Part 13

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.

XVIII.

The universe forms a single unity.

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.

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.

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.

XXII.

Universal creation is an immense harmony, of which the Earth is but an insignificant, rather uninteresting, and unfinished fragment.

XXIII.

Nature is a perpetual future. _Progress is law._ Progression is eternal.

XXIV.

The eternity of a soul would not be long enough to visit the infinite and learn all there is to know.

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. Modern scientific conceptions in their turn tend to unity. Astronomy, or the knowledge of the world, and psychology, or knowledge of being, unite to-day to establish the only basis on which definite philosophy can be built.

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P. S.--The preceding incidents, with the researches and reflections which accompany them, are brought together here in a sort of essay, whose aim is to shed a gleam of light on the solution of the greatest problem that can engage the human mind. With this object the present work is offered to the attention of those who sometimes "in the midst of Life's journey," of which Dante speaks, linger to ask themselves where and what they are,--to seek, to think, and to dream.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Strange coincidences sometimes occur; and upon the day that George Spero made the ascent which was to be so fatal to him I knew that he had started, from the extraordinary restlessness of the magnetic needle, which announced at Paris, where I had remained, the intense aurora borealis for which he had been waiting so anxiously to make his aerial journey. It is well known that the aurora borealis causes magnetic disturbances which are felt at long distances from their manifestation. But what surprised me most, and what I never have been able to explain, is, that at the very time of the accident I experienced an undefined uneasiness; then a kind of presentiment that some accident had happened to him. The despatch announcing his death found me almost prepared for it.

[2] Phantasms of the Living. By E. Gurney and Frederick Myers, of the University of Cambridge, and Frank Podmore. London, 1886. (The president of the Society for Psychical Research is Professor Balfour Stewart, F. R. S.)

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Transcriber's Notes

Simple typographical errors were corrected, in some cases by referring to other editions of this book.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Page 280: "A SOUL CLOTHED WITH AIR." is the heading of a chapter that is not identified as such in this edition.