our earth. There therefore stood
before me a female exactly resembling the women on that earth. Her face
was beautiful, but it was smaller than that of a woman of our earth; she
was more slender, but of equal height; she wore a linen head-dress, not
artfully yet gracefully disposed. A man also was presented. He, too, was
more slender than the men of our earth; he wore a garment of deep blue,
closely fitted to his body without folds or flowing skirts. Such, I
learn, were the personal form and costume of the humans of that earth.
Afterwards there was shown me a species of the oxen and cows, which did
not indeed differ much from those on our earth, except that they were
smaller, and made some approach to the stag and hind species.' We have
seen, too, that the lunar spirits were no larger than children seven
years old.

One passage of Swedenborg's description of Jupiter is curious. 'Although
on that earth,' he says, 'spirits speak with men' (_i.e._ with Jovian
men) 'man in his turn does not speak with spirits, except to say, when
instructed, _that he will do so no more_,'--which we should regard as a
bull if it were not news from the Jovian spirit world. 'Nor is man
allowed to tell anyone that a spirit has spoken to him; if he does so,
he is punished. Those spirits of Jupiter when they were with me, at
first supposed they were with a man of their own earth; but when in my
turn I spoke with them, and thought of publishing what passed between us
and so relating it to others, then, because they were not allowed to
chastise me, they discovered they were with a stranger.'

It has been a favourite idea with those who delight in the argument from
design, that the moons of the remoter planets have been provided for the
express purpose of making up for the small amount of sunlight which
reaches those planets. Jupiter receives only about one twenty-seventh
part of the light which we receive from the sun; but then, has he not
four moons to make his nights glorious? Saturn is yet farther away from
the sun, and receives only the ninetieth part of the light we get from
the sun; but then he has eight moons and his rings, and the nocturnal
glory of his skies must go far to compensate the Saturnians for the
small quantity of sunlight they receive. The Saturnian spirits who
visited Swedenborg were manifestly indoctrinated with these ideas. For
they informed him that the nocturnal light of Saturn is so great that
some Saturnians worship it,