The Day After Death (New Edition). Our Future Life According to Science

There is, therefore, no need to excuse a murderer, there is no need to deny his free will, there is no need to spare him the just chastisement of his crime. It is not because there are certain protuberances on his skull that the murderer dips his hands in the blood of his victims. These protuberances are only the external indications of the evil and vicious propensities with which he was born, by which he might have been warned and corrected, and which he might have conquered by the strength of his will, by a real and ardent desire to restore his deformed and vicious soul to rectitude. It is always possible, by adequate effort, to surmount the evil inclinations of one's nature; every one of us can resist pride, idleness, and envy. The man who has not corrected these bad impulses is guilty, and nothing can render a crime committed in all the plenitude of his free will excusable. Thus, neither God nor society is implicated in this question, if we accept the doctrine of the plurality of existences.

Descartes and Leibnitz have demonstrated that the human understanding possesses ideas called innate, that is to say, ideas which we bring with us to our birth. This fact is certain. In our time, the Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart, has put Descartes' theory into a more precise form, by proving that the only real innate idea, that which has universal existence in the human mind after birth, is the idea, or the principle of causality, a principle which makes us say and think that there is no effect without cause, which is the beginning of reason. In France, Laromiguière and Damiron have popularized this discovery of the Scotch philosopher. Thus the classics of philosophy record this proposition as a truth beyond the reach of doubt. We unreservedly admit the principle of causality as the innate idea par excellence, and we take account of the fact. But we ask the fashionable philosophy how it can explain it? In our minds there are innate ideas, as Descartes has said; and the principle of causality, which invincibly obliges us to refer from the effect to the cause, is the most evident of those ideas which seem to make a part of ourselves; but why have we innate ideas, where do they come from, and how did they get into our minds? The classical philosophy, the philosophy of Descartes, which reigns in France, at the Normal School, and among the professors of the University of Paris, cannot teach us that. It will be said, perhaps, to use the favourite argument of Descartes, that we have innate ideas because it is the will of God, who has created the soul. But such a reply is at once commonplace and arbitrary, it may be used on all occasions—it is so used in fact—and it is not a logical argument.

Innate ideas and the principle of causality are explained very simply by the doctrine of the plurality of existences; they are, indeed, merely deductions from that doctrine. A man's soul, having already existed, either in the body of an animal or that of another man, has preserved the trace of the impressions received during that existence. It has lost, it is true, the recollection of actions performed during its first incarnation; but the abstract principle of causality, being independent of the particular facts, being only the general result of the practice of life, must remain in the soul at its second incarnation.

Thus, the principle of causality, of which French philosophy cannot offer any satisfactory theory, is explained in the simplest possible manner, by the hypothesis of re-incarnations and of the plurality of existences.

We have previously alluded to memory, and explained its relation to re-incarnations, and the reasons why we are born without any consciousness of a previous life. We have said, that if we come from an animal, we have no memory, because the animal has none, or has very little. We must now add, that if we come from a human soul, reopening to the light of life, we are destitute of memory, because it would disturb the trial of our terrestrial life, and even render it impossible, as it is the intention of nature that we should recommence the experience of existence without any trace, present to our minds, of previous actions which might limit or embarrass our free will.

We cannot pass from this portion of our subject without calling attention to the fact that the remembrance of a previous existence is not always absolutely wanting to us. Who is there, who, in his hours of solitary contemplation, has not seen a hidden world come forth before his eyes from the far distance of a mysterious past? When, wrapped in profound reverie, we let ourselves float on the stream of imagination, into the ocean of the vague, and the infinite, do we not see magic pictures which are not absolutely unknown to our eyes? do we not hear celestial harmonies which have already enchanted our ears? These secret imaginings, these involuntary contemplations, to which each of us can testify, are they not the real recollections of an existence anterior to our life here below?

Might we not also attribute to a vague remembrance, to an unconscious sympathy, the real and profound pleasure which we derive from the mere sight of plants, flowers, and vegetation? The aspect of a forest, of a beautiful meadow, of green hills, touches us, moves us, sometimes even to tears. Great masses of verdure, and the humble field daisy, alike speak to our hearts. Each of us has a favourite plant, the flower whose perfume he loves to inhale, or the tree whose shade he prefers. Rousseau was moved by the sight of a yew tree, and Alfred de Musset loved the willows so much, that he expressed a wish, piously fulfilled, that a willow might over-shadow his grave.

This love of the vegetable world has a mysterious root in our hearts. May we not recognize in so natural a sentiment, a sort of vague remembrance of our original country, a secret and involuntary evocation of the scene in which the germ of our soul was first loosed to the light of the sun, the powerful promoter of life?

Besides the undecided and dim remembrance of pictures which seem to belong to our anterior existences upon the globe, we sometimes feel keen aspirations towards a kinder and calmer destiny than that which is allotted to us here below. No doubt coarse beings, entirely attached to material appetites and interests, do not feel these secret longings for an unknown and happier destiny, but poetical and tender souls, those who suffer from the wretched conditions of which human nature is the slave and the martyr, take a vague pleasure in such melancholy aspirations. In the radiant infinite they foresee celestial dwellings, where they shall one day reside, and they are impatient to break the ties which bind them to earth. Read the episode in Goethe's Mignon, in which Mignon, wandering and exiled, pours out her young soul in aspirations to heaven, in sublime longings for an unknown and blessed future, which she feels drawing her towards itself, and ask yourself whether the beautiful verses of the great poet, who was also a great naturalist, do not interpret a truth of nature, i.e., the new life which awaits us in the plains of ether. Why do all men, among all peoples, raise their eyes to heaven in solemn moments, in the impulses of passion, and the anguish of grief or pain? Does any one, under such circumstances, contemplate the earth on which he stands? Our eyes and our hearts turn towards the skies. The dying raise their fallen orbs to heaven, and we look towards the celestial spaces in those vague reveries which we have been describing. It is permitted to us to believe that this universal tendency is an intuition of that which awaits us after our terrestrial life, a natural revelation of the domain which shall be ours one day, and which extends over the celestial empyrean, to the bosom of ethereal space.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH

A SUMMARY OF THE SYSTEM OF THE PLURALITY OF LIVES

WE propose now to collect, within a few summary propositions, the principal features of the system of nature which we have defined.

1. The sun is the primary agent of life and organization.

2. In the primitive time of our globe, life began to appear in aquatic and aërial plants, as well as in zoophytes. The same order reproduces itself at present, in the point of departure, and in the development of life and of souls. The solar rays, falling on the earth, and into the waters, produce the formation of plants and that of zoophytes. The rays of the sun by depositing in the waters and on the earth, animated germs, emanating from the spiritualized beings who inhabit the sun, bring about the birth of plants and zoophytes.

3. Plants and zoophytes are endowed with sensation. They enclose an animal germ, just as a seed encloses an embryo.

4. The animal germ contained in the plant and in the zoophyte, passes, at the death of each animal, into the body of the animal which comes next to it in the ascending scale of organic perfection. From the zoophyte the animated germ passes into the mollusc, from thence into the articulated animal, the fish, or the reptile. From the body of the reptile, it passes into that of the bird, and then into the mammifers.

In the inferior beings, for instance zoophytes, several animated germs may be united to form the soul of a single being of a superior order.

5. In passing through the entire series of animals, this rudimentary soul becomes perfected and acquires the beginnings of faculties. Conscience, will, and judgment succeed to sensation. When the soul has attained the body of a mammifer, it has acquired a certain number of faculties. In addition to feeling, it has the basis of reason, i.e., the principle of causation. From the body of a mammiferous animal belonging to the superior species, the soul passes into the body of a newly-born infant.

6. The child is born without memory, like the superior animal whence it has proceeded. At a year old it acquires this faculty, and gradually obtains others; imagination and thought develop themselves, reason grows strong, memory becomes firm and extensive.

7. If the child dies before the age of twelve months, his soul, still very imperfect, and devoid of active faculties, passes into the body of another newly-born child, and recommences a new existence.

8. When a man dies, his body remains upon the earth, his soul rises through the atmosphere to the ether which surrounds all the planets, and enters into the body of the angel, or superhuman being.

9. If, during its sojourn upon the earth, the soul has not undergone a sufficient amount of purification and ennobling, it recommences a second existence, passing into the body of a newly-born child, and losing the remembrance of its first life. Only when the soul has attained the suitable degree of perfection, and, after having been re-incarnate once, or many times, is empowered to leave our globe, to assume a new body in the bosom of the ethereal plains, and thus become a superhuman being, can it recover the recollection of its past existences.

10. That which occurs upon the Earth also takes place in the other planets of our solar system. In these planets vegetables, or beings analogous to vegetables are produced by the action of the sun. By means of his rays animated germs are carried into these globes, and plants and inferior animals are produced. Then these animated germs contained in the plants and inferior animals, passing successively through the whole series of animals, end by producing a being, superior, in intelligence and sensibility, to all the other living creatures. This superior being, the analogue of the human being, we call planetary man.

11. The planetary man, who inhabits Mercury, Mars, Venus, &c., being dead, his material form remains upon the planetary globe, and his soul, provided it has acquired the necessary degree of purity, passes into the surrounding ether, is incarnate in a new body, and produces a superhuman being.

12. Phalanxes of these superhuman beings float in the planetary ether. It witnesses the reunion of all the purified souls, which have come from our globe and from the other planets. The organic types of these beings is the same, whatever may be their planetary abode.

13. The superhuman being is provided with special attributes, he is endowed with mighty faculties which raise him to a height infinitely above terrestrial or planetary humanity. In this being, matter, in comparison with the spiritual principle, is reduced to a much smaller proportion than in man. His body is light and vaporous. He possesses senses which are unknown to us, and the senses which he possesses in common with us, are prodigiously intensified, subtilised, and perfected. He can transport himself, in a short space of time, to any distance, he can travel, without fatigue, from one point in space to another. His vision is of immeasurable extent. He has intuitive knowledge of many facts of nature which are hidden by an impenetrable veil from feeble human perception.

14. The superhuman being who comes from the earth can place himself in communication with men who are worthy of the privilege. He directs their conduct, watches over their actions, enlightens their understanding, inspires their hearts. When, in their turn, they too reach the celestial dwellings, he receives them on the threshold of their new abode, and initiates them into the life of blessedness beyond the tomb.

15. The superhuman being is mortal. When he has terminated the normal course of his existence in the ethereal spaces, he dies, and his spiritual principle enters into a new body, that of the archangel, or arch-human being, in whom the proportion of spiritual principle predominates still more strongly, in proportion to matter.

16. These re-incarnations, in the depths of the ethereal spaces, are reproduced more frequently than can be defined, and give us a series of creatures of ever-increasing activity and power of thought and action. At each promotion in the hierarchy of space these sublime beings find the energy of their moral and intellectual faculties, their power of feeling, and of loving, and their induction into the most profound mysteries of the Universe, undergoing augmentation.

17. When he has arrived at the highest degree of the celestial hierarchy, the spiritualized being is absolutely perfect; in strength and in intelligence. He is entirely freed from all material alloy, he has no longer a body, he is a pure spirit. In this condition he passes into the sun.

18. The sun, the king-star, is then the final and common sojourn of all the spiritualized beings who have come from the other planets, after having passed through the long series of existences which have rolled away in the plains of ether.

19. The spiritualized beings gathered together in the sun, send down upon the earth and upon the planets emanations from their essence, that is to say, animated germs. These animated germs are carried by the sunbeams, which distribute organization, feeling, and life over all the planets, at the same time that they preside at all the great physical and mechanical operations which take place on the earth, and on the other planets of our solar world.

20. The formation of the aërial and aquatic plants, and the birth of inferior animals or zoophytes, are, as we have said, the result of the action of the sun's rays on our globe. Then commences the series of the transmigrations of souls through the bodies of various animals, which results in man, in the superhuman being, and in all the succession of celestial metempsychoses, whose ultimate term is the spiritualized being or the dweller in the sun.

Thus does the great chain of nature close and complete itself;—that uninterrupted chain of vital activity, which has neither beginning nor end, and which links all created beings into one family, the universal family of the worlds.

Nature is not a straight line, but a circle, and we cannot say where this wonderful circle begins or ends. The wisdom of the Egyptians, which represented the world as a serpent coiled around itself, was the symbol of a great truth which the science of our time has once more brought to light.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH

REPLIES TO SOME OBJECTIONS.—FIRST: THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL, WHICH IS THE BASIS OF THIS SYSTEM, IS NOT DEMONSTRATED.—SECOND: WE HAVE NOT ANY RECOLLECTION OF ANTERIOR EXISTENCES.—THIRD: THIS SYSTEM IS NO OTHER THAN THE METEMPSYCHOSIS OF THE ANCIENTS.—FOURTH: THIS SYSTEM IS CONFOUNDED WITH DARWINISM

HAVING brought into relief, by the preceding summary, the entire doctrine of successive lives and of re-incarnations, we must now meet some objections which will have been provoked by these propositions, and reply to them in a way which has the advantage of still more distinctly explaining our ideas on several points.

First objection. It will be said: The existence of an immortal soul in man forms the basis of all this reasoning. Now, the fact of the existence of an immortal soul is not demonstrated in the course of this work, and, besides, it could not be demonstrated.

The following is our reply to this first objection.

We are composed of two elements, or of two substances; one which thinks—the soul, or the immaterial substance; the other, which does not think—the body, or the material substance. This truth is self-evident. Thought is a fact, certain in itself; and it is another fact, equally certain, that my arms, my nails or beard, do not think. Here, then, is the proof of the immortality of the soul, or thinking principle.

Matter does not perish; observation and science prove that material bodies are never annihilated, that they merely change their condition, their form, and their place; but are always to be found somewhere intact as to their substance. Our bodies decompose, and are dissolved, but the matter of which they were formed is never destroyed, it is dispersed in the air, the fire, and the water, in which it produces new material combinations, but it is not destroyed for all that. Now, if matter does not perish, but only becomes transformed, all the more certainly must the soul be indestructible and imperishable. Like matter, it must be transformed, without being destroyed.

Descartes has said, I think, therefore I am. This reasoning, so much admired in the schools, has always appeared to us rather weak. To give force to the syllogism, he should have said, I think, therefore I am immortal. My soul is immortal, because it exists, and it does exist since I think. Thus the fact of the immortality of the spiritual principle which we bear within us is self-evident, and we do not need any of the demonstrations which abound in philosophical works, and have been put forth from antiquity until our own time; we need no Treatises on the Soul to establish its existence.

The difficulty does not consist in proving that a spiritual principle exists within us, that is to say, a principle which resists death, because, in order to contest the existence of this principle, it would be necessary to contest thought. The real problem is to find out whether this spiritual and immortal principle which we bear within us, is to live again, after our death, in ourselves or in others. The question is, whether the immortal soul will be born again in the same individual, physically transformed, in the same person, in the ego, or whether it will pass into the possession of a being strange to that person.

We may remark here that on this all the interest of the question for us turns. It would be of very little importance to us, in reality, whether the soul were immortal or not, if the soul of each of us, being really indestructible and immortal, should pass to another than ourselves, or if, reviving in us, it did not possess the memory of our past existence. The resurrection of the soul without the memory of the past would be a real annihilation, this would be the nothingness of the materialists. It must be, then, that the soul lives again after our death, in ourselves, and that this soul, then, has clear remembrance of all the actions which took place in its previous existences. It behoves us, in short, to know, not whether our souls are immortal—that fact is self-evident—but whether they will belong to us in the other life, whether, after our death, we shall have identity, individuality, personality. It is to the study of this question that the present work is devoted. We are endeavouring to prove that the soul of the man remains always the same, in spite of its numerous peregrinations, notwithstanding the variety of form of the bodies in which it is successively lodged, when it passes from the animal to the man, from the man to the superhuman being, and from the superhuman being, after other celestial transmigrations, to the spiritualized being who inhabits the sun. We are endeavouring to establish that the soul, notwithstanding all its journeys, in the midst of its incarnations and various metamorphoses, remains always identical with itself, doing nothing more in each metempsychosis, in each metamorphosis of the exterior being, than perfect and purify itself, growing in power and in intellectual grasp. We are endeavouring to prove, that, notwithstanding the shadows of death, our individuality is never destroyed, and that we shall be born again in the heavens, with the same moral personality which was ours here below; in other words, that the human person is imperishable. It is for the reader to say whether we have attained our object, whether we have established the truth of this doctrine conformably with the laws of reasoning and the facts of science.

If an absolute demonstration of the existence of an immaterial principle in us be insisted upon, we must reply, that philosophy, like geometry, has its axioms, that is to say, its self-evident truths, which need not, or, if we choose to say so, which cannot be mathematically demonstrated. The existence of the soul is one of those axioms of philosophy. Diogenes answered a rhetorician who denied movement by walking in his presence. By expressing any thought, by saying "yes," or "no," we may prove the existence of the immortal soul to the sophists who would attempt to contest it.

We have just said that geometry has its axioms. Let us remember that an entire school of geometricians amused themselves by disputing the axioms, under the pretext that it was impossible to demonstrate them. We were present, in December, 1866, at a curious sitting of the Institute, during which M. Lionville, a celebrated mathematician, and professor at the Sorbonne, explained this strange polemic with great skill.

In attempting to demonstrate the propositions of geometry, certain axioms, i.e., self-evident truths, must be admitted in the first place. Otherwise, the primary reasoning will have no basis. But, among the numerous propositions of this kind which present themselves to the mind, and which result from the admission of one of their number, which is the most evident? That depends on the nature of the mind of each of us, and therefore it is that there is not, and that there never will be, an argument on this question.

There is a school of geometry which pretends to demonstrate everything. There is another, the true and good school, which, recognizing that the human mind has limits, and that everything is not accessible by our thoughts, lays down, under the name of axioms, certain truths which do not require proof, or, which is often the same thing, are incapable of proof.

Among the number of self-evident truths, or truths difficult of demonstration, we find the question of parallel lines. What are two parallels? Two lines which never meet each other. But how can we prove this property of two lines by reasoning? That is not, exactly speaking, possible, since the notion of the infinite is not admitted, or not understood by everybody, and cannot, therefore, serve as the basis of an absolutely rigorous argument.