But, as I have said, we were approaching one of the worlds belonging to the system of the sapphire sun. Everything was blue,—landscapes, water, plants, rocks,—slightly greenish on the side lighted by the second sun, and hardly touched by the rays of the orange sun, which was rising on the distant horizon. As we floated into the atmosphere of this world a soft, delicious music was wafted into the air like a perfume, a dream. Never had I heard anything like it. The sweet, deep, distant melody seemed to come from a choir of harps and violins, strengthened by an accompaniment of organs. It was an exquisite anthem, which charmed at once; it needed no analyzing to be understood; it filled the soul with ecstasy. It seemed to me that I could have lingered there listening for an eternity. I was so fearful of losing a single note that I dared not speak to my guide. Urania noticed it; stretching out her hand toward a lake, she pointed to a group of winged beings who were hovering over the blue waters.
They had not the earthly human form. They were beings who had evidently been created to live in air. They seemed woven out of light. At a distance I thought they were dragon-flies; they had their slender, graceful shape, the same wide wings, quickness, and lightness. But on examining them more closely I noticed their height, which was not inferior to our own, and realized from the expression of their eyes that they were not animals. Their heads were very like that of the dragon-fly, and like those aerial creatures they had no legs. The delicious music to which I had been listening was but the noise of their flight. They were very numerous,—perhaps many thousands.
From the mountain-tops could be seen plants which were neither trees nor flowers, whose slender stalks rose to an enormous height; the branched stems bearing, as though with outstretched arms, great tulip-shaped cups. These plants were alive, or as much so as our sensitive growths, perhaps more, and like the desmodium, with its moving leaves, showed their internal impressions by their motions. These groves formed actual vegetable cities. The inhabitants of this world had no other dwellings, but reposed among the fragrant sensitive-plants when not floating in the air.
"This seems a very strange world to you," said Urania; "you are wondering what kinds of ideas, habits, or history these people could have,—what kinds of arts, literature, and sciences. It would take a long time to answer all the questions you might ask. Know only that their eyes are superior to your finest telescopes; that their nervous system vibrates at the passing of a comet, and discovers by an electric sense facts which you on the Earth will never know. The organs which you see under their wings serve as hands, more skilful than yours. Instead of printing, they take the direct photography of events and the phonetic impression of words. They care very little for anything but scientific research; that is to say, the study of Nature. The three passions which absorb the greater part of earthly life—eager greed for fortune, political ambition, and love—are unknown to them, because they require nothing to live on, there are no international divisions nor government, except a council of administration, and because they are androgynous."
"Androgynous!" I repeated; and ventured to add, "Is that best?"
"It is different. It is a great deal of trouble saved to a humanity."
"To be in a condition to understand the infinite diversity displayed in the different phases of creation," she continued, "it is necessary to cast aside all terrestrial feelings and ideas. Just as the species of your planet have changed in succeeding ages from the uncouth creatures of the first geological periods to the appearance of man, and as even now the animal and vegetable population of the Earth is still composed of the most widely varying forms, from man to the coral, from bird to fish, from an elephant to a butterfly, so on an incomparably vaster scale the forces of Nature have given birth to an infinite diversity of beings and things throughout the innumerable worlds of heaven. The form of its occupant is the result in each world of some element peculiar to that globe,—substance, heat, light, electricity, density, weight. Shape, functions, the number of the senses,—you have but five, and they are rather poor ones,—depend on the vital conditions of each sphere. Life is earthly on the Earth, Martial on Mars, Saturnian on Saturn, Neptunian on Neptune,—that is to say, appropriate to each habitation; or, to express it better, more strictly speaking, produced and developed by each world according to its organic condition, and following a primordial law which all Nature obeys,—the law of progress."
