III.
THE INFINITE VARIETY OF BEINGS.
The tricolored system had long since disappeared in our upward flight.We were passing through the neighborhood of a great many worlds whichwere very different from our Earth. Some of them appeared to be entirelycovered with water, and peopled by aquatic beings; others, occupiedentirely by plants. We stopped near several of them. What unimaginablevariety! The inhabitants of one of them seemed to me especiallybeautiful. Urania apprised me of the fact that their organization wastotally different from that of the children of Earth, and that thosehuman beings could discern the physico-chemical operations which takeplace in the maintenance of the body. In our earthly organism we do notsee, for example, how the food absorbed is assimilated,--how the blood,tissues, and bones renew themselves; all functions are fulfilledinstinctively, without thought perceiving it. Thus man suffers from athousand maladies whose origin is hidden, and often undiscoverable.There the human being feels the action of his vital nourishment as wefeel pleasure or pain. A nerve starts from every particle of his body,so to speak, which transmits the different impressions it receives tothe brain. If terrestrial man were endowed with such a nervous system,looking into his organism through the intermediary of the nerves, hewould see how food transforms itself into chyle, the latter into blood,blood into flesh, muscular, nervous substance, etc.: he would seehimself! But we are very far from that, the centre of our perceptionsbeing obstructed by nerves, thickened by cerebral lobes and opticthalami.
On another globe which we crossed during the night--that is to say, onthe side of its nocturnal hemisphere--human eyes are so constructed asto be _luminous_, and shine as though some phosphorescent emanationradiated from their strange centres. A night meeting comprising a largenumber of these persons presents an extremely fantastic appearance,because the brilliancy, as well as the color, of the eyes changes withthe different passions by which they are swayed. More than that, thepower of their glance is such that they exert an _electric_ and magneticinfluence of variable intensity, and which under certain conditions hasthe effect of lightning, causing the victim upon whom the force andenergy of their will is fixed to fall dead.
A little farther away my celestial guide pointed out a world in whichorganisms enjoy a precious faculty: the soul may change its body withoutpassing through the often disagreeable and always sad experience ofdeath. A savant who has labored all his life for the instruction ofmankind, and feels that his end is drawing near before he has been ableto complete his noble undertaking, can change bodies with a youth, andbegin a new life still more useful than the first. The young man'sconsent and the magnetic manipulation of a competent physician aresufficient for the transmigration. Sometimes it happens that two personsunited by the sweet, strong ties of love effect such an exchange ofbodies after a union of many years,--the husband's soul takes the wife'sbody, and conversely, for the rest of their existence. The inmostexperience of life becomes incomparably more complete for each of them.Savants and historians desirous of living two centuries instead of one,are seen to fall into a long artificial winter's sleep, which suspendstheir lives for half of each year, and even more. Some even succeed inliving three times longer than the normal life of centenarians.
A few seconds later, crossing another system, we met a kind of organismstill more different from ours, and assuredly far superior. With theinhabitants of the planet we were then looking at,--a world lighted by abrilliant hydrogenized sun,--thought is not obliged to pass throughspeech to be understood. How many times has it not happened when abright or transcendent idea came into our minds, and we wanted to utterit or write it out, that just as we were about to speak or write, wefelt that it was slipping away, flying from us, confused ormetamorphosed into something else? The inhabitants of this planet have asixth sense, which might be called magneto-telegraphic, by virtue ofwhich, when the author is not disinclined, the thought becomes outwardlymanifest, and can be read upon a feature which occupies very much thesame place as a forehead. These silent conversations are often thedeepest and most enjoyable,--always the most sincere.
We are innocently disposed to believe that the human organism isperfect, and leaves nothing on earth to be desired; but for all thathave we not often regretted being obliged to listen, in spite ofourselves, to disagreeable words, absurd speeches, a sermon verbose withemptiness, bad music, slander, or calumny? Our grammars vainly pretendthat we can "close our ears" to these speeches; unfortunately there isno such thing. You cannot shut your ears as you can your eyes. I wasvery much surprised to find a planet where Nature had not forgotten thissalutary provision. As we stopped there for an instant, Urania pointedout ears which closed like eyelids. "There is very much less anger andvexation here than with you," said she; "but the wranglings ofpolitical parties are much more sharp and vociferous, adversariesare unwilling to listen to disputes, and succeed effectually,notwithstanding the speakers may be most loquacious."
On another world, in which phosphorus plays a large part, whoseatmosphere is constantly electrified, whose temperature is very high,and where the inhabitants have no sufficient reason for inventingwearing apparel, certain passions manifest themselves by theillumination of some part of the body. It is the same thing on a largescale that we see in our terrestrial meadows on a smaller one in mildsummer evenings when glow-worms silently manifest themselves, and thenwaste away in a soft, amorous flame. It is very curious to observe theappearance of these luminous couples in the evening in populous cities.The color of the phosphorescence differs in the sexes, and its intensityvaries with the age and temperament. The stronger sex burns with a moreor less ardent red flame, and the gentler sex with a bluish light,sometimes pale and diaphanous. Our glow-worms, however, give but a veryfaint and rudimentary idea respecting the nature of the impressionsexperienced by these peculiar beings. I could not believe my eyes whenwe were passing through the atmosphere of this planet. But I was stillmore surprised on arriving at the satellite of this unique world. Thatwas a solitary moon, lighted by a kind of twilight sun. A sombre valleylay before us. From the trees scattered on both slopes of the valleyhung human beings enveloped in shrouds. They had tied themselves to thebranches by their hair, and were sleeping in the deepest silence. What Ihad taken for grave-clothes was a covering formed from the growth oftheir bleached and tangled locks. As I was wondering at this marvellousspectacle Urania told me this was their usual mode of interment andresurrection. Yes, on this world human beings enjoyed the organicfaculty of those insects which have the gift of going to sleep in achrysalis state, and metamorphosing themselves into winged butterflies.It is like a double human race; and the beings in the first phase, eventhe coarsest and most material of them, need but to die to rise again inthe most splendid of transformations. Each year in this world representsabout two hundred terrestrial years. Two thirds of the year is lived inthe lower condition, one third (winter) in the chrysalis state, and thefollowing spring the sleepers feel life coming back to their transformedflesh; they stir, awaken, leave their fleecy coverings on the trees, andfreeing themselves from them, fly away, wonderful winged creatures, toaerial regions, there to live for a new Phoenician year,--that is, fortwo hundred years of our swiftly moving planet.
We crossed a great number of planets in this way, and it seemed asthough all eternity would not be long enough to admit of my enjoyingthese creations unknown to earth; but my guide barely left me time torealize this, and still new suns and new worlds were appearing. We werevery near striking against some transparent comets in our rapid flight,that were wandering about like a breath from one system to another, andmore than once I felt myself strongly attracted toward wonderful planetswith fresh landscapes, whose occupants would have been new objects ofstudy. And yet the celestial Muse bore me on without fatigue stillhigher, still farther away, until at last we came to what seemed to methe confines of the universe. The suns grew more rare, less luminous,paler; darkness was more intense between the stars; and we were soon inthe midst of an actual desert, the thousands of mi
llions of stars whichconstitute the universe visible from the Earth being far distant:everything had faded to a little, lonely Milky Way in empty infinity.
"At last we have reached the very limits of creation!" I cried.
"Look!" she replied, pointing to the zenith.