234. Are there, as has been stated, worlds which serve as stations and resting-places for errant spirits?

"Yes; there are worlds which are specially adapted for the reception of wandering beings, worlds which they may temporally inhabit; a sort of camping-ground in which they may bivouac for a time, and repose after a too lengthened erraticity – a state which is always somewhat wearisome. Those worlds constitute intermediary stations between the worlds of other orders, and are graduated according to the nature of the spirits who are to come into them, and who will find in them the conditions of a rest more or less enjoyable."

– Can the spirits who occupy these worlds quit them at pleasure?

"Yes, they can leave them for any other region to which they may have to go. They are like birds of passage alighting on an island in order to rest and recover strength for reaching their destination."

235. Do spirits progress during their sojourns in the transitional worlds?

"Certainly; those who thus come together do so with a view to their instruction, and in order more readily to obtain permission to enter a higher region, and thus to advance their progress towards the perfection which is their aim."

236. Are the transitional worlds of a special nature, and destined to be for ever the sojourn of wandering spirits?

"No; their position in the hierarchy of worlds is only temporary."

– Are they, at the same time, inhabited by corporeal beings?

"No; their surface is sterile. Those who inhabit them have no corporeal wants."

– Is this sterility permanent, and does it result from anything special in their nature?

"No; their sterility is only transitional."

– Such worlds are, then, void of everything like the beauties of nature?

"The inexhaustible richness of creation is manifested by beauties of immensity that are no less admirable than the terrestrial harmonies which you call the beauties of nature."

– Since the state of those worlds is only transitory, will the state of our earth, at some future time, be of that character?

"Such has already been its state."

– At what epoch?

"During its formation."

Nothing in nature is useless; everything has its purpose, its destination. There is no void; every portion of immensity is inhabited. Life is everywhere. Thus, during the long series of ages which preceded man's appearance upon the earth, during the vast periods of transition attested by the superposition of the geologic strata, before even the earliest formation of organised beings, upon that formless mass, in that arid chaos in which the elements existed in a state of fusion, there was no absence of life. Beings who had neither human wants nor human sensations found therein a welcome refuge. The will of God had ordained that the earth, even in that embryonic state, should be useful. Who, then, would venture to say that, of the innumerable orbs which circulate in immensity, one only, and one of the smallest of them all, lost in the crowd, has the exclusive privilege of being inhabited? What, in that case, would be the use of the others? Would God have created them merely to regale our eyes? Such a supposition, of which the absurdity is incompatible with the wisdom that appears in all His works, becomes still more evidently inadmissible when we reflect on the myriads of heavenly bodies which we are unable to perceive. On the other hand, no one can deny the grandeur and sublimity of the idea that worlds in course of formation, and which are still unfitted for the habitation of material life, are, nevertheless, peopled with living beings appropriate to its condition – an idea which may possibly contain the solution of more than one problem as yet obscure.