the atmosphere diminished. A portion of the rain water was absorbed by
the earth, and did not return to the sea; for, instead of flowing into
the sea over impermeable strata, and so forming either springs or
subterranean and submarine watercourses, it had filtered deeper within
the surface, insensibly filling every void, every fissure, and
saturating the rocks to a great depth. So long as the internal heat of
the globe was sufficient to prevent the indefinite descent of this
water, and to convert it into vapor, a considerable quantity remained
upon the surface; but the time came when the internal heat of the globe
was entirely dispersed in space and offered no obstacle to infiltration.
Then the surface water gradually diminished; it united with the rocks,
in the form of hydrates, and thus disappeared from circulation.
Indeed, were the loss of the surface water of the globe to amount only
to a few tenths of a millimeter yearly, in ten million years none would
remain.
This vapor of water in the atmosphere had made warmth and life possible;
with its disappearance came cold and death. If at present the aqueous
vapor of the atmosphere should disappear, the heat of the sun would be
incapable of maintaining animal and vegetable life; life which,
moreover, could not exist, inasmuch as vegetables and animals are
chiefly composed of water.[4]
Footnote 4:
Of all terrestrial substances water has the greatest specific heat. It
cools more slowly than any other. Its specific heat is four times
greater than that of air. When the temperature of a kilogram of water
falls one degree, it raises the temperature of four kilograms of air
one degree. But water is seven hundred and seventy times heavier than
air, so that if we compare two equal volumes of water and air, we find
that a cubic meter of water, in losing one degree of temperature,
raises the temperature of seven hundred and seventy times four, or
3080 cubic meters of air by the same amount. This is the explanation
of the influence of the sea in modifying the climate of continents.
The heat of summer is stored in the ocean and is slowly given out in
winter. This explains why islands and seashores have no extremes of
climate. The heat of summer is tempered by the breezes, and the cold
of winter is alleviated by the heat stored in the water.
The invisible vapor of water, distributed through the atmosphere,
exercises the greatest possible influence on temperature. In quantity
this vapor seems almost negligible, since oxygen and nitrogen alone form
ninety-nine and one-half per cent. of the air we breathe; and the
remaining one-half of one per cent. contains, besides the vapor of
water, carbonic acid, ammonia and other substances. There is scarcely
more than a quarter of one per cent. of aqueous vapor. If we consider
the constituent atoms of the atmosphere, the physicist tells us that for
two hundred atoms of oxygen and nitrogen there is scarcely one of
water-vapor; but this one atom has eighty times more absorptive energy
than the two hundred others.
The radiant heat of the sun, after traversing the atmosphere, warms the
surface of the earth. The heat waves reflected from the warmed earth are
not lost in space. The aqueous vapor atoms, acting like a barrier, turn
them back and preserve them for our benefit.
This is one of the most brilliant and the most fruitful discoveries of
modern physics. The oxygen and nitrogen molecules of dry air do not
oppose the radiation of heat; but, as we have just said, one molecule of
water-vapor possesses eighty times the absorptive energy of the other
two hundred molecules of dry air, and consequently such a molecule is
sixteen thousand times more efficacious in so far as the conservation of
heat is concerned. So that it is the vapor of water and not the air,
properly speaking, which regulates the conditions of life upon the
earth.
If one should remove this vapor from the surrounding atmosphere, a loss
of heat would go on at the surface similar to that which takes place in
high altitudes, for the atmosphere would then be as powerless to retain
heat as a vacuum is. A cold like that at the surface of the moon would
be the result. The soil would still receive heat directly from the sun,
but even during the daytime this heat would not be retained, and after
sunset the earth would be exposed to the glacial cold of space, which
appears to be about 273° below zero. Thus vegetable, animal and human
life would be impossible, if it had not already become so, through the
very disappearance of the water.
Certainly we may and must admit that water has not been so essential a
condition of life on all the worlds of space as it has been upon our
own. The resources of nature are not limited by human observation. There
must be, there are, in the limitless realms of space, millions and
millions of suns differing from ours, systems of worlds in which other
substances, other chemical combinations, other physical and mechanical
conditions, other environments, have produced beings absolutely unlike
ourselves, living another life, possessed of other senses, differing in
organization from ourselves far more than the fish or mollusk of the
deep sea differs from the bird or the butterfly. But we are here
studying the conditions of terrestrial life, and these conditions are
determined by the constitution of the planet itself.
[Illustration:
FOSSIL SPECIMENS OF THE XXTH. CENTURY.
]
The gradual filtration of water into the interior of the earth, keeping
pace with the radiation of the earth’s original heat into space, the
slow formation of oxides and hydrates, in about eight million years
reduced by three-fourths the quantity of water in circulation on the
earth’s surface. As a consequence of the disappearance of continental
elevations, whose débris, obeying passively the laws of gravity, were
slowly carried by the rain, the wind, and the streams to the sea, the
earth had become almost level and the seas more shallow; but as
evaporation and the formation of aqueous vapor goes on only from the
surface and does not depend upon the depth, the atmosphere was still
rich in vapor. The conditions of life upon the planet were then similar
to those we now observe on Mars; where we see that great oceans have
disappeared or have become mere inland seas of slight depth, that the
continents are vast plains, that evaporation is active, that a
considerable quantity of aqueous vapor still exists, that rains are
rare, that snows abound in the polar regions and are almost entirely
melted during the summer of each year—in short, a world still habitable
by beings analogous to those that people the earth.
This epoch marked the apogee of the human race. Thenceforward the
conditions of life grew less favorable, and from century to century,
from generation to generation, underwent marked change. Vegetable and
animal species, the human race itself, everything in short, became
transformed. But whereas, hitherto, these metamorphoses had enriched,
embellished and perfected life, the day had come when decadence was to
begin.
During more than a hundred thousand years it was insensible, for the
parabolic curve of life did not suddenly fall away from its highest
point. Humanity had reached a degree of civilization, of intellectual
greatness, of physical and moral well-being, of scientific, artistic and
industrial perfection, incomparably beyond anything of which we know.
For several million years the central heat of the globe had been
utilized in winter for general warming purposes by towns, villages,
manufactories and every variety of industry. When this failing source of
heat had finally become exhausted, the heat of the sun had been stored
subject to the wants of the race, hydrogen had been extracted from
sea-water, the energy of waterfalls, and subsequently that of the tides,
had been transformed into light and heat, and the entire planet had
become the plaything of science, which disposed at will of all its
elements. The human senses, perfected to a degree which we should now
qualify as supernatural, and those newly acquired, mentioned above,
become with the lapse of time more highly developed; humanity released
more and more from the empire of matter; a new system of alimentation;
the spirit governing the body and the gross appetites of former times
forgotten; the psychic faculties in perpetual play, acting at a distance
over the entire surface of the globe, communicating under certain
conditions with even the inhabitants of Mars and Venus; apparatus which
we cannot imagine replacing those optical instruments with which
physical astronomy had begun its investigations; the whole world made
new in its perceptions and interests; an enlightened social condition
from which envy and jealousy, as well as robbery, suffering and murder
had disappeared—this, indeed, was a real humanity of flesh and bone like
our own, but as far above it in intellectual supremacy as we are above
the simians of the tertiary epoch.
Human intelligence had so completely mastered the forces of nature that
it seemed as if so glorious an era never could come to an end. The
decrease in the amount of water, however, commenced to alarm even the
most optimistic. The great oceans had disappeared. The crust of the
earth, once so thin and mobile, had gradually increased in thickness,
and, notwithstanding the internal pressure, the earth had become almost
completely solidified. Oscillations of the surface were no longer
possible, for it had become entirely rigid. The seas which remained were
confined to the tropics. The poles were frozen. The continents of olden
times, where so many other foci of civilization had shone so
brilliantly, were immense deserts. Step by step humanity had migrated
towards the tropical zone, still watered by streams, lakes and seas.
There were no more mountains, no more condensers of snow.
[Illustration:
“RUDIMENTARY SPECIES OF CRYPTOGAMS ONLY SURVIVED.”
]
As the quantity of water and rainfall diminished, and, as the springs
failed and the aqueous vapor of the atmosphere grew less, vegetation had
entirely changed its aspect, increasing the volume of its leaves and the
length of its roots, seeking in every way to absorb the humidity
necessary for life. Species which had not been able to adjust themselves
to the new conditions had vanished; the rest were transformed. Not a
tree or a plant with which we are familiar was to be seen. There were no
oaks, nor ashes, nor elms, nor willows, and the landscape bore no
resemblance to that of today. Rudimentary species of cryptogams only
survived.
Like changes had taken place in the animal kingdom. Animal forms had
been greatly modified. The wild species had either disappeared or been
domesticated. The scarcity of water had modified the food of herbivora
as well as carnivora. The most recent species, evolved from those which
preceded them, were smaller, with less fat and a larger skeleton. The
number of plants had sensibly decreased. Less of the carbonic acid of
the air was absorbed, and a proportionally greater quantity existed in
the atmosphere. As for the human race, its metamorphosis was so absolute
that it was with an astonishment bordering on incredulity that one saw
in geological museums fossil specimens of men of the twentieth or one
hundredth century, with great brutal teeth and coarse intestines; it was
difficult to admit that organisms so gross could really be the ancestors
of intellectual man.
Though millions of years had passed, the sun still poured upon the earth
almost the same quantity of heat and light. At most, the loss had not
exceeded one-tenth. The only difference was that the sun appeared a
little yellower and a little smaller.
The moon still revolved about the earth, but more slowly. Its distance
from the earth had increased and its _apparent_ diameter had diminished.
At the same time the period of the earth’s rotation had lengthened. This
slower rotatory motion of the earth, increase in the distance of the
moon, and lengthening of the lunar month, were the results of the
friction of the tides, whose action resembled that of a brake. If the
earth and the moon last long enough, and there are still oceans and
tides, calculation would enable us to predict that the time would come
when the periodic time of the earth’s rotation would finally equal the
lunar month, so that there would be but five and one-quarter days in the
year: the earth would then always present the same side to the moon. But
this would require more than 150 million years. The period of which we
are speaking, ten million years, is but a fifteenth of the above; and
the time of the earth’s rotation, instead of being seventy times, was
only four and one-half times greater than it now is, or about 110 hours.
These long days exposed the earth to the prolonged action of the sun,
but except in those regions where its rays were normal to the surface,
that is to say in the equatorial zone between the two tropical circles,
this exposure availed nothing; the obliquity of the ecliptic had not
changed; the inclination of the axis of the earth being the same, about
two degrees, and the changes in the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit
had produced no sensible effect upon the seasons or the climate.
The human form, food, respiration, organic functions, physical and
intellectual life, ideas, opinions, religion, science, language—all had
changed. Of present man almost nothing survived.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
The last habitable regions of the globe were two wide valleys near the
equator, the basins of dried up seas; valleys of slight depth, for the
general level was almost absolutely uniform. No mountain peaks, ravines
or wild gorges, not a single wooded valley or precipice was to be seen;
the world was one vast plain, from which rivers and seas had gradually
disappeared. But as the action of meteorological agents, rainfall and
streams, had diminished in intensity with the loss of water, the last
hollows of the sea bottom had not been entirely filled up, and shallow
valleys remained, vestiges of the former structure of the globe. In
these a little ice and moisture were left, but the circulation of water
in the atmosphere had ceased, and the rivers flowed in subterranean
channels as in invisible veins.
As the atmosphere contained no aqueous vapor, the sky was always
cloudless, and there was neither rain nor snow. The sun, less dazzling
and less hot than formerly, shone with the yellowish splendor of a
topaz. The color of the sky was sea-green rather than blue. The volume
of the atmosphere had diminished considerably. Its oxygen and nitrogen
had become in part fixed in metallic combinations, as oxides and
nitrides, and its carbonic acid had slowly increased, as vegetation,
deprived of water, became more and more rare and absorbed an ever
decreasing amount of this gas. But the mass of the earth, owing to the
constant fall of meteorites, bolides and uranolites, had increased with
time; so that the atmosphere, though considerably less in volume, had
retained its density and exerted nearly the same pressure.
Strangely enough, the snow and ice had diminished as the earth grew
cold; the cause of this low temperature was the absence of water vapor
from the atmosphere, which had decreased with the superficial area of
the sea. As the water penetrated the interior of the earth and the
general level became more uniform, first the depth and then the area of
seas had been reduced, the invisible envelope of aqueous vapor had lost
its protecting power, and the day came when the return of the heat
received from the sun was no longer prevented, it was radiated into
space as rapidly as it was received, as if it fell upon a mirror
incapable of absorbing its rays.
Such was the condition of the earth. The last representatives of the
human race had survived all these physical transformations solely by
virtue of its genius of invention and power of adaptation. Its last
efforts had been directed toward extracting nutritious substances from
the air, from subterranean water, and from plants, and replacing the
vanished vapor of the air by buildings and roofs of glass.
It was necessary at any cost to capture these solar rays and to prevent
their radiation into space. It was easy to store up this heat in large
quantities, for the sun shone unobscured by any cloud and the day was
long—fifty-five hours.
For a long time the efforts of architects had been solely directed
towards this imprisonment of the sun’s rays and the prevention of their
dispersion during the fifty-five hours of the night. They had succeeded
in accomplishing this by an ingenious arrangement of glass roofs,
superposed one upon the other, and by movable screens. All combustible
material had long before been exhausted; and even the hydrogen extracted
from water was difficult to obtain.
The mean temperature in the open air during the daytime was not very
low, not falling below –10°.[5] Notwithstanding the changes which the
ages had wrought in vegetable life, no species of plants could exist,
even in this equatorial zone.
Footnote 5:
Many readers will regard this climate quite bearable, inasmuch, as in
our own day regions may be cited whose mean temperature is much lower,
yet which are nevertheless habitable, as, for example, Verchnoiansk,
whose mean annual temperature is –19.3°. But in these regions there is
a summer during which the ice melts; and if in January the temperature
falls to –60°, and even lower, in July they enjoy a temperature of
fifteen and twenty degrees above zero. But at the stage which we have
now reached in the history of the world, this mean temperature of the
equatorial zone was constant, and it was impossible for ice ever to
melt again.
As for the other latitudes, they had been totally uninhabitable for
thousands of years, in spite of every effort made to live in them. In
the latitudes of Paris, Nice, Rome, Naples, Algiers and Tunis, all
protective atmospheric action had ceased, and the oblique rays of the
sun had proved insufficient to warm the soil which was frozen to a great
depth, like a veritable block of ice. The world’s population had
gradually diminished from ten milliards to nine, to eight, and then to
seven, one-half the surface of the globe being then habitable. As the
habitable zone became more and more restricted to the equator, the
population had still further diminished, as had also the mean length of
human life, and the day came when only a few hundred millions remained,
scattered in groups along the equator, and maintaining life only by the
artifices of a laborious and scientific industry.
Later still, toward the end, only two groups of a few hundred human
beings were left, occupying the last surviving centers of industry. From
all the rest of the globe the human race had slowly but inexorably
disappeared—dried up, exhausted, degenerated, from century to century,
through the lack of an assimilable atmosphere and sufficient food. Its
last remnants seemed to have lapsed back into barbarism, vegetating like
the Esquimaux of the north. These two ancient centers of civilization,
themselves yielding to decay, had survived only at the cost of a
constant struggle between industrial genius and implacable nature.
Even here, between the tropics and the equator, the two remaining groups
of human beings which still contrived to exist in face of a thousand
hardships which yearly became more insupportable, did so only by
subsisting, so to speak, on what their predecessors had left behind.
These two ocean valleys, one of which was near the bottom of what is now
the Pacific ocean, the other to the south of the present island of
Ceylon, had formerly been the sites of two immense cities of glass—iron
and glass having been, for a long time, the materials chiefly employed
in building construction. They resembled vast winter-gardens, without
upper stories, with transparent ceilings of immense height. Here were to
be found the last plants, except those cultivated in the subterranean
galleries leading to rivers flowing under ground.
Elsewhere the surface of the earth was a ruin, and even here only the
last vestiges of a vanished greatness were to be seen.
[Illustration:
THE SOLE SURVIVORS.
]
In the first of these ancient cities of glass, the sole survivors were
two old men, and the grandson of one of them, Omegar, who had seen his
mother and sisters die, one after the other, of consumption, and who now
wandered in despair through these vast solitudes. Of these old men, one
had formerly been a philosopher and had consecrated his long life to the
study of the history of perishing humanity; the other was a physician
who had in vain sought to save from consumption the last inhabitants of
the world. Their bodies seemed wasted by anæmia rather than by age. They
were pale as specters, with long, white beards, and only their moral
energy sustained them yet an instant against the decree of destiny. But
they could not struggle longer against this destiny, and one day Omegar
found them stretched lifeless, side by side. From the dying hands of one
fell the last history ever written, the history of the final
transformations of humanity, written half a century before. The second
had died in his laboratory while endeavoring to keep in order the
nourishment tubes, automatically regulated by machinery propelled by
solar engines.
The last servants, long before developed by education from the simian
race, had succumbed many years before, as had also the great majority of
the animal species domesticated for the service of humanity. Horses,
dogs, reindeers, and certain large birds used in aerial service, yet
survived, but so entirely changed that they bore no resemblance to their
progenitors.
It was evident that the race was irrevocably doomed. Science had
disappeared with scientists, art with artists, and the survivors lived
only upon the past. The heart knew no more hope, the spirit no ambition.
The light was in the past; the future was an eternal night. All was
over. The glories of days gone by had forever vanished. If, in preceding
centuries, some traveller, wandering in these solitudes, thought he had
rediscovered the sites of Paris, Rome, or the brilliant capitals which
had succeeded them, he was the victim of his own imagination; for these
sites had not existed for millions of years, having been swept away by
the waters of the sea. Vague traditions had floated down through the
ages, thanks to the printing-press and the recorders of the great events
of history; but even these traditions were uncertain and often false.
For, as to Paris, the annals of history contained only some references
to a maritime Paris; of its existence as the capital of France for
thousands of years, there was no trace nor memory. The names which to us
seem immortal, Confucius, Plato, Mahomet, Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne,
and Napoleon, had perished and were forgotten. Art had, indeed,
preserved noble memories; but these memories did not extend as far back
as the infancy of humanity, and reached only a few million years into
the past. Omegar lingered in an ancient gallery of pictures, bequeathed
by former centuries, and contemplated the great cities which had
disappeared. Only one of these pictures related to what had once been
Europe, and was a view of Paris, consisting of a promontory projecting
into the sea, crowned by an astronomical temple and gay with
helicopterons circling above the lofty towers of its terraces. Immense
ships were plowing the sea. This classic Paris was the Paris of the one
hundred and seventieth century of the Christian era, corresponding to
the one hundred and fifty-seventh of the astronomical era—the Paris
which existed immediately prior to the final submergence of the land.
Even its name had changed; for words change like persons and things.
Nearby, other pictures portrayed the great but less ancient cities which
had risen in America, Australia, Asia, and afterwards upon the
continents which had emerged from the ocean. And so this museum of the
past recalled in succession the passing pomps of humanity down to the
end.
[Illustration:
“ALL DAY LONG HE WANDERED THROUGH THE VAST GALLERIES.”
]
The end! The hour had struck on the timepiece of destiny. Omegar knew
the life of the world henceforth was in the past, that no future existed
for it, and that the present even was vanishing like the dream of a
moment. The last heir of the human race felt the overwhelming sentiment
of the vanity of things. Should he wait for some inconceivable miracle
to save him from his fate? Should he bury his companions, and share
their tomb with them? Should he endeavor to prolong for a few days, a
few weeks, a few years even, a solitary, useless and despairing
existence? All day long he wandered through the vast and silent
galleries, and at night abandoned himself to the drowsiness which
oppressed him. All about him was dark—the darkness of the sepulchre.
A sweet dream, however, stirred his slumbering thought, and surrounded
his soul with a halo of angelic brightness. Sleep brought him the
illusion of life. He was no longer alone. A seductive image which he had
seen more than once before, stood before him. Eyes caressing as the
light of heaven, deep as the infinite, gazed upon him and attracted him.
He was in a garden filled with the perfume of flowers. Birds sang in the
nests amid the foliage. And in the distant landscape, framed in plants
and flowers, were the vast ruins of dead cities. Then he saw a lake, on
whose rippling surface two swans glided, bearing a cradle from which a
new-born child stretched toward him its arms.
Never had such a ray of light illuminated his soul. So deep was his
emotion that he suddenly awoke, opened his eyes, and found confronting
him only the somber reality. Then a sadness more terrible even than any
he had known filled his whole being. He could not find an instant of
repose. He rose, went to his couch, and waited anxiously for the
morning. He remembered his dream, but he did not believe in it. He felt,
vaguely, that another human being existed somewhere; but his degenerate
race had lost, in part, its psychic power, and perhaps, also, woman
always exerts upon man an attraction more powerful than that which man
exerts upon woman. When the day broke, when the last man saw the ruins
of his ancient city standing out upon the sky of dawn, when he found
himself alone with the two last dead, he realized more than ever his
unavoidable destiny, and decided to terminate at once a life so
hopelessly miserable.
Going into the laboratory, he sought a bottle whose contents were well
known to him, uncorked it, and carried it to his lips, to empty it at a
draught. But, at the very moment the vial touched his lips, he felt a
hand upon his arm.
He turned suddenly. There was no one in the laboratory, and in the
gallery he found only the two dead.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V.
In the ruins of the other equatorial city, occupying a once submerged
valley south of the island of Ceylon, was a young girl, whose mother and
older sister had perished of consumption and cold, and who was now left
alone, the last surviving member of the last family of the race. A few
trees, of northern species, had been preserved under the spacious dome
of glass, and beneath their scanty foliage, holding the cold hands of
her mother who had died the night before, the young girl sat alone,
doomed to death in the very flower of her age. The night was cold. In
the sky above the full moon shone like a golden torch, but its yellow
rays were as cold as the silver beams of the ancient Selene. In the vast
room reigned the stillness and solitude of death, broken only by the
young girl’s breathing, which seemed to animate the silence with the
semblance of life.
[Illustration:
“ALONE!”
]
She was not weeping. Her sixteen years contained more experience and
knowledge than sixty years of the world’s prime. She knew that she was
the sole survivor of this last group of human beings, and that every
happiness, every joy and every hope had vanished forever. There was no
present, no future; only solitude and silence, the physical and moral
impossibility of life, and soon eternal sleep. She thought of the woman
of bygone days, of those who had lived the real life of humanity, of
lovers, wives and mothers, but to her red and tearless eyes appeared
only images of death; while beyond the walls of glass stretched a barren
desert, covered by the last ice and the last snow. Now her young heart
beat violently in her breast, till her slender hands could no longer
compress its tumult; and now life seemed arrested in her bosom, and
every respiration suspended. If for a moment she fell asleep, in her
dreams she played again with her laughing and care-free sister, while
her mother sung in a pure and penetrating voice the beautiful
inspirations of the last poets; and she seemed to see, once more, the
last fêtes of a brilliant society, as if reflected from the surface of
some distant mirror. Then, on awakening, these magic memories faded into
the somber reality. Alone! Alone in the world, and tomorrow death,
without having known life! To struggle against this unavoidable fate was
useless; the decree of destiny was without appeal, and there was nothing
to do but to submit, to await the inevitable end, since without food or
air organic life was impossible—or else to anticipate death and deliver
oneself at once from a joyless existence and a certain doom. She passed
into the bath-room, where the warm water was still flowing, although the
appliances which art had designed to supply the wants of life were no
longer in working order; for the last remaining servants (descendants of
ancient simian species, modified, as the human race had been, by the
changing conditions of life,) had also succumbed to the insufficiency of
water. She plunged into the perfumed bath, turned the key which
regulated the supply of electricity derived from subterranean
water-courses still unfrozen, and for a moment seemed to forget the
decree of destiny in the enjoyment of this refreshing rest. Had any
indiscreet spectator beheld her as, standing upon the bear-skin before
the large mirror, she began to arrange the tresses of her long auburn
hair, he would have detected a smile upon her lips, showing that, for an
instant, she was oblivious of her dark future. Passing into another
room, she approached the apparatus which furnished the food of that
time, extracted from the water, air, and the plants and fruits
automatically cultivated in the greenhouses.
It was still in working order, like a clock which has been wound up. For
thousands of years the genius of man had been almost exclusively applied
to the struggle with destiny. The last remaining water had been forced
to circulate in subterranean canals, where also the solar heat had been
stored. The last animals had been trained to serve these machines, and
the nutritious properties of the last plants had been utilized to the
utmost. Men had finally succeeded in living upon almost nothing, so far
as quantity was concerned; every newly discovered form of food being
completely assimilable. Cities had finally been built of glass, open to
the sun, to which was conveyed every substance necessary to the
synthesis of the food which replaced the products of nature. But as time
passed, it became more and more difficult to obtain the necessaries of
life. The mine was at last exhausted. Matter had been conquered by
intelligence; but the day had come when intelligence itself was
overmatched, when every worker had died at his post and the earth’s
storehouse had been depleted. Unwilling to abandon this desperate
struggle, man had put forth every effort. But he could not prevent the
earth’s absorption of water, and the last resources of a science which
seemed greater even than nature itself had been exhausted.
[Illustration:
_By G. Rochegrosse._
“SHE FELT THAT ANOTHER HEARD AND UNDERSTOOD.”
]
Eva returned to the body of her mother, and once more took the cold
hands in her own. The psychic faculties of the race in these its latter
days had acquired, as we have said, transcendent powers, and she thought
for a moment to summon her mother from the tomb. It seemed to her as if
she must have one more approving glance, one more counsel. A single idea
took possession of her, so fascinating her that she even lost the desire
to die. She saw afar the soul which should respond to her own. Every man
belonging to that company of which she was the last survivor had died
before her birth. Woman had outlived the sex once called strong. In the
pictures upon the walls of the great library, in books, engravings and
statues, she saw represented the great men of the city, but she had
never seen a living man; and still dreaming, strange and disquieting
forms passed before her. She was transported into an unknown and
mysterious world, into a new life, and love did not seem to be yet
wholly banished from earth. During the reign of cold, all electrical
communication between the two last cities left upon the earth had been
interrupted. Their inhabitants could speak no more with each other, see
each other no more, nor feel each other’s presence. Yet she was as well
acquainted with the ocean city as if she had seen it, and when she fixed
her eyes upon the great terrestrial globe suspended from the ceiling of
the library, and then, closing them, concentrated all her will and
psychic power upon the object of her thoughts, she acted at a distance
as effectively, though in a different way, as in former days men had
done when communicating with each other by electricity. She called, and
felt that another heard and understood. The preceding night she had
transported herself to the ancient city in which Omegar lived, and had
appeared to him for an instant in a dream. That very morning she had
witnessed his despairing act and by a supreme effort of the will had
arrested his arm. And now, stretched in her chair beside the dead body
of her mother, heavy with sleep, her solitary soul wandered in dreams
above the ocean city, seeking the companionship of the only mate left
upon the earth. And far away, in that ocean city, Omegar heard her call.
Slowly, as in a dream, he ascended the platform from which the air-ships
used to take their flight. Yielding to a mysterious influence, he obeyed
the distant summons. Speeding toward the west, the electric air-ship
passed above the frozen regions of the tropics, once the site of the
Pacific ocean, Polynesia, Malaisia and the Sunda islands, and stopped at
the landing of the crystal palace. The young girl, startled from her
dream by the traveller, who fell from the air at her feet, fled in
terror to the farther end of the immense hall, lifting the heavy curtain
of skin which separated it from the library. When the young man reached
her side, he stopped, knelt, and took her hand in his, saying simply:
“You called me. I have come.” And then he added: “I have known you for a
long time. I knew that you existed, I have often seen you; you are the
constant thought of my heart, but I did not dare to come.”
[Illustration:
“YOU CALLED ME. I HAVE COME.”
]
She bade him rise, saying: “My friend, I know that we are alone in the
world, and that we are about to die. A will stronger than my own
compelled me to call you. It seemed as if it were the supreme desire of
my mother, supreme even in death. See, she sleeps thus since yesterday.
How long the night is!”
The young man, kneeling, had taken the hand of the dead, and they both
stood there beside the funeral couch, as if in prayer.
He leaned gently toward the young girl, and their heads touched. He let
fall the hand of the dead.
Eva shuddered. “No,” she said.
Then, suddenly, he sprang to his feet in terror; the dead woman had
revived. She had withdrawn the hand which he had taken in his own, and
had opened her eyes. She made a movement, looking at them.
[Illustration:
“‘BEHOLD, WHERE WE SHALL BE TOMORROW!’”
]
“I wake from a strange dream,” she said, without seeming surprised at
the presence of Omegar. “Behold, my children, my dream;” and she pointed
to the planet Jupiter, shining with dazzling splendor in the sky.
And as they gazed upon the star, to their astonished vision, it appeared
to approach them, to grow larger, to take the place of the frozen scene
about them.
Its immense seas were covered with ships. Aerial fleets cleaved the air.
The shores of its seas and the mouths of its great rivers were the
scenes of a prodigious activity. Brilliant cities appeared, peopled by
moving multitudes. Neither the details of their habitations nor the
forms of these new beings could be distinguished, but one divined that
here was a humanity quite different from ours, living in the bosom of
another nature, having other senses at its disposal; and one felt also
that this vast world was incomparably superior to the earth.
“Behold, where we shall be tomorrow!” said the dying woman. “We shall
find there all the human race, perfected and transformed. Jupiter has
received the inheritance of the earth. Our world has accomplished its
mission, and life is over here below. Farewell!”
She stretched out her arms to them; they bent over her pale face and
pressed a long kiss upon her forehead. But they perceived that this
forehead was cold as marble, in spite of this strange awakening.
The dead woman had closed her eyes, to open them no more.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
It is sweet to live. Love atones for every loss; in its joys all else is
forgotten. Ineffable music of the heart, thy divine melody fill the soul
with an ecstasy of infinite happiness! What illustrious historians have
celebrated the heroes of the world’s progress, the glories of war, the
conquests of mind and of spirit! Yet after so many centuries of labor
and struggle, there remained only two palpitating hearts, the kisses of
two lovers. All had perished except love; and love, the supreme
sentiment, endured, shining like an inextinguishable beacon over the
immense ocean of the vanished ages.
Death! They did not dream of it. Did they not suffice for each other?
What if the cold froze their very marrow? Did they not possess in their
hearts a warmth which defied the cold of nature? Did not the sun still
shine gloriously, and was not the final doom of the world yet far
distant? Omegar bent every energy to the maintenance of the marvellous
system which had been devised for the automatic extraction by chemical
processes of the nutritive principles of the air, water and plants, and
in this he seemed to be successful. So in other days, after the fall of
the Roman empire, the barbarians had been seen to utilize during
centuries the aqueducts, baths and thermal springs, all the creations of
the civilization of the Cæsars, and to draw from a vanished industry the
sources of their own strength.
But one day, wonderful as it was, this system gave out. The subterranean
waters themselves ceased to flow. The soil was frozen to a great depth.
The rays of the sun still warmed the air within the glass-covered
dwellings, but no plant could live longer; the supply of water was
exhausted.
The combined efforts of science and industry were impotent to give to
the atmosphere the nutritive qualities possessed by those of other
worlds, and the human organism constantly clamored for the regenerating
principles which, as we have seen, had been derived from the air, water
and plants. These sources were now exhausted.
This last human pair struggled against these insurmountable obstacles,
and recognized the uselessness of farther contest, yet they were not
resigned to death. Before knowing each other they had awaited it
fearlessly. Now each wished to defend the other, the beloved one,
against pitiless destiny. The very idea of seeing Omegar lying inanimate
beside her, filled Eva with such anguish that she could not bear the
thought. And he, too, vainly longed to carry away his well beloved from
a world doomed to decay, to fly with her to that brilliant Jupiter which
awaited them, and not to abandon to the earth the body he adored.
He thought that, perhaps, there still existed, somewhere upon the earth,
a spot which had retained a little of that life-giving water without
which existence was impossible; and, although already they were both
almost without strength, he formed the supreme resolution of setting out
to seek for it. The electric aeronef was still in working order.
Forsaking the city which was now only a tomb, the two last survivors of
a vanished humanity abandoned these inhospitable regions and set out to
seek some unknown oasis.
The ancient kingdoms of the world passed under their feet. They saw the
remains of great cities, made illustrious by the splendors of
civilization, lying in ruins along the equator. The silence of death
covered them all. Omegar recognized the ancient city which he had
recently left, but he knew that there, also the supreme source of life
was lacking, and they did not stop. They traversed thus, in their
solitary air-ship, the regions which had witnessed the last stages of
the life of humanity; but death, and silence, and the frozen desert was
everywhere. No more fields, no more vegetation; the watercourses were
visible as on a map, and it was evident that along their banks life had
been prolonged; but they were now dried up forever. And when, at times,
some motionless lake was distinguished in the lower level, it was like a
lake of stone; for even at the equator the sun was powerless to melt the
eternal ice. A kind of bear, with long fur, was still to be seen
wandering over the frozen earth, seeking in the crevices of the rocks
its scanty vegetable food. From time to time, also, they descried a kind
of penguin and sea-cows walking upon the ice, and large, gray polar
birds in awkward flight, or alighting mournfully.
Nowhere was the sought-for oasis found. The earth was indeed dead.
Night came. Not a cloud obscured the sky. A warmer current from the
south had carried them over what was formerly Africa, now a frozen
waste. The mechanism of the aeronef had ceased to work. Exhausted by
cold rather than by hunger, they threw themselves upon the bear-skins in
the bottom of the car.
[Illustration:
_By O. Guillonnet._
“A WHITE SHADOW STOPPED BEFORE THEIR ASTONISHED EYES.”
]
Perceiving a ruin, they alighted. It was an immense quadrangular base,
revealing traces of an enormous stone stairway. It was still possible to
recognize one of the ancient Egyptian pyramids which, in the middle of
the desert, survived the civilization which it represented. With all
Egypt, Nubia and Abyssinia, it had sunk below the level of the sea, and
had afterwards emerged into the light and been restored in the heart of
a new capital by a new civilization, more brilliant than that of Thebes
and of Memphis, and finally had been again abandoned to the desert. It
was the only remaining monument of the earlier life of humanity, and
owed its stability to its geometric form.
“Let us rest here,” said Eva, “since we are doomed to die. Who, indeed,
has escaped death? Let me die in peace in your arms.”
They sought a corner of the ruin and sat down beside each other, face to
face with the silent desert. The young girl cowered upon the ground,
pressing her husband in her arms, still striving with all her might
against the penetrating cold. He drew her to his heart, and warmed her
with his kisses.
“I love you, and I am dying,” she said. “But, no, we will not die. See
that star, which calls us!”
At the same moment they heard behind them a slight noise, issuing from
the ancient tomb of Cheops, a noise like that the wind makes in the
leaves. Shuddering, they turned, together, in the direction whence the
sound came. A white shadow, which seemed to be self-luminous, for the
night was already dark and there was no moon, glided rather than walked
toward them, and stopped before their astonished eyes.
“Fear nothing,” it said. “I come to seek you. No, you shall not die. No
one has ever died. Time flows into eternity; eternity remains.
“I was Cheops, King of Egypt, and I reigned over this country in the
early days of the world. As a slave, I have since expiated my crimes in
many existences, and when at length my soul deserved immortality I lived
upon Neptune, Ganymede, Rhea, Titan, Saturn, Mars, and other worlds as
yet unknown to you. Jupiter is now my home. In the days of humanity’s
greatness, Jupiter was not habitable for intelligent beings. It was
passing through the necessary stages of preparation. Now this immense
world is the heir to all human achievement. Worlds succeed each other in
time as in space. All is eternal, and merges into the divine. Confide in
me, and follow me.”
And as the old Pharaoh was still speaking, they felt a delicious fluid
penetrate their souls, as sometimes the ear is filled with an exquisite
melody. A sense of calm and transcendent happiness flowed in their
veins. Never, in any dream, in any ecstasy, had they ever experienced
such joy.
[Illustration:
_By O. Guillonnet._
“THE SPECTRE ROSE INTO SPACE.”
]
Eva pressed Omegar in her arms. “I love you,” she repeated. Her voice
was only a breath. He touched his lips to her already cold mouth, and
heard them murmur: “How I could have loved!”
Jupiter was shining majestically above them, and in the glorious light
of his rays their sight grew dim and their eyes gently closed.
The spectre rose into space and vanished. And one to whom it is given to
see, not with the bodily eyes, which perceive only material vibrations,
but with the eyes of the soul, which perceive psychical vibrations,
might have seen two small flames shining side by side, united by a
common attraction, and rising, together with the phantom, into the
heavens.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
EPILOGUE.
“And the angel lifted up his hand to heaven and sware by Him that
liveth forever and ever that there should be time no longer.”—Rev.
x., 6.
Φ
The earth was dead. The other planets also had died one after the other.
The sun was extinguished. But the stars still shone; there were still
suns and worlds.
In the measureless duration of eternity, time, an essentially relative
conception, is determined by each world, and even in each world this
conception is dependent upon the consciousness of the individual. Each
world measures its own duration. The year of the earth is not that of
Neptune. The latter is 164 times the former, and yet is not longer
relatively to the absolute. There is no common measure between time and
eternity. In empty space there is no time, no years, no centuries; only
the possibility of a measurement of time which becomes real the moment a
revolving world appears. Without some periodic motion no conception
whatever of time is possible.
The earth no longer existed, nor her celestial companion, the little
isle of Mars, nor the beautiful sphere of Venus, nor the colossal world
of Jupiter, nor the strange universe of Saturn, which had lost its
rings, nor the slow-moving Uranus and Neptune—not even the glorious sun,
in whose fecundating heat these mansions of the heavens had basked for
so many centuries. The sun was a dark ball, the planets also; and still
this invisible system sped on in the glacial cold of starry space. So
far as life is concerned, all these worlds were dead, did not exist.
They survived their past history like the ruins of the dead cities of
Assyria which the archæologist uncovers in the desert, moving on their
way in darkness through the invisible and the unknown.
No genius, no magician could recall the vanished past, when the earth
floated bathed in light, with its broad green fields waking to the
morning sun, its rivers winding like long serpents through the verdant
meadows, its woods alive with the songs of birds, its forests filled
with deep and mysterious shadows, its seas heaving with the tides or
roaring in the tempest, its mountain slopes furrowed with rushing
streams and cascades, its gardens enameled with flowers, its nests of
birds and cradles of children, and its toiling population, whose
activity had transformed it and who lived so joyously a life perpetuated
by the delights of an endless love. All this happiness seemed eternal.
What has become of those mornings and evenings, of those flowers and
those lovers, of that light and perfume, of those harmonies and joys, of
those beauties and dreams? All is dead, has disappeared in the darkness
of night.
The world dead, all the planets dead, the sun extinguished. The solar
system annihilated, time itself suspended.
Time lapses into eternity. But eternity remains, and time is born again.
Before the existence of the earth, throughout an eternity, suns and
worlds existed, peopled with beings like ourselves. Millions of years
before the earth was, they were. The past of the universe has been as
brilliant as the present, the future will be as the past, the present is
of no importance.
In examining the past history of the earth, we might go back to a time
when our planet shone in space, a veritable sun, appearing as Jupiter
and Saturn do now, shrouded in a dense atmosphere charged with warm
vapors; and we might follow all its transformations down to the period
of man. We have seen that when its heat was entirely dissipated, its
waters absorbed, the aqueous vapor of its atmosphere gone, and this
atmosphere itself more or less absorbed, our planet must have presented
the appearance of those great lunar deserts seen through the telescope
(with certain differences due to the action of causes peculiar to the
earth), with its final geographical configurations, its dried-up shores
and water-courses, a planetary corpse, a dead and frozen world. It still
bears, however, within its bosom an unexpended energy—that of its motion
of translation about the sun, an energy which, transformed into heat by
the sudden destruction of its motion, would suffice to melt it and to
reduce it, in part, to a state of vapor, thus inaugurating a new epoch;
but for an instant only, for, if this motion of translation were
destroyed, the earth would fall into the sun and its independent
existence would come to an end. If suddenly arrested it would move in a
straight line toward the sun, with an increasing velocity, and reach the
sun in sixty-five days; were its motion gradually arrested, it would
move in a spiral, to be swallowed up, at last, in the central luminary.
The entire history of terrestrial life is before our eyes. It has its
commencement and its end; and its duration, however many the centuries
which compose it, is preceded and followed by eternity—is, indeed, but a
single instant lost in eternity.
For a long time after the earth had ceased to be the abode of life, the
colossal worlds of Jupiter and Saturn, passing more slowly from their
solar to their planetary stage, reigned in their turn among the planets,
with the splendor of a vitality incomparably superior to that of our
earth. But they, also, waxed old and descended into the night of the
tomb.
Χ
Had the earth, like Jupiter, for example, retained long enough the
elements of life, death would have come only with the extinction of the
sun. But the length of the life of a world is proportional to its size
and its elements of vitality.
The solar heat is due to two principal causes—the condensation of the
original nebula, and the fall of meteorites. According to the best
established calculations of thermodynamics, the former has produced a
quantity of heat eighteen million times greater than that which the sun
radiates yearly, supposing the original nebula was cold, which there is
no reason to believe was the case. It is, therefore, certain that the
solar temperature produced by this condensation far exceeded the above.
If condensation continues, the radiation of heat may go on for centuries
without loss.
The heat emitted every second is equal to that which would result from
the combustion of eleven quadrillions six hundred thousand milliards of
tons of coal burning at once! The earth intercepts only one five
hundredth millionth part of the radiant heat, and this one five
hundredth millionth suffices to maintain all terrestrial life. Of
sixty-seven millions of light and heat rays which the sun radiates into
space, only one is received and utilized by the planets.
[Illustration]
Well! to maintain this source of heat it is only necessary that the rate
of condensation should be such that the sun’s diameter should decrease
seventy-seven meters a year, or one kilometer in thirteen years. This
contraction is so gradual that it would be wholly imperceptible. Nine
thousand five hundred years would be required to reduce the diameter by
one single second of arc. Even if the sun be actually in a gaseous
state, its temperature, so far from growing less, or even remaining
stationary, would increase by the very fact of contraction; for if on
the one hand the temperature of a gaseous body falls when it condenses,
on the other hand the heat generated by contraction is more than
sufficient to prevent a fall in temperature, and the amount of heat
increases until a liquid state is reached. The sun seems to have reached
this stage.
The condensation of the sun, whose density is only one-fourth that of
the earth, may thus of itself maintain for centuries, at least for ten
million years, the light and heat of this brilliant star. But we have
just spoken of a second source of heat: the fall of meteorites. One
hundred and forty-six million meteorites fall upon the earth yearly. A
vastly greater number fall into the sun, because of its greater
attraction. If their mass equals about the one hundredth part of the
mass of the earth, their fall would suffice to maintain the
temperature,—not by their combustion, for if the sun itself was being
consumed it would not have lasted more than six thousand years, but by
the sudden transformation of the energy of motion into heat, the
velocity of impact being 650,000 meters per second, so great is the
solar attraction.
If the earth should fall into the sun, it would make good for
ninety-five years the actual loss of solar energy; Venus would make good
this loss for eighty-four years; Mercury for seven; Mars for thirteen;
Jupiter for 32,254; Saturn for 9652; Uranus for 1610; and Neptune for
1890 years. That is to say, the fall of all the planets into the sun
would produce heat enough to maintain the present rate of expenditure
for about 46,000 years.
It is therefore certain that the fall of meteors greatly lengthens the
life of the sun. One thirty-third millionth of the solar mass added each
year would compensate for the loss, and half of this would be sufficient
if we admit that condensation shares equally with the fall of meteorites
in the maintenance of solar heat; centuries would have to pass before
any acceleration of the planets’ velocities would be apparent.
Owing to these two causes alone we may, therefore, admit a future for
the sun of at least twenty million years; and this period cannot but be
increased by other unknown causes, to say nothing of an encounter with a
swarm of meteorites.
The sun therefore was the last living member of the system; the last
animated by the warmth of life.
But the sun also went out. After having so long poured upon his
celestial children his vivifying beams, the black spots upon his surface
increased in number and in extent, his brilliant photosphere grew dull,
and his hitherto dazzling surface became congealed. An enormous red ball
took the place of the dazzling center of the vanished worlds.
For a long time this enormous star maintained a high surface
temperature, and a sort of phosphorescent atmosphere; its virgin soil,
illumined by the light of the stars and by the electric influences which
formed a kind of atmosphere, gave birth to a marvelous flora, to an
unknown fauna, to beings differing absolutely in organization from those
who had succeeded each other upon the worlds of its system.
But for the sun also the end came, and the hour sounded on the timepiece
of destiny when the whole solar system was stricken from the book of
life. And one after another the stars, each one of which is a sun, a
solar system, shared the same fate; yet the universe continued to exist
as it does today.
Ψ
The science of mathematics tells us: “The solar system does not appear
to possess at present more than the one four hundred and fifty-fourth
part of the transformable energy which it had in the nebulous state.
Although this remainder constitutes a fund whose magnitude confounds our
imagination, it will also some day be exhausted. Later, the
transformation will be complete for the entire universe, resulting in a
general equilibrium of temperature and pressure.
“Energy will not then be susceptible of transformation. This does not
mean annihilation, a word without meaning, nor does it mean the absence
of motion, properly speaking, since the same sum of energy will always
exist in the form of atomic motion, but the absence of all sensible
motion, of all differentiation, the absolute uniformity of conditions,
that is to say, absolute death.”
Such is the present statement of the science of mathematics.
Experiment and observation prove that on the one hand the quantity of
matter, and on the other hand the quantity of energy also, remains
constant, whatever the change in form or in position; but they also show
that the universe tends to a state of equilibrium, a condition in which
its heat will be uniformly distributed.
The heat of the sun and of all the stars seems to be due to the
transformation of their initial energy of motion, to molecular impacts;
the heat thus generated is being constantly radiated into space, and
this radiation will go on until every sun is cooled down to the
temperature of space itself.
If we admit that the sciences of today, mechanics, physics and
mathematics, are trustworthy, and that the laws which now control the
operations of nature and of reason are permanent, this must be the fate
of the universe.
Far from being eternal, the earth on which we live has had a beginning.
In eternity a hundred million years, a thousand million years or
centuries, are as a day. There is an eternity behind us and before us,
and all apparent duration is but a point. A scientific investigation of
nature and acquaintance with its laws raises, therefore, the question
already raised by the theologians, whether Plato, Zoroaster, Saint
Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, or some young seminarist who has just
taken orders: “What was God doing before the creation of the universe,
and what will he do after its end?” Or, under a less anthromorphic form,
since God is unknowable: “What was the condition of the universe prior
to the present order of things, and what will it be after this order has
passed away?”
Note that the question is the same, whether we admit a personal God,
reasoning and acting toward a definite end, or, whether we deny the
existence of any spiritual being, and admit only the existence of
indestructible atoms and forces representing an invariable sum of
energy.
In the first case, why should God, an eternal and uncreated power,
remain inactive? Or, having remained inactive, satisfied with the
absolute infinity of his nature which nothing could augment, why did he
change this state and create matter and force?
The theologian may reply: “Because it was his good pleasure.” But
philosophy is not satisfied with this change in the divine purpose. In
the second case, since the origin of the present condition of things
only dates back a certain time, and since there can be no effect without
a cause, we have the right to ask what was the condition of things
anterior to the formation of the present universe.
Although energy is indestructible, we certainly cannot deny the tendency
toward its universal dissipation, and this must lead to absolute repose
and death, for the conclusions of mathematics are irresistible.
Nevertheless, we do not concede this.
Why?
Because the universe is not a definite quantity.
Ω
It is impossible to conceive of a limit to the extension of matter.
Limitless space, the inexhaustible source of the transformation of
potential energy into visible motion, and thence into heat and other
forces, confronts us, and not a simple, finished piece of mechanism,
running like a clock and stopping forever.
The future of the universe is its past. If the universe were to have had
an end, this end would have been reached long ago, and we should not be
here to study this problem.
It is because our conceptions are finite, that things have a beginning
and an end. We cannot conceive of an absolutely endless series of
transformations, either in the future or in the past, nor that an
equally endless series of material combinations, of planets, suns,
sun-systems, milky ways, stellar universes, can succeed each other.
Nevertheless, the heavens are there to show us the infinite. Nor can we
comprehend any better the infinity of space or of time; yet it is
impossible for us to conceive of a limit to either, for our thought
overleaps the limit, and is impotent to conceive of bounds beyond which
there is no space nor time. One may travel forever, in any direction,
without reaching a boundary, and as soon as anyone affirms that at a
certain moment duration ceases, we refuse our assent; for we cannot
confound time with the human measures of it.
These measures are relative and arbitrary; but time itself exists, like
space, independently of them. Suppress everything, space and time would
still remain; that is to say, space which material things may occupy,
and the possibility of the succession of events. If this were not so,
neither space nor time would be really measurable, not even in thought,
since thought would not exist. But it is impossible for the mind even to
suppress either the one or the other. Strictly speaking, it is neither
space nor time that we are speaking of, but infinity and eternity,
relative to which every measure, however great, is but a point.
We do not comprehend or conceive of infinite space or time, because we
are incapable of it. But this incapacity does not invalidate the
existence of the absolute. In confessing that we do not comprehend
infinity, we feel it about us, and that space, as bounded by a wall or
any barrier whatever, is in itself an absurd idea. And we are equally
incapable of denying the possibility of the existence, at some instant
of time, of a system of worlds whose motions would measure time without
creating it. Do our clocks create time? No, they do but measure it. In
the presence of the absolute, our measures of both time and space
vanish; but the absolute remains.
[Illustration]
We live, then, in the infinite, without doubting it for an instant. The
hand which holds this pen is composed of eternal and indestructible
elements, and the atoms which constituted it existed in the solar nebula
whence our planet came, and will exist forever. Your lungs breathe, your
brains think, with matter and forces which acted millions of years ago
and will act endlessly. And the little globule which we inhabit floats,
not at the center of a limited universe, but in the depth of infinity,
as truly as does the most distant star which the telescope can discover.
The best definition of the universe ever given, to which there was
nothing to add, is Pascal’s, “A sphere whose center is everywhere and
circumference nowhere.”
It is this infinity which assures the eternity of the universe.
Stars, systems, myriads, milliards, universes succeed each other without
end in every direction.
We do not live near a center which does not exist, and the earth, like
the farthest star, lies in the fathomless infinite.
No bounds to space. Fly in thought in any direction with any velocity
for months, years, centuries, forever, we shall meet with no limit,
approach no boundary, we shall always remain in the vestibule of the
infinite before us.
No bounds to time. Live in imagination through future ages, add
centuries to centuries, epoch to epoch, we shall never attain the end,
we shall always remain in the vestibule of the eternity which opens
before us.
In our little sphere of terrestrial observation we see that, through all
the transformations of matter and motion, the same quantity of each
remains, though under new forms. Living beings afford a perpetual
illustration of this: they are born, they grow by appropriating
substances from the world without, and when they die they break up and
restore to nature the elements of which they are composed. But by a law
whose action never ceases other bodies are constituted from these same
elements. Every star may be likened to an organized being, even as
regards its internal heat. A body is alive so long as respiration and
the circulation of the blood makes it possible for the various organs to
perform their functions. When equilibrium and repose are reached, death
follows; but after death all the substances of which the body was formed
are wrought into other beings. Dissolution is the prelude to recreation.
Analogy leads us to believe that the same is true of the cosmos. Nothing
can be destroyed.
_There is an incommensurable Power, which we are obliged to recognize as
limitless in space and without beginning or end in time, and this Power
is that which persists through all the changes in those sensible
appearances under which the universe presents itself to us._
For this reason there will always be suns and worlds, not like ours, but
still suns and worlds succeeding each other through all eternity.
And for us this visible universe can only be the changing _appearance_
of the absolute and eternal _reality_.
Α
It is in virtue of this transcendent law that, long after the death of
the earth, of the giant planets and the central luminary, while our old
and darkened sun was still speeding through boundless space, with its
dead worlds on which terrestrial and planetary life had once engaged in
the futile struggle for daily existence, another extinct sun, issuing
from the depths of infinity, collided obliquely with it and brought it
to rest!
Then in the vast night of space, from the shock of these two mighty
bodies was suddenly kindled a stupendous conflagration, and an immense
gaseous nebula was formed, which trembled for an instant like a flaring
flame, and then sped on into regions unknown. Its temperature was
several million degrees. All which here below had been earth, water,
air, minerals, plants, atoms; all which had constituted man, his flesh,
his palpitating heart, his flashing eye, his armed hand, his thinking
brain, his entrancing beauty; the victor and the vanquished, the
executioner and his victim, and those inferior souls still wearing the
fetters of matter,—all were changed into fire. And so with the worlds of
Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the rest. It was the resurrection of
visible nature. But those superior souls which had acquired immortality
continued to live forever in the hierarchy of the invisible psychic
universe. The conscious existence of mankind had attained an ideal
state. Mankind had passed by transmigration through the worlds to a new
life with God, and freed from the burdens of matter, soared with an
endless progress in eternal light.
The immense gaseous nebula, which absorbed all former worlds, thus
transformed into vapor, began to turn upon itself. And in the zones of
condensation of this primordial star-mist, new worlds were born, as
heretofore the earth was.
So another universe began, whose genesis some future Moses and Laplace
would tell, a new creation, extra-terrestrial, superhuman,
inexhaustible, resembling neither the earth nor Mars, nor Saturn, nor
the sun.
And new humanities arose, new civilizations, new vanities, another
Babylon, another Thebes, another Athens, another Rome, another Paris,
new palaces, temples, glories and loves. And all these things possessed
nothing of the earth, whose very memory had passed away like a shadow.
And these universes passed away in their turn. But infinite space
remained, peopled with worlds, and stars, and souls, and suns; and time
went on forever.
For there can be neither end nor beginning.
[Illustration]
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Added Table of Contents.
2. The author used all lower case for genus names.
3. Silently corrected typographical errors.
4. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
6. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.