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37 chapters
I. A DREAM OF YOUTH.
I. A DREAM OF YOUTH.
I WAS seventeen years old; her name was Urania. Was Urania a fair, blue-eyed maiden, a dream of spring, an innocent but inquisitive daughter of Eve? No; she was simply, as in days of yore, that one of the nine Muses who presided over astronomy, and whose celestial glance inspired and directed the chorus of the spheres; she was the angelic idea which soars above terrestrial dulness. She had not the disturbing flesh, nor the heart whose palpitations are communicated at a distance, nor the gentle a
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II. UNKNOWN HUMANITIES.
II. UNKNOWN HUMANITIES.
T HEN I saw the Earth sinking down into the yawning depths of immensity; the cupolas of the observatory, Paris with its lights, were rapidly fading away. Although feeling as if I were motionless, I had the same sensation which one experiences on rising in a balloon and seeing the earth descend. I went up, up, in a magic flight toward the inaccessible zenith. Urania was with me, a little higher up, looking at me kindly and pointing out the kingdoms below. Day had come again. I recognized France,
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III. THE INFINITE VARIETY OF BEINGS.
III. THE INFINITE VARIETY OF BEINGS.
T HE tricolored system had long since disappeared in our upward flight. We were passing through the neighborhood of a great many worlds which were very different from our Earth. Some of them appeared to be entirely covered with water, and peopled by aquatic beings; others, occupied entirely by plants. We stopped near several of them. What unimaginable variety! The inhabitants of one of them seemed to me especially beautiful. Urania apprised me of the fact that their organization was totally diff
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IV. ETERNITY AND THE INFINITE
IV. ETERNITY AND THE INFINITE
W HAT was that? Could it be true? Another universe was coming down to us! Millions and millions of suns grouped together were floating about like a celestial archipelago, and as we flew toward them they spread themselves out like a limitless cloud of stars. I looked about me on all sides, trying to pierce the depths of boundless space, and saw similar clusters of twinkling stars scattered about in all directions, at various distances. The new universe which we were entering was made up principal
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V. THE LIGHT OF THE PAST.
V. THE LIGHT OF THE PAST.
T HUS spoke my celestial guide. Her face was glorious as the day, her eyes shone with a starry lustre, her voice was like divine music. I looked at the worlds about us revolving in space, and felt that a mighty harmony controlled the course of Nature. "Now let us return to the Earth," she said, pointing to the spot where our terrestrial Sun had disappeared. "But look again. You understand now that space is infinite; you will soon comprehend that time is eternal." We crossed other constellations
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I. LIFE.
I. LIFE.
A N intense evening glow floated in the atmosphere like a wondrous golden radiance. From the heights of Passy the view extended over the whole of the great city, which at that time, more than ever before, was not a city, but a world. The Universal Exhibition of 1867 had lavished all the attrac tions and delights of the century on imperial Paris. The flowers of civilization were blooming in their most brilliant tints, wasting themselves away by the very ardor of their perfume,—fading, dying in th
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II. THE APPARITION.
II. THE APPARITION.
T HEIR first meeting had been a very strange one. The young naturalist was a passionate admirer of the beauties of Nature, and was always looking for grand effects. The year before, he had made a journey to Norway to visit the silent fiords, in which the sea was swallowed up; the mountains, whose snow-crowned summits lift their spotless brows far above the clouds; and to make a special study of the aurora borealis,—that most magnificent exhibition of our planet's life. I had accompanied him on t
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III. "TO BE, OR NOT TO BE?"
III. "TO BE, OR NOT TO BE?"
I T was this very phase of his intellectual life which had drawn the two friends so intimately together. Happy at being alive, in the flower of her spring-time, expanding to the light of life,—a harp thrilling with all the harmonies of Nature,—the beautiful Northern girl still sometimes dreamed of the fays and elves of her native clime, of the angels and mysteries of the Christian religion which had soothed her childhood. The credulity of her early days had not obscured her understanding; she th
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IV. AMOR.
IV. AMOR.
I N their life together, pleasant and intimate as it was, there was something lacking. These conversations on the serious topics of being or non-being, their exchange of ideas on the analysis of humanity, their inquiries into the final end of the existence of things, satisfied their minds sometimes, but not their hearts. When they had been together for a long time, talking under the garden trellis which towered above the picture of the great city, or in the silent library, the student, the think
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V. THE AURORA BOREALIS.
V. THE AURORA BOREALIS.
T HE disturbances of the magnetic needle had announced the aurora's presence even before the sun went down, and the inflation of the balloon with pure hydrogen gas was begun while the sky showed in the magnetic North that coloring of golden green which is always the sure indication of an aurora bore alis. The preparations were ended in a couple of hours. The atmosphere, entirely free from all clouds, was perfectly limpid, the stars twinkled in the bosom of a sky profoundly dark and without a moo
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VI. ETERNAL PROGRESS.
VI. ETERNAL PROGRESS.
D AYS , weeks, months, seasons, years, pass quickly on this planet,—and doubtless also on the others. The Earth has already run its yearly course around the Sun twenty times since destiny so tragically closed the book that my young friends had been reading for less than a year. Their happiness was short-lived; their morning faded away like the dawn. I had forgotten, 1 or at least lost sight of them, when quite recently, at a hypnotic séance in Nancy, where I had stopped for a few days on my way
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I. TELEPATHY.
I. TELEPATHY.
T HE magnetic séance at Nancy had left a strong impression on my mind. I often thought of my departed friend and his investigations in the unexplored domains of nature and life, of his sincere and original analytical researches on the mysterious problem of immortality; but I could not think of him now without associating him with the idea of a possible reincarnation in the planet Mars. This idea seemed to me to be bold, rash, purely imaginary if you like, but not absurd. The distance from here t
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II. ITER EXTATICUM CŒLESTE.
II. ITER EXTATICUM CŒLESTE.
T HE hours and days that I devoted to the study of these psychological and telepathical questions did not prevent my observing Mars through the telescope, and taking geographical drawings of it, every time that our atmosphere, so often cloudy, would permit. Besides, it may be realized that while in the study of Nature and in science all questions are related to each other, yet that astronomy and psychology are most closely united to each other, since the psychic universe has the material world f
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III. THE PLANET MARS.
III. THE PLANET MARS.
H AD I been the plaything of a dream? Had my spirit really been transported to the planet Mars, or had I been the dupe of a purely imaginary illusion? The feeling of reality had been so strong, so intense, and the things I had seen agreed so perfectly with the scientific notions which we already possess in regard to the physical nature of the Martial world, that I could not entertain a doubt on the subject, although amazed at that ecstatic trip, and asking myself a thousand questions, each one c
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IV. THE FIXED POINT IN THE UNIVERSE.
IV. THE FIXED POINT IN THE UNIVERSE.
T HE memory of Urania and the celestial journey on which she had borne me away, the truths she had made me realize, Spero's history, his trials in his pursuit of the absolute, his apparition, his story of another world, still haunted me, and kept the same problems (partly solved, partly veiled in the uncertainty of our knowledge) incessantly before my mind. I felt that I had gradually risen to a perception of the truth, and that the visible universe was really but an appearance, which we must pa
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A SOUL CLOTHED WITH AIR.
A SOUL CLOTHED WITH AIR.
S HE was standing, in her chaste nudity, with uplifted arms, twisting the thick and waving masses of her hair, which she was trying to bring into subjection on the top of her head,—a fresh, young beauty, who had not yet attained the fulness and perfection of developed form, but was approaching it, radiant in the loveliness of her seventeenth year. A child of Venice, her white, soft, rose-tinted skin revealed the circulation of a strong and ardent life-blood beneath its transparency; her eyes sho
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V.
V.
The infinitely small. The experiments made in beating gold-leaf show that ten thousand leaves are contained in the thickness of a millimetre. A millimetre has been divided on a glass plate into a thousand equal parts; and infusoria exist, which are so small that their entire bodies, placed between two of these divisions, do not touch either of them. The members and organs of these beings are composed of cellules, these of molecules, and these of atoms. Twenty cubic centimetres of oil spread over
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VI.
VI.
The intangible, invisible atom, scarcely conceivable to our mind accustomed to superficial judgments, constitutes the only true matter; and what we call matter is but an effect produced on our senses by the motion of atoms,—that is to say, an incessant possibility of sensations. The result is, that matter, like the manifestations of energy, is only a mode of motion. If motion should stop; if force should be annihilated; if the temperature of bodies should be reduced to absolute zero,—matter, as
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VII.
VII.
The visible universe is composed of invisible bodies. What we see is made up of things which are not seen. There is but one kind of primitive atom. The constituent molecules of different bodies—iron, gold, oxygen, hydrogen, etc.—differ only in the number, grouping, and motion of the atoms which compose them....
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VIII.
VIII.
What we call "matter," vanishes when scientific analysis thinks to grasp it. But we find as the support of the universe and the origin of all form, Force,—the dynamic element. By my will I can unsettle the Moon in her course. The movements of each atom on our Earth are the mathematical resultant of the undulations of the luminiferous ether which come to it in time from the abysses of infinite space....
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IX.
IX.
The human being has for essential principle the soul. The body is visible and transitory....
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X.
X.
Atoms are indestructible. The energy which moves atoms and governs the universe is indestructible. The human soul is indestructible....
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XI.
XI.
The individuality of the soul is recent in the Earth's history. Our planet was nebula, then sun, after that, chaos. No terrestrial human being was then in existence. Life began with the most rudimentary organisms; it has progressed century by century to attain its present state, which is not the last. What we call the faculties of the soul,—intelligence, reason, conscience,—are modern. The mind has gradually freed itself from matter; as—if the comparison were not awkward—gas frees itself from co
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XII.
XII.
Psychic force has been beginning to assert itself in the higher spheres of terrestrial humanity for the past thirty or forty centuries; its action is but in its dawn. Souls conscious of their individuality, or still unconscious of it, are by their very nature beyond the conditions of space and time. After the death of the body, as during life, they occupy no place; perhaps some of them go to dwell in other worlds. Those only who are freed from material bonds can be conscious of their extra-corpo
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XIII.
XIII.
The Earth is but a province of the eternal fatherland; it forms a part of heaven. Heaven is infinite ; all worlds are a part of heaven....
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XIV.
XIV.
The planetary and sidereal systems which constitute the universe are at different degrees of organization and advancement. The extent of their diversity is infinite; beings are everywhere appropriate to their worlds....
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XV.
XV.
All worlds are not lived upon. The present era is of no more importance than are those which preceded or those which will follow it. Some worlds have been inhabited in the past, others will be in the future. Some day nothing will remain of the Earth; even its ruins will have perished....
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XVI.
XVI.
Terrestrial life is not the type of other lives. An unlimited diversity reigns in the universe. There are dwelling-places where the weight is intense, where light is unknown, where touch, smell, and hearing are the only senses, where, the optic nerve not being formed, all the beings are blind. There are others where the beings are so light and so slight that they would be invisible to earthly eyes, where senses of an exquisite delicacy reveal to privileged beings sensations forbidden to terrestr
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XVII.
XVII.
The space existing between the worlds distributed over the immense universe does not separate them from each other. They are all in perpetual communication, from the attraction which makes itself felt through all distance, and establishes an indissoluble link between all worlds....
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XIX.
XIX.
The system of the physical world is the material basis, the habitat of the moral or spiritual world. Hence astronomy must be the basis of all philosophical and religious belief. Every thinking being bears within himself the consciousness, but the uncertainty, of immortality. This is because we are the microscopic wheels of an unknown mechanism....
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XX.
XX.
Man makes his own destiny. He rises or falls in accordance with his works. Beings attached to material riches, misers, hypocrites, liars, ambitious people, live like the perverse, in the lower zones. But a primordial and absolute law governs creation,—the law of Progress. Everything rises in the infinite. Sins are falls....
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XXI.
XXI.
In the ascension of souls, moral qualities have no less value than intellectual qualities. Goodness, devotion, self-abnegation, sacrifice, purify the soul, and raise it, like study and science....
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XXII.
XXII.
Universal creation is an immense harmony, of which the Earth is but an insignificant, rather uninteresting, and unfinished fragment....
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XXIII.
XXIII.
Nature is a perpetual future. Progress is law. Progression is eternal....
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XXIV.
XXIV.
The eternity of a soul would not be long enough to visit the infinite and learn all there is to know....
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XXV.
XXV.
The soul's destiny is to free itself more and more from the material world, and to belong to the lofty Uranian life, whence it can look down upon matter and suffer no more. It then enters upon the spiritual life, eternally pure. The supreme aim of all beings is the perpetual approach to absolute perfection and divine happiness. Such was Spero's scientific and philosophical testament. Does it not seem to have been dictated by Urania herself? The Nine Muses of ancient mythology were sisters. Moder
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