Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked RecordGreg, Percy
Science
Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record
Greg, Percy
Science fiction
What was now especially noteworthy was that, solid as they appeared,
each form was in some way transparent. From the Emblem before
mentioned a rose-coloured light pervaded the scene; scarcely
discernible in the general atmosphere, faintly but distinctly
traceable in every herb, shrub, and tree, more distinguishable and
concentrated in each animal. But in plant or animal the condensed
light was never separated and individualised, never parted from,
though obviously gathered and agglomerated out of, the generally
diffused rosy sheen that tinged the entire landscape. It was as though
the rose-coloured light formed an atmosphere which entered and passed
freely through the tissues of each animal and plant, but brightened
and deepened in those portions which at any moment pervaded any
organised shape, while it flowed freely in and out of all. The
concentration was most marked, the connection with the diffused
atmosphere least perceptible, in those most intelligent creatures,
like the _ambâ_ and _carve_, which in the service of man appear to
have acquired a portion of human intelligence. But turning to the type
of Man himself, the light within his body had assumed the shape of the
frame it filled and appeared to animate. In him the rose-coloured
image which exactly corresponded to the body that encased it was
perfectly individualised, and had no other connection with the
remainder of the light than that it appeared to emanate and to be fed
from the original source. As I looked, the outward body dissolved, the
image of rosy light stood alone, as human and far more beautiful than
before, rose upward, and passed away.
"What seest thou?" was uttered in an even more earnest and solemn tone
than heretofore.
"Life," I said, "physical and spiritual; the one sustained by the
other, the spiritual emanating from the Source of Life, pervading all
living forms, affording to each the degree of individuality and of
intelligence needful to it, but in none forming an individual entity
apart from the race, save in Man himself; and in Man forming the
individual being, whereof the flesh is but the clothing and the
instrument."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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