We shall not be expected to delineate the form of the dwellers in the realms of ether. We can only say, that, as ether is an excessively subtle and rarefied fluid, it necessarily follows that the superhuman being who is to float and fly in its light masses, must be wonderfully light, must be composed of extraordinary subtle substances. A slight material tissue, animated by life, a vaporous, diaphanous drapery of living matter, such do we represent the superhuman being to our fancy.
How is this body supported? Does it need food for its maintenance, like the bodies of men and of animals? We may reply with confidence that food—that tyrannous obligation of the human and the animal species—is spared to the inhabitants of the planetary ether. Their bodies must be supported and refreshed by mere respiration of the fluid in which they exist.
Let us consider the immense space occupied in the lives of animals by their need of alimentation. Many animals, especially those which live in the water, have an incessant need of food. They must eat always, without intermission, or they die of inanition. Among superior animals, the necessity for eating and drinking is less imperious, because the respiratory function comes to their aid, bringing into the body, by the absorption of oxygen and a small proportion of azote, a certain amount of reparative element, as a supplement to alimentary substances. Man profits largely by this advantage. Our respiration is a function of the highest importance, and it bears a great share in the reparation of all our organs. The oxygen which our blood borrows from the air in breathing, contributes largely to our nutrition. The respiratory function in birds is very active, and the organs which exercise it are largely developed, and in their nutrition also oxygen counts largely, and takes the place of a certain quantity of food.
It is our belief that the respiration of the ether in which he lives, suffices for the support of the material body of the superhuman being, and that the necessity for eating and drinking has no place in his existence.
I do not know whether my reader forms an exact conception of the consequences which would result from the theory, that the superhuman beings whom we are contemplating are exempted from all need of food. Those consequences will be most readily comprehended, if we consider that it is the pressing obligation of procuring food which renders the lives of animals so miserable. Forced incessantly to seek their subsistence, animals are entirely given up to this grovelling occupation; thence come their passions, their quarrels, and their sufferings. It is much the same in the case of man, though in a less degree. The necessity for providing for the aliment of every day, the obligation of earning his daily bread—as the popular phrase has it—is the great cause of the labours and the sufferings of the human species. Supposing that man could live, develop himself, and sustain his life without eating—that the mere respiration of air would supply the waste of his organs—what a revolution would be effected in human society. Hateful passions, wars, and rivalries would disappear from the earth. The golden age, dreamed of by the poets, would be the certain consequence of such an organic disposition.
This blessing of nature, refused to man, assuredly belongs to the superhuman being. We may conclude also that the evil passions, which are a sad attribute of our species, would be unknown in the home of these privileged creatures. Released from the toil of seeking their food, living and repairing their functions by the mere effect of respiration—an involuntary and unconscious act (as the circulation of the blood and absorption are unconscious acts in men and animals)—the inhabitants of the ethereal spaces must be able to abandon themselves exclusively to impressions of unmixed happiness and serenity.
The forces of our body become rapidly exhausted; we cannot exercise our functions for a certain time without experiencing fatigue. In order to transport ourselves from one place to another, to carry burthens, to go up or down any height, to walk, we are obliged to expend these forces, and lassitude immediately ensues. We cannot exercise the faculty of thought for more than a certain time. At the end of a short period attention fails, and thought is suspended. In short, our corporeal machine, beautifully ordered, is subject to a thousand derangements, which we call diseases.
From the sense of fatigue, from the continual menace of illness by organic derangement, the dwellers in the ether are free. Rest is not for them, as for us, a necessity ensuing on exercise. The body of the superhuman being, inaccessible to fatigue, does not need repose. Unembarrassed by the mechanism of a complicated machine, it subsists and sustains itself by the unaided force of the life which animates it. Its sole physiological function, probably, is the inhalation of ether, a function which, it is easy to conceive, may be exercised without the aid of numerous organs, if we see a whole class of animals—the Batrachian—for whose respiration the bare and simple skin suffices.
If we admit, that the only function which the superhuman being has to exercise is that of respiration, the extreme simplicity of his body will be easily understood. The numerous and complicated organs and apparatus which exist in the bodies of men and animals, have for their object the exercise of the functions of nutrition and reproduction. These functions being suppressed in the creature whom we are considering, his body must be proportionably lightened. Everything is reduced to respiration, and the preservation and maintenance of the faculties of the soul; all is in harmony with those ends. We admire, with good reason, the wise mechanism of the bodies of men and animals; but, if human anatomy reveals prodigies in our structure, marvellous provision in securing the preservation of the individual and his reproduction, what infinitely greater marvels would, if we were but permitted to study it, be revealed by the organization of the body of the superhuman being, in which everything is calculated to secure the maintenance and the perfection of the soul. With what astonishment should we learn the use and the purpose of the different parts of that glorious body, discover the relations of resemblance or of origin between the living economy of the human, and the living economy of the superhuman being, and divine the relations which might exist between the organs of the superhuman being and those which he should assume in another life, still superior, in which he should be the same being, again resuscitated in new glory and fuller perfection!
The special organization of the being whom we are describing would give him the power of transporting himself in a very short space of time from one place to another, and of traversing great distances with extraordinary rapidity. We are but simple human beings, and yet by thought we devour space, and travel, in a twinkling, from one end of the globe to another; may we not therefore believe that the bodies of superhuman beings, in whom the spiritual principle is dominant, are endowed with the privilege of passing from one point in space to another, with a rapidity which the speed of electricity enables us to measure?