[Footnote 48: A few theologians have feebly affirmed the possibility of human life on other planets than the Earth, but their voices have either been stifled or have met with no echo. At the Congress of Fribourg, in Switzerland, August, 1897, evolution was adopted by an assembly of 700 eminent Catholics--laymen and clergy. Dr. Zahn said that _although creation is possible a priori, it is a posteriori so very improbable that it ought to be rejected; that those who believe in this creation rely upon the literal interpretation of Genesis, whilst the contemporary students of the Bible affirm that the book is allegorical, that God, in the beginning created the elements and gave them power to evolve in all the forms that characterise the organic and inorganic worlds_. One voice alone was raised in protest, but it was drowned beneath the refutations of the rest. The question, however, might be asked: How is the transition made from one kingdom to another? What is the missing link? Who is to interpret the Bible if it is an allegorical book? Is it the Church which has always imposed _the letter_ of the Bible and condemned all who have attempted to set forth _its spirit_?] [Footnote 49: In hypnosis, indeed, the thought suggested is strong enough to modify organic life and bring about hematic extravasion (stigmata), burnings, vomiting, etc.... In certain ecstatic cases, fixity of thought produces analogous effects. No one who has studied these questions can have the slightest doubt that mind dominates matter.] [Footnote 50: We say force-matter, for there is no force without matter, they are the two poles of the same thing. Moreover, what is considered force in relation to dense matter plays the _role_ of matter to subtler forces; electricity, _e.g._, is force-matter, probably capable of serving as a vehicle for subtler force-matter, just as it plays the _role_ of force in relation to its conductors. Force is born and dies with matter and _vice versa_; both alike arise from the activity of God.] [Footnote 51: The sensations it calls forth vary with the forms. That which burns us, gives life to other beings; water, which suffocates us, enables fishes to live; whilst air suffocates creatures that live in the water, etc.] [Footnote 52: All this must be taken figuratively. God does not incarnate Himself. He is the All. To our limited conceptions, He seems to limit Himself, in order to be the Life of a Universe.] [Footnote 53: Here, too, we are speaking relatively; in reality, there are no fragments of the Absolute. We describe the process as it seems to us in the world of illusion.] [Footnote 54: Being: Divinity.] [Footnote 55: Force-matter.] [Footnote 56: Forms.] [Footnote 57: The movement given to the germ by the union of its positive and negative forces.]