V.
AD VERITATEM PER SCIENTIAM.
I was studying in my library the conditions of life upon the surface ofworlds governed and illuminated by suns of different sizes, whenglancing at the chimney-piece I was struck with the expression--I hadalmost said the animation--of my dear Urania's face. It was thegracious, living expression which once--ah! how quickly the earth goesround, and how short a quarter of a century is!--which once--and itseems to me like yesterday--which once--in those youthful days soquickly flown--had attracted my thoughts and inflamed my heart. I couldnot keep from looking at her again, and resting my eyes on her. Truly,she was still just as beautiful, and my feelings had not changed. Shedrew me to her as the light draws an insect. I rose from my table toapproach her, and see again the singular effect of the daylight on herchanging face, and I surprised myself by standing before her, forgettingmy work.
Her look seemed to be lost in the distance, yet she was looking. Atwhat? I had the firm conviction that she was really looking atsomething; and following the direction of that fixed, motionless,solemn, although not severe gaze, my eyes went straight to Spero'sportrait, hanging there between two book-cases. Really, Urania waslooking fixedly at him.
Suddenly the picture broke away from the wall and fell, breaking theframe. I rushed to it. The portrait was lying on the carpet, and Spero'sgentle face was turned towards me. Picking it up, I found a largepaper, grown yellow, which filled up the whole back, and was writtenover on both sides in Spero's handwriting. Why had I never noticed thispaper? It is true that it might have lain under the setting of theframe, hidden beneath the protecting cardboard mat. When I brought thiswater-color back from Christiania I did not think of examining itsarrangement. But who could have had the singular idea of putting thissheet in such a place? I recognized my friend's handwriting, and glancedover the two pages in utter bewilderment. According to all appearancesthey must have been written on the last day of the young student'slife,--the day of his ascension to the aurora borealis. Probably Iclea'sfather wished to preserve these last thoughts carefully, so framed themwith Spero's portrait, and forgot to mention it when he afterwards gaveme the portrait as a memento, on my return from the pilgrimage to my twofriends' graves. However that might be, placing the water-color gentlyon the table, I experienced the deepest emotion as I recognized everydetail of that dear face. They were his very eyes, so sweet, so deep,and always unfathomable; the wide brow apparently so calm, the delicatemouth with its reserved sensitiveness, the fresh coloring of the face,neck, and hands. His eyes looked at me, whichever way I turned theportrait; they looked at Urania at the same time; they looked everywhereat once. Strange idea of the artist! I could not resist the thought ofUrania's eyes, which had seemed to me to be looking at the portrait withembarrassing intentness. Her celestial countenance no longer wore thesame expression at all, but appeared to me rather to be melancholy,almost sad. Then I turned again to the mysterious sheet of paper. It waswritten in a clear, precise hand, with no erasures. I offer it to thereaders of this book just as I found it, without the slightest change;for it appears to be the very natural conclusion of the precedingepisodes.
Here it is, _verbatim_:--
This is the scientific testament of a mind which on the Earth did all in its power to remain independent of the weight of matter, and which hopes to be freed from it.
I should like to leave the results of my researches in the form of aphorisms. It seems to me that the Truth can be reached only through the study of Nature, that is to say, by science. Here are the inductions which appear to me to be founded on this method of observation.
I.
The visible, tangible, ponderable, and constantly moving universe is composed of invisible, intangible, imponderable, and inert atoms.
II.
These atoms are governed by force, to constitute bodies and to organize beings.
III.
Force is essential entity.
IV.
Visibility, tangibility, solidity, and weight are relative properties, and not absolute realities.
V.
The infinitely small.
The experiments made in beating gold-leaf show that ten thousand leaves are contained in the thickness of a millimetre. A millimetre has been divided on a glass plate into a thousand equal parts; and infusoria exist, which are so small that their entire bodies, placed between two of these divisions, do not touch either of them. The members and organs of these beings are composed of cellules, these of molecules, and these of atoms. Twenty cubic centimetres of oil spread over a lake will cover four thousand square metres, so that the layer of oil thus expanded measures only one two hundred thousandth of a millimetre in thickness. Spectral analysis of light discloses the presence of a millionth of a milligramme of sodium in a flame. The sense of smell perceives 1/604000000 a milligramme of mercaptan in the air breathed. The dimensions of atoms must be less than a millionth of a millimetre in diameter. [Waves of light are comprised between 4 and 8 ten millionths of a millimetre, from violet to red; 2300 are required to fill a millimetre. In the duration of a second the ether through which light is transmitted makes 700,000,000,000,000 oscillations, each of which is mathematically defined.]
VI.
The intangible, invisible atom, scarcely conceivable to our mind accustomed to superficial judgments, constitutes the only true matter; and what we call matter is but an effect produced on our senses by the motion of atoms,--that is to say, an incessant possibility of sensations.
The result is, that matter, like the manifestations of energy, is only a mode of motion. If motion should stop; if force should be annihilated; if the temperature of bodies should be reduced to absolute zero,--matter, as we know it, would cease to exist.
VII.
The visible universe is composed of invisible bodies. What we see is made up of things which are not seen. There is but one kind of primitive atom. The constituent molecules of different bodies--iron, gold, oxygen, hydrogen, etc.--differ only in the number, grouping, and motion of the atoms which compose them.
VIII.
What we call "matter," vanishes when scientific analysis thinks to grasp it. But we find as the support of the universe and the origin of all form, Force,--the dynamic element. By my will I can unsettle the Moon in her course.
The movements of each atom on our Earth are the mathematical resultant of the undulations of the luminiferous ether which come to it in time from the abysses of infinite space.
IX.
The human being has for essential principle the soul. The body is visible and transitory.
X.
Atoms are indestructible.
The energy which moves atoms and governs the universe is indestructible.
The human soul is indestructible.
XI.
The individuality of the soul is recent in the Earth's history. Our planet was nebula, then sun, after that, chaos. No terrestrial human being was then in existence. Life began with the most rudimentary organisms; it has progressed century by century to attain its present state, which is not the last. What we call the faculties of the soul,--intelligence, reason, conscience,--are modern. The mind has gradually freed itself from matter; as--if the comparison were not awkward--gas frees itself from coal, perfume from the flower, flame from fire.
XII.
Psychic force has been beginning to assert itself in the higher spheres of terrestrial humanity for the past thirty or forty centuries; its action is but in its dawn. Souls conscious of their individuality, or still unconscious of it, are by their very nature beyond the conditions of space and time. After the death of the body, as during life, they occupy no place; perhaps some of them go to dwell in other worlds. Those only who are
freed from material bonds can be conscious of their extra-corporeal existence and immortality.
XIII.
The Earth is but a province of the eternal fatherland; it forms a part of heaven. _Heaven is infinite_; all worlds are a part of heaven.
XIV.
The planetary and sidereal systems which constitute the universe are at different degrees of organization and advancement. The extent of their diversity is infinite; beings are everywhere appropriate to their worlds.
XV.
All worlds are not lived upon. The present era is of no more importance than are those which preceded or those which will follow it. Some worlds have been inhabited in the past, others will be in the future. Some day nothing will remain of the Earth; even its ruins will have perished.
XVI.
Terrestrial life is not the type of other lives. An unlimited diversity reigns in the universe. There are dwelling-places where the weight is intense, where light is unknown, where touch, smell, and hearing are the only senses, where, the optic nerve not being formed, all the beings are blind. There are others where the beings are so light and so slight that they would be invisible to earthly eyes, where senses of an exquisite delicacy reveal to privileged beings sensations forbidden to terrestrial humanity.
XVII.
The space existing between the worlds distributed over the immense universe does not separate them from each other. They are all in perpetual communication, from the attraction which makes itself felt through all distance, and establishes an indissoluble link between all worlds.
XVIII.
The universe forms a single unity.
XIX.
The system of the physical world is the material basis, the habitat of the moral or spiritual world. Hence astronomy must be the basis of all philosophical and religious belief. Every thinking being bears within himself the consciousness, but the uncertainty, of immortality. This is because we are the microscopic wheels of an unknown mechanism.
XX.
Man makes his own destiny. He rises or falls in accordance with his works. Beings attached to material riches, misers, hypocrites, liars, ambitious people, live like the perverse, in the lower zones.
But a primordial and absolute law governs creation,--the law of Progress. Everything rises in the infinite. Sins are falls.
XXI.
In the ascension of souls, moral qualities have no less value than intellectual qualities. Goodness, devotion, self-abnegation, sacrifice, purify the soul, and raise it, like study and science.
XXII.
Universal creation is an immense harmony, of which the Earth is but an insignificant, rather uninteresting, and unfinished fragment.
XXIII.
Nature is a perpetual future. _Progress is law._ Progression is eternal.
XXIV.
The eternity of a soul would not be long enough to visit the infinite and learn all there is to know.
XXV.
The soul's destiny is to free itself more and more from the material world, and to belong to the lofty Uranian life, whence it can look down upon matter and suffer no more. It then enters upon the spiritual life, eternally pure. The supreme aim of all beings is the perpetual approach to absolute perfection and divine happiness.
Such was Spero's scientific and philosophical testament. Does it notseem to have been dictated by Urania herself?
The Nine Muses of ancient mythology were sisters. Modern scientificconceptions in their turn tend to unity. Astronomy, or the knowledge ofthe world, and psychology, or knowledge of being, unite to-day toestablish the only basis on which definite philosophy can be built.
* * * * *
P. S.--The preceding incidents, with the researches and reflectionswhich accompany them, are brought together here in a sort of essay,whose aim is to shed a gleam of light on the solution of the greatestproblem that can engage the human mind. With this object the presentwork is offered to the attention of those who sometimes "in the midst ofLife's journey," of which Dante speaks, linger to ask themselves whereand what they are,--to seek, to think, and to dream.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Strange coincidences sometimes occur; and upon the day that GeorgeSpero made the ascent which was to be so fatal to him I knew that he hadstarted, from the extraordinary restlessness of the magnetic needle,which announced at Paris, where I had remained, the intense auroraborealis for which he had been waiting so anxiously to make his aerialjourney. It is well known that the aurora borealis causes magneticdisturbances which are felt at long distances from their manifestation.But what surprised me most, and what I never have been able to explain,is, that at the very time of the accident I experienced an undefineduneasiness; then a kind of presentiment that some accident had happenedto him. The despatch announcing his death found me almost prepared forit.
[2] Phantasms of the Living. By E. Gurney and Frederick Myers, of theUniversity of Cambridge, and Frank Podmore. London, 1886. (The presidentof the Society for Psychical Research is Professor Balfour Stewart, F.R. S.)
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
Simple typographical errors were corrected, in some cases by referringto other editions of this book.
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominantpreference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Page 280: "A SOUL CLOTHED WITH AIR." is the heading of a chapter that isnot identified as such in this edition.
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