Urania

by Camille Flammarion

Among the terrestrial souls floating about in the atmosphere of Mars he had already met Icléa's (for souls feel each other), who had followed him, guided by a constant attraction. She on her part had felt inclined towards a masculine incarnation. Thus they were reunited, in one of the most privileged countries in that world, neighbors and predestined to meet again in life, to share the same emotions, the same thoughts, the same works; thus, although the memory of their earthly life remained veiled and as if effaced by the new transformation, yet a vague feeling of spiritual relationship and an immediate sympathetic attachment had reunited them as soon as they saw each other. Their psychic superiority, the nature of their habitual thoughts, their condition of mind, accustomed to seek ends and causes, had given them both a kind of inward clairvoyance which freed them from the general ignorance of the living. They had fallen in love with each other so suddenly, they had yielded so passively to the magnetic influence of the thunder-clap of their meeting, that they soon formed but a single being, united as at the time of their earthly separation. They remembered that they had met before, and were sure that it must have been on the Earth,—that neighboring planet which shines in the evening so brilliantly in the sky of Mars; and sometimes, in their solitary flights over the little hills peopled with aerial plants, they contemplated the "evening star," trying to re-tie the broken thread of an interrupted tradition.

An unexpected event explained their reminiscences, and proved that they were not mistaken.

The inhabitants of Mars are very superior to those of Earth by their organizations, by the number and delicacy of their senses, and by their intellectual faculties.

The fact that density is very slight on the surface of that world, and that the constituent particles of bodies are less heavy there than here, has permitted the formation of beings of incomparably less weight, more aerial, more delicate, more sensitive. The fact that the atmosphere is nutritive has freed Martial organisms from the coarseness of earthly needs. It is an entirely different state of things. The light there is less bright, that planet being farther from the Sun than we, and the optic nerve is more sensitive. Electric and magnetic influences being very intense, the inhabitants possess senses unknown to terrestrial organizations,—senses which put them into communication with these influences. Everything is evenly balanced in Nature. Beings are everywhere adapted to their surroundings and to the soil from which they spring. Organisms can no more be earthly on Mars than they could be aerial at the bottom of the sea. More than that, the condition of superiority generated by this nature of things is developed of itself by the facility by which all intellectual work is accomplished. Nature seems to obey thought. The architect desirous of erecting a building, the engineer who wants to change the surface of the ground, either to lower or to raise, to cut down mountains or fill up valleys, does not strike against material weight and material difficulties, as he does here. Art, too, has made the most rapid progress from the beginning.

And yet more. Martial humanity, being several hundreds of thousands of years older than terrestrial humanity, went through all the phases of its development before we did; our real scientific progress, even the most transcendent, is but a child's foolish toy, compared to the science of the inhabitants of that planet. In astronomy, especially, they are incomparably more advanced than we, and know the Earth much better than we know their home. They have invented, among other things, a kind of tele-photographic apparatus, in which a roll of stuff constantly receives the picture of our world, and is impressed by it unalterably as it unrolls. An immense museum, devoted especially to the planets of the solar system, preserves all these photographic pictures, fixed forever in chronological order.

All the Earth's history is to be found there,—France in the time of Charlemagne, Greece in the days of Alexander, Egypt under Rameses. By the microscope the smallest details can be made out, such as Paris during the French Revolution, Rome under the pontificate of Borgia, Christopher Columbus's Spanish fleet reaching America, the Francs of Clovis taking possession of the Gauls, Julius Cæsar's army stopped in its conquest of England by the tide which washed away his ships, the troops of King David, the founder of standing armies, as well as most historic scenes, recognizable from special characters of their own.

One day, when the two friends were visiting the museum, their reminiscences, which had been thus far very vague, were brightened, like a landscape at night, by a flash of lightning. Suddenly they recognized the appearance of Paris during the Exposition of 1867. Their memory became more definite. They each felt, individually, that they had lived there; and under this strong impression they also felt sure that they had lived there together. Their memory gradually grew clearer, not by interrupted gleams, but rather as the light grows stronger from the beginning of dawn.

Then they both remembered, as if by inspiration, that sentence of Scripture: "In my Father's house are many mansions;" and this other, from Jesus to Nicodemus: "Verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... Ye must be born again."

From that day they never doubted their former earthly existence, but were convinced that they were continuing on the planet Mars the life they had lived before. They belonged to the cycle of the great minds of all ages, who know that human destiny does not end with the present world, but continues in heaven, and who also know that each planet—Mars, the Earth, or any other—is a star of heaven.

The rather singular fact of the change of sex, which seemed to me to be very important, was really without any weight whatever. Spero told me that souls, contrary to our ideas, have no sex, and that their destinies are the same. I also learned that on that planet, so much less material than our own, organisms have no resemblance whatever to terrestrial bodies. Conceptions and births are effected in another way, which reminds one, but under a more spiritual form, of the fecundation and blooming of flowers. Pleasure has no bitterness. Heavy earthly burdens and the anguish of grief are unknown there. Everything there is more aerial, more ethereal, and less material. The Martials might be called winged, sentient, living flowers; but in fact no earthly being can serve as comparison to aid us in imagining their form and manner of existence.