declare that the rays transmitted by the sun to the earth and the other
planets are nothing more or less than the emanations of these souls?
that these are the emissions of pure spirits living in the radiant star
that come to us, and to dwellers in the other planets, under the visible
form of rays?

"If this hypothesis be accepted, what magnificent, what sublime
relations may we not catch a glimpse of, between the sun and the globes
that roll around him; between the Sun and the planets there would be a
continual exchange, a never broken circle, an unending 'come and go' of
beamy emissions, which would engender and nourish in the solar world
motion and activity, thought and feeling, and keep burning everywhere
the torch of life.

"See the emanations of souls that dwell in the Sun descending upon the
earth in the shape of solar rays. Light gives life to plants, and
produces vegetable life, to which sensibility belongs. Plants having
received from the Sun the germ of sensibility transmit it to animals,
always with the help of the Sun's heat. See the soul germs enfolded in
animals develop, improve little by little, from one animal to another,
and at last become incarnated in a human body. See, a little later, the
superhuman succeed the man, launch himself into the vast plains of
ether, and begin the long series of transmigrations that will gradually
lead him to the highest round of the ladder of spiritual growth, where
all material substance has been eliminated, and where the time has come
for the soul thus exalted, and with essence purified to the utmost, to
enter the supreme home of bliss and intellectual and moral power; that
is the Sun.

"Such would be the endless circle, the unbroken chain, that would bind