Urania Part 15

"Physiologists who affirm that the soul does not exist, are like their ancestors who affirmed that they felt pain in their finger or their foot. They are a little less far from the truth, but they stop on the way when they stop at the brain, and make the human being consist of cerebral impressions. This hypothesis is all the less excusable because these same physiologists know perfectly well that personal sensation is always accompanied by a modification of substance. In other words, the _ego_ of the individual only continues when the ident.i.ty of its matter ceases to continue.

"Our principle of sensibility, then, cannot be a material object; it is put in communication with the universe by cerebral impressions, by the chemical forces disengaged in the encephalon in consequence of material combinations. But it is _different_.

"And our organic const.i.tution is perpetually transformed under the direction of a psychic principle.

"Some molecule now incorporated in our organism escapes from it by expiration, perspiration, etc., to belong to the atmosphere for a longer or shorter time, then to be incorporated into another organism,--plant, animal, or man. The molecules which actually const.i.tute your body were not all made part of your person yesterday, and none of them were there three months ago. Where were they? Either in the air or in another body.

All the molecules now forming your organic tissues, your lungs, your eyes, your brain, your legs, etc., have already served to form other organic tissues. We are all resuscitated dead men, made from the dust of our ancestors. If all the people who have lived up to this time arose from the dead, there would be five of them to every square foot upon the surface of all the continents,--obliged to climb on one another's shoulders in order to stand; but they could not all be completely resuscitated, for many of the molecules have served successively for several bodies.

"Our own organisms likewise, resolved into their ultimate particles, will help to form the bodies of our descendants.

"Each molecule of air then goes on eternally from life to life, and escapes thence from death to death, by turns wind, wave, earth, animal, or flower. It is incorporated successively into the substance of numberless organisms. The air, the inexhaustible source whence everything that lives takes its breath, is yet an immense reservoir into which everything that dies pours its last sigh; by its absorption, vegetable and animal, different organisms come to life and afterwards perish. Life and death are both in the air we breathe, and perpetually succeed each other by the exchange of gaseous molecules; the molecule of oxygen which this old oak exhales will fly away to the lungs of a child in its cradle. The last sighs of a man will weave the brilliant corolla of a flower, or expand like a smile over the verdant meadow. And thus by an infinite series of partial deaths, the atmosphere incessantly nourishes the universal life spread over the surface of the world.

"And if nevertheless some objection should still remain unanswered, I would go further, and add that our clothes as well as our bodies are composed of substances which at first were all gaseous. Take this thread, draw it out: what a resistance! How many webs of cambric, silk, linen, cotton, and wool industry have been formed by the help of these warps and woofs! And yet, what is a thread of linen, flax, or cotton?

Globules of air in juxtaposition which are held together only by their molecular force. What is a thread of silk or wool? Another set of molecules in juxtaposition. Admit, then, that our clothes as well are air, gas, substances drawn in the beginning from the atmosphere,--oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, vapor of water, etc."

"I am glad to see," said the painter, "that art is not so far from science as is supposed in certain circles. If your theory is purely scientific to you, to me it is art, and of the best. Besides, do all these distinctions exist in Nature? In Nature there is neither art nor painting nor sculpture, music nor decoration, philosophy nor chemistry, nor astronomy nor meteorology. Look at the sky, the sea, those foot-hills of the Alps, those rosy evening clouds, those luminous perspectives towards the Italian coast,--all that is one. There is unity in everything. And since molecular philosophy demonstrates that there is no longer any body, that even the atoms in a bar of steel or platinum do not touch each other, no one will be the loser, provided our souls are left us."

"Yes, it is a fact against which no prejudice can prevail,--living beings are souls clothed with air. I pity the worlds deprived of their atmosphere."

We had returned to the seash.o.r.e after a long ramble not far from our point of departure, and were pa.s.sing the battlemented wall of a villa on our way from Beaulieu to Cape Ferrat, when two very fas.h.i.+onably dressed ladies pa.s.sed us. They were the d.u.c.h.ess of V---- and her daughter, whom we had met the previous Thursday at a ball at the Prefecture. We bowed to them, and disappeared under the olive-trees. The young girl, inquisitive daughter of Eve, turned to look after us, and it seemed to me that a sudden blush crimsoned her cheeks; it was doubtless the reflection of the setting sun's rays.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Perhaps you think," said the artist, also looking back, "that you have diminished my admiration for beauty? No, I appreciate it still more. In it I bow to harmony; and--shall I confess it?--the human body thus considered as the manifestation to the senses of a directing soul seems to me to acquire thence more n.o.bility, more beauty, and more light."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

V.

AD VERITATEM PER SCIENTIAM.

I was studying in my library the conditions of life upon the surface of worlds governed and illuminated by suns of different sizes, when glancing at the chimney-piece I was struck with the expression--I had almost said the animation--of my dear Urania's face. It was the gracious, living expression which once--ah! how quickly the earth goes round, and how short a quarter of a century is!--which once--and it seems to me like yesterday--which once--in those youthful days so quickly flown--had attracted my thoughts and inflamed my heart. I could not keep from looking at her again, and resting my eyes on her. Truly, she was still just as beautiful, and my feelings had not changed. She drew me to her as the light draws an insect. I rose from my table to approach her, and see again the singular effect of the daylight on her changing face, and I surprised myself by standing before her, forgetting my work.

Her look seemed to be lost in the distance, yet she was looking. At what? I had the firm conviction that she was really looking at something; and following the direction of that fixed, motionless, solemn, although not severe gaze, my eyes went straight to Spero's portrait, hanging there between two book-cases. Really, Urania was looking fixedly at him.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Suddenly the picture broke away from the wall and fell, breaking the frame. I rushed to it. The portrait was lying on the carpet, and Spero's gentle face was turned towards me. Picking it up, I found a large paper, grown yellow, which filled up the whole back, and was written over on both sides in Spero's handwriting. Why had I never noticed this paper? It is true that it might have lain under the setting of the frame, hidden beneath the protecting cardboard mat. When I brought this water-color back from Christiania I did not think of examining its arrangement. But who could have had the singular idea of putting this sheet in such a place? I recognized my friend's handwriting, and glanced over the two pages in utter bewilderment. According to all appearances they must have been written on the last day of the young student's life,--the day of his ascension to the aurora borealis. Probably Iclea's father wished to preserve these last thoughts carefully, so framed them with Spero's portrait, and forgot to mention it when he afterwards gave me the portrait as a memento, on my return from the pilgrimage to my two friends' graves. However that might be, placing the water-color gently on the table, I experienced the deepest emotion as I recognized every detail of that dear face. They were his very eyes, so sweet, so deep, and always unfathomable; the wide brow apparently so calm, the delicate mouth with its reserved sensitiveness, the fresh coloring of the face, neck, and hands. His eyes looked at me, whichever way I turned the portrait; they looked at Urania at the same time; they looked everywhere at once. Strange idea of the artist! I could not resist the thought of Urania's eyes, which had seemed to me to be looking at the portrait with embarra.s.sing intentness. Her celestial countenance no longer wore the same expression at all, but appeared to me rather to be melancholy, almost sad. Then I turned again to the mysterious sheet of paper. It was written in a clear, precise hand, with no erasures. I offer it to the readers of this book just as I found it, without the slightest change; for it appears to be the very natural conclusion of the preceding episodes.

Here it is, _verbatim_:--

This is the scientific testament of a mind which on the Earth did all in its power to remain independent of the weight of matter, and which hopes to be freed from it.

I should like to leave the results of my researches in the form of aphorisms. It seems to me that the Truth can be reached only through the study of Nature, that is to say, by science. Here are the inductions which appear to me to be founded on this method of observation.

I.

The visible, tangible, ponderable, and constantly moving universe is composed of invisible, intangible, imponderable, and inert atoms.

II.

These atoms are governed by force, to const.i.tute bodies and to organize beings.

III.

Force is essential ent.i.ty.

IV.

Visibility, tangibility, solidity, and weight are relative properties, and not absolute realities.

V.

The infinitely small.

The experiments made in beating gold-leaf show that ten thousand leaves are contained in the thickness of a millimetre. A millimetre has been divided on a gla.s.s plate into a thousand equal parts; and infusoria exist, which are so small that their entire bodies, placed between two of these divisions, do not touch either of them. The members and organs of these beings are composed of cellules, these of molecules, and these of atoms.

Twenty cubic centimetres of oil spread over a lake will cover four thousand square metres, so that the layer of oil thus expanded measures only one two hundred thousandth of a millimetre in thickness. Spectral a.n.a.lysis of light discloses the presence of a millionth of a milligramme of sodium in a flame. The sense of smell perceives 1/604000000 a milligramme of mercaptan in the air breathed. The dimensions of atoms must be less than a millionth of a millimetre in diameter. [Waves of light are comprised between 4 and 8 ten millionths of a millimetre, from violet to red; 2300 are required to fill a millimetre. In the duration of a second the ether through which light is transmitted makes 700,000,000,000,000 oscillations, each of which is mathematically defined.]

VI.

The intangible, invisible atom, scarcely conceivable to our mind accustomed to superficial judgments, const.i.tutes the only true matter; and what we call matter is but an effect produced on our senses by the motion of atoms,--that is to say, an incessant possibility of sensations.

The result is, that matter, like the manifestations of energy, is only a mode of motion. If motion should stop; if force should be annihilated; if the temperature of bodies should be reduced to absolute zero,--matter, as we know it, would cease to exist.

VII.

The visible universe is composed of invisible bodies. What we see is made up of things which are not seen. There is but one kind of primitive atom. The const.i.tuent molecules of different bodies--iron, gold, oxygen, hydrogen, etc.--differ only in the number, grouping, and motion of the atoms which compose them.

VIII.

What we call "matter," vanishes when scientific a.n.a.lysis thinks to grasp it. But we find as the support of the universe and the origin of all form, Force,--the dynamic element. By my will I can unsettle the Moon in her course.

The movements of each atom on our Earth are the mathematical resultant of the undulations of the luminiferous ether which come to it in time from the abysses of infinite s.p.a.ce.