Lumen

by Camille Flammarion

  FOURTH CONVERSATION

  ANTERIORES VITAE

  [Sidenote: New horizons.]

  QUAERENS. Two years have fled, Lumen, since the day when you grantedme that mysterious interview. During this period, unconsciously forthe inhabitants of eternal space, but most consciously for us dwellersupon the Earth, I have often raised my thoughts to the great problemsin which you have initiated me, and to the horizons developed beforemy mind's eye. Doubtless, also, since your departure from the Earthyou have made, through your observations and studies, great advanceupon a field of research more and more vast. Doubtless, also, you havenumberless marvels to declare to me, now that my intelligence is betterprepared to receive them. If I am worthy, and if I can comprehendthem, give me an account, Lumen, of the celestial voyages which havetransported your spirit into the higher spheres; of the unknown truthswhich they have revealed to you; of the grandeurs which they haveopened out to you, and of the principles they have taught you inreference to that mysterious subject, viz., the destiny of man, andother beings.

  LUMEN. I have prepared your mind, my dear old friend, to receivemarvellous impressions, such as no earthly spectacle ever has, or couldproduce. It is, nevertheless, necessary that you should keep yourunderstanding free from all earthly prejudice. That which I am going tounfold will astonish you, but receive it from the first with attentionas an undeniable truth, and not as a romance. This is the firstcondition that I demand from my earnest pupil. When you comprehend--andyou will comprehend, if you bring to the task a mathematical mindand an unprejudiced spirit--you will see that all the facts whichconstitute our ultra-terrestrial existence are not only possible, butalso real, and moreover, are in perfect harmony with our intellectualfaculties as already manifested upon the earth.

  QUAERENS. Be assured, Lumen, that I bring to you an open mind, clearedfrom all prejudice, and I am eagerly expecting to hear revelations suchas the human ear has never before heard.

  [Sidenote: Space and Light.]

  LUMEN. The events which will form the subject of this recital havenot only the Earth and its neighbouring stars for their subject, butthey will extend over immense fields of sidereal astronomy, and makeus acquainted with their marvels. Their explanation will be solved,as was that of former difficulties, by the study of _light_, a magicbridge thrown from one star to another, from the Earth to the Sun, fromthe Earth to the stars--of _light_, the universal movement which fillsspace, sustains worlds in their orbits, and constitutes the eternallife of nature. Take care, then, to keep ever in mind, the fact of the_successive transmission of light in space_.

  [Sidenote: Velocity of Light.]

  QUAERENS. I know that light, whatever it may be, is the agent by whichobjects are rendered visible to our eyes, that it is not transmittedinstantaneously from one point to another, but gradually, like allmotion. I know that it flies at the rate of 75,000 leagues a second,that it runs 750,000 leagues in ten seconds, and 4,500,000 each minute.I know that it takes more than eight minutes to cross the distance of37 millions of leagues which separate us from the Sun. Modern astronomyhas made these facts familiar.

  LUMEN. Do you perfectly realise its undulatory movement?

  [Sidenote: Undulatory movement of Sound.]

  QUAERENS. I think so. I compare it to that of sound, although it beaccomplished upon a scale incomparably more vast. By undulationfollowing undulation, sound is diffused in the air. When the bellspeal forth their sonorous sound, this is heard at the very moment whenthe clapper strikes the bell, by those living round the church, but isnot heard till one second after, by those living at a distance of 492yards; two seconds later by those at 765 yards; and three seconds laterstill, by those at a distance of 1093 yards from the church. Thus soundonly gradually reaches one village after another as far as it can go.

  In the same way light passes successively from one region in space toanother at a greater distance, and travels without being extinguishedinto the far-off realms of Infinity. If we could see from the Earthan event which is being accomplished upon the Moon; for instance, ifwe had sufficiently good instruments to perceive from here, a fruitfalling from a tree on the surface of the Moon, we should not see thefact at the _moment of its occurrence_, but one second and a quarter_after_, because light requires about that time to travel the distancefrom the Moon to the Earth. Similarly, could we see an event takingplace upon a world at ten times greater distance than the Moon, wecould not witness it until 13 seconds after it had really happened. Ifthis world were a hundred times farther off than the Moon, we couldnot see an event until 130 seconds after it had taken place; were it athousand times more distant, we should not see it until 1300 seconds,or 21 minutes 40 seconds had elapsed. And so on according to thedistance.

  [Sidenote: Time taken by Light in travelling from the Earth to the starCapella.]

  LUMEN. Exactly, and you are aware that the luminous ray sent to theEarth by the star _Capella_ takes seventy-two years in reaching it. Itfollows, therefore, that if we only receive the luminous ray to-day,which left its surface seventy-two years ago, the denizens of Capellasee only that which happened on the Earth seventy-two years ago. TheEarth reflects in space the light that it gets from the Sun, and froma distance, appears as brilliant as Venus and Jupiter appear to you,planets lighted by the same Sun that lights the Earth. The luminousaspect of the Earth, its photograph, journeys in space at the rate of75,000 leagues a second, and only reaches Capella after seventy-twoyears of incessant travel. I recall these elementary principles inorder that you may have them thoroughly fixed in your memory; youwill then be able to comprehend, without difficulty, the facts whichhave happened to me during my ultra-terrestrial life since our lastinterview.

  QUAERENS. These principles of optics are, to my mind, clearlyestablished. The day after your death in October 1864, when, asyou have confided to me, you found yourself rapidly transported toCapella, you were astonished to arrive there at the moment when thephilosophical astronomers of the country were observing the Earth inthe year 1793, and witnessing one of the most significant acts of theFrench Revolution. You were not less surprised to see yourself again asa child, running about in the streets of Paris. Then, leaving Capellaand coming nearer to the Earth, you arrived at the zone where that partof the terrestrial photography passed before your vision, which showedyou your infancy, and you saw yourself at six years of age, not inmemory, but in reality. Out of all your previous revelations, this isthe one I had the most difficulty in believing--I mean, in grasping itsmeaning.

  LUMEN. That which I now wish to make you comprehend is stranger still.But it was first necessary for you to admit that one, before I couldadequately reveal to you this one.

  [Sidenote: Retrospective survey of life on Earth.]

  On leaving Capella and approaching the Earth, I saw again myseventy-two years of earthly existence, my entire life such as it hadbeen, passed before me; for, in approaching the Earth, I passed throughsuccessive zones of earthly scenes, where I saw spread out as in ascroll the visible history of our planet, because in going back towardsthe Earth, I was continually meeting the various zones which carriedthrough space the visible history of our planet, comprising that ofParis as well as my own, for I was there. Taking thus in one day aretrospective survey of the road which it had taken light seventy-twoyears to traverse, I had reviewed my whole life in that one day, and Iperceived even my own interment.

  QUAERENS. It is as if, on returning from Capella to the Earth, you hadseen, as in a mirror, the seventy-two years of your life photographedyear by year. The one the farthest from the Earth, but which hadstarted the first, and was the oldest, showed events as they were in1793; the second, which left the Earth a year later, and had not yetreached Capella, contained those of 1794; the tenth, those of 1803;the thirty-sixth, having reached midway on the road, gave those of1829; the fiftieth, those of 1843; the seventy-first, those of 1864.

  LUMEN. It is impossible to have better grasped these facts, which seemso mysterious and incomprehensible at first sight. Now I can
recount toyou that which happened to me upon Capella, after having thus witnessedover again my existence on the Earth.

  I

  LUMEN. Whilst not very long ago (but I can no longer express that timeby earthly measurements), in a melancholy region of Capella, I wascontemplating the starry heavens at the beginning of a clear night,occupied in noting the star which is your earthly Sun, and near it thelittle azure planet, your Earth, I observed one of the scenes of mychildhood--my young mother seated in the midst of a garden, holdingan infant in her arms (my brother), having at her side a little girlof two summers (my sister), and a boy two years older (myself). I sawmyself at that age when man is not yet conscious of his intellectualexistence, though he bears even then upon his brow the germ of futurepromise. Whilst dreaming of this singular spectacle, which showed _me_myself at the entrance of my earthly career, I felt my attention drawnfrom your planet by a superior power, and directed towards anotherpoint in the heavens, which, even at that moment, seemed to be linkedwith the Earth and my career there, by some mysterious tie. I couldnot turn my gaze from this new point in the the heavens, my eyesbeing, as it were, chained to the spot by some magnetic power I wasunable to resist. Several times I endeavoured to withdraw my eyes, andto fix them on the Earth I love so well; but in vain, for I was everre-attracted to the same unknown star.

  [Sidenote: The star Gamma in Virgo.]

  [Sidenote: Life on the planet of Virgo.]

  This star, upon which my eyes sought instinctively to divine something,belongs to the constellation of _Virgo_, whose form varies slightly asseen from Capella. It is a double star, that is to say, an associationof two suns, one of a silvery whiteness, the other of a bright goldenyellow, which revolve round one another once in 175 years. This starcan be seen from the Earth with the naked eye, and its sign is theletter [Greek: g] (_Gamma_), in the constellation of Virgo. Aroundeach of the suns which form it there is a planetary system. My sightwas fixed upon one of the planets belonging to the golden sun. On thatplanet there are animals and vegetables as upon the Earth; their formsbear a similarity to earthly ones, although there is an essentialdifference in their organisms. Their animal kingdom is analogous toyours; they have fishes in the seas, quadrupeds in the air, in whichmen can fly without wings, by reason of the extreme density of theatmosphere. The men of this planet possess almost the same form asthose on the Earth, but no hair grows upon their heads, and they havethree large thin thumbs instead of five fingers on their hands, andthree great toes at the heel in place of soles to their feet, theextremities of their arms and legs being supple as india-rubber. Theyhave, nevertheless, two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, which give themtheir resemblance to earthly beings. They have not two ears, one oneach side of the head, but one only, in the shape of a cone, which isplaced on the upper part of the skull like a little hat.

  They live in societies and wear clothing. Thus, you see, in theirexterior they differ little from the inhabitants of the Earth.

  QUAERENS. Are there, then, in other worlds beings entirely distinct fromus, but who, notwithstanding their dissimilarities, can be comparedwith us?

  LUMEN. A distinction profound and unimaginable by you separates ingeneral the animal life of the different worlds. _These forms are theresult of elements special to each globe, and of the forces whichregulate them_: matter, density, weight, heat, light, electricity,atmosphere, &c., differ essentially on each globe. Even in the samesystem these forms differ.

  [Sidenote: The system of Gamma in Virgo.]

  Thus the men of Uranus and Mercury do not in any way resemble the menof the Earth; those who see them for the first time cannot perceivethat they possess either head, members, or senses. On the contrary,the forms of those in the planetary system of Virgo, towards which myattention was being persistently drawn, are nearly similar to thoseof the inhabitants of the Earth, whom they also resemble morallyand intellectually. Slightly inferior to ourselves, they belong tothat scale in the order of souls which immediately precedes that ofterrestrial humanity as a whole.

  QUAERENS.. Yet there is a wide divergence between human beingsthemselves in all that pertains both to intellect and morals. We inEurope differ greatly from the tribes of Abyssinia and from the savagesof the Oceanic Isles. What people do you take as a type of the highestdegree of intelligence on the Earth?

  [Sidenote: The Arabs and their intelligence.]

  LUMEN. The Arabs. They are capable of producing their Keplers, theirNewtons, their Galileos, their Archimedes, their Euclids, theirD'Alemberts. Besides, they sprang from those primitive hordes whoseroots reach down to the bed rock of humanity. But it is not necessaryto choose a people for a type. It is better to consider moderncivilisation as a whole. Nor is there so marked a distance as youappear to suppose, between the brain capacity of a negro and that ofthe Latin race.

  However, if you insist upon a comparison, I can assure you that themen of the planet of Virgo are almost on a par intellectually with theScandinavians.

  [Sidenote: Vital difference between Virgo and the Earth.]

  The most vital difference which exists between their world and theEarth, _is the absence of sex_. Neither plants, animals, nor humanbeings have sex. Generation is effected spontaneously, as the naturalresult of the union of certain physiological conditions in some ofthe fertile isles of this planet, man not being formed in the womb ofhis mother as upon earth. It would be useless to explain the process,to one whose earthly faculties prevent him comprehending the factsof a world distinctly different from his own. It results from thisorganic arrangement, that marriage in any form does not exist in thisworld, and that the friendships between human beings are never mixedwith the carnal desires, which are inevitably manifested on the Earthbetween people of different sexes, even when the attraction is mostpure. Probably you will remember that during the protozoic period, theinhabitants of the Earth were all deaf, dumb, and sexless. The divisioninto sexes took place much later in the history of Nature both amonganimals and plants.

  Being attracted towards this far-off planet I attentively examined itssurface with my spiritual sight, and I was specially drawn, withoutknowing the cause, to a white city, resembling from afar a regioncovered with snow; but it is improbable that it was snow, as it isunlikely that water can exist on that globe in the same physicaland chemical conditions as upon the Earth. Upon the borders of thiscity an avenue led to a neighbouring wood of yellow trees. I soonremarked three persons who seemed to be slowly sauntering towardsthis wood. This little group was formed of two friends, who were inclose conversation, and of a third, who differed from both by his redgarment and the burden he bore, and who was probably their servant,their slave, or some domestic animal. Whilst intently regarding the twoprincipal personages, I observed the one to the right raise his faceto the sky, as if some one had called him from a balloon, and turn hisgaze towards Capella, a star which, doubtless, he did not see, becausefor him it was then daylight. Oh, my old friend, I shall never forgetthe sudden surprise this sight gave me! I can still scarcely believethat I was not dreaming....

  This person on the planet of Virgo, who was looking towards me withoutknowing it, was.... Can I tell you? Well, it was _myself_!

  QUAERENS. How _yourself_?

  LUMEN. Yes, my very self. I recognised myself instantly, and you canjudge of my surprise!

  QUAERENS. Certainly I can. I cannot comprehend it at all.

  [Sidenote: Anterior existence]

  LUMEN. The fact is, the situation was so entirely novel that it demandsexplanation. It was in truth myself, and I was not long in findingout, not only that it was my former face and figure, but also that theperson walking by my side was my dear Kathleen, an intimate friend,and the companion of my studies upon that planet. My gaze followedthem as far as the Yellow Wood, across picturesque valleys, beneathgolden cupolas, under trees covered with large orange-tinted branches,and through hedges of elms with amber-coloured leaves. A purling brookbabbled on the fine sand, and we seated ourselves on its banks. Irecall sweet hours we have passed
together, the happy years which haveglided away in this far-off country, the fraternal confidences, andthe impressions we shared, in the midst of woodland scenes, of silentplains, of mist-covered hills, and of little lakes which smilinglyreflected the heavens. With aspirations raised towards all that wasgrand and sacred in nature, we adored God in His works. With what joyI saw again this phase of my previous existence, and riveted anew thegolden chain, whose links life on Earth had broken!

  In truth, dear Quaerens, it was my very self who then was living on thatplanet of Virgo. I really saw myself, and I could follow in sequencethe events of my life and the happiest moments of that existence, nowso far remote.

  Besides, if I had had any doubt of my identity, the uncertainty wouldhave ceased during my observation, for whilst pondering upon thematter, I saw Berthor--my brother during that existence--come out ofthe wood, approach us, and join in our conversation by the side of themurmuring brook.

  QUAERENS. Master, I fail still to comprehend how you could really seeyourself on that planet of Virgo. Were you then gifted with ubiquity?

  Could you, like Francis of Assisi or Apollonius of Tyana, be in twoplaces at the same time?

  [Sidenote: Scientific explanation of anterior life on Virgo.]

  LUMEN. Certainly not. But in examining the astronomical co-ordinates ofthe Sun Gamma in Virgo, and knowing its parallax as seen from Capella,I came to the conclusion that the light from this Sun could not employless than 172 years in traversing the distance which separates it fromCapella.

  I was then actually receiving the luminous ray which left that world172 years before. And it so happens that at that epoch I was absolutelyliving upon the planet of which we speak, and that I was then in mytwentieth year. In verifying these periods, and in comparing thedifferent planetary styles, I found, in fact, that I was born on theworld of Virgo in the year 45904 (which corresponds to the year1677 of the Christian era on Earth), and that I died--through anaccident--in the year 45913, which corresponds to the year 1767. Eachyear of this planet equals ten of yours. When I saw myself, as I havejust told you, I appeared to be about twenty years of age according toearthly reckoning, but following the way of reckoning on that planet,I was only two years old. There the age of fifteen years is oftenreached, which is considered the limit of life on that globe, and isequivalent to 150 years on the Earth.

  [Sidenote: Light takes 172 years to travel from Virgo to Capella.]

  The luminous ray, or, to speak more accurately, the aspect orphotograph of the world of Virgo, takes 172 earthly years to traversethe immense space which separates it from Capella; consequently, uponfinding myself upon this last star, I was receiving at that very momentthe image which left the constellation of Virgo 172 years previously.And although things have changed greatly, though generations havefollowed generations, though I died there myself, and have had time tobe born again and live seventy-two years on the Earth, neverthelesslight had taken all this time to cross the space which separates Virgofrom Capella, and was bringing afresh to me impressions of events longpassed away.

  QUAERENS. This duration of the passage of light being proved, I have notany objection to urge on this point, but I frankly own that to creditan experience of such amazing singularity, taxes my imagination beyondits just limits.

  [Sidenote: The history of each world is contained in the rays of light.]

  LUMEN. This is not any imagination, my old friend. It is a reality,eternal and sacred, holding its fixed place in the universal plan ofcreation. The light of every star, direct or reflected--say otherwise,the aspect of each Sun, and of each planet--is diffused in space,according to a rate of rapidity already known to you, and the luminousray contains in itself all that is visible. As nothing can be lost,the history of each world is contained in the light which incessantlyemanates from it in successive waves, eternally travelling intoinfinite space without any possibility of its being annihilated. True,the terrestrial eye cannot read it; but there are eyes immeasurablysuperior to your earthly ones.

  [Sidenote: Light is vibrations of ether; Sight, perceptions of thought.]

  I make use of the terms _sight_ and _light_, in these conversations,in order that you may comprehend me; but, as I told you in a previouscommunication, speaking absolutely, there is not such a thing as light,only vibrations of ether; neither is there any sight, only perceptionsof the mind. Moreover, even upon the Earth, when you examine the natureof a star with a telescope, or better still with a spectroscope, youwell know it is not its actual state you have before your eyes, butits past state, transmitted to you by a ray of light which left it,perhaps, ten thousand years ago. You know, besides, that a certainnumber of stars, of which your astronomers on the Earth are seekingto determine the physical and numerical properties, and which shinebrilliantly over your heads, have long ago ceased even to exist--mayindeed have ceased to exist since the beginning of your world.

  QUAERENS. We know this is so. Thus you have seen, unrolled before youreyes, your existence previous to the last one, 172 years after it hadflown by.

  LUMEN. Say rather one phase of this existence; but I could have beenable, and could now indeed review my entire life by going closer tothat planet, as I have already done for my terrestrial existence.

  Quaerens. So, through the medium of light, you have really seen againyour last two incarnations?

  LUMEN. Precisely; and what is more, I have seen them, and continue tosee them, _simultaneously_, side by side as it were of one another.

  QUAERENS. You see them again both at the _same time_?

  LUMEN. This fact is easily explained. The light from the Earth takesseventy-two years to reach Capella. The light from the planet of Virgo,being once and a half farther off than Capella, takes once and a halflonger time to travel, which would make it about 172 years. As I livedseventy-two years upon the Earth, and one hundred years before thatupon the other planet, these two periods reach me at precisely _thesame time_ upon Capella. Thus by simply looking at these two worlds, Ihave before me my last two existences, which unroll themselves as if Iwere not here to see them, and without my being able to change any ofthe acts that I see myself upon the point of accomplishing, either uponthe one or the other, since those acts, although present and future tomy actual observation, are in reality past.

  QUAERENS. This is indeed a strange experience!

  LUMEN. But what struck me most in this unexpected observation of two ofmy previous existences in two different worlds, thus unrolled beforeme, was the odd resemblance between these two lives. I found that I hadalmost the same tastes in the one as in the other, the same passions,the same errors. Nothing criminal, nothing saintly in either.

  [Sidenote: Explanation of inherent tastes.]

  Furthermore (extraordinary coincidence), I have witnessed scenes inthe first analogous to those I have seen upon the Earth. This explainsthe innate tastes I brought into the terrestrial world, for the poetryof the North, the poems of Ossian, the dreamy landscape of Ireland,for its mountains and its Aurora Borealis. For Scotland, Scandinavia,Sweden, Norway with its fiords, Spitzbergen with its solitudes--allalike attracted me. Old towers in ruins, rocks and wild ravines,sombre pines soughing with the northern winds--all these appealedto me on the Earth, and seemed to have some mysterious link with mydeepest thoughts. When I saw Ireland for the first time, I felt asif I had lived there before. When for the first time I ascended theRigi and the Finsteraarhorn, and saw the superb sunrise over the snowysummits of the Alps, it seemed as if I had previously seen all this.The spectre of the Brocken was not new, the reason being that I hadin a former life inhabited similar regions on the planet of Virgo.The same life, the same actions, the same circumstances, the sameconditions--analogies, analogies! Almost all that I have seen, done,thought on the Earth, I had already seen, done, thought a hundred yearsbefore upon that anterior world. I had always suspected it! Taking italtogether, however, my terrestrial life as a whole was superior to theone preceding it. Each child in coming into the world brings with himdifferent facultie
s, special predispositions, innate dissimilarities,which no one denies, and can only be explained to the philosophicalmind,--or in view of eternal Justice,--by the supposition of workspreviously accomplished by free souls.

  But though my terrestrial life was superior to its anterior one,evincing, as it did, a more accurate and profound knowledge of thesystem of the World, it yet lacked, I am bound to state, the possessionof certain moral and physical qualities which belonged to me in myformer existence.

  On the other hand, I had faculties on that World which I had not hadupon the Earth. I may cite one specially, that of flying.

  [Sidenote: Flying without wings.]

  I see that on the planet of Virgo I could fly, just as easily as walk,and this without either aeronautic apparatus or wings, by simplystretching my arms and legs, as if I were swimming in the water. Onclosely examining the mode of locomotion in use on that planet, I seeclearly that I have (or rather had) neither wings, balloon, nor anykind of mechanical appliance. At a given moment I spring from theground by a vigorous leap, and, spreading out my arms, sail in the airwithout fatigue. At other times, descending a steep mountain on foot, Ispring out into space, with feet pressed together, and float at will,with a slow and oblique motion, to any point I wish, standing uprightas soon as my feet touch the ground.

  [Sidenote: Dreams bring reminiscences of a former existence.]

  Then again, when I wish to do so, I fly slowly in the manner of adove which describes a curve in returning to its dovecot. All this Idistinctly see myself doing in this world. Not once, but a hundred,a thousand times have I thus felt myself transported in my dreamson Earth softly, naturally, and without apparatus. How can suchimpossibilities so often present themselves to us in our dreams?Nothing can explain them, for nothing analogous exists upon thisearthly globe. Obeying instinctively this innate tendency, I havefrequently soared into the atmosphere suspended from the car of aballoon, but the sensation is not the same; _one does not feel one'sself_ flying; on the contrary, one has the feeling of being stationary.

  I now have the key to my dreams. During the slumber of my terrestrialsenses my soul had reminiscences of its anterior existence.

  QUAERENS. But I also often feel, and see myself flying in dreams inprecisely the way you describe, without wings or machinery, and simplyby an effort of will. Is this, then, a proof that I also have livedupon the planet of Virgo?

  LUMEN. I do not know. If you had abnormal sight, or instruments,or eyes sufficiently piercing, you could see this planet from yourglobe, examine its surface, and if, perchance, you had existed therewhen it parted with the luminous rays which have actually reached theEarth, you might perhaps find yourself again there. But your eyes aretoo feeble to make a like research. Besides, it does not follow thatbecause you have been able to fly, that therefore you have lived inthat world. There are a considerable number of worlds where flyingis the normal condition, and where all the human race possess thisfaculty. In reality, there are but few planets where the livingcreatures crawl as upon the Earth.

  [Sidenote: Plurality of existences.]

  QUAERENS. The conclusion resulting then from your experience is, thatyou have had a life anterior to that upon the Earth. Do you, then,believe in a plurality of existences for the soul?

  LUMEN. You forget that you speak to a disembodied spirit. I ought tobe well fitted to give such evidence, having before me both my earthlylife and my anterior life upon the planet of Virgo. Besides, I canrecall many other existences.

  QUAERENS. Ah! that is precisely what I lack in order to possess asimilar conviction. I can recall absolutely nothing that preceded mybirth into this world.

  [Sidenote: The soul's memory.]

  LUMEN. You are yet in the flesh; you must wait for freedom from earthlyfetters before you can recall your spiritual life. The soul hasonly full remembrance, full possession of itself in its normal, itscelestial life; that is to say, between its incarnations. It then seesnot only its life on the Earth, but all its anterior lives.

  How could a soul, enveloped in the gross materialities of the flesh,and fixed there for a transitory work, recall its spiritual life? Wouldnot such a remembrance even prove hurtful? What trammels would not beput upon the soul's liberty of action, could it see its life from thebeginning to the end?

  Where would be the merit of striving if one's destiny could be foreseen?

  Souls incarnated upon the Earth have not yet attained to a sufficientlyelevated state of advancement, for the memory of their anterior life tobe of use to them.

  [Sidenote: Man is oblivious of anterior impressions, as in thebutterfly.]

  The permanence of the anterior impressions of the soul is notmanifested in this world of passage. The caterpillar does not rememberits rudimentary existence in the egg. The sleeping chrysalis cannotrecall the days it spent in work when it crawled upon the herbage. Thebutterfly, which flits from flower to flower, has not any memory of thetime when its cocoon dreamed, as it hung suspended from its web; norof the twilight, when its larvae trailed from plant to plant; nor ofthe night, when it was buried like a nut in its shell. This does notalter the fact that the egg, the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and thebutterfly, are one and the same being.

  In certain cases, even of terrestrial life, you have remarkableexamples of forgetfulness, such as that of somnambulism, either naturalor artificial, and also in certain psychical conditions of which modernscience makes a study. Hence it is not surprising that during oneexistence we should not remember our anterior ones. Uranic life andplanetary life represent two states, free and distinct the one from theother.

  QUAERENS. Still, master, if we had already lived a life before thisone, something of it would remain with us, otherwise these anteriorexistences might as well never have been.

  [Sidenote: Heredity.]

  [Sidenote: Dissimilarities.]

  _Lumen._ Do you, then, call it nothing to be born on the Earth withinnate tendencies? Such a thing as intellectual heredity does notexist. Take two children of the same parentage, receiving identicallythe same education, surrounded by the same care, and having in everyrespect similar environments. Now examine each of them. Are they equal?Not in any way; equality of souls does not exist. The one is born withpacific instincts and great intelligence. He will be good, learned,wise, illustrious perchance, amid the thinkers of his age. The otherone brings with him a domineering, envious perhaps, or even a brutalinstinct. His career defines and accentuates itself as each yearpasses, and will lead him eventually to high rank in military life, andwill give him the honour (little to be coveted, though still admiredupon the Earth) which is attached to the title of an official assassin.

  Whether feebly or strongly pronounced, this dissimilarity of character,which depends neither upon family, nor upon race, nor upon education,nor upon material conditions, is manifest in every man. Reflect uponthis at your leisure; you will arrive at the conviction that it isabsolutely inexplicable, and can only be accounted for by belief in ananterior life of the soul.

  [Sidenote: Creation of the soul.]

  _Quaerens._ Have not most philosophers and theologians taught that thesoul and the body are created at one and the same time?

  _Lumen._ And which, pray, is the precise moment of its creation? Isit at the moment of birth? Legislation, enlightened by anatomicalphysiology, knows that a child lives before being delivered from itsuterine prison, therefore the destruction of an embryo of eight monthsis regarded as murder. At what period do you then suppose, that thesoul appears in the fluid brain of the foetus or of the embryo?

  _Quaerens._ It was thought in olden times that the real spiritualquickening of the human being took place during the sixth week ofgestation, but the modern belief is that it occurs at the moment ofconception.

  _Lumen._ Oh, bitter mockery! In accordance with this view you wouldhave the eternal designs of the Creator dependent in their executionupon capricious desires, upon the intermittent flames of two amoroushearts! You would dare to admit that our immortal being is created byth
e physical contact of two human beings! You would be disposed tobelieve that the Divine Head which governs the worlds, is influenced byintrigue, by passion, even by crime! You would think that the number ofsouls depends upon the number of flowers impregnated by the touch ofthe sweet pollen dust borne to them on golden wings?

  Is not such a doctrine, such a supposition, an outrage upon the Divinedignity and the spiritual grandeur of the soul itself? And would itnot, besides, be the complete materialisation of our intellectualfaculties?

  _Quaerens._ And yet----

  _Lumen._ Yes; that seems so to you, because upon your planet no soulcan incarnate itself otherwise than in a human embryo. It is a law oflife on the Earth. But you must look through the veil. The soul is notan effect. The body serves it only as its garment.

  QUAERENS. I admit that it would indeed be singular that an event of suchdire importance as the _creation_ of an immortal soul should springfrom a carnal cause, should be the result of casual unions, more orless legitimate. Also, I agree with you that organic causes do notexplain the different degrees of capacity with which mankind is borninto this world.

  But I ask, of what use would be these various existences if, onbeginning a new life, we retain no remembrance of those that precedeit? Also, if it is really desirable to have in prospect a journeywithout end through endless worlds, and an eternal transmigration?For at last there must be an end to it all, and, after many aeons ofvoyages, we must some day finish our existence and seek repose. Wouldit not be as well to do so after one existence only?

  [Sidenote: The unknown.]

  LUMEN. O men! You do not comprehend either time or space. Do you notknow that outside the movement of the stars time no longer exists,and that eternity is no longer measured? Do you not know that in theinfinite extent of the sidereal universe space is but a vain word, nolonger measurable? You ignore all; principles, causes, all escape you:atoms upon a movable atom, you have not any exact appreciation of theuniverse; and yet, despite ignorance so dense, and comprehension soobscure, you would attempt to judge all, to envelop all, to seize all!But it would be easier to put the ocean into a nutshell than it wouldbe to make you, with your terrestrial brain, understand the law ofdestiny.

  [Sidenote: Nothing created, nothing annihilated.]

  Can you not, then, by making a legitimate use of the faculty ofinduction which has been given you, gather the direct consequencesresulting from observation supported by reason? Observation, sustainedby proof, shows conclusively that all are not equal on coming into thisworld; that the past is not unlike the future; and that the eternitywhich is before us is equally behind us; that nothing is created innature, and that nothing is annihilated; that nature includes allthings existing, and that God, spirit, law, number, are no more outsidenature than matter, weight, motion; that moral truth, justice, wisdom,virtue, exist in the progress of the world as surely as its physicalreality; that justice decrees equity in the distribution of itsdestinies; that our destinies are not accomplished upon this earthlyplanet; that the empyrean heaven does not exist, and that the Earth isa star in the sky; that other inhabited planets soar with ours in thevast expanse; opening out to the wings of the soul an inexhaustiblefield of vision, and that the infinite in the universe corresponds, inthe material creation, with the eternity of our intelligence in thespiritual creation.

  [Sidenote: Unknown forces in nature.]

  [Sidenote: Affinities.]

  Are not certainties such as these, followed by the inductions withwhich they inspire us, sufficient to liberate your mind from ancientprejudices, and to open out, to an enlightened judgment, a panoramaworthy of the vague yet profound desires of our souls? I couldillustrate this general sketch by examples and details which wouldsurprise you still more. Let it suffice for me to add that there are innature other forces than those you know, which, both in essence and inmode of action, differ from electricity, attraction, light, &c. Now,among these natural and unknown forces there is one in particular,the study of which will ultimately lead to singular discoveries inelucidating the problems of the soul and of life. This is the psychicforce. This invisible fluidic force establishes a mysterious bond,unknown to themselves, between living beings, and already in manycases you have been able to recognise its existence. Take the case oftwo beings _in love_ (as the saying is). It seems impossible for themto live apart. Should circumstances lead to their being separated, ourtwo lovers become absent-minded, and their souls as it were leave theirbodies, and span any distance which prevents them re-uniting with oneanother. The thoughts of the one are shared by the other, and they livetogether despite their separation.

  Should any misfortune touch one, the other becomes immediatelyconscious of it; and such separations have been known to end in death.How many facts have been stated by trustworthy witnesses of the suddenapparition of a person to an intimate friend, of a wife to a husband,of a mother to a son, and _vice versa_, just at the moment of death,even though many leagues might separate them! The most captious criticcannot in these days deny facts thus circumstantially proved. Twinchildren living ten leagues apart, and under very different conditions,are stricken at the same time with the same malady, or if one isexcessively fatigued, the other feels the same without apparently anyassignable cause. And so on. These facts prove that ties of sympathyexist between souls and even between bodies, and give room for therepeated reflection, that we are far from knowing all the forcesoperating in nature.

  If I communicate these views to you, my friend, it is chiefly to showthat you can not only have a foretaste of truth before death, butalso that earthly existence is not so entirely deprived of light, asto prevent one's reason recognising the chief characteristics of themoral world. Besides, all these truths will be emphasised by my furthernarration, when you learn that it is not only the previous existencebefore my last one that I have seen again, thanks to the slowness oflight, but also my ante-penultimate planetary life, inclusive of morethan ten existences preceding that one in which we came to know eachother upon this Earth.

  II

  [Sidenote: Plurality of lives.]

  QUAERENS. Reflection and study had already inclined me, Lumen, tobelieve in the plurality of the existences of the soul. Yet thisdoctrine lacks proofs, logical, moral, and even physical, as numerousand as weighty as are those in favour of the plurality of the inhabitedworlds. I own that until now I had grave doubts on the subject. Modernoptics and marvellous calculations, which enable us to touch, as itwere, the other worlds, show us their years, their seasons, their days,and make us acquainted with the varieties of nature living on theirsurface. All these elements have enabled contemporaneous astronomy toestablish the fact of human existence in the other worlds on a strongand imperishable foundation. But I repeat that it is not so withpalingenesis, though I am strongly inclined towards the doctrine ofthe transmigration of souls in the actual heaven, since this is theonly way by which we can gain an idea of eternal life. My desires,however, need to be sustained by the help of a light, and inspired by aconfidence I do not yet possess.

  LUMEN. It is precisely this light which we have under consideration,and will be brought out by this interview.

  I have, I own, an advantage over you, since I speak _de visu_, andthat I strictly limit myself to interpret with exactitude the eventswith which my spiritual life is actually woven. But since you can seethe possibility and probability of the scientific explanation of mystatement, you cannot fail as you listen to increase your light andaugment your knowledge.

  QUAERENS. It is for this cause chiefly that I am always eager to hearyou.

  LUMEN. Light, you understand, is the means of giving to thedisincarnated soul _a direct vision_ of its planetary existences.

  [Sidenote: Constellations.]

  After having reviewed my earthly existence, I saw once more my lifeprevious to my last one, upon one of the planets of Gamma in Virgo,light bringing to me the former only after 72 years, and the latterafter 172 years. I see myself at present from Capella as I was upon theearth 72 years a
go, and as I was upon Virgo 172 years ago. Thus twoexistences, both _past and successive_, are here shown me as _presentand simultaneous_, by virtue of the laws of light which transmit themto me.

  [Sidenote: Andromeda.]

  [Sidenote: Effects of perspective.]

  Nearly five hundred years ago, I lived upon a world whose astronomicalposition as seen from the earth is precisely that of the left breastof Andromeda. Assuredly the inhabitants of that world do not suspectthat the denizens of a little planet in space have joined the starsby fictitious lines, tracing figures of men, women, animals, anddivers objects, incorporating all the stars in figures more or lessoriginal, in order to give them a name. It would greatly astonishsome of these planetary people if they were told, that upon theEarth certain stars bear the names of Heart-of-the-Scorpion (what aheart!), Head-of-the-Dog, Tail-of-the-Great-Bear, Eye-of-the-Bull,Neck-of-the-Dragon, Brow-of-Capricorn. You are, of course, aware thatneither the constellations drawn upon the celestial globe, nor theposition of the stars upon that globe, are either real or absolute, butare only the result of the position of the Earth in space, and thus aresimply a question of _perspective_. Go to the top of a mountain andfix upon a map the respective positions of all the summits surroundingyou in that circular panorama, its hills, its valleys, its villages,its lakes; a map so constructed could only serve for the place fromwhence it was drawn. Now transport yourself ten miles farther; the samesummits are visible, but their respective positions in regard to eachother are different, resulting from the change in perspective. Thepanorama of the Alps and of the Oberland, as seen from Lucerne, andPilatus does not in the least resemble that seen from the Fulkhorn,or from the Schynige Platte above Interlaken. Yet these are the samesummits and the same lakes. It is exactly so with the stars. The sameaspect is seen both from the star Delta in Andromeda and from theEarth; but there is not a constellation that can be recognised, becauseall the celestial perspectives have changed; stars of the firstmagnitude have become of the second and of the third; whilst others, oflesser magnitudes, seen nearer, shine with increased brilliancy; and,above all, the respective situation of the stars as regards one anotherhas completely changed in consequence of the different position of thatstar and of the Earth.

  QUAERENS. Therefore the appearance of the constellation which one has solong believed to be ineffaceably traced upon the vaulted sky is onlydue to perspective. In changing our position we change our perspective,and our sky is no longer the same. But, then, ought we not to have achange of celestial perspective every six months, since during thisinterval the Earth has greatly altered its position, having removedto a distance of seventy-four millions of leagues from the place itformerly occupied?

  LUMEN. This objection proves that you have perfectly comprehended theprinciple of the deformation of the constellations as one moves in anydirection in space.

  It would be, as you suppose, if the Earth's orbit were of a dimensionsufficiently vast for the two opposite points of this orbit to changethe view of this celestial scenery.

  QUAERENS. Seventy-four millions of leagues--

  LUMEN. Are as nothing in the order of celestial distances, and canno more affect the perspectives of the stars, than taking a step inthe cupola of the Pantheon would change the apparent position of thebuildings in Paris to the eye of the observer.

  [Sidenote: The charts of the Middle Ages.]

  QUAERENS. Certain charts of the Middle Ages represent the Zodiac asan arch in the heavens, and place some of the constellations, suchas Andromeda, the Lyre, Cassiopea, and the Eagle, in the same regionas the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Thrones. That, therefore, wassimply fancy, since constellations have no real existence, but aresimply appearances due to perspective.

  LUMEN. Certainly the old heaven of theology has no legitimate placeto-day, and simple common sense shows that it does not exist. Twotruths cannot oppose one another; it is a necessity that the spiritualheaven should accord with the physical heaven, and the object of myvarious conversations is the demonstration of this truth. Upon theworld of Andromeda of which I speak, there is nothing resemblingthe constellation of Andromeda. Seen from the Earth, those starswhich appear joined and have served on the celestial landscape todistinguish the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopea, are in realityspread out in space at all sorts of distances, and in every direction.One cannot find either there or elsewhere the least vestige of thetracings of terrestrial mythology.

  [Sidenote: The poetry of the heavens lost.]

  QUAERENS. All its poetry is lost.... I shall feel, however, a certainsatisfaction in believing that for a part of my life I have restedon the bosom of Andromeda. It is a pleasant fancy. There is in it amythological perfume and a comforting sensation. I should like to betransported there without fear of the monster, and without solicitudefor the young Perseus bearing the head of the Medusa, and mounted onhis famous Pegasus. But now, thanks to the scalpel of science, there isno longer an unveiled princess bound to a rock on the sea-shore, nor avirgin holding an ear of golden corn, nor Orion pursuing the Pleiades;Venus has vanished from our evening sky, and old Saturn has let fallhis scythe in the night. Science has caused these ancient myths todisappear! I regret its progress.

  [Sidenote: The facts of astronomy grander than its fancies.]

  LUMEN. Do you, then, prefer illusion to reality? Do you not knowthat truth is immeasurably more beautiful, grander, and infinitelymore marvellous than error, however that may be embellished? Whatcan be comparable in all the mythologies past and present, to therapt scientific contemplation of celestial grandeurs and the sublimemovements of nature? What impression can strike the soul moreprofoundly than _the fact_ of the expanse crowded with worlds, and theimmensity of the sidereal systems? What voice is more eloquent thanthe silence of a star-lit night? What wild flight of imagination couldconceive an image surpassing that, of the interstellar voyage of light,stamping with the seal of eternity the transitory events of the life ofeach world?

  Throw off, then, my friend, your old errors and become worthy of themajesty of science. Listen to what follows:--

  [Sidenote: Description of the world of Andromeda.]

  [Sidenote: The elements.]

  By reason of the time light employs in coming from the system [Greek:d] of Andromeda to Capella, I have seen again, in this year of 1869,my ante-penultimate existence, already ended five hundred years ago.That world is very singular according to our ideas. It has only onekingdom on its surface, and that the animal kingdom. The vegetablekingdom does not exist there. But that animal kingdom is very differentfrom ours, and of a superior kind, although it is endowed with fivesenses similar to those on the Earth. It is a world without sleep andwithout fixity. It is entirely enveloped in a rose-coloured ocean,less dense than terrestrial water, and more dense than our atmosphere.It is a substance holding a middle place as a fluid, between air andwater. Terrestrial chemistry does not produce any similar substance,therefore it would be in vain to try and represent it to you. Carbolicacid gas that can be held invisible at the bottom of a glass, and canbe poured out like water, will give you the nearest idea of it. Thisis due to a fixed quantity of heat and electricity held in permanenceupon that globe. You are aware that the composition of all things uponthe Earth, whether mineral, vegetable, or animal, is in three states,solid, liquid, and gaseous, and that the sole cause of these differentconditions is the heat radiated from the Sun upon the surface of theEarth. The interior heat of the globe has now hardly any appreciableeffect upon its surface.

  [Sidenote: Degree of heat fixes the condition of matter.]

  [Sidenote: Effect of the Earth flying off at a tangent.]

  Less solar heat would liquefy gases and solidify liquids. Greater heatwould dissolve solids and evaporate liquids. A more or less quantityof heat would produce liquid air (yes, liquid air), and marble wouldbe turned into gas. If by any cause whatever the earthly planet wereone day to fly off from its orbit at a tangent, and rush away into theglacial obscurity of space, you would see all the water on the Earthbeco
me solid, and gases in their turn become liquids; then as to solidsthemselves ... you would see! No, you could not see this by remainingupon the Earth, but you could from the depths of space witness thiscurious spectacle, should your globe ever indulge in the freak ofescaping from its orbit at a tangent. And note further, that shouldthis colossal cold ever take place suddenly, all creatures would findthemselves immediately frozen on the spot, and the globe would carryinto space the singular panorama of the whole human race, and everyanimal immovably congealed for all eternity, in the various attitudesassumed by each individual and each creature, at the moment of thecatastrophe.

  [Sidenote: Worlds in a glacial state. Life arrested.]

  [Sidenote: The awakening out of glacial repose.]

  There are worlds now in this state. They are eccentric worlds,the life of whose inhabitants has been insensibly arrested by therapid flight of their planet away from the Sun, and they have beentransformed into millions of statues. Most of them are lying downasleep, seeing that this profound change of temperature takes manydays in its accomplishment. There they are by millions, pell-mell,dead, or, to be more accurate, sunk in a complete lethargy. The coldpreserves them. Three or four thousand years later, when the planetreturns from its dark and frozen aphelion to its brilliant perihelion,towards the sun--whose fertilising heat caressing its surface withwelcoming rays will rapidly increase--and when it has reached thedegree which betokens the normal temperature of these beings, they willbe resuscitated at the age at which they were when overtaken by sleep;they will take up their affairs from the moment of their interruption(long interruption indeed!) without any consciousness that they hadslept a dreamless sleep for so many ages. One may see some continuinga game, or finishing a phrase whose first words have been uttered fourthousand years ago. All this is perfectly simple, for we have seen thattime does not in reality exist. This, on a large scale, is exactlywhat passes on a small one on the Earth when you revive infusoria,which take a fresh lease of life under the rain, after several years ofapparent death.

  [Sidenote: World of Andromeda.]

  But to return to our world of Andromeda; the rose-coloured andquasi-liquid atmosphere, surrounding it entirely as an ocean withoutislands, is the abode of living beings, who are perpetually floating inthe depths of that ocean which none have ever sounded: from their birthto their death they have not one moment's repose. Incessant activity isthe condition of their existence. Should they become stationary theywould perish. In order to breathe, that is to say, to enable this fluidelement to penetrate to their bosom, they are constrained to keep theirtentacles in unceasing motion, and their lungs (I use this word thebetter to be understood) constantly open.

  [Sidenote: Process of nourishment.]

  The external form of this human race resembles that of the sirensof antiquity, but is less elegant, and their organism approachesthat of the seal. Do you see the essential difference between theirconstitution and that of terrestrial man? It is that _on the Earth webreathe without being conscious of the act_, and obtain oxygen withoutexertion, not being compelled with difficulty to convert venous intoarterial blood by the absorption of oxygen. Upon this other world, onthe contrary, this nourishment _is only obtained with labour_ and atthe price of incessant effort.

  QUAERENS. Then this world is inferior to ours in the scale of progress?

  LUMEN. Without any doubt, seeing that I inhabited it before comingupon the Earth. But do not think that the Earth is much superior byreason of our being able to breathe whilst we are asleep. Doubtless, itis a great advantage to be furnished with a pneumatic mechanism, whichopens involuntarily every time that our organism needs the least breathof air, and which acts automatically and unceasingly night and day. Butman does not live on air alone; his earthly organism requires to benourished with something more solid, and this solid something does notcome to him involuntarily as does air.

  [Sidenote: Labour of life on the Earth.]

  What is the result? Look for a moment at the Earth. See what sorrow,what desolation! What a world of misery and brutality! Multitudes boweddown with bent backs to the soil, which they dig with toil and pain,that they may gain their daily bread! All these heads bent down to thegrossness of matter, in place of being raised up to the contemplationof nature! All these efforts and these labours, bringing in their wakefeebleness and disease! All this traffic to amass a little gold at theexpense of others! Man taking advantage of his brother man! Castes,aristocracies, robbery and ruin, ambitions, thrones, wars! In a word,_personal interests_, always selfish, often sordid, and the reign ofmatter over mind. Such is the normal state of the Earth, a conditionforced by the law which rules over your bodies, compelling you to killin order to live, and to prefer the possession of material goods thatcannot be earned beyond the grave, to the possession of intellectualgifts, which the soul can keep as a rich and inalienable possession.

  QUAERENS. You speak, master, as if you thought it were possible to livewithout eating.

  LUMEN. Do you, then, believe that the beings of every world in spaceare subject to an operation so ridiculous as this? Happily, in many ofthe worlds, the spirit is not subjected to such ignominy.

  [Sidenote: Atmospheric nutrition.]

  It is not so difficult as you may suppose, on first thoughts, tobelieve in the possibility of atmospheric nutriment. The maintenance oflife among man and the animals depends upon two causes, respiration andnutrition. The first is found naturally in the atmosphere; the secondis derived from nourishment. Nutrition produces blood; from the bloodcome the tissues, the muscles, the bones, the cartilages, the flesh,the brain, the nerves, in a word, the organic constituents of thebody. The oxygen we breathe can itself be considered as a nutritivesubstance, inasmuch as it combines with the principal aliments absorbedby the stomach, and completes the formation of the blood and thedevelopment of the tissues.

  [Sidenote: The process of alimentation.]

  Now, to imagine nutrition passing entirely into the domain of theatmosphere, it is only necessary to observe that, as a whole, acomplete aliment is made up of albumen, of sugar, of fat, and ofsalt, and to imagine also that an atmospheric fluid, in place ofbeing composed of azote and of oxygen only, should be formed of thesedifferent substances in a gaseous state. These aliments are found inthe solids that you absorb; digestion is the function which separatesthem, and which causes them to assimilate with the organs to which theybelong. When, for example, you eat a morsel of bread, you introduceinto your stomach a grain of starch, a substance insoluble in water,and which is not found in the blood. The saliva, and the pancreaticjuice, transform the insoluble starch into soluble sugar. The bile,the pancreatic juice, and the intestinal secretions, change the sugarinto fat. Both sugar and fat are present in the blood, and it is bythe processes of alimentation that substances are separated andassimilated in your body.

  It astonishes you, my friend, that after living five years--accordingto terrestrial reckoning--in the celestial world, I can remember allthese material terms, and condescend to make use of them. But thememories that I have brought from the Earth are still vivid, and as wespeak on this occasion on a question of organic physiology, I do notfeel ashamed of calling things by their own names.

  If, then, we suppose that in place of being combined or mixed in theconstitution of bodies, solid or liquid, these aliments could be foundin a gaseous state in the composition of the atmosphere, we shouldcreate by this means nutritive atmospheres, which would dispense withdigestion and its attendant coarse and humiliating functions.

  That which man is capable of imagining in the restricted sphere of hisobservation, Nature has put in practice in more than one spot of theuniverse.

  Besides, I can assure you that when one has ceased to be accustomedto this material process of the introduction of nourishment into thedigestive tube, one cannot avoid being impressed with its coarseness.This was the reflection I made a few days ago whilst observing one ofthe richest countries on your planet. I was struck by the suave andangelic beauty of a maiden, recl
ining in a gondola as it floated gentlyon the blue waters of the Bosphorus before Constantinople. Red velvetcushions, embroidered with brilliant silks, whose heavy tassels of goldtouched the water, formed the divan of this young Circassian. Beforeher knelt a little black slave playing upon some stringed instrument.Her form was so juvenile and graceful, her bended arm so elegant, hereyes so pure and innocent, her pensive brow so calm under the light ofheaven, that for an instant I was captivated by a kind of retrospectiveadmiration for this masterpiece of living nature.

  Well! while this pure vision of awakening youth, sweet as a floweropening its petals to the sun's rays, held me in a kind of passingenchantment, the bark reached the landing-stage, and the maiden,leaning on a slave, seated herself on a couch near a well-spread table,around which others had already gathered. She began to eat! Yes! fornear an hour _she was eating_!

  I could scarcely tolerate the earthly recollections recalled by thisridiculous spectacle. To see a being like that partaking of foodthrough the mouth, and making her charming body the receptacle for Ido not know what substances! What vulgarity! Masticating morsels ofsome kind of animal which her pearly teeth did not disdain to chew,and again fragments of another animal which her virginal lips openedwithout hesitation to receive and swallow! What a diet: a medley ofingredients drawn from cattle, or from deer, which have lived in themire and afterwards been slaughtered. Horror! I turned away withsadness from this strange contrast, and directed my gaze to the systemof Saturn, where humanity need not stoop to such necessities.

  [Sidenote: Victims to the struggle for existence.]

  The floating beings belonging to the world of Andromeda, where myantepenultimate existence was passed, are submitted to a still moredegrading manner of sustaining life than are the inhabitants of theEarth. They have not the advantage of finding three parts of theirnutriment supplied by the air, as is the case on your globe: theymust work to obtain what may be called their oxygen, and, withoutceasing, they are condemned to use their lungs in order to prepare thenutritious air they need, without sleeping, and without ever feelingsatisfied, because, despite their incessant toil, they cannot absorbmore than a small quantity at a time. Thus they pass their entire life,and finally die victims to the struggle for existence.

  QUAERENS. Better far never to have been born! But does not the samereflection apply to the Earth?

  What is the use of being born, to weary one's self with endless workand worry, to turn in the same daily treadmill for sixty or a hundredyears; to sleep, to eat, to work, to speak, to run, to err, to agitate,to dream, _ad infinitum_? Of what use is all this? Would not one bejust as advanced if one were extinguished the day after birth, or,better still, if one did not take the trouble to come into the world?Nature would not go on in any worse fashion, and even if it did, no onewould be the wiser. And one might ask, of what use is Nature herself,and why does the universe exist at all?

  [Sidenote: Humanity in Andromeda.]

  [Sidenote: Humanity.]

  LUMEN. That is the great mystery. Yet must all destinies beaccomplished. The world of Andromeda is decidedly an inferior one. Togive you an idea of the poor mental calibre of its inhabitants, I willcite two examples, selecting the subjects of religion and politics, asthese are generally the best criterions of the value of a people. Inreligion, in place of seeking for God in nature, and of basing theirjudgment on science, instead of aspiring to the truth, and of usingtheir eyes to see and their reason to comprehend--in a word, in placeof establishing the foundations of their philosophy upon knowledgeas exact as possible of the order which governs the world--they aredivided into sects, who are voluntarily blind, and believe they renderhomage to their pretended God by ceasing to reason, and think theyadore Him, in maintaining that their anthill is unique in space; byreciting phrases and in injuring other sects, and alas! by blessingswords, and burnings at the stake, and in authorising massacres andwars. Their doctrines contain assertions which seem expressly imaginedto outrage common sense. These are precisely those which constitute thearticles of their faith and belief!

  They are stupid in politics. The most intelligent and pure-minded donot understand each other. Therefore the Republic seems to be a formof government which cannot be realised. Tracing the annals of theirhistory as far back as possible, one sees a people, cowardly andindifferent, deliberately choosing, rather than govern themselves, tobe led by an individual claiming to be their Basileus, their king.This chief deprives them of three-fourths of their resources, keepingfor himself and his, the atmosphere containing the greatest amount ofrose-essence--that is to say, that he keeps the best in the land forhis own use; he numbers his subjects, and from time to time sends themto fight with neighbouring peoples, who, like themselves, are subjectto a similar Basileus.

  Marshalling them like shoals of herrings, he directs them on eitherside towards the field of battle, which they call the _field ofhonour_, they then destroy one another like furious fools, withoutknowing why, and without, for that matter, the power to comprehend, asthey do not even speak the same language.

  And do you imagine that those who, most favoured by chance, live toreturn, feel any hatred against their Basileus?

  Nothing of the kind. The remnant of the army who live to see theirhomes again, think nothing more natural than to celebrate theirthanksgivings in company with the dignitaries of their sects,supplicating their God to grant long life to, and to pour blessingsupon, the worthy man whom they designate their father and king.

  [Sidenote: Organisation of the beings on Andromeda.]

  QUAERENS. I gather from this narration, that the inhabitants of DeltaAndromeda are, both physically and intellectually, greatly ourinferiors, for upon the Earth we do not regulate our affairs in thismanner.... In short, upon their globe there is only one living kingdom,and that a mobile one, without repose, without sleep, kept in perpetualagitation by reason of an inexorable fate. A world like this strikes meas being very fantastic.

  LUMEN. What, then, would you say of the one I inhabited fifteencenturies ago? A world also containing only one kingdom, and that nota movable one, but, on the contrary, as fixed as is your vegetablekingdom?

  QUAERENS. How! Animals and men held down by roots?

  III

  [Sidenote: Organisation of beings on Andromeda.]

  LUMEN. My existence anterior to that upon the world of Andromeda waspassed upon Venus, a planet near to the Earth, where I can remembermyself as a woman. Not that I have directly seen myself there, for,according to the law of light, it would require the same length of timeto travel from Venus to Capella as it would from the Earth to Capella,and I consequently see Venus only as it was seventy-two years ago,and not as it was nine hundred years ago, which was the epoch of myexistence upon that planet.

  My fourth life, previous to my terrestrial one, was passed upon animmense annular planet belonging to the constellation Cygnus, situatedin the zone of the Milky Way. This singular world is inhabited solelyby trees.

  QUAERENS. That is to say, that so far only plants are there, and neitheranimals nor intelligent speaking beings?

  LUMEN. Not exactly. There are only plants there, it is true. But inthis vast world of plants there are vegetable races more advanced thanthose existing upon the Earth. There plants live as we do--feel, think,reason, and speak.

  [Sidenote: Reasoning plants.]

  QUAERENS. But this is impossible! Pardon!--I would say improbable,incomprehensible, and entirely inconceivable.

  LUMEN. These intelligent vegetable races really exist--so much so, thatI myself belonged to them. Fifteen centuries ago I was a tree possessedof reason.

  QUAERENS. But tell me, how can a plant reason without a brain, and speakwithout a tongue?

  LUMEN. Tell me, I beg of you, by what process you yourself think,and by what transformation of motion your soul translates its muteconceptions into audible language?

  QUAERENS. I am seeking, O Master, but I fail to find, the materialexplanation of this fact, however ordinary it may be.

 
[Sidenote: Facts not impossible because unknown.]

  LUMEN. We have no right to declare an unknown fact impossible, whenwe are so ignorant ourselves of the laws regulating our own being.Because the brain is the physiological organ of intelligence placed atthe service of man on the Earth, do you therefore believe that thereare similar brains and spinal marrows upon all the worlds in space?This would be an error too childish. The law of progress governs thevital system of each world. This vital system differs according to thesecret nature of the special forces peculiar to each. When a world hasreached a sufficient degree of evolution to fit it for entering intothe service of moral life, _mind_, more or less developed, appears onit.

  [Sidenote: Gradation of the human race.]

  Do not imagine that the Eternal Father creates at once a human race oneach globe. Not so. The first step in the ladder of the animal kingdomreceives the human transfiguration by force of circumstance, and bynatural law, which ennobles it, as soon as progress has brought it to astate of relative superiority.

  [Sidenote: The development of life.]

  Do you know why you have a chest, a stomach, two legs, two arms, anda head furnished with visual, auditory, and olfactory senses? It isbecause the quadrupeds, the mammalia, which preceded the appearanceof man on the Earth, had them already. Monkeys, dogs, lions, bears,horses, oxen, tigers, cats, &c., and before them the horned rhinoceros,the cave-hyena, the elk, the mastodon, the oppossum, &c., and priorto these the pleiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, the iguanodon, thepterodactyl, &c., and again before these the fishes, the crustacea, themollusca, &c., have been the result of the vital forces in action uponthe Earth, dependent upon the state of the soil, of the atmosphere,of inorganic chemistry, of the quantity of heat, and of terrestrialgravity. The earthly animal kingdom has followed, from its origin, thiscontinuous and progressive march towards the perfection of its typicalforms of mammalia, freeing itself more and more, from the grossness ofits material.

  Man is more beautiful than the horse, the horse than the bear, the bearthan the tortoise. A similar law governs the vegetable kingdom.

  Heavy, coarse vegetables without leaves and without flowers began theseries. Then, as the ages advanced, their forms became more pure, andgraceful leaves appeared filling the woods with silent shadows.

  Flowers in their turn began to beautify the gardens of the Earth, andspread sweet perfumes in an atmosphere until then insipid.

  [Sidenote: The genealogical tree of life.]

  To the scrutinising eye of the geologist who visits these tertiary,secondary, and primordial districts, this double progressive series oftwo kingdoms is to be seen to this day. There was a period upon theEarth when a few islands had but just emerged from the bosom of thewarm waters, into an atmosphere surcharged with vapour, when the onlyliving things distinguishing this inorganic kingdom were long floatingfilaments held in suspension in the waves. Seaweed and sea-wrack werethe first forms of vegetation. On the rocks, live creatures for whichone has no name. There, sponges swell out. Here, a tree of coral liftsup itself. Further on, the Medusae detach themselves and float likeballs of jelly. Are these animals? Are these plants? Science does notanswer. They are animal-plants, zoophites. But life is not limited tothese forms. There are creatures not less primitive, and as simple,which typify a special species. These are the annelides, worms, fish inthe form of a simple tube, creatures without eyes, ears, blood, nerves,will, a vegetative species, yet endowed with the power of _motion_.Later on rudimentary organs of sight and of locomotion appeared, andlife became less elemental. Then fishes and amphibious creatures cameinto existence. The animal kingdom began to form itself.

  [Sidenote: Formation of the animal kingdom.]

  What would have been the result if the first creature had never quittedits rock? If these primitive elements of terrestrial life had remainedstationary at the point of their formation, and if, for any causewhatever, the faculty of locomotion had never had a beginning? Theconsequence would have been, that in place of the system of terrestrialvitality being manifested in two different directions, viz., in theworld of plants and the world of animals, it would have continuedmanifesting itself solely in the first direction, with the result thatthere would have been but one kingdom instead of two, and the creativeprogress would have operated in that kingdom as it operated in theanimal kingdom. It would not have been arrested at the formation ofsensitives, superior plants which are already gifted with a veritablenervous system; nor would it have stopped at the formation of flowers,which are already bordering on ours in their organic functions; but,continuing its ascension, would have produced, in the vegetablekingdom, that which has already been produced in the animal kingdom. Asit is, many vegetables feel and act; here would have been vegetablesfeeling and making themselves understood. The Earth would not have beenon that account deprived of the human species. Only mankind, insteadof being gifted with locomotion as it is, would have been fixed by thefeet. Such is the state of the annular world in which I lived fifteencenturies ago in the heart of the Milky Way.

  QUAERENS. Of a truth, this world of men-plants astonishes me more thanthe previous one, and I find it difficult to picture to myself the lifeand manners of these singular beings.

  [Sidenote: Men-plants.]

  LUMEN. Their kind of life is indeed very different from yours. Theyneither build cities nor make voyages; they have no need of any formof government; they are ignorant of war, that scourge of terrestrialhumanity, and they have nothing of that national self-love calledpatriotism which is one of your characteristics. Prudent, patient, andgifted with constancy, they have neither the mobility nor the fragilityof the denizens of the Earth. Life there reaches an average of five orsix centuries, and is calm, sweet, uniform, and without revolutions.But do not think that these men-plants live only a vegetable life. Onthe contrary, they have an existence both personal and positive. Theyare divided, not by caste, regulated by birth and fortune, according tothat absurd custom on the earth, but by families, whose native valuediffers precisely according to its kind. They have an unwritten socialhistory, but nothing which happens amongst them can be lost, inasmuchas they have neither emigrations nor conquests, but their records andtraditions are handed down from one generation to another. Each oneknows the history of his own race. They have also two sexes, as uponthe Earth, and unions take place there in a similar manner, but arepurer, more disinterested, and invariably affectionate. Nor are theseunions always consanguineous; impregnation can even be effected at adistance.

  QUAERENS. But, after all, how can they communicate their thoughts if itbe true that they think? And besides, master, how was it possible foryou to recognise yourself on this singular world?

  [Sidenote: Manner of life upon Cygnus.]

  LUMEN. The same reply will satisfactorily answer your double question.I was looking at that ring in the constellation of Cygnus, being drawnthere with persistence by some irresistible instinct. It surprisedme to see only vegetable growths upon its surface, and I principallyremarked their singular manner of grouping: here two and two, therethree and three, farther off ten and ten, besides others in largerclusters. Some were seated, as it were, upon the brink of a fountain,others appeared to be reposing, with little shoots springing up roundthem. I sought to find there the kinds familiar to me on the Earth,such as pines, oaks, poplars, willows, but I could not find any ofthese botanical growths.

  At last I fixed my eyes upon a plant in the shape of a fig-tree,without either leaves or fruit, but full of brilliant scarlet flowers,when suddenly I saw this enormous fig-tree stretch out a bough like agigantic arm, raise the extremity of this arm to its head, and pluckone of the magnificent flowers ornamenting its crown, and then presentthe same, with an inclination of the head, to another fig-tree growingsome little distance apart, of slender and graceful form, and bearingsweet blue flowers. This one appeared to receive the red flower with acertain pleasure, for it extended a branch, or one might say a cordialhand, to its neighbour, which was apparently held in a long clasp.

&nb
sp; Under certain circumstances, as you know, a gesture is sufficient formaking yourself known to another. Thus, then, the meaning of thistableau was borne in upon me. This gesture of the fig-tree in the MilkyWay awoke within me a world of memories.

  This Man-Plant _was myself_ as I was fifteen centuries ago, and inthe fig-trees with the violet flowers which were grouped around me Irecognised my children; for I recollected that the tints of the flowersborne by the offspring, are the result of the admixture of the twocolours distinguishing their parents.

  [Sidenote: Faculties of men-plants.]

  These Men-Plants see without eyes, hear without ears, and speak withoutlarynx. Have you not flowers upon the Earth which can discriminatenot only night from day, but also the different hours of the day, theheight of the sun above the horizon, a clear sky from a cloudy one, andmore, which perceive divers sounds with exquisite sensitiveness; and,in fine, not only hear each other perfectly, but also the butterflymessengers. These rudiments are developed to a veritable degree ofcivilisation upon the world of which I speak, and these beings areas complete in their kind as you on the Earth are in yours. Theirintelligence, it is true, is less advanced than the average intellectof terrestrial humanity; but in their manners and mutual relations,they show in all ways a sweetness and refinement, which might oftenserve as a model to the dwellers upon the Earth.

  QUAERENS. How is it possible, master, that they see without eyes, andhear without ears?

  [Sidenote: Light and sound are only modes of motion.]

  LUMEN. You will cease to be astonished, my old friend, if you willbut reflect that light and sound are nothing else than two _modes ofmotion_. In order to appreciate either one or the other of these twomodes of motion, you must (and that is sufficient) be endowed with anapparatus in correspondence with them, which might be only a simplenerve. The eye and the ear are the apparatus for your terrestrialnature. In another natural organisation the optic nerve and theauditory nerve form quite different organs. Besides, light and soundare not the only two modes of motion in nature. I can even say thatlight and sound are the result of your manner of feeling, and not ofanything real.

  [Sidenote: Nature possesses myriads of modes of motion.]

  There are in nature not one, but ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousanddifferent modes of motion. Upon the Earth you are so formed as to beable to appreciate chiefly these two, which constitute almost the wholeof your life in its external relations.

  Upon other worlds there are other senses with which nature can beappreciated under its various aspects. Some of these senses take theplace of your eyes and of your ears, and others are in touch withperceptions entirely foreign to those which are received by terrestrialorgans.

  QUAERENS. When you spoke to me just now of the men-plants in the worldof Cygnus, the idea occurred to me to ask if earthly plants possess asoul?

  [Sidenote: Form determined by soul.]

  [Sidenote: Souls of plants.]

  LUMEN. Most certainly. Terrestrial plants are gifted with a souljust as much as are animals and men. Without a potential soul noorganisation could exist. The _form_ of a plant is determined by itssoul. An acorn and the kernel of a peach are planted side by side inthe same soil, the same situation, under the same conditions; whyshould the first produce an oak and the second a peach tree? Becausean organic force inherent in the oak will construct its special kindof vegetable, and another organic force, another soul inherent in thepeach, will equally draw to itself other elements necessary for itsspecial body, just as the human soul, in the construction of its body,uses the means put by nature at its disposal. Only the soul of theplant has not any self-consciousness.

  [Sidenote: Souls and atoms.]

  [Sidenote: Personality of the soul.]

  The souls in vegetables, in animals, and in men, have already attainedto that degree of personality and of authority, which enables themto bend at will, and to command and govern at pleasure, all thosenon-personal forces which exist in the bosom of immeasurable nature.The human monad, for example, being superior to the monad of salt,or of carbon, or of oxygen, absorbs and incorporates them in itsstructure. Our human soul in our terrestrial body upon the Earthgoverns, without being conscious of it, all the elementary soulsforming the constituent parts of its body. Matter is not a solid andcompassable substance. It is an assemblage of centres of forces.Substance has not any importance. From one atom to another there is agreat distance in proportion to the dimensions of atoms. At the headof the divers centres of forces which constitute and form the humanbody is the human soul, governing all the ganglionic souls, which aresubordinated to it.

  QUAERENS. I must frankly own, most wise instructor, that I fail toclearly grasp this theory.

  LUMEN. Then I will illustrate it for you by an example which willdemonstrate the truth of all I have said, and convince you that it is afact.

  QUAERENS. A fact? Are you, then, a reincarnation of the PrincessScheherazade, and have you been fascinating me with a new tale from the"Arabian Nights"?

  FIFTH CONVERSATION

  INGENIUM AUDAX: NATURA AUDACIOR

  [Sidenote: Theta ([Greek: th]) in Orion.]

  LUMEN. You know the splendid constellation of Orion which reigns likea sovereign over your winter nights, and the curious multiple star[Greek: th] (theta) which is to be found below the sword suspendedfrom the Belt, and shines in the midst of the famous nebula. Thissystem [Greek: th] of Orion is one of the most singular which is tobe found in the vast treasure-house which contains such a variety ofcelestial jewels. It is composed of four principal Suns disposed ina quadrilateral form. Two of these Suns, forming what I may call thebase of the quadrilateral, are accompanied, the one by a single Sun,the other by two Suns. Thus it is a system of seven Suns around each ofwhich circulate inhabited planets.

  [Sidenote: A world in Orion.]

  I was on a planet turning round one of the secondary Suns. Thisrevolved round another of the four principal Suns. That in its turncirculated, in concert with the others and at the same time, around aninvisible centre of gravity in the interior of the quadrilateral. I donot insist on these movements, but the celestial mechanism explainsthem.

  [Sidenote: Day Suns and night Suns.]

  I was therefore lighted and warmed on my planet by seven Suns at thesame time; by one larger and more brilliant in appearance than theother six, because it was nearer to me; by a second very large andequally bright; by a third of moderate size, and by two who were liketwins. These different Suns are never all together above the horizon.There are day Suns and night Suns; that is to say, they have there nonight properly so called.

  QUAERENS. Really? Are there in the heavens double and multiple Suns?

  [Sidenote: Inhabitants of Theta Orionis.]

  LUMEN. Yes, a very great number. The system of which I am speaking toyou, amongst others, is known to the astronomers of the Earth, whocount by thousands in their catalogues, systems of double stars, ofmultiple stars, and of coloured stars. You can study them yourselfwith your telescope. Now, on the planet of Orion, which I have justmentioned to you, the inhabitants are neither vegetables nor animals.They could not be placed in any classification of terrestrial life,nor in either of the two great divisions of the vegetable and animalkingdoms. In truth I do not know with what to compare them in order togive you an idea of their form.

  Have you ever seen, in botanic gardens, the gigantic tapering plant the_Cereus giganteus_?

  QUAERENS. I know this plant very well. Its name comes from itsresemblance to the wax tapers, placed in three or more branched stands,with which churches are lighted.

  [Sidenote: Analysis of the nervous system.]

  [Sidenote: Plant-beings.]

  LUMEN. Well, the men of [Greek: th] Orionis bear some likeness to thisform. Only they move slowly, and maintain an upright position by meansof a process of suction analogous to that of the ampullae of certainplants. The lower part of the vertical stem, where it rests on theground, is slightly elongated, like a starfish, with little appendageswhich fix
themselves to the soil by means of suction. These beingsoften go in troops, and change their latitude according to the seasons.But the most singular peculiarity of their organisation is that whichillustrates the principle of which I have spoken to you, of the unionof elementary souls in the human body. One day I visited this world,and found myself in the midst of an Orionic landscape. I beheld abeing standing there like a plant ten metres high, without leaves orflowers. He consisted in fact of a cylindrical stalk, the uppermostpart of which separated into many branches like those of a chandelier.The central stem, as well as those of the branches, measured about athird of a metre in diameter. The tops of the stalk and of the brancheswere crowned with a diadem of silver fringe. Suddenly I saw this beingagitate his branches and then vanish. The fact is that in this worldindividuals, although quite well, fall to pieces literally in aninstant.

  [Sidenote: Death by disintegration.]

  The molecules of which they are constituted fall altogether to theground. The personal existence of the individual comes to an end. Hismolecules separate and are dispersed.

  QUAERENS. They disintegrate, and the atoms fly apart, like truants fromschool.

  LUMEN. Just so. I can recollect this disintegration of the body oftentook place in their lives. Sometimes it was the result of contrariety,sometimes of fatigue, and in other cases of a want of organic accordbetween the different parts. They exist in their entirety actualand complete, then suddenly they are reduced into the most simpleelementary form. The cerebral molecule, which constitutes each one inreality, feels itself descending in consequence of the fall of itssister molecules of the long branches, and it arrives at the surfaceof the ground solitary and independent.

  QUAERENS. This mode of dissolution would sometimes be a very convenientproceeding here below. To get out of an embarrassing situation, forexample a conjugal scene _a la_ Moliere, or a bad quarter of an hoursuch as Rabelais describes, or a mournful situation such as thescaffold for an execution, one would only have to let loose one'sconstituent atoms, and--bid good-bye to the company....

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: Animated molecules.]

  LUMEN. You seem to regard the matter as a joke, but I assure you it isan undoubted reality. It would exist on the Earth as well as on theplanet of Orion, if the principle of authority were not so firmly fixedwith you. There it is only in an elementary form. Your body is formedof animated molecules.

  According to one of your most eminent physiologists, your spinal marrowis a series of centres, linked together independently, and yet undercontrol. The essential constituents of your blood, of your flesh, andof your bones, are in a like case. They are provinces self-governed,but subject to a superior authority. The working of this superiorauthority is a condition of human life--a condition which is lessexclusive amongst the inferior animals. Each ring of the worm calledlombric is a complete worm, so that a lombric represents a series ofsimilar beings constituting a veritable living cooperative society. Cutinto rings, the worm would be so many independent individuals.

  In the tape-worm, a solitary worm, the head is of more importancethan the rest of the body, and possesses the faculty of reproducingthe rest of the body after it has been cut off. The leech is anotherexample of united individuals. Cut it into five or six rings, and theoperation gives you as many leeches. Thus also, a cutting of a branchof a tree will grow. In like manner a crab's claw or a lizard's tailwill be reproduced. In reality the vertebrate animals, such as man, areessentially composite in structure. The spinal marrow, and its highestexpansion in the brain, consist of segments placed in juxtaposition,with nervous centres, each of which possesses an elementary soul.

  [Sidenote: Power of the personal soul.]

  The law of authority in action on the Earth, has determined in theanimal series a preponderating direction. You are composed of amultitude of beings grouped together, and dominated by the plasticattraction of your personal soul, which from the centre of your beinghas formed your body from the embryo, and has united round itself, ina microcosm, a whole world of beings, who have not any consciousness oftheir individuality.

  QUAERENS. On the planet of Orion nature itself is then in a state ofabsolute Republicanism.

  LUMEN. Republicanism governed by _law_.

  QUAERENS. But when a being finds itself thus disintegrated, how can heafterwards reconstitute himself as a whole?

  LUMEN. By an act of the will, and often without the least effort, andeven by a casual desire. Although separated from the cerebral molecule,the corporeal molecules are still intimately connected with oneanother. At a given moment they combine, and each takes its place. Thedirecting molecule draws the other from a distance, as the loadstoneattracts iron filings.

  QUAERENS. I can easily picture to myself the spectacle of thisLilliputian army, when summoned by a whistle, drawing to its centreto organise a reunion; all the little soldiers climbing one over theother, and in a moment taking their places to reconstruct the man-taperthat you have described to me. One really ought to leave the Earth tobehold such rare wonders!

  LUMEN. You still judge of universal nature by the atom that you havebefore your eyes, and you are only qualified to comprehend the factswhich are within the sphere of your observations. But I assure you theEarth is not the type of the universe.

  [Sidenote: Various forms of life.]

  This world of [Greek: th] Orionis, with its seven revolving Suns,is peopled by an organic system analogous to that which I have justdescribed to you.

  I lived there 2400 years ago, and I can see myself there again inaccordance with the time that light occupied in coming from that pointin space to Capella. When there, I was acquainted with the spirit whoin this century was incarnated on the Earth and published his studiesunder the name of Allan Kardec.

  We did not recollect that we had known one another before, duringour terrestrial life, but we often felt attracted to one another bypeculiar intellectual sympathies. Now that he has returned, likemyself, into the world of spirits, he also remembers the singularrepublic of Orion and can see it. Yes, this is very curious, but it isquite true. You have no idea, on your poor planet, of the unimaginablediversity which separates the worlds in their geological, as much as intheir physiological organisations.

  [Sidenote: Sense of sight in spirits.]

  These conversations may serve to throw light on your knowledge ofthis general truth, so important in the conception of the universe.But the scientific service that these conversations can speciallyrender you is in making you understand that light is the mode oftransmission of universal history. With the powerful visual facultywhich we enjoy here, we can distinguish the surface of distant worlds.The eye of our "perisprit" is not identical with the bodily eye. Inthe terrestrial sight the rays diverge, so that a very small object,placed quite near the eye fills the interval of the two rays, whilstat a greater distance, a larger object is necessary to fill the space,proportionately increased, which separates the same rays. In our eye,on the contrary, the visual rays enter in parallel lines, so that wesee each object in its real proportions, and in its normal size, itsapparent size being quite unaffected by distance. We do not see thewhole of large objects, but only sections of them proportioned to theopenings of our special retina, but these parts are seen by us withequal clearness at any distance (when there is no atmosphere to veilthis distance).

  A tree in a prairie on a celestial body, as far as Theta of Orionis from Capella, is perfectly visible to us. On the other hand, inaccordance with the law of the successive transmission of the rays oflight, all the events in nature, and the history of all the worlds, aredepicted in space as a universal tableau, the most true and the mostmagnificent in all nature.

  [Sidenote: Infinite diversity in Sirius.]

  As these conversations will have shown you, I have traversed a greatmany different celestial countries, and have actually studied creationwithout fixing myself in any place. I hope in the course of the nextcentury to be reincarnated on a world dependent on
the train of Sinus.The humanity there is more beautiful than that of the Earth. Birth iseffected by means of an organic system less ridiculous and less brutalthan that of the Earth.

  But the most remarkable characteristic of the life on this world is,that there men perceive the physico-chemical operations which takeplace for the maintenance of the body. From each molecule of the body,so to speak, proceeds a nerve which transmits to the brain the variousimpressions that it receives, so that the soul absolutely knows itsbody, and rules over it as a sovereign.

  [Sidenote: Vegetable life in Aldebaran.]

  There is an immense variety amongst the worlds. On one of theplanets of the system of Aldebaran, very curious from this pointof view, the vegetables are all composed of a substance analogousto _the loadstone_, because silica and magnesia predominate in itsconstitution. The animals feed on this substance only. Most of thebeings inhabiting this world are _incombustible_.

  Upon the world of which I speak night is illumined by phosphorescentlights. I have visited other worlds where night does not exist atall, where day and night do not succeed each other as upon the Earth,because every portion of their spheres is continuously supplied withlight by several suns, which never leave them in darkness for aninstant. There sleep is unnecessary, either for man, for animals, orfor plants.

  Upon your planet sleep consumes a third portion of your life, itsprimary cause being the rotation of the earth on its axis, whichproduces day and night in succession, on the various parts of the globe.

  Upon these worlds where it is always day, the inhabitants never sleep,and it would greatly surprise them to learn, that there exists ahumanity where a third of life is passed in a lethargy resembling death.

  [Sidenote: Phosphoric light]

  Not far from this, a world revolves where night is almost unknown,although it does not possess a nocturnal sun, as in the quadrilateralof Orion, and it has no satellites. The rocks of its mountains, beingof a chemical composition that reminds one of the phosphates and thesulphates of barytes, store up the solar light received during theday; and during the night they radiate a sweet, calm, translucentlight, which illumines the scenery with a tranquil nocturnal clearness.There, also, one sees curious trees, bearing flowers which shine in theevening like fire-flies. These resemble horse-chestnuts, but the snowyflowers are luminous.

  Phosphorus enters largely into the composition of this curious andsingular world. Its atmosphere is constantly electrical; its animalsare luminous, as well as its plants, and its humanity partakes of thesame nature.

  [Sidenote: The passions phosphorescent.]

  The temperature is very high, and the inhabitants have not much need toinvent clothes. Now, it happens that certain passions are manifestedby the illumination of part of the body. This is, on a large scale,what takes place on a small scale in your terrestrial meadows, whereone sees in the sweet summer evenings the glow-worms silently consumedin an amorous flame. In the fire-flies of the north, that you seein France, the male is winged and is not luminous; the female, onthe contrary, is luminous, but does not possess the aerial faculty.In Italy the two sexes are winged, and both can become luminous. Thehumanity which I am describing to you has all the advantages of thislatter type.

  Certain forms of terrestrial life are to be met with among the siderealhumanities. Thus we find in some of them, the same thing that takesplace on the Earth in the ant world, where, on the day of their aerialunions, all the males die of exhaustion; and again in the world ofbees, where the procreators are pitilessly sacrificed; and amongstspiders, where they are devoured by their companions unless they canimmediately escape. We find reproduced the habits of a great numberof insects, which never see their offspring, and lay their eggs insurroundings in which the newly-born will find their first food.

  The human body on this Earth owes its form and its state of being tothe atmospheric environment, and to the conditions of density, ofweight, and of nutrition, by means of which terrestrial evolutionoperates.

  The human being proceeds from the fusion of a microscopic masculinecorpuscle with a minute feminine ovule. This fusion gives birth to alittle cell which is transformed into the embryo, in which graduallyappear the heart, the head, the limbs, and the different organs. Thenervous system of this embryo may be compared to rays of delicatethreads, proceeding from a central point which will become the brain.

  Under the influence of the Solar light and of the vibrations of theair, one of these nerves is developed at its extremity, and forms theeye. This is undefined at first, and almost blind in an elementarystate, like the eyes of the trilobites and of the fishes of theSilurian period, but it develops into the admirable eyes of birds, ofthe vertebrae, and of man. The senses of smell and taste proceed fromthe nerves in the same way. These last two senses, with that of touch,are the most primitive, the earliest, and the most necessary to life.There are but two of the senses which place man in communication withthe outer world--sight and hearing,--but the eye is the sole organwhich puts us in communication with the whole universe.

  Millions of these little nerve-threads proceed from the brain, throughthe body, without producing any other than the five senses, unless weexcept certain sensations of touch, which are intimate and personal,and which have even been described as a sixth sense. You shall hear.

  Now there is no reason why that which has taken place and been arrestedon our little planet, should take place and be arrested in the samefashion elsewhere.

  In proof of this I must tell you that I visited, not long since, twoworlds on which human beings have two senses of which we have not anyidea on our Earth.

  One of these senses may be described as electrical. One of thelittle nerve-threads of which I have just told you is developed intoa multitude of ramifications which form a sort of cornet. These,under the scalpel and the microscope, appear to be tubes placed injuxtaposition, the outer extremity of which receives the electric fluidand transmits it to the brain, much as our optic nerves receive thewaves of light, and our auditory nerves receive the undulations ofsound.

  The beings provided with this sense perceive the electrical conditionof bodies, of material things, of plants and flowers, of animals, ofthe atmosphere, and of clouds. To these beings this electric sense isa source of knowledge which is wholly forbidden to us. Their organicsensations are all different from yours. Their eyes are not constructedlike yours; they do not see what you see; they see what you do not see.They are conscious only of the invisible violet rays. But their mode ofexistence differs from yours, especially through their electric sense.The electric constitution of their world is the cause of the existenceand of the development of this sense.

  Another sense with which I was still more struck, and which was ofquite a different character, I found on a second world. This was thesense of orientation. Another of the nerve-threads proceeding from thebrain produced a species of winged ear, very light, by means of whichthe living being perceives his direct bearings. He is conscious of thepoints of the compass, and turns to the north or the south, the east orthe west, instinctively.

  The atmosphere is full of emanations which you never perceive. Thissingular sense orients the possessors of it infallibly. It enables themalso to discover things concealed in the interior of the Sun, and givesthem an insight into some of Nature's secrets which are absolutelyhidden from you.

  I would thus demonstrate to you that in the vast domains of creationan infinite variety exists, and that eternity will be inexhaustiblyoccupied in gathering and partaking of its flowers and of its fruits.

  There are worlds where old age is unknown--where lovers are consumed ina delirious fantasy, transported by the intoxication of the body, andcareless of the morrow. The active sex never survive these nuptials;the passive sex, oviparous, having secured the perpetuity of thespecies, sleep their last sleep. Those celestial worlds, where onenever grows old, are not without their advantages.

  [Sidenote: Life too long]

  [Sidenote: A world without war.]

  Worlds exist
in which the vital movements, respiration, assimilation,the organic periods, day and night, the seasons and the years, are allof extreme length. Although the nervous system of the human inhabitantsis highly developed, and thought has a prodigious activity, life thereappears to be of an endless length. Those who die of old age havelived more than a thousand of these years, but they are so rare thatthe memory of a few only have been preserved in the historical recordsof this humanity. War between the nations has never been invented,because there is only one race, one people, one language. The naturalconstitutions of these organisms are remarkable. Diseases are almostunknown; there are no doctors. As a result of this great mentalactivity, the length of life becomes a perspective without end, andbefore long becomes a burden. Hence suicide is almost universal. Thiscustom has been habitual from very ancient times. The few old men whofrom any special motive have not put an end to their lives, are lookedupon as exceptional beings, originals, and more or less eccentric.Suicide is the general law.

  But, my dear friend, it is impossible for me to describe to you all thecuriosities of the universe. Let it suffice that I have raised the veilsufficiently, to give you a glimpse of the incommensurable diversitythat exists, in the animated productions of all the various systemsdisseminated through space.

  [Sidenote: Infinite diversity]

  While accompanying me in spirit in this interstellar voyage, youhave passed several hours away from the Earth. It is well to isolateone's self thus at times amongst the celestial solitudes. The soulobtains a fuller possession of itself, and in its solitary reflectionsit penetrates profoundly into the universal reality. Terrestrialhumanity, you understand, is, as regards moral as well as physicallife, the result virtually of the forces of the Earth. Human strength,figure, weight, all depend on these forces. The organic functions aredetermined by the planet. If life is divided with you between work andrest, between activity and sleep, it is because of the rotation of theglobe, and day and night. In the luminous globes, and those lighted bymany Suns alternately, they do not sleep. If you need to eat and drink,it is in consequence of the insufficiency of the atmosphere. The bodiesof the beings who do not eat are not constructed like yours, since theyhave no need of a stomach and intestines. The terrestrial eye enablesyou to see the universe in a certain way, the Saturnian eye sees in adifferent manner.

  [Sidenote: Other senses than those of the Earth.]

  There are senses which perceive other things than those which youperceive in nature. Each of the worlds is inhabited by a raceessentially different, and sometimes the inhabitants are neithervegetables nor animals. There are men of all possible forms, of alldimensions, of all weights, of all colours, of all sensations, of everyvariety of characteristics. The universe is infinite. Our terrestrialexistence is only one phase of the infinite. An inexhaustible diversityenriches this marvellous field of the eternal Sower. The function ofscience is, to study all that the terrestrial senses are capable ofperceiving. The function of philosophy is, to form a synthesis of alldefined and determined ideas and facts, and to develop the sphere ofthought.

  What would you say if I told you not only of the physical differencesof humanity, but also of its moral and intellectual diversities?Its varieties are great--too much so, indeed, for you to thoroughlyunderstand them. As an instance, I will give you just one noteworthyexample. In your terrestrial humanity, intellectual or moral worthcounts for nothing in advancing a man, whatever may be the value of hisideas, or the worth of his personal character, unless he possesses themeans and the determination to push himself forward. No one seeks forhidden merit. A man must needs make his own way, and struggle againstintrigue, cupidity, and ambition--a strife which is the antipodes ofwhat ought to be. It results, therefore, that the noblest and mostworthy people remain in obscurity, whilst position, wealth, and socialdistinction are often showered on worthless intriguers.

  Ah well! I recently visited a world belonging to one of the mostluminous regions of the Milky Way, where an intellectual orderabsolutely different exists; where the constitution of the Governmentis such, that only those distinguished for their virtues are placed atthe head of the State; and their function is to seek out, and place inresponsible positions, men worthy of the trust.

  In that country, in short, the search is as eager for the discoveryof merit and intelligence, as it is in yours for gold and diamonds.All is done there for the benefit of humanity. They have not inventedany Academy, as they cannot conceive that a man of worth (instead ofbeing sought after) should be compelled to waste his time in visitsof ceremony, and find, probably, that a titled nobody (who has knownbetter than he how to cajole votes) has been preferred to himself. Sotrue it is, that the system prevailing in other worlds is far moreenlightened than that of yours.

  [Sidenote: The magnifying power of time.]

  Now, my dear terrestrial friend, you know what the Earth is in theuniverse; you know something of what the heavens contain; and you knowalso what Life is, and what Death is. We shall soon see the dawn ofmorning, which puts spirits to flight and brings our conversations toan end, as the approach of your terrestrial day causes the brightnessof Venus to fade away. But I should like to add to the preceding ideasa very interesting remark suggested by the same observations. It isthis: If you set out from the Earth at the moment that a flash oflightning bursts forth, and if you travelled for an hour or more withthe light, you would see the lightning as long as you continued tolook at it. This fact is established by the foregoing principles. Butif, instead of travelling _exactly_ with the velocity of light, youwere to travel with a little less velocity; note the observation thatyou might make: I will suppose that this voyage away from the Earth,during which you look at the lightning, lasts a minute. I will supposealso, that the lightning lasts a thousandth part of a second. You willcontinue to see the lightning during 60,000 times its duration. In ourfirst supposition this voyage is identical with that of light. Lighthas occupied 60,000 tenths of seconds to go from the Earth to the pointin space where you are. Your voyage and that of light have co-existed.Now if instead of flying with just the same velocity as light, you hadflown a little less quickly, and if you had employed a thousandth partof a second more to arrive at the same point, instead of always seeing_the same moment of the lightning_, you would have seen, successively,the different moments which constituted the total duration of thelightning, equal to 1000 parts of a second. In this whole minuteyou would have had time to see first the beginning of the flash oflightning, and could analyse the development of it, the successivephases of it, to the very end. You may imagine what strange discoveriesone could make in the secret nature of lightning, increased 60,000times in the order of its duration, what frightful battles you wouldhave time to discover in the flames! what pandemonium! what unluckyatoms! what a world hidden by its volatile nature from the imperfecteyes of mortals!

  [Sidenote: Vision of the analysing eye.]

  If you could see by your imagination sufficiently, to separate andcount the atoms which constitute the body of a man, that body woulddisappear before you, for it consists of thousands of millions of atomsin motion, and to the analysing eye it would be a nebula animatedby the forces of gravitation. Did not Swedenborg imagine that theuniverse by which he was surrounded, seen as a whole, was in the formof an immense man? That was anthropomorphism. But there are analogieseverywhere. What we know most certainly is, that things _are not_ whatthey appear to be, either in space or in time. But let us return to thedelayed flash of lightning.

  When you travel with the velocity of light, you see constantly thescene which was in existence at the moment of your departure. If youwere carried away for a year, at the same rate, you would have beforeyour eyes the same event for that time. But if, in order to see moredistinctly an event which would have taken only a few seconds, suchas the fall of a mountain, an avalanche, or an earthquake, you wereto delay, to see the commencement of the catastrophe (in slackening alittle, your steps on those of light), you would see the progress ofthe catastrophe, its first moment
, its second, and so on successively,in thus nearly following the light, you would only see the end afteran hour of observation. The event would last for you an hour insteadof a few seconds. You would see the rocks, or the stones suspendedin the air, and could thus ascertain the mode of production of thephenomenon, and its incidental delays. Already your terrestrialscientific knowledge enables you to take instantaneous photographs ofthe successive aspects of rapid phenomena, such as lightning, a meteor,the waves of the sea, a volcanic eruption, the fall of a building, andto make them pass before you graduated in accordance with their effecton the retina. Similarly you can, on the contrary, photograph thepollen of a flower, through each stage of expansion to its completionin the fruit, or the development of a child from its birth to maturity,and project these phases upon a screen, depicting in a few seconds thelife of a man, or a tree.

  [Sidenote: A chrono-telescope.]

  I see in your thoughts that you compare this effect to that of amicroscope which would magnify time. That is exactly what it is; wethus see time amplified. This process cannot strictly speaking becalled that of the microscope, but rather that of a _chronoscope_ orof a chrono-telescope (to see time from afar). The duration of a reignmight, by the same process, be augmented according to the good pleasureof the parti politique.

  Thus, for example, Napoleon II. reigned only three hours, but one couldsee him reign for fifteen years _successively_, by dispersing the 180minutes of the three hours over the length of 180 months (in removingone's self from the Earth with a velocity a little inferior to thatof light); so, by setting out at the very moment that the Chamber hadproclaimed Napoleon II., one would arrive at the last minute of hissupposed reign, only at the end of fifteen years. Each minute would beseen for a month, each second for twelve hours.

  [Sidenote: Light transmission in space.]

  The conclusions of this discourse are based entirely on this principle,my dear Quaerens. I have endeavoured to show you that the physical lawof the _successive transmission of Light_ in space, is one of the_fundamental elements of the conditions of eternal life_. Accordingto this law every event is imperishable, and the past is alwayspresent. The image of the Earth as it was 6000 years ago, is actuallynow in space at the distance that light crossed it 6000 years since.The worlds situated in that region see the Earth of that epoch. Wecould see again our own direct existence and our different anteriorexistences. All that we need for this is to be at the proper distancefrom the worlds in which we had lived. There are stars which you seefrom the Earth, and which no longer exist, because they became extinctafter they had emitted the luminous ray which has only just reached you.

  In the same way you might hear the voice of a man at a distance, whomight be dead before the moment at which you heard him, if, perchance,he had been struck with apoplexy immediately after he had uttered hislast cry.

  [Sidenote: There are living forms unknown to Earth.]

  I am very much pleased that this last sketch has enabled me at the sametime to trace for you a picture of the diversities of existence and ofthe _possibility of living forms unknown to the Earth_. Here also yousee the revelations of Urania are grander and more profound than thoseof all her sisters. _The Earth is only an atom in the universe._

  I must pause here, for all these numerous and diverse applicationsof the laws of light are not apparent to you. On the Earth, in thisdark cavern, as Plato appropriately termed it, you vegetate inignorance of the gigantic forces in action in the universe. The daywill come when physical science will discover in light the principleof every movement and the inner reason of things. Already within thelast few years spectrum analysis has demonstrated to you that by theexamination of a luminous ray from the Sun, or from a Star, you canlearn what substances constitute that Sun and that Star. Already youcan determine, across a distance of millions and millions of miles, thenature of celestial bodies from which a ray of light has come to you!And the study of light will afford still more splendid results, bothin experimental science, and in its application to the philosophy ofthe universe.

  [Sidenote: Anticipations.]

  But the refraction of the earth's atmosphere is projecting beyond thezenith the light shed forth by the distant Sun. The vibrations of thelight of day will let me talk with you no longer. Farewell, my goodfriend. Farewell! or rather, _au revoir_! Great things are going tohappen around you. After the storm I shall perhaps return for one lastvisit to give you proof of my existence, and to show that I have notforgotten you. Then, later, when your life upon this little planet isdone, I shall come to you once more, and together we will take ourreal journey through the unspeakable splendours of speed. Nor can youever, in your wildest dreams, form even a faint idea of the stupendoussurprises, the inconceivable wonders which there await you.

  THE END

  * * * * *

  Transcriber's Notes:

  Page 32, Sidenote, "h" changed to "e" (the place where he was in)

  Page 34, Footnote, "3,14159" changed to "314,159" (314,159 x 2, it)

  Page 139, repeated word "the" deleted. Original read (Even in the thesame system)

  Page 160, period added to text (surprise you still more.)

  Page 172, Sidenote, "Adromeda" changed to "Andromeda" (World ofAndromeda)

  Page 179, "oxgyen" changed to "oxygen" (called their oxygen)