We did not recollect that we had known one another before, during our terrestrial life, but we often felt attracted to one another by peculiar intellectual sympathies. Now that he has returned, like myself, into the world of spirits, he also remembers the singular republic of Orion and can see it. Yes, this is very curious, but it is quite true. You have no idea, on your poor planet, of the unimaginable diversity which separates the worlds in their geological, as much as in their physiological organisations.
Sense of sight in spirits.
These conversations may serve to throw light on your knowledge of this general truth, so important in the conception of the universe. But the scientific service that these conversations can specially render you is in making you understand that light is the mode of transmission of universal history. With the powerful visual faculty which we enjoy here, we can distinguish the surface of distant worlds. The eye of our "perisprit" is not identical with the bodily eye. In the terrestrial sight the rays diverge, so that a very small object, placed quite near the eye fills the interval of the two rays, whilst at a greater distance, a larger object is necessary to fill the space, proportionately increased, which separates the same rays. In our eye, on the contrary, the visual rays enter in parallel lines, so that we see each object in its real proportions, and in its normal size, its apparent size being quite unaffected by distance. We do not see the whole of large objects, but only sections of them proportioned to the openings of our special retina, but these parts are seen by us with equal clearness at any distance (when there is no atmosphere to veil this distance).
A tree in a prairie on a celestial body, as far as Theta of Orion is from Capella, is perfectly visible to us. On the other hand, in accordance with the law of the successive transmission of the rays of light, all the events in nature, and the history of all the worlds, are depicted in space as a universal tableau, the most true and the most magnificent in all nature.
Infinite diversity in Sirius.
As these conversations will have shown you, I have traversed a great many different celestial countries, and have actually studied creation without fixing myself in any place. I hope in the course of the next century to be reincarnated on a world dependent on the train of Sinus. The humanity there is more beautiful than that of the Earth. Birth is effected by means of an organic system less ridiculous and less brutal than that of the Earth.
But the most remarkable characteristic of the life on this world is, that there men perceive the physico-chemical operations which take place for the maintenance of the body. From each molecule of the body, so to speak, proceeds a nerve which transmits to the brain the various impressions that it receives, so that the soul absolutely knows its body, and rules over it as a sovereign.
Vegetable life in Aldebaran.
There is an immense variety amongst the worlds. On one of the planets of the system of Aldebaran, very curious from this point of view, the vegetables are all composed of a substance analogous to the loadstone, because silica and magnesia predominate in its constitution. The animals feed on this substance only. Most of the beings inhabiting this world are incombustible.