Urania Part 10

This anecdote was written by the celebrated Emmanuel Kant, who had desired to make an inquiry into the facts, and who adds, "What can be alleged against the authenticity of this occurrence?"

Now, Gothenburg is two hundred kilometres from Stockholm. Swedenborg was then in his seventy-second year.

Here is the second fact:--

In 1761 Madame de Marteville, widow of a minister from Holland to Stockholm, received a demand for the sum of twenty-five thousand Dutch florins (ten thousand dollars), from one of her husband's creditors whom she knew her husband had paid, and a second payment of which would greatly embarra.s.s, almost ruin her. It was impossible to find the receipt. She went to see Swedenborg, and a week later she saw her husband in a dream; he showed her the piece of furniture in which the receipt had been placed, together with a hairpin set with twenty diamonds, which she also believed to be lost. "It was at two o'clock in the morning. Greatly elated, she rose, and found everything at the place indicated. Going back to bed, she slept until nine o'clock. About eleven o'clock, M. de Swedenborg was announced. He told her that he saw M. de Marteville's spirit the night before, and that he informed him that he was going to his widow."

And now for the third fact.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

In the month of February, 1772, being in London, Swedenborg sent a note to the Rev. John Wesley (founder of the Wesleyan sect), telling him that he should be very glad to make his acquaintance. The zealous preacher received the note just as he was setting out on a journey, and replied that he should profit by the gracious permission to visit him, on his return, which would be in about six months. Swedenborg answered him "that in that case they would never see each other in this world, as the 29th of the next month was to be the day of his death."

Swedenborg really died on the date mentioned by himself more than a month beforehand.

These are three facts whose authenticity it is impossible to doubt, but which in our present condition of knowledge no one would be able to explain.

We might multiply these _authentic_ accounts indefinitely. Facts a.n.a.logous to those already mentioned of communications from a distance, whether at the moment of death or in the normal condition of life, are not so rare--without, however, being very frequent--but that every one of our readers may have heard such cited, or perhaps have observed them himself in more than one instance. Besides, experiments made in the realms of magnetism show also that under certain ascertained psychological conditions an experimenter can act upon his subject not only at the distance of a few metres, but of several kilometres, and even of more than a hundred kilometres, according to the sensitiveness of the subject, as well as to the intensity of the magnetizer's will.

Moreover, s.p.a.ce is not what we suppose. The distance from Paris to London is great for a walker, and was even insurmountable before the invention of boats; it is nothing for electricity. The distance from the Earth to the Moon is great for our present modes of locomotion; it is nothing for attraction. In fact, from an absolute point of view, the s.p.a.ce which separates us from Sirius is not a greater part of infinity than the distance from Paris to Versailles, or from your left eye to your right.

There is more yet; the separation which seems to us to exist between the Earth and the Moon, or between the Earth and Mars, or even between the Earth and Sirius, is only an illusion due to the insufficiency of our perceptions. The Moon acts constantly upon the Earth, and moves it perpetually. The attraction of Mars for our planet is equally acute, and we in our turn disturb Mars in its course in submitting to the influence of the Moon. We act upon the Sun itself, and make it move as if we touched it. By virtue of attraction, the Moon causes the Earth to turn every month around their common centre of gravity,--a point which travels one thousand seven hundred kilometres below the surface of the globe. The Earth causes the Sun to turn annually around their common centre of gravity, situated four hundred and fifty-six kilometres from the solar centre; all the worlds act upon each other perpetually, so that there is no isolation, no real separation, between them. Instead of being a void separating the worlds from one another, s.p.a.ce is rather a connecting link. Now, if attraction thus establishes a real, perpetual, active, and indisputable communication between the Earth and its sisters in immensity, as proved by the precision of astronomical observations, we do not see by what right pretended positivists can declare that no communication can be possible between two beings, more or less distant from each other, either on the Earth or in two different worlds.

Cannot two brains that vibrate in unison at a distance of many kilometres be moved by the same psychic force? Cannot the emotion which starts from a brain reach a brain vibrating at no matter what distance, just as sound crosses a room, making the strings of a piano or violin vibrate?

Do not forget that our brains are composed of molecules which do not touch, and which are in constant vibration. And why speak of brains?

Cannot thought, will, psychic force, whatever its nature may be, act on a being to whom it is attached by the sympathetic and indissoluble ties of intellectual relationship? Do not the palpitations of a heart suddenly transmit themselves to the heart which beats in unison with ours? Are we to admit in the cases of apparitions noted above that the mind of the dead has really a.s.sumed a corporeal form when near the observer? In the greater part of the cases this hypothesis does not seem necessary. In our dreams we think we see persons who are not before our closed eyes at all. We see them perfectly, as well as in broad daylight; we speak to them, converse with them. Surely it is neither our retina nor our optic nerve which sees them, any more than our ear hears them.

Our cerebral cells alone are concerned in it.

Certain apparitions may be objective, exterior, and substantial; others may be subjective,--in that case the being who manifests himself would act from a distance on the being who sees, and this influence on his brain would determine the interior vision which appears exterior, as in dreams, but may be purely subjective and interior. Just as a thought, a memory, may arouse an image in our minds which may be very distinct and very vivid, just so one intelligence acting upon another may make an image appear in him which will for a moment give him the illusion of reality. It is not the retina which is affected by a positive reality, it is the optic thalami of the brain which are excited. In what way? The present state of our physiological and psychological knowledge does not yet teach us that.

Such are the most rational inductions which it seems possible to derive from the phenomena to which we have just been giving our attention,--unexplained, but very old phenomena; for the histories of all peoples, from the highest antiquity, have preserved examples of it which it would be very difficult to deny or efface. But it will be asked, ought we, can we, admit in our age of experimental methods and positive science that a dying or even a dead man can communicate with any one? What is a dead man?

A human being dies every second on the whole terrestrial globe; that is, eighty-six thousand four hundred per day, about thirty-one millions per year, or more than three milliards per century. In ten centuries more than thirty milliards of corpses have been committed to the earth and given back to general circulation under the form of various products,--water, gas, etc. If we keep an account of the diminution of human population as we count up the historic ages, we find that for ten thousand years, _at least two hundred milliards of human bodies have been formed from the earth and from the atmosphere by respiration and nourishment, and have returned to it_. Molecules of oxygen, hydrogen, carbonic acid, and nitrogen, which have const.i.tuted these bodies, have enriched the earth and been given back to atmospheric circulation.

Yes, the Earth we inhabit is now formed partly of the milliards of brains which have thought, the milliards of organisms who have lived. We walk over the remains of our ancestors as our descendants will walk over ours. The brows of thinkers; eyes which have looked, smiled, and wept; mouths which have sung of love, rosy lips, and marble bosoms; mothers'

flesh and blood; the arms of toilers; the muscles of men, good and bad,--all who have lived, all who have thought, lie in the same earth.

It would be difficult now to take a single step on the planet without walking on the remains of the dead; it would be difficult to breathe without inhaling the breath of the dead. The constructive elements of the body draw upon Nature and are returned to Nature, and each one of us bears in himself atoms which have formerly belonged to other bodies.

Ah, well! Do you think that can be all of humanity? Do you think it may not have left something n.o.bler, grander, and more spiritual? Does each of us give the universe, when we breathe our last, nothing but sixty or eighty kilos of flesh and bone which will disintegrate and return to the elements? Does not the soul which animates us endure by the same right as each molecule of oxygen or nitrogen or iron? And all the souls that have lived, do they not still exist?

We have no right to affirm that man is composed solely of material elements, and that the thinking faculty is only one property of the organization. On the contrary, we have the strongest reasons for admitting that the soul is an individual ent.i.ty, that it is that which governs the molecules to organize the living form of the human body.

What becomes of the invisible and intangible molecules which have composed our body during life? They will belong to new bodies. What becomes of the equally invisible and intangible souls? It may be thought that they also reincarnate themselves in new organisms, each in accordance with its nature, its faculties, and its destiny.

The soul belongs to the psychic world. Doubtless there is on the Earth an innumerable quant.i.ty of souls, still heavy and coa.r.s.e, barely freed from matter, and incapable of conceiving intellectual realities. But there are others who live in study, in contemplation, in the culture of the psychic or spiritual world. Those cannot remain imprisoned on the Earth, and their destiny is to live the Uranian life.

The Uranian soul, even during its terrestrial incarnations, lives in the world of the absolute and divine. It knows that, though dwelling on the Earth, it is really in heaven, and that our planet is a star of heaven.

What is the inner nature of the soul? What are its ways of manifestation? When does its memory become permanent, and maintain with certainty a conscious ident.i.ty? Under what variety of forms and substances can it live? What extent of s.p.a.ce can it overcome? What is the order of intellectual relationship which exists among the different planets of the same system? What is the germinating force which sows the world with seed? When can we put ourselves in communication with the neighboring earths? When shall we penetrate the profound secret of destiny? Mystery and ignorance to-day. _But the unknown of yesterday is the truth of to-morrow._

[Ill.u.s.tration]

It is an historic and scientific fact, and absolutely incontestable, that in all ages, among all peoples, and under the most diverse religious manifestations, the idea of immortality rests invulnerable at the base of human consciousness. Education has given it a thousand forms, but did not invent it. It exists of itself. Every human being coming into the world brings with him, under a form more or less vague, this inner feeling, this desire, this hope.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

II.

ITER EXTATIc.u.m CLESTE.

The hours and days that I devoted to the study of these psychological and telepathical questions did not prevent my observing Mars through the telescope, and taking geographical drawings of it, every time that our atmosphere, so often cloudy, would permit. Besides, it may be realized that while in the study of Nature and in science all questions are related to each other, yet that astronomy and psychology are most closely united to each other, since the psychic universe has the material world for its habitat, while astronomy has for its object the study of the regions of eternal life, and we could form no idea of these regions if we did not know them astronomically. In fact, whether we know it or not, we are living now, at this moment, in heavenly regions, and all beings, whatever they may be, are eternally citizens of heaven. It was not without a secret divination of things that antiquity made Urania the Muse of all the sciences.

My mind had been occupied with the planet Mars for a long time, when one day, in a solitary ramble on the edge of a wood, after several hours of July heat, I seated myself at the foot of a clump of oak-trees, and was not long in dropping off to sleep.

The heat was overpowering, the landscape silent, the Seine seemed quiet as a ca.n.a.l at the bottom of the valley. I was strangely surprised on waking up after a few minutes' nap at no longer recognizing the landscape nor the trees, nor the river flowing at the foot of the hill, nor the undulating meadows which stretched far away to the distant horizon. The setting sun was smaller than we are accustomed to see it, the air thrilled with harmonious sounds unknown to Earth, and insects as large as birds were fluttering about on the leafless trees, which were covered with gigantic red flowers. Astonishment made me spring up with so energetic a bound that I found myself on my feet feeling singularly light and buoyant. I had taken but a few steps before it seemed to me that more than half the weight of my body had evaporated during my sleep. This inner sensation struck me even more forcibly than the metamorphosis of Nature spread out before me.

I could hardly believe my eyes or senses. Besides, my eyes were not at all the same. I did not hear in the same way, and I realized at once that my organization had developed several new senses quite different from those of our terrestrial body, especially a magnetic sense, by which one being can communicate with another without the necessity of translating thoughts audibly by words. This sense reminds one of the magnetic needle, which, from a cellar in the Paris Observatory, starts and shivers when an aurora borealis appears in Siberia, or when an electric explosion breaks out in the Sun.

The orb of day had just sunk in a distant lake, and the rosy gleams of twilight were hovering far down the sky, like a last dream of light. Two moons were beginning to shed their rays at different heights: the first, a crescent, hung over the lake in whose bosom the Sun had disappeared; the second, in its first quarter, was much higher, and towards the east.

They were very small, and but distantly resembled the immense torch of our earthly nights. It seemed as if they shed their bright but feeble rays regretfully. I looked from one to the other in utter bewilderment.

Perhaps the strangest thing in all this strange spectacle was that the western moon, which was about three times as large as its companion in the east, although five times smaller than our terrestrial moon, travelled through the sky with a motion very easy to follow with the eye, and seemed to speed quickly from right to left to join its celestial sister in the west.

A third moon, or rather a brilliant star, could also be seen in the last beams of the setting Sun, which were dying away. Smaller than the smallest of the satellites, it showed no appreciable disk, but its light was dazzling. It looked out from the evening sky as Venus in her most brilliant season beams in our own heavens, when the "shepherd's star"

reigns like a queen over balmy evenings in spring, and weaves the fabric of happy dreams.

The more brilliant stars were already lighting up the sky. I recognized Arcturus with its golden rays, Vega so white and pure, the seven stars of the Septentrion, and several of the zodiacal constellations. The evening star, the new vesper, was shining in the constellation of the Fishes. After having studied its position in the heavens for a few moments, and finding out by the constellations where I was myself; after examining the two satellites and reflecting on the lightness of my own body,--I was convinced that I was on the planet Mars, and that the beautiful evening star was--the Earth!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

My eyes rested on it with that feeling of mournful love which thrills the fibres of our hearts when our thoughts fly away to a beloved object from whom we are separated by cruel distance; for a long time I looked at that fatherland where so many different feelings meet and jostle each other, and I thought,--

"What a pity it is that the numberless human beings living on that little habitation do not know where they are! That little Earth is most beautiful thus lighted up by the Sun, with its microscopic moon which looks like a speck beside it. Borne through the invisible by the divine laws of attraction, a floating atom in the harmony of the skies, it fills its place and hovers overhead like an angelic island! But its inhabitants are unaware of it! Singular humanity! They find the Earth too wide, so divide themselves up into flocks, and spend their time shooting one another. In that angelic isle there are as many soldiers as there are male inhabitants; they are all in arms against one another, and think it glorious to change the names of countries and the colors of flags, when it would have been so simple a matter to live peacefully.

War is the favorite occupation of its nations, and the primordial education of the people. Aside from that, they spend their existence in adoring matter. They do not appreciate intellectual worth, are indifferent to the most wonderful problems of creation, and live an objectless life! What a pity! A citizen of Paris who had never heard the city's name mentioned, nor that of France, would not be more of a stranger than they in their own country. Ah! if they could but see the Earth from here! How delighted they would be to return to it, and how transformed all their ideas would be, both general and individual! Then they would at least know the land they live in; it would be a beginning,--they would study progressively the sublime truths about it, instead of vegetating under a horizonless fog, and after a while they would live the true life, the intellectual life."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"What honor he pays it! One would think he had left friends in that prison yonder!"

I had not spoken, but I distinctly heard this sentence, which seemed like a reply to my inward conversation. Two of the dwellers upon Mars were looking at and had understood me, by virtue of that sixth sense of magnetic perception to which I before alluded. I was somewhat confused, and, I must confess, deeply wounded, by this apostrophe. "After all," I thought, "I love the Earth; it is my country, and I am patriotic." My two neighbors both began to laugh.

"Yes," answered one of them, with unexpected good-nature, "you are patriotic; any one might know that you have just come from the Earth."