From “Consolations in Travel.”

(The Genius of Humanity Speaks)

IN the population of the world, the great object is evidently to produce organized frames most capable of the happy and intellectual enjoyment of life—to raise man above the mere animal state. To perpetuate the advantages of civilization, the races most capable of these advantages are preserved and extended, and no considerable improvement made by an individual is ever lost to society. You see living forms perpetuated in the series of ages, and apparently the quantity of life increased. In comparing the population of the globe as it now is with what it was centuries ago, you would find it considerably greater; and if the quantity of life is increased, the quantity of happiness, particularly that resulting from the exercise of intellectual power, is increased in a still higher ratio. Now, you will say, ‘Is mind generated, is spiritual power created; or are those results dependent upon the organization of matter, upon new perfections given to the machinery upon which thought and motion depend?’ I proclaim to you,” said the Genius, raising his voice from its low and sweet tone to one of ineffable majesty, “neither of these opinions is true. Listen, whilst I reveal to you the mysteries of spiritual natures, but I almost fear that with the mortal veil of your senses surrounding you, these mysteries can never be made perfectly intelligible to your mind. Spiritual natures are eternal and indivisible, but their modes of being are as infinitely varied as the forms of matter. They have no relation to space, and, in their transitions, no dependence upon time, so that they can pass from one part of the universe to another by laws entirely independent of their motion. The quantity or the number of spiritual essences, like the quantity or number of the atoms of the material world, are always the same; but their arrangements, like those of the materials which they are destined to guide or govern, are infinitely diversified; they are, in fact, parts more or less inferior of the infinite mind, and in the planetary systems, to one of which this globe you inhabit belongs, are in a state of probation, continually aiming at, and generally rising to a higher state of existence. Were it permitted me to extend your vision to the fates of individual existences, I could show you the same spirit, which in the form of Socrates developed the foundations of moral and social virtue, in the Czar Peter possessed of supreme power and enjoying exalted felicity in improving a rude people. I could show you the monad or spirit, which with the organs of Newton displayed an intelligence almost above humanity, now in a higher and better state of planetary existence drinking intellectual light from a purer source and approaching nearer to the infinite and divine Mind. But prepare your mind, and you shall at least catch a glimpse of those states which the highest intellectual beings that have belonged to the earth enjoy after death in their transition to new and more exalted natures.” The voice ceased, and I appeared in a dark, deep, and cold cave, of which the walls of the Colosseum formed the boundary. From above a bright and rosy light broke into this cave, so that whilst below all was dark, above all was bright and illuminated with glory. I seemed possessed at this moment of a new sense, and felt that the light brought with it a genial warmth; odors like those of the most balmy flowers appeared to fill the air, and the sweetest sounds of music absorbed my sense of hearing; my limbs had a new lightness given to them, so that I seemed to rise from the earth, and gradually mounted into the bright luminous air, leaving behind me the dark and cold cavern, and the ruins with which it was strewed. Language is inadequate to describe what I felt in rising continually upwards through this bright and luminous atmosphere. I had not, as is generally the case with persons in dreams of this kind, imagined to myself wings; but I rose gradually and securely as if I were myself a part of the ascending column of light. By degrees this luminous atmosphere, which was diffused over the whole of space, became more circumscribed, and extended only to a limited spot around me. I saw through it the bright blue sky, the moon and stars, and I passed by them as if it were in my power to touch them with my hand. I beheld Jupiter and Saturn as they appear through our best telescopes, but still more magnified, all the moons and belts of Jupiter being perfectly distinct, and the double ring of Saturn appearing in that state in which I have heard Herschel often express a wish he could see it. It seemed as if I was on the verge of the solar system, and my moving sphere of light now appeared to pause. I again heard the low and sweet voice of the Genius, which said, “You are now on the verge of your own system: will you go further, or return to the earth?” I replied, “I have left an abode which is damp, dreary, dark, and cold; I am now in a place where all is life, light, and enjoyment; show me, at least before I return, the glimpse which you promised me of those superior intellectual natures and the modes of their being and their enjoyments.” “There are creatures far superior,” said the Genius, “to any idea your imagination can form in that part of the system now before you, comprehending Saturn, his moons and rings. I will carry you to the verge of the immense atmosphere of this planet. In that space you will see sufficient to wonder at, and far more than with your present organization it would be possible for me to make you understand.” I was again in motion, and again almost as suddenly at rest. I saw below me a surface infinitely diversified, something like that of an immense glacier covered with large columnar masses, which appeared as if formed of glass, and from which were suspended rounded forms of various sizes, which, if they had not been transparent, I might have supposed to be fruit. From what appeared to me to be analogous to masses of bright blue ice, streams of the richest tint of rose color or purple burst forth and flowed into basins, forming lakes or seas of the same color. Looking through the atmosphere towards the heavens, I saw brilliant opaque clouds of an azure color that reflected the light of the sun, which had to my eyes an entirely new aspect, and appeared smaller, as if seen through a dense blue mist. I saw moving on the surface below me immense masses, the forms of which I find it impossible to describe; they had systems for locomotion similar to those of the morse or sea horse, but I saw with great surprise that they moved from place to place by six extremely thin membranes which they used as wings. Their colors were varied and beautiful, but principally azure and rose color. I saw numerous convolutions of tubes, more analogous to the trunk of the elephant than to anything else I can imagine, occupying what I supposed to be the upper parts of the body, and my feeling of astonishment almost became one of disgust, from the peculiar character of the organs of these singular beings; and it was with a species of terror that I saw one of them mounting upwards, apparently flying towards those opaque clouds which I have before mentioned. “I know what your feelings are,” said the Genius; “you want analogies and all the elements of knowledge to comprehend the scene before you. You are in the same state in which a fly would be whose microscopic eye was changed for one similar to that of man; and you are wholly unable to associate what you now see with your former knowledge. But those beings who are before you, and who appear to you almost as imperfect in their functions as the zoöphytes of the Polar Sea, to which they are not unlike in their apparent organization to your eyes, have a sphere of sensibility and intellectual enjoyment far superior to that of the inhabitants of your earth. Each of those tubes which appears like the trunk of an elephant is an organ of peculiar motion or sensation. They have many modes of perception of which you are wholly ignorant, at the same time that their sphere of vision is infinitely more extended than yours, and their organs of touch far more perfect and exquisite. It would be useless for me to attempt to explain their organization, which you could never understand; but of their intellectual objects of pursuit I may perhaps give you some notion. They have used, modified, and applied the material world in a manner analogous to man; but with far superior powers they have gained superior results. Their atmosphere being much denser than yours and the specific gravity of their planet less, they have been enabled to determine the laws belonging to the solar system with far more accuracy than you can possibly conceive, and any one of those beings could show you what is now the situation and appearance of your moon with a precision that would induce you to believe that he saw it, though his knowledge is merely the result of calculation. Their sources of pleasure are of the highest intellectual nature; with the magnificent spectacle of their own rings and moons revolving round them, with the various combinations required to understand and predict the relations of these wonderful phenomena their minds are in unceasing activity and this activity is a perpetual source of enjoyment. Your view of the solar system is bounded by Uranus, and the laws of this planet form the ultimatum of your mathematical results; but these beings catch a sight of planets belonging to another system and even reason on the phenomena presented by another sun. Those comets, of which your astronomical history is so imperfect, are to them perfectly familiar, and in their ephemerides their places are shown with as much accurateness as those of Jupiter or Venus in your almanacs; the parallax of the fixed stars nearest them is as well understood as that of their own sun, and they possess a magnificent history of the changes taking place in the heavens and which are governed by laws that it would be vain for me to attempt to give you an idea of. They are acquainted with the revolutions and uses of comets; they understand the system of those meteoric formations of stones which have so much astonished you on earth; and they have histories in which the gradual changes of nebulæ in their progress towards systems have been registered, so that they can predict their future changes. And their astronomical records are not like yours which go back only twenty centuries to the time of Hipparchus; they embrace a period a hundred times as long, and their civil history for the same time is as correct as their astronomical one. As I cannot describe to you the organs of these wonderful beings, so neither can I show to you their modes of life; but as their highest pleasures depend upon intellectual pursuits, so you may conclude that those modes of life bear the strictest analogy to that which on the earth you would call exalted virtue. I will tell you, however, that they have no wars, and that the objects of their ambition are entirely those of intellectual greatness, and that the only passion that they feel in which comparisons with each other can be instituted are those dependent upon a love of glory of the purest kind. If I were to show you the different parts of the surface of this planet, you would see marvelous results of the powers possessed by these highly intellectual beings and of the wonderful manner in which they have applied and modified matter. Those columnar masses, which seem to you as if arising out of a mass of ice below, are results of art, and processes are going on in them connected with the formation and perfection of their food. The brilliant-colored fluids are the results of such operations as on the earth would be performed in your laboratories, or more properly in your refined culinary apparatus, for they are connected with their system of nourishment. Those opaque azure clouds, to which you saw a few minutes ago one of those beings directing his course, are works of art and places in which they move through different regions of their atmosphere and command the temperature and the quantity of light most fitted for their philosophical researches, or most convenient for the purposes of life. On the verge of the visible horizon which we perceive around us, you may see in the east a very dark spot or shadow, in which the light of the sun seems entirely absorbed; this is the border of an immense mass of liquid analogous to your ocean, but unlike your sea it is inhabited by a race of intellectual beings inferior indeed to those belonging to the atmosphere of Saturn, but yet possessed of an extensive range of sensations and endowed with extraordinary power and intelligence. I could transport you to the different planets and show you in each peculiar intellectual beings bearing analogies to each other, but yet all different in power and essence. In Jupiter you would see creatures similar to those in Saturn, but with different powers of locomotion; in Mars and Venus you would find races of created forms more analogous to those belonging to the earth; but in every part of the planetary system you would find one character peculiar to all intelligent natures, a sense of receiving impressions from light by various organs of vision, and towards this result you cannot but perceive that all the arrangements and motions of the planetary bodies, their satellites and atmospheres are subservient. The spiritual natures therefore that pass from system to system in progression towards power and knowledge preserve at least this one invariable character, and their intellectual life may be said to depend more or less upon the influence of light. As far as my knowledge extends, even in other parts of the universe the more perfect organized systems still possess this source of sensation and enjoyment; but with higher natures, finer and more ethereal kinds of matter are employed in organization, substances that bear the same analogy to common matter that the refined or most subtle gases do to common solids and fluids. The universe is everywhere full of life, but the modes of this life are infinitely diversified, and yet every form of it must be enjoyed and known by every spiritual nature before the consummation of all things. You have seen the comet moving with its immense train of light through the sky; this likewise has a system supplied with living beings, and their existence derives its enjoyment from the diversity of circumstances to which they are exposed; passing as it were through the infinity of space they are continually gratified by the sight of new systems and worlds, and you can imagine the unbounded nature of the circle of their knowledge. My power extends so far as to afford you a glimpse of the nature of a cometary world.” I was again in rapid motion, again passing with the utmost velocity through the bright blue sky, and I saw Jupiter and his satellites and Saturn and his ring behind me, and before me the sun, no longer appearing as through a blue mist, but in bright and unsupportable splendor, towards which I seemed moving with the utmost velocity; in a limited sphere of vision, in a kind of red, hazy light similar to that which first broke in upon me in the Colosseum, I saw moving round me globes which appeared composed of different kinds of flame and of different colors. In some of these globes I recognized figures which put me in mind of the human countenance, but the resemblance was so awful and unnatural that I endeavored to withdraw my view from them. “You are now,” said the Genius, “in a cometary system; those globes of light surrounding you are material forms, such as in one of your systems of religious faith have been attributed to seraphs; they live in that element which to you would be destruction; they communicate by powers which would convert your organized frame into ashes; they are now in the height of their enjoyment, being about to enter into the blaze of the solar atmosphere. These beings so grand, so glorious, with functions to you incomprehensible, once belonged to the earth; their spiritual natures have risen through different stages of planetary life, leaving their dust behind them, carrying with them only their intellectual power. You ask me if they have any knowledge or reminiscence of their transitions; tell me of your own recollections in the womb of your mother and I will answer you. It is the law of divine wisdom that no spirit carries with it into another state and being any habit or mental qualities except those which may be connected with its new wants or enjoyments; and knowledge relating to the earth would be no more useful to these glorified beings than their earthly system of organized dust, which would be instantly resolved into its ultimate atoms at such a temperature; even on the earth the butterfly does not transport with it into the air the organs or the appetites of the crawling worm from which it sprung. There is, however, one sentiment or passion which the monad or spiritual essence carries with it into all its stages of being, and which in these happy and elevated creatures is continually exalted; the love of knowledge or of intellectual power, which is, in fact, in its ultimate and most perfect development, the love of infinite wisdom and unbounded power, or the love of God. Even in the imperfect life that belongs to the earth this passion exists in a considerable degree, increases even with age, outlives the perfection of the corporeal faculties, and at the moment of death is felt by the conscious being, and its future destinies depend upon the manner in which it has been exercised and exalted. When it has been misapplied and assumed the forms of vague curiosity, restless ambition, vainglory, pride, or oppression, the being is degraded, it sinks in the scale of existence and still belongs to the earth or an inferior system, till its errors are corrected by painful discipline. When, on the contrary, the love of intellectual power has been exercised on its noblest objects, in discovering and in contemplating the properties of created forms and in applying them to useful and benevolent purposes, in developing and admiring the laws of the eternal Intelligence, the destinies of the sentient principle are of a nobler kind, it rises to a higher planetary world. From the height to which you have been lifted I could carry you downwards and show you intellectual natures even inferior to those belonging to the earth, in your own moon and in the lower planets, and I could demonstrate to you the effects of pain or moral evil in assisting in the great plan of the exaltation of spiritual natures; but I will not destroy the brightness of your present idea of the scheme of the universe by degrading pictures of the effects of bad passions and of the manner in which evil is corrected and destroyed. Your vision must end with the glorious view of the inhabitants of the cometary worlds; I cannot show you the beings of the system to which I, myself, belong, that of the sun; your organs would perish before our brightness, and I am only permitted to be present to you as a sound or intellectual voice. We are likewise in progression, but we see and know something of the plans of infinite wisdom; we feel the personal presence of that supreme Deity which you only imagine; to you belongs faith, to us knowledge; and our greatest delight results from the conviction that we are lights kindled by his light and that we belong to his substance. To obey, to love, to wonder and adore, form our relations to the infinite Intelligence. We feel his laws are those of eternal justice and that they govern all things from the most glorious intellectual natures belonging to the sun and fixed stars to the meanest spark of life animating an atom crawling in the dust of your earth. We know all things begin from and end in his everlasting essence, the cause of causes, the power of powers.”