what desolation! What a world of misery and brutality! Multitudes bowed
down with bent backs to the soil, which they dig with toil and pain,
that they may gain their daily bread! All these heads bent down to the
grossness of matter, in place of being raised up to the contemplation
of nature! All these efforts and these labours, bringing in their wake
feebleness and disease! All this traffic to amass a little gold at the
expense of others! Man taking advantage of his brother man! Castes,
aristocracies, robbery and ruin, ambitions, thrones, wars! In a word,
_personal interests_, always selfish, often sordid, and the reign of
matter over mind. Such is the normal state of the Earth, a condition
forced by the law which rules over your bodies, compelling you to kill
in order to live, and to prefer the possession of material goods that
cannot be earned beyond the grave, to the possession of intellectual
gifts, which the soul can keep as a rich and inalienable possession.
QUÆRENS. You speak, master, as if you thought it were possible to live
without eating.
LUMEN. Do you, then, believe that the beings of every world in space
are subject to an operation so ridiculous as this? Happily, in many of
the worlds, the spirit is not subjected to such ignominy.
[Sidenote: Atmospheric nutrition.]
It is not so difficult as you may suppose, on first thoughts, to
believe in the possibility of atmospheric nutriment. The maintenance of
life among man and the animals depends upon two causes, respiration and
nutrition. The first is found naturally in the atmosphere; the second
is derived from nourishment. Nutrition produces blood; from the blood
come the tissues, the muscles, the bones, the cartilages, the flesh,
the brain, the nerves, in a word, the organic constituents of the
body. The oxygen we breathe can itself be considered as a nutritive
substance, inasmuch as it combines with the principal aliments absorbed
by the stomach, and completes the formation of the blood and the
development of the tissues.
[Sidenote: The process of alimentation.]
Now, to imagine nutrition passing entirely into the domain of the
atmosphere, it is only necessary to observe that, as a whole, a
complete aliment is made up of albumen, of sugar, of fat, and of
salt, and to imagine also that an atmospheric fluid, in place of
being composed of azote and of oxygen only, should be formed of these
different substances in a gaseous state. These aliments are found in
the solids that you absorb; digestion is the function which separates
them, and which causes them to assimilate with the organs to which they
belong. When, for example, you eat a morsel of bread, you introduce
into your stomach a grain of starch, a substance insoluble in water,
and which is not found in the blood. The saliva, and the pancreatic
juice, transform the insoluble starch into soluble sugar. The bile,
the pancreatic juice, and the intestinal secretions, change the sugar
into fat. Both sugar and fat are present in the blood, and it is by
the processes of alimentation that substances are separated and
assimilated in your body.
It astonishes you, my friend, that after living five years--according
to terrestrial reckoning--in the celestial world, I can remember all
these material terms, and condescend to make use of them. But the
memories that I have brought from the Earth are still vivid, and as we
speak on this occasion on a question of organic physiology, I do not
feel ashamed of calling things by their own names.
If, then, we suppose that in place of being combined or mixed in the
constitution of bodies, solid or liquid, these aliments could be found
in a gaseous state in the composition of the atmosphere, we should
create by this means nutritive atmospheres, which would dispense with
digestion and its attendant coarse and humiliating functions.
That which man is capable of imagining in the restricted sphere of his
observation, Nature has put in practice in more than one spot of the
universe.
Besides, I can assure you that when one has ceased to be accustomed
to this material process of the introduction of nourishment into the
digestive tube, one cannot avoid being impressed with its coarseness.
This was the reflection I made a few days ago whilst observing one of
the richest countries on your planet. I was struck by the suave and
angelic beauty of a maiden, reclining in a gondola as it floated gently
on the blue waters of the Bosphorus before Constantinople. Red velvet
cushions, embroidered with brilliant silks, whose heavy tassels of gold
touched the water, formed the divan of this young Circassian. Before
her knelt a little black slave playing upon some stringed instrument.
Her form was so juvenile and graceful, her bended arm so elegant, her
eyes so pure and innocent, her pensive brow so calm under the light of
heaven, that for an instant I was captivated by a kind of retrospective
admiration for this masterpiece of living nature.
Well! while this pure vision of awakening youth, sweet as a flower
opening its petals to the sun's rays, held me in a kind of passing
enchantment, the bark reached the landing-stage, and the maiden,
leaning on a slave, seated herself on a couch near a well-spread table,
around which others had already gathered. She began to eat! Yes! for
near an hour _she was eating_!
I could scarcely tolerate the earthly recollections recalled by this
ridiculous spectacle. To see a being like that partaking of food
through the mouth, and making her charming body the receptacle for I
do not know what substances! What vulgarity! Masticating morsels of
some kind of animal which her pearly teeth did not disdain to chew,
and again fragments of another animal which her virginal lips opened
without hesitation to receive and swallow! What a diet: a medley of
ingredients drawn from cattle, or from deer, which have lived in the
mire and afterwards been slaughtered. Horror! I turned away with
sadness from this strange contrast, and directed my gaze to the system
of Saturn, where humanity need not stoop to such necessities.
[Sidenote: Victims to the struggle for existence.]
The floating beings belonging to the world of Andromeda, where my
antepenultimate existence was passed, are submitted to a still more
degrading manner of sustaining life than are the inhabitants of the
Earth. They have not the advantage of finding three parts of their
nutriment supplied by the air, as is the case on your globe: they
must work to obtain what may be called their oxygen, and, without
ceasing, they are condemned to use their lungs in order to prepare the
nutritious air they need, without sleeping, and without ever feeling
satisfied, because, despite their incessant toil, they cannot absorb
more than a small quantity at a time. Thus they pass their entire life,
and finally die victims to the struggle for existence.
QUÆRENS. Better far never to have been born! But does not the same
reflection apply to the Earth?
What is the use of being born, to weary one's self with endless work
and worry, to turn in the same daily treadmill for sixty or a hundred
years; to sleep, to eat, to work, to speak, to run, to err, to agitate,
to dream, _ad infinitum_? Of what use is all this? Would not one be
just as advanced if one were extinguished the day after birth, or,
better still, if one did not take the trouble to come into the world?
Nature would not go on in any worse fashion, and even if it did, no one
would be the wiser. And one might ask, of what use is Nature herself,
and why does the universe exist at all?
[Sidenote: Humanity in Andromeda.]
[Sidenote: Humanity.]
LUMEN. That is the great mystery. Yet must all destinies be
accomplished. The world of Andromeda is decidedly an inferior one. To
give you an idea of the poor mental calibre of its inhabitants, I will
cite two examples, selecting the subjects of religion and politics, as
these are generally the best criterions of the value of a people. In
religion, in place of seeking for God in nature, and of basing their
judgment on science, instead of aspiring to the truth, and of using
their eyes to see and their reason to comprehend--in a word, in place
of establishing the foundations of their philosophy upon knowledge
as exact as possible of the order which governs the world--they are
divided into sects, who are voluntarily blind, and believe they render
homage to their pretended God by ceasing to reason, and think they
adore Him, in maintaining that their anthill is unique in space; by
reciting phrases and in injuring other sects, and alas! by blessing
swords, and burnings at the stake, and in authorising massacres and
wars. Their doctrines contain assertions which seem expressly imagined
to outrage common sense. These are precisely those which constitute the
articles of their faith and belief!
They are stupid in politics. The most intelligent and pure-minded do
not understand each other. Therefore the Republic seems to be a form
of government which cannot be realised. Tracing the annals of their
history as far back as possible, one sees a people, cowardly and
indifferent, deliberately choosing, rather than govern themselves, to
be led by an individual claiming to be their Basileus, their king.
This chief deprives them of three-fourths of their resources, keeping
for himself and his, the atmosphere containing the greatest amount of
rose-essence--that is to say, that he keeps the best in the land for
his own use; he numbers his subjects, and from time to time sends them
to fight with neighbouring peoples, who, like themselves, are subject
to a similar Basileus.
Marshalling them like shoals of herrings, he directs them on either
side towards the field of battle, which they call the _field of
honour_, they then destroy one another like furious fools, without
knowing why, and without, for that matter, the power to comprehend, as
they do not even speak the same language.
And do you imagine that those who, most favoured by chance, live to
return, feel any hatred against their Basileus?
Nothing of the kind. The remnant of the army who live to see their
homes again, think nothing more natural than to celebrate their
thanksgivings in company with the dignitaries of their sects,
supplicating their God to grant long life to, and to pour blessings
upon, the worthy man whom they designate their father and king.
[Sidenote: Organisation of the beings on Andromeda.]
QUÆRENS. I gather from this narration, that the inhabitants of Delta
Andromeda are, both physically and intellectually, greatly our
inferiors, for upon the Earth we do not regulate our affairs in this
manner.... In short, upon their globe there is only one living kingdom,
and that a mobile one, without repose, without sleep, kept in perpetual
agitation by reason of an inexorable fate. A world like this strikes me
as being very fantastic.
LUMEN. What, then, would you say of the one I inhabited fifteen
centuries ago? A world also containing only one kingdom, and that not
a movable one, but, on the contrary, as fixed as is your vegetable
kingdom?
QUÆRENS. How! Animals and men held down by roots?
III
[Sidenote: Organisation of beings on Andromeda.]
LUMEN. My existence anterior to that upon the world of Andromeda was
passed upon Venus, a planet near to the Earth, where I can remember
myself as a woman. Not that I have directly seen myself there, for,
according to the law of light, it would require the same length of time
to travel from Venus to Capella as it would from the Earth to Capella,
and I consequently see Venus only as it was seventy-two years ago,
and not as it was nine hundred years ago, which was the epoch of my
existence upon that planet.
My fourth life, previous to my terrestrial one, was passed upon an
immense annular planet belonging to the constellation Cygnus, situated
in the zone of the Milky Way. This singular world is inhabited solely
by trees.
QUÆRENS. That is to say, that so far only plants are there, and neither
animals nor intelligent speaking beings?
LUMEN. Not exactly. There are only plants there, it is true. But in
this vast world of plants there are vegetable races more advanced than
those existing upon the Earth. There plants live as we do--feel, think,
reason, and speak.
[Sidenote: Reasoning plants.]
QUÆRENS. But this is impossible! Pardon!--I would say improbable,
incomprehensible, and entirely inconceivable.
LUMEN. These intelligent vegetable races really exist--so much so, that
I myself belonged to them. Fifteen centuries ago I was a tree possessed
of reason.
QUÆRENS. But tell me, how can a plant reason without a brain, and speak
without a tongue?
LUMEN. Tell me, I beg of you, by what process you yourself think,
and by what transformation of motion your soul translates its mute
conceptions into audible language?
QUÆRENS. I am seeking, O Master, but I fail to find, the material
explanation of this fact, however ordinary it may be.
[Sidenote: Facts not impossible because unknown.]
LUMEN. We have no right to declare an unknown fact impossible, when
we are so ignorant ourselves of the laws regulating our own being.
Because the brain is the physiological organ of intelligence placed at
the service of man on the Earth, do you therefore believe that there
are similar brains and spinal marrows upon all the worlds in space?
This would be an error too childish. The law of progress governs the
vital system of each world. This vital system differs according to the
secret nature of the special forces peculiar to each. When a world has
reached a sufficient degree of evolution to fit it for entering into
the service of moral life, _mind_, more or less developed, appears on
it.
[Sidenote: Gradation of the human race.]
Do not imagine that the Eternal Father creates at once a human race on
each globe. Not so. The first step in the ladder of the animal kingdom
receives the human transfiguration by force of circumstance, and by
natural law, which ennobles it, as soon as progress has brought it to a
state of relative superiority.
[Sidenote: The development of life.]
Do you know why you have a chest, a stomach, two legs, two arms, and
a head furnished with visual, auditory, and olfactory senses? It is
because the quadrupeds, the mammalia, which preceded the appearance
of man on the Earth, had them already. Monkeys, dogs, lions, bears,
horses, oxen, tigers, cats, &c., and before them the horned rhinoceros,
the cave-hyena, the elk, the mastodon, the oppossum, &c., and prior
to these the pleiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, the iguanodon, the
pterodactyl, &c., and again before these the fishes, the crustacea, the
mollusca, &c., have been the result of the vital forces in action upon
the Earth, dependent upon the state of the soil, of the atmosphere,
of inorganic chemistry, of the quantity of heat, and of terrestrial
gravity. The earthly animal kingdom has followed, from its origin, this
continuous and progressive march towards the perfection of its typical
forms of mammalia, freeing itself more and more, from the grossness of
its material.
Man is more beautiful than the horse, the horse than the bear, the bear
than the tortoise. A similar law governs the vegetable kingdom.
Heavy, coarse vegetables without leaves and without flowers began the
series. Then, as the ages advanced, their forms became more pure, and
graceful leaves appeared filling the woods with silent shadows.
Flowers in their turn began to beautify the gardens of the Earth, and
spread sweet perfumes in an atmosphere until then insipid.
[Sidenote: The genealogical tree of life.]
To the scrutinising eye of the geologist who visits these tertiary,
secondary, and primordial districts, this double progressive series of
two kingdoms is to be seen to this day. There was a period upon the
Earth when a few islands had but just emerged from the bosom of the
warm waters, into an atmosphere surcharged with vapour, when the only
living things distinguishing this inorganic kingdom were long floating
filaments held in suspension in the waves. Seaweed and sea-wrack were
the first forms of vegetation. On the rocks, live creatures for which
one has no name. There, sponges swell out. Here, a tree of coral lifts
up itself. Further on, the Medusæ detach themselves and float like
balls of jelly. Are these animals? Are these plants? Science does not
answer. They are animal-plants, zoophites. But life is not limited to
these forms. There are creatures not less primitive, and as simple,
which typify a special species. These are the annelides, worms, fish in
the form of a simple tube, creatures without eyes, ears, blood, nerves,
will, a vegetative species, yet endowed with the power of _motion_.
Later on rudimentary organs of sight and of locomotion appeared, and
life became less elemental. Then fishes and amphibious creatures came
into existence. The animal kingdom began to form itself.
[Sidenote: Formation of the animal kingdom.]
What would have been the result if the first creature had never quitted
its rock? If these primitive elements of terrestrial life had remained
stationary at the point of their formation, and if, for any cause
whatever, the faculty of locomotion had never had a beginning? The
consequence would have been, that in place of the system of terrestrial
vitality being manifested in two different directions, viz., in the
world of plants and the world of animals, it would have continued
manifesting itself solely in the first direction, with the result that
there would have been but one kingdom instead of two, and the creative
progress would have operated in that kingdom as it operated in the
animal kingdom. It would not have been arrested at the formation of
sensitives, superior plants which are already gifted with a veritable
nervous system; nor would it have stopped at the formation of flowers,
which are already bordering on ours in their organic functions; but,
continuing its ascension, would have produced, in the vegetable
kingdom, that which has already been produced in the animal kingdom. As
it is, many vegetables feel and act; here would have been vegetables
feeling and making themselves understood. The Earth would not have been
on that account deprived of the human species. Only mankind, instead
of being gifted with locomotion as it is, would have been fixed by the
feet. Such is the state of the annular world in which I lived fifteen
centuries ago in the heart of the Milky Way.
QUÆRENS. Of a truth, this world of men-plants astonishes me more than
the previous one, and I find it difficult to picture to myself the life
and manners of these singular beings.
[Sidenote: Men-plants.]
LUMEN. Their kind of life is indeed very different from yours. They
neither build cities nor make voyages; they have no need of any form
of government; they are ignorant of war, that scourge of terrestrial
humanity, and they have nothing of that national self-love called
patriotism which is one of your characteristics. Prudent, patient, and
gifted with constancy, they have neither the mobility nor the fragility
of the denizens of the Earth. Life there reaches an average of five or
six centuries, and is calm, sweet, uniform, and without revolutions.
But do not think that these men-plants live only a vegetable life. On
the contrary, they have an existence both personal and positive. They
are divided, not by caste, regulated by birth and fortune, according to
that absurd custom on the earth, but by families, whose native value
differs precisely according to its kind. They have an unwritten social
history, but nothing which happens amongst them can be lost, inasmuch
as they have neither emigrations nor conquests, but their records and
traditions are handed down from one generation to another. Each one
knows the history of his own race. They have also two sexes, as upon
the Earth, and unions take place there in a similar manner, but are
purer, more disinterested, and invariably affectionate. Nor are these
unions always consanguineous; impregnation can even be effected at a
distance.
QUÆRENS. But, after all, how can they communicate their thoughts if it
be true that they think? And besides, master, how was it possible for
you to recognise yourself on this singular world?
[Sidenote: Manner of life upon Cygnus.]
LUMEN. The same reply will satisfactorily answer your double question.
I was looking at that ring in the constellation of Cygnus, being drawn
there with persistence by some irresistible instinct. It surprised
me to see only vegetable growths upon its surface, and I principally
remarked their singular manner of grouping: here two and two, there
three and three, farther off ten and ten, besides others in larger
clusters. Some were seated, as it were, upon the brink of a fountain,
others appeared to be reposing, with little shoots springing up round
them. I sought to find there the kinds familiar to me on the Earth,
such as pines, oaks, poplars, willows, but I could not find any of
these botanical growths.
At last I fixed my eyes upon a plant in the shape of a fig-tree,
without either leaves or fruit, but full of brilliant scarlet flowers,
when suddenly I saw this enormous fig-tree stretch out a bough like a
gigantic arm, raise the extremity of this arm to its head, and pluck
one of the magnificent flowers ornamenting its crown, and then present
the same, with an inclination of the head, to another fig-tree growing
some little distance apart, of slender and graceful form, and bearing
sweet blue flowers. This one appeared to receive the red flower with a
certain pleasure, for it extended a branch, or one might say a cordial
hand, to its neighbour, which was apparently held in a long clasp.
Under certain circumstances, as you know, a gesture is sufficient for
making yourself known to another. Thus, then, the meaning of this
tableau was borne in upon me. This gesture of the fig-tree in the Milky
Way awoke within me a world of memories.
This Man-Plant _was myself_ as I was fifteen centuries ago, and in
the fig-trees with the violet flowers which were grouped around me I
recognised my children; for I recollected that the tints of the flowers
borne by the offspring, are the result of the admixture of the two
colours distinguishing their parents.
[Sidenote: Faculties of men-plants.]
These Men-Plants see without eyes, hear without ears, and speak without
larynx. Have you not flowers upon the Earth which can discriminate
not only night from day, but also the different hours of the day, the
height of the sun above the horizon, a clear sky from a cloudy one, and
more, which perceive divers sounds with exquisite sensitiveness; and,
in fine, not only hear each other perfectly, but also the butterfly
messengers. These rudiments are developed to a veritable degree of
civilisation upon the world of which I speak, and these beings are
as complete in their kind as you on the Earth are in yours. Their
intelligence, it is true, is less advanced than the average intellect
of terrestrial humanity; but in their manners and mutual relations,
they show in all ways a sweetness and refinement, which might often
serve as a model to the dwellers upon the Earth.
QUÆRENS. How is it possible, master, that they see without eyes, and
hear without ears?
[Sidenote: Light and sound are only modes of motion.]
LUMEN. You will cease to be astonished, my old friend, if you will
but reflect that light and sound are nothing else than two _modes of
motion_. In order to appreciate either one or the other of these two
modes of motion, you must (and that is sufficient) be endowed with an
apparatus in correspondence with them, which might be only a simple
nerve. The eye and the ear are the apparatus for your terrestrial
nature. In another natural organisation the optic nerve and the
auditory nerve form quite different organs. Besides, light and sound
are not the only two modes of motion in nature. I can even say that
light and sound are the result of your manner of feeling, and not of
anything real.
[Sidenote: Nature possesses myriads of modes of motion.]
There are in nature not one, but ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand
different modes of motion. Upon the Earth you are so formed as to be
able to appreciate chiefly these two, which constitute almost the whole
of your life in its external relations.
Upon other worlds there are other senses with which nature can be
appreciated under its various aspects. Some of these senses take the
place of your eyes and of your ears, and others are in touch with
perceptions entirely foreign to those which are received by terrestrial
organs.
QUÆRENS. When you spoke to me just now of the men-plants in the world
of Cygnus, the idea occurred to me to ask if earthly plants possess a
soul?
[Sidenote: Form determined by soul.]
[Sidenote: Souls of plants.]