Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/67

 take for granted that the mountain ridge of humanity does not continue under the Dead Sea, merely because we cannot see through its waters, for do not all mountain ridges continue on the bottom of the ocean? What! man will guess at worlds, when he cannot even guess world-quarters! Would the Greenlander paint a Negro, a Dane, a Greek, in his mind's eye, without ever having seen one? Can the political genius divine the inner versifications of the poetic one, without experience? Can the Abderite imagine the architecture of the sage? Would we have guessed the existence of but one of the animal creations of Anthropomorphism which copy the human figure in all animals, and yet change it? Or could a bodiless self, placed in a vacuum, with all existing logic and metaphysic, ever have conceived but a single vein of its present embodification and humanification? "

"But what are you asserting or denying?" asked Wilhelmi.

"I only assert that a second life on another planet cannot be denied, merely because we are unable to map out the planet, and portray its inhabitants. But we need no other planet."

The Baron said: "O, I have often dreamed delicious dreams of this grande tour through the stars! It seemed the progression of a student from one class to another,—the classes being worlds."

"But," replied Karlson, "to all these worlds, as upon our own, you will be refused admittance if you arrive without a body. By what miracle will you obtain one?"

"By a repeated one," I answered. "For by a miracle we have our present body. But we can say in favor of this planet wandering, that our eyes too widely separate the worlds of which each one is but an element of the