Lumen

Lumen is by Camille Flammarion, in an authorised translation from the French by A. A. M. and R. M. The One Hundred and Forty-first of the Minor Planets, situated between Mars and Jupiter and discovered at the Paris Observatory by M. Paul Henry on the 13th of January 1875, received the name of LUMEN in honour of the Author of this Work. The contents list a first conversation with topics such as death, the soul, the hour of death, and separation of the soul, among others.

The text says the soul is not the vital force, for that is limited and is transmitted by generation, has no consciousness of itself, is born, grows up, declines, and dies. The text says the chemical or mechanical work of cerebral cells, however subtle they may be, can never produce an intellectual judgment, such as the knowledge of the fact that four multiplied by four is equal to sixteen. The text says that contemporary science is beginning to penetrate a little into this invisible world, and has just calculated the vibrations below 458 billions and the vibrations above 727 billions.