This superior being, this last step of the ascending scale of living creation proper to the planetary worlds, the corresponding analogous creature to terrestrial man, we shall take leave to call _planetary man_.
In all the planets, then, there exist _men_, as on the earth, just as there exist animals which are inferior to that noble and privileged type.
According to the views which we have explained at the commencement of this work, terrestrial man undergoes, after his death, a glorious metamorphosis. Leaving his miserable material covering here below, his soul springs upward into space, and becomes incarnate in a new being, whose type is infinitely superior, by reason of its moral perfection, to that of our poor humanity. He becomes that which we have called the _superhuman being_. If this be true of the terrestrial man, it must be equally true of the planetary man. So that the superhuman being must proceed, not only from the earth, but from all the other planets.
Superhuman beings come from the human souls who have lived either upon the Earth, or upon Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, &c. And precisely as the superhuman being, who comes from the Earth passes into the surrounding ether, so the planetary man, leaving Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, &c., passes into the ether, which surrounds his own planet, becomes incarnate in a superhuman being, and lives in the ethereal plains adjoining the planet which he has quitted.
All these superhuman beings float in the clouds of ether which, in the case of every planet, succeed to its atmosphere.
Thus, the principles upon which we have based terrestrial humanity, are general, and apply to all planetary humanity. Not from the Earth only do those souls proceed who are incarnate in new creatures in the bosom of the ethereal spaces, these souls proceed from all the globes which, together with the Earth, form the attendant court of the royal Sun.
PROOFS OF THE PLURALITY OF HUMAN EXISTENCES, AND OF RE-INCARNATIONS.--APART FROM THIS DOCTRINE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EXPLAIN THE PRESENCE OF MAN UPON THE EARTH, THE SAD AND UNEQUAL CONDITIONS OF HUMAN LIFE, AND THE FATE OF CHILDREN WHO DIE IN INFANCY.
THE doctrine of the plurality of existences, and of re-incarnations, which bind together, like so many links of the same chain, all living creatures, from the most minute animal, even to those blessed beings to whom it is given to behold God in His glory; which gives brethren in the different planets to terrestrial humanity; which makes of the inhabitants of our globe a nation of the universe; which sees but one family in all the population of the worlds--a planetary family--whose every member may raise himself by his merits and his struggles, in the hierarchy of happiness, is supported by so many proofs. So many, indeed, that we are puzzled to choose among all the methods of demonstration which offer themselves in aid of it. To enumerate them all would unduly enlarge the dimensions of this work, so that we shall content ourselves with bringing forward the most striking.