Part 2
The 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 different from that of the children of Earth, and that those human beings could discern the physico-chemical operations which take place in the maintenance of the body. In our earthly organism we do not see, for example, how the food absorbed is assimilated,--how the blood, tissues, and bones renew themselves; all functions are fulfilled instinctively, without thought perceiving it. Thus man suffers from a thousand maladies whose origin is hidden, and often undiscoverable. There the human being feels the action of his vital nourishment as we feel pleasure or pain. A nerve starts from every particle of his body, so to speak, which transmits the different impressions it receives to the brain. If terrestrial man were endowed with such a nervous system, looking into his organism through the intermediary of the nerves, he would see how food transforms itself into chyle, the latter into blood, blood into flesh, muscular, nervous substance, etc.: he would see himself! But we are very far from that, the centre of our perceptions being obstructed by nerves, thickened by cerebral lobes and optic thalami.
On another globe which we crossed during the night--that is to say, on the side of its nocturnal hemisphere--human eyes are so constructed as to be _luminous_, and shine as though some phosphorescent emanation radiated from their strange centres. A night meeting comprising a large number of these persons presents an extremely fantastic appearance, because the brilliancy, as well as the color, of the eyes changes with the different passions by which they are swayed. More than that, the power of their glance is such that they exert an _electric_ and magnetic influence of variable intensity, and which under certain conditions has the effect of lightning, causing the victim upon whom the force and energy of their will is fixed to fall dead.
A little farther away my celestial guide pointed out a world in which organisms enjoy a precious faculty: the soul may change its body without passing through the often disagreeable and always sad experience of death. A savant who has labored all his life for the instruction of mankind, and feels that his end is drawing near before he has been able to complete his noble undertaking, can change bodies with a youth, and begin a new life still more useful than the first. The young man's consent and the magnetic manipulation of a competent physician are sufficient for the transmigration. Sometimes it happens that two persons united by the sweet, strong ties of love effect such an exchange of bodies after a union of many years,--the husband's soul takes the wife's body, and conversely, for the rest of their existence. The inmost experience of life becomes incomparably more complete for each of them. Savants and historians desirous of living two centuries instead of one, are seen to fall into a long artificial winter's sleep, which suspends their lives for half of each year, and even more. Some even succeed in living three times longer than the normal life of centenarians.
A few seconds later, crossing another system, we met a kind of organism still more different from ours, and assuredly far superior. With the inhabitants of the planet we were then looking at,--a world lighted by a brilliant hydrogenized sun,--thought is not obliged to pass through speech to be understood. How many times has it not happened when a bright or transcendent idea came into our minds, and we wanted to utter it or write it out, that just as we were about to speak or write, we felt that it was slipping away, flying from us, confused or metamorphosed into something else? The inhabitants of this planet have a sixth sense, which might be called magneto-telegraphic, by virtue of which, when the author is not disinclined, the thought becomes outwardly manifest, and can be read upon a feature which occupies very much the same place as a forehead. These silent conversations are often the deepest and most enjoyable,--always the most sincere.
We are innocently disposed to believe that the human organism is perfect, and leaves nothing on earth to be desired; but for all that have we not often regretted being obliged to listen, in spite of ourselves, to disagreeable words, absurd speeches, a sermon verbose with emptiness, bad music, slander, or calumny? Our grammars vainly pretend that we can "close our ears" to these speeches; unfortunately there is no such thing. You cannot shut your ears as you can your eyes. I was very much surprised to find a planet where Nature had not forgotten this salutary provision. As we stopped there for an instant, Urania pointed out ears which closed like eyelids. "There is very much less anger and vexation here than with you," said she; "but the wranglings of political parties are much more sharp and vociferous, adversaries are unwilling to listen to disputes, and succeed effectually, notwithstanding the speakers may be most loquacious."
On another world, in which phosphorus plays a large part, whose atmosphere is constantly electrified, whose temperature is very high, and where the inhabitants have no sufficient reason for inventing wearing apparel, certain passions manifest themselves by the illumination of some part of the body. It is the same thing on a large scale that we see in our terrestrial meadows on a smaller one in mild summer evenings when glow-worms silently manifest themselves, and then waste away in a soft, amorous flame. It is very curious to observe the appearance of these luminous couples in the evening in populous cities. The color of the phosphorescence differs in the sexes, and its intensity varies with the age and temperament. The stronger sex burns with a more or less ardent red flame, and the gentler sex with a bluish light, sometimes pale and diaphanous. Our glow-worms, however, give but a very faint and rudimentary idea respecting the nature of the impressions experienced by these peculiar beings. I could not believe my eyes when we were passing through the atmosphere of this planet. But I was still more surprised on arriving at the satellite of this unique world. That was a solitary moon, lighted by a kind of twilight sun. A sombre valley lay before us. From the trees scattered on both slopes of the valley hung human beings enveloped in shrouds. They had tied themselves to the branches by their hair, and were sleeping in the deepest silence. What I had taken for grave-clothes was a covering formed from the growth of their bleached and tangled locks. As I was wondering at this marvellous spectacle Urania told me this was their usual mode of interment and resurrection. Yes, on this world human beings enjoyed the organic faculty of those insects which have the gift of going to sleep in a chrysalis state, and metamorphosing themselves into winged butterflies. It is like a double human race; and the beings in the first phase, even the coarsest and most material of them, need but to die to rise again in the most splendid of transformations. Each year in this world represents about two hundred terrestrial years. Two thirds of the year is lived in the lower condition, one third (winter) in the chrysalis state, and the following spring the sleepers feel life coming back to their transformed flesh; they stir, awaken, leave their fleecy coverings on the trees, and freeing themselves from them, fly away, wonderful winged creatures, to aerial regions, there to live for a new Phoenician year,--that is, for two hundred years of our swiftly moving planet.
We crossed a great number of planets in this way, and it seemed as though all eternity would not be long enough to admit of my enjoying these creations unknown to earth; but my guide barely left me time to realize this, and still new suns and new worlds were appearing. We were very near striking against some transparent comets in our rapid flight, that were wandering about like a breath from one system to another, and more than once I felt myself strongly attracted toward wonderful planets with fresh landscapes, whose occupants would have been new objects of study. And yet the celestial Muse bore me on without fatigue still higher, still farther away, until at last we came to what seemed to me the confines of the universe. The suns grew more rare, less luminous, paler; darkness was more intense between the stars; and we were soon in the midst of an actual desert, the thousands of millions of stars which constitute the universe visible from the Earth being far distant: everything had faded to a little, lonely Milky Way in empty infinity.
"At last we have reached the very limits of creation!" I cried.
"Look!" she replied, pointing to the zenith.
IV.
ETERNITY AND THE INFINITE
What 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 principally of red, ruby, and garnet suns. Many of them were absolutely blood-red.
It was like going through a magnificent display of lightning. We sped swiftly from sun to sun; but incessant electrical commotions like the flashes of an aurora-borealis assailed us on all sides. What strange abiding-places worlds lighted solely by red suns must be! Then, too, we saw in one section of this universe a secondary group, composed of great numbers of rose-colored and blue stars. Suddenly an enormous comet, whose head was like some monster's open jaws, rushed upon and enveloped us. I clung terror-stricken to my goddess's side, who was for a moment hidden from me by a luminous haze. We were soon in a dark desert again, for the second universe, like the first, was now far away.
* * * * *
"Creation," she said, "comprises an infinite number of distinct worlds, separated from each other by abysses of vacancy."
"An _infinite_ number?"
"A mathematical objection," she answered. "Doubtless, no matter how great a number may be, it cannot be actually infinite, since by thought one can always increase by a unit, or even double, treble, centuple it. But remember that the present is but a door through which the future rushes to the past. Eternity is endless, and the number of the worlds will be like it, without end."
"Look! You still see, always and on all sides, new celestial archipelagoes,--new worlds everywhere."
"It seems to me, O Urania! that we have been ascending toward the boundless heavens for a long time, and at very great speed."
"We could rise like this forever," she answered, "and never reach a definite limit.
"We could be wafted about yonder to right, to left; forward, backward; above, below,--in no matter what direction, but never anywhere should we find any confines.
"Never, never any end!
"Do you know where we are? Do you know how we reached here?
"We are--on the threshold of the infinite, as we were when on the Earth. _We have not advanced one step!_"
* * * * *
A deep emotion had taken possession of my mind. Urania's last words had pierced my very marrow like an icy chill. "Never any end--never! never," I repeated; I could think or speak of nothing else. But still the magnificence of the spectacle appealed to my eyes, and my feeling of annihilation gave place to enthusiasm.
"Astronomy," I cried, "is everything! To know these things, to live in the infinite,--oh, Urania! what are other human ideas compared with science? Shadows, phantoms!"
"Oh! you will wake up again upon the Earth," she said; "you will admire, and rightly too, the wisdom of your masters. But understand this,--the astronomy of your schools and observatories, mathematical astronomy, the beautiful science as known to Newton, Laplace, Le Verrier, is not yet definite, actual knowledge.
"That, O my son! is not the end which I have pursued since the days of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Look at the thousands of suns analogous to that which gives life to the earth, which like it are sources of light, motion, activity, and splendor! Ah! that is the object of the science to come,--the study of universal and eternal life. Until now, no one has ever entered the temple. Figures are not an end, but a means; they do not represent Nature's structure, only the methods, the scaffoldings. You are to see the dawn of a new day. Mathematical astronomy will yield her place to physical astronomy, to the true study of Nature.
"Yes," she continued, "astronomers who calculate the movements of the stars in their daily passage of the meridian, those who foretell eclipses, celestial phenomena, periodical comets, who observe the exact positions of the stars and planets on the different degrees of the celestial sphere so carefully; those who discover comets, planets, satellites, and variable stars; those who investigate and determine the disturbance caused the Earth's motion by attraction from the Moon and planets; those who consecrate their night-watches to the discovery of the fundamental elements of the world's system,--are all of them calculators and observers, precursors of the new astronomy. These are immense labors, studies worthy of admiration, and important works which bring to light the highest faculties of the human mind. But it is the army of the past; mathematicians and geometricians. Henceforth, the hearts of savants will throb for a still nobler conquest. All these great minds never really left the Earth while studying the skies. Astronomy's aim is not to show us the apparent position of shining specks, nor to weigh stones moving through space, nor to foretell eclipses, or the phases of the Moon or tides. All this is fine, but it is not enough.
"If life did not exist upon the earth, that planet would be absolutely devoid of interest for any mind whatsoever; and the same remark is applicable to all the worlds which gravitate around the thousands of millions of suns in the wide stretches of immensity. Life is the object of the whole creation. If there were neither life nor thought, it would all be null and void.
"You are destined to witness an entire transformation in science. Matter will give place to mind."
"Life universal!" I asked: "Are all the planets of our solar system inhabited? Are the myriads of worlds which people the infinite lived upon? Do those forms of human life resemble ours? Shall we ever know them?"
"The epoch of your life upon the earth, even the duration of terrestrial humanity, is but a moment in eternity."
I did not understand this answer to my questions.
"There is no reason why all the worlds should be inhabited _now_," she went on. "The present period is of no more importance than those which preceded or will follow it.
"The length of the Earth's existence will be longer--much longer, perhaps ten times longer--than that of its vital human period. Out of a dozen worlds selected by chance from immensity, we could, for example, find hardly one inhabited by a really intelligent race. Some have been already, others will be in the future; these are in preparation, those have run through all their phases: here cradles, there graves. And then too an infinite variety in the forces of Nature and their manifestations is revealed; earthly life being in no way the type of extra-terrestrial existence. Beings can think, live, in wholly different organizations from those with which you are familiar on your own planet. Inhabitants of the other worlds have neither your form nor senses; they are otherwise.
"The day will come, and very soon, since you are called to see it, when the study of the conditions of life in the various provinces of the universe will be astronomy's essential aim and chief charm. Soon, instead of being concerned simply about the distance, the motion, and the material facts of your neighboring planets, astronomers will discover their physical constitution,--for example, their geographical appearance, their climatology, their meteorology,--will solve the mystery of their vital organizations, and will discuss their inhabitants. They will find that Mars and Venus are actually peopled by thinking beings; that Jupiter is still in its primary period of organic preparation; that Saturn looks down upon us under quite different conditions from those which were instrumental in the establishment of terrestrial life, and without passing through a state analogous to that of Earth, will be inhabited by beings incompatible with earthly organisms. New methods will tell about the physical and chemical constitutions of the stars and the nature of their atmospheres. Perfected instruments will permit the discovery of direct proofs of existence in these planetary humanities and the idea of putting one's self in communication with them. This is the scientific transformation which will mark the close of the nineteenth century and inaugurate the twentieth."
I listened with delight to these words of the celestial Muse, which shed an entirely different light upon the future of astronomy and filled me with renewed ardor. Before my eyes was a panorama of innumerable worlds moving in space, and I understood that the true object of science is to teach us about those far distant universes and allow us to live in those wide horizons. The beautiful goddess resumed:
"Astronomy's mission will be still higher. After making you know and feel that the Earth is but a city in the celestial country, and man a citizen of heaven, she will go still farther. Disclosing the plan on which the physical universe is constructed, she will show that the moral universe is constructed on the very same basis, that the two worlds form but one world, and that mind governs matter. What she will have done for space she will do for time. After realizing the boundlessness of space, and recognizing that the same laws govern all places simultaneously and make the vast universe one grand unit, you will learn that the centuries of the past and of the future are linked with the present, and that thinking monads will live forever through successive and progressive changes. You will learn that minds exist incomparably superior to the greatest minds of earthly humanity, and that all things advance toward supreme perfection. You will learn too that the material form is but an appearance, and that the real being consists of an imponderable, intangible, and invisible form.
"Astronomy will then be eminently and above all else the directress of philosophy. Those who reason without astronomical knowledge will never reach the truth. Those who follow her beacon faithfully will gradually rise to the solutions of the greatest problems.
"Astronomical philosophy will be the religion of lofty minds.
"You will see this double transformation in science," she added, "when you leave the terrestrial globe; the astronomical knowledge which you already so justly prize will be entirely remodelled in form as well as spirit.
"But this is not all. The renewal of an old science will be of little use to mankind in general if these sublime truths which develop the mind, enlighten the soul, and free it from vulgar common-place should be kept shut up within the narrow limits of professional astronomers. This time too will pass away. We must begin anew. The torch must be taken in hand, and its glory increased by carrying it into the busy streets and public squares. Every one is called to receive the light, every one is thirsting for it,--especially the humble, those on whom fortune frowns, for these are the persons who think most; these are eager for knowledge, while the contented ones of the century do not suspect their own ignorance, and are almost proud of staying in it. Yes, the light of astronomy must be diffused throughout the world; it must filter through the strata of humanity to the popular masses, enlighten their consciences, elevate their hearts. That will be its most beautiful and its grandest, greatest mission!"
V.
THE LIGHT OF THE PAST.
Thus 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 and came back toward the solar system. I saw the Sun reappear, looking like a little star.
"For an instant," said she, "I am going to give you, if not divine, at least angelic sight. Your soul shall feel the ethereal vibrations which constitute light itself, and shall know that the history of each world is eternal with God. To see is to know: behold!"
Just as a microscope shows us an ant as large as an elephant, and penetrates the infinitely small, making the invisible visible, so at the Muse's command my sight suddenly acquired an unknown power of perception, and distinguished the Earth in space, very near the Sun, which was in eclipse, and from invisible it became visible.
I recognized it; and as I watched, its disk grew larger, looking like the Moon a few days before the full. After a while I could distinguish the principal geographical aspects in the growing disk,--the snowy patch at the North Pole, the outlines of Europe and Asia, the North Sea, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean. The more steadily I fixed my gaze, the better I could see. Details became more and more perceptible, as if I were gradually changing the lenses of a microscope. I recognized the geographical form of France; but our beautiful country appeared to be entirely green,--from the Rhine to the Ocean, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, as if it were covered with one immense forest. I succeeded, however, better and better in distinguishing the slightest details, for the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Loire, were easily found.
"Pay great attention," murmured my companion.
As she said this, she placed the tips of her slender fingers lightly on my brow, as though she had wished to magnetize my brain and endow my perceptive faculties with still greater power. Then I looked again more intently at the vision, and saw before my eyes Gaul in the time of Julius Cæsar. It was during the war of independence aroused by the patriotism of Vercingetorix.
"We are at such a distance from the Earth," said Urania, "that light requires all the time that separates us from Julius Cæsar to reach here. Only the rays of light that left the Earth at that time come to us; and yet light travels at the rate of three hundred thousand kilometres a second. It is fast, very fast, but it is not instantaneous. Astronomers on the Earth, who are observing stars situated as far from them as we are now, do not see them as they really are, but as they were when the rays of light which they see to-day left them; that is to say, as they were more than eighteen centuries ago.