FOOTNOTES:
[17] Milton, in his Paradise Lost, says that before the fall of our first parents, perpetual spring reigned upon the Earth, but that as soon as Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, angels, with flaming swords, were sent from Heaven to incline the poles of the Earth more than 20 degrees. It is well for us that the angels did not cause them to incline farther, or our seasons would have been still shorter and more defective. Fourier pretends that it would be possible for humanity to produce an effect sufficiently great to set the globe straight upon its axis, and thus restore the equality of the seasons, and perpetual spring. This philosopher forgot to indicate one thing only, the mechanical means by which man is to produce this effect. This theory reminds us of the drowning man who fancied he could save himself by catching hold of his own hair, while he was struggling in the water.
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH.
THAT WHICH HAS TAKEN PLACE UPON THE EARTH WITH REGARD TO THE CREATION OF ORGANIZED BEINGS HAS PROBABLY ALSO TAKEN PLACE IN THE OTHER PLANETS.—THE SUCCESSIVE ORDER OF THE APPEARANCE OF LIVING BEINGS ON OUR GLOBE.—THIS SAME SUCCESSION HAS PROBABLY TAKEN PLACE IN EACH OF THE PLANETS.—PLANETARY MAN.—THE PLANETARY, LIKE THE TERRESTRIAL MAN, IS TRANSFORMED, AFTER DEATH, INTO A SUPERHUMAN BEING, AND PASSES INTO THE ETHER.
WE believe, with M. Camille Flammarion, that organized beings exist in all the planets. But are these beings who live in the distant worlds accompanied, like terrestrial man, by a superior type? This is the subject which we now propose to examine. In the absence of observation analogy is our only means of investigation, and, guided by analogy, we must admit that the processes which have taken place upon the earth, since the epoch of its formation, must have similarly taken place upon all the other planets, the earth's congeners.
We are now perfectly acquainted with the manner in which the vegetable and animal creations have appeared, and succeeded each other upon our globe since its origin. At first the earth was simply a collection of gas, and burning vapour which revolved round the sun. This mass of gas and vapour grew cold by degrees in its passage through space, and first becoming liquid, afterwards assumed the consistency of paste, and ultimately became solid, by a gradual process of refrigeration. Consolidation began on the surface, because the circumference of a sphere is more exposed than the remainder of the mass to refrigerating influences. Then the water and the vapours which still flowed upon the consolidated globe became condensed, and, falling in burning showers upon the hard soil, they formed the first seas.
The proof that the earth's primitive condition was like to a liquid or half paste, is, that if we take a plastic sphere, for instance a slightly fluid ball of quicksilver, and make it turn rapidly upon its axis, we observe that it swells out in the middle, and becomes flat at the two poles, or the extremities of the axis; this is the effect of the centrifugal force engendered by the rotatory motion. Now the earth is depressed at the poles, and slightly swelled out at the equator.