Superior planet

“ And this is what establishes the sovereignty of the Supreme on the worlds long settled in light and life. Such advanced planets are indeed poems of harmony, pictures of the beauty of achieved goodness attained through the pursuit of cosmic truth. And if such things can happen to a planet, then even greater things can happen to a system and the larger units of the grand universe as they too achieve a settledness indicating the exhaustion of the potentials for finite growth. ”

“ Why should not the Solar System be the chief and most complete system in the universe, and the Earth the principal planet in that System? So far as we yet know, the Sun is the largest Sun among the stars; and we shall attempt to show, that the Earth is the largest solid opaque globe in the solar system. Some System must be the largest and most finished of all ”

“ Lifting our searching gaze into the measureless space beyond our earth, we find planet bound to planet, and system chained to system, all impelled by a universal force to roll in regularity and order around a common centre. The pendulations of the remotest star are communicated through the unseen bond; and our rocking world obeys the mysterious impulse throughout all those forces which regulate the inorganic combinations of this earth, and unto which its organic creation is irresistibly compelled to bow. ”

“ To myself, who had passed much of my life on the four outer giants, on Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and Neptune, the little planet ahead seemed insignificant, almost, with its single tiny moon. And yet from it, I knew, had come that unceasing stream of human life, that dauntless flood of pioneers, which had spread over all the solar system in the last hundred thousand years. They had gone out to planet after planet, had conquered the strange atmospheres and bacteria and gravitations, until now the races of man held sway over all the sun's eight wheeling worlds. ”

“ It commands a stupendous prospect, bounded only by the spherical form of the earth. And standing there, with the earth beneath and the heavens all around, one fully realizes that we live upon a great planet rolling in its orbit through immense space. ”

“ A single moment's reflection upon the solar system will fully demonstrate the difficulties that have attended this subject; the principal planets are attracted by the sun, and the sun by the planets; the satellites are also attracted by their principal planets, and each planet attracts all the rest, and is attracted by them. All these actions and reactions vary according to the quantities of matter and the distances, and produce great inequalities and irregularities. ”

“ If the earth were brought down in size to an ordinary large school globe, a piece of rough brown paper covering it might well represent the thickness of this earth-crust, with which the science of geology has to do. And the whole of the globe, this earth of ours, is but one tiny planet in the great Solar System. And the centre of that Solar System, the blazing sun, though equal in size to more than a million earths, is yet himself but one star amid millions of twinkling stars, scattered broadcast through the universe. ”

“ We now come to the best known planet of the solar system, reckoning outwards from the Sun, and though this planet itself, as an object to look at, has no particular interest for the general public, yet the history of its discovery is a matter of extreme interest. ”

“ Thirteen major planets they counted as they searched the system with their powerful telectroscope, the outermost more than ten billion miles from the parent sun, while planet six, the one indicated by the world number, was at a distance of five hundred million miles, nearly as far from the sun as Jupiter is from ours, yet the giant sun, giving more than twenty-five times as much heat and light in the blue-white range, heated the planet to approximately the same temperature Earth enjoys. ”

“ It is full of progressive action everywhere, and, to quote from another author, “our planet and our solar system are but as the small dust of the balance in the colossal scale of the worlds that are.” ”

“ The worlds of light that nightly illume the firmament of earth are not mere spheres of uninhabitable matter, nor are they simply appendages to earth,—glittering ornaments to attract the eye of man,—but vast systems of suns and tributary planets, with worlds whose products and inhabitants far exceed in organized development those of this little planet Earth, whose astronomers are just beginning to realize the capacities of the worlds revealed through their telescopes. ”

“ Revolving upon its own axis, and describing an ample circuit through the boundless fields of space, is a planet of the solar system bearing upon its surface a population of nearly a thousand millions subject to sin, disease and death. This orb of the starry heavens shines with a glory similar to that of its kindred spheres. ”

“ Probably much of the impressiveness of the spectacle is owing to the knowledge that those little points of light, shining now in a row and now in a cluster, are actually, at every instant, under the government of their giant neighbor and master, and that as we look upon them, obediently making their circuits about him, never venturing beyond a certain distance away, we behold a type of that gravitational mastery to which our own little planet is subject as it revolves around its still greater ruler, the sun, to whose control even Jupiter in his turn must submit. ”

“ I wish to reiterate that advanced Spirits of Planets of our, and of other Solar Systems, unite in declaring that everywhere life expressions are alike or very similar. That dissimilarities through environments pertain more to bulk and density than to form. ”

“ The result would be that the earth would be carried around the sun in a circular or an elliptical orbit. Every other planet in the solar system would be under the operation of the same compound forces governed by the same laws ”

“ The supreme controlling power in the solar system is the attraction of the sun. Each planet of the system experiences that attraction, and, in virtue thereof, is constrained to revolve around the sun in an elliptic path. ”

“ Not to embarrass ourselves with the perplexities of a problem so complicated as our solar system is in its entirety, we shall for the sake of clear reasoning assume an ideal system, consisting of a sun and [156] a large planet—in fact, such as our own system would be if we could withdraw from it all other bodies, leaving the sun and Jupiter only remaining. We shall suppose, of course, that the sun is much larger than the planet, in fact, it will be convenient to keep in mind the relative masses of the sun and Jupiter, the weight of the planet being less than one-thousandth part of the sun. ”

“ De L'Ester—Alas and alas, that many, many centuries must elapse ere your hope shall bear fruition. Development of the peoples of a planet, as a whole, is not a matter of centuries, but of ages. Centuries come and go, and only Infinite Intelligence can discern that all along the line one step has been taken. Like the rising and falling of ocean's unquiet waves, now amid mad tempests, dashing their white crests toward the sky, anon with gentle undulations laving the sand strewn shore, so amid storm and calm, the peoples of planets slowly, but surely, evolve toward higher planes of being. ”

“ A planet runs through its grand period of life from a formless nebula to a globe, which solidifies into a planet with or without satellites. It is involution as long as the planet is in process of formation; but when matter begins to manifest, the first step in evolution is taken, which goes on from protoplasm to man. Then comes the blooming-time, when this flower of space will scatter its seeds, as did the huge planet once revolving between Jupiter and Mars. ”

“ This knowledge of our real place and value in the universe is a very important consequence of our modern astronomy, and should not be lost sight of in any of our speculations. But then it is also now ascertained that the great laws of our own planet, and of the solar system to which it belongs, prevail in all other and the most remote systems, so as to make the visible universe, in the strictest sense, ONE SYSTEM--indicating one origin and showing the presence of one Controlling Power. ”

“ These rings or planets, thus detached from the central atmospheric mass, would continue to revolve, in virtue of the force originally impressed upon them, and their motion would be nearly circular, in the same plane and in the same direction with that of the sun. The first planet, so formed, must have been that at the extreme limit of our solar system ”

“ Suppose that some great planet, not of the Solar System, barred our path. We should not be taken wholly unawares, for astronomers would know of the approach of the star and our earth to one another months, and perhaps years, beforehand. That would be because the light of the Sun falling on it would be reflected, just as the reflection of the Sun's rays light up the Moon for our eyes. If the strange planet were a very large body, like the sun for bigness, it would become visible far beyond the confines of the Solar System. ”

“ Our favored planet, not like the airless moon, is folded in the kindly bosom of an atmosphere which, while ministering nourishment to man and accommodating itself to all his movements and vicissitudes, interposes as his shield against the fiery influences of the solar system, even to arresting and consuming those countless meteoric stones, showered upon us from stellar space, before they can penetrate to the lower aerial strata. ”

“ The great planet, being in fact himself a "semi-sun," may be regarded as an originator, no less than a recipient, of agitating influences, the combined effects of which may well appear insubordinate to any obvious law. ”

“ And thus, all these phenomena concur in making it appear probable, that the Earth is placed in that region of the solar system in which the planet-forming powers are most vigorous and potent;—between the region of permanent nebulous vapor, and the region of mere shreds and specks of planetary matter, such as are the satellites and the planetoidal group. ”

“ Every one of these planets is an original, unique, and exclusive creation; each planet is a matchless, superb, and perfect production. And this diversity of individuality extends to all features of the physical, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of planetary existence. Each of these billion perfection spheres has been developed and embellished in accordance with the plans of the resident Eternal of Days. ”

“ We shall begin with the planets nearest to the sun, and then we shall gradually proceed outwards to one planet after another, until we reach the confines of the system. We shall find much to occupy our attention. Each planet is itself a globe, and it will be for us to describe as much as is known of it. The satellites by which so many of the planets are accompanied possess many points of interest. The circumstances of their discovery, their sizes, their movements, and their distances must be duly considered. ”

“ The older planets were no doubt discovered by someone, but we can say little more about these discoveries than we can about the discovery of the sun or of the moon; all are alike prehistoric. Here was the first recorded instance of the discovery of a planet which, like the earth, revolves around the sun, and, like our earth, may conceivably be an inhabited globe. ”

“ It may therefore be expected that the small planet will proceed much more rapidly in its evolution than the large one; we might, therefore, anticipate that Mars and his satellites have attained a more advanced stage of their history than is the case with the earth and her satellite. ”

“ Now that I have had a cursory view of the natural divisions of your planet, of its scenery, its peoples and the expressions of their spiritual and intellectual growth, I perceive that in their characteristics the Entoans and Earthians are very much alike. Upon visiting planets other than their own, spirits of a scientific turn experience great surprise at the striking resemblances existing between all planets approaching a like degree of evolvement. Really, bulk, density and atmospheric conditions constitute the most noticeable differences. ”

“ And now, in the unwearied march of science, often baffled but never cast down, it has been announced as the probable solution of all the changes of the past, the progression of the whole solar system, whereby the earth, and all the sister planets, are dragged through infinite space, and brought successively within the sphere of new constellations—now in a hotter and now in a milder efflux of ether—combining its own with a more general movement in a universal whirl—and thus constantly subjected, in all its parts, to ever-varying external influences! ”

“ If we except intruders into our solar system, such as comets and their comparatively inconsiderable effects, we may say that every physical or psychical reality which at any time has entered into the history of this planet and that of its brothers and sisters was in that vast flowing, swirling, revolving globe of gases which is known to have been at one time at least five billion miles in diameter, or fifteen billions in circumference. ”

“ In obedience to this law, each planet must be attracted, not only by the sun, but by innumerable bodies, and the movement of the planet must be the joint effect of all such attractions. As for the influence of the stars on our solar system, it may be at once set aside as inappreciable. ”

“ It almost exactly supplies what I have been conjuring up as my idea of a perfect planet. Its compensations of high land near the equator, and low with effective internal heat at the poles, are ideal. The gradual slope of its continental elevations, on account of their extent, will ease the work of operating railways, and the atmosphere's density will be just the thing for our flying machines, while Nature has supplied all sources of power so lavishly that no undertaking will be too great. ”