The Inhabited Worlds

49:0.1All mor­tal-in­hab­ited worlds are evo­lu­tion­ary in ori­gin and na­ture. These spheres are the spawn­ing ground, the evo­lu­tion­ary cra­dle, of the mor­tal races of time and space. Each unit of the as­cen­dant life is a ver­i­ta­ble train­ing school for the stage of ex­is­tence just ahead, and this is true of ev­ery stage of man’s pro­gres­sive Par­a­dise as­cent; just as true of the ini­tial mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence on an evo­lu­tion­ary planet as of the fi­nal uni­verse head­quar­ters school of the Mel­chiz­e­deks, a school which is not at­tended by as­cend­ing mor­tals un­til just be­fore their trans­la­tion to the regime of the super­uni­verse and the at­tain­ment of first-stage spirit ex­is­tence.

49:0.2All in­hab­ited worlds are ba­si­cally grouped for ce­les­tial ad­min­is­tra­tion into the lo­cal sys­tems, and each of these lo­cal sys­tems is lim­ited to about one thou­sand evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. This lim­i­ta­tion is by the de­cree of the An­cients of Days, and it per­tains to ac­tual evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets whereon mor­tals of sur­vival sta­tus are liv­ing. Nei­ther worlds fi­nally set­tled in light and life nor plan­ets in the pre­hu­man stage of life de­vel­op­ment are reck­oned in this group.

49:0.3Sa­ta­nia it­self is an un­fin­ished sys­tem con­tain­ing only 619 in­hab­ited worlds. Such plan­ets are num­bered se­ri­ally in ac­cor­dance with their reg­is­tra­tion as in­hab­ited worlds, as worlds in­hab­ited by will crea­tures. Thus was Uran­tia given the num­ber 606 of Sa­ta­nia, mean­ing the 606^th world in this lo­cal sys­tem on which the long evo­lu­tion­ary life pro­cess cul­mi­nated in the ap­pear­ance of hu­man be­ings. There are thirty-six un­in­hab­ited plan­ets near­ing the life-en­dow­ment stage, and sev­eral are now be­ing made ready for the Life Car­ri­ers. There are nearly two hun­dred spheres which are evolv­ing so as to be ready for life im­plan­ta­tion within the next few mil­lion years.

49:0.4Not all plan­ets are suited to har­bor mor­tal life. Small ones hav­ing a high rate of ax­ial rev­o­lu­tion are wholly un­suited for life habi­tats. In sev­eral of the phys­i­cal sys­tems of Sa­ta­nia the plan­ets re­volv­ing around the cen­tral sun are too large for habi­ta­tion, their great mass oc­ca­sion­ing op­pres­sive grav­ity. Many of these enor­mous spheres have satel­lites, some­times a half dozen or more, and these moons are of­ten in size very near that of Uran­tia, so that they are al­most ideal for habi­ta­tion.

49:0.5The old­est in­hab­ited world of Sa­ta­nia, world num­ber one, is Anova, one of the forty-four satel­lites re­volv­ing around an enor­mous dark planet but ex­posed to the dif­fer­en­tial light of three neigh­bor­ing suns. Anova is in an ad­vanced stage of pro­gres­sive civ­i­liza­tion.