far as space concerns it any
longer) immovable in space. _I_ was not leaving the earth: the earth
was leaving _me_, and not only the earth but the whole solar system
was streaming past. And about me in space, invisible to me, scattered in
the wake of the earth upon its journey, there must be an innumerable
multitude of souls, stripped like myself of the material, stripped like
myself of the passions of the individual and the generous emotions of the
gregarious brute, naked intelligences, things of new-born wonder and
thought, marvelling at the strange release that had suddenly come on them!

As I receded faster and faster from the strange white sun in the black
heavens, and from the broad and shining earth upon which my being had
begun, I seemed to grow in some incredible manner vast: vast as regards
this world I had left, vast as regards the moments and periods of a human
life. Very soon I saw the full circle of the earth, slightly gibbous, like
the moon when she nears her full, but very large; and the silvery shape of
America was now in the noonday blaze wherein (as it seemed) little England
had been basking but a few minutes ago. At first the earth was large, and
shone in the heavens, filling a great part of them; but every moment she
grew smaller and more distant. As she shrank, the broad moon in its third
quarter crept into view over the rim of her disc. I looked for the
constellations. Only that part of Aries directly behind the sun and the
Lion, which the earth covered, were hidden. I recognised the tortuous,
tattered band of the Milky Way with Vega very bright between sun and
earth; and Sirius and Orion shone splendid against the unfathomable
blackness in the opposite quarter of the heavens. The Pole Star was
overhead, and the Great Bear hung over the circle of the earth. And away
beneath and beyond the shining corona of the sun were strange groupings of
stars I had never seen in my life--notably a dagger-shaped group that I
knew for the Southern Cross. All these were no larger than when they had
shone on earth, but the little stars that one scarce sees shone now
against the setting of black vacancy as brightly as the first-magnitudes
had done, while the larger worlds were points of indescribable glory and
colour. Aldebaran was a spot of blood-red fire, and Sirius condensed to
one point the light of innumerable sapphires. And they shone steadily:
they did not scintillate, they were calmly glorious. My impressions