Two years have fled, O Lumen, since the day of our first mystical conversation. During this period, of which inhabitants of eternal space like you have been unconscious, but of which we dwellers on the Earth have been very conscious, I have often devoted my thoughts to the great mysteries into which you have initiated me, and to the new horizons set out before my mind’s eye. Since your departure from the Earth you have doubtless made great advances, by means of your observations and studies, in progressively vaster fields of research. Doubtless, too, you have numberless marvels to relate to me now that my intelligence is better prepared to receive them. If I am worthy, and can comprehend them, please give me an account of the celestial voyages that have transported your spirit into the higher spheres, of the hitherto-unknown truths that they have imparted to you, of the grandeurs that they have exposed to you, and of the principles they have taught you in reference to the mysterious subject of the destiny of human and other beings.

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own . . . With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter . . . At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.