IX.

The human being has for essential principle the soul. The body is visible and transitory.

X.

Atoms are indestructible.

The energy which moves atoms and governs the universe is indestructible.

The human soul is indestructible.

XI.

The individuality of the soul is recent in the Earth's history.

Our planet was nebula, then sun, after that, chaos. No terrestrial human being was then in existence. Life began with the most rudimentary organisms; it has progressed century by century to attain its present state, which is not the last. What we call the faculties of the soul,--intelligence, reason, conscience,--are modern. The mind has gradually freed itself from matter; as--if the comparison were not awkward--gas frees itself from coal, perfume from the flower, flame from fire.

XII.

Psychic force has been beginning to a.s.sert itself in the higher spheres of terrestrial humanity for the past thirty or forty centuries; its action is but in its dawn. Souls conscious of their individuality, or still unconscious of it, are by their very nature beyond the conditions of s.p.a.ce and time. After the death of the body, as during life, they occupy no place; perhaps some of them go to dwell in other worlds. Those only who are freed from material bonds can be conscious of their extra-corporeal existence and immortality.

XIII.

The Earth is but a province of the eternal fatherland; it forms a part of heaven. _Heaven is infinite_; all worlds are a part of heaven.

XIV.

The planetary and sidereal systems which const.i.tute the universe are at different degrees of organization and advancement. The extent of their diversity is infinite; beings are everywhere appropriate to their worlds.

XV.

All worlds are not lived upon. The present era is of no more importance than are those which preceded or those which will follow it. Some worlds have been inhabited in the past, others will be in the future. Some day nothing will remain of the Earth; even its ruins will have perished.

XVI.

Terrestrial life is not the type of other lives. An unlimited diversity reigns in the universe. There are dwelling-places where the weight is intense, where light is unknown, where touch, smell, and hearing are the only senses, where, the optic nerve not being formed, all the beings are blind. There are others where the beings are so light and so slight that they would be invisible to earthly eyes, where senses of an exquisite delicacy reveal to privileged beings sensations forbidden to terrestrial humanity.

XVII.

The s.p.a.ce existing between the worlds distributed over the immense universe does not separate them from each other. They are all in perpetual communication, from the attraction which makes itself felt through all distance, and establishes an indissoluble link between all worlds.

XVIII.

The universe forms a single unity.

XIX.

The system of the physical world is the material basis, the habitat of the moral or spiritual world. Hence astronomy must be the basis of all philosophical and religious belief. Every thinking being bears within himself the consciousness, but the uncertainty, of immortality. This is because we are the microscopic wheels of an unknown mechanism.

XX.

Man makes his own destiny. He rises or falls in accordance with his works. Beings attached to material riches, misers, hypocrites, liars, ambitious people, live like the perverse, in the lower zones.

But a primordial and absolute law governs creation,--the law of Progress. Everything rises in the infinite. Sins are falls.

XXI.

In the ascension of souls, moral qualities have no less value than intellectual qualities. Goodness, devotion, self-abnegation, sacrifice, purify the soul, and raise it, like study and science.

XXII.

Universal creation is an immense harmony, of which the Earth is but an insignificant, rather uninteresting, and unfinished fragment.

XXIII.

Nature is a perpetual future. _Progress is law._ Progression is eternal.

XXIV.

The eternity of a soul would not be long enough to visit the infinite and learn all there is to know.

XXV.

The soul's destiny is to free itself more and more from the material world, and to belong to the lofty Uranian life, whence it can look down upon matter and suffer no more. It then enters upon the spiritual life, eternally pure. The supreme aim of all beings is the perpetual approach to absolute perfection and divine happiness.

Such was Spero's scientific and philosophical testament. Does it not seem to have been dictated by Urania herself?

The Nine Muses of ancient mythology were sisters. Modern scientific conceptions in their turn tend to unity. Astronomy, or the knowledge of the world, and psychology, or knowledge of being, unite to-day to establish the only basis on which definite philosophy can be built.

P. S.--The preceding incidents, with the researches and reflections which accompany them, are brought together here in a sort of essay, whose aim is to shed a gleam of light on the solution of the greatest problem that can engage the human mind. With this object the present work is offered to the attention of those who sometimes "in the midst of Life's journey," of which Dante speaks, linger to ask themselves where and what they are,--to seek, to think, and to dream.