Besides, the image of a star, borne upon the wings of light, goes into the unfathomable depths of the mysterious abysses of space.
Vast regions exist without stars.
Vast regions exist in space without stars, regions decimated by time, whence worlds have been successively removed by the attraction of exterior suns. The image of a star in crossing these dark abysses, would be in a condition analogous to that of a person, or object, that the photographer had forgotten and left in the camera.
It is not impossible that such images encounter in these vast spaces an obscure star (celestial mechanics state the existence of many such) in a special condition whose surface (formed perhaps of iodine, if one is to credit spectral analysis) would be sensitised, and capable of fixing upon itself the image of this far-off world.
Thus terrestrial events might be printed upon a dark globe. And if this globe turns upon itself, like other celestial bodies, it would present successively its different zones to the terrestrial image, and would thus take a sort of continuous photograph of successive events.
Images of this world's events photographed spirally upon other globes in space.
Following moreover, in ascending, or descending, a perpendicular line to its equator, the line where the images were reproduced would no longer be described in a circle, but in a spiral; and after the first movement of rotation was finished, the new images would not coincide with the old ones, nor superimpose them, but would follow above and below. The imagination could now suppose that this world is not spherical, but cylindrical, and thus see in space an imperishable column around which would be engraved the great events of the world's history.
I have not myself seen this realisation. It is so short a time since I left the Earth, that I have barely done more than glance superficially at these celestial marvels. Before long I shall seek to verify this fact, and see if its reality does not form a part of the infinite richness of the astral creations.
Quærens. If the ray which leaves the Earth is never destroyed, master, our actions are then eternal?
Lumen. Certainly they are.