Part 4

Thus the events of the years as they passed were revealed to me in following my own career--my marriage, my various enterprises, my connections, my travels, my studies, and so on. I witnessed at the same time the development of contemporary history. To the restoration of Louis XVIII. succeeded the brief reign of Charles X. I saw the barricades of the days of July 1830, and not far from the throne of the Duke of Orleans I saw the Column of the Bastile arise. Passing rapidly over eighteen years, I perceived myself at the Luxembourg at the time when that magnificent avenue was opened, that avenue I loved so much, and which has been threatened by a recent decree. I saw Arago again, this time at the Observatory, and I beheld the crowd before the door of the new amphitheatre. I recognised the Sorbonne of Cousin and of Guizot. Then I shuddered as I saw my mother's funeral pass. She was a stern woman, and perhaps a little too severe in her judgments, but I loved her dearly, as you know. The singular and brief revolution of 1848 surprised me as much as when I first witnessed it. On the Place de la Bourse I saw Lamoricière, who was buried last year, and in the Champs-Élysées, Cavaignac, who has been dead five or six years. The 2nd of December found me an observer on my solitary tower, and from thence I witnessed many striking events which passed before me, and many others which were unknown to me.

QUÆRENS. Did the event pass rapidly before you?

LUMEN. I had no perception of time; but the whole retrospective panorama appeared to me in successive scenes--in less than a day, perhaps in a few hours.

QUÆRENS. Then I do not understand you at all. Pardon your old friend this interruption, a little too abrupt perhaps. As I took it, you saw the real events of your life, not merely images of them. But, in view of the time necessary for the passage of light, these events appeared to you after they had happened. If, then, seventy-two terrestrial years had passed before your eyes, they should have taken seventy-two years to appear to you, and not a few hours. If the year 1793 appeared to you only in 1864, the year 1864, consequently, should only in 1936 appear to you.

[Sidenote: The anachronism explained.]

LUMEN. You have grounds for your fresh objection, and this proves to me that you have perfectly comprehended the theory of this fact. I fully appreciate your belief in me; indeed its consciousness helps me in my explanations. Thus it is not necessary that seventy-two years should be needed in which to review my life, for under the impulse of an involuntary force all its events passed before me in less than a day. Continuing to follow the course of my existence, I reached its later years, rendered memorable by the striking changes which had come over Paris. I saw our old friends, and you yourself; my daughter and her charming children; my family, and circle of acquaintances; and last of all I saw myself lying dead upon my bed, and I was present at the final scene. Yes; I tell you I had returned to the Earth. Drawn by the contemplation which absorbed my soul, I had quickly forgotten the mountain, the old men, and Capella. Even as a dream all faded from my mind.

I did not at first perceive the strange vision which captivated all my faculties. I cannot tell you either by what law or by what power souls can be transported with such rapidity from one place to another. Suffice it to say, _I had returned to the Earth_ in less than a day, and I had entered my chamber even at the moment of my decease. Also in this returning voyage I had travelled faster than the rays of light, hence the various phases of my life on Earth had unrolled themselves to my sight in their successive stages as they occurred. When I reached half-way I saw the rays of light arriving only thirty-six years behind time, showing me the Earth, not as it appeared seventy-two years ago, but thirty-six. When I had travelled three-quarters of the way I saw things as they had been eighteen years ago; at the half of the last quarter, as they were nine years previously; until finally the whole acts of my life were condensed into less than one day because of the rapid rate at which my soul had travelled, which far surpassed the velocity of the rays of light.

QUÆRENS. Was not this a very strange phenomenon?

LUMEN. Do any other objections rise in your mind as you listen to me?

QUÆRENS. No, this is the only one; or rather, this one has puzzled and interested me so greatly that it has absorbed all others.

LUMEN. I would remark that there is another, an astronomical one, which I will hasten to dispel, for fear it should arise and cloud your mind. It depends upon the Earth's movement, not only upon its diurnal rotation, which in itself would be sufficient to prevent my seeing the facts in succession, but this movement would also be greatly accelerated by the rapidity of my return to the Earth. Hence seventy-two years would pass before me in less than a day. On reflection, I was surprised that I had not earlier perceived this; yet as I had only seen a comparatively small number of countries, panoramas, and facts, it is probable that in returning to our planet I had only a fleeting glance for a few moments of the successive points of interest. But however this may be, I can but bear evidence that I have been witness to the rapid succession of events both throughout the century and of my own life.

QUÆRENS. That difficulty had not escaped me; I had weighed the thought, and had come to the conclusion that you had revolved in space, even as a balloon is spun round by the rotation of the globe. It is true that the inconceivable speed with which you would be whirled through space would be likely to give you vertigo, nevertheless, after hearing your experience, this hypothesis forces itself upon me, that spirits rush through space with the lightness and velocity of thought; and in remarking on the intensity of your gaze as you approached certain parts of the Earth, may it not be admissible to infer that this very eagerness to see certain localities, might be the reason of your being drawn to them, and as it were fixed above their point of vision?

LUMEN. As to this I can affirm nothing, because I know nothing; but I do not think this is the explanation. I did not see all the events of my life, but only a few of the main ones, which, successively unfolding, passed in review before me on the same visual ray. A magnetism drew me imperiously as with a chain to the Earth; or, if you prefer it, a force similar to that mysterious attraction of the stars, by reason of which, stars of a lesser degree would inevitably fall upon those of the first magnitude, unless retained in their orbits by centrifugal force.

QUÆRENS. In reflecting on the effect of the concentration of thought upon a single point, and of the attraction which consequently ensues towards that point, I cannot but conclude that therein lies the mainspring of the mechanism of dreams.

[Sidenote: The source of dreams.]

LUMEN. You say truly, my friend; I can confirm you in this remark, as for many years I have made dreams the subject of a special study and observation. When the soul, freed from the attentions, the preoccupations, the encumbrance of the body, has a vision of the object which charms it, and towards which it is irresistibly drawn, all disappear except the object. That alone remains, and becomes the centre of a world of creations; the soul possesses it entirely without any reserve, it contemplates it, it seizes it as its own, the entire universe is effaced from the memory in order that its domination over the soul may be absolute. I felt thus on being drawn earthwards. I saw but one object, around which were grouped the ideas, the images, and the associations to which it had given birth.

QUÆRENS. Your rapid flight to Capella and your equally rapid return to the Earth were governed by this psychological law; and you acted more freely than in a dream, because your soul was not impeded by the machinery of your organism. Often in our former conversations have you discoursed to me upon the strength of the will. Thus, willing to do so, you were enabled to return and to see yourself upon your death-bed before your mortal remains had been committed to the dust.

[Sidenote: Lumen witnesses his own funeral.]

[Sidenote: His flight to the stars.]

LUMEN. I did return; and I blessed my family for the sincerity of their grief. I shed a benediction on them; I soothed their grief, and poured balm upon their wounded hearts; and I inspired my children with the belief that the body lying there was not my real self--my _ego_--but merely the shell from which my soul had risen to a sphere celestial, infinite, and far beyond their earthly ken. I witnessed my own funeral procession, and I noticed those who called themselves my friends and who yet, for some trifling reason, begged to be excused from following my remains to their last resting-place. I listened to the various comments of those following my bier, and although in this region of peace we are free from that thirst for praise which clings to most of us whilst on Earth, nevertheless I felt gratified to know that I had left pleasant memories behind me. When the stone of the vault was rolled away, that which separates the dead from the living, I gave a last farewell to my poor sleeping body; and, as the Sun set in its bed of purple and gold, I went out into the air until night had fallen, plunged in admiration of the beautiful scenes which unrolled themselves in the heavens. The aurora borealis displayed itself above the North Pole in bands of glistening silver, shooting stars rained from Cassiopeia, and the full Moon rose slowly in the east like a new world emerging from the waves. I saw Capella scintillating and looking at me with a glance pure and bright, and could distinguish the crowns surrounding it, as if they were princes dowered with a celestial divinity. Then I forgot the Earth, the Moon, the Planetary System, the Sun, the Comets, in one intense, overpowering attraction towards a shining brilliant star, and I felt myself carried towards it instinctively with a celerity far greater than that of an electric flash. After a time, the duration of which I cannot guess, I arrived upon the same ring and upon the same mountain, from which I had first kept watch when I saw the old men occupied in following the history of the Earth, seventy-one years and eight months ago. They were still absorbed in the contemplation of events happening in the city of Lyons on the 23rd of January 1793. I will avow to you the reason of the mysterious attraction of Capella for me. For marvellous as it may seem, there are in creation invisible ties which do not break like mortal ties; there are means by which souls can commune with each other, in spite of the distance that separates them.

[Sidenote: He meets the spirit of his wife.]

[Sidenote: They recall their life on Earth.]

On the evening of the second day, as the emerald Moon enshrined itself in the third ring of gold--for such is the sidereal measurement of time--I found myself walking in a lonely avenue enamelled with flowers of sweet perfume. Sauntering along, as if in a dream, imagine my delight when I saw coming towards me my beautiful and beloved Sylvia. She was at a ripe age at her death, and notwithstanding an indefinable change I recognised the features, whose expression had but deepened and spiritualised, in happy correspondence with her sweet, pure life. I will not stop to describe to you the joy of our meeting, this is not the time for it; but perchance some day we may have the opportunity of descanting upon the different manifestations of affection in this world and the world beyond the grave, and I only add now that together we sought our native land on Earth, where we had passed days of peace and happiness. We delighted to turn our gaze towards the luminous point, which our state of exaltation enabled us to perceive was a world--the one upon which we had lived in earthly form--we loved to wed the memory of the past with the reality of our present, and in all the freshness of our new and ecstatic sensations we sought to recall and review the scenes of our youth. It was thus we actually saw again the happy years of our earthly love, the pavilion of the convent, the flower garden, the promenades in the charming and delightful environs of Paris, and the solitary rambles that, loving and beloved, we took together. To retrace these years we had but to travel together into space in the direction of the Earth, where these scenes, focused by the light, were being photographed. Now, my friend, I have fulfilled my promise in revealing to you these remarkable observations.

Behold the day breaks, and the star Lucifer is paling already under its rosy light. I must return to the constellations....

QUÆRENS. Just one more word, Lumen, before we conclude this interview. Can earthly scenes be transmitted successively into space--if so, the present could be kept perpetually before the eyes of distant spectators, and be limited only by the power of their spiritual sight?

[Sidenote: The precession of events as seen in space.]

LUMEN. Yes, my friend. Let us, for example, place our first observer on the Moon--he would perceive terrestrial events one second and a quarter after they had happened. Let us place a second observer at four times the distance--he would be cognisant of them five seconds later. Double the distance, and a third would see them ten seconds after they had taken place. Again double the distance, and a fourth observer would have to wait twenty seconds before he could witness them; so on and on with ever-increasing delay, until at the Sun's distance; eight minutes and thirteen seconds must elapse before they could become visible.

Upon certain planets, as we have seen, hours must intervene between the action and the sight of it; further off still, days, months even years must elapse. Upon neighbouring stars earthly events are not seen until four, six, ten years after their occurrence; but there are stars so distant that light only reaches them after many centuries, and even thousands of years. Indeed, there are nebulæ to which light takes millions of years to travel.

QUÆRENS. Therefore it only needs a sight sufficiently piercing to witness events historic or geologic which are long since past. Could not one, therefore, so gifted see the Deluge, the Garden of Eden, Adam and. . . .

LUMEN. I have told you, my old friend, that the rising of the sun on this hemisphere puts to flight all spirits, so I must go. Another interview may be granted us some other day, when we can continue our talk on this subject, and I will then give you a general sketch which will open out for you new horizons. The stars call me, and are already disappearing. I must away. Adieu, Quærens, adieu.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Physiological anatomy would probably explain this fact by suggesting that a sort of _punctum cæcum_ is displaced in order to conceal the object that one does not wish to see.

[2] Every one knows that the farther an object is, the smaller it appears. An object which is seen under an angle of one second, is at a distance of 206,265 times its own diameter, whatever it may be; because as there are 1,296,000 seconds in the circumference, the ratio between the circumference and its diameter being 314,159 × 2, it follows that this object is at a distance equal to 206,265 times its own diameter. As Capella sees the semi-diameter of the terrestrial orbit only under an angle 22 times smaller, its distance is 22 times greater. Capella is therefore at a distance of 4,484,000 times the radius of the terrestrial orbit. Future micrometrical measurements may modify these results concerning the parallax of this star, but they cannot change the principle upon which the conception of this work is grounded.

SECOND CONVERSATION

REFLUUM TEMPORIS

I

QUÆRENS. Your revelations which were interrupted by the break of day, O Lumen, have left me hungering and thirsting to hear more of this wonderful mystery. As a child to whom one shows a delicious fruit longs to have a bite, and when he has tasted of it begs for more, so my curiosity is eager to have renewed enjoyment of these paradoxes of nature. May I venture to submit to you a few questions in relation to the subject, which have been suggested to me by the friends to whom I have communicated the substance of your revelations, and then may I ask you to continue the narrative of your impressions of the regions beyond this Earth?

[Sidenote: Scientific truth, not fancy or romance.]

LUMEN. No, my friend, I cannot consent to such curiosity. However perfectly disposed your mind may be to accept my communications, I am convinced that all the details of my subject have not been equally apprehended by you, and are not in your eyes equally self-evident. My recital has been called mystical by those who have not quite understood that it is neither a romance nor a phantasy, but a scientific truth, a physical fact demonstrable and demonstrated, indisputable and as positive as the fall of an aerolite or the motion of a cannon-ball. The reason which prevents you and your friends from fully comprehending these facts is, that they took place beyond this Earth, in regions foreign to the sphere of your impressions, and inaccessible to your terrestrial senses. Naturally you do not comprehend them. (Pardon my frankness, but in the spiritual world one is frank; there, even thoughts are visible.) You only comprehend those things which you perceive. And as you persist in regarding your ideas of time and space as _absolute_, although they are only _relative_, and thence form a judgment on truths which are quite beyond your sphere, and which are imperceptible to your terrestrial organism and faculties, I should not do you a true service, my friend, in giving you fuller details of my ultra-terrestrial observations.

[Sidenote: An inquiring mind.]

QUÆRENS. It is not, I assure you, in a spirit of simple curiosity, dear Lumen, that I ventured to draw you forth from the bosom of the invisible world, where advanced souls partake of indescribable joys. But I have understood, perhaps better than you, the grandeur of the problem, and it is under the inspiration of an earnest, studious avidity that I seek for other aspects of it, still more novel than those you have given me, if I may say so, or rather more bold and more incomprehensible. As the result of reflection, I have arrived at the conclusion that what we know is _nothing_, and that what we do not know is _everything_; I am therefore disposed to welcome everything you tell me. I beg of you, if you will allow me, to share your revelations....

LUMEN. The fact is, my friend, I assure you, either you are not sufficiently able to understand, or you are too willing to believe: in the first case, you do not fully comprehend; in the second, you are too credulous, and do not appreciate my communications at their full value. However, I shall continue.

QUÆRENS. Dear comrade of my earthly life!

LUMEN. The remaining facts, which I shall now relate to you, are still more extraordinary than any that preceded them.

QUÆRENS. I feel like Tantalus in the midst of his lake, or like the spirits in the twenty-fourth canto of the Purgatorio. I am as eager as the Hesperides holding out their hands for the fragrant fruit, or as Eve in her desire for....

[Sidenote: Travelling on a ray of light.]

[Sidenote: Lumen sees the Revolution of 1848.]

LUMEN. Some time after my departure from the Earth, the eyes of my soul being still mournfully directed toward my native world, I found that, on an attentive examination, I could perceive at the 45th degree of north latitude and the 35th degree of longitude, a triangular piece of land of a sombre colour, north of the Black Sea, on the shores of which I saw, towards the west, a grievous number of my compatriots madly engaged in killing one another. I recalled to mind that relic of barbarism, war, formerly called glorious, with which you are still beset and burdened, and I remembered that in this corner of the Crimea 800,000 men fell, in ignorance of the cause of their mutual massacre. Some clouds then passed over Europe. At that time I was not on Capella, but in mid space, between that star and the Earth, about half the distance from Vega. Having left the Earth some time before, I turned toward a group of stars, that, seen from your planet, are to the left of Capella. Meanwhile my thoughts recurred from time to time to the Earth, and soon after taking the observation to which I have referred, my eyes being fixed on Paris, I was surprised to see it a prey to an insurrection of the people. Examining it more attentively, I discerned barricades on the boulevards, near the Hôtel de Ville, and along the streets, and the citizens firing at one another. The first idea that occurred to me was that a new revolution was taking place before my eyes, and that Napoleon III. was dethroned. But, by the secret sympathy of souls, my sight was attracted to a barricade in the Faubourg St. Antoine, upon which I saw lying prostrate the Archbishop Denis Auguste Affre, with whom I had been slightly acquainted. His sightless eyes were turned towards the heavens where I was, but he saw nothing; in his hand he held a green branch. I was thus witnessing the days of 1848, and in particular that of the 25th of June.

[Sidenote: He sees the events of 1831.]

A few minutes--a few hours, perhaps--passed, during which my imagination and my reason sought in turns for an explanation of this special scene. To see 1848 _after_ 1854! When my sight was again attracted to the Earth, I remarked a distribution of tricoloured flags in a grand square of the city of Lyons, Trying to distinguish the official person who was making this distribution, I recognised the uniforms, and I remembered that after the accession of Louis Philippe, the young Duke of Orleans had been sent to quell the disturbances in the capital of French manufactures. It followed from thence that, _after_ 1854 and 1848, I had before my eyes an event of 1831. Presently my glance turned to Paris on the day of a public fête. The king, a coarse-looking man, with a rubicund face, was tearing along in a magnificent chariot, and was just crossing the Pont Neuf. The weather was splendid. Some fair ladies posed, like a basket of lilies, on the white parapet of the bridge. Floating over Paris some brightly-coloured creatures could be seen. Evidently I beheld the en trance of the Bourbons into France.