more. Where had I been? It was beautiful. The Sun had just set, and the
planet Mars, then very brilliant, was already shining in the sky. "Ah!"
I said, as a fugitive beam reached me, "I have been there!" Drawn by the
same attraction, the two neighboring planets are looking at each other
through transparent space. May we not catch a first glimpse of the
eternal journey from this celestial fraternity? The Earth is no longer
alone in the universe. The panoramas of the infinite are beginning to
open themselves out. Whether we live here or near by, we are not the
citizens of a country or of a world, but are in very truth the _Citizens
of Heaven_!
[Illustration]
III.
THE PLANET MARS.
Had I been the plaything of a dream?
Had my spirit really been transported to the planet Mars, or had I been
the dupe of a purely imaginary illusion?
The feeling of reality had been so strong, so intense, and the things I
had seen agreed so perfectly with the scientific notions which we
already possess in regard to the physical nature of the Martial world,
that I could not entertain a doubt on the subject, although amazed at
that ecstatic trip, and asking myself a thousand questions, each one
contradicting the other.
Spero's absence in all that vision puzzled me a little. I still felt so
closely attached to his dear memory that it seemed to me as if I should
have been able to detect his presence, to fly directly to him, see him,
speak to him, hear him. But was not the man hypnotized at Nancy the toy
of his own imagination, or of mine, or of the experimenter's? On the
other hand, even admitting that my two friends had been reincarnated
upon that neighboring planet, I reflected that beings might easily not
meet one another in going about the same city, and in a world the
chances were infinitely less. And yet surely it was not the doctrine of
chances which should be invoked in this case; for such a feeling of
attraction as that which had united us ought to increase the probability
of our meeting, and throw an element into the scale which should
outweigh all the rest.
[Illustration]
Talking thus with myself, I went back to my observatory at Juvisy, where
I had been preparing some electric batteries for an optical experiment
with the tower of Montlhéry. When I had satisfied myself that everything
was in readiness, I left the task of making the signals agreed upon,
between ten and eleven o'clock, to my assistant, and went to the old
tower, where I installed myself an hour later. The night had come. From
the top of the old donjon the horizon is perfectly circular, entirely
free in all its circumference, which extended on a radius of twenty to
twenty-five kilometres all around this central point. A third post of
observation, situated in Paris, was in communication with us. The object
of the experiment was to find out whether the rays of different colors
of the luminous spectrum all travel with the same speed,--300,000
kilometres a second. The result was affirmative.
[Illustration]
The experiments were ended at about eleven o'clock, the starry night was
marvellous, and the moon was beginning to rise. As soon as I had put the
apparatus under cover inside the tower, I went to the upper platform
again, to look at the broad landscape lighted by the first rays of the
waxing moon. The atmosphere was calm, mild, almost warm.
But my foot was still on the last step when I stopped, terror-stricken,
uttering a cry which seemed to die away in my throat. Spero, yes, Spero
himself, was there, before me, seated on the parapet! I threw up my
arms, and felt as if I were going to faint; but he said in his gentle
voice, which I knew so well,--
"Do I frighten you?"
I had not strength enough to reply or to advance, and still I dared to
look at my friend, who was smiling at me. His dear face, lighted by the
moonlight, was just as I had seen it when he left Paris for
Christiania,--young, pleasant, and thoughtful, with a very animated
look. I left the stairs, and felt a strong desire to rush to him and
embrace him; but I dared not, and stood looking at him.
When I had recovered my senses I cried, "Spero, it is you!"
"I was there during your experiments," he replied, "and it was I who
inspired you with the idea of comparing the intense violet with the
intense red, for the speed of the luminous waves; only I was invisible,
like the ultra-violet rays."
"Can it really be so? Let me look at you and feel you."
I passed my hands over his face and body, through his hair, and had
precisely the same impression as if he had been a living being. My
reason refused to admit the testimony of my eyes and hands and ears, yet
I could not doubt that it was really he. There could not be such a
resemblance. And then, too, my doubts would have disappeared at his
first words, for he at once added,--
"My body is at this moment sleeping in Mars."
"So," I said, "you still exist, you are living now, and you know at last
the answer to the great problem that so distressed you? And Icléa?"
"We will have a long talk," he answered; "I have many things to tell
you."
I sat down beside him on the edge of the wide parapet which rises above
the old tower, and this is what I heard.
* * * * *
Shortly after the accident at Lake Tyrifiorden he had felt like a man
who awakes from a long and heavy sleep. He was alone in midnight
darkness on the border of a lake; he knew that he was living, but could
neither see nor feel himself. The air did not affect him; he was not
only light, but imponderable. Apparently, what remained of him was
solely his thinking faculty. His first idea on trying to remember was
that he had awakened from his fall by the Norwegian lake; but when the
day broke he saw that he was in another world. The two moons revolving
rapidly in the sky in opposite directions made him surmise that he was
upon our neighbor, the planet Mars, and other evidences soon proved that
he was correct.
He lived there for a while in the spirit state, and recognized there the
presence of a very beautiful humanity, in which the feminine sex reigns
supreme, from an acknowledged superiority over the masculine sex. These
organisms are light and delicate, their density of body very slight,
their weight slighter still. On the surface of this world material force
plays but a secondary part in nature; delicacy of sensation decides
everything. There is a large number of animal species, and several human
races. In all these species and races the feminine sex is stronger and
handsomer (the strength consisting in the superiority of sensation) than
the masculine sex, and it is she who rules the world.
His great desire to know the life before him induced him not to remain
long as an onlooker in the spirit state, but to come to life again under
a corporeal form, and, knowing the organic condition of this planet, in
a feminine form.
Among the terrestrial souls floating about in the atmosphere of Mars he
had already met Icléa's (for souls feel each other), who had followed
him, guided by a constant attraction. She on her part had felt inclined
towards a masculine incarnation. Thus they were reunited, in one of the
most privileged countries in that world, neighbors and predestined to
meet again in life, to share the same emotions, the same thoughts, the
same works; thus, although the memory of their earthly life remained
veiled and as if effaced by the new transformation, yet a vague feeling
of spiritual relationship and an immediate sympathetic attachment had
reunited them as soon as they saw each other. Their psychic superiority,
the nature of their habitual thoughts, their condition of mind,
accustomed to seek ends and causes, had given them both a kind of inward
clairvoyance which freed them from the general ignorance of the living.
They had fallen in love with each other so suddenly, they had yielded so
passively to the magnetic influence of the thunder-clap of their
meeting, that they soon formed but a single being, united as at the time
of their earthly separation. They remembered that they had met before,
and were sure that it must have been on the Earth,--that neighboring
planet which shines in the evening so brilliantly in the sky of Mars;
and sometimes, in their solitary flights over the little hills peopled
with aerial plants, they contemplated the "evening star," trying to
re-tie the broken thread of an interrupted tradition.
An unexpected event explained their reminiscences, and proved that they
were not mistaken.
The inhabitants of Mars are very superior to those of Earth by their
organizations, by the number and delicacy of their senses, and by their
intellectual faculties.
The fact that density is very slight on the surface of that world, and
that the constituent particles of bodies are less heavy there than
here, has permitted the formation of beings of incomparably less weight,
more aerial, more delicate, more sensitive. The fact that the atmosphere
is nutritive has freed Martial organisms from the coarseness of earthly
needs. It is an entirely different state of things. The light there is
less bright, that planet being farther from the Sun than we, and the
optic nerve is more sensitive. Electric and magnetic influences being
very intense, the inhabitants possess senses unknown to terrestrial
organizations,--senses which put them into communication with these
influences. Everything is evenly balanced in Nature. Beings are
everywhere adapted to their surroundings and to the soil from which they
spring. Organisms can no more be earthly on Mars than they could be
aerial at the bottom of the sea. More than that, the condition of
superiority generated by this nature of things is developed of itself by
the facility by which all intellectual work is accomplished. Nature
seems to obey thought. The architect desirous of erecting a building,
the engineer who wants to change the surface of the ground, either to
lower or to raise, to cut down mountains or fill up valleys, does not
strike against material weight and material difficulties, as he does
here. Art, too, has made the most rapid progress from the beginning.
And yet more. Martial humanity, being several hundreds of thousands of
years older than terrestrial humanity, went through all the phases of
its development before we did; our real scientific progress, even the
most transcendent, is but a child's foolish toy, compared to the science
of the inhabitants of that planet. In astronomy, especially, they are
incomparably more advanced than we, and know the Earth much better than
we know their home. They have invented, among other things, a kind of
tele-photographic apparatus, in which a roll of stuff constantly
receives the picture of our world, and is impressed by it unalterably as
it unrolls. An immense museum, devoted especially to the planets of the
solar system, preserves all these photographic pictures, fixed forever
in chronological order.
All the Earth's history is to be found there,--France in the time of
Charlemagne, Greece in the days of Alexander, Egypt under Rameses. By
the microscope the smallest details can be made out, such as Paris
during the French Revolution, Rome under the pontificate of Borgia,
Christopher Columbus's Spanish fleet reaching America, the Francs of
Clovis taking possession of the Gauls, Julius Cæsar's army stopped in
its conquest of England by the tide which washed away his ships, the
troops of King David, the founder of standing armies, as well as most
historic scenes, recognizable from special characters of their own.
One day, when the two friends were visiting the museum, their
reminiscences, which had been thus far very vague, were brightened, like
a landscape at night, by a flash of lightning. Suddenly they
_recognized_ the appearance of Paris during the Exposition of 1867.
Their memory became more definite. They each felt, individually, that
they had lived there; and under this strong impression they also felt
sure that they had lived there together. Their memory gradually grew
clearer, not by interrupted gleams, but rather as the light grows
stronger from the beginning of dawn.
Then they both remembered, as if by inspiration, that sentence of
Scripture: "In my Father's house are many mansions;" and this other,
from Jesus to Nicodemus: "Verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... Ye must be born again."
From that day they never doubted their former earthly existence, but
were convinced that they were continuing on the planet Mars the life
they had lived before. They belonged to the cycle of the great minds of
all ages, who know that human destiny does not end with the present
world, but continues in heaven, and who also know that each
planet--Mars, the Earth, or any other--is a star of heaven.
The rather singular fact of the change of sex, which seemed to me to be
very important, was really without any weight whatever. Spero told me
that souls, contrary to our ideas, have no sex, and that their destinies
are the same. I also learned that on that planet, so much less material
than our own, organisms have no resemblance whatever to terrestrial
bodies. Conceptions and births are effected in another way, which
reminds one, but under a more spiritual form, of the fecundation and
blooming of flowers. Pleasure has no bitterness. Heavy earthly burdens
and the anguish of grief are unknown there. Everything there is more
aerial, more ethereal, and less material. The Martials might be called
winged, sentient, living flowers; but in fact no earthly being can serve
as comparison to aid us in imagining their form and manner of existence.
I listened to the translated soul's story almost without interrupting
him, for it seemed to me all the time as if he would disappear as he had
come. However, remembering my dream, of which I had been reminded by the
coincidence of preceding descriptions with what I had seen, I could not
keep from telling my celestial friend of that surprising vision, and
expressing my surprise at not having seen him on my trip to Mars,--a
fact which made me doubt the reality of the journey.
"But," he answered, "I saw you perfectly well, and you both saw and
spoke to me, for it was I."
The tones of his voice were so odd at these last words that I suddenly
recognized in them the melodious voice of the beautiful Martial girl who
had so enchanted me.
"Yes," he answered, "it was I. I was trying to make you know me; but you
were so bewildered by a sight which captivated your mind that you did
not throw off your terrestrial sensations,--you remained sensual and
earthly, you could not rise high enough for pure perception. Yes, it was
I who held out my arms to you in the aerial car to take you down to our
dwelling, when you suddenly awoke."
"But then," I cried, "if you are that Martial maiden, how can you appear
to me in Spero's form, when he no longer exists?"
"I do not act upon your retina or your optic nerve," he replied, "but on
your mental being and your brain. I am in communication with you now; I
influence directly the cerebral seat of your sensation. My mental being
is really formless, like yours and that of all other souls. But when I
put myself in direct relation with your thought, as at this moment, you
can see me only as you knew me. It is the same during your dreams; that
is to say, during more than a quarter of your terrestrial life,--for
twenty years out of seventy,--you see, you hear, you speak, you feel,
with the same impression, the same clearness, the same certainty as
during your normal life; and yet your eyes are closed, your tympanum is
insensible, your mouth is mute, your arms are stretched out motionless.
It is the same, too, in cases of suggestion, in conditions of hypnotic
somnambulism. You see me and hear me, you feel me, too, by your brain,
which is under influence; but I am no more in the form which you see
than the rainbow exists in the presence of the eyes that look at it."
"Could you also appear to me in your Martial form?"
"No,--at least not unless you were really transported in spirit to that
planet. There would then be quite a different mode of communication. In
our conversation here, everything is subjective to you. The elements of
my Martial form do not exist in the terrestrial atmosphere, and your
brain could not imagine them. You can see me to-day only through the
medium of your dream; but as soon as you try to analyze its details it
will vanish away. You did not see us exactly as we are, because your
mind can judge only by your earthly eyes, which are not sensitive to all
our radiations, and because you do not possess all our senses."
"I must confess," I answered, "that I cannot understand your Martial
beings as having six limbs."
"If these forms were not so graceful, they would have seemed frightful
to you; the organisms in each world are most appropriate to its
conditions of existence. I acknowledge, on my part, that to the
inhabitants of Mars the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de Médicis are
actual monstrosities, on account of their animal heaviness.
[Illustration]
"Everything with us is exquisitely light, although our planet is much
smaller than yours; yet the beings are larger than here, because the
weight is less, and beings can grow taller without being impeded by
their weight or imperilling their stability.
"They are larger and lighter, because the constructive materials of that
planet are of very little density. What would have happened on the Earth
if the weight had not been so great, has happened there. The winged
species would have ruled over the world, instead of dwindling away in
impossibility of development. On Mars, organic development is effected
in the series of winged species. Martial humanity is indeed a race of
sextupedal origin; but it is actually bipedal, bimanous, and what might
be called _bialic_, since these beings have two wings.
[Illustration]
"Their manner of life is totally different from terrestrial life, in the
first place because they live in the air and on aerial plants as much
as they do on the surface of the ground; and further, because they do
not eat, the atmosphere being nutritive. Passions are not the same
there. Murder is unknown. Humanity, being without material needs, has
never lived there, even in the primitive ages, in the barbarity of
rapine and war. The ideas and feelings of the inhabitants of Mars are of
an entirely intellectual nature.
"Nevertheless, in dwelling on this planet, analogies at least, if not
resemblances, are to be found. Thus, there is a succession of night and
day there as on the Earth, which does not differ essentially from what
you have, the duration of night and day being 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35
seconds. As there are 668 of these days in a Martial year, we have more
time than you for our work, our investigations, and our enjoyments. Our
seasons, too, are almost twice as long as yours, but they have the same
intensity. The climates are not very different; a country in Mars, on
the shores of the equatorial sea, differs less from the climate of
France than Lapland differs from Nubia.
"An inhabitant of the Earth would not feel so very foreign. The greatest
difference between the two worlds certainly consists in the great
superiority of their humanity over yours.
"This superiority is principally due to the great progress realized by
astronomical science and to the universal propagation among the
inhabitants of that planet of that science, without which one has but
false ideas of life, of creation, and of destiny. We are very much
favored, as much by the acuteness of our senses as by the purity of our
skies. There is much less water on Mars than on the Earth, and fewer
clouds. The sky there is almost always fair, especially in the temperate
zone."
"But still you often have inundations."
"Yes; and quite recently your telescopes have noticed one along the
shores of a sea to which your colleagues have given a name which will
always be dear to me, even when far from the Earth. The greater part of
our shores are beaches, level plains. We have few mountains, and our
seas are not deep. The inhabitants make use of these overflows for
irrigating great stretches of country. They have straightened and
enlarged the watercourses and made them like canals, and have
constructed a network of immense canals all over the continents. The
continents themselves are not bristling all over with Alpine or
Himalayan upheavals like those of the terrestrial globe, but are
_immense plains_, crossed in all directions by canals, which connect all
the seas with one another, and by streams made to resemble canals.
Formerly there was as much water on Mars, in proportion to the size of
the planet, as on the Earth; gradually, from age to age, a part of the
rain-water sank into the depths of the soil and did not return to the
surface. It combined itself chemically with the rocks, and was withdrawn
from atmospheric circulation. Then, too, from age to age, rains, snows,
and winds, winter frosts and summer droughts, have disintegrated the
mountains, and the watercourses, bringing fragments to the sea-basins,
have gradually raised their beds. We have no more large oceans or deep
seas,--nothing but inland waters; many straits, gulfs, and seas
analogous to the Channel, the Red Sea, the Adriatic, the Baltic, and the
Caspian; pleasant shores, quiet harbors, large lakes and streams, aerial
rather than aquatic fleets, an almost always clear sky, especially in
the morning. There are no mornings on Earth so luminous as ours.
"The meteorological system differs materially from that of the Earth,
because, the atmosphere being more rarified, the waters which move over
the surface evaporate more easily, and then because in condensing again,
instead of forming clouds that last, they pass almost without transition
from the gaseous to the liquid state. There are few clouds and few fogs.
"Astronomy is cultivated there on account of the clearness of the
heavens. We have two satellites, whose courses would appear strange to
earthly astronomers, for while one of them gives us months of a hundred
and thirty hours, or five Martial days, plus eight hours, the other, by
a combination of its motion with the daily rotation of the planet, rises
in the occident and sets in the orient, crossing the sky from west to
east in five hours and a half, and passing from one phase to the other
in less than three hours. That spectacle is unique in the whole solar
system, and has done much to attract the attention of the inhabitants to
the study of the sky. Besides that, we have eclipses of the moon almost
every day, but never total eclipses of the Sun, because our satellites
are too small.
"The Earth looks to us as Venus looks to you. To us it is the morning
and evening star; and in old times, before the invention of optical
instruments, which have taught us that it is a planet, dwelt upon like
ours, but by an inferior race, our ancestors worshipped it as a tutelary
divinity. All worlds have a mythology during their centuries of infancy,
and this mythology has for its origin, its foundation, and its object
the appearance of the celestial bodies.
"Sometimes the Earth, accompanied by the Moon, passes between us and the
Sun, and projects itself upon its disk like a little black spot,
attended by a still smaller one. Every one there follows these celestial
phenomena with curiosity. Our newspapers think more of science than of
theatres, literary fancies, or political quarrels.
"The Sun looks smaller to us, and we receive a little less light and
heat from it; our more sensitive eyes see better than yours. The
temperature is a little higher."
"How can that be?" said I. "You are farther from the Sun, yet are warmer
than we?"
"Chamounix is a little farther from noonday sun than Mont Blanc," he
answered. "The distance from the Sun does not alone regulate the
temperature, you must also take into account the constitution of the
atmosphere. Our polar ice melts under our summer sun more entirely than
yours."
"What lands in Mars are most populous?"