The early Christians were not in the least embarrassed in the matter of placing heaven. They beheld it on high, beyond the clouds, in a brilliant, serene region. Christ, by his ascension, had shown them the way. The expression has gone into the language: to rise to heaven. It no longer means anything since it has become known that the earth rotates on its own axis and that, consequently, there is for us in space neither above nor below. In order to rise to heaven at midnight one would have to take the same direction by which, at noon, he would descend. Heaven, then, cannot be situated on high. As to hell, which was formerly placed in the interior of the earth, let us not speak. The theologians of today make many reservations as to hell; they have learned that the prospect of cooking eternally in a huge caldron is not of a nature to excite much religious enthusiasm in the crowds. The beyond to which we are invited is a benign place. It is not quite the paradise of Mahomet; it is that of Fénélon,--a perfumed landscape where the streams are of milk, the pebbles of candy, the soil of chocolate. It still remains to locate this celestial confectionery in space. Some have thought of the planets. But suppose they are really inhabited, as M. Flammarion hopes, and as is moreover fairly probable? Then let us seek farther, farther still. Let us question the uttermost stars,--those which our naked eye cannot see,--even those that the telescopes will never discover. Their answer is known. They reply that they are worlds, suns, surrounded by earths, some living like ours, others dead like the moon. Analogy permits us to believe that what we do not see resembles greatly what we do see. If we were transported to the regions where simple folk place the beyond, we would turn back to our own earth and say, doubtless: The beyond is situated yonder. There is no reasonably conceivable beyond. The entire universe is built upon the same plan and its component parts are limited by nothing. An immensity in which grains of sand whirl about at the mercy of the wind of infinity.