you, each of the myriad vibrations according to their kind. Youwould perceive a number of facts which are certainly passing aroundyou, whose very existence you cannot even now guess, and in place oftwo dominant notes you would be conscious of the grand concert ofharmonies everywhere about you.

  But although thus ignorant, you are unconscious of it, because allaround you are equally ignorant, and therefore it is impossible tocompare your limited faculties with those of beings much more highlyorganised.

  [Sidenote: Were the eye a combined spectroscope and telescope, it wouldsee the chemical elements composing bodies.]

  The senses you do possess suffice, however, to indicate the existenceof other senses, not only more powerful, but of a totally differentorder. By the sense of touch, for example, you can, it is true, feelthe sensation of _heat_; but it is easy to conceive the existence ofa special sense, analogous to that by which light reveals to you theaspect of exterior objects, and which would render man capable ofjudging of the form and substance of an object, its interior structure,and other qualities, by the action of the caloric waves radiating fromit. The same reasoning would hold good on the subject of _electricity_.You could equally well conceive the existence of a sense, endowingthe eye with the powers of a spectroscope and telescope in one, thusenabling it to see the _chemical_ elements, of which bodies arecomposed.

  Thus already, from a scientific point of view, you have sufficientground for imagining modes of perception, quite different from thosewhich characterise human beings. These faculties exist in other worlds,and there are endless ways of perceiving the action of the forces ofnature.

  [Sidenote: Our terrestrial senses are limited.]

  QUAERENS. Certainly, master, I own that as you unfold thesepossibilities a new and singular clearness enlightens my understanding,and your teachings appear to me a true interpretation of the reality.I had already dreamed that similar marvels might be possible, butI had not been able to explain them, enveloped as I still am in myterrestrial senses. One thing is certain, we must be lifted out of ourearth-bound limitations ere we are capable of comprehending, or even ofattempting to judge, of the scope of the universe.

  Thus, being endowed with only a few limited senses, we can but know thefacts that are perceptible to them. The remainder is naturally unknown.Can it be that the unknown is infinitely more than the known?

  [Sidenote: The ordinary senses are insensible to many physicalmovements.]

  LUMEN. This "remainder" is immense, and all you at present know willseem as nothing by comparison. Not only do your senses not perceivephysical movements--such as solar and terrestrial electricity whosecurrents cross in the atmosphere, the magnetism of minerals, of plants,and of beings, the affinities of organisms, &c., which are invisibleto you--but they perceive still less the movements of the moral world,its sympathies and antipathies, its presentiments, its spiritualattractions, &c. I only speak the simple truth when I say, that allthat you know, and all that you could know, through the medium of yourearthly senses, is as nothing compared to that which is.

  [Sidenote: Beings exist with other than our senses.]

  This truth is so profound that it might well be asserted, that beingsexist upon the Earth essentially different from you, possessing neithereyes, nor ears, nor any of your senses, but endowed with _other_senses, and capable of perceiving that which you cannot perceive, andwho, while living in the same world as yourself, know that which youcannot know, and form an idea of nature completely at variance withyour own.

  QUAERENS. All this is utterly beyond my comprehension.

  LUMEN. Moreover, my earthly friend, I can add most emphatically thatthe perceptions you receive, and that constitute the bases of yourscience, are not even the perceptions of the _reality_. No. Light,lucidity, colours, looks, tones, noises, harmonies, sounds, perfumes,flavours, apparent qualities of bodies, &c., are nothing but _forms_.

  These forms enter into your mind by the avenue of the eye, and the ear,by the senses of smell, and taste, and are represented to you by theirappearances, but not even by the essence of the things themselves.

  _The real nature of things entirely escapes your understanding, and youare utterly incapable of comprehending the universe._

  [Sidenote: Matter is not solid.]

  Matter itself is not what you believe it to be. To speak absolutely,there is not anything that is _solid_; your own body, a piece of ironor of granite, are not more solid than the air you breathe. All thesethings are composed of atoms which do not touch each other, and whichare in perpetual movement. The Earth, atom of the Heavens, moves inspace with a swiftness of 643,000 leagues a day; but, in proportion totheir dimensions, each atom which constitutes your own body and thatcirculates in your blood, moves much more quickly. If your vision weresufficiently powerful to see through this stone, you would no longersee it thus, because your sight would pass through and beyond it....

  [Sidenote: How man errs in thinking his limited sensations describethose of the universe.]

  [Sidenote: The difference of organisms on Mars, Uranus, &c.]

  [Sidenote: The tie uniting the physical and spiritual world]

  But I see by the disturbance of your brain, and the rapid movements ofthe fluid which crosses your closely-concentrated lobes, that you nolonger understand my revelations. I will not then pursue this subjectwhich I have thus merely lightly touched upon, with the end in view ofthereby demonstrating how greatly you would err, did you attach anyimportance to difficulties born of your terrestrial sensations, andto assure you that neither you nor any man upon the Earth could formeven an approximate idea of the universe. What is earthly man but amere pigmy! Ah! if you were but acquainted with the organisms whichvibrate upon Mars or upon Uranus; if it had but been granted to you, toappreciate the senses in action, upon Venus and upon a ring of Saturn;if during centuries of travel you had been permitted to glance at andobserve the forms of life in the systems of the double stars; at thesensations of sight in the coloured suns, to glean the impressionsof an electric sense, of which you can know absolutely nothing,in the groups of multiple suns; if a suitable comparison of thisultra-terrestrial state had furnished you with the elements of a freshknowledge, you would then have comprehended that beings exist--who cansee, hear, feel, or, to be more accurate, understand nature withouteyes, without ears, without sense of smell; that an incredible numberof other senses exist in nature, senses essentially different fromyours; and that there are in creation an incalculable number ofmarvellous facts which it is absolutely impossible for you to imagine.In this general contemplation of the universe, my friend, one perceivesthe solidarity--the tie which unites the physical with the spiritualworld; one sees from a higher ground the instinctive strength whichraises certain souls, tried by the coarseness of matter but purifiedby sacrifice, towards the higher regions of spiritual light; and oneunderstands how immense is the happiness reserved for those beings,who, even while on Earth, have succeeded in gradually overcoming theirlower nature.

  QUAERENS.. To return to the transmission of light in space. Doesnot light lose itself at last? Does the aspect of the Earth remaineternally visible, and never, on the contrary, diminish in proportionto the square of distance, thus becoming finally annihilated?

  [Sidenote: The word end applied to space meaningless]

  LUMEN. Your expression "at last" is without meaning, because there isno end in space.

  Light becomes attenuated, it is true, with distance, the scenes becomeless vivid, but nothing is lost entirely. Any number, whatever it maybe, perpetually reduced by half, for example, can never become equalto zero. The Earth is not visible to all eyes at a certain distance.Nevertheless it still exists, even though it may not be seen by all;and only spiritual sight can see it.

  Besides, the image of a star, borne upon the wings of light, goes intothe unfathomable depths of the mysterious abysses of space.

  [Sidenote: Vast regions exist without stars.]

  Vast regions exist in space without stars, regions decimated by time,
whence worlds have been successively removed by the attraction ofexterior suns. The image of a star in crossing these dark abysses,would be in a condition analogous to that of a person, or object, thatthe photographer had forgotten and left in the _camera_.

  It is not impossible that such images encounter in these vast spaces anobscure star (celestial mechanics state the existence of many such) ina special condition whose surface (formed perhaps of iodine, if one isto credit spectral analysis) would be sensitised, and capable of fixingupon itself the image of this far-off world.

  Thus terrestrial events might be printed upon a dark globe. And if thisglobe turns upon itself, like other celestial bodies, it would presentsuccessively its different zones to the terrestrial image, and wouldthus take a sort of continuous photograph of successive events.

  [Sidenote: Images of this world's events photographed spirally uponother globes in space.]

  Following moreover, in ascending, or descending, a perpendicularline to its equator, the line where the images were reproduced wouldno longer be described in a circle, but in a spiral; and after thefirst movement of rotation was finished, the new images would notcoincide with the old ones, nor superimpose them, but would followabove and below. The imagination could now suppose that this world isnot spherical, but cylindrical, and thus see in space an imperishablecolumn around which would be engraved the great events of the world'shistory.

  I have not myself seen this realisation. It is so short a time since Ileft the Earth, that I have barely done more than glance superficiallyat these celestial marvels. Before long I shall seek to verify thisfact, and see if its reality does not form a part of the infiniterichness of the astral creations.

  QUAERENS. If the ray which leaves the Earth is never _destroyed_,master, our actions are then eternal?

  LUMEN. Certainly they are.

  [Sidenote: Actions carried for ever on rays of light.]

  An act once accomplished can never be effaced, and no power can evercause it to be as if it had never been. Say that a crime is committedin the heart of a desert country. The criminal goes far away, remainsunknown, and supposes that the act which he has committed has _passed_for ever. He has washed his hands of it, he has repented, he believeshis action _obliterated_. But in reality nothing is destroyed. At themoment when this act was accomplished, the light seized it and carriedit into space with the rapidity of lightning. It became incorporatedin a ray of light; eternal, it will transmit itself eternally intoinfinitude.

  Likewise a good action is done in secret; the benefactor thinks it isconcealed, but a ray of light has taken possession of it. Far frombeing forgotten, it will live for ever.

  Napoleon, in order to satisfy his personal ambition, was voluntarilythe cause of the death of five millions of men, whose ages averagedabout thirty years, and who, according to the laws of life, hadthirty-seven more years to live. Therefore, by this calculation, hecaused the destruction of 185 millions of years of human life.

  [Sidenote: Napoleon's punishment.]

  His chastisement, his expiation, consists in being carried along bythat ray of light which left the plains of Waterloo on the 18th June1815, and to be ever moving in space with the quickness of lightitself; to have constantly in sight that critical scene, where he sawfor ever crumbling to pieces the scaffolding of his vain ambition;to feel, without respite, the bitterness of despair; and to remainbound to this ray of light for the 185 millions of years for whosedestruction he was responsible. By thus acting, in place of worthilyfulfilling his mission, he has retarded for a similar length of timehis progress in the spiritual life.

  And if it were given to you to see that which goes on in the moralworld, as clearly as you now see that which passes in the physical one,you would recognise vibrations and transmissions of another nature,which imprint in the arcana of the spiritual world, not only theactions, but even the most secret thoughts.

  [Sidenote: Speculation upon the problem of communication by luminoussignals between the Earth and stars.]

  [Sidenote: An interval of two centuries between question and answer.]

  QUAERENS. Your revelations, Lumen, are awful! Thus, our eternaldestinies are intimately bound up with the construction of the universeitself. I have many times speculated upon the problem of communicationbetween the worlds by the aid of light. Many physicists have supposedthat it will be possible to establish communication between the Earthand the Moon, and even the planets, by the aid of luminous signals.But suppose one could make signs from the Earth to a star, by employingthe light, for example, a hundred years must come and go before thesignal from the Earth could reach its destination, and the responsecould only return after the same interval of time had elapsed. Twocenturies must consequently elapse between the question and its answer.The terrestrial observer would have died long before his signal couldhave reached his sidereal observer, and the latter would doubtless haveundergone a similar fate before his answer could have been received!

  LUMEN. It would, in fact, be a conversation between the living and thedead.

  QUAERENS. Pardon a last question, master--one perhaps a littleindiscreet, but a last one, for I see Venus is paling, and I feel thatyour voice will soon cease to be heard. If actions are thus visiblein ethereal regions, we can then see, after our death, not only ourown actions, but also those of others--I mean those which speciallyinterest us?

  For instance, a pair of twin souls, dwelling in perfect unity, wouldlike to see again for a thousand years the delightful hours passedtogether on the Earth; they would rush into space with a rapidity equalto that of light, in order to have always before their eyes the samehours of joy.

  In another sense, a husband would trace with interest the entire lifeof his companion; and should some unexpected situation have presenteditself, he could at leisure examine the causes leading to the same. Hemight even, if his disembodied companion resided in some neighbouringregion, call upon her to observe, in common with himself, theseretrospective incidents.

  No denial could be admissible before such palpable evidence, and mightnot this power exercised by these spirits give rise to some strangerevelations?

  LUMEN. You are very earthly, my friend, to think that in the Heavensmemories of a material kind will be valued, and I am astonished thatyou can continue to think them of importance. What should speciallystrike you in all we have said during these two interviews is, thatby virtue of the laws of light, we can see events after they havebeen accomplished, although they are past, and indeed when they haveentirely vanished.

  QUAERENS. Believe me, master, this truth will never more be effaced frommy memory. It is precisely this point which I find so exceedinglymarvellous.

  Forget, I pray you, my last digression.

  To say the truth, that which from our first interview has mosttaxed and surpassed the bounds of my imagination, was to thinkthat the duration of the voyage of the spirit can be not only_nil_--negative--but also _retrograde_!

  [Sidenote: Time retrogressive.]

  "Time retrogressive!" These two words involve a contradiction in terms.Dare one believe it?

  You start to-day for a star, and you arrive yesterday! What do Isay--yesterday? You will arrive there seventy-two years ago, even ahundred years ago! The farther you go, the sooner you will arrive!Terms in grammar must be remade for such extraordinary reckoning.

  LUMEN. This is undeniable.

  Speaking according to terrestrial style, there is not any error in thismode of expression, since the Earth was only in 1793, &c., for theworld in which we arrived, or for the world which we reached.

  [Sidenote: Apparent paradoxes anent time.]

  You have, however, on your little globe certain apparent paradoxes,which give an idea of this one.

  For example, a telegram sent from Paris at noon arrives at Bresttwenty minutes before noon. But these curious aspects of particularapplication are not of sufficient significance for you to dwell upon,but rather the _revelation_ of which they are the metaphysical form andthe outward expression. Know
that time is not an absolute reality, butonly a transitory measure caused by the movements of the Earth in theSolar System.

  Regarded with the eyes of the soul, and not with those of the body,this picture of human life, not imaginary but real, such as it was,dissimulation being impossible, touches on one side the domain oftheology, inasmuch as it explains physically a mystery hithertoinexplicable: I mean "individual judgment" of ourselves after death.

  From the point of view of the whole question, the present of a worldis no longer a momentary actuality, which disappears as soon as ithas appeared, it is no longer a phase without consistency, a gatethrough which the past is precipitated unceasingly towards the future,a mathematical plan in space. It is, on the contrary, an effectivereality, which flies away from this world with the swiftness of light,sinking for ever in the infinite, and remaining thus an _eternalpresent_.

  [Sidenote: Events live for ever.]

  The metaphysical reality of this vast problem is such, that one can nowconceive the omnipresence of the world throughout all its duration.Events vanish from the place in which they were born, but they exist inspace. This successive and endless projection of all the facts enactedupon every world takes place in the bosom of the _Infinite Being_,whose ubiquity holds everything in an eternal permanence.

  [Sidenote: Scientific explanation of ubiquity.]

  The events which have been accomplished upon the surface of the Earthsince its creation are visible in space at distances proportioned totheir remoteness in the past. The whole history of the globe, and thelife of each one of its inhabitants, could thus be seen at a glance byan eye which could embrace that space. We thus understand optically, asit were, that the eternal Spirit, present everywhere, can see all thepast at one and the same moment.

  That which is true of our Earth is true of all the worlds in space.Thus the entire history of the whole universe can be present at onceto the universal ubiquity of the Creator. I may add that God knows allthe past, not only in consequence of this direct sight, but also bythe knowledge of each thing in the present. If a naturalist, such asCuvier, knows how to reconstruct, by the aid of a fragment of bone, anyspecies of extinct animals, surely the Author of Nature knows by thepresent Earth the Earth which is past, the Planetary System, and theSun of the past, and all the conditions of temperatures, aggregations,and combinations, by which the elements have produced the complexcondition of things at present in existence.

  [Sidenote: Present, past, and future, all one.]

  On the other hand, the future can be as completely present to God inits actual germs, as the past is in its fruits.

  Each event is bound in an indissoluble manner with the past and thefuture.

  The future will be as inevitably the outcome of the present, and is,as logically deducible from it, and exists in it as exactly, as thatthe past itself is therein inscribed for those who are able to decipherit. But--and I emphasise it--the main point of this recital is tostate, to make you understand, that the past life of all worlds, andof all beings, is always visible in space, thanks to the successivetransmission of light across and through the vast regions of theinfinite.