The whole universe consists of astral systems. To create them, nature has only one hundred elements at its disposal. Despite all its ingenuity and the infinite number of combinations available to its fertility, the result is necessarily a finite number, like the number of the elements themselves. To fill up space, nature must repeat its original combinations and types ad infinitum. Accordingly, each star must exist in time and space an infinite number of times, not just as it appears once, but at each moment of its duration from its genesis to its death. The earth is such a star. Hence, each human being, too, is eternal at each moment of its existence. What I am writing at this moment in a cell in the Fort Du Taureau I have written and will write throughout eternity—at a table, with a pen, in circumstances absolutely identical to the present ones. It is the same for every one…we have innumerable doubles in time and space…These doubles have flesh and blood, trousers and overcoats, crinolines and chignons. They are not phantoms but eternalized reality. One thing, to be sure, is lacking in them is progress. What we call by that name is walled up in each earth, the same drama, the same setting, on the same narrow stage—a clamorous humanity intoxicated with its greatness. Always and everywhere it believes itself the universe, living in its prison as if it were immeasurable, only to sink—along with the terrestrial globe itself—into the shadows which soon put an end to its arrogance. The same monotony, the same immobility on the other stars. The universe repeats itself endlessly, marking time on the spot. Unwaveringly, eternity performs the same play over and over again, in infinity.
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