[6] Quoted by Flammarion in his "Pluralité des mondes habités."
[7] See "Le Soleil," by M. A. Guillemin, pp. 194-208.
CHAPTER THE NINTH.
THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN ARE PURELY SPIRITUAL BEINGS.—THE SOLAR RAYS ARE EMANATIONS FROM THE SPIRITUAL BEINGS WHO LIVE IN THE SUN.—THESE BEINGS THUS PRODUCE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE UPON THE EARTH.—THE CONTINUITY OF SOLAR RADIATION, INEXPLICABLE BY PHYSICISTS, EXPLAINED BY THE EMANATION FROM THE SOULS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN.—THE WORSHIP OF FIRE, AND THE ADORATION OF THE SUN AMONG DIFFERENT PEOPLES, ANCIENT AND MODERN.
FROM the discussion of physical astronomy contained in the preceding chapters, we have concluded, with MM. Kirchhoff and Faye, that the sun is a mass of burning gases. But, our readers will ask, if this be so—if the sun is a gaseous incandescent mass, or a globe of matter in a state of fusion, surrounded by an atmosphere of burning gas, where do you place its inhabitants, and under what form do you picture them?
We have already said, that at each step of their promotion in the hierarchy, the creatures who live in the planetary spaces and have succeeded to the superhuman being, grow in perfection, their senses are multiplied, their intellectual power is considerably extended. In proportion as the creature, who in the beginning was human, is raised by successive deaths and resurrections in the scale of inter-planetary being, the material substance, which, united to its spiritual principle, formed its radiant individuality, is diminished. In further exposition of our system, we must state our belief that this superior being, when he has been sufficiently perfected and exalted, by his different incarnations, by the multiplied stages in the immensity of the heavens, finally becomes pure spirit. When he attains the sun, he is free from all material substance, from all carnal alloy. He is a flame, a breath; all is intelligence, sentiment, thought, in him; nothing impure is mingled with his perfect essence. He is an absolute soul, a soul without a body. The gaseous and burning mass of which the sun is composed is, therefore, appropriate to receive these quintessential beings. A throne of fire is a fitting throne for souls.
We might even go further, and maintain that not only is the sun the asylum and receptacle of souls which have finished the course of their peregrinations in this world, but that it is nothing else than a collection of those souls which have come to it from the other planets, after having passed through the intermediate states which we have described. The sun may be only an aggregation of souls.