sounds, the colours, the scents--all that depends upon material
vibration--were abstracted from it; while form, of which the idea exists
in the mind apart from all concrete manifestations, was still present.
For some time after that, a series of these crystalline globes passed
through the atmosphere where I dwelt, some near, some far; and I saw in
an instant, in each case, the life and history of each. Some were still
all aflame, mere currents of molten heat and flying vapour. Some had the
first signs of rudimentary life--some, again, had a full and organised
life, such as ours on earth, with a clash of nations, a stream of
commerce, a perfecting of knowledge. Others were growing cold, and the
life upon them was artificial and strange, only achieved by a highly
intellectual and noble race, with an extraordinary command of natural
forces, fighting in wonderfully constructed and guarded dwellings
against the growing deathliness of a frozen world, and with a tortured
despair in their minds at the extinction which threatened them. There
were others, again, which were frozen and dead, where the drifting snow
piled itself up over the gigantic and pathetic contrivances of a race
living underground, with huge vents and chimneys, burrowing further
into the earth in search of shelter, and nurturing life by amazing
processes which I cannot here describe. They were marvellously wise,
those pale and shadowy creatures, with a vitality infinitely ahead of
our own, a vitality out of which all weakly or diseased elements had
long been eliminated. And again there were globes upon which all seemed
dead and frozen to the core, slipping onwards in some infinite progress.
But though I saw life under a myriad of new conditions, and with an
endless variety of forms, the nature of it was the same as ours. There
was the same ignorance of the future, the same doubts and uncertainties,
the same pathetic leaning of heart to heart, the same wistful desire
after permanence and happiness, which could not be there or so attained.

Then, too, I saw wild eddies of matter taking shape, of a subtlety that
is as far beyond any known earthly conditions of matter as steam is
above frozen stone. Great tornadoes whirled and poised; globes of
spinning fire flew off on distant errands of their own, as when the
heavens were made; and I saw, too, the crash of world with world, when
satellites that had lost their impetus drooped inwards upon some central
sun, and me