In short, the sun, the centre of the planetary aggregation, the constant source of light and heat, which sends forth motion, sensation, and life upon the earth, is, in our belief, the final sojourn of purified perfected souls, which have attained their most exquisite subtlety. They are entirely devoid of material alloy, they are pure spirits who dwell in the midst of the blazing atmosphere and the burning masses which compose the sun. That star, whose size far surpasses the bulk of all the others put together, is sufficiently vast to contain them. From their throne of fire, these souls, all intelligence and activity, behold the marvellous spectacle of the march of all the planetary globes which compose the solar world, through space. Placed in the centre of this vast world, understanding the secrets of nature, and all the mysteries of the universe, they are in possession of perfect happiness, of absolute wisdom, and of illimitable knowledge. The Genoese naturalist, Charles Bonnet, was the first to bring forward general ideas upon the philosophy of the universe, in the same order as those which we have just developed. In his _Palingénésie Philosophique_, published in 1771, he introduces the doctrine of divers existences for the human soul, outside that of the earth. In a chapter appended to that work, and entitled, "Conjectures on the blessings to come," he draws a picture of the perfect happiness which we shall enjoy in that abode, and dwells, in the following eloquent words, on the transcendent knowledge which we shall possess, which will unfold to our view all the secrets of the physical and moral worlds:-- "If the Supreme Intelligence," says Charles Bonnet, "has varied all His works here below, so that nothing created is identical with anything else, if harmonious progression reigns among all terrestrial beings; and one common chain unites them; is it not probable that this marvellous chain is prolonged throughout all the planetary worlds; that it unites them all, and that they are only constituent and infinitesimal parts of the same series? "At present we can see only a few links of this great chain; we are not even certain that we observe them in their habitual order; we can only follow this admirable progression very imperfectly, and through innumerable windings in which we meet with frequent interruptions, but we always know that the breaches are not in the chain, but in our knowledge. "When it shall have been granted to us to contemplate this chain, as I have supposed the intelligences for whom our world was chiefly made to contemplate it; when, like them, we shall be able to follow its coils in other worlds, then, and then only, we shall understand their reciprocal dependence, their secret relations, the exact meaning of every link, and we shall rise by a scale of relative perfection to the most transcendent and luminous truths.