LUMEN. This is not any imagination, my old friend. It is a reality, eternal and sacred, holding its fixed place in the universal plan of creation. The light of every star, direct or reflected--say otherwise, the aspect of each Sun, and of each planet--is diffused in space, according to a rate of rapidity already known to you, and the luminous ray contains in itself all that is visible. As nothing can be lost, the history of each world is contained in the light which incessantly emanates from it in successive waves, eternally travelling into infinite space without any possibility of its being annihilated. True, the terrestrial eye cannot read it; but there are eyes immeasurably superior to your earthly ones. [Sidenote: Light is vibrations of ether; Sight, perceptions of thought.] I make use of the terms _sight_ and _light_, in these conversations, in order that you may comprehend me; but, as I told you in a previous communication, speaking absolutely, there is not such a thing as light, only vibrations of ether; neither is there any sight, only perceptions of the mind. Moreover, even upon the Earth, when you examine the nature of a star with a telescope, or better still with a spectroscope, you well know it is not its actual state you have before your eyes, but its past state, transmitted to you by a ray of light which left it, perhaps, ten thousand years ago. You know, besides, that a certain number of stars, of which your astronomers on the Earth are seeking to determine the physical and numerical properties, and which shine brilliantly over your heads, have long ago ceased even to exist--may indeed have ceased to exist since the beginning of your world. QUÆRENS. We know this is so. Thus you have seen, unrolled before your eyes, your existence previous to the last one, 172 years after it had flown by. LUMEN. Say rather one phase of this existence; but I could have been able, and could now indeed review my entire life by going closer to that planet, as I have already done for my terrestrial existence. Quærens. So, through the medium of light, you have really seen again your last two incarnations? LUMEN. Precisely; and what is more, I have seen them, and continue to see them, _simultaneously_, side by side as it were of one another. QUÆRENS. You see them again both at the _same time_?