A deep emotion had taken possession of my mind. Urania"s last words had pierced my very marrow like an icy chill. "Never any end--never!
never," I repeated; I could think or speak of nothing else. But still the magnificence of the spectacle appealed to my eyes, and my feeling of annihilation gave place to enthusiasm.
"Astronomy," I cried, "is everything! To know these things, to live in the infinite,--oh, Urania! what are other human ideas compared with science? Shadows, phantoms!"
"Oh! you will wake up again upon the Earth," she said; "you will admire, and rightly too, the wisdom of your masters. But understand this,--the astronomy of your schools and observatories, mathematical astronomy, the beautiful science as known to Newton, Laplace, Le Verrier, is not yet definite, actual knowledge.
"That, O my son! is not the end which I have pursued since the days of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Look at the thousands of suns a.n.a.logous to that which gives life to the earth, which like it are sources of light, motion, activity, and splendor! Ah! that is the object of the science to come,--the study of universal and eternal life. Until now, no one has ever entered the temple. Figures are not an end, but a means; they do not represent Nature"s structure, only the methods, the scaffoldings.
You are to see the dawn of a new day. Mathematical astronomy will yield her place to physical astronomy, to the true study of Nature.
"Yes," she continued, "astronomers who calculate the movements of the stars in their daily pa.s.sage of the meridian, those who foretell eclipses, celestial phenomena, periodical comets, who observe the exact positions of the stars and planets on the different degrees of the celestial sphere so carefully; those who discover comets, planets, satellites, and variable stars; those who investigate and determine the disturbance caused the Earth"s motion by attraction from the Moon and planets; those who consecrate their night-watches to the discovery of the fundamental elements of the world"s system,--are all of them calculators and observers, precursors of the new astronomy. These are immense labors, studies worthy of admiration, and important works which bring to light the highest faculties of the human mind. But it is the army of the past; mathematicians and geometricians. Henceforth, the hearts of savants will throb for a still n.o.bler conquest. All these great minds never really left the Earth while studying the skies.
Astronomy"s aim is not to show us the apparent position of shining specks, nor to weigh stones moving through s.p.a.ce, nor to foretell eclipses, or the phases of the Moon or tides. All this is fine, but it is not enough.
"If life did not exist upon the earth, that planet would be absolutely devoid of interest for any mind whatsoever; and the same remark is applicable to all the worlds which gravitate around the thousands of millions of suns in the wide stretches of immensity. Life is the object of the whole creation. If there were neither life nor thought, it would all be null and void.
"You are destined to witness an entire transformation in science. Matter will give place to mind."
"Life universal!" I asked: "Are all the planets of our solar system inhabited? Are the myriads of worlds which people the infinite lived upon? Do those forms of human life resemble ours? Shall we ever know them?"
"The epoch of your life upon the earth, even the duration of terrestrial humanity, is but a moment in eternity."
I did not understand this answer to my questions.
"There is no reason why all the worlds should be inhabited _now_," she went on. "The present period is of no more importance than those which preceded or will follow it.
"The length of the Earth"s existence will be longer--much longer, perhaps ten times longer--than that of its vital human period. Out of a dozen worlds selected by chance from immensity, we could, for example, find hardly one inhabited by a really intelligent race. Some have been already, others will be in the future; these are in preparation, those have run through all their phases: here cradles, there graves. And then too an infinite variety in the forces of Nature and their manifestations is revealed; earthly life being in no way the type of extra-terrestrial existence. Beings can think, live, in wholly different organizations from those with which you are familiar on your own planet. Inhabitants of the other worlds have neither your form nor senses; they are otherwise.
"The day will come, and very soon, since you are called to see it, when the study of the conditions of life in the various provinces of the universe will be astronomy"s essential aim and chief charm. Soon, instead of being concerned simply about the distance, the motion, and the material facts of your neighboring planets, astronomers will discover their physical const.i.tution,--for example, their geographical appearance, their climatology, their meteorology,--will solve the mystery of their vital organizations, and will discuss their inhabitants. They will find that Mars and Venus are actually peopled by thinking beings; that Jupiter is still in its primary period of organic preparation; that Saturn looks down upon us under quite different conditions from those which were instrumental in the establishment of terrestrial life, and without pa.s.sing through a state a.n.a.logous to that of Earth, will be inhabited by beings incompatible with earthly organisms. New methods will tell about the physical and chemical const.i.tutions of the stars and the nature of their atmospheres.
Perfected instruments will permit the discovery of direct proofs of existence in these planetary humanities and the idea of putting one"s self in communication with them. This is the scientific transformation which will mark the close of the nineteenth century and inaugurate the twentieth."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
I listened with delight to these words of the celestial Muse, which shed an entirely different light upon the future of astronomy and filled me with renewed ardor. Before my eyes was a panorama of innumerable worlds moving in s.p.a.ce, and I understood that the true object of science is to teach us about those far distant universes and allow us to live in those wide horizons. The beautiful G.o.ddess resumed:
[Ill.u.s.tration]
"Astronomy"s mission will be still higher. After making you know and feel that the Earth is but a city in the celestial country, and man a citizen of heaven, she will go still farther. Disclosing the plan on which the physical universe is constructed, she will show that the moral universe is constructed on the very same basis, that the two worlds form but one world, and that mind governs matter. What she will have done for s.p.a.ce she will do for time. After realizing the boundlessness of s.p.a.ce, and recognizing that the same laws govern all places simultaneously and make the vast universe one grand unit, you will learn that the centuries of the past and of the future are linked with the present, and that thinking monads will live forever through successive and progressive changes. You will learn that minds exist incomparably superior to the greatest minds of earthly humanity, and that all things advance toward supreme perfection. You will learn too that the material form is but an appearance, and that the real being consists of an imponderable, intangible, and invisible form.
"Astronomy will then be eminently and above all else the directress of philosophy. Those who reason without astronomical knowledge will never reach the truth. Those who follow her beacon faithfully will gradually rise to the solutions of the greatest problems.
"Astronomical philosophy will be the religion of lofty minds.
"You will see this double transformation in science," she added, "when you leave the terrestrial globe; the astronomical knowledge which you already so justly prize will be entirely remodelled in form as well as spirit.
"But this is not all. The renewal of an old science will be of little use to mankind in general if these sublime truths which develop the mind, enlighten the soul, and free it from vulgar common-place should be kept shut up within the narrow limits of professional astronomers. This time too will pa.s.s away. We must begin anew. The torch must be taken in hand, and its glory increased by carrying it into the busy streets and public squares. Every one is called to receive the light, every one is thirsting for it,--especially the humble, those on whom fortune frowns, for these are the persons who think most; these are eager for knowledge, while the contented ones of the century do not suspect their own ignorance, and are almost proud of staying in it. Yes, the light of astronomy must be diffused throughout the world; it must filter through the strata of humanity to the popular ma.s.ses, enlighten their consciences, elevate their hearts. That will be its most beautiful and its grandest, greatest mission!"
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
V.
THE LIGHT OF THE PAST.
Thus spoke my celestial guide. Her face was glorious as the day, her eyes shone with a starry l.u.s.tre, her voice was like divine music. I looked at the worlds about us revolving in s.p.a.ce, and felt that a mighty harmony controlled the course of Nature.
"Now let us return to the Earth," she said, pointing to the spot where our terrestrial Sun had disappeared. "But look again. You understand now that s.p.a.ce is infinite; you will soon comprehend that time is eternal."
We crossed other constellations and came back toward the solar system. I saw the Sun reappear, looking like a little star.
"For an instant," said she, "I am going to give you, if not divine, at least angelic sight. Your soul shall feel the ethereal vibrations which const.i.tute light itself, and shall know that the history of each world is eternal with G.o.d. To see is to know: behold!"
Just as a microscope shows us an ant as large as an elephant, and penetrates the infinitely small, making the invisible visible, so at the Muse"s command my sight suddenly acquired an unknown power of perception, and distinguished the Earth in s.p.a.ce, very near the Sun, which was in eclipse, and from invisible it became visible.
I recognized it; and as I watched, its disk grew larger, looking like the Moon a few days before the full. After a while I could distinguish the princ.i.p.al geographical aspects in the growing disk,--the snowy patch at the North Pole, the outlines of Europe and Asia, the North Sea, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean. The more steadily I fixed my gaze, the better I could see. Details became more and more perceptible, as if I were gradually changing the lenses of a microscope. I recognized the geographical form of France; but our beautiful country appeared to be entirely green,--from the Rhine to the Ocean, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, as if it were covered with one immense forest. I succeeded, however, better and better in distinguishing the slightest details, for the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Loire, were easily found.
"Pay great attention," murmured my companion.
As she said this, she placed the tips of her slender fingers lightly on my brow, as though she had wished to magnetize my brain and endow my perceptive faculties with still greater power. Then I looked again more intently at the vision, and saw before my eyes Gaul in the time of Julius Caesar. It was during the war of independence aroused by the patriotism of Vercingetorix.
"We are at such a distance from the Earth," said Urania, "that light requires all the time that separates us from Julius Caesar to reach here.
Only the rays of light that left the Earth at that time come to us; and yet light travels at the rate of three hundred thousand kilometres a second. It is fast, very fast, but it is not instantaneous. Astronomers on the Earth, who are observing stars situated as far from them as we are now, do not see them as they really are, but as they were when the rays of light which they see to-day left them; that is to say, as they were more than eighteen centuries ago.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
"One never sees the stars from the Earth, nor from any point in s.p.a.ce, as they are, but as they have been," she continued; "the farther away from them one is, the more behind he is in their history.
"You observe most carefully through the telescope stars which no longer exist. Many of the stars visible to the naked eye are no longer in existence. Many of the nebulae whose substance you a.n.a.lyze through the spectroscope have become suns. Many of your most beautiful red stars are extinct and dead; you would not detect them if you should go to them.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
"The light shed from all the suns which people immensity, the light reflected into s.p.a.ce from all the worlds irradiated by these suns, carries away through the boundless skies photographs of all the centuries every day, every second. Looking at a star, you see it as it was at the time the impression that you receive left it,--just as when you hear a clock strike, you receive the sound after it has left it, and as long after as you are far from it.
"The result is, that the history of all these worlds actually travels through s.p.a.ce, never entirely disappearing; that all past events are present and indestructible in the bosom of the infinite.
"The universe will endure forever. The Earth will come to an end, and some day will be nothing but a tomb. But there will be new suns and new earths, new springs and new smiles, and life will always bloom afresh in the limitless and endless universe.
"I wanted to show you," said she, after a pause, "how eternal time is!
You have felt the infinity of s.p.a.ce, you have understood the grandeur of the universe. Now your celestial journey is over. We must go back to the earth and your own home again.
"For yourself," she added, "know that study is the one source of any intellectual value; be neither rich nor poor; keep yourself from all ambition as well as from all servitude; be independent,--independence is the rarest gift and the first condition of happiness."
Urania was still speaking in her gentle voice; but my brain was so confused by the commotion aroused in it by so many extraordinary scenes that I was seized by a fit of trembling. A shiver ran over me from head to foot, which was probably the cause of my abrupt awakening in a state of great agitation. Alas! the delightful celestial journey had ended.