employed in organisation, substances that bear the same analogy to common
matter that the refined or most subtle gases do to common solids and
fluids. The universe is everywhere full of life, but the modes of this
life are infinitely diversified, and yet every form of it must be enjoyed
and known by every spiritual nature before the consummation of all
things. You have seen the comet moving with its immense train of light
through the sky; this likewise has a system supplied with living beings
and their existence derives its enjoyment from the diversity of
circumstances to which they are exposed; passing as it were through the
infinity of space they are continually gratified by the sight of new
systems and worlds, and you can imagine the unbounded nature of the
circle of their knowledge. My power extends so far as to afford you a
glimpse of the nature of a cometary world." I was again in rapid motion,
again passing with the utmost velocity through the bright blue sky, and I
saw Jupiter and his satellites and Saturn and his ring behind me, and
before me the sun, no longer appearing as through a blue mist but in
bright and unsupportable splendour, towards which I seemed moving with
the utmost velocity; in a limited sphere of vision, in a kind of red hazy
light similar to that which first broke in upon me in the Colosaeum, I
saw moving round me globes which appeared composed of different kinds of
flame and of different colours. In some of these globes I recognised
figures which put me in mind of the human countenance, but the
resemblance was so awful and unnatural that I endeavoured to withdraw my
view from them. "You are now," said the Genius, "in a cometary system;
those globes of light surrounding you are material forms, such as in one
of your systems of religious faith have been attributed to seraphs; they
live in that element which to you would be destruction; they communicate
by powers which would convert your organised frame into ashes; they are
now in the height of their enjoyment, being about to enter into the blaze
of the solar atmosphere. These beings so grand, so glorious, with