them is of necessity that which light travels in a hundred years.
Now, at the rate of 75,000 leagues per second, you see at once that
it travels 4,500,000 leagues in a _minute_, 270,000,000 leagues in
an _hour_, 6,480,800,000 leagues in a _day_, 2,366,820,000,000 in a
_year_, allowing for leap-years; consequently, the result would be
that the interval between two points of departure at the distance of
a _century_ from one another, is nearly 236 _billions_ 682 thousand
millions of leagues. Here, then, I say we have a series of terrestrial
photographs, imprinted in space, at corresponding distances, one after
another. Let us now suppose that between each of these centennial
pictures we should find annual pictures, between each of which the
distance is preserved in accordance with the time that light travels in
a year, which I have just given you; then between each of the annual
pictures we have those of every day, and as each day contains the
photographs of each hour, every hour the photographs of its minutes,
and every minute of its seconds, all succeeding one another, according
to their respective distances apart--we shall have in a ray of light,
or rather in a jet of light, composed of a series of distinct pictures
in juxtaposition, the aerial register of the history of the Earth.
[Sidenote: Psychical optics.]
When the spirit travels in this ethereal ray of pictures with a
swiftness greater than that of light, it sees in succession, backwards,
the ancient pictures. When it arrives at the distance at which the
aspect of events that set out in 1767 is to be seen, it has already
retraced a hundred years of terrestrial history. When it reaches the
point where the aspect of 1667 has arrived, it retraces two centuries.
When it attains to the photograph of 1567, it has seen, again, three
centuries, and so on successively. I told you in the beginning that I
directed my course toward a group of stars situated at the left of
Capella. This group proved to be at an incomparably greater distance
than that star, although from the Earth it appeared to be close beside
it, because the two visual rays are near one another. This apparent
proximity is solely due to the perspective. In order to give you an
idea of the remoteness of this far-off universe, I may tell you that
it is not less vast in size than the Milky Way. One may then ask to
what distance should the Milky Way be transported to reduce it to
the apparent size of this nebula. My learned friend Arago made this
calculation, of which you must be aware, as he repeated it every year
in his course of lectures at the Observatory, that have been published
since his death. It would be necessary to suppose the Milky Way to be
transported to a distance equal to 334 times its own length. Now, as
light takes 15,000 years to traverse the Milky Way from one end to
another, it follows that it cannot take less than 334 times 15,000
years, that is to say, less than 5,000,000 years, in coming from
thence. I have ascended a ray of light from the Earth to these remote
regions, and if my spiritual sight had been more perfect, I should have
been able to distinguish not only the retrogression of history for
10,000 years or 100,000 years, but even for 5,000,000 years.
QUÆRENS. Can the mind, then, by its powers alone, cross in this way the
immeasurable spaces of the heavens?
LUMEN. Not by its own power alone, but by making use of the forces
of nature. Attraction is one of these forces. It is transmitted with
a velocity incomparably superior to that of light, and the most
rigorously exact astronomical calculations are obliged to consider
this transmission as almost instantaneous. I will add that if I have
been able to perceive events at such distances, it is not by the
apprehension of a physical sense that I know them, but by a process
incomparably more subtle, which belongs to the psychic order. The
movements of the ether, which constitute light, are not luminous by
themselves, as you know. The eye is not necessary in order to perceive
them. A soul vibrating under their influence perceives them as well,
and often incomparably better than an organic optical apparatus. This
being psychical optics. For example, attraction crosses instantaneously
the 148,000,000 of kilometres that separate the Earth from the Sun,
whilst light occupies 493 seconds in this passage.
QUÆRENS. What length of time did your voyage to that remote universe
occupy?
LUMEN. Have I not told you that time does not exist outside the
movements of the Earth? Whether I employed a year or an hour, it would
have been exactly the same period in infinity.
QUÆRENS. I have thought it over, and the physical difficulties seem to
me enormous. Permit me now to submit to you a strange thought that has
just come into my head.
LUMEN. It is to hear your reflections that I give you this narrative.
QUÆRENS. I want to ask you if the same inversion would take place with
the hearing as well as the sight? If you can see an event backwards
from its real occurrence, can you also hear a discourse backwards,
beginning at the end? This is perhaps a daring question, and apparently
ridiculous, but in paradoxes where can one stop?
[Sidenote: Light and sound.]
LUMEN. The paradox is only apparent. The laws of sound are essentially
different from the laws of light. Sound travels only at the rate of 340
metres a second, and its effects have absolutely nothing in common with
those of light. Nevertheless it is evident that if we were to advance
into the air with a velocity _superior_ to that of sound, we should
hear inversely the sounds that left the lips of a speaker. If, for
instance, some one were to recite an alexandrine, an auditor in moving
with the aforesaid velocity, starting at the moment when he heard the
last foot of the line, would find successively the eleven other feet
which had been uttered before, and would thus hear the alexandrine
backwards.
As to the theory itself, it suggests a curious reflection, that nature
might have caused sound to travel, not at the rate of 340 metres
a second, and that its velocity, which depends on the density and
the elasticity of the air, might have been very much less. Why, for
instance, might it not have been transmitted at the rate of only a few
centimetres a second? Now see what would be the result if this were
the case. Men would not be able to speak to one another when walking
together. Let two friends be conversing, and suppose one takes a step
or two in advance, or goes on, say the distance of a metre; now, if
sound were to take many seconds to cross this metre, the consequence
would be that, instead of hearing the phrases spoken in their right
order by his friend, the foremost walker would hear in an inverse
order the sounds conveying the anterior phrases. In that case we could
not speak whilst walking, and three-fourths of mankind would not be
able to hear one another.
These remarks, my friend, induce me to suggest to you, in this
connection, for your consideration, a subject well worthy of attention,
and which has hitherto received little notice--that of the adaptation
of the human organism to its terrestrial environment. The manner in
which man sees, in which he hears; his sensations, his nervous system,
his build, his weight, his density, his walk, his functions--in a word,
all his actions are regulated and constituted by the condition of your
planet. None of your acts are absolutely free and independent. Man is
the obedient, though unconscious, creature of the organic forces of the
Earth.
[Sidenote: The human organism derived from the Earth.]
[Sidenote: Organic life accords with its habitat on each planet.]
Undoubtedly the human soul, not being a function of the brain,
and existing by itself, enjoys relative liberty; but this liberty
is limited by its faculties, its powers, and its energies; it is
determined, according to the causes which decide it, at the moment of
the birth of every man. Could one know exactly the faculties of his
soul and the circumstances which were to surround his life, one could
write beforehand that man's life in all its details. The human organism
is the product of the planet. It is not by a Divine fantasy, by a
miracle, or by a direct creation that terrestrial man is constituted
such as he is. His form, his figure, his weight, his sense, his whole
organisation, are derived from the state or condition of your planet,
the atmosphere that you breathe, the food that nourishes you, the
gravity of the surface of the Earth, the density of terrestrial matter,
&c. The human body does not differ anatomically from that of one of the
higher mammalia, and if you go back to the origin of species, you will
find gradual transformations established by unimpeachable evidence. The
whole of terrestrial life, from the mollusc to man, is the development
of one single and sole genealogical tree. The human form has its
origin in the animal form. Man is the butterfly developed from the
chrysalis of the palæontological ages. From this fact the consequence
results that on other worlds organic life is different from what it is
here, and that their humanities, which, like our own, are the result
of forces in activity on each planet, differ absolutely in their
forms from that of terrestrial humanity. For example, on the worlds
where they do not eat, the digestive apparatus and the intestines do
not exist. On the worlds which are very highly electric, the beings
inhabiting them are gifted with an electric sense. On others, sight is
adapted for the ultra-violet rays, and the eyes have nothing in common
with your eyes; they do not see what you see, and they see what you
cannot see. The organs are adapted to the functions they have to fulfil.
QUÆRENS. We are not, then, the absolute type of creation? Creation
itself is, it appears, a perpetual development of forces in activity.
[Sidenote: The soul and destiny]
LUMEN. The soul itself is subject to a similar law. There are as many
diversities of souls as of bodies. In order that the soul should exist
as an independent being having a consciousness of itself, in order that
it should preserve the recollection of its identity and be qualified
for immortality, it is necessary that even in this life it should know
that it really exists. Otherwise it is no more advanced the day after
death than the day before death, and falls as an insensible breath
into the blind cosmos, neither more nor less than any other centre
of unconscious force. Many men on the Earth boast that they do not
believe in anything but matter, without knowing what they say, since
they do not know what matter is. These last, and those, still more
numerous, who _do not think at all_, are not immortal, since they have
no consciousness of their existence. The spirits who live really the
spiritual life are the only ones who are fitted for immortality.
QUÆRENS. Are there many of them?
LUMEN. My friend, behold the dawn of morning which invites me anew to
return into the depths of space, peopled with things unknown on Earth,
that fruitful mine in which spirits find again the wrecks of past
existences, the secrets of many mysteries, the ruins of disintegrated
worlds, and the genesis of future worlds. And for the rest, it would
be superfluous to lengthen out this recital with useless details. My
object has been to show you that, in order to have the spectacle of a
world and of a system exactly opposite to yours, all that is needed is
to recede from the Earth with a velocity greater than that of light.
In this flight of the soul towards the inaccessible horizons of the
infinite, one retraces the luminous rays reflected by the Earth and
by the other planets for millions and myriads of years, and _while
observing the planets at this vast distance one can be present_ in
vision _at the events of their past history_. Thus one ascends the
stream of time to its source. Such a faculty ought to illuminate for
you the regions of eternity with a new light. If, as I hope, you admit
the scientific value of my expositions of these ultra-terrestrial
studies, I look forward to unfolding to you before long their
metaphysical consequences.
THIRD CONVERSATION
HOMO HOMUNCULUS
[Sidenote: Clouds no impediment to vision.]
QUÆRENS. I have listened to you with interest, Lumen, without, I
own, being entirely convinced that all you have told me is actually
real. Indeed it is difficult to believe that it is possible to see
with absolute certainty all the things of which you speak. When, for
instance, there are clouds across your field of view, you cannot see
clearly what passes on the Earth. The same objection obtains for the
interior of houses.
[Sidenote: Light a vibration of ether.]
LUMEN. You are mistaken, my friend. The undulations of ether pass
through obstacles that you would believe impenetrable. Clouds are
formed of molecules between which rays of light frequently pass. In the
contrary case, there are here and there vistas or gaps, across which
one can only see obliquely. The case is very rare when nothing can be
distinguished. Besides, light is not what it appears to be; it is a
vibration of ether, and there are other ways of seeing than by means
of the retina and the optic nerve.
The vibrations of ether are perceptible to senses other than those you
possess. Therefore, if this be your sole objection, it is, I must say,
far from being an insurmountable one.
QUÆRENS. You have a special faculty for resolving all doubts. Perhaps
this is one of the gifts granted to spiritual beings. I have been
obliged successively to admit, that you have been transported to
Capella with a swiftness exceeding that of light; that you reached
another world as a spirit; that your soul is liberated from the flesh;
that your ultra-earthly perception is able to distinguish from that
height all that passes here; that you can advance or recede in space
according to your fancy; and lastly, that the clouds themselves are no
obstacles to your clearly seeing the surface of our globe. It must be
owned that these are grave difficulties indeed.
LUMEN. You are very material, my old friend! Should you be very
surprised if I undertook to prove to you that all these difficulties
exist only in name, and that all the objections which oppose themselves
to your conception of phenomena are the effects of ignorance?
What should you think if I affirmed that no one has a single true idea
of what takes place upon the Earth, and that man utterly fails to
understand nature?
QUÆRENS. In the name of all the indisputable truths of modern science,
I should dare to think that you were trying to impose upon me.
[Sidenote: The marvels of spectral analysis.]
[Sidenote: Piercing nature of the soul's sight.]
LUMEN. God forbid! Listen to me, my friend. The marvellous discoveries
of contemporary science ought to enlarge the sphere of your
conceptions. You have just discovered spectral analysis! By this
methodic examination of a simple ray of light shot from a far-off star,
you learn what are the elements which compose this inaccessible star
and feed its brilliancy. This knowledge, my brother, is of more value
than all the conquests of Alexander, of Cæsar, and of Napoleon, than
all the discoveries of Ptolemy, of Columbus, of Gutenberg, than all the
books of Moses and of Confucius. Only think, trillions of leagues span
the abyss which separates us from Sirius, from Arcturus, from Vega,
from Capella, from Castor and Pollux, and it is now possible to analyse
the substances which constitute these suns, just as accurately as if
you could take them in your hand and submit them to the crucible of
the laboratory! How then can you refuse to admit that, by processes
which are unknown to you, the soul's sight can be sufficiently piercing
to see clearly a bright far-off world, and to distinguish even its
smallest details? Does not the telegraph carry in an inappreciable
moment your thought from Europe to America through the depths of the
ocean? Cannot two people converse in a low voice at a distance of
thousands of leagues, and still you hesitate to admit the truth of my
narrations, because you do not altogether comprehend them? But can you
explain how the telegraphic message is transmitted? No, you cannot.
Cease then to retain doubts which have not even the merit of being
scientific.
QUÆRENS. My objections, learned master, have not any other end in view
than to elicit fresh light upon the subject. I am far from denying the
truth of all you tell me, and I but seek to form a rational and exact
idea of it.
[Sidenote: The inadequacy of the earthly senses.]
LUMEN. Be assured, my friend, I do not take any offence at your
objections. My only desire is to develop and enlarge the sphere of your
conceptions. I can at this very instant open your eyes to see the utter
inadequacy of your terrestrial faculties, and the fatal poverty of
positive science itself, by inviting you to reflect that the causes of
your impressions are solely modes of motion, and that what is proudly
termed _science_ is only a very _limited organic perception_.
[Sidenote: The limitations of the senses.]
Light by which your eyes see--sound by which your ears hear--are
different forms of motion by which you are impressed; odours, flavours,
&c., are emanations which strike upon your olfactory nerve or touch
your palate; these are solely vibratory motions which are transmitted
to your brain. You can only appreciate a few of these movements through
the senses you possess, principally those of sight and hearing. You, in
your simplicity, believe that you see and hear nature? Nothing of the
kind. All you do is to receive some of the movements in activity upon
your sublunary atom. That is all. Beyond the impressions you receive
there are an infinitely greater number unperceived by you.
QUÆRENS. Pardon, master, but this new aspect of nature is not
sufficiently clear for me to understand it. Would you....
[Sidenote: The extent of the gamut _re_ vibrations of sound.]
[Sidenote: The extent of the vibrations of light.]
LUMEN. This aspect is indeed new to you, but attentive reflection will
enable you to grasp it. Sound is formed by vibrations in the air which
strike upon the membrane of the tympanum and give you the impression of
various tones. Man does not hear all sounds. When the vibrations are
too slow (below forty a second), the sound is too low; your ear cannot
catch it. When the vibrations are too rapid (above 36,000 a second),
the sound is too sharp; your ear cannot receive it. Above and below
these two limits, therefore, human beings do not perceive them. These
vibrations exist, however, and are perceived by creatures of other
kinds, as, for example, certain insects. The same rules apply to light.
The different aspects of light, the shades and colours of objects, are
equally due to the vibrations which strike upon the optic nerve and
give you the impression of the different degrees of intensity in light.
Man does not by any means see all that is visible. When the vibrations
are too slow (under 458 billions a second), light is too feeble; your
eye sees nothing. When the vibrations are too rapid (over 727 billions
a second), light outruns your organic faculty of perception and is
invisible to you. Above and below these two limits the vibrations of
ether still exist, and are perceived by other beings. You do not know
therefore, nor can you receive, any impressions except those that can
be made to vibrate upon the two chords of your organic lyre, called
respectively the optic nerve and the auditory nerve.
Imagine for one instant the extent of all the sights and sounds which
are not perceptible to you. All the undulatory movements that exist in
the universe between the figures of 36,000 and those represented by
458,000,000,000,000 in the same unity of time, can neither be heard nor
be seen by you, and remain utterly unknown to you.
[Sidenote: Man deaf to the concert of universal harmonies by reason of
his limitations.]
Try to measure that distance! Contemporary science is beginning to
penetrate a little into this invisible world, and you know that it
has just calculated the vibrations below 458 billions (these are the
caloric invisible rays) and the vibrations above 727 billions (these
are the chemical rays, also equally invisible to the human eye).
Scientific methods can enlarge the sphere of the perceptions but a
little; you remain isolated in the midst of infinitude. Moreover,
an endless number of other vibrations exist in nature which have no
_correspondence_ with your organisation, and therefore cannot be
received by you, _consequently you remain for ever utterly ignorant of
them_. Did you possess other strings to your lyre--ten, a hundred, a
thousand--the harmony of nature could more completely translate itself
to you, each of the myriad vibrations according to their kind. You
would perceive a number of facts which are certainly passing around
you, whose very existence you cannot even now guess, and in place of
two dominant notes you would be conscious of the grand concert of
harmonies everywhere about you.
But although thus ignorant, you are unconscious of it, because all
around you are equally ignorant, and therefore it is impossible to
compare your limited faculties with those of beings much more highly
organised.
[Sidenote: Were the eye a combined spectroscope and telescope, it would
see the chemical elements composing bodies.]
The senses you do possess suffice, however, to indicate the existence
of other senses, not only more powerful, but of a totally different
order. By the sense of touch, for example, you can, it is true, feel
the sensation of _heat_; but it is easy to conceive the existence of
a special sense, analogous to that by which light reveals to you the
aspect of exterior objects, and which would render man capable of
judging of the form and substance of an object, its interior structure,
and other qualities, by the action of the caloric waves radiating from
it. The same reasoning would hold good on the subject of _electricity_.
You could equally well conceive the existence of a sense, endowing
the eye with the powers of a spectroscope and telescope in one, thus
enabling it to see the _chemical_ elements, of which bodies are
composed.
Thus already, from a scientific point of view, you have sufficient
ground for imagining modes of perception, quite different from those
which characterise human beings. These faculties exist in other worlds,
and there are endless ways of perceiving the action of the forces of
nature.
[Sidenote: Our terrestrial senses are limited.]
QUÆRENS. Certainly, master, I own that as you unfold these
possibilities a new and singular clearness enlightens my understanding,
and your teachings appear to me a true interpretation of the reality.
I had already dreamed that similar marvels might be possible, but
I had not been able to explain them, enveloped as I still am in my
terrestrial senses. One thing is certain, we must be lifted out of our
earth-bound limitations ere we are capable of comprehending, or even of
attempting to judge, of the scope of the universe.
Thus, being endowed with only a few limited senses, we can but know the
facts that are perceptible to them. The remainder is naturally unknown.
Can it be that the unknown is infinitely more than the known?
[Sidenote: The ordinary senses are insensible to many physical
movements.]
LUMEN. This "remainder" is immense, and all you at present know will
seem as nothing by comparison. Not only do your senses not perceive
physical movements--such as solar and terrestrial electricity whose
currents cross in the atmosphere, the magnetism of minerals, of plants,
and of beings, the affinities of organisms, &c., which are invisible
to you--but they perceive still less the movements of the moral world,
its sympathies and antipathies, its presentiments, its spiritual
attractions, &c. I only speak the simple truth when I say, that all
that you know, and all that you could know, through the medium of your
earthly senses, is as nothing compared to that which is.
[Sidenote: Beings exist with other than our senses.]
This truth is so profound that it might well be asserted, that beings
exist upon the Earth essentially different from you, possessing neither
eyes, nor ears, nor any of your senses, but endowed with _other_
senses, and capable of perceiving that which you cannot perceive, and
who, while living in the same world as yourself, know that which you
cannot know, and form an idea of nature completely at variance with
your own.
QUÆRENS. All this is utterly beyond my comprehension.
LUMEN. Moreover, my earthly friend, I can add most emphatically that
the perceptions you receive, and that constitute the bases of your
science, are not even the perceptions of the _reality_. No. Light,
lucidity, colours, looks, tones, noises, harmonies, sounds, perfumes,
flavours, apparent qualities of bodies, &c., are nothing but _forms_.
These forms enter into your mind by the avenue of the eye, and the ear,
by the senses of smell, and taste, and are represented to you by their
appearances, but not even by the essence of the things themselves.
_The real nature of things entirely escapes your understanding, and you
are utterly incapable of comprehending the universe._
[Sidenote: Matter is not solid.]