New
horizons.
Quærens. Two years have fled, Lumen, since
the day when you granted me that mysterious
interview. During this period, unconsciously
for the inhabitants of eternal space, but most
consciously for us dwellers upon the Earth,
I have often raised my thoughts to the great
problems in which you have initiated me, and
to the horizons developed before my mind's
eye. Doubtless, also, since your departure
from the Earth you have made, through your
observations and studies, great advance upon
a field of research more and more vast. Doubtless,
also, you have numberless marvels to
declare to me, now that my intelligence is
better prepared to receive them. If I am
worthy, and if I can comprehend them, give
me an account, Lumen, of the celestial voyages
which have transported your spirit into the
higher spheres; of the unknown truths which
they have revealed to you; of the grandeurs
which they have opened out to you, and of the
principles they have taught you in reference
to that mysterious subject, viz., the destiny of
man, and other beings.
Lumen. I have prepared your mind, my dear
old friend, to receive marvellous impressions,
such as no earthly spectacle ever has, or could
produce. It is, nevertheless, necessary that
you should keep your understanding free from
all earthly prejudice. That which I am going
to unfold will astonish you, but receive it from
the first with attention as an undeniable truth,
and not as a romance. This is the first condition
that I demand from my earnest pupil.
When you comprehend—and you will comprehend,
if you bring to the task a mathematical
mind and an unprejudiced spirit—you will see
that all the facts which constitute our ultra-terrestrial
existence are not only possible, but
also real, and moreover, are in perfect harmony
with our intellectual faculties as already manifested
upon the earth.
Quærens. Be assured, Lumen, that I bring
to you an open mind, cleared from all prejudice,
and I am eagerly expecting to hear
revelations such as the human ear has never
before heard.
Space and
Light.
Lumen. The events which will form the
subject of this recital have not only the Earth
and its neighbouring stars for their subject,
but they will extend over immense fields of
sidereal astronomy, and make us acquainted
with their marvels. Their explanation will be
solved, as was that of former difficulties, by
the study of light, a magic bridge thrown from
one star to another, from the Earth to the
Sun, from the Earth to the stars—of light, the
universal movement which fills space, sustains
worlds in their orbits, and constitutes the
eternal life of nature. Take care, then, to
keep ever in mind, the fact of the successive
transmission of light in space.
Velocity of
Light.
Quærens. I know that light, whatever it
may be, is the agent by which objects are
rendered visible to our eyes, that it is not
transmitted instantaneously from one point to
another, but gradually, like all motion. 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 of 37 millions of leagues which
separate us from the Sun. Modern astronomy
has made these facts familiar.
Lumen. Do you perfectly realise its undulatory
movement?
Undulatory
movement
of Sound.
Quærens. I think so. I compare it to that
of sound, although it be accomplished upon a
scale incomparably more vast. By undulation
following undulation, sound is diffused in the
air. When the bells peal forth their sonorous
sound, this is heard at the very moment when
the clapper strikes the bell, by those living
round the church, but is not heard till one
second after, by those living at a distance of 492
yards; two seconds later by those at 765 yards;
and three seconds later still, by those at a distance
of 1093 yards from the church. Thus
sound only gradually reaches one village after
another as far as it can go.
In the same way light passes successively
from one region in space to another at a
greater distance, and travels without being
extinguished into the far-off realms of Infinity.
If we could see from the Earth an event which
is being accomplished upon the Moon; for instance,
if we had sufficiently good instruments
to perceive from here, a fruit falling from a tree
on the surface of the Moon, we should not
see the fact at the moment of its occurrence,
but one second and a quarter after, because
light requires about that time to travel the
distance from the Moon to the Earth. Similarly,
could we see an event taking place upon
a world at ten times greater distance than the
Moon, we could not witness it until 13 seconds
after it had really happened. If this world
were a hundred times farther off than the
Moon, we could not see an event until 130
seconds after it had taken place; were it a
thousand times more distant, we should not
see it until 1300 seconds, or 21 minutes 40
seconds had elapsed. And so on according to
the distance.
Time taken
by Light in
travelling
from the
Earth to the
star Capella.
Lumen. Exactly, and you are aware that the
luminous ray sent to the Earth by the star
Capella takes seventy-two years in reaching it.
It follows, therefore, that if we only receive
the luminous ray to-day, which left its surface
seventy-two years ago, the denizens of
Capella see only that which happened on the
Earth seventy-two years ago. The Earth
reflects in space the light that it gets
from the Sun, and from a distance, appears
as brilliant as Venus and Jupiter appear to
you, planets lighted by the same Sun that
lights the Earth. The luminous aspect of
the Earth, its photograph, journeys in space
at the rate of 75,000 leagues a second, and
only reaches Capella after seventy-two years
of incessant travel. I recall these elementary
principles in order that you may have them
thoroughly fixed in your memory; you will
then be able to comprehend, without difficulty,
the facts which have happened to me
during my ultra-terrestrial life since our last
interview.
Quærens. These principles of optics are, to
my mind, clearly established. The day after
your death in October 1864, when, as you
have confided to me, you found yourself
rapidly transported to Capella, you were astonished
to arrive there at the moment when
the philosophical astronomers of the country
were observing the Earth in the year 1793,
and witnessing one of the most significant acts
of the French Revolution. You were not less
surprised to see yourself again as a child, running
about in the streets of Paris. Then, leaving
Capella and coming nearer to the Earth,
you arrived at the zone where that part of
the terrestrial photography passed before your
vision, which showed you your infancy, and
you saw yourself at six years of age, not in
memory, but in reality. Out of all your previous
revelations, this is the one I had the most
difficulty in believing—I mean, in grasping its
meaning.
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 could adequately reveal to you this one.
Retrospective
survey
of life on
Earth.
On leaving Capella and approaching the
Earth, I saw again my seventy-two years of
earthly existence, my entire life such as it had
been, passed before me; for, in approaching
the Earth, I passed through successive zones
of earthly scenes, where I saw spread out as
in a scroll the visible history of our planet,
because in going back towards the Earth, I
was continually meeting the various zones
which carried through space the visible history
of our planet, comprising that of Paris as
well as my own, for I was there. Taking thus
in one day a retrospective survey of the road
which it had taken light seventy-two years
to traverse, I had reviewed my whole life in
that one day, and I perceived even my own
interment.
Quærens. It is as if, on returning from
Capella to the Earth, you had seen, as in a
mirror, the seventy-two years of your life photographed
year by year. The one the farthest
from the Earth, but which had started the
first, and was the oldest, showed events as
they were in 1793; the second, which left the
Earth a year later, and had not yet reached
Capella, contained those of 1794; the tenth,
those of 1803; the thirty-sixth, having reached
midway on the road, gave those of 1829; the
fiftieth, those of 1843; the seventy-first, those
of 1864.
Lumen. It is impossible to have better
grasped these facts, which seem so mysterious
and incomprehensible at first sight. Now I
can recount to you that which happened to me
upon Capella, after having thus witnessed over
again my existence on the Earth.
Lumen. Whilst not very long ago (but I can
no longer express that time by earthly measurements),
in a melancholy region of Capella,
I was contemplating the starry heavens at the
beginning of a clear night, occupied in noting
the star which is your earthly Sun, and near it
the little azure planet, your Earth, I observed
one of the scenes of my childhood—my young
mother seated in the midst of a garden, holding
an infant in her arms (my brother), having
at her side a little girl of two summers (my
sister), and a boy two years older (myself). I
saw myself at that age when man is not yet
conscious of his intellectual existence, though
he bears even then upon his brow the germ of
future promise. Whilst dreaming of this singular
spectacle, which showed me myself at the
entrance of my earthly career, I felt my attention
drawn from your planet by a superior
power, and directed towards another point in
the heavens, which, even at that moment,
seemed to be linked with the Earth and my
career there, by some mysterious tie. I could
not turn my gaze from this new point in the
the heavens, my eyes being, as it were, chained
to the spot by some magnetic power I was
unable to resist. Several times I endeavoured
to withdraw my eyes, and to fix them on the
Earth I love so well; but in vain, for I
was ever re-attracted to the same unknown
star.
The star
Gamma in
Virgo.
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 as seen from Capella. It is a double
star, that is to say, an association of two suns,
one of a silvery whiteness, the other of a
bright golden yellow, which revolve round one
another once in 175 years. This star can be
seen from the Earth with the naked eye, and
its sign is the letter γ (Gamma), in the constellation
of Virgo. Around each of the suns
which form it there is a planetary system.
My sight was fixed upon one of the planets
belonging to the golden sun. On that planet
there are animals and vegetables as upon the
Earth; their forms bear a similarity to earthly
ones, although there is an essential difference
in their organisms. Their animal kingdom is
analogous to yours; they have fishes in the
seas, quadrupeds in the air, in which men can
fly without wings, by reason of the extreme
density of the atmosphere. The men of this
planet possess almost the same form as those
on the Earth, but no hair grows upon their
heads, and they have three large thin thumbs
instead of five fingers on their hands, and three
great toes at the heel in place of soles to their
feet, the extremities of their arms and legs
being supple as india-rubber. They have,
nevertheless, two eyes, a nose, and a mouth,
which give them their resemblance to earthly
beings. They have not two ears, one on each
side of the head, but one only, in the shape of
a cone, which is placed on the upper part of
the skull like a little hat.
They live in societies and wear clothing.
Thus, you see, in their exterior they differ
little from the inhabitants of the Earth.
Quærens. Are there, then, in other worlds
beings entirely distinct from us, but who, notwithstanding
their dissimilarities, can be compared
with us?
Lumen. A distinction profound and unimaginable
by you separates in general the animal
life of the different worlds. These forms are
the result of elements special to each globe, and of
the forces which regulate them: matter, density,
weight, heat, light, electricity, atmosphere, &c.,
differ essentially on each globe. Even in the
same system these forms differ.
The system
of Gamma
in Virgo.
Thus the men of Uranus and Mercury do
not in any way resemble the men of the Earth;
those who see them for the first time cannot
perceive that they possess either head, members,
or senses. On the contrary, the forms of
those in the planetary system of Virgo, towards
which my attention was being persistently
drawn, are nearly similar to those of the inhabitants
of the Earth, whom they also resemble
morally and intellectually. Slightly inferior to
ourselves, they belong to that scale in the
order of souls which immediately precedes
that of terrestrial humanity as a whole.
Quærens.. Yet there is a wide divergence
between human beings themselves in all that
pertains both to intellect and morals. We in
Europe differ greatly from the tribes of Abyssinia
and from the savages of the Oceanic Isles.
What people do you take as a type of the
highest degree of intelligence on the Earth?
The Arabs
and their
intelligence.
Lumen. The Arabs. They are capable of
producing their Keplers, their Newtons, their
Galileos, their Archimedes, their Euclids, their
D'Alemberts. Besides, they sprang from those
primitive hordes whose roots reach down to
the bed rock of humanity. But it is not
necessary to choose a people for a type. It
is better to consider modern civilisation as a
whole. Nor is there so marked a distance as
you appear to suppose, between the brain
capacity of a negro and that of the Latin race.
However, if you insist upon a comparison, I
can assure you that the men of the planet of
Virgo are almost on a par intellectually with
the Scandinavians.
Vital difference
between
Virgo
and the
Earth.
The most vital difference which exists
between their world and the Earth, is the
absence of sex. Neither plants, animals, nor
human beings have sex. Generation is effected
spontaneously, as the natural result of the
union of certain physiological conditions in
some of the fertile isles of this planet, man
not being formed in the womb of his mother
as upon earth. It would be useless to explain
the process, to one whose earthly faculties prevent
him comprehending the facts of a world
distinctly different from his own. It results
from this organic arrangement, that marriage
in any form does not exist in this world, and
that the friendships between human beings
are never mixed with the carnal desires, which
are inevitably manifested on the Earth between
people of different sexes, even when the attraction
is most pure. Probably you will remember
that during the protozoic period, the inhabitants
of the Earth were all deaf, dumb, and sexless.
The division into sexes took place much later
in the history of Nature both among animals
and plants.
Being attracted towards this far-off planet I
attentively examined its surface with my spiritual
sight, and I was specially drawn, without
knowing the cause, to a white city, resembling
from afar a region covered with snow; but it
is improbable that it was snow, as it is unlikely
that water can exist on that globe in the same
physical and chemical conditions as upon the
Earth. Upon the borders of this city an avenue
led to a neighbouring wood of yellow trees. I
soon remarked three persons who seemed to
be slowly sauntering towards this wood. This
little group was formed of two friends, who
were in close conversation, and of a third,
who differed from both by his red garment
and the burden he bore, and who was probably
their servant, their slave, or some
domestic animal. Whilst intently regarding
the two principal personages, I observed the
one to the right raise his face to the sky, as
if some one had called him from a balloon,
and turn his gaze towards Capella, a star
which, doubtless, he did not see, because for
him it was then daylight. Oh, my old friend,
I shall never forget the sudden surprise this
sight gave me! I can still scarcely believe
that I was not dreaming. . . .
This person on the planet of Virgo, who was
looking towards me without knowing it, was. . . . Can
I tell you? Well, it was myself!
Quærens. How yourself?
Lumen. Yes, my very self. I recognised
myself instantly, and you can judge of my
surprise!
Quærens. Certainly I can. I cannot comprehend
it at all.
Anterior
existence
Lumen. The fact is, the situation was so
entirely novel that it demands explanation.
It was in truth myself, and I was not long
in finding out, not only that it was my former
face and figure, but also that the person walking
by my side was my dear Kathleen, an
intimate friend, and the companion of my
studies upon that planet. My gaze followed
them as far as the Yellow Wood, across
picturesque valleys, beneath golden cupolas,
under trees covered with large orange-tinted
branches, and through hedges of elms with
amber-coloured leaves. A purling brook babbled
on the fine sand, and we seated ourselves
on its banks. I recall sweet hours we have
passed together, the happy years which have
glided away in this far-off country, the fraternal
confidences, and the impressions we shared, in
the midst of woodland scenes, of silent plains,
of mist-covered hills, and of little lakes which
smilingly reflected the heavens. With aspirations
raised towards all that was grand and
sacred in nature, we adored God in His works.
With what joy I saw again this phase of my
previous existence, and riveted anew the
golden chain, whose links life on Earth had
broken!
In truth, dear Quærens, it was my very self
who then was living on that planet of Virgo.
I really saw myself, and I could follow in
sequence the events of my life and the
happiest moments of that existence, now so
far remote.
Besides, if I had had any doubt of my
identity, the uncertainty would have ceased
during my observation, for whilst pondering
upon the matter, I saw Berthor—my brother
during that existence—come out of the wood,
approach us, and join in our conversation by
the side of the murmuring brook.
Quærens. Master, I fail still to comprehend
how you could really see yourself on that
planet of Virgo. Were you then gifted with
ubiquity?
Could you, like Francis of Assisi or Apollonius
of Tyana, be in two places at the same
time?
Scientific
explanation
of anterior
life on
Virgo.
Lumen. Certainly not. But in examining
the astronomical co-ordinates of the 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 employ
less than 172 years in traversing the distance
which separates it from Capella.
I was then actually receiving the luminous
ray which left that world 172 years before.
And it so happens that at that epoch I was
absolutely living upon the planet of which
we speak, and that I was then in my twentieth
year. In verifying these periods, and
in comparing the different planetary styles,
I found, in fact, that I was born on the world
of Virgo in the year 45904 (which corresponds
to the year 1677 of the Christian era on Earth),
and that I died—through an accident—in the
year 45913, which corresponds to the year
1767. Each year of this planet equals ten of
yours. When I saw myself, as I have just
told you, I appeared to be about twenty years
of age according to earthly reckoning, but following
the way of reckoning on that planet,
I was only two years old. There the age of
fifteen years is often reached, which is considered
the limit of life on that globe, and is
equivalent to 150 years on the Earth.
Light takes
172 years to
travel from
Virgo to
Capella.
The luminous ray, or, to speak more accurately,
the aspect or photograph of the world
of Virgo, takes 172 earthly years to traverse
the immense space which separates it from
Capella; consequently, upon finding myself
upon this last star, I was receiving at that
very moment the image which left the constellation
of Virgo 172 years previously. And
although things have changed greatly, though
generations have followed generations, though
I died there myself, and have had time to be
born again and live seventy-two years on the
Earth, nevertheless light had taken all this
time to cross the space which separates Virgo
from Capella, and was bringing afresh to me
impressions of events long passed away.
Quærens. This duration of the passage of
light being proved, I have not any objection
to urge on this point, but I frankly own that
to credit an experience of such amazing singularity,
taxes my imagination beyond its just
limits.
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 of
creation. 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 luminous ray contains in itself
all that is visible. As nothing can be lost, the
history of each world is contained in the light
which incessantly emanates from it in successive
waves, eternally travelling into infinite
space without any possibility of its being annihilated.
True, the terrestrial eye cannot read
it; but there are eyes immeasurably superior
to your earthly ones.
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 previous
communication, speaking absolutely, there
is not such a thing as light, only vibrations of
ether; neither is there any sight, only perceptions
of the mind. Moreover, even upon the
Earth, when you examine the nature of a star
with a telescope, or better still with a spectroscope,
you well know it is not its actual state
you have before your eyes, but its past state,
transmitted to you by a ray of light which left
it, perhaps, ten thousand years ago. You know,
besides, that a certain number of stars, of which
your astronomers on the Earth are seeking to
determine the physical and numerical properties,
and which shine brilliantly over your
heads, have long ago ceased even to exist—may
indeed have ceased to exist since the beginning
of your world.
Quærens. We know this is so. Thus you
have seen, unrolled before your eyes, your
existence previous to the last one, 172 years
after it had flown by.
Lumen. Say rather one phase of this existence;
but I could have been able, and could
now indeed review my entire life by going
closer to that planet, as I have already done
for my terrestrial existence.
Quærens. So, through the medium of light,
you have really seen again your last two incarnations?
Lumen. Precisely; and what is more, I have
seen them, and continue to see them, simultaneously,
side by side as it were of one
another.
Quærens. You see them again both at the
same time?
Lumen. This fact is easily explained. The
light from the Earth takes seventy-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 half longer time to
travel, which would make it about 172 years.
As I lived seventy-two years upon the Earth,
and one hundred years before that upon the
other planet, these two periods reach me at
precisely the same time upon Capella. Thus
by simply looking at these two worlds, I have
before me my last two existences, which unroll
themselves as if I were not here to see them,
and without my being able to change any of
the acts that I see myself upon the point of
accomplishing, either upon the one or the
other, since those acts, although present and
future to my actual observation, are in reality
past.
Quærens. This is indeed a strange experience!
Lumen. But what struck me most in this
unexpected observation of two of my previous
existences in two different worlds, thus unrolled
before me, was the odd resemblance
between these two lives. I found that I
had almost the same tastes in the one as
in the other, the same passions, the same
errors. Nothing criminal, nothing saintly in
either.
Explanation
of inherent
tastes.
Furthermore (extraordinary coincidence), I
have witnessed scenes in the first analogous
to those I have seen upon the Earth. This
explains the innate tastes I brought into the
terrestrial world, for the poetry of 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—all alike attracted me. Old towers
in ruins, rocks and wild ravines, sombre pines
soughing with the northern winds—all these
appealed to me on the Earth, and seemed to
have some mysterious link with my deepest
thoughts. When I saw Ireland for the first
time, I felt as if I had lived there before.
When for the first time I ascended the Rigi
and the Finsteraarhorn, and saw the superb
sunrise over the snowy summits 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 had in a former life inhabited
similar regions on the planet of Virgo.
The same life, the same actions, the same
circumstances, the same conditions—analogies,
analogies! Almost all that I have seen, done,
thought on the Earth, I had already seen, done,
thought a hundred years before upon that
anterior world. I had always suspected it!
Taking it altogether, however, my terrestrial
life as a whole was superior to the one preceding
it. Each child in coming into the
world brings with him different faculties,
special predispositions, innate dissimilarities,
which no one denies, and can only be explained
to the philosophical mind,—or in view
of eternal Justice,—by the supposition of works
previously 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 the system
of the World, it yet lacked, I am bound to
state, the possession of certain moral and physical
qualities which belonged to me in my former
existence.
On the other hand, I had faculties on that
World which I had not had upon the Earth.
I may cite one specially, that of flying.
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 simply stretching
my arms and legs, as if I were swimming
in the water. On closely examining the mode
of locomotion in use on that planet, I see
clearly that I have (or rather had) neither
wings, balloon, nor any kind of mechanical
appliance. At a given moment I spring from
the ground by a vigorous leap, and, spreading
out my arms, sail in the air without fatigue.
At other times, descending a steep mountain
on foot, I spring out into space, with feet
pressed together, and float at will, with a slow
and oblique motion, to any point I wish, standing
upright as soon as my feet touch the
ground.
Dreams
bring reminiscences
of
a former
existence.
Then again, when I wish to do so, I fly slowly
in the manner of a dove which describes a curve
in returning to its dovecot. All this I distinctly
see myself doing in this world. Not
once, but a hundred, a thousand times have I
thus felt myself transported in my dreams on
Earth softly, naturally, and without apparatus.
How can such impossibilities so often present
themselves to us in our dreams? Nothing can
explain them, for nothing analogous exists upon
this earthly globe. Obeying instinctively this
innate tendency, I have frequently soared into
the atmosphere suspended from the car of a
balloon, but the sensation is not the same; one
does not feel one's self flying; on the contrary,
one has the feeling of being stationary.
I now have the key to my dreams. During
the slumber of my terrestrial senses my soul
had reminiscences of its anterior existence.
Quærens. But I also often feel, and see myself
flying in dreams in precisely the way you
describe, without wings or machinery, and
simply by an effort of will. Is this, then, a
proof that I also have lived upon 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 your
globe, examine its surface, and if, perchance,
you had existed there when it parted with the
luminous rays which have actually reached the
Earth, you might perhaps find yourself again
there. But your eyes are too feeble to make
a like research. Besides, it does not follow
that because you have been able to fly, that
therefore you have lived in that world. There
are a considerable number of worlds where
flying is the normal condition, and where all
the human race possess this faculty. In
reality, there are but few planets where the
living creatures crawl as upon the Earth.
Plurality of
existences.
Quærens. The conclusion resulting then
from your experience is, that you 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 to be well fitted to
give such evidence, having before me both my
earthly life and my anterior life upon the planet
of Virgo. Besides, I can recall many other
existences.
Quærens. Ah! that is precisely what I lack
in order to possess a similar conviction. I
can recall absolutely nothing that preceded
my birth into this world.
The soul's
memory.
Lumen. You are yet in the flesh; you must
wait for freedom from earthly fetters before
you can recall your spiritual life. The soul
has only full remembrance, full possession of
itself in its normal, its celestial life; that is
to say, between its incarnations. It then sees
not 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? Would
not such a remembrance even prove hurtful?
What trammels would not be put upon the
soul's liberty of action, could it see its life
from the beginning 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 sufficiently elevated state of
advancement, for the memory of their anterior
life to be of use to them.
Man is oblivious
of
anterior impressions,
as in the
butterfly.
The permanence of the anterior impressions
of the soul is not manifested in this world of
passage. The caterpillar does not remember
its rudimentary existence in the egg. The
sleeping chrysalis cannot recall the days it
spent in work when it crawled upon the
herbage. The butterfly, which flits from
flower to flower, has not any memory of the
time when its cocoon dreamed, as it hung
suspended from its web; nor of the twilight,
when its larvæ trailed from plant to plant;
nor of the night, when it was buried like a
nut in its shell. This does not alter the fact
that the egg, the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and
the butterfly, are one and the same being.
In certain cases, even of terrestrial life, you
have remarkable examples of forgetfulness,
such as that of somnambulism, either natural
or artificial, and also in certain psychical conditions
of which modern science makes a
study. Hence it is not surprising that during
one existence we should not remember our
anterior ones. Uranic life and planetary life
represent two states, free and distinct the
one from the other.
Quærens. Still, master, if we had already
lived a life before this one, something of it
would remain with us, otherwise these anterior
existences might as well never have
been.
Heredity.
Dissimilarities.
Lumen. Do you, then, call it nothing to be
born on the Earth with innate tendencies?
Such a thing as intellectual heredity does
not exist. Take two children of the same
parentage, receiving identically the same education,
surrounded by the same care, and
having in every respect similar environments.
Now examine each of them. Are they equal?
Not in any way; equality of souls does not
exist. The one is born with pacific instincts
and great intelligence. He will be good,
learned, wise, illustrious perchance, amid the
thinkers of his age. The other one brings
with him a domineering, envious perhaps, or
even a brutal instinct. His career defines
and accentuates itself as each year passes,
and will lead him eventually to high rank
in military life, and will give him the honour
(little to be coveted, though still admired
upon 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 upon this at
your leisure; you will arrive at the conviction
that it is absolutely inexplicable, and can only
be accounted for by belief in an anterior life
of the soul.
Creation of
the soul.
Quærens. Have not most philosophers and
theologians taught that the soul and the body
are created at one and the same time?
Lumen. And which, pray, is the precise
moment of its creation? Is it at the moment
of birth? Legislation, enlightened by anatomical
physiology, knows that a child lives
before being delivered from its uterine prison,
therefore the destruction of an embryo of eight
months is regarded as murder. At what period
do you then suppose, that the soul appears
in the fluid brain of the foetus or of the
embryo?
Quærens. It was thought in olden times
that the real spiritual quickening of the human
being took place during the sixth week of
gestation, but the modern belief is that it
occurs at the moment of conception.
Lumen. Oh, bitter mockery! In accordance
with this view you would have the eternal
designs of the Creator dependent in their
execution upon capricious desires, upon the
intermittent flames of two amorous hearts!
You would dare to admit that our immortal
being is created by the physical contact of
two human beings! You would be disposed
to believe that the Divine Head which governs
the worlds, is influenced by intrigue, by passion,
even by crime! You would think that the
number of souls depends upon the number
of flowers impregnated by the touch of the
sweet pollen dust borne to them on golden
wings?
Is not such a doctrine, such a supposition,
an outrage upon the Divine dignity and the
spiritual grandeur of the soul itself? And
would it not, besides, be the complete materialisation
of our intellectual faculties?
Quærens. And yet——
Lumen. Yes; that seems so to you, because
upon your planet no soul can incarnate
itself otherwise than in a human embryo. It
is a law of life on the Earth. But you
must look through the veil. The soul is
not an effect. The body serves it only as its
garment.
Quærens. I admit that it would indeed be
singular that an event of such dire importance
as the creation of an immortal soul
should spring from a carnal cause, should
be the result of casual unions, more or less
legitimate. Also, I agree with you that
organic causes do not explain the different
degrees of capacity with which mankind is
born into this world.
But I ask, of what use would be these
various existences if, on beginning a new
life, we retain no remembrance of those that
precede it? Also, if it is really desirable to
have in prospect a journey without end
through endless worlds, and an eternal transmigration?
For at last there must be an
end to it all, and, after many æons of voyages,
we must some day finish our existence and
seek repose. Would it not be as well to do
so after one existence only?
The
unknown.
Lumen. O men! You do not comprehend
either time or space. Do you not know that
outside the movement of the stars time no
longer exists, and that eternity is no longer
measured? Do you not know that in the
infinite extent of the sidereal universe space
is but a vain word, no longer measurable?
You ignore all; principles, causes, all escape
you: atoms upon a movable atom, you have
not any exact appreciation of the universe;
and yet, despite ignorance so dense, and comprehension
so obscure, 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 would be to make you, with
your terrestrial brain, understand the law of
destiny.
Nothing
created,
nothing
annihilated.
Can you not, then, by making a legitimate
use of the faculty of induction which has been
given you, gather the direct consequences resulting
from observation supported by reason?
Observation, sustained by proof, shows conclusively
that all are not equal on coming
into this world; that the past is not unlike
the future; and that the eternity which is
before us is equally behind us; that nothing
is created in nature, and that nothing is annihilated;
that nature includes all things existing,
and that God, spirit, law, number, are
no more outside nature than matter, weight,
motion; that moral truth, justice, wisdom,
virtue, exist in the progress of the world as
surely as its physical reality; that justice
decrees equity in the distribution of its destinies;
that our destinies are not accomplished
upon this earthly planet; that the empyrean
heaven does not exist, and that the Earth
is a star in the sky; that other inhabited
planets soar with ours in the vast expanse;
opening out to the wings of the soul an inexhaustible
field of vision, and that the infinite
in the universe corresponds, in the material
creation, with the eternity of our intelligence
in the spiritual creation.
Unknown
forces in
nature.
Affinities.
Are not certainties such as these, followed
by the inductions with which they inspire us,
sufficient to liberate your mind from ancient
prejudices, and to open out, to an enlightened
judgment, a panorama worthy of the vague yet
profound desires of our souls? I could illustrate
this general sketch by examples and
details which would surprise you still more.
Let it suffice for me to add that there are
in nature other forces than those you know,
which, both in essence and in mode 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 in
elucidating the problems of the soul and of
life. This is the psychic force. This invisible
fluidic force establishes a mysterious bond, unknown
to themselves, between living beings,
and already in many cases you have been able
to recognise its existence. Take the case of
two beings in love (as the saying is). It seems
impossible for them to live apart. Should circumstances
lead to their being separated, our
two lovers become absent-minded, and their
souls as it were leave their bodies, and span
any distance which prevents them re-uniting
with one another. The thoughts of the one
are shared by the other, and they live together
despite their separation.
Should any misfortune touch one, the other
becomes immediately conscious of it; and
such separations have been known to end in
death. How many facts have been stated by
trustworthy witnesses of the sudden apparition
of a person to an intimate friend, of a wife to
a husband, of a mother to a son, and vice versâ,
just at the moment of death, even though
many leagues might separate them! The
most captious critic cannot in these days deny
facts thus circumstantially proved. Twin children
living ten leagues apart, and under very
different conditions, are stricken at the same
time with the same malady, or if one is excessively
fatigued, the other feels the same without
apparently any assignable cause. And so
on. These facts prove that ties of sympathy
exist between souls and even between bodies,
and give room for the repeated reflection, that
we are far from knowing all the forces operating
in nature.
If I communicate these views to you, my
friend, it is chiefly to show that you can not
only have a foretaste of truth before death, but
also that earthly existence is not so entirely
deprived of light, as to prevent one's reason
recognising the chief characteristics of the
moral world. Besides, all these truths will be
emphasised by my further narration, when you
learn that it is not only the previous existence
before my last one that I have seen again,
thanks to the slowness of light, but also my
ante-penultimate planetary life, inclusive of
more than ten existences preceding that one
in which we came to know each other upon
this Earth.
Plurality of
lives.
Quærens. Reflection and study had already
inclined me, Lumen, to believe in the plurality
of the existences of the soul. Yet this doctrine
lacks proofs, logical, moral, and even physical,
as numerous and as weighty as are those in
favour of the plurality of the inhabited worlds.
I own that until now I had grave doubts on the
subject. Modern optics and marvellous calculations,
which enable us to touch, as it were, the
other worlds, show us their years, their seasons,
their days, and make us acquainted with the
varieties of nature living on their surface. All
these elements have enabled contemporaneous
astronomy to establish the fact of human existence
in the other worlds on a strong and imperishable
foundation. But I repeat that it is
not so with palingenesis, though I am strongly
inclined towards the doctrine of the transmigration
of souls in the actual heaven, since this is the
only 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 a confidence 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, and that I strictly limit myself
to interpret with exactitude the events with
which my spiritual life is actually woven.
But since you can see the possibility and probability
of the scientific explanation of my statement,
you cannot fail as you listen to increase
your light and augment your knowledge.
Quærens. It is for this cause chiefly that I
am always eager to hear you.
Lumen. Light, you understand, is the means
of giving to the disincarnated soul a direct vision
of its planetary existences.
Constellations.
After having reviewed my earthly existence,
I saw once more my life previous 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 latter after 172 years.
I see myself at present from Capella as I was
upon the earth 72 years ago, and as I was upon
Virgo 172 years ago. Thus two existences,
both past and successive, are here shown me as
present and simultaneous, by virtue of the laws of
light which transmit them to me.
Andromeda.
Effects of
perspective.
Nearly five hundred years ago, I lived upon
a world whose astronomical position as seen
from the earth is precisely that of the left
breast of Andromeda. Assuredly the inhabitants
of that world do not suspect that the
denizens of a little planet in space have joined
the stars by fictitious lines, tracing figures of men,
women, animals, and divers objects, incorporating
all the stars in figures more or less original,
in order to give them a name. It would greatly
astonish some of these planetary people if they
were told, that upon the Earth certain stars
bear the names of Heart-of-the-Scorpion (what
a heart!), 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
that neither the constellations drawn upon the
celestial globe, nor the position of the stars
upon that globe, are either real or absolute, but
are only the result of the position of the Earth
in space, and thus are simply a question of perspective.
Go to the top of a mountain and fix
upon a map the respective positions of all the
summits surrounding you in that circular panorama,
its hills, its valleys, its villages, its lakes;
a map so constructed could only serve for the
place from whence it was drawn. Now transport
yourself ten miles farther; the same summits
are visible, but their respective positions
in regard to each other are different, resulting
from the change in perspective. The panorama
of the Alps and of the Oberland, as seen from
Lucerne, and Pilatus does not in the least
resemble that seen from the Fulkhorn, or from
the Schynige Platte above Interlaken. Yet
these are the same summits and the same lakes.
It is exactly so with the stars. The same aspect
is seen both from the star Delta in Andromeda
and from the Earth; but there is not a constellation
that can be recognised, because all the
celestial perspectives have changed; stars of the
first magnitude have become of the second and
of the third; whilst others, of lesser magnitudes,
seen nearer, shine with increased brilliancy;
and, above all, the respective situation of the
stars as regards one another has completely
changed in consequence of the different position
of that star and of the Earth.
Quærens. Therefore the appearance of the
constellation which one has so long believed
to be ineffaceably traced upon the vaulted sky
is only due 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 a change of celestial perspective
every six months, since during this interval the
Earth has greatly altered its position, having
removed to a distance of seventy-four millions
of leagues from the place it formerly occupied?
Lumen. This objection proves that you have
perfectly comprehended the principle of the
deformation of the constellations as one moves
in any direction in space.
It would be, as you suppose, if the Earth's
orbit were of a dimension sufficiently vast
for the two opposite points of this orbit to
change the view of this celestial scenery.
Quærens. Seventy-four millions of leagues—
Lumen. Are as nothing in the order of
celestial distances, and can no more affect
the perspectives of the stars, than taking a
step in the cupola of the Pantheon would
change the apparent position of the buildings
in Paris to the eye of the observer.
The charts
of the
Middle
Ages.
Quærens. Certain charts of the Middle
Ages represent the Zodiac as an arch in
the heavens, and place some of the constellations,
such as Andromeda, the Lyre, Cassiopea,
and the Eagle, in the same region as the
Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Thrones.
That, therefore, was simply fancy, since constellations
have no real existence, but are
simply appearances due to perspective.
Lumen. Certainly the old heaven of theology
has no legitimate place to-day, and
simple common sense shows that it does not
exist. Two truths cannot oppose one another;
it is a necessity that the spiritual
heaven should accord with the physical
heaven, and the object of my various conversations
is the demonstration of this truth.
Upon the world of Andromeda of which I
speak, there is nothing resembling the constellation
of Andromeda. Seen from the
Earth, those stars which appear joined and
have served on the celestial landscape to
distinguish the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopea,
are in reality spread out in space at
all sorts of distances, and in every direction.
One cannot find either there or elsewhere
the least vestige of the tracings of terrestrial
mythology.
The poetry
of the
heavens
lost.
Quærens. All its poetry is lost. . . . I
shall feel, however, a certain satisfaction in
believing that for a part of my life I have
rested on the bosom of Andromeda. It is
a pleasant fancy. There is in it a mythological
perfume and a comforting sensation.
I should like to be transported there without
fear of the monster, and without solicitude
for the young Perseus bearing the head
of the Medusa, and mounted on his famous
Pegasus. But now, thanks to the scalpel of
science, there is no longer an unveiled
princess bound to a rock on the sea-shore,
nor a virgin holding an ear of golden corn,
nor Orion pursuing the Pleiades; Venus has
vanished from our evening sky, and old
Saturn has let fall his scythe in the night.
Science has caused these ancient myths to
disappear! I regret its progress.
The facts of
astronomy
grander
than its
fancies.
Lumen. Do you, then, prefer illusion to
reality? Do you not know that truth is
immeasurably more beautiful, grander, and
infinitely more marvellous than error, however
that may be embellished? What can
be comparable in all the mythologies past
and present, to the rapt scientific contemplation
of celestial grandeurs and the sublime
movements of nature? What impression
can strike the soul more profoundly than the
fact of the expanse crowded with worlds, and
the immensity of the sidereal systems? What
voice is more eloquent than the silence of a
star-lit night? What wild flight of imagination
could conceive an image surpassing that,
of the interstellar voyage of light, stamping
with the seal of eternity the transitory events
of the life of each world?
Throw off, then, my friend, your old errors
and become worthy of the majesty of science.
Listen to what follows:—
Description
of the world
of Andromeda.
The
elements.
By reason of the time light employs in
coming from the system δ 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 one kingdom on its surface, and that the
animal kingdom. The vegetable kingdom does
not exist there. But that animal kingdom is
very different from ours, and of a superior kind,
although it is endowed with five senses similar
to those on the Earth. It is a world without
sleep and without 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 and water.
Terrestrial chemistry does not produce any
similar substance, therefore it would be in
vain to try and represent it to you. Carbolic
acid gas that can be held invisible at the
bottom of a glass, and can be poured out like
water, will give you the nearest idea of it.
This is due to a fixed quantity of heat and
electricity held in permanence upon that globe.
You are aware that the composition of all
things upon the Earth, whether mineral, vegetable,
or animal, is in three states, solid, liquid,
and gaseous, and that the sole cause of these
different conditions is the heat radiated from
the Sun upon the surface of the Earth. The
interior heat of the globe has now hardly any
appreciable effect upon its surface.
Degree of
heat fixes
the condition
of
matter.
Effect of the
Earth flying
off at a
tangent.
Less solar heat would liquefy gases and
solidify liquids. Greater heat would dissolve
solids and evaporate liquids. A more or less
quantity of heat would produce liquid air (yes,
liquid air), and marble would be turned into
gas. If by any cause whatever the earthly
planet were one day to fly off from its orbit
at a tangent, and rush away into the glacial
obscurity of space, you would see all the
water on the Earth become solid, and gases in
their turn become liquids; then as to solids
themselves . . . you would see! No, you
could not see this by remaining upon the Earth,
but you could from the depths of space witness
this curious spectacle, should your globe ever
indulge in the freak of escaping from its orbit
at a tangent. And note further, that should
this colossal cold ever take place suddenly, all
creatures would find themselves immediately
frozen on the spot, and the globe would carry
into space the singular panorama of the whole
human race, and every animal immovably congealed
for all eternity, in the various attitudes
assumed by each individual and each creature,
at the moment of the catastrophe.
Worlds in
a glacial
state. Life
arrested.
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 the rapid
flight of their planet away from the Sun, and
they have been transformed into millions of
statues. Most of them are lying down asleep,
seeing that this profound change of temperature
takes many days in its accomplishment. There
they are by millions, pell-mell, dead, or, to be
more accurate, sunk in a complete lethargy.
The cold preserves them. Three or four
thousand years later, when the planet returns
from its dark and frozen aphelion to its brilliant
perihelion, towards the sun—whose fertilising
heat caressing its surface with welcoming rays
will rapidly increase—and when it has reached
the degree which betokens the normal temperature
of these beings, they will be 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 had slept a dreamless sleep
for so many ages. One may see some continuing
a game, or finishing a phrase whose
first words have been uttered four thousand
years ago. All this is perfectly simple, for we
have seen that time does not in reality exist.
This, on a large scale, is exactly what 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 of apparent
death.
World of
Andromeda.
But to return to our world of Andromeda;
the rose-coloured and quasi-liquid atmosphere,
surrounding it entirely as an ocean without
islands, is the abode of living beings, who
are perpetually floating in the depths of that
ocean which none have ever sounded: from
their birth to their death they have not one
moment's repose. Incessant activity is the
condition of their existence. Should they
become stationary they would perish. In order
to breathe, that is to say, to enable this fluid
element to penetrate to their bosom, they are
constrained to keep their tentacles in unceasing
motion, and their lungs (I use this word the
better to be understood) constantly open.
Process of
nourishment.
The external form of this human race resembles
that of the sirens of antiquity, but is
less elegant, and their organism approaches
that of the seal. Do you see the essential
difference between their constitution and that
of terrestrial man? It is that on the Earth we
breathe without being conscious of the act, and
obtain oxygen without exertion, not being
compelled with difficulty to convert venous
into arterial blood by the absorption of oxygen.
Upon this other world, on the contrary, this
nourishment is only obtained with labour and at
the price of incessant effort.
Quærens. Then this world is inferior to ours
in the scale of progress?
Lumen. Without any doubt, seeing that I
inhabited it before coming upon the Earth.
But do not think that the Earth is much
superior by reason of our being able to
breathe whilst we are asleep. Doubtless, it
is a great advantage to be furnished with a
pneumatic mechanism, which opens involuntarily
every time that our organism needs the
least breath of air, and which acts automatically
and unceasingly night and day. But
man does not live on air alone; his earthly
organism requires to be nourished with something
more solid, and this solid something does
not come to him involuntarily as does air.
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 bowed down 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 the grossness of
matter, in place of being raised up to the contemplation
of nature! All these efforts and
these labours, bringing in their wake feebleness
and disease! All this traffic to amass a
little gold at the expense 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 of
matter over mind. Such is the normal state
of the Earth, a condition forced by the law
which rules over your bodies, compelling you
to kill in order to live, and to prefer the
possession of material goods that cannot be
earned beyond the grave, to the possession
of intellectual gifts, which the soul can keep
as a rich and inalienable possession.
Quærens. You speak, master, as if you
thought it were possible to live without
eating.
Lumen. Do you, then, believe that the
beings of every world in space are subject
to an operation so ridiculous as this? Happily,
in many of the worlds, the spirit is not
subjected to such ignominy.
Atmospheric
nutrition.
It is not so difficult as you may suppose, on
first thoughts, to believe in the possibility of
atmospheric nutriment. The maintenance of
life among man and the animals depends upon
two causes, respiration and nutrition. The
first is found naturally in the atmosphere; the
second is derived from nourishment. Nutrition
produces blood; from the blood come the
tissues, the muscles, the bones, the cartilages,
the flesh, the brain, the nerves, in a word,
the organic constituents of the body. The
oxygen we breathe can itself be considered
as a nutritive substance, inasmuch as it combines
with the principal aliments absorbed
by the stomach, and completes the formation
of the blood and the development of the
tissues.
The process
of alimentation.
Now, to imagine nutrition passing entirely
into the domain of the atmosphere, it is only
necessary to observe that, as a whole, a complete
aliment is made up of albumen, of sugar,
of fat, and of salt, and to imagine also that
an atmospheric fluid, in place of being composed
of azote and of oxygen only, should
be formed of these different substances in a
gaseous state. These aliments are found in
the solids that you absorb; digestion is the
function which separates them, and which
causes them to assimilate with the organs to
which they belong. When, for example, you
eat a morsel of bread, you introduce into
your stomach a grain of starch, a substance
insoluble in water, and which is not found in
the blood. The saliva, and the pancreatic juice,
transform the insoluble starch into soluble
sugar. The bile, the pancreatic juice, and
the intestinal secretions, change the sugar into
fat. Both sugar and fat are present in the
blood, and it is by the processes of alimentation
that substances are separated and assimilated
in your body.
It astonishes you, my friend, that after living
five years—according to terrestrial reckoning—in
the celestial world, I can remember all these
material terms, and condescend to make use of
them. But the memories that I have brought
from the Earth are still vivid, and as we speak
on this occasion on a question of organic physiology,
I do not feel ashamed of calling things
by their own names.
If, then, we suppose that in place of being
combined or mixed in the constitution of bodies,
solid or liquid, these aliments could be found
in a gaseous state in the composition of the
atmosphere, we should create by this means
nutritive atmospheres, which would dispense
with digestion and its attendant coarse and
humiliating functions.
That which man is capable of imagining in
the restricted sphere of his observation, Nature
has put in practice in more than one spot of
the universe.
Besides, I can assure you that when one has
ceased to be accustomed to this material process
of the introduction of nourishment into
the digestive tube, one cannot avoid being
impressed with its coarseness. This was the
reflection I made a few days ago whilst observing
one of the richest countries on your
planet. I was struck by the suave and angelic
beauty of a maiden, reclining in a gondola as
it floated gently on the blue waters of the
Bosphorus before Constantinople. Red velvet
cushions, embroidered with brilliant silks,
whose heavy tassels of gold touched the water,
formed the divan of this young Circassian.
Before her knelt a little black slave playing
upon some stringed instrument. Her form
was so juvenile and graceful, her bended arm
so elegant, her eyes so pure and innocent,
her pensive brow so calm under the light of
heaven, that for an instant I was captivated
by a kind of retrospective admiration for this
masterpiece of living nature.
Well! while this pure vision of awakening
youth, sweet as a flower opening its petals to
the sun's rays, held me in a kind of passing
enchantment, 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! for near an hour she
was eating!
I could scarcely tolerate the earthly recollections
recalled by this ridiculous spectacle.
To see a being like that partaking of food
through the mouth, and making her charming
body the receptacle for I do not know what substances!
What vulgarity! Masticating morsels
of some kind of animal which her pearly
teeth did not disdain to chew, and again fragments
of another animal which her virginal
lips opened without hesitation to receive and
swallow! What a diet: a medley of ingredients
drawn from cattle, or from deer, which
have lived in the mire and afterwards been
slaughtered. Horror! I turned away with sadness
from this strange contrast, and directed my
gaze to the system of Saturn, where humanity
need not stoop to such necessities.
Victims to
the struggle
for existence.
The floating beings belonging to the world
of Andromeda, where my antepenultimate existence
was passed, are submitted to a still
more degrading manner of sustaining life than
are the inhabitants of the Earth. They have
not the advantage of finding three parts of
their nutriment supplied by the air, as is the
case on your globe: they must work to obtain
what may be called their oxygen, and, without
ceasing, they are condemned to use their lungs
in order to prepare the nutritious air they
need, without sleeping, and without ever feeling
satisfied, because, despite their incessant toil,
they cannot absorb more than a small quantity
at a time. Thus they pass their entire life,
and finally die victims to the struggle for
existence.
Quærens. Better far never to have been
born! But does not the same reflection apply
to the Earth?
What is the use of being born, to weary
one's self with endless work and worry, to turn
in the same daily treadmill for sixty or a
hundred years; 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 be just 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 one would be
the wiser. And one might ask, of what use
is Nature herself, and why does the universe
exist at all?
Humanity
in Andromeda.
Humanity.
Lumen. That is the great mystery. Yet must
all destinies be accomplished. The world of
Andromeda is decidedly an inferior one. To
give you an idea of the poor mental calibre
of its inhabitants, I will cite two examples,
selecting the subjects of religion and politics,
as these are generally the best criterions of
the value of a people. In religion, in place of
seeking for God in nature, and of basing their
judgment on science, instead of aspiring to the
truth, and of using their eyes to see and their
reason to comprehend—in a word, in place of
establishing the foundations of their philosophy
upon knowledge as exact as possible of the order
which governs the world—they are divided
into sects, who are voluntarily blind, and believe
they render homage to their pretended
God by ceasing to reason, and think they
adore Him, in maintaining that their anthill is
unique in space; by reciting phrases and in
injuring other sects, and alas! by blessing
swords, and burnings at the stake, and in
authorising massacres and wars. Their doctrines
contain assertions which seem expressly
imagined to outrage common sense. These are
precisely those which constitute the articles of
their faith and belief!
They are stupid in politics. The most intelligent
and pure-minded do not understand each
other. Therefore the Republic seems to be a
form of government which cannot be realised.
Tracing the annals of their history as far back
as possible, one sees a people, cowardly and
indifferent, deliberately choosing, rather than
govern themselves, to be led by an individual
claiming to be their Basileus, their king. This
chief deprives them of three-fourths of their
resources, keeping for himself and his, the
atmosphere containing the greatest amount
of rose-essence—that is to say, that he keeps
the best in the land for his own use; he
numbers his subjects, and from time to time
sends them to fight with neighbouring peoples,
who, like themselves, are subject to a similar
Basileus.
Marshalling them like shoals of herrings, he
directs them on either side towards the field
of battle, which they call the field of honour,
they then destroy one another like furious fools,
without knowing why, and without, for that
matter, the power to comprehend, as they do
not even speak the same language.
And do you imagine that those who, most
favoured by chance, live to return, feel any
hatred against their Basileus?
Nothing of the kind. The remnant of the
army who live to see their homes again, think
nothing more natural than to celebrate their
thanksgivings in company with the dignitaries
of their sects, supplicating their God to grant
long life to, and to pour blessings upon, the
worthy man whom they designate their father
and king.
Organisation
of the
beings on
Andromeda.
Quærens. I gather from this narration, that
the inhabitants of Delta Andromeda are, both
physically and intellectually, greatly our inferiors,
for upon the Earth we do not regulate
our affairs in this manner. . . . In short, upon
their globe there is only one living kingdom,
and that a mobile one, without repose, without
sleep, kept in perpetual agitation by reason of
an inexorable fate. A world like this strikes
me as being very fantastic.
Lumen. What, then, would you say of the
one I inhabited fifteen centuries ago? A
world also containing only one kingdom, and
that not a movable one, but, on the contrary,
as fixed as is your vegetable kingdom?
Quærens. How! Animals and men held
down by roots?
Organisation
of
beings on
Andromeda.
Lumen. My existence anterior to that upon
the world of Andromeda was passed upon
Venus, a planet near to the Earth, where
I can remember myself 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 time to 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 my existence upon that planet.
My fourth life, previous to my terrestrial
one, was passed upon an immense annular
planet belonging to the constellation Cygnus,
situated in the zone of the Milky Way. This
singular world is inhabited solely by trees.
Quærens. That is to say, that so far only
plants are there, and neither animals nor
intelligent speaking beings?
Lumen. Not exactly. There are only plants
there, it is true. But in this vast world of
plants there are vegetable races more advanced
than those existing upon the Earth. There
plants live as we do—feel, think, reason, and
speak.
Reasoning
plants.
Quærens. But this is impossible! Pardon!—I
would say improbable, incomprehensible,
and entirely inconceivable.
Lumen. These intelligent vegetable races
really exist—so much so, that I myself belonged
to them. Fifteen centuries ago I was
a tree possessed of reason.
Quærens. But tell me, how can a plant
reason without a brain, and speak without
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
mute conceptions into audible language?
Quærens. I am seeking, O Master, but I
fail to find, the material explanation of this
fact, however ordinary it may be.
Facts not
impossible
because
unknown.
Lumen. We have no right to declare an
unknown fact impossible, when we are so
ignorant ourselves of the laws regulating our
own being. Because the brain is the physiological
organ of intelligence placed at the
service of man on the Earth, do you therefore
believe that there are similar brains and
spinal marrows upon all the worlds in space?
This would be an error too childish. The
law of progress governs the vital system of
each world. This vital system differs according
to the secret nature of the special forces
peculiar to each. When a world has reached
a sufficient degree of evolution to fit it for
entering into the service of moral life, mind,
more or less developed, appears on it.
Gradation of
the human
race.
Do not imagine that the Eternal Father
creates at once a human race on each globe.
Not so. The first step in the ladder of the
animal kingdom receives the human transfiguration
by force of circumstance, and by
natural law, which ennobles it, as soon as
progress has brought it to a state of relative
superiority.
The development
of life.
Do you know why you have a chest, a
stomach, two legs, two arms, and a head furnished
with visual, auditory, and olfactory
senses? It is because the quadrupeds, the
mammalia, which preceded the appearance of
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 prior to these the
pleiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, the iguanodon,
the pterodactyl, &c., and again before these
the fishes, the crustacea, the mollusca, &c.,
have been the result of the vital forces in
action upon the Earth, dependent upon the
state of the soil, of the atmosphere, of inorganic
chemistry, of the quantity of heat,
and of terrestrial gravity. The earthly animal
kingdom has followed, from its origin, this continuous
and progressive march towards the
perfection of its typical forms of mammalia,
freeing itself more and more, from the grossness
of its material.
Man is more beautiful than the horse, the
horse than the bear, the bear than the tortoise.
A similar law governs the vegetable
kingdom.
Heavy, coarse vegetables without leaves and
without flowers began the series. Then, as the
ages advanced, their forms became more pure,
and graceful leaves appeared filling the woods
with silent shadows.
Flowers in their turn began to beautify the
gardens of the Earth, and spread sweet perfumes
in an atmosphere until then insipid.
The genealogical
tree
of life.
To the scrutinising eye of the geologist who
visits these tertiary, secondary, and primordial
districts, this double progressive series of two
kingdoms is to be seen to this day. There
was a period upon the Earth when a few
islands had but just emerged from the bosom
of the warm waters, into an atmosphere surcharged
with vapour, when the only living
things distinguishing this inorganic kingdom
were long floating filaments held in suspension
in the waves. Seaweed and sea-wrack
were the first forms of vegetation. On the
rocks, live creatures for which one has no
name. There, sponges swell out. Here,
a tree of coral lifts up itself. Further
on, the Medusæ detach themselves and float
like balls of jelly. Are these animals?
Are these plants? Science does not answer.
They are animal-plants, zoophites. But life
is not limited to these forms. There are
creatures not less primitive, and as simple,
which typify a special species. These are the
annelides, worms, fish in the 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,
and life became less elemental. Then fishes
and amphibious creatures came into existence.
The animal kingdom began to form itself.
Formation
of the
animal
kingdom.
What would have been the result if the first
creature had never quitted its rock? If these
primitive elements of terrestrial life had remained
stationary at the point of their formation,
and if, for any cause whatever, the faculty
of locomotion had never had a beginning?
The consequence would have been, that in
place of the system of terrestrial vitality being
manifested in two different directions, viz., in
the world of plants and the world of animals,
it would have continued manifesting itself
solely in the first direction, with the result
that there would have been but one kingdom
instead of two, and the creative progress would
have operated in that kingdom as it operated
in the animal kingdom. It would not have
been arrested at the formation of sensitives,
superior plants which are already gifted with
a veritable nervous 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 vegetable kingdom, that
which has already been produced in the animal
kingdom. As it is, many vegetables feel and
act; here would have been vegetables feeling
and making themselves understood. The Earth
would not have been on that account deprived
of the human species. Only mankind, instead
of being gifted with locomotion as it is, would
have been fixed by the feet. Such is the state
of the annular world in which I lived fifteen
centuries ago in the heart of the Milky Way.
Quærens. Of a truth, this world of men-plants
astonishes me more than the previous
one, and I find it difficult to picture to myself
the life and manners of these singular beings.
Men-plants.
Lumen. Their kind of life is indeed very
different from yours. They neither build cities
nor make voyages; they have no need of any
form of government; they are ignorant of war,
that scourge of terrestrial humanity, and they
have nothing of that national self-love called
patriotism which is one of your characteristics.
Prudent, patient, and gifted with constancy,
they have neither the mobility nor the fragility
of the denizens of the Earth. Life there
reaches an average of five or six centuries, and
is calm, sweet, uniform, and without revolutions.
But do not think that these men-plants live
only a vegetable life. On the contrary, they
have an existence both personal and positive.
They are divided, not by caste, regulated by
birth and fortune, according to that absurd custom
on the earth, but by families, whose native
value differs precisely according to its kind.
They have an unwritten social history, but
nothing which happens amongst them can be
lost, inasmuch as they have neither emigrations
nor conquests, but their records and traditions
are handed down from one generation
to another. Each one knows the history of
his own race. They have also two sexes, as
upon the Earth, and unions take place there
in a similar manner, but are purer, more disinterested,
and invariably affectionate. Nor
are these unions always consanguineous; impregnation
can even be effected at a distance.
Quærens. But, after all, how can they communicate
their thoughts if it be true that they
think? And besides, master, how was it possible
for you to recognise yourself on this
singular world?
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 drawn there with persistence by some
irresistible instinct. It surprised me to see
only vegetable growths upon its surface, and I
principally remarked their singular manner of
grouping: here two and two, there three and
three, farther off ten and ten, besides others
in larger clusters. Some were seated, as it
were, upon the brink of a fountain, others
appeared to be reposing, with little shoots
springing up round them. 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 of these 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 a gigantic arm, raise the extremity
of this arm to its head, and pluck
one of the magnificent flowers ornamenting its
crown, and then present the same, with an
inclination of the head, to another fig-tree
growing some little distance apart, of slender
and graceful form, and bearing sweet blue
flowers. This one appeared to receive the red
flower with a certain pleasure, for it extended
a branch, or one might say a cordial hand, to
its neighbour, which was apparently held in a
long clasp.
Under certain circumstances, as you know,
a gesture is sufficient for making yourself
known to another. Thus, then, the meaning
of this tableau was borne in upon me. This
gesture of the fig-tree in the Milky Way awoke
within me a world of memories.
This Man-Plant was myself as I was fifteen
centuries ago, and in the fig-trees with the
violet flowers which were grouped around me
I recognised my children; for I recollected
that the tints of the flowers borne by the
offspring, are the result of the admixture of
the two colours distinguishing their parents.
Faculties of
men-plants.
These Men-Plants see without eyes, hear
without ears, and speak without larynx. Have
you not flowers upon the Earth which can discriminate
not only night from day, but also
the different hours of the day, the height of
the sun above the horizon, a clear sky from a
cloudy one, and more, which perceive divers
sounds with exquisite sensitiveness; and, in
fine, not only hear each other perfectly,
but also the butterfly messengers. These
rudiments are developed to a veritable degree
of civilisation upon the world of which
I speak, and these beings are as complete
in their kind as you on the Earth are in
yours. Their intelligence, it is true, is less
advanced than the average intellect of terrestrial
humanity; but in their manners and
mutual relations, they show in all ways a
sweetness and refinement, which might often
serve as a model to the dwellers upon the
Earth.
Quærens. How is it possible, master, that
they see without eyes, and hear without ears?
Light and
sound are
only modes
of motion.
Lumen. You will cease to be astonished, my
old friend, if you will but reflect that light
and sound are nothing else than two modes of
motion. In order to appreciate either one or
the other of these two modes of motion,
you must (and that is sufficient) be endowed
with an apparatus in correspondence with
them, which might be only a simple nerve.
The eye and the ear are the apparatus for
your terrestrial nature. In another natural
organisation the optic nerve and the auditory
nerve form quite different organs. Besides,
light and sound are not the only two modes
of motion in nature. I can even say that
light and sound are the result of your manner
of feeling, and not of anything real.
Nature
possesses
myriads of
modes of
motion.
There are in nature not one, but ten,
twenty, a hundred, a thousand different modes
of motion. Upon the Earth you are so formed
as to be able to appreciate chiefly these two,
which constitute almost the whole of your life
in its external relations.
Upon other worlds there are other senses
with which nature can be appreciated under
its various aspects. Some of these senses take
the place of your eyes and of your ears, and
others are in touch with perceptions entirely
foreign to those which are received by terrestrial
organs.
Quærens. When you spoke to me just now
of the men-plants in the world of Cygnus, the
idea occurred to me to ask if earthly plants
possess a soul?
Form determined
by
soul.
Souls of
plants.
Lumen. Most certainly. Terrestrial plants
are gifted with a soul just as much as are
animals and men. Without a potential soul
no organisation could exist. The form of a
plant is determined by its soul. An acorn and
the kernel of a peach are planted side by side
in the same soil, the same situation, under the
same conditions; why should the first produce
an oak and the second a peach tree? Because
an organic force inherent in the oak will construct
its special kind of vegetable, and another
organic force, another soul inherent in
the peach, will equally draw to itself other
elements necessary for its special 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 the plant has not
any self-consciousness.
Souls and
atoms.
Personality
of the soul.
The souls in vegetables, in animals, and in
men, have already attained to that degree of
personality and of authority, which enables
them to bend at will, and to command and
govern at pleasure, all those non-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 its structure. Our human soul in our
terrestrial body upon the Earth governs, without
being conscious of it, all the elementary
souls forming the constituent parts of its body.
Matter is not a solid and compassable substance.
It is an assemblage of centres of
forces. Substance has not any importance.
From one atom to another there is a great
distance in proportion to the dimensions of
atoms. At the head of the divers centres of
forces which constitute and form the human
body is the human soul, governing all the
ganglionic souls, which are subordinated to it.
Quærens. I must frankly own, most wise
instructor, that I fail to clearly grasp this
theory.
Lumen. Then I will illustrate it for you by
an example which will demonstrate the truth
of all I have said, and convince you that it is a
fact.
Quærens. A fact? Are you, then, a reincarnation
of the Princess Scheherazade, and
have you been fascinating me with a new tale
from the "Arabian Nights"?
