Chapter III: Introduction (2)

Endeavouring to estimate the real importance of this history and of our planet itself, I searched space, not only for the Earth which had become invisible long ago, but even the Sun; but I could neither find the Sun nor any of its brightest neighbours such as Alpha Centauri or Sirius, nor any of the stars which one sees from the Earth. The whole region of space where our floating island gravitates had disappeared long ago as an insignificant point in the depths of space. Austerlitz, Waterloo, Sevastopol, Magenta, Sadowa, Keichshofen, Sedan, were but microscopic agitations in a Lilliputian ant-heap, amusement of infants delighting in muscular exercises involving blood and smoke. Why blame them? Why pity them? They do what pleases them and nobody forces them to do it. Why should astronomy use a magnifying-glass to study the microbes on a planet T The system of many-coloured suns, the blinding organic wealth of which had inspired me to return to the earthly twilight, revolves at a distance of 60,000 billion miles. Light takes more than ten years to traverse this distance. Yet this is nothing extraordinary in the way of astronomical distance.

Sirius, the most brilliant star of our sky, transported to that distance, would be 3,500 times farther away than it is in reality, and it would send us 12 million times less light. It would be a small point, still within the range of the new photographic processes. It would be a telescopic star of the 18th magnitude.

This sidereal milestone would be far from marking the limit of the space accessible to telescopic investigation, which includes stars of the 20th magnitude, and which, according to ingenious calculations, is occupied by about 100 million suns. And indeed, as I advanced in my celestial voyage, I crossed new abysses and discovered far ahead and above me new stars which became suns, shone in the night and appeared single, double, treble, quadruple, even quintuple, radiating a silver or golden light, or emitting the most vivid and various colours; and I guessed in passing at celestial earths peopled by unknown humanities floating in these rays, before these worlds in turn rolled away and disappeared beneath me in the night. They rushed with different speeds in every direction through space, like luminous globes in the bouquets of fireworks, and seemed to fly away in a starry rain.

When I reached the confines of our sidereal universe, the suns and systems became sparser, and as I continued my ascent I found myself engulfed in a black and desert void whence I could see the outer form of our universe, resembling one of those many star clusters which are seen in every telescopic field. This cluster became smaller and smaller as I flew on into the outer darkness.

Then, in the infinite night I perceived above me another universe which appeared in space as a pale and distant nebula, and I understood that all we can see with our eyes in the clearest night and all that telescopic vision has yet allowed us to discover represent nothing but a local region in an animated immensity, and that there are other universes besides that of which our Sun forms a star.

(7) IN INFINITE SPACE

I approached this second universe, which became larger and larger like an archipelago of stars, and I soon arrived at its outskirts. As I traversed it from end to end I saw that it also was composed of several million suns separated from each other by thousands of millions of miles. Then I found beyond it another dark abyss resembling that which I had crossed to reach the second universe.

Continuing my flight, I saw a third, and I crossed it. A fourth approached, then another, and yet another. And as I crossed those deserts which separated them, in whatever direction my gaze endeavoured to pierce the void, everywhere it discovered new universes in the distance.

The splendid spiral nebulæ are not balls of gas but agglomerations of suns, Milky Ways situated outside our sidereal universe.

Then I understood that all the stars which have ever been observed in the sky, the millions of luminous points which constitute the Milky Way, the innumerable celestial bodies, suns of every magnitude and of every degree of brightness, solar systems, planets, and satellites, which by millions and hundreds of millions succeed each other in the void around us, that whatever human tongues have designated by the name of universe, do not in the infinite represent more than an archipelago of celestial islands and not more than a city in the grand total of population, a town of greater or lesser importance.

In this city of the limitless empire, in this town of a land without frontiers, our Sun and its system represent a single point, a single house among millions of other habitations. Is our solar system a palace or a hovel in this great city? Probably a hovel.

And the Earth? The Earth is a room in the solar mansion--a small dwelling, miserably small.

Thus in the general economy of nature our planet has no more importance than a poor little room in a considerable house. That house in turn is lost in the middle of an immense town. And that immense town, which to us represents the entire universe, is in fact nothing but a universe beyond which in every direction there exist other universes.

How far is this reality from human pretensions, both ancient and modern, which imagine that our world represents the infinite, that God stops the Sun to illuminate one of Joshua’s battles--a miracle renewed, says history, for Charlemagne and Charles V--and that the great Sower of stars took upon himself a human shape to dwell among us!

What simplicity among sincere theologians! What imposture among the chiefs of states who still dare to invest themselves with titles of divine mandatories to enslave the people! Are not the real atheists those either ignorant or insincere people who make the sublimest idea the accomplice of all their mediocrities, and are not the real Deists the independent searchers whose sole ambition is laboriously to look for the causes and gradually to work up to truth?

With what strange religious systems has humanity up to now enveloped its barren imagination! The Israelite who believes he is agreeable to God in practising circumcision or in buying a new knife to be sure that it has not touched pig’s fat; the Christian who imagines he can make God descend upon a table and who is told by his preachers that prayers and fasts have an influence upon the weather and agriculture; the Mahommedan who sees the gate of Mahomet’s paradise opening before him as he stabs a missionary; the fanatic who casts himself under the wheels of the Juggernaut; the Buddhist who remains fascinated in the beatific contemplation of his navel, or works a prayer-mill for the remission of sins--these surely form the most ridiculous and infantile ideas of the unknown and unknowable Being.

All these littlenesses are related to the primitive illusion of the smallness of the universe, which was considered as a sort of screen studded with golden nails and enclosing the earth in its centre. Certainly if astronomy had had no other result than to enlarge our general conceptions and show us the relativity of terrestrial things in the bosom of the absolute, to deliver us from this ancient slavery of thought and make us free citizens of the infinite, it would deserve our veneration and our gratitude, for without it we should still be incapable of forming true conceptions.

Some conservatives will perhaps object that there are even in French observatories astronomers who go to Communion, tell their beads, and carry candles in the churches, and that the same mentality can be found in certain English, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, and other observatories. Yes, without a doubt, the fact is undeniable. Such a psychological phenomenon has two explanations. Either these hybrid beings are sincere or they are not. If they are believers, they are illogical and in perpetual conflict with their scientific reason, and we must not be astonished at the strange arrangement which their conscience is capable of constructing between two conceptions of nature which directly contradict each other. While incapable of explanation, such sincerity can be respected, like that of the innocent infant who believes all one tells him.

In the second, case it is hypocrisy, falsehood, rascality, personal interest; and this sort of conscience is suitably judged by every honest man.

These anomalies and limitations have not hindered astronomy from bringing light and independence to spirits who can understand it and who have the courage and the freedom of their opinions.

But in telling of my Venetian dream I did not want to indulge in irritating polemics, and my only object was to show to some open eyes the horizons of astronomical philosophy, and I hasten to return to my sidereal voyage and to describe its last phase. I shall, however, add another word concerning our tiny planet, remarking that its inhabitants are as a rule so unintelligent and so incapable of judgment that they imagine that all have an equal intellectual and moral value and that in the most civilised country of this globe the vote of an imbecile or a drunkard has the same weight as that of an educated thinker, so that the legislative chamber entrusted with the fate of the country is an incoherent mass of persons incompetent to deal with any of the questions likely to arise. Half of them are ignorant and are preoccupied with their private concerns. In this system of pretended equality, Judas is the same as Jesus, Philip II equals Marcus Aurelius. Torquemada is the same as St. Vincent de Paul, Fouquier-Tinville the same as Mirabeau, and the wine-merchant at the corner is the equal of Archimedes and Pythagoras. There is no reasoning. Our little planet is as insignificant morally as it is physically. Among terrestrial humanity only one man in a hundred is intelligent. Humanity is practically no older than four or five years as regards intelligence compared with what it ought to be normally.

I had traversed several universes analogous to our galactic system, universes separated from each other by abysses of nothingness, and what had struck me most in this general survey was meeting a number of humanities foreign to our own living in various regions of space, living their own lives and carried along to their destiny in the whirlpool of their personal affairs. While the inhabitants of the Earth reduce creation to their own size, thousands, millions, billions, of other humanities live in every degree of intellectual advancement on solar systems which to them are the very centre of observation and from which our terrestrial home appears lost in the infinite distance.

I also saw dead worlds. It is a fact worthy of attention that all existence tends towards death. Beings only come into existence to die. The worlds only attain periods of vitality to descend again into decadence and the tomb. Suns only burn to be extinguished. Death would therefore be the supreme law, the final result.

The mathematician can now calculate with great accuracy the date when our Sun will become extinct aid when the Earth will roll on through the eternal night like an icy cemetery. The entire history of terrestrial humanity will have arrived at an absolute zero. The time will come when even the ruins will be destroyed.

On account of the tendency of energy to establish itself in a state of stable equilibrium in the universe, life will have an end on our planet as well as the other worlds.

If everything appears thus to tend to extinction and death, it is because we do not know the secret of the conservation of energy. An end such as I have indicated is really unthinkable. The terms of the problem contain their own condemnation. It is admitted that force and matter can be neither created nor destroyed, and have therefore existed and acted from all eternity. If therefore the final result of the radiation of suns into space is their extinction and consequently the extinction of life on their attendant planets, then since an eternity has already elapsed during which energy has tended to equilibrium, there ought to be not a single sun, star or planet in existence.

Now relatively, not to an eternal duration but only to a period like a lightning flash compared with that, say a trillion years, the life of a human race, of a planet, or even of a sun, is very short. Geologists talk of 20 to 30 million years for the whole duration of the geological eras from the origin of life on earth; physicists talk of 100 million for the constitution of the terrestrial globe from the liquid to the solid state; astronomers also assign 100 million years to the age of the Sun, and even less to its future duration. Even if we doubled or trebled these numbers, even if we multiplied them by ten or even a hundred, we should not arrive at the millionth part of a trillion years! Thus without going back to a previous eternity, if the energy of suns had no other final result but extinction we should not exist now and nothing that is would be.

The universe was not made of one piece at the origin of things. This origin does not in fact exist. We find in space suns of every age. There are old ones, there are new ones. Here are cradles, yonder are tombs. If the first creations formed by matter and energy had not been renewed, there would no longer be a universe. All primitive energy which had animated the suns would be used up. Besides, matter and energy are but one.

Just as in passing through a forest we find oaks in decay, green trees, and new growths, thus also does the celestial traveller encounter in space worlds long dead, dying worlds, worlds in full activity, and budding stars.

Everything dies, but everything lives again.

Among the last worlds in full vitality which I visited on my voyage among distant universes there was one which appeared particularly remarkable on account of the high state of social progress. Although this world is the most distant of all those suspected to exist in the depths of space, yet the human race which dwells there is not very different from ours, physically. It is divided into two sexes, and the organic forms somewhat resemble those of our race. But the social state is distinctly superior to ours.

A perpetual harmony reigns among all the members of this vast family. Simple and modest, each of these beings has no higher ambition than gradually to raise himself in the knowledge of things and in moral perfection.

The atmosphere is not entirely nutritious, and there, as here, one is obliged to eat in order to live. But they live exclusively on fruit and vegetables, and kill no living being.

The functions of material life only take up a very short time, and life is mainly intellectual. Instead of personal rivalries, great and small, and the various ambitions which agitate the entire lives of the men and women of our poor little world, those beings are mainly occupied in study and pleasure.

There is no money. There are no rich nor poor. The fruits necessary for nourishment can be picked anywhere beyond all needs. Summer is perpetual and no sort of clothing has been thought of because the bodily forms always keep their beauty, and coquetry would have nothing to conceal.

There is no old age. On reaching a ripe age one goes to sleep and the body dissolves like a cloud, which becomes invisible by the change of state of its molecules.

No law has instituted the marriage bond. As it would be impossible to contract for interest, because there are neither castes nor fortunes, love alone guides the choice. On rare occasions the years reveal some divergence of character sufficient to lead to a desire for another choice, but when this divergence shows itself there is no chain to break. Besides, they always remain lovers and never become married. The desire of change, of variety, of curiosity, hardly arises because the persons who have freely chosen each other love each other beyond all others and have only chosen each other because they knew each other.

Friendships are sure and faithful, and there is no example of treason dictated by the vile sentiment of jealousy.

Contrary to what happens on earth, every person whose life is ruled by the sentiment of personal interest or ambition would be considered as a monster beyond all explanation and thoroughly despised. In that world they do not, as we do here, meet people who are constantly unhappy on account of a desire to occupy all the best places, are never satisfied with their own lot, and who, being indefatigable opportunists, grab everything in their insatiable egoism, and die full of honours and vanities.

There is no frontier. Humanity forms a single family. Communications are established over the whole globe by a sort of language which passes with the speed of lightning. An administrative council controlled by universal suffrage directs public education, science, art, and justice; and this universal suffrage is enlightened, and exercises its choice among the best and wisest spirits. The dregs of the population are not represented; the deputies do not shine by numbers and incompetence, but by worth. In a country corresponding to France, their number would be reduced from 600 to 100, every deputy possessing a special competence in legislative questions. It is superfluous to add that a Ministry of War has never been thought of there. The people, led by reason, do not follow a fetish. Besides, no patriotic sentiment can there be exploited or brutally debased, since no frontier divides humanity, and patriotic sentiment consists solely in the recognition of intellectual worth.

No institute of so-called official science has been established there. No Sorbonne has condemned the theory of the Earth’s movement, no Academy has disapproved of the doctrine of perpetual peace. There are no titles, no decorations. Nothing is appreciated but personal, intellectual, and moral worth.

The word “infallibility” does not exist in the language of that people. Only one religion reigns in their hearts: natural religion, founded upon astronomy. Their faculties, more transcendent than ours, their senses, more numerous and more penetrating, their more powerful instruments of observation, have long ago placed them in communication with neighbouring worlds, and they have been able to utilise astral magnetism for purposes of transport from one world to another.

They have discovered the mystery of the union between force and matter, and know that there is a fundamental identity between them. In their own religions, they have never given God a name, and have never dared to play at a cult, knowing that such puerility and such pride would be unworthy of their merit. Their religion consists in a belief in immortality based on the knowledge of the intimate nature of being, in preparations for the future life, in efforts to make themselves better and more perfect by a continual study of creation, and a mutual love based on an enlightened sentiment of justice and equity.

They consider Reason as the highest prerogative of the human race, and would consider any doctrinaire mad who would forbid the exercise of that faculty for the sake of any religious system whatever.

From that world, nobody has ever yet perceived the Earth, and nobody suspects its existence.

Their senses are more perfect and more subtle. While our human race is less endowed than certain animals which can foresee a storm, the changes of the seasons, and earthquakes, they possess the sense of orientation, which we lack entirely, although on our own planet certain species like the dog, the cat, the pigeon, and the swallow possess it.

They seemed to me absolutely happy, though exceedingly sensitive. They spent the greatest part of their existence amid the most refined pleasures. Their world is a perpetual paradise ever born afresh. Perfumes arise from the bosom of splendid and varied flowers, and woods are balmy with intoxicating spices, and the light of day plays upon fairy-like scenery.

* * * * *

When I contemplated this marvellous spectacle, I felt surrounded and penetrated, so to speak, with waves of sound which cradled my enraptured soul in the most delicious melody my ears had ever heard. The sensation of a celestial attraction seemed to carry me on a cloud and make me slowly descend towards an island on which a palace of flowers appeared. I felt a sort of electric shock and--I felt myself in a high ogival window of Venice. A gondola filled with musicians was returning from the Lido by the Grand Canal. Groups chanted harmonious choruses, the sky shone with stars, the moon was setting behind the domes, and Mars was descending towards the horizon.

The old clock sounded slowly the twelve strokes of midnight. “Well,” I exclaimed, “I have been sleeping. Here I have been for two hours at this window. Meanwhile the Moon has flown 4,850 miles in its orbit round the Earth, and the Earth has traversed 410,000 miles in its revolution round the Sun, drawn by that wonderful attraction which rules the world across the voids of space; perhaps it also rules our souls through the voids of time. “Thou beautiful starry sky,” I murmured, “who hast taught us so much already, wilt thou not soon solve for us the riddle of the great mystery? Thou art our hope, thou alone canst teach us, thou alone canst open before our eyes the panoramas of infinity and eternity.”

II. THE WORLD
OF LONG AGO