Urania

Camille Flammarion is one of the most remarkable of modern

French scientists. Born on February 25, 1842, he was

apprenticed at an early age to an engraver, but, attracted by

astronomy, he studied so well that, when a lad of sixteen, he

was admitted as a pupil to the Paris Observatory. There is no

doubt that the great French mathematician, Le Verrier,

regarded Flammarion with a certain disdain as more of a poet

than an astronomer; but he soon vindicated, by several

important discoveries, his title to be regarded as a man of

science. "Urania," which appeared in 1889, is an excellent

example of his ability as a thinker, and of his charm as a

writer. The work is hardly a novel, though it is far more

popular than many books of fiction. It is really an essay in

philosophy dealing with the question of the immortality of the

soul; and it has an especial interest for English readers

owing to the fact that much in it that seems to be pure

fantasy is based on researches undertaken by the British

Society for Psychical Research. The plot and the characters

are of secondary importance; they are only used for the

purpose of illustrating certain ideas.

_I.--The Muse of Astronomy_

I was seventeen years old when I fell in love with Urania. Was she a

fair, young, blue-eyed daughter of Eve? No; she was an exquisite statue

of the Muse of Astronomy, chiselled by Pradier in the days of the

Empire. She stood on the mantelpiece in the study of the famous

mathematician, Le Verrier, who directed the Paris Observatory, where I

was working. At four o'clock in the afternoon my illustrious chief used

to depart, and I would then steal into his room and sit down before

Urania and dream of lovelier worlds than ours, hidden in the infinite

spaces of the starry sky. Sometimes my friend and companion in studies,

Georges Spero, would come and sit beside me; and, inspired by the

immortal beauty of Urania, we would let our young and ardent

imaginations play over the glories and wonders of the heavens.

"You will be too late for Jupiter," said Le Verrier, entering

unexpectedly one evening, and catching me in an attitude of adoration

before Urania. "I am afraid you are more of a poet than an astronomer."

The great man of science himself certainly did not love beauty as much

as he loved wisdom, for the next day he sold the lovely image of Urania

in order to buy an old Chinese astronomical clock. I was almost

heartbroken when I entered his room and found that Urania had

disappeared. With her had gone the vivifying power of imagination which

had transmuted the abstruse calculations on which I was engaged into

glimpses of heavenly visions of infinite life. With what wild joy then

did I see, when I returned home, Urania shining in all her loveliness on

my own mantelpiece. Knowing my love for the beautiful figure of the

muse, Georges Spero had bought it back from the watchmaker to whom Le

Verrier had sent it, and placed it in my room as a gift.

It was an extraordinary mark of friendship, for Georges loved Urania

even more passionately than I did. To him she was the personification of

everything in life that lifted man above the level of the brute.

Possessing a nobler and finer intellect than mine, he had thrown himself

into the study of the problems of the soul with a fury of passion and a

concentration of thought that almost killed him. Are our souls immortal,

or do they perish with our bodies? This was the question that tormented

him to madness. One night I found him sitting in his room in the Place

du Panthéon with a glass of poison in his hand.

"This is the quickest road to the knowledge I want," he said, with a

smile. "I shall soon know if the soul is immortal."

He had been dissecting a skull; and by his side was a microscope with

which he had been studying the grey matter of the brain. Convinced at

last of the uncertainty of the positive sciences, he had fallen into

violent despair. But Urania was at hand to comfort him, and his mind

became calmer and clearer when we ceased to talk about earthly things,

and ascended into high regions of philosophic speculation over which the

muse of heaven presides.

"Ah, Camille," he exclaimed, "the Uranian way is the best. It is only by

studying the heavens that we shall be able to understand this little

earth of ours, and the part we play in it. Look at the midnight sky,

streaming with the light of infinite suns, and filled with an unending

procession of worlds in which the spirit of life clothes itself in an

unimaginable variety of forms. This clot of dust on which we live will

grow cold, and break and scatter in the abysses of space. But it is not

our home; we are only passengers, and when our journey here is done,

fairer mansions are waiting for us in the depths of the sky. If I die

before you, I will return and convince you of this truth."

Returning to the study of astronomy, Spero built up a system of

philosophy which made him, at the age of twenty-five, one of the most

famous men in France.

_II.--Love and Death_

By way of relief from his severer work, Georges Spero resolved to go to

Norway and study the wild and beautiful phenomena of the Aurora

Borealis, and I went with him. One morning, as we were standing on a

mountain looking at a magnificent sunrise, I saw a girl climbing a

neighbouring peak. She did not perceive us; but when she reached the

summit the image of Spero was thrown on a cloud in front of her, by one

of those curious plays of sunlight and mist which sometimes occur in

hazy, mountainous regions. His fine, austere features and graceful

figure were enlarged into a vast, god-like apparition, with a halo of

bright colours shining like a glory around his head, and a fainter

circle of rainbow hues framing his whole form. It was the first anthelia

that the lovely girl had seen, and it filled her with wonder and awe.

Theirs was a strange courtship--Spero's and Iclea's. The lovely young

Norwegian lady had recently lost her mother, and being, like many of the

cultivated women of Northern Europe, somewhat dubious of the dogmas of

religion, she had found death a terrible mystery when it was thus

brought sharply home to her. She was wandering in the dreadful labyrinth

of modern doubt, vainly seeking to forget her trouble in the excitements

of mountaineering, when she saw the unearthly apparition of the young

French philosopher. A study of his works heightened the feeling of awe

with which she already regarded him. At first there was no room for love

in the passionate desire after knowledge which drew her to him. She was

merely a disciple sitting at the feet of the great master. Accompanied

by her father, she continued her studies under him when he returned to

Paris, and for three months they were bound together wholly by

intellectual interest. For several hours every day they studied side by

side, and much of Iclea's time was spent in translating papers in

foreign languages, bearing on subjects in which Georges was interested.

One morning he arrived earlier than usual, his eyes shining with joy.

"I have settled the problem," he cried, leaning against the mantelpiece.

"At least," he added, with his usual modesty, "I have settled it to my

own satisfaction."

Striding up and down the room, he rapidly sketched out a system of

philosophy in which the ultimate truths of modern science were

transformed into the bases of religion. Iclea listened to him in silence

as he went on to explain the spiritual forces still dormant in the human

soul.

"We are still in our spiritual infancy," he said. "It is scarcely four

thousand years since mankind began to manifest its higher powers. Our

greatest conquests over nature are all of recent date, and they are the

work of a few noble souls who have erected themselves above the animal

conditions of life. The reign of brute force is over, and I am certain

that as soon as we learn to exercise the powers of our soul we shall

acquire transcendental faculties that will enable us to transport

ourselves from one world to another."

"That, too, is my belief," said Iclea.

Georges bent over her and gazed into her eyes of heavenly blue through

which her very soul was speaking. There was a strange silence, and then

their lips met.

* * * * *

For some months I lost sight of my two friends. In the ecstasy of their

love they forgot for a while the problems of philosophy which had

brought them together. The joys of intellectual communion were submerged

and almost lost in the new, strange feeling which crowned and glorified

their lives. Hand in hand the lovers wandered about Paris, which had now

become to them a city in fairyland. Meeting them one evening on the

banks of the Seine, I learned that they were returning to Norway with

Iclea's father, and that they were to be married at Christiania on the

anniversary of the mysterious apparition on the mountain which had

brought them together. Georges was about to resume his interrupted

studies of the Aurora Borealis, which he wished to trace to its source

by means of a balloon ascent, and Iclea intended to accompany him in his

voyage through the air.

To my great regret I was unable to go with them to Norway, as my duties

as an astronomer kept me in Paris. I anxiously awaited that

extraordinary agitation of the magnetic needle which announces the

existence of an Aurora Borealis in Northern Europe. When at last the

magnetic perturbation occurred in the observatory, I rejoiced to think

that Spero and his bride were floating high, feasting their eyes on the

most gorgeous of spectacles.

But suddenly an indefinable feeling of uneasiness came over me, which

grew into a dreadful presentiment of disaster. Long before the telegram

arrived from Christiania I knew what had happened. Georges and Iclea

were dead!

Every reader of the newspapers next morning knew as much as I did. An

escape of gas which could not be stopped sent the balloon hurtling to

the earth. Spero threw everything movable out of the car in a vain

attempt to lighten it and break the force of the descent. The balloon

still kept falling; then Iclea, with a wild courage born of love, saved

Georges' life by leaping out of the car. Relieved of her weight, the

balloon rose up, but Spero had now no wish to live. He jumped out with a

wild cry, and his body crashed on the edge of the lake into which Iclea

had fallen. There the mortal remains of the two lovers now lie, covered

by a single stone. But where were their souls?

One night Georges Spero remembered his promise to me, and returned to

earth.

_III.--A Soul from Mars_

Sitting alone on the top of the ancient castle of Montlhéry, I was

conducting an experiment in optics by means of electrical communications

with two assistants at Paris and Juvisy. I was trying to find out if the

rays of different colours in the spectrum travel at the same rate. It

was just on midnight before I brought the experiment to a successful

conclusion. As I covered up my instruments, some one said, "You would

not have brought that off, Camille, if it had not been for me. I gave

you the idea of comparing the violet vibrations with the red."

I turned round with a cry of fear. Georges Spero was sitting in the

moonlight on the parapet, looking at me with a smile.

"Are you afraid of me, Camille?" he said.

"You, Georges! You!" I stammered. "Is it really you? Keep still, and let

me touch you."

I put my hands on his face, and stroked his hair, and felt his body. I

could no longer doubt that I had him before me in the actual flesh, but

he read my thoughts.

"You are mistaken, Camille," he said. "My real body is asleep on Mars."

"So you still live?" I exclaimed. "You have solved the great problem.

And Iclea?"

"Let us sit here and talk," he replied. "There are many things I want to

tell you."

My fears had vanished, and I sat by my beloved friend.

"It seemed to me," said Georges, "that my fall from the balloon knocked

me senseless. When I came to, I was lying in the darkness with the

ripple of lake-water breaking on my ear. What amazed me was a strange

sense of lightness that made me feel I could rise up and float away if I

wanted to. Thinking this was a disorder of the mind, I did not attempt

to move, but watched with wondering eyes the sky above me. It was

lighted by two strange moons. When the day broke, and showed around me a

world of unimaginable splendour, I knew the meaning of the two moons and

of my strange feeling of lightness. I was a disembodied spirit that had

been transported to Mars.

"Do you know, Camille, that the soul is able to choose its mortal

covering? This is, at least, the case on Mars. For some time I wandered

about in an invisible form, studying the conditions of life there.

Animal strength, I found, counted for nothing. The Martians are an

aerial race, with exquisite senses, which respond in a way unknown on

earth to spiritual influences. Do you remember I read your thoughts when

we first met, and answered them before you spoke? That is one of the

Martians' gifts. Finding that these wonderful faculties were better

developed in the women of Mars than in the men, I chose the feminine

form for my reincarnation."

"And Iclea?" I said.

"Iclea," said Spero, "was re-born in a masculine shape. It was partly

because of the mystic attraction that I felt for her that I chose the

other form. Neither of us remembered our earthly existence, but a vague

yet deep sentiment of our spiritual relationship made me seek her out

and unite myself to her. It was your beloved muse Uriana," he added,

"who revealed the ties that bound us in our former lives.

"Owing to their superior faculties, the Martians have carried every

science to a perfection undreamt of on this earth. In astronomical

observations, for instance, they employ a system of telephotography. For

thousands of years their instruments have been photographing, on an

unending roll of paper, the wild spectacle of terrestrial life.

"One day, as Iclea and I were examining recent photographs, we saw a

picture of Paris during the Great Exhibition. Seizing a microscope, we

looked at the figures, and recognised ourselves among them. Strange

memories stirred within us, and we stared at each other in silent

amazement. Suddenly I remembered the sacred words I learnt at my

mother's knee. Yes, there were many mansions in our Father's house! The

blood-stained planet from which we had escaped was neither the cradle

nor the grave of His children.

"Then we wept as we thought of the cruelty, ignorance, misery, and

grossness of existence on earth. It was, dear Camille, with no joy that

I recollected the promise I had made to you. But, you see, I have

carried it out. I wish to convince you, and, through you, all the rest

of mankind, that the soul is immortal, and that the earth is only a

temporary stage of existence in a spiritual progress in which the whole

universe is included."

"But how is it possible for you, Georges," I interrupted, "to appear to

me in the body you wore on earth?"

"All this," said Spero, touching his body, "is an illusion. Do you not

recollect my saying that only invisible things are real? You do not see

me with your eyes, or feel me with your hands, as you think you do. The

impression which you have of my presence is born of the influence which

my mind is exerting in an invisible way on your mind. Can't you

understand? It is a kind of hypnotism. At the present moment, as I have

said, I am lying asleep on Mars, but my spirit is in direct

communication with yours. The form you see sitting beside you on this

parapet is only an illusion of your senses. My soul is speaking to your

soul."

"But could you not," I said, "give me some description of life on Mars?"

"A dream," he replied, "would be more vivid than a mere description,

though it would only be a shadow of the reality. For since you have not,

my dear friend, our exquisite faculties of knowledge, your mind could

not clearly mirror our life. Hark! Iclea is awake, and calling me. I

cannot stay any longer. Shut your eyes, and I will send you a dream."

I turned to say good-bye, but Spero had vanished. A deep drowsiness fell

upon me, and just as I got off the parapet and found a safer position I

fell asleep.

_IV.--The Eternal Progress_

I was sitting under a strange tree covered with gigantic red flowers. In

the sky above me were two moons that shed a dim brightness on the lovely

and fantastic scenery. A multitude of radiant shapes fluttered and

darted through the air. They were Martians--exquisite, aerial, and

divinely beautiful figures glowing with luminous tints. Airy gondolas,

which seemed to be fashioned from phosphorescent flowers, passed above

my head, and one of them floated down to the tree under which I was

lying. In it were Iclea and Georges, but etherealised beyond the reach

of human imagination.

They took me in their flying chariot as day was breaking, and we

coursed, with a strange silent interchange of thoughts, over the

orange-coloured land of Mars. I could not understand everything which

was communicated to me, now by Iclea and now by Georges; but I perceived

that all manual labour on the planet was done by means of machines

directed by animals whose intelligence was on a level with my own. The

Martians themselves lived only for the things of the mind; they had

twelve senses instead of five, and their bodies, in which electricity

played the part that blood does in our systems, were so finely and yet

so strongly organised that they possessed an extraordinary power over

the forces of nature. Everything on their world, seas, mountains and

rivers were like their wonderful canals, works of art and science.

Nature was completely plastic in their hands. There was no poverty and

no crime. Deriving their food from the air which they breathe, the

Martians were liberated from material cares and immersed in the joys of

intellectual pursuits.

"You now see, Camille," said Spero, resorting at last to language which

I could clearly understand, "that life on Mars has developed as

peacefully and nobly as it began. There is no break between our

vegetable kingdom and our animal kingdom. We are nourished, like your

plants, trees, and herbs, by the air which we breathe. Ten million years

ago your world was also a scene of innocence and tranquil felicity. The

land was overgrown with a wildly beautiful vegetation that fed on the

gentle winds of heaven, and primitive forms of animal life had spread

from the depths of the sea along the shallow shores, and were there

learning to extract from the air a nourishment similar to that which

they obtained from the water. But by a woeful chance, one of your

primitive animals--a deaf, blind, sexless clot of jelly--then had its

body pierced by a drop of sea-water thicker than usual, and it found

that this way of feeding was quicker than simple respiration. Such was

the origin of the first digestive tube, which has exercised so baleful

an influence on the course of terrestrial life, and turned the earth

into a vast slaughterhouse."

"Is there no hope for us?" I said.

"No," he replied; "the earth is a shipwrecked planet. None of the higher

organisms there will ever rise to our level. How can they alter the

structure of their bodies, and empty their veins of blood, and fill them

with the subtle electricity which serves us as a life force? And the

grossness of their blood-fed senses! How can all the fine powers of the

immortal soul ever develop along with such degraded instruments of

knowledge?"

"But even if our earth is a shipwrecked planet," I exclaimed, "there is

at least some means of escaping from it. You and Iclea, for instance----"

"Yes, there is a way of escape," said Spero, "the Uranian way. By

soaring aloft into the serene region of spiritual ideas, a terrestrial

soul can still free itself from its animality. Some save themselves by

their high moral qualities, others are purified and uplifted by their

imagination and intellect. Virtue and science are the wings that enable

earth-born spirits to mount the skies. The destiny of a soul is

determined by its works and aspirations. Lovers of knowledge sojourn

awhile on Mars, which is only the first stage in the eternal progress.

Spirits animated by divine feelings rise at once into high regions of

starry splendour. The Uranian way is open to all, and the day will

arrive when every inhabitant of your wild, dark planet will recognise

that he, too, is a citizen of heaven. Then Urania will at last inspire

and direct him, and point out the path by which he can ascend from the

blood-stained earth to the fairer mansions prepared for him in the

skies."

As he was speaking our aerial chariot floated down to a fairy palace by

the shore of an enchanted sea. I alighted; and a radiant, flower-like

maiden, who was standing by the portal, unfolded her rainbow wings and

shadowed me with them, and murmured, "Do you wish to return to earth?"

"No," I cried, running up to clasp her in my arms.

I awoke with a sudden shock. I was lying on the top of the tower of

Montlhéry; the sun was rising, and the vast circle of country below me

shone clear and distinct in the morning light.

"Was it a dream?" I said to myself. "Surely not. The earth is not the

only home of life in the universe. Urania, the celestial muse, is now

unfolding before our astonished eyes the panoramas of infinity, and we

know at last that we are not the children of the earth, but citizens of

the heavens."

* * * * *