The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)Figuier, Louis
Religion
The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)
Figuier, Louis
Cosmology; Future life; Transmigration
_The Author._ I am about to explain myself on this point. The absolute
fixity of the sun and the stars was an astronomical principle, which,
in the time of Newton, appeared to be indubitable. But science never
stands still. Observations made in the present century have proved that
the fixity, the immobility of the sun is only relative. The truth is
that the sun, and with him the entire system of planets, asteroïds,
satellites, and comets, which he carries, in his train, change their
places, very slightly no doubt, but still appreciably. Our sun appears
to advance slowly, with all the planetary family, towards that part of
the sky in which the constellation of _Hercules_ is situated, at the
rate of 62,000,000 of leagues each year, or two leagues each second,
describing an orbit which comprehends millions of centuries. That which
is the case with our sun is equally the case with the other suns, that
is to say, the stars. This general motion of translation must be common
to all the stellar systems, and it is indubitable that the countless
millions of solar systems suspended in infinite space, are moving more
or less quickly towards an unknown point in the sky. Now, there is
nothing to forbid the supposition that all these circles or ellipses
traced by myriads of solar systems, have a common centre of attraction,
towards which our system and all the others gravitate. Thus, all these
celestial bodies, without exception, all this ant-hill of worlds which
we have enumerated, may be turning round one point, one centre of
attraction. What forbids us to believe that God dwells at this centre
of attraction for all the worlds which fill infinite space?
_Theophilus._ Now I understand your thought, and I am struck by its
grandeur. This God, placed at the mathematical centre of the worlds
which compose the universe, this infinite intelligence, throned in the
centre of the infinite universe, and presiding over the movements of
all the innumerable phalanxes of heavenly bodies which our imagination
can conceive, responds to the idea which we form of God, if we venture
to face the awful personality of His Omnipotence. You have done well
to develop this theory in your work. It will be in harmony with the
kind of religious spirit which animates it, and which is, besides, the
expression of the desires, and the aspirations of the men of our time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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