Part 13

Now, my dear terrestrial friend, you know what the Earth is in the universe; you know something of what the heavens contain; and you know also what Life is, and what Death is. We shall soon see the dawn of morning, which puts spirits to flight and brings our conversations to an end, as the approach of your terrestrial day causes the brightness of Venus to fade away. But I should like to add to the preceding ideas a very interesting remark suggested by the same observations. It is this: If you set out from the Earth at the moment that a flash of lightning bursts forth, and if you travelled for an hour or more with the light, you would see the lightning as long as you continued to look at it. This fact is established by the foregoing principles. But if, instead of travelling _exactly_ with the velocity of light, you were to travel with a little less velocity; note the observation that you might make: I will suppose that this voyage away from the Earth, during which you look at the lightning, lasts a minute. I will suppose also, that the lightning lasts a thousandth part of a second. You will continue to see the lightning during 60,000 times its duration. In our first supposition this voyage is identical with that of light. Light has occupied 60,000 tenths of seconds to go from the Earth to the point in space where you are. Your voyage and that of light have co-existed. Now if instead of flying with just the same velocity as light, you had flown a little less quickly, and if you had employed a thousandth part of a second more to arrive at the same point, instead of always seeing _the same moment of the lightning_, you would have seen, successively, the different moments which constituted the total duration of the lightning, equal to 1000 parts of a second. In this whole minute you would have had time to see first the beginning of the flash of lightning, and could analyse the development of it, the successive phases of it, to the very end. You may imagine what strange discoveries one could make in the secret nature of lightning, increased 60,000 times in the order of its duration, what frightful battles you would have time to discover in the flames! what pandemonium! what unlucky atoms! what a world hidden by its volatile nature from the imperfect eyes of mortals!

[Sidenote: Vision of the analysing eye.]

If you could see by your imagination sufficiently, to separate and count the atoms which constitute the body of a man, that body would disappear before you, for it consists of thousands of millions of atoms in motion, and to the analysing eye it would be a nebula animated by the forces of gravitation. Did not Swedenborg imagine that the universe by which he was surrounded, seen as a whole, was in the form of an immense man? That was anthropomorphism. But there are analogies everywhere. What we know most certainly is, that things _are not_ what they appear to be, either in space or in time. But let us return to the delayed flash of lightning.

When you travel with the velocity of light, you see constantly the scene which was in existence at the moment of your departure. If you were carried away for a year, at the same rate, you would have before your eyes the same event for that time. But if, in order to see more distinctly an event which would have taken only a few seconds, such as the fall of a mountain, an avalanche, or an earthquake, you were to delay, to see the commencement of the catastrophe (in slackening a little, your steps on those of light), you would see the progress of the catastrophe, its first moment, its second, and so on successively, in thus nearly following the light, you would only see the end after an hour of observation. The event would last for you an hour instead of a few seconds. You would see the rocks, or the stones suspended in the air, and could thus ascertain the mode of production of the phenomenon, and its incidental delays. Already your terrestrial scientific knowledge enables you to take instantaneous photographs of the successive aspects of rapid phenomena, such as lightning, a meteor, the waves of the sea, a volcanic eruption, the fall of a building, and to make them pass before you graduated in accordance with their effect on the retina. Similarly you can, on the contrary, photograph the pollen of a flower, through each stage of expansion to its completion in the fruit, or the development of a child from its birth to maturity, and project these phases upon a screen, depicting in a few seconds the life of a man, or a tree.

[Sidenote: A chrono-telescope.]

I see in your thoughts that you compare this effect to that of a microscope which would magnify time. That is exactly what it is; we thus see time amplified. This process cannot strictly speaking be called that of the microscope, but rather that of a _chronoscope_ or of a chrono-telescope (to see time from afar). The duration of a reign might, by the same process, be augmented according to the good pleasure of the parti politique.

Thus, for example, Napoleon II. reigned only three hours, but one could see him reign for fifteen years _successively_, by dispersing the 180 minutes of the three hours over the length of 180 months (in removing one's self from the Earth with a velocity a little inferior to that of light); so, by setting out at the very moment that the Chamber had proclaimed Napoleon II., one would arrive at the last minute of his supposed reign, only at the end of fifteen years. Each minute would be seen for a month, each second for twelve hours.

[Sidenote: Light transmission in space.]

The conclusions of this discourse are based entirely on this principle, my dear Quærens. I have endeavoured to show you that the physical law of the _successive transmission of Light_ in space, is one of the _fundamental elements of the conditions of eternal life_. According to this law every event is imperishable, and the past is always present. The image of the Earth as it was 6000 years ago, is actually now in space at the distance that light crossed it 6000 years since. The worlds situated in that region see the Earth of that epoch. We could see again our own direct existence and our different anterior existences. All that we need for this is to be at the proper distance from the worlds in which we had lived. There are stars which you see from the Earth, and which no longer exist, because they became extinct after they had emitted the luminous ray which has only just reached you.

In the same way you might hear the voice of a man at a distance, who might be dead before the moment at which you heard him, if, perchance, he had been struck with apoplexy immediately after he had uttered his last cry.

[Sidenote: There are living forms unknown to Earth.]

I am very much pleased that this last sketch has enabled me at the same time to trace for you a picture of the diversities of existence and of the _possibility of living forms unknown to the Earth_. Here also you see the revelations of Urania are grander and more profound than those of all her sisters. _The Earth is only an atom in the universe._

I must pause here, for all these numerous and diverse applications of the laws of light are not apparent to you. On the Earth, in this dark cavern, as Plato appropriately termed it, you vegetate in ignorance of the gigantic forces in action in the universe. The day will come when physical science will discover in light the principle of every movement and the inner reason of things. Already within the last few years spectrum analysis has demonstrated to you that by the examination of a luminous ray from the Sun, or from a Star, you can learn what substances constitute that Sun and that Star. Already you can determine, across a distance of millions and millions of miles, the nature of celestial bodies from which a ray of light has come to you! And the study of light will afford still more splendid results, both in experimental science, and in its application to the philosophy of the universe.

[Sidenote: Anticipations.]

But the refraction of the earth's atmosphere is projecting beyond the zenith the light shed forth by the distant Sun. The vibrations of the light of day will let me talk with you no longer. Farewell, my good friend. Farewell! or rather, _au revoir_! Great things are going to happen around you. After the storm I shall perhaps return for one last visit to give you proof of my existence, and to show that I have not forgotten you. Then, later, when your life upon this little planet is done, I shall come to you once more, and together we will take our real journey through the unspeakable splendours of speed. Nor can you ever, in your wildest dreams, form even a faint idea of the stupendous surprises, the inconceivable wonders which there await you.

THE END

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Transcriber's Notes:

Page 32, Sidenote, "h" changed to "e" (the place where he was in)

Page 34, Footnote, "3,14159" changed to "314,159" (314,159 × 2, it)

Page 139, repeated word "the" deleted. Original read (Even in the the same system)

Page 160, period added to text (surprise you still more.)

Page 172, Sidenote, "Adromeda" changed to "Andromeda" (World of Andromeda)

Page 179, "oxgyen" changed to "oxygen" (called their oxygen)