Curiously enough in the nineteenth century, the sun was deemed uninhabitable.—Author, chap, xx., etc.
Hitherto I have refrained from much allusion to the great central world into which we have now entered, until I could offer some connected remarks in this chapter, and just before we enter personally upon the solar scenes. A thousand years ago it was the general scientific view that the sun could not possess life. Prior to that time the sun had been held by some to be peopled, but upon purely imaginative grounds, for the chief conditioning data were then unknown. The standing problem of the bright photosphere had not then been solved. The photosphere, as we now know, is the cross-electric outward emanation from the magneto-cross-electric current, which ever sweeps the solar surface, keeping that surface comparatively cool, and composing it, more or less, to dynamic equilibrium. The solar photosphere, in short, is, as it were, our own familiar "Aurora glory," intensified by cross-electric action upon a gigantic scale, and overspreading, in the upper atmosphere, the entire solar circumference.
All central suns, after throwing off their planetary surroundings, continue long in cross-electrically disturbed condition, even long after they have become so far dynamically balanced as to develop organic life. When all this electrical disturbance at length completely subsides, as we see in Sirius, and many other of the like more advanced suns, the conditions are all at the highest for human development. A long lingering disturbance may still remain in the equatorial regions, even after the rest of the sun has attained the serenity alluded to. This is the case of our sun, in common with a good many others, and the consequence is, that there are two distinct solar peoples within our luminary, the one occupying a great belt of the still more or less disturbed equatorial centre, the other possessing the climatically serene and perfected sections, where they form an upper class of extremely higher human attainments, and keep quite aloof from the lower solars, much as we ourselves would do from a herd of monkeys or other inferior beings.
Of course our intercourse and trading were not with these high and mighty folks. Nevertheless it was one of our main objects to pay them a visit. Indeed Brown and I reckoned that this visit would form about the most novel and attractive chapter of our forthcoming volume, so little are these most remarkable people yet known to us. All our intercourse as yet had been with the lower or equatorial solars, whom we found a plain common-sense people, advanced on an average to our own whereabouts, much as we should have expected and calculated from their main physical conditions of enormous gravity, and very considerable, but irregular and intermittently disturbed sub-photospheric light and heat.
White was already quite at home with these Lower Solars, and had many a warm welcome in their genial expressions. His agent, whom White had duly signalized on his approach, was waiting at the landing, and was apparently a plain straightforward man of business. But what an odd figure! And what a change, from the slender forms of Vulcan, was the short squat mortal before us, his big broad head upon an almost inperceptibly short neck, half-buried between his shoulders, and his body as broad as it was long. His deep sepulchral voice, as he spoke to us—and, let me add, quite fluently in good English, which he had mastered for our benefit, as well as the Telegraph tongue—was yet another striking feature of the case.
We all turned out of ship, and with much curiosity wandered about in the solar scenes. The aspect of the heavens above was even more striking than the scene upon the ground below; and we were never tired of watching the sublime grandeur of the electric storms, now lowering and darkening and again breaking up, with frequent glimpses of the reverse, or lower surface, of the beautiful photosphere, with its comparatively subdued lustre, now serene, for fleeting minutes, like an upper solar sky, and again promptly disturbed by the varying electrical streams, and the violent breaches of the upward and the downward atmospheric rushes.
We had not been long ashore ere a most comic incident occurred. A waggish youth of our company who had joined us from the first on a business holiday, and who had kept us all alive with his fun and frolic, observing Brown at one of the market stalls deep into a bargain about a lump of helium, adroitly undid the waste tube, which was firing out the converted surplus gravity, from its usual and comparatively dignified fastening behind the neck, and brought it down so as to emerge from beneath the old gentleman's coat tails, giving him all the appearance of possessing a fiery appendage in that fundamentary quarter. We all broke at once into a burst of laughter, while the broad grin visible upon some solar faces near us must, as we guessed, be accepted in the same sense, however difficult to be so realized. Brown was excessively angry at first, and more than suspected me, until we had indicated the hopeless delinquent. But his helium bargain, which he presently concluded, soon restored his composure.
Our Lower Solar friends were a fairly busy and progressive people, who occupy all that vast equatorial region of the sun which we have of old assigned to spot liability. It is of course hundreds of thousands of miles in breadth, with a circumference of between two and three millions; and all over this vast area was spread an almost countless multitude of busy humanity. Brown and I secured our seats for Borderland, as the terminal territory is called, and which, in a straight line, was about a quarter of a million of miles from where we had landed. By ascending high up in the thin hydrogen atmosphere, travelling here was at much greater speed than we were used to in our own heavier atmospheric medium. Although we were a good twenty-four of our hours on this voyage, we were never tired of the vast and varied landscape beneath, and we had besides a comfortable sleep by the way.
The grandest spectacle of all is the approach to Upper Solardom, which was heralded to us from afar by the gradual diminution of electrical disturbance overhead, and the bright and steady serenity of the remote horizon. This Borderland has, from one cause and another, come to be thickly occupied by the Lower Solars. One cause of attraction is the accommodation required for the curious who travel into Upper Solardom; and who are apt to linger, both going and returning, in the comparatively bright scenes of all the circuit of this Border territory. But as neither Upper Solars, nor their Upper Solardom, have much attraction for the Lower—there being, as we shall presently show, no great love lost between them, and no great coveting on the one part for the other's condition—the crowd and business of Borderland was due chiefly to quite another cause.
All this Borderland, then, was a sort of sanitarium, physical and mental, for the Lower Solars; and a delightful, as well as healthful, change it ever proved. The consequence was that great numbers had, for many generations back, made this attractive territory their permanent home. There was a curious consequence to those whose families had thus lived longest on the border, and especially along its nearest Upper Solar edges, namely that they began to develop the characteristics of Upper Solar superiority. So soon as these signs unquestionably appeared, Upper Solardom was thrown open to their common citizenship; and it was often curious to mark the hesitation at first of these new-fledged great ones, at quitting the warmth of their old accustomed Lower Solar associations, intellectually inferior as they might be, to enter the cold, methodical, unvarying, most ungenial, and almost austere-looking life of the higher race. But it is now time to describe more particularly those remarkable Upper Solars, at whose walls, or rather at whose protective cross-electric panoply, we have just arrived.
The grand distinction of the Upper Solars is the additional sense given to the mind, in its communication with the outside world. This is the causation or reasoning sense, and it is indicated by a special set of nerves proceeding direct outwards from the middle of the frontal brain—the skull in that part having two small openings, by way of intellectual eyes, situated an inch or two above the ordinary eyes, and through which the said nerves pass, terminating in a peculiar outer ganglion, serving to meet, directly, external impressions. One feels quite lost in arguing upon this additional human quality or power; for prior to our knowledge of Upper Solar fact, we should have regarded such power as altogether superhuman and restricted to Deity. But there could be no doubt that it was a human acquirement, the result of long residence under the highest physical auspices—no doubt, I repeat, for we see daily in Borderland the proof in many thousands who are simultaneously graduating before our eyes into that higher power and higher life. In these cases the well-known red marks first come out upon the forehead. From that first stage it is only a question of time in successive generations. That time, science, and medicine can more or less expedite or protract; and sometimes it is the fancy to do the last rather than the first, for, as I have said, Upper Solar life is no attractive spectacle to the Lower Solar minds. Of course, once lifted clean out of the lower into that higher realm of thought, the attractions of the latter will be duly realized.
This additional sense gives the faculty of knowing either ourselves or each other so completely, that, if all affecting circumstances can be known or given or calculated, our conduct—that is to say, all our thought and action—could be predicted under any or all of those circumstances for all time coming. The upper life cases are in this respect much simpler and easier dealt with than ours of the lower life, as we are ever apt to be irregular and "tricky," and to conceal or confuse thought and intention by nonconformable outward expression. There is no double dealing of this kind in the grave straightforward Upper Solar life. But our complex case is not beyond the range of the sixth sense; it requires only an additional calculus line. An Upper Solar can usually be resolved upon one line, as both himself and his physical surroundings are so regular and so ascertainable. But the Lower Solars, and ordinary humanity in general, require two and often the estremely intricate problem of three separate calculus lines.
Upper is separated from Lower Solardom by a lofty wall, or cross-electric panoply, ascending perpendicularly right up to the reversal of the photosphere. This thin diaphanous aurora-looking process hardly prevents our view more than would the clearest glass, but it is an impenetrable barrier to the Lower Solars, almost as much as the solar photosphere itself. Consequently we visitors have to pass through one of the appointed gates, where an Upper Solar guard receives the intending traveller and subjects him to the calculus. This is usually a brief process, and completed in the unaided mind of the guardian; although, at times, he will not be so easily satisfied, and will take to his pencil, especially if he detects the necessity for more than one or two calculus lines. This happened just the day before our visit, with an Unmitigated Calvinist Missionary, who had come to make conversions, and who had at first aroused disturbing suspicions. But when it was found, by means of a carefully traced third calculus line, that a terrible category of ideas, lying behind the missionary's apparently placid outer expression, referred solely to the next life, the man himself being a plain well-meaning common-sense mortal as ever stepped, he was at once passed through. The sole object of the guardianship is to make sure that visitors have no mischievous or other bad or trouble-giving intentions. That being ascertained, they are perfectly free to go in and out at pleasure.
The grand dividing wall we were now approaching has a gradual self-adjusting forward movement, towards the solar equator, ever enclosing additional territory, where electrical disturbance above has sufficiently ceased for that purpose. This is a slow but a steady process. The steps are hardly appreciable under intervals of ten thousand solar-axial revolutions of twenty-five of our days each. Eventually the two great walls, approaching respectively from north and south, will meet at the solar equator, thus constituting the whole solar surface into Upper Solar territory, and making of our sun a world of entirely Upper Solar life.
The Upper Solars, it is inferred by us lower mortals, are able to calculate, quite accurately, alike the beginning and the duration of this result. Then comes a long reign of Upper Solar life, and an advance into knowledge far beyond ordinary human attainment. But the end comes at last in this as in all else. Indeed it has been foreseen from the beginning. The fires of all solar energy must at length burn out. There have been many instances in the past, and there will be many more in the future. But all this complex question of science, including that other of the contingency of the re-entrance of those burnt-out systems into light and heat, and a fresh career of life, by the collisions and other fortunes incidental to constant locomotion and gravity action—a problem in whose solution, by the way, we have of late made much progress—all this, I say, however interesting, must not further distract us at present. Suffice it to add, that the prospect, whether from afar, or as being close at hand, is always viewed alike philosophically by the Upper Solar minds. Their advanced science might long protract, by artificial conditions, the Upper Solar existence in any threatened case. But, as they calmly argue, why enter upon any such forced and inferior conditions! There is ever, accordingly, perfect resignation to the final extinction of the race in each successive case. And again, it would be within the power of their science to effect a timely escape to other suns, more or less perfectly suited to them, and having yet millions of generations of life before them, which are in full communion with them, and where they would be loyally welcomed. But each solar world accepts its own destiny and fate, and this escape-resource has never been adopted. They reflect that the comparative handful of their particular section of the race will not be missed in the many millions of the peopled suns of Upper Solar life attainment; and that there is a still more satisfying eternity for all of them in that spiritual life of the future, which is the common heritage of man.
And now it was for Brown and me to wonder how we, the Peri of a lower world, were to be dealt with at the gate of this paradise, to which we were approaching. I must say that, even in spite of sundry comic sensations, I felt penetrated by a profound respect and awe, as the bright, keen, all-speaking pair of eyes concentrated upon me, the short squat figure having first raised itself to my level by mounting a chair. There was further a mysterious uncomfortable glitter about those small upper eyes in the forehead, whose jet-black extremities were evidently in co-action and co-agitation with the lower. To my agreeable surprise, however, I was passed through almost at once. But turning back to Brown, and seeing some little haggling going on, and old B. for once, as I thought, a trifle uncomfortable, I could not resist calling out that that sad Calvinism of his was at the bottom of it all.
The next moment, however, the old fellow tripped up to my side, quite proud of his comparative consequence. "Well, Green," he said emphatically, "I never! They do say, hereabout, that the empty heads get easiest through. Who would have thought that as between you and me! You must have so crammed my head all these years, that at last it is fuller than your own." I was rather put out by this unseasonable, or at least unexpected sally of old Brown's. But then who could think, just at that exciting moment, of anything else than Upper Solardom?
What struck us most, when at last really inside, was the uniformity of everything around. There seemed a great throng of people and a multitude of dwellings, although nowhere such as to cause any inconvenience. But the houses were all alike, and the people all seemed to have the same expression, and to be doing the same things—in short to live, move, and think in the same way. It seemed as though, having ascertained the best plan of a dwelling, for instance, they all took exactly to that pattern, and that, having determined the best rule as to habits of life and thought, they all followed that rule. There is one curious physical difference between them and us, in the absence of a stomach and bowel system like ours. As they imbibe, in their advanced chemical ways, only the exact kind and quantity of the nutriment needed for the system, there is neither excrement nor excrementary passage; and of course there is never either the worry or the savour of a sewage question in Upper Solardom.
These Upper Solars are supposed to have complete knowledge of all physical science, but, on principle, to withhold such advanced knowledge from the Lower Solars, in order that, by gradual self-progress, the social and moral advance may accompany the scientific. With their advanced science, they might travel from system to system as easiy and quickly, perhaps, as we now master mere interplanetary distances; but, as matter of fact, they never do so, simply because there seems to them no need for such time and labour-wasting effort, seeing their communications by mind are already perfect and constant with all Upper Solar life throughout the universe, or, more strictly, throughout that section of it in which they live. Having attained to all physical science, their chief study is the science of mind; and the chief occupation there is the sublime study of Deity, in its relation to eternity past and future, to infinity, and to the visible universe. In this high question our own more limited capacity can but catch up one or other of the outside extremities of the true idea—namely, on the one hand, a personal God, necessarily local and limited; and, on the other, a pantheistic expanse, as necessarily nothing at all. In endeavouring, with their higher capacity, to grasp the true mean of the Divine relationship, these Upper Solars have before them a grand question, in which the race is ever making a satisfying because an appreciable progress, but with this result, at once inspiring and despairing, that every step of ascent opens to view a still larger field of what remains unknown.
After strolling about for a while, no one around us taking any notice, any more than if we were a couple of harmless stray sheep, we resolved to accost one of these self-absorbed beings, in order to pump some information out of him. We relied on the probability of his being master of the universal telegraph language of our own, so-called "Higher Life." "Yes, you do it. Green," interposed Brown eagerly; and I doubt not he was at the moment thinking of the promising variety of material thus in store for our forthcoming volume. I doubt not, also, that I could, just then, have signally reversed, upon his own pate, that late allocution of his about other people's empty heads, had I chosen to go back upon it. But with all our present high surroundings I rose above that small sort of thing.
Watching our opportunity, we planted ourselves right in front of one advancing form, for there seemed no other way of distracting the attention of these people, in their devoted self-abstraction. This was an elderly man, with the grave but not unpleasant expression that appeared to belong to the whole race. He glanced up at us for a moment, and, with perfectly unchanged expression, was about to make a slight détour, so as to pass round us. But we were not to be done in that way, and so we promptly checkmated him.
Brown stood awe-struck, while I gathered myself up for the encounter. With a feeling of profound respect, which could hardly fail to appear in my looks, I asked our new friend if he would afford to us, ignorant strangers as we were, some information upon all that was around us. With a sign of assent, he answered at once, and in our telegraph language, that he would give us a few minutes. Then turning round, and pointing to what seemed to us a sort of telegraph apparatus, from which he had himself just come, and where there were still a great many looking on and apparently reading, he told us that communications were there being received from a number of systems, far and near, throughout the universe. The information appeared to us to be conveyed by a rapid succession of spectrum colours and their colour sounds, all of which rumbled in our crude ears like the mere indiscriminate hum of an Eolian harp, but which seemed to convey, with extraordinary rapidity, the most precise knowledge to the absorbed listeners before us. We were already aware, indeed, that these Upper Solars intercommunicated ideas with a rapidity almost infinitely beyond mere speech making; and that they classed us mere speechmakers as an inferior race, and more allied to anthropoids than to themselves. Although there was not a great difference in physical form between them and the Lower Solars, these Uppers, with their additional sense, and other superiorities, made out, at least, a very wide difference in mind.
Our guide next took us, after a short walk, into one of a line or street of houses, presumably his own residence. These houses are very small slight structures, and, in passing through this one, we noticed what must have been a bed, but which to us looked more like an electric battery. We had already, indeed, heard something of the sleeping arrangements in Upper Solardom, the plan being to lie down in a head-to-foot magnetic current, which composes at once to sleep, while a clock regulation, by arrest and reversal of the composing current, after so many hours, causes immediate awakening.
We now passed through, into a somewhat large and open space behind, where we noticed what seemed like a slightly hollowed out amphitheatre. This was nearly filled by the irregular outline of what looked like a transparent mist or light auroral cloud. Our guide, in pointing to this remarkable object, seemed, by his face, to ask us if we could divine its meaning. We approached nearer, and gazed intently for some seconds. Suddenly I recognized the peculiarity of the outline, and a sense of sublime awe and even terror came over me, for was it not a micromized reflection of the vast outside universe! It was indeed no other. Our own science, although far less advanced, had long since laid down the general form of our universe, embodied mainly, as it was, in the so-called Milky Way; and here it all was, bodily reflected before our eyes. When I had whispered the solution to Brown, he was even more awed and affected than myself.
Our guide first explained that this reflection was secured for their use from the point of view of the furthest outlying star-cluster, and conveyed to them, as to many others, by lines which, with ter-cross strength, passed unscathed through their own and any other solar photospheres; while our own poorer lines, merely cross-electric, whether duplicated, or even reduplicated, were, alas! at once destroyed by contact with those glowing cross-electric furnaces. Then taking a rod in his hand, our instructor next directed our attention to one particular spot, considerably inside, towards the centre of the mist. This, as I correctly surmised, was the location of our own system; but nothing in particular could be distinguished, beyond the general outline of a comparatively very small section of the misty total, representing the particular sub-universe of which our solar system was a minute part.
We were next directed to look through what appeared a telescopic apparatus; and there truly I saw what had been the little fragment of mist now resolved into almost countless stars or suns, but yet on so small a scale, that any of their respective revolving planets were totally invisible. A spring was next touched, and now this first magnifying was itself remagnified. But the magnified field was this time restricted to only one sun, whose principal planets just emerged into distinct sight. This was our own luminary, and around it we made out clearly great Jupiter and diversified Saturn, with Uranus and Neptune feebly visible, while the earth and Venus were but small discless points of light. Another magnifying brought only the earth and the moon into the field; and, in yet one more, it was the earth alone, looming out grandly in all her solitude. Ceaselessly turning on her axis, and moving along in her orbit, the mighty living world lay before us; and even while we gazed for a few seconds, we had to keep adjusting the apparatus, so as to move with the restless mass, and maintain it all in our full view. "See, Green," cried Brown, all of a sudden, and in no small excitement, just at this conjuncture, "the bright morning seems just dawning over the ground of Old England; and as the next magnifying is to bring to us the life size, who knows what delicate scenes and questionable sights may open upon us—Mrs. G. herself, perhaps, at her favourite eastern-outlook bedroom window, and just out of bed, in her night-dress, to sniff the fresh morning air." "Bless my heart and soul," said I to myself, as something approaching to a momentary tremor ran through me, "I had not thought about all this!" My fingers instinctively dropped from the regulating knob, and the final trigger remained unsprung.
We now turned back with our friend towards his house, and as he discoursed to us, I nudged Brown, in order to whisper in his ear that we were being treated to no less than actual Ter-Cross science. Poor Brown was sorely awe-struck, and seemed to look in wonder at something of a jaunty aspect I put on. For my part, suspecting, as we're-entered the house, that our opportunities were drawing to a close, and eager to make the most of what were left, I plumped to our instructor a plain question. It was unmistakably evident, I said to him, that his race had attained to Ter-Cross science, an attainment that might be yet very far from our own less advanced position; but what of the Quarto-Cross? "The Quarto Cross," he echoed, and at the same time reverently upraising his eyes—"The Quarto-Cross is beyond us—unattainable discovery! Divine Power!" So saying, and giving us a slight salute, he disappeared behind his door, and we were left on the steps lamenting.