Urania :: III. "TO BE, OR NOT TO BE?"

III. "TO BE, OR NOT TO BE?"

IT was this very phase of his intellectual life which had drawn the two friends so intimately together. Happy at being alive, in the flower of her spring-time, expanding to the light of life,—a harp thrilling with all the harmonies of Nature,—the beautiful Northern girl still sometimes dreamed of the fays and elves of her native clime, of the angels and mysteries of the Christian religion which had soothed her childhood. The credulity of her early days had not obscured her understanding; she thought freely, and sought sincerely for the truth; while regretting perhaps that she no longer believed in the paradise of the preachers, she felt nevertheless a strong desire to live forever. Death seemed to her a cruel injustice. She never thought of her mother lying on her death-bed in the ripe beauty of her thirtieth year,—taken away to the green and fragrant cemetery, filled with the songs of birds, while the roses were in full bloom; crossed off the book of life while all Nature still sang, still bloomed and shone,—she never thought of her mother's pale face, as I said, without a sudden shudder creeping all over her from head to foot. No, her mother was not dead! She would not die at thirty, or at any time! And he? He die! That sublime mind to be blotted out by a stoppage of the heart or breath? No, it was not possible! Men are mistaken! We shall know some day!

Then, too, sometimes she thought of these mysteries under a form rather more Æsthetic and sentimental than scientific; but she thought of them. All her questionings, her doubts, the secret object of her conversations, perhaps her rapidly developed attachment for her friend,—the cause of it all was the insatiable thirst for knowledge which consumed her soul. She hoped in him because she had already found in his writings a solution to the highest problems. He had taught her to know the universe; and she found this knowledge more beautiful, more vivid, more poetic, grander, than the old errors and illusions. From the time when he told her that life had no object other than the search for truth, she had felt sure that he would find it; and her mind clung to and bound itself to his even more strongly than her heart.

They had lived a common intellectual life in this way for about three months, almost every day spending several hours reading original essays, written in different languages, on science and philosophy,—the theory of atoms, molecular physics, organic chemistry, thermo-dynamics, and the different sciences whose object is the knowledge of existence,—or in discoursing upon the real or apparent contradictions of hypotheses; sometimes finding statements and coincidences most remarkable for their scientific axioms, in the books of purely literary writers, and occasionally astonished at the foresight of some great authors. These readings, investigations, and comparisons had especially interested them by the discrimination which their minds were led to make, as they became more and more enlightened, between nine tenths of the writers whose works are absolutely worthless, and half of the last tenth, whose writings have but a superficial value. Having thus cleared the field of literature, they took great delight and satisfaction in the restricted society of superior minds. Perhaps mixed with it was a little feeling of pride.

One day Spero arrived earlier than usual. "Eureka!" he cried. But correcting himself quickly, added, "Perhaps."

Leaning against the chimney-piece, where a bright fire crackled, while his companion looked at him with her large eyes full of curiosity, he began to speak with a sort of unconscious solemnity, as though he were discussing something with his own mind in the solitude of the woods.

"What we see is only apparent. Reality is quite different.

"The sun apparently turns about us, rising every morning, setting at night; the earth where we are seems to be motionless: but the contrary is the truth. We live on a whirling projectile, thrown into space with a speed seventy-five times as great as that which carries a cannon-ball.

"Our ears are pleased by a harmonious concert. Sound does not exist; it is merely an impression of the senses produced by vibrations of a certain size and rapidity on the air, which in themselves are silent. There would be no sound without the acoustic nerve and the brain. In reality there is nothing but motion.

"The rainbow spreads its radiant circle; the rose and corn-flower, dripping with rain, glitter in the sun; the green meadow, the golden furrow, diversify the plain with their bright colors. There are no colors; there is no light,—there is nothing but the ether waves, which cause a vibration of the optic nerve. Appearances are deceitful. The sun warms and fertilizes; fire burns. There is no heat, only sensation; heat, like light, is but one form of motion,—invisible but supreme, sovereign motion!

*****

"Take a strong iron beam, like one of those used so generally in building nowadays. It is set up in space, ten metres high, between two walls which support its ends. It is 'solid.' In the middle of it is placed a weight of one, two, or ten thousand kilograms; but it does not even show this enormous weight,—a level would hardly find a depression in it. And yet this beam is composed of particles which do not touch each other, which are in perpetual vibration, which separate under the influence of heat, and are drawn together by cold. Tell me, if you please, in what the solidity of this bar of iron consists. Its material atoms? Assuredly not, since they do not touch. That solidity lies in molecular attraction,—that is to say, in an immaterial force.

"Speaking absolutely, solidity does not exist. Take up a heavy iron cannon-ball: this ball is composed of invisible molecules which do not touch each other. The continuity which the surface seems to have, and the apparent solidity of the ball are, then, pure illusions. To the mind which would analyze it, its inner structure is an eddying swarm of little gnats, like those darting about in the air on a summer day. Then suppose we heat this apparently solid ball: it will melt; heat it more, it will evaporate,—but without changing its nature for all that; gas or liquid, it will still be iron.

"We are in a house. All these walls, these floors, these carpets, this furniture, the marble mantelpiece, are also composed of particles which do not touch each other; and all these particles which constitute these objects are in constant motion, circulating around each other. "Our body is in the same condition. It is formed by a perpetual circulation of molecules; it is a flame which is ceaselessly consumed and renewed; it is a stream on whose banks one sits down, expecting to see the same water again, but the perpetual course of things always brings fresh water. Each globule of our blood is a world (and we have five millions per cubic millimetre). Constantly, without let or hindrance, in our arteries and veins, in our flesh, in our brain, all circulates,—all moves, all hurries along in a vital whirl as rapid, proportionately, as that of the heavenly bodies. Molecule by molecule, our brain, our skull, our eyes, our nerves, our entire flesh ceaselessly renews itself, and so rapidly that in a few months our entire body is reconstituted.

*****

"From estimates founded on molecular attraction it has been calculated that in a tiny drop of water taken up on the point of a pin, a drop invisible to the naked eye, measuring one thousandth of a cubic millimetre, there are more than two hundred and twenty-five million molecules.

"In the head of a pin there are not less than eight sextillions of atoms, or eight thousand millions of millions of millions; and these atoms are separated from each other by distances greater than their dimensions, these dimensions being invisible even to the most powerful microscope. If one felt inclined to count the number of these atoms contained in the head of a pin, by detaching in thought a thousand million of them per second, it would be necessary to continue the operation for two hundred and fifty-three thousand years, in order to finish the enumeration.

"In a drop of water, in the head of a pin, there are incomparably more atoms than there are stars in all the sky known to astronomers, armed with their strongest telescopes.

*****

"What upholds the earth, the sun, and all the stars of the universe in the eternal void? What upholds that heavy iron beam thrown between two walls, and upon which several stories are to be built? What keeps all bodies in shape? Force.

"The world, beings, and things, all that we see, is formed of invisible and imponderable atoms. The universe is a dynamism. God is the universal soul; in eo vivimus, movemur, et sumus. "As the soul is force moving the body, the Infinite Being is force moving the universe. The purely mechanical theory is incomplete to an analyst who goes to the bottom of things. It is true that the human will is weak, in comparison to cosmic forces; yet by sending a train from Paris to Marseilles, a ship from Marseilles to Suez, I freely displace an infinitesimal portion of the earth's matter, and modify the moon's course. Blind men of the nineteenth century, come back to the swan of Mantua: Mens agitat molem.

"If I dissect matter, I find the invisible atom at the base of everything. Matter disappears, fades away into smoke. If my eyes had power enough to see the truth, they would see, through walls and bodies composed of separate molecules, atomic swarms. The eyes of the flesh do not see what is. The mind's eye must see. Do not rely on the evidence of your senses alone; there are as many stars over our heads in the daytime as there are during the night.

"In Nature there is neither astronomy nor chemistry nor philosophy nor mechanics; those are subjective methods of observation. There is but a single unit. The infinitely great is identical with the infinitely small. Space is infinite without being great. Time is eternal without being long. Stars and atoms are one.

*****

"The unity of the universe is constituted of invisible, imponderable, immaterial force, which moves atoms. If a single atom should cease to be moved by force, the universe would stop. The earth turns round the sun, the sun gravitates around a sidereal arch, which is itself capable of motion; the millions, the thousand millions of suns which people the universe move much more rapidly than gunpowder projectiles; these stars which seem to us to be motionless are suns thrown into the eternal void at the speed of ten, twenty, thirty millions of kilometres a day, all rushing towards an unknown goal,—suns, planets, earths, satellites, wandering comets ...; the fixed point, the centre of gravity sought after by analysts, flies as fast as it is pursued, and really exists nowhere. The atoms of which bodies are composed, move relatively as fast as stars in the sky. Motion regulates all things, forms all things.

"The atom itself is not an inert mass, it is a centre of force. "That which essentially constitutes and organizes the human being, is not his material substance; it is not the protoplasm, nor the cell, nor those marvellous and fertile combinations of carbon with hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,—it is animate, invisible, immaterial Force. It is that which groups, directs, and keeps together the innumerable particles which compose the exquisite harmony of the living body.

"Matter and energy have never been seen separated from each other; the existence of one implies the existence of the other; they are perhaps substantially identical.

"If the body should suddenly decay after death, as it slowly disintegrates and perpetually renews itself during life, it would matter little. The soul remains. The organizing cerebral atom is the centre of this force. It also is indestructible.

"What we see is deceitful. The real is the invisible."

*****

He began to pace up and down the floor. The young girl had listened to him as one listens to an apostle, a loved apostle; and although he had really spoken but for her, he had not apparently realized her presence,—she had been so silent and motionless. She went to him and took one of his hands in hers. "Oh!" she cried, "if you have not yet conquered Truth, she cannot elude you."

Then, growing excited herself, and alluding to an often-expressed reservation of his, "You think," she added, "that it is impossible for terrestrial man to attain to the truth because we have but five senses, and that a multitude of natural manifestations are unknown to our minds because we have no means of reaching them. Just as sight would be denied us if we were deprived of the optic nerve, hearing if we had no acoustic nerve, etc.; just as the vibrations, the exhibitions of force which pass between the strings of our organic instrument, without causing those we have to quiver, are unknown to us. I concede that, and agree with you that the inhabitants of certain worlds maybe incomparably more advanced than we; but it seems to me that although earthly, you have found it out."

"My darling," he answered, sitting down beside her on the wide library lounge, "it is very certain that some of the strings in our terrestrial harp are missing: probably a citizen of the Sirius system would laugh at our pretentions. The smallest piece of magnetized iron is stronger in finding the magnetic pole than either Newton or Leibnitz, and the swallow knows the variations of latitude better than did Christopher Columbus or Magellan. What did I say just now? That appearances are deceitful, and that our minds must see invisible force through matter. That is perfectly sure. Matter is not what it seems to be, and no man informed about the progress of the positive sciences could now pretend to be a materialist."

"Then," she said, "the cerebral atom, the principle of human organism, would be immortal, like all other atoms, if one should admit the fundamental assertions of chemistry. But it would differ from the others, possessing a higher rank, the soul being attached to it. And would it preserve the consciousness of its existence? Would the soul be comparable to an electric substance? Once I saw the lightning go through a drawing-room and extinguish the lights; when they were re-lighted, we found that the gilding had all been taken off the clock, and that the chased silver candlestick was gilded in several places. That is a subtle force!"

"Do not draw comparisons; they would be too far from the truth. There is no doubt that the soul exists, as force does. We can admit that it and the cerebral atom are one; that it thus survives the dissolution of the body we can imagine."

"But what becomes of it? Where does it go?"

"The greater number of souls never even suspect their own existence. Out of the fourteen hundred millions of human beings who people the earth, ninety-nine one hundredths do not think. Great heavens! what would they do with immortality? As the molecule of iron floats in the blood, throbbing in Lamartine's or Hugo's temple, or is fixed for a time in CÆsar's sword; as the molecule of hydrogen shines in the lobby of a theatre, or merges itself into the drop of water swallowed by a fish in the dusky depths of the sea, so living atoms sleep which have never thought. Thinking souls are the inheritance of the intellectual life. They preserve humanity's patrimony, and increase it for the future. Without this immortality of human souls which are conscious of their existence and live through the mind, all the history of the earth would end in nothing, and the whole creation, that of the most sublime worlds as well as that of our mean little planet, would be a deceptive absurdity, more miserable and pitiable than the cast of an earthworm. That has a right to be; but the universe would not have. Do you imagine that the thousand millions of worlds attain the splendors of life and thought, to succeed each other without end in the sidereal universe, only to give birth to constantly deceived hopes, and grandeurs which are perpetually destroyed? It is useless for us to humble ourselves; we cannot admit that nothing is the supreme object of perpetual progress, proved by all the history of Nature. Now, souls are the seeds of planetary humanities."

"Can they transport themselves from one world to another?"

"Nothing is so difficult to understand as that of which one is ignorant, nothing more simple than what one knows. Who is surprised now to see that the electric telegraph instantly sends human thought across continents and seas? Who is surprised to see lunar attraction raise the waters of the ocean and produce tides? Who is surprised to see light transmit itself from one star to another at the rate of three hundred thousand kilometres per second? Besides, thinkers alone could appreciate the grandeur of these marvels; the vulgar are surprised at nothing. If some new discovery to-morrow should enable us to make signals to the inhabitants of Mars and receive replies from them, three quarters of mankind would think nothing of it the day after. Yes, the animating forces can transport themselves from one world to the other; not everywhere nor always, to be sure, and not all of them. There are laws and conditions. My will, with the help of my muscles, can raise my arm or throw a stone; if I take a weight of twenty kilos, it will still raise my arm; if I want to raise a weight of a thousand kilos, I can no longer do it. Some minds are incapable of any activity; others have acquired transcendent faculties. Mozart at six years of age surprised all his hearers by the power of his musical genius, and at eight published his first two sonatas; while the greatest dramatic author who ever existed, Shakspeare, had written nothing worthy of his name until after he was thirty years old. It is not necessary to believe that the soul should belong to some supernatural world. Everything is in Nature. It is hardly more than a hundred thousand years since terrestrial humanity evolved itself from the animal chrysalis. For millions of years, during the long historic series of the primary, secondary, and tertiary periods, there was not a single eye on the earth to see these grand sights, a single human mind to contemplate them. Progress has slowly raised the inferior souls of plants and animals; man is quite recent on the planet. Nature is in ceaseless progress, the universe is a perpetual growth, ascent is the supreme law.

"All worlds," he added, "are not actually inhabited. Some are at the dawn, others at twilight. For example, in our solar system, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and several of his satellites seem to be in full vital activity. Jupiter appears not to have passed its primary period; the Moon has perhaps no longer any inhabitants. Our own period is of no more importance in the general history of the universe than one anthill in the infinite. Before the existence of the earth, there had been, from all eternity, worlds peopled with humanities. When our planet shall have ceased to live, and the last human family shall have fallen asleep on the brink of the last lagoon of the frozen ocean, numberless suns will still shine in the infinite, there will still be mornings and evenings, spring-time and flowers, hopes and joys, other suns, other earths, other humanities,—boundless space, peopled with tombs and cradles. But life, thought, eternal progress, are the final object of creation.

"The earth is a star's satellite. Now, as well as in the future, we are citizens of the sky; whether we know it or not, we are really living in the stars."

Thus the two friends conversed about the deep subjects which engrossed their thoughts; when they were conquering a problem, even if it were incomplete, they experienced a true happiness at having taken another step in their search for the unknown, and could then talk more quietly about the ordinary things of life. They were two minds equally eager for knowledge, imagining in their youthful fervor that they could isolate themselves from the world, look down upon human ideas, and in their celestial flight reach the star of Truth, which shone above their heads in the depths of the infinite.

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