This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the information in books and make it universally accessible. https://books.google.com » Stories of Infinity: LUMEN— HISTORY OF A COMET— IN INFINITY. BY CAMILLE FLAMMARION, AUTHOR OF "THE ATMOSPHERE," "the PLURALITY OF INHABITED WORLDS," ETC, ETC TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY S. R. CROCKER. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. IS73. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by ROBERTS BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Stereotyped by John C. Regan, i9 Spring Lane, Boston. CONTENTS. I. L UMEN. PAGE First Story. Resurrectio Prceteriti: Death — The Soul — The Hour of Death — Separation of the Soul — The Soul's Vision in the Heavens — The Solar System in the Heavens — The Earth from a Celestial Standpoint — Capella — The Speed of Light — Worlds Seen from Afar — Lumen Reviews His own Life ... 5 Second Story. The Reflux of Time: Stories of Infin ity — A Journey in a Kay of Light — Reviewed Events — Remounting the Stream of Time — Man's Organism Adapted to the Planet He Inhabits . 54 Third Story. Homo Bomunculus: The Sphere of Human Observation — Events In Space — Time, Space, and Eternity 87 Fourth Story. Anteriores Vitoe: Space and Light — The Star Gamma, of Virgo — The Anterior Life — The Plurality of Lives — The Unknown — The Con stellations — The Elements — Life on the Earth — The Process of Alimentation — The Great Problem — One Humanity — The Organization of Beings — The Development of Life — In the Constellation of the Swan — Souls and Atoms — Multiple and Colored Suns — A World in Orion — Analysis of the Nervous System — The Eye and Sight — Study of the Uni verse 102 (Hi) iv CONTENTS. II. HISTORY OF A COMET. PAGE First. The Comet First Notices the Existence of the Earth: The Orbit of the Comet — Passage within Sight of the Earth — The Earth Six Hundred Thou sand Years Ago — Saturn at the Same Date . 108 Second. In which the Comet Makes Comparisons Between Other Worlds and Ours, very Unfavorable to the Lat ter: Encounter with the Earth — A Revolution of the Globe — Catastrophe in the Heavens — The Cra dle of the Earth 180 Third. Dawn : The Legend of Centuries — Diversity of Worlds — The Progress of Life on Earth . 191 Fourth. The Parisians before Paris : The Earth Forty Thousand Years Ago — Appearance of Man on Earth 204 FrFTH. The East : Humanity Twenty Thousand Years Ago — Primordial Humanity — Terrestrial Humanity Asserts Itself 213 Sixth. In which the Comet Jumps from the Deluge to the Year 1811: From Agamemnon to Napoleon — The Doings of Humanity — Men and the Stars — The History of Humanity 223 III. IN INFINITY. Pneumatology. Discourse on Time and Space, by a Spirit — Description of the Universe — Distances in the Universe — History in the Universe — Spiritual Beings — God in Nature — The Future of the Earth — The End of the World — Eternity . .240 I. LUMEN. FIEST STORY.— RESURRECTIO PR2ETERITI. I. Inquirer. You promised, Lumen, to tell me the story of that strange hour — strangest of all hours — that followed the exhalation of your last sigh, and how, by the operation of a law, natural, though so wonderful, you saw again the past in the present, and penetrated a mystery that has been so profoundly insoluble until to-day. Lumen. Yes, my old friend, I will keep my prom ise ; and, thanks to the long communion of our souls, I hope you will comprehend this phenomenon, " strange " as you call it. There are sights that the mortal eye can hardly endure. Death, which freed me from the feeble and fatigable faculties of the body, has not yet touched you with its liberating hand. You belong to the world of living creatures. Despite the seclusion of your retreat in these royal towers of the Faubourg Saint- Jacques, whither the profane come not to interrupt your meditations, you are yet a part of (5) 6 STORIES OF INFINITY. earthly life and of its superficial preoccupations. Do not wonder, then,, if, in admitting you to a knowledge of my mystery, I desire you to withdraw yourself still more strictly from external disturbances, and to give the greatest intensity of attention of which your mind is capable. Inquirer. I have ears only for hearing you, O Lu men, and intelligence only for trying to understand you. Speak, then, fearlessly and directly, and deign to de scribe the impressions, unknown to me, that follow the ceasing of life. Lumen. At what point shall I begin ? Inquirer. If you remember from the moment when my trembling hand closed your eyes, I should like to take up the narrative at that point. Lumen. Ah, the divorce of the thinking and the nervous organizations leaves in the soul no kind of recollection. It is as if the impressions of the brain, which constitute the harmony of the memory, were utterly effaced, soon to be renewed in another mode. The first sensation of identity felt after death, re sembles that of a dream on earth, when awakening gradually to a consciousness of the morning, we are yet penetrated by visions of the night. Importuned by the future and the past, the spirit tries at once to regain full control of itself, and to seize the fleeting impres sions of the vanished dream, which still flit within it, with their retinue of pictures and events. Sometimes, wrapt in such retrospection of a delightful dream, it feels under its closed eyelid the links of its vision LUMEN. 7 reattaching themselves, and the spectacle continues ; it relapses at once into dreams, and a kind of half-sleep. Thus, as we leave this life, our thinking faculty is poised between a reality which it does not yet compre hend, and a dream not yet wholly vanished. Impres sions the most diverse are intermingled and confounded, and if, under the burden of perishable sentiments, we regret the earth whence we have just been banished, we are also overwhelmed by a feeling of ineffable sad ness which oppresses our thoughts, wraps us in shad ows, and delays the coming of clear sight. Inquirer. Did you experience these sensations im mediately after death ? Lumen. After death? Death is not. What you call death, the separation of the body and the soul, does not, in fact, take place under a material form, as do the chemical separations of dissociated elements that are witnessed in the physical world. One is scarcely more conscious of this final severance, which seems to you so cruel, than is the new-born child of his birth. We are infants in heavenly life, just as we have been infants in earthly life. Only the soul, not being wrapped in the corporeal swaddling-bands which clothe it here below, acquires far more rapidly a knowledge of its condition and personality. This perceptive faculty varies greatly in different souls. There are some who, during life in the body, never lifted themselves toward heaven, never longed to master the laws of creation. Such, still under the dominion of bodily appetites, dwell a long time in a state of trouble and unconsciousness. 8 STORIES OF INFINITY. There are others, happily, who, at the close of this life, soar on winged aspirations to the summits of the sublime eternal ; these behold with calm serenity the approach of the moment of separation ; they know that progress is the law of existence, and that they will enter, beyond, into a higher life than this ; they note, step by step, the numbness that mounts to their hearts, and when the last flutter, faint and imperceptible, ceases, they are already far above the body which they had seen sinking into sleep ; and shaking off magnetic bonds, they feel themselves borne by an unknown force toward that point in the creation to which their aspirations, their feelings and their hopes have at tracted them. Inquirer. This conversation just begun, my dear master, reminds me of Plato's dialogues on the immor tality of the soul ; and as Phaedrus asked his master, Socrates, on the very day when the latter was going to take the hemlock, in obedience to the iniquitous sen tence of the Athenians, I will ask you — you, who have passed the fatal bound — what essential difference dis tinguishes the soul from the body, since the one dies, while the other does not? Lumen. I will not give you a metaphysical answer, like that of Socrates, nor a dogmatic one, like that of the theologians, but a scientific answer ; for you, like myself, value nothing except facts determined by pos itive methods. Now there are in man, as in the uni verse itself, three quite distinct principles : first, the body ; second, the vital force ; third, the soul. LUMEN. 9 I name them in this order that I may follow the method a posteriori. The body is an aggregation of molecules, themselves formed by groups of atoms. The atoms are inert, passive, unchangeable and inde structible. They enter into the organism by respira tion and alimentation, constantly renew the tissues, are replaced by others, and, thrown oft" by life, go to make part - of other bodies. In a fevv months the human body is wholly renewed : in the blood, in the skin, in the brain, and in the bones, there remains not a single one of those atoms which con stituted the body a few months before. Through the vast medium of the atmosphere, especially, atoms travel incessantly from one body to another. The molecule of iron is the same, whether it is incorporated in the blood that pulses under the temple .of an illustrious man, or is part of a bit of rusty scrap-iron.