Part 12

"I go no further for the human soul just now, although it is incomparably superior to the soul of a plant, and although it has created an intellectual world as much above the rest of the terrestrial world as the stars are higher than the Earth. I am not looking at it now from the point of view of its spiritual faculties, but only as force animating the human being.

"Ah! I wonder that that force can group the atoms that we breathe, or that we assimilate by nutrition and form this charming being! Think of that young girl the day she was born, and follow in thought the gradual development of that little body through the years of her awkward age to the first graces of youth and the charms of womanhood. How is human organism nourished, developed, and composed? You know,--by respiration and nutrition.

"The air supplies three quarters of our nourishment by respiration. The oxygen in the air maintains the fire of life, and the body is comparable to a flame, constantly renewed by the principles of combustion. The lack of oxygen extinguishes life as it extinguishes a lamp. By respiration the black venous blood is transformed into red arterial blood and regenerated. The lungs are a fine tissue pierced with from forty to fifty millions of little holes, which are just too small for the blood to filter through, and just large enough for the air to penetrate them. A perpetual interchange of gas takes place between the air and the blood, the first furnishing the second with oxygen, the second eliminating carbonic acid. On the one hand the atmospheric oxygen burns carbon in the lung; on the other the lung exhales carbonic acid, nitrogen, and water in the form of vapor. In the daytime, plants breathe by an opposite process,--they absorb carbonic acid and exhale oxygen; by this difference maintaining one part of the general equilibrium of terrestrial life.

"Of what is the human body composed? An average adult man weighs 70 kilograms. Of this amount there are nearly 52 kilograms of water in the blood and flesh. Analyze the substance of our body, you will find albumen, fibrine, caseine, and gelatine; that is, organic substances composed originally of the four essential gases,--oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbonic acid. You will also find substances with no nitrogen, such as gum, sugar, starch, and fat. These matters likewise pass through our organism; their carbon and hydrogen are consumed by the oxygen breathed in during respiration, and then exhaled under the form of carbonic acid and water.

"You are not unaware that water is a combination of two gases, oxygen and hydrogen; the air is a mixture of two gases, oxygen and nitrogen, to which are added in lesser proportions water in the form of vapor, which, however, is but condensed oxygen, etc.

"Thus our body is composed only of transformed gases."

* * * * *

"But," interrupted my companion, "we do not live solely upon the air; at certain hours, indicated by our stomachs, it is very necessary to add some supplies which are not without a value of their own,--such as a pheasant's wing, a filet de sole, a glass of Château Laffitte or champagne, or, as your taste may prefer, asparagus, grapes, peaches...."

"Yes, that all passes through our organism and renews its tissues,--pretty rapidly too; for in a few months (not in seven years, as was formerly thought) our body is entirely renewed. To return to that lovely being who posed before us just now. None of that flesh which we admired existed three or four months ago; those shoulders, that face, those eyes, that mouth, those arms, that hair, and, even to the very nails, all that organism, is but a current of molecules, a ceaselessly renewed flame, a river which we may look at all our lives, but never see the same water again. Now, all that is but assimilated gas, condensed and modified, and more than anything else, it is air. These bones themselves, so solid now, were formed and hardened gradually. Do not forget that our whole body is composed of invisible molecules which do not touch each other, and which are continually renewed.

"Finally, our table is spread with vegetables and fruits; if we are vegetarians we absorb substances almost entirely drawn from the air. This peach is air and water; this pear, this grape, this almond are also made of air and water, a few gaseous elements drawn to them by the sap, by solar heat, by the rain. Asparagus or salad, peas or beans, lettuce or chicory, all these live in the air and on the air; what the earth furnishes, what the sap seeks out, are also gases, and the very same nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, etc.

"If it is a question of beefsteak, chicken, or some other 'meat,' the difference is not very great. Sheep and oxen feed upon grass. If we relish a partridge cooked with cauliflower, a roasted quail, a truffled turkey, or a stewed hare, all these substances, apparently so different, are only transformed vegetable matter, which itself is but a grouping of molecules taken from the gases of which we have just been speaking,--air, water, elements, molecules, and atoms almost imponderable of themselves, and moreover absolutely invisible to the naked eye.

"Thus, whatever may be our kind of nourishment, our body, kept repaired, developed by the absorption of molecules acquired by respiration and alimentation, is really but a current incessantly renewed by means of this assimilation,--directed, governed, and organized by the immaterial force which animates us. To this force we may assuredly give the name of 'soul.' It groups the atoms which suit it, eliminates those which are useless to it, and, starting with an imperceptible speck, an indiscernible germ, ends by building up the Apollo Belvidere or the Venus of the Capitol. Phidias is but a coarse imitator, compared to this hidden and mysterious force. Mythology tells us that Pygmalion became the lover of a statue of his own creation. Not so! Pygmalion, Praxiteles, Michael Angelo, Benvenuto, and Canova created nothing but statues. The force that can construct the living body of man and woman is more sublime.

"But this force is immaterial, invisible, intangible, imponderable, like the attraction which lulls the worlds in the universal melody; and the body, however material it may seem to us, is in itself only a harmonious grouping, formed by the attraction of this interior force. So you see that I confine myself strictly within the limits of positive science in speaking of this young girl by the title of a soul clothed with air,--like you or me, for instance, neither more nor less.

"From the origin of humanity down to within a century or two, it has been believed that sensation was perceived at the very point where it was felt. A pain felt in the finger was considered as having its seat in the finger itself. Children and many people believe so still. Physiology has demonstrated that the impression is transmitted from the finger-tip to the brain by means of the nervous system. If the nerve is cut, the finger may be burned with impunity; the paralysis is complete. We have been able to determine the time taken by the impression in transmitting itself from any part of the body to the brain, and it is known that the rapidity of this transmission is about twenty-eight metres per second. Since then we have referred sensation to the brain. But we have stopped half way.

"The brain is matter, like the finger, and by no means fixed and stable matter. It is essentially changing matter, rapidly variable, and forming no identity. A single lobe, a single cell, a single molecule which does not change, does not and could not exist in the whole mass of encephalic matter. A stoppage of motion, of circulation, or of transformation would be a death-warrant. The brain subsists and feels, only on condition of submitting, like all the rest of the body, to the incessant transformations of organic matter which constitute the vital circuit.

"So it cannot be that our personality, our identity, lies in a certain grouping of cerebral matter,--our individual me, our _ego_ which acquires and preserves a personal scientific and moral value, increasing with study; our _ego_ which feels itself responsible for its acts performed a month, a year, ten, twenty, fifty years ago, during which time however the molecular grouping has been _changed_ frequently.

"Physiologists who affirm that the soul does not exist, are like their ancestors who affirmed that they felt pain in their finger or their foot. They are a little less far from the truth, but they stop on the way when they stop at the brain, and make the human being consist of cerebral impressions. This hypothesis is all the less excusable because these same physiologists know perfectly well that personal sensation is always accompanied by a modification of substance. In other words, the _ego_ of the individual only continues when the identity of its matter ceases to continue.

"Our principle of sensibility, then, cannot be a material object; it is put in communication with the universe by cerebral impressions, by the chemical forces disengaged in the encephalon in consequence of material combinations. But it is _different_.

"And our organic constitution is perpetually transformed under the direction of a psychic principle.

"Some molecule now incorporated in our organism escapes from it by expiration, perspiration, etc., to belong to the atmosphere for a longer or shorter time, then to be incorporated into another organism,--plant, animal, or man. The molecules which actually constitute your body were not all made part of your person yesterday, and none of them were there three months ago. Where were they? Either in the air or in another body. All the molecules now forming your organic tissues, your lungs, your eyes, your brain, your legs, etc., have already served to form other organic tissues. We are all resuscitated dead men, made from the dust of our ancestors. If all the people who have lived up to this time arose from the dead, there would be five of them to every square foot upon the surface of all the continents,--obliged to climb on one another's shoulders in order to stand; but they could not all be completely resuscitated, for many of the molecules have served successively for several bodies.

"Our own organisms likewise, resolved into their ultimate particles, will help to form the bodies of our descendants.

"Each molecule of air then goes on eternally from life to life, and escapes thence from death to death, by turns wind, wave, earth, animal, or flower. It is incorporated successively into the substance of numberless organisms. The air, the inexhaustible source whence everything that lives takes its breath, is yet an immense reservoir into which everything that dies pours its last sigh; by its absorption, vegetable and animal, different organisms come to life and afterwards perish. Life and death are both in the air we breathe, and perpetually succeed each other by the exchange of gaseous molecules; the molecule of oxygen which this old oak exhales will fly away to the lungs of a child in its cradle. The last sighs of a man will weave the brilliant corolla of a flower, or expand like a smile over the verdant meadow. And thus by an infinite series of partial deaths, the atmosphere incessantly nourishes the universal life spread over the surface of the world.

"And if nevertheless some objection should still remain unanswered, I would go further, and add that our clothes as well as our bodies are composed of substances which at first were all gaseous. Take this thread, draw it out: what a resistance! How many webs of cambric, silk, linen, cotton, and wool industry have been formed by the help of these warps and woofs! And yet, what is a thread of linen, flax, or cotton? Globules of air in juxtaposition which are held together only by their molecular force. What is a thread of silk or wool? Another set of molecules in juxtaposition. Admit, then, that our clothes as well are air, gas, substances drawn in the beginning from the atmosphere,--oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, vapor of water, etc."

* * * * *

"I am glad to see," said the painter, "that art is not so far from science as is supposed in certain circles. If your theory is purely scientific to you, to me it is art, and of the best. Besides, do all these distinctions exist in Nature? In Nature there is neither art nor painting nor sculpture, music nor decoration, philosophy nor chemistry, nor astronomy nor meteorology. Look at the sky, the sea, those foot-hills of the Alps, those rosy evening clouds, those luminous perspectives towards the Italian coast,--all that is one. There is unity in everything. And since molecular philosophy demonstrates that there is no longer any body, that even the atoms in a bar of steel or platinum do not touch each other, no one will be the loser, provided our souls are left us."

"Yes, it is a fact against which no prejudice can prevail,--living beings are souls clothed with air. I pity the worlds deprived of their atmosphere."

We had returned to the seashore after a long ramble not far from our point of departure, and were passing the battlemented wall of a villa on our way from Beaulieu to Cape Ferrat, when two very fashionably dressed ladies passed us. They were the Duchess of V---- and her daughter, whom we had met the previous Thursday at a ball at the Préfecture. We bowed to them, and disappeared under the olive-trees. The young girl, inquisitive daughter of Eve, turned to look after us, and it seemed to me that a sudden blush crimsoned her cheeks; it was doubtless the reflection of the setting sun's rays.

"Perhaps you think," said the artist, also looking back, "that you have diminished my admiration for beauty? No, I appreciate it still more. In it I bow to harmony; and--shall I confess it?--the human body thus considered as the manifestation to the senses of a directing soul seems to me to acquire thence more nobility, more beauty, and more light."

V.

AD VERITATEM PER SCIENTIAM.

I was studying in my library the conditions of life upon the surface of worlds governed and illuminated by suns of different sizes, when glancing at the chimney-piece I was struck with the expression--I had almost said the animation--of my dear Urania's face. It was the gracious, living expression which once--ah! how quickly the earth goes round, and how short a quarter of a century is!--which once--and it seems to me like yesterday--which once--in those youthful days so quickly flown--had attracted my thoughts and inflamed my heart. I could not keep from looking at her again, and resting my eyes on her. Truly, she was still just as beautiful, and my feelings had not changed. She drew me to her as the light draws an insect. I rose from my table to approach her, and see again the singular effect of the daylight on her changing face, and I surprised myself by standing before her, forgetting my work.

Her look seemed to be lost in the distance, yet she was looking. At what? I had the firm conviction that she was really looking at something; and following the direction of that fixed, motionless, solemn, although not severe gaze, my eyes went straight to Spero's portrait, hanging there between two book-cases. Really, Urania was looking fixedly at him.

Suddenly the picture broke away from the wall and fell, breaking the frame. I rushed to it. The portrait was lying on the carpet, and Spero's gentle face was turned towards me. Picking it up, I found a large paper, grown yellow, which filled up the whole back, and was written over on both sides in Spero's handwriting. Why had I never noticed this paper? It is true that it might have lain under the setting of the frame, hidden beneath the protecting cardboard mat. When I brought this water-color back from Christiania I did not think of examining its arrangement. But who could have had the singular idea of putting this sheet in such a place? I recognized my friend's handwriting, and glanced over the two pages in utter bewilderment. According to all appearances they must have been written on the last day of the young student's life,--the day of his ascension to the aurora borealis. Probably Icléa's father wished to preserve these last thoughts carefully, so framed them with Spero's portrait, and forgot to mention it when he afterwards gave me the portrait as a memento, on my return from the pilgrimage to my two friends' graves. However that might be, placing the water-color gently on the table, I experienced the deepest emotion as I recognized every detail of that dear face. They were his very eyes, so sweet, so deep, and always unfathomable; the wide brow apparently so calm, the delicate mouth with its reserved sensitiveness, the fresh coloring of the face, neck, and hands. His eyes looked at me, whichever way I turned the portrait; they looked at Urania at the same time; they looked everywhere at once. Strange idea of the artist! I could not resist the thought of Urania's eyes, which had seemed to me to be looking at the portrait with embarrassing intentness. Her celestial countenance no longer wore the same expression at all, but appeared to me rather to be melancholy, almost sad. Then I turned again to the mysterious sheet of paper. It was written in a clear, precise hand, with no erasures. I offer it to the readers of this book just as I found it, without the slightest change; for it appears to be the very natural conclusion of the preceding episodes.

Here it is, _verbatim_:--

This is the scientific testament of a mind which on the Earth did all in its power to remain independent of the weight of matter, and which hopes to be freed from it.

I should like to leave the results of my researches in the form of aphorisms. It seems to me that the Truth can be reached only through the study of Nature, that is to say, by science. Here are the inductions which appear to me to be founded on this method of observation.

I.

The visible, tangible, ponderable, and constantly moving universe is composed of invisible, intangible, imponderable, and inert atoms.

II.

These atoms are governed by force, to constitute bodies and to organize beings.

III.

Force is essential entity.

IV.

Visibility, tangibility, solidity, and weight are relative properties, and not absolute realities.

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 a lake will cover four thousand square metres, so that the layer of oil thus expanded measures only one two hundred thousandth of a millimetre in thickness. Spectral analysis of light discloses the presence of a millionth of a milligramme of sodium in a flame. The sense of smell perceives 1/604000000 a milligramme of mercaptan in the air breathed. The dimensions of atoms must be less than a millionth of a millimetre in diameter. [Waves of light are comprised between 4 and 8 ten millionths of a millimetre, from violet to red; 2300 are required to fill a millimetre. In the duration of a second the ether through which light is transmitted makes 700,000,000,000,000 oscillations, each of which is mathematically defined.]

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 we know it, would cease to exist.

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.

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.

IX.

The human being has for essential principle the soul. The body is visible and transitory.

X.

Atoms are indestructible.

The energy which moves atoms and governs the universe is indestructible.

The human soul is indestructible.

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 coal, perfume from the flower, flame from fire.

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-corporeal existence and immortality.

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.

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.

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.

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 terrestrial humanity.

XVII.