Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space and time -- Fiction
These conversations may serve to throw light on your knowledge of
this general truth, so important in the conception of the universe.
But the scientific service that these conversations can specially
render you is in making you understand that light is the mode of
transmission of universal history. With the powerful visual faculty
which we enjoy here, we can distinguish the surface of distant worlds.
The eye of our "perisprit" is not identical with the bodily eye. In
the terrestrial sight the rays diverge, so that a very small object,
placed quite near the eye fills the interval of the two rays, whilst
at a greater distance, a larger object is necessary to fill the space,
proportionately increased, which separates the same rays. In our eye,
on the contrary, the visual rays enter in parallel lines, so that we
see each object in its real proportions, and in its normal size, its
apparent size being quite unaffected by distance. We do not see the
whole of large objects, but only sections of them proportioned to the
openings of our special retina, but these parts are seen by us with
equal clearness at any distance (when there is no atmosphere to veil
this distance).
A tree in a prairie on a celestial body, as far as Theta of Orion
is from Capella, is perfectly visible to us. On the other hand, in
accordance with the law of the successive transmission of the rays of
light, all the events in nature, and the history of all the worlds, are
depicted in space as a universal tableau, the most true and the most
magnificent in all nature.
[Sidenote: Infinite diversity in Sirius.]
As these conversations will have shown you, I have traversed a great
many different celestial countries, and have actually studied creation
without fixing myself in any place. I hope in the course of the next
century to be reincarnated on a world dependent on the train of Sinus.
The humanity there is more beautiful than that of the Earth. Birth is
effected by means of an organic system less ridiculous and less brutal
than that of the Earth.
But the most remarkable characteristic of the life on this world is,
that there men perceive the physico-chemical operations which take
place for the maintenance of the body. From each molecule of the body,
so to speak, proceeds a nerve which transmits to the brain the various
impressions that it receives, so that the soul absolutely knows its
body, and rules over it as a sovereign.
[Sidenote: Vegetable life in Aldebaran.]
There is an immense variety amongst the worlds. On one of the
planets of the system of Aldebaran, very curious from this point
of view, the vegetables are all composed of a substance analogous
to _the loadstone_, because silica and magnesia predominate in its
constitution. The animals feed on this substance only. Most of the
beings inhabiting this world are _incombustible_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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