FOOTNOTES:
[5] Represented by the French word hectare.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
THE SUN THE DEFINITIVE ABODE OF SOULS WHO HAVE ATTAINED THE HIGHEST RANK IN THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY.—THE SUN THE FINAL AND COMMON DWELLING OF SOULS WHO HAVE COME FROM THE EARTH.—THE PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION OF THE SUN.—THE SUN IS A MASS OF BURNING GASES.
THE fundamental importance of the sun in the general economy of our world being finally established, our readers will not be surprised to hear that we assign that radiant and sublime abode to the human souls released from the earth, and successively purified and perfected by the long series of their multiplied incarnations in the bosom of the interplanetary spaces. Some philosophers have perceived this truth. The astronomer Bode placed the most elevated intelligences in the sun. "The happy creatures which inhabit this privileged abode," he says, "have no need of the alternate succession of day and night; a pure and unextinguishable light illumines it for ever. In the centre of the light of the sun, they enjoy perfect security, under the shelter of the wings of the Almighty."[6] Under what form may we picture to our fancy the inhabitants of the sun? We cannot answer this question without being acquainted with the geography of the sun, or as astronomers call it, his physical constitution, which differs essentially from that of the planets, of their satellites, and of the comets. He is unique in his position and office in the planetary system,—he must therefore be specially constituted. What is this special constitution? What is the geography of the sun?
Would that it were in our power to reply to this question with precision; would that we could describe the configuration of the sun. Unhappily, science has not yet reached that point. The problem of the sun's true nature is full of uncertainty. Astronomers are divided between two opposite theories, and that which seems to be the best supported, is too recent to be set forth in a dogmatic fashion. We can only summarize the actual condition of our knowledge on this question, explain the theory which seems conformable to ascertained facts, and applying it to the subject on which we are engaged, endeavour to deduce the physical condition, which, in our opinion, would belong to the inhabitants of the king-star.
Until the great epoch of the discovery of the telescope, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in the time of Keppler and Galileo, only vague and arbitrary ideas respecting the sun prevailed. The educated, as well as the vulgar, beheld in it merely a globe of fire; the most learned declared that they found in it pure fire, elementary fire, the principle of light, and of fire. But as no means existed of examining the surface of the sun, and as his real distance from the earth was either unknown, or very imperfectly understood, a prudent reserve was maintained on this question. The discovery of the telescope immediately placed the astronomers in possession of the celestial realm; it enabled them to sound the depths of space, and to study the apparent configuration of the stars, including the sun himself. A few hours' observation with the astronomical spy-glass, and more was learned of the nature of the sun, than in the two thousand years of more or less philosophical reverie which preceded the discovery of the telescope.