QUÆRENS. I gather from this narration, that the inhabitants of Delta Andromeda are, both physically and intellectually, greatly our inferiors, for upon the Earth we do not regulate our affairs in this manner.... In short, upon their globe there is only one living kingdom, and that a mobile one, without repose, without sleep, kept in perpetual agitation by reason of an inexorable fate. A world like this strikes me as being very fantastic. LUMEN. What, then, would you say of the one I inhabited fifteen centuries ago? A world also containing only one kingdom, and that not a movable one, but, on the contrary, as fixed as is your vegetable kingdom? QUÆRENS. How! Animals and men held down by roots? III [Sidenote: Organisation of beings on Andromeda.] LUMEN. My existence anterior to that upon the world of Andromeda was passed upon Venus, a planet near to the Earth, where I can remember myself as a woman. Not that I have directly seen myself there, for, according to the law of light, it would require the same length of time to travel from Venus to Capella as it would from the Earth to Capella, and I consequently see Venus only as it was seventy-two years ago, and not as it was nine hundred years ago, which was the epoch of my existence upon that planet. My fourth life, previous to my terrestrial one, was passed upon an immense annular planet belonging to the constellation Cygnus, situated in the zone of the Milky Way. This singular world is inhabited solely by trees. QUÆRENS. That is to say, that so far only plants are there, and neither animals nor intelligent speaking beings? LUMEN. Not exactly. There are only plants there, it is true. But in this vast world of plants there are vegetable races more advanced than those existing upon the Earth. There plants live as we do--feel, think, reason, and speak. [Sidenote: Reasoning plants.] QUÆRENS. But this is impossible! Pardon!--I would say improbable, incomprehensible, and entirely inconceivable. LUMEN. These intelligent vegetable races really exist--so much so, that I myself belonged to them. Fifteen centuries ago I was a tree possessed of reason. QUÆRENS. But tell me, how can a plant reason without a brain, and speak without a tongue? LUMEN. Tell me, I beg of you, by what process you yourself think, and by what transformation of motion your soul translates its mute conceptions into audible language? QUÆRENS. I am seeking, O Master, but I fail to find, the material explanation of this fact, however ordinary it may be. [Sidenote: Facts not impossible because unknown.]