state and prepares itself for the future. Spectrum analysis shows that the substances which abound there are different from terrestrial substances. Any living beings who may develop there will probably be chemically different from terrestrial beings, and consist not of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, or nitrogen, but of combinations of other substances. It will be a differently constituted world. Our interest in observing it is not lessened by that consideration. The thinking mind knows that our present era is of no particular importance. It has been preceded by other eras and will be succeeded by other cycles. It is not because we live at this particular moment that our time can be said to be of any special value. The years contemporary with Jesus Christ or with the Pharaohs who built the pyramids had just as much value as ours, and when we shall no longer be there, the Earth will continue to revolve and measure out their days to our successors indefinitely. Whether Jupiter is inhabited this year or in 500,000 years or in 10,000,000 years is the same to the philosopher. Everything to him is present, both the future and the past ... this great subject has already been dealt with, and there is no need to refer to it again. Let us greet Jupiter as the symbol of the future. Behind him, among the constellation, there are stars whose light, starting at the time of the siege of Troy, has only arrived to-day. Thus in the same celestial record the past and the future are thrown together, and they tell us that if there is anything interesting in human life it is Thought, the mind which contemplates the universe, which lives intelligently, and without which all Nature would be but the play of an automaton. VII. HEARTBEATS ACROSS SPACE CHAPTER VII HEARTBEATS ACROSS SPACE ACROSS 92 million miles of space the magnetic pulses of the solar heart are transmitted to the earth, and they make the small and light compass needle, ever trembling and seeking its pole, vibrate on its pivot. This magnetic needle does not remain fixed in the magnetic meridian, but oscillates every day to the right and left of the line, i.e. to the east and west. The greatest deviation is produced at about 8 a.m. The needle stops and returns to the magnetic meridian of the time (it varies from year to year), crosses it a little after 10 a.m., and continues to deviate towards the west, reaching its greatest deviation about 1.15 p.m. It then returns to the meridian, which it reaches about 6 p.m. and crosses to the east. It moves very slowly, with a slight oscillation between 8 and 10 p.m. to the east, attaining at 8 a.m. the greatest easterly deviation with which we began. Such is the daily oscillation of the needle, a process expressive of the unknown and mysterious vital current which traverses our planet and manifests, so to speak, the soul of the earth.