to the Earth were governed by this psychological law; and you acted
more freely than in a dream, because your soul was not impeded by the
machinery of your organism. Often in our former conversations have you
discoursed to me upon the strength of the will. Thus, willing to do
so, you were enabled to return and to see yourself upon your death-bed
before your mortal remains had been committed to the dust.
[Sidenote: Lumen witnesses his own funeral.]
[Sidenote: His flight to the stars.]
LUMEN. I did return; and I blessed my family for the sincerity of
their grief. I shed a benediction on them; I soothed their grief, and
poured balm upon their wounded hearts; and I inspired my children
with the belief that the body lying there was not my real self--my
_ego_--but merely the shell from which my soul had risen to a sphere
celestial, infinite, and far beyond their earthly ken. I witnessed my
own funeral procession, and I noticed those who called themselves my
friends and who yet, for some trifling reason, begged to be excused
from following my remains to their last resting-place. I listened to
the various comments of those following my bier, and although in this
region of peace we are free from that thirst for praise which clings
to most of us whilst on Earth, nevertheless I felt gratified to know
that I had left pleasant memories behind me. When the stone of the
vault was rolled away, that which separates the dead from the living,
I gave a last farewell to my poor sleeping body; and, as the Sun set
in its bed of purple and gold, I went out into the air until night had
fallen, plunged in admiration of the beautiful scenes which unrolled
themselves in the heavens. The aurora borealis displayed itself above
the North Pole in bands of glistening silver, shooting stars rained
from Cassiopeia, and the full Moon rose slowly in the east like a
new world emerging from the waves. I saw Capella scintillating and
looking at me with a glance pure and bright, and could distinguish
the crowns surrounding it, as if they were princes dowered with a
celestial divinity. Then I forgot the Earth, the Moon, the Planetary
System, the Sun, the Comets, in one intense, overpowering attraction
towards a shining brilliant star, and I felt myself carried towards
it instinctively with a celerity far greater than that of an electric
flash. After a time, the duration of which I cannot guess, I arrived
upon the same ring and upon the same mountain, from which I had first
kept watch when I saw the old men occupied in following the history
of the Earth, seventy-one years and eight months ago. They were still
absorbed in the contemplation of events happening in the city of Lyons
on the 23rd of January 1793. I will avow to you the reason of the
mysterious attraction of Capella for me. For marvellous as it may seem,
there are in creation invisible ties which do not break like mortal
ties; there are means by which souls can commune with each other, in
spite of the distance that separates them.
[Sidenote: He meets the spirit of his wife.]
[Sidenote: They recall their life on Earth.]
On the evening of the second day, as the emerald Moon enshrined itself
in the third ring of gold--for such is the sidereal measurement of
time--I found myself walking in a lonely avenue enamelled with flowers
of sweet perfume. Sauntering along, as if in a dream, imagine my
delight when I saw coming towards me my beautiful and beloved Sylvia.
She was at a ripe age at her death, and notwithstanding an indefinable
change I recognised the features, whose expression had but deepened
and spiritualised, in happy correspondence with her sweet, pure life.
I will not stop to describe to you the joy of our meeting, this is not
the time for it; but perchance some day we may have the opportunity of
descanting upon the different manifestations of affection in this world
and the world beyond the grave, and I only add now that together we
sought our native land on Earth, where we had passed days of peace and
happiness. We delighted to turn our gaze towards the luminous point,
which our state of exaltation enabled us to perceive was a world--the
one upon which we had lived in earthly form--we loved to wed the memory
of the past with the reality of our present, and in all the freshness
of our new and ecstatic sensations we sought to recall and review the
scenes of our youth. It was thus we actually saw again the happy years
of our earthly love, the pavilion of the convent, the flower garden,
the promenades in the charming and delightful environs of Paris, and
the solitary rambles that, loving and beloved, we took together. To
retrace these years we had but to travel together into space in the
direction of the Earth, where these scenes, focused by the light, were
being photographed. Now, my friend, I have fulfilled my promise in
revealing to you these remarkable observations.
Behold the day breaks, and the star Lucifer is paling already under its
rosy light. I must return to the constellations....
QUÆRENS. Just one more word, Lumen, before we conclude this interview.
Can earthly scenes be transmitted successively into space--if so,
the present could be kept perpetually before the eyes of distant
spectators, and be limited only by the power of their spiritual sight?
[Sidenote: The precession of events as seen in space.]
LUMEN. Yes, my friend. Let us, for example, place our first observer on
the Moon--he would perceive terrestrial events one second and a quarter
after they had happened. Let us place a second observer at four times
the distance--he would be cognisant of them five seconds later. Double
the distance, and a third would see them ten seconds after they had
taken place. Again double the distance, and a fourth observer would
have to wait twenty seconds before he could witness them; so on and on
with ever-increasing delay, until at the Sun's distance; eight minutes
and thirteen seconds must elapse before they could become visible.
Upon certain planets, as we have seen, hours must intervene between
the action and the sight of it; further off still, days, months even
years must elapse. Upon neighbouring stars earthly events are not seen
until four, six, ten years after their occurrence; but there are stars
so distant that light only reaches them after many centuries, and even
thousands of years. Indeed, there are nebulæ to which light takes
millions of years to travel.
QUÆRENS. Therefore it only needs a sight sufficiently piercing to
witness events historic or geologic which are long since past. Could
not one, therefore, so gifted see the Deluge, the Garden of Eden, Adam
and. . . .
LUMEN. I have told you, my old friend, that the rising of the sun on
this hemisphere puts to flight all spirits, so I must go. Another
interview may be granted us some other day, when we can continue our
talk on this subject, and I will then give you a general sketch which
will open out for you new horizons. The stars call me, and are already
disappearing. I must away. Adieu, Quærens, adieu.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Physiological anatomy would probably explain this fact by
suggesting that a sort of _punctum cæcum_ is displaced in order to
conceal the object that one does not wish to see.
[2] Every one knows that the farther an object is, the smaller it
appears. An object which is seen under an angle of one second, is at a
distance of 206,265 times its own diameter, whatever it may be; because
as there are 1,296,000 seconds in the circumference, the ratio between
the circumference and its diameter being 314,159 × 2, it follows that
this object is at a distance equal to 206,265 times its own diameter.
As Capella sees the semi-diameter of the terrestrial orbit only under
an angle 22 times smaller, its distance is 22 times greater. Capella
is therefore at a distance of 4,484,000 times the radius of the
terrestrial orbit. Future micrometrical measurements may modify these
results concerning the parallax of this star, but they cannot change
the principle upon which the conception of this work is grounded.
SECOND CONVERSATION
REFLUUM TEMPORIS
I
QUÆRENS. Your revelations which were interrupted by the break of day,
O Lumen, have left me hungering and thirsting to hear more of this
wonderful mystery. As a child to whom one shows a delicious fruit
longs to have a bite, and when he has tasted of it begs for more, so
my curiosity is eager to have renewed enjoyment of these paradoxes of
nature. May I venture to submit to you a few questions in relation to
the subject, which have been suggested to me by the friends to whom I
have communicated the substance of your revelations, and then may I ask
you to continue the narrative of your impressions of the regions beyond
this Earth?
[Sidenote: Scientific truth, not fancy or romance.]
LUMEN. No, my friend, I cannot consent to such curiosity. However
perfectly disposed your mind may be to accept my communications, I
am convinced that all the details of my subject have not been equally
apprehended by you, and are not in your eyes equally self-evident. My
recital has been called mystical by those who have not quite understood
that it is neither a romance nor a phantasy, but a scientific truth,
a physical fact demonstrable and demonstrated, indisputable and as
positive as the fall of an aerolite or the motion of a cannon-ball. The
reason which prevents you and your friends from fully comprehending
these facts is, that they took place beyond this Earth, in regions
foreign to the sphere of your impressions, and inaccessible to your
terrestrial senses. Naturally you do not comprehend them. (Pardon
my frankness, but in the spiritual world one is frank; there, even
thoughts are visible.) You only comprehend those things which you
perceive. And as you persist in regarding your ideas of time and space
as _absolute_, although they are only _relative_, and thence form a
judgment on truths which are quite beyond your sphere, and which are
imperceptible to your terrestrial organism and faculties, I should not
do you a true service, my friend, in giving you fuller details of my
ultra-terrestrial observations.
[Sidenote: An inquiring mind.]
QUÆRENS. It is not, I assure you, in a spirit of simple curiosity,
dear Lumen, that I ventured to draw you forth from the bosom of the
invisible world, where advanced souls partake of indescribable joys.
But I have understood, perhaps better than you, the grandeur of the
problem, and it is under the inspiration of an earnest, studious
avidity that I seek for other aspects of it, still more novel than
those you have given me, if I may say so, or rather more bold and more
incomprehensible. As the result of reflection, I have arrived at the
conclusion that what we know is _nothing_, and that what we do not know
is _everything_; I am therefore disposed to welcome everything you tell
me. I beg of you, if you will allow me, to share your revelations....
LUMEN. The fact is, my friend, I assure you, either you are not
sufficiently able to understand, or you are too willing to believe: in
the first case, you do not fully comprehend; in the second, you are too
credulous, and do not appreciate my communications at their full value.
However, I shall continue.
QUÆRENS. Dear comrade of my earthly life!
LUMEN. The remaining facts, which I shall now relate to you, are still
more extraordinary than any that preceded them.
QUÆRENS. I feel like Tantalus in the midst of his lake, or like the
spirits in the twenty-fourth canto of the Purgatorio. I am as eager as
the Hesperides holding out their hands for the fragrant fruit, or as
Eve in her desire for....
[Sidenote: Travelling on a ray of light.]
[Sidenote: Lumen sees the Revolution of 1848.]
LUMEN. Some time after my departure from the Earth, the eyes of my soul
being still mournfully directed toward my native world, I found that,
on an attentive examination, I could perceive at the 45th degree of
north latitude and the 35th degree of longitude, a triangular piece
of land of a sombre colour, north of the Black Sea, on the shores of
which I saw, towards the west, a grievous number of my compatriots
madly engaged in killing one another. I recalled to mind that relic
of barbarism, war, formerly called glorious, with which you are still
beset and burdened, and I remembered that in this corner of the Crimea
800,000 men fell, in ignorance of the cause of their mutual massacre.
Some clouds then passed over Europe. At that time I was not on Capella,
but in mid space, between that star and the Earth, about half the
distance from Vega. Having left the Earth some time before, I turned
toward a group of stars, that, seen from your planet, are to the left
of Capella. Meanwhile my thoughts recurred from time to time to the
Earth, and soon after taking the observation to which I have referred,
my eyes being fixed on Paris, I was surprised to see it a prey to an
insurrection of the people. Examining it more attentively, I discerned
barricades on the boulevards, near the Hôtel de Ville, and along the
streets, and the citizens firing at one another. The first idea that
occurred to me was that a new revolution was taking place before my
eyes, and that Napoleon III. was dethroned. But, by the secret sympathy
of souls, my sight was attracted to a barricade in the Faubourg St.
Antoine, upon which I saw lying prostrate the Archbishop Denis Auguste
Affre, with whom I had been slightly acquainted. His sightless eyes
were turned towards the heavens where I was, but he saw nothing; in his
hand he held a green branch. I was thus witnessing the days of 1848,
and in particular that of the 25th of June.
[Sidenote: He sees the events of 1831.]
A few minutes--a few hours, perhaps--passed, during which my
imagination and my reason sought in turns for an explanation of this
special scene. To see 1848 _after_ 1854! When my sight was again
attracted to the Earth, I remarked a distribution of tricoloured flags
in a grand square of the city of Lyons, Trying to distinguish the
official person who was making this distribution, I recognised the
uniforms, and I remembered that after the accession of Louis Philippe,
the young Duke of Orleans had been sent to quell the disturbances in
the capital of French manufactures. It followed from thence that,
_after_ 1854 and 1848, I had before my eyes an event of 1831. Presently
my glance turned to Paris on the day of a public fête. The king, a
coarse-looking man, with a rubicund face, was tearing along in a
magnificent chariot, and was just crossing the Pont Neuf. The weather
was splendid. Some fair ladies posed, like a basket of lilies, on the
white parapet of the bridge. Floating over Paris some brightly-coloured
creatures could be seen. Evidently I beheld the en trance of the
Bourbons into France.
[Sidenote: Supposed explanation of this strange slight.]
I should not have understood this last strange sight if I had not
recollected that a number of balloons, in the form of animals, had
been sent up on that occasion. From my higher altitude they appeared
to wriggle about the roofs of the houses. To see again past events
was comprehensible enough, according to the law of light. But to see
things contrary to their real order in time, that was too fantastic,
and puzzled me beyond expression. Nevertheless, as I had the things
before my eyes, I could not deny the fact. I sought forthwith for
some hypothesis to account for this singular phenomenon. At first I
supposed it was really the Earth that I saw, and that by a fiat of
fate, the secret of which is known only to God, the history of France
repeats itself, and passes through the same phases that it has already
traversed; that the course of events proceed up to a certain maximum,
where they shine gloriously for a time, and then comes a reaction to
the original state of things, by an oscillation in human affairs like
the variations of the magnetic needle, or like the movements of the
stars.
The personages whom I took for the Duke of Orleans and Louis XVIII.
were perhaps other princes, who were repeating exactly what the
former had done. This hypothesis, however, appeared to be so very
extraordinary, that I paused to consider a more rational theory.
Admitting the fact of the number of stars, with planets moving round
them, is it not probable that a world exactly like the Earth exists
somewhere in the universe of space?
[Sidenote: Calculation of probabilities.]
The calculation of probabilities supplies an answer to this question.
The greater the number of worlds, the greater will be the probability
that the forces of nature have given birth to an organisation like
that of the Earth. Now the real number of worlds surpasses all human
calculation, either written or possible to be written. If we could
understand what "infinite" means, we might venture to say that this
number is infinite. I concluded, then, that there is a very high
probability in favour of the existence of many worlds exactly like the
Earth, on the surface of which the same history is accomplished, and
the same succession of historical events takes place; worlds which are
inhabited by identically the same species of vegetables and animals,
and the same humanity, and where men and families like our own, I doubt
not, exist.
In the second place, I asked myself if another world analogous to
the Earth might not also be symmetrical to it; and then I worked out
the geometry of the problem, and the metaphysical theory of images.
I arrived at the conclusion that it was _possible_ for the world in
question to be like the Earth, but in an inverse form. When you look
at yourself in a mirror, you notice that the ring on your right hand
appears to be on the ring-finger of your left hand. This explains the
symbol. If you wink your right eye, your reflection winks the left
eye; when you advance your right arm, your image advances the left
arm. It is not impossible that in the infinity of the stars a world
exists exactly the converse of the terrestrial world. Undoubtedly in an
_infinity_ of worlds the non-existence of a similar world, perhaps of
millions of them, would be the real impossibility. Nature of necessity
repeats herself, reproduces herself, but still under all forms plays
the game of creation. I thought therefore that the world on which I saw
those things was not the Earth, but a globe like the Earth, the history
of which was precisely the opposite of yours.
QUÆRENS. I myself have had the idea also that it might have been as you
say. But was it not easy for you to make sure of it by ascertaining
whether it was the Earth or another star that you had before your eyes,
by examining its astronomical position?
[Sidenote: The solution of the problem.]
LUMEN. That is precisely what I did immediately, and this examination
confirmed me in my opinion. The star where I had just witnessed four
facts, analogous to four terrestrial facts, but inversely, did not
appear to me to occupy its original position. The little constellation
of the Altar no longer existed, and on that side of the heavens where
you remember the Earth appeared to be in my first episode, there was
an irregular polygon of unknown stars. I was thus convinced that it
was not our Earth that I had before my eyes. I could no longer feel
any doubt about it, and I was satisfied that I had now, for my field
of exploration, a world so much the more curious that it was not the
Earth, and that its history appeared to represent, in an inverse order,
the scenes of the history of our world.
[Sidenote: History retraced]
[Sidenote: France of the past.]
Some events, it is true, did not appear to have corresponding ones
on the Earth, but in general the coincidence was very remarkable. I
was the more struck with this because the contempt which I feel for
the instigators of war had led me to hope that a folly so absurd
and so infamous might not have existed in other worlds. But, on the
contrary, the greater part of the events which I witnessed were
combats or preparations for war. After a battle, which appeared to
me very much to resemble that of Waterloo, I saw the battle of the
Pyramids. An image of Napoleon as emperor had become first Consul,
and I saw the Revolution succeed to the Consulate. Some time after
I observed the square in front of the Château of Versailles covered
with mourning-coaches, and in an open pathway from Ville-d'Avray I
recognised the botanist Jean Jacques Rousseau slowly walking along,
and, no doubt, at that moment philosophising on the death of Louis XV.
I was particularly struck with the gala fêtes at the beginning of the
reign of Louis XV., worthy successors of those of the Regency, during
which the treasures of France glistened in precious stones on the
fingers of the three or four adored courtesans. I saw Voltaire, with
his white cotton cap, in his park at Ferney; and later on, Bossuet,
walking on the little terrace of his episcopal palace at Meaux, not far
from the little hill through which the railway is now cut, but I could
not see the least trace of the railway line. In this same succession of
events, I saw the highroads covered with diligences, and large sailing
ships on the seas. Steam and all the factories that are moved by it
now, had disappeared. Neither telegraphs nor any other application
of electricity existed. Balloons, which more than once I had seen in
the field of observation, were lost to sight. The last that I saw was
the shapeless globe sent up by the brothers Montgolfier at Annonay
in the presence of the States-General. The face of the Earth was
quite changed--Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Havre, and more especially
Versailles, were not recognisable; the first four had lost their
immense activity, the last had gained incomparably in magnificence.
[Sidenote: The monarchy.]
I had formed a very imperfect idea of the splendour of the royal fêtes
at Versailles. It was a satisfaction to me to be present at them; and
it was not without interest that I recognised Louis XIV. himself, on
the splendid terrace at the west, surrounded by a thousand nobles whose
breasts were covered with decorations. It was in the evening; the last
rays of glowing sunshine were reflected on the royal façade, whilst
gallant couples gravely descended the steps of the marble stairs, and
presently disappeared along the silent and shady avenues. My sight was
fixed in preference on France, or at least toward that region of this
unknown world which represented France to me; for absence makes the
heart grow fonder, and when far from one's country one thinks of it
all the more, and recurs with ever new interest to the thought of it.
Do not believe that souls liberated from their bodies are scornful,
and indifferent, and devoid of memory. Our existence would then be a
sad one. No; we preserve the faculty of remembrance. Our hearts are
not wholly absorbed in the life of the spirit; and so it was with an
instinctive feeling of delight, which you can imagine, that thus I saw
again the history of France unfolded before me as though its phases
were being accomplished in an inverse order.
[Sidenote: Feudalism]
[Sidenote: Joan of Arc.]
[Sidenote: The Crusades.]
[Sidenote: The history of France unrolled.]