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

Since the sun is the first cause of life on our globe, since he is, as we have proved, the origin of life, feeling, and thought, since he is the determining cause of the existence of everything possessing organization upon the earth, why may we not hold that the rays which the sun pours upon the earth and the other planets are nothing else than the emanations from these souls? that they are emissions from the pure spirits dwelling in the central star, directed towards us, and the other planets, under the visible form of rays?

If this hypothesis were accepted, what magnificent, what sublime relations existing between the sun and the globes which gravitate around him, would be revealed to us! A continual exchange would be established between the sun and the surrounding planets, an unbroken circle, an inexhaustible communion, radiant emanations which should generate and maintain activity and motion, thought and sentiment, which should keep the flame of life burning everywhere! Let us think of the emanations from souls dwelling in the sun descending upon the earth in solar rays. Light gives existence to plants, and produces vegetable life, accompanied by sensibility. Plants, having received this sensible germ from the sun, communicate it, aided by heat likewise emanating from the sun, to animals. Let us think of the germs of souls, placed in the breasts of animals, developing themselves, becoming perfected by degrees, from one animal to another, and finishing by becoming incarnate in a human body. Let us think, then, of the superhuman being succeeding to man, springing up into the vast plains of ether, and beginning the series of numerous transmigrations which, from one step to another, will lead him to the summit of the scale of spiritual perfection, from which every material substance has been eliminated, and where the soul, thus exalted to the purest degree of its essence, penetrates into the supreme abode of happiness, and of intellectual and moral power—the sun.

Such may be this endless circle, such this unbroken chain, binding together all beings in nature, and passing from the visible to the invisible world.

To those persons who may declaim with severity against the system which we have ventured to put forward, we shall put a question which cannot fail to embarrass them, for science has never been able to solve it. We shall ask them how the light of the sun, and the heat which results from it, are maintained? It is evident that the enormous quantities of heat and light which the sun sends out in torrents into space, must come from a source which cannot be inexhaustible, which has need of renewal, otherwise the sun would become extinct. As there is no effect without a cause, it is plain that the inconceivable quantity of forces which the sun distributes by his burning rays, must be derived from some place. M. Guillemin, in his work on the sun, passes in review the different theories which have been adopted, up to the present day, to explain solar radiation. The following is an analysis of a chapter of M. Guillemin's work on the "Maintenance of Solar Radiation."

Pouillet has calculated that if the sun were not supplied with something to make up for the losses he sustains, he must cool at the rate of one degree in a century. But this calculation falls short of the truth. Pouillet supposed that the specific heat of the sun is the greatest which can be conceived. The specific heat of the sun is, it is true, unknown, but instead of placing it at the maximum power, which it is not proved to be, we might suppose it, by an allowable hypothesis, to be equal to that of water, which is well known. Now if we grant to the sun the specific heat of water, we rectify Pouillet's calculation, and we arrive at the conclusion that the sun, if not furnished with any resources from which to repair his losses, would be entirely extinct at the end of 10,000 years. Professor Tyndall, whose experiments are more recent than those of Pouillet, and inspire greater confidence, says: "If the sun were a block of coal, and it were supplied with sufficient oxygen to enable it to burn at the degree of heat proper to that star, it would be entirely consumed at the end of 5000 years." Now the sun has existed for millions of years, for the transition periods of our globe, in which the first living beings were manifested, are traced back to millions of years. And yet his heat has not sensibly diminished since those distant ages. The proof that it has not diminished, is that the climates of the globe at the present time are the same as they were in the tertiary or quaternary epoch. In the tertiary or quaternary strata the same plants and the same animals which exist at present are found. Speaking of times nearer to our own, we may observe that the productions of the soil remain unchanged during the 2000 or 3000 years, whose traditions and historical archives we possess.

The sun has lost none of his heat during millions of years. Where has he gotten this heat from? Where does he get it from now? By what means is that unquenched fire kept up.

To this question neither astronomy nor physics has ever furnished a satisfactory reply. Treatises, whether astronomical or physical, give us nothing but hypotheses, which we cannot accept.

At first it was said that the sun, turning on his axis in twenty-five days, produced by this movement a perpetual friction of his surface against the element in which he moves, in other words, against the ether. But if that were the case, this friction ought to engender a similar heat on the surface of the planets, whose rotatory motion, and especially the motion of translation in their orbit, is much more rapid than that of the sun turning on his axis. Besides, if we calculate the elevation of the temperature which would result from the friction of the sun against the ether, we shall find that the heat would hardly suffice to maintain the radiation of the solar star during one century. This hypothesis is therefore untenable.

Another theory, better supported, has been put forward by the physicists Mayer, Watterston, and Thompson; it explains the maintenance of the solar heat by a constant fall of meteors on the surface of the solar star.

A multitude of corpuscles gravitate round the sun, and approach him with sufficient nearness to be attracted by his surface, and fall upon it. These are asteroids, which turn in whirling swarms around the sun. A shower of corpuscles, of meteorolites, may be always falling on his surface. Their fall would cause a great development of caloric, in consequence of the transformation of their enormous speed into heat, and this caloric would suffice, according to the authors of this theory, for the maintenance of solar radiation. Let us quote Professor Tyndall on this point:

"It is easy to calculate both the maximum and the minimum velocity imparted by the sun's attraction to an asteroid circulating round him. The maximum is generated when the body approaches from an infinite distance, the entire pull of the sun being then exerted upon it. The minimum is that velocity which would barely enable the body to revolve round the sun close to its surface. The final velocity of the former, just before striking the sun, would be 390 miles a second, that of the latter 276 miles a second. The asteroid, on striking the sun with the former velocity, would develop more than 9000 times the heat generated by the combustion of an equal asteroid of solid coal; while the shock, in the latter case, would generate heat equal to that of the combustion of upwards of 4000 such asteroids. It matters not therefore whether the substances falling into the sun be combustible or not; their being combustible would not add sensibly to the tremendous heat produced by their mechanical collision. Here then we have an agency competent to restore his lost energy to the sun, and to maintain a temperature at his surface which transcends all terrestrial combustion.

"The very quality of the solar rays—their incomparably penetrative power—enables us to infer that the temperature of their origin must be enormous; but in the fall of asteroids we find the means of producing such a temperature."—P. 423.

The fall of these asteroids on the surface of the sun would be followed by an increase in the bulk of that star, and there has been no such increase since the earliest period of its observation. Also, the augmentation of the sun's bulk by these foreign bodies, would have produced an accelerant motion in the orbits of all the stars, which, however slight, would be distinctly perceptible; whereas, for the 2000 years of celestial observation, whose records we possess, unbroken and perfect regularity in the progression of the stars of our solar world is registered.

There is another objection to this hypothesis. It is that it presupposes a solid and resistant medium in the sun. This medium does not exist, according to the new solar theory, which considers this star to be formed of vapour and of gas, or, at most, of a liquid sphere. Another proof that this resistant medium does not exist, is to be found in the fact that several comets, among others those of 1680, and of 1843, have passed so close to the sun at their perihelion, that their movements must have been greatly disturbed by the resistance of a dense medium. The movements of these comets, were, however, quite unaffected by this cause; they were observed to reappear at the moment indicated by the regular curve of their orbit.

The absence of a resistant medium in the sun has been regarded as so grave an objection by one of the authors of this theory, Mr. Thompson, that he has abandoned it, as incompatible with facts.

Another hypothesis has been proposed, for explaining the maintenance of solar heat. The substances which now form the sun have not always been collected together in their present state of aggregation. At first, his molecules were, relatively, extremely distant from one another, and formed a chaotic, or confused mass. Under the influence of attraction, they drew together by degrees, and agglomerated themselves into a nucleus, which has become the centre of attraction of the whole mass. This simply amounts to saying that the sun began by being in the state of nebulosity, and passed at a later period into the condition of adherent and continuous matter.

"The molecules of solar nebulosity," says Balfour Stewart, "precipitating themselves upon one another, produced heat; as, when a stone is thrown with force from the top of a precipice, heat is also the ultimate form into which the potential energy of the stone is converted."

This system of explanation of the primary origin of the planets is in general favour. Having drawn themselves together to form a continuous whole, the elements of the sun would have changed their physical condition, and the result of this change would have been an enormous escape of heat, sufficient to explain the origin of the solar focus. We know, in fact, that condensation of matter always accompanies an escape of heat; and it has been calculated that a diminution of only a thousandth part from the actual bulk of the sun would suffice to maintain the solar heat for 20,000 years.

M. Helmholtz, the author of this ingenious theory, has also calculated that "the mechanical force equivalent to the mutual gravitation of the particles of the nebulous mass would have been originally equal to 454 times the quantity of mechanical force actually disposable in our system," 453/454 of the force coming from the conatus to the gravitation would therefore have been already expended. The author adds that the 1/454 which remains of this original heat, would suffice to raise the temperature of a mass of water equal to the combined birth of the sun and the planets, to 28,000,000 of degrees centigrade; this is a quantity of heat equal to 2500 times that which would be engendered by the combustion of the entire solar system, supposing it to be turned into a mass of coal.

These calculations are, doubtless, most interesting, but their defect is that they rest upon the conception of the sun's nebulosity, an hypothesis which requires closer examination before it ought to be accepted as the basis of so important a deduction. Besides, if the sun were warmed by a physical cause not in action at the present time, his heat, however great it may be estimated to be, must necessarily have been diminishing as long as the sun has been in existence. Now, we repeat that it does not appear that the heat of the sun has ever suffered any diminution. The theory of nebulosity is therefore no more securely founded in principle than the other hypotheses which have preceded it.

Thus, we find that neither astronomy nor physical science offers us any satisfactory explanation of the constant maintenance of solar radiation. Common sense tells us that this furnace, constantly in activity, must be as unceasingly fed; but science is as yet unable to discover the nature and source of its aliment.

There, where science places nothing, we venture to place something. In our belief solar radiation is maintained by the continuous, unbroken succession of souls, in the sun. These pure and burning spirits are perpetually replacing the emanations perpetually sent through space by the sun, to the globes which surround him. Thus we complete that uninterrupted circle of which we have previously spoken, which binds together all the creatures of nature by the links of a common chain, and attaches the visible to the invisible world. We may venture to put forward this explanation of the maintenance of solar radiation with some confidence, since science can give us no exact information upon the point, and philosophy in this case only fills up the void left by astronomy and physics.

In short, the sun, the centre of the planetary aggregation, the constant source of light and heat, which sends forth motion, sensation, and life upon the earth, is, in our belief, the final sojourn of purified perfected souls, which have attained their most exquisite subtlety. They are entirely devoid of material alloy, they are pure spirits who dwell in the midst of the blazing atmosphere and the burning masses which compose the sun. That star, whose size far surpasses the bulk of all the others put together, is sufficiently vast to contain them. From their throne of fire, these souls, all intelligence and activity, behold the marvellous spectacle of the march of all the planetary globes which compose the solar world, through space. Placed in the centre of this vast world, understanding the secrets of nature, and all the mysteries of the universe, they are in possession of perfect happiness, of absolute wisdom, and of illimitable knowledge.

The Genoese naturalist, Charles Bonnet, was the first to bring forward general ideas upon the philosophy of the universe, in the same order as those which we have just developed. In his Palingénésie Philosophique, published in 1771, he introduces the doctrine of divers existences for the human soul, outside that of the earth. In a chapter appended to that work, and entitled, "Conjectures on the blessings to come," he draws a picture of the perfect happiness which we shall enjoy in that abode, and dwells, in the following eloquent words, on the transcendent knowledge which we shall possess, which will unfold to our view all the secrets of the physical and moral worlds:—

"If the Supreme Intelligence," says Charles Bonnet, "has varied all His works here below, so that nothing created is identical with anything else, if harmonious progression reigns among all terrestrial beings; and one common chain unites them; is it not probable that this marvellous chain is prolonged throughout all the planetary worlds; that it unites them all, and that they are only constituent and infinitesimal parts of the same series?

"At present we can see only a few links of this great chain; we are not even certain that we observe them in their habitual order; we can only follow this admirable progression very imperfectly, and through innumerable windings in which we meet with frequent interruptions, but we always know that the breaches are not in the chain, but in our knowledge.

"When it shall have been granted to us to contemplate this chain, as I have supposed the intelligences for whom our world was chiefly made to contemplate it; when, like them, we shall be able to follow its coils in other worlds, then, and then only, we shall understand their reciprocal dependence, their secret relations, the exact meaning of every link, and we shall rise by a scale of relative perfection to the most transcendent and luminous truths.

"With what feelings shall our souls be filled, when, having studied to its depths the economy of a world, we shall fly to another, and compare the two! How perfect shall our cosmology be then! How wide the generalization and great the fecundity of our principles, the succession, the mass, the exactness of our knowledge! What light shall be shed from so many different objects upon the other branches of our studies; upon physics, geometry, astronomy, rational science, and especially upon that divine study whose object is the Supreme Being.

"All these truths are chained together, and the most distant are held to the nearest by hidden links, which it is the end of understanding to discover. Newton, no doubt, exulted in having discovered the secret relation between the fall of a stone and the motion of a planet; when he shall be one day transformed into a celestial intelligence, he will smile at this child's play, and his profound geometry will be to him only the first elements of another Infinite.

"Man's reason has already penetrated beyond all the planetary worlds; it has raised itself up to heaven, where God dwells; it contemplates the august throne of the Ancient of Days, it beholds all the spheres rolling beneath His feet, and obeying the impulse of His hand, it hears the acclamations of all the intelligences, and, mingling its adoration and its praise with the majestic song of the hierarchies, it cries with the deepest consciousness of its own nothingness: 'Holy, holy, holy, is He who is eternal, and the All Good; glory be to God in the highest, and good-will towards man!' Oh! the depth of the riches of the Divine Goodness, which is not satisfied with manifesting itself to men on the earth by countless means, but will bring him one day to the celestial dwelling-places, and satisfy the thirst of his soul with the fulness of delight. There are many dwellings in our Father's home; had it not been so, He whom He sent to us would have told us, and He is gone thither to prepare a place for us. He will come back and take us with Him; that where He is we may be also. Where He is, not in the outer court, not in the vestibule, but in the sanctuary of universal creation, in the holy of holies. Where He is, who is the King of angels and of men, the Mediator of the new covenant, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, who has made the new way for us which leads to life, who has made us free to enter into the Holy Place, who has brought us near to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the innumerable multitude of angels, to God Himself, who is the Judge of all.... In this eternal dwelling, in the bosom of light, of perfection and happiness, we shall read the general and particular history of Providence. Initiated, to a certain extent, in the profound mysteries of His government, His laws, His dispensations, we shall admiringly recognize the secret reasons of the many general and particular events which astonish us, confound us, and throw us into a state of doubt which philosophy does not always dissipate, but which religion never fails to allay. We shall ceaselessly meditate upon the great book of the destinies of the worlds. We shall dwell particularly on the pages which concern this little planet; the cradle of our infancy, and the first monument of the paternal goodness of the Creator towards man. We shall discover, with astonishment, the numerous revolutions which this little globe has undergone before it assumed its actual form, and we shall follow with our gaze those which it is destined to undergo in the course of ages; but our admiration and our gratitude will be chiefly excited by the wonders of that great redemption, in which there are so many things beyond our feeble reach, which have been the objects of the studious research and the profound meditation of the prophets, and which the angels have desired to look into. One line on this page will contain our own history, and will develop to our view the why and the how of those calamities, trials, and privations which in this world try the patience of the just man, purify his soul, and enhance his virtues, while they crush and destroy the weak. When we have reached so elevated a degree of knowledge, the origin of physical and moral evil will no longer embarrass us; we shall confront them distinctly at their source, and in their most distant effects, and we shall acknowledge, from the evidence before us, that all which God does is well done.

"In this world we see effects only; and we even observe them in a very superficial manner; all the causes are hidden from us: then we shall see effects in their causes, consequences in their principles, the history of the individual in that of the species, the history of the species in that of the globe, the history of the globe in that of the worlds, &c. Now we see things only confusedly, and in a glass darkly; but then we shall see face to face, and shall know in some sort as we have been known; in short, because we shall have an infinitely more complete and distinct knowledge of the work, we shall also acquire an incomparably deeper sense of the perfections of the workman. And this knowledge, the most sublime, the most vast, the most desirable of all, will be incessantly perfected by intimate intercourse with the eternal source of all perfection! I cannot express this sufficiently, I do but stammer over it; words are wanting; would that I could know the language of the angels. If it were possible to a finite intelligence ever to exhaust the universe, it would still find the treasures of truth from eternity to eternity in contemplation of its author; and, after a thousand myriads of ages consumed in such meditation, it would only have touched the edges of that science of which it may be even the highest intelligences possess no more than the rudiments. There is no true reality except in Him who is, for all which is, is by Him, before being out of Him; there is but one existence, because there is but one Being whose essence it is to exist; and all which bears the inappropriate name of being had remained shut up in necessary existence as the consequence in the principal."8

Before concluding this chapter, let us remark that the deductions of science concerning the sovereign part played by the sun in the general economy of nature, are in perfect harmony with the religious conceptions of the most ancient peoples. The worship of fire has reigned from time immemorial in Asia, and especially in ancient Persia. From the Persian shores sailed the first peoples, the Aryas, or Aryans, who occupied and peopled Europe. Fire worship was the first religion of ancient Asia. M. Burnouf dwells on this fact in his Etudes sur la Science des Religions, from which we quote the following passages:

"The men of that time (the Aryas) perceived that all the movements of inanimate things which take place on the earth's surface proceed from heat, which manifests itself, either under the form of fire which burns, or under the form of thunder, or under the form of wind; but the thunder is fire hidden in the cloud, and rises with it into the air; —fire which burns is, before it manifests itself, shut up in the vegetable matters which supply it with aliment; wind is produced when the air is stirred by heat, which rarefies it or condenses it on its withdrawal.

"Vegetables, in their turn, derive their combustibility from the sun, which makes them grow, by storing up his heat in them, and the air is warmed by the rays of the sun, the same rays which reduced the terrestrial waters to invisible vapours, and then to thunder-bearing clouds. The clouds spread the rain, make the rivers, feed the sea which the agitated winds trouble. Thus all this mobility which animates nature around us is the work of heat, and heat proceeds from the sun, which is at the same time "the celestial traveller," and the universal motor.

"Life also seemed to them to be closely allied to the idea of fire. The grand phenomenon of the accumulation of solar heat in plants, a phenomenon which science has since elucidated, was early perceived by the ancients. It is frequently pointed out in the Veddas in expressive terms. When they lighted the wood on the hearth they knew that they only 'forced' it to give out the fire which it had received from the sun. When their attention was directed to animals, the close bond which exists between heat and life, struck them in all its force; heat maintains life, they found no living animals in whom was life without heat; on the contrary, they saw that vital energy displayed itself in the proportion in which the animals shared in heat, and diminished in the same proportion. Life exists and perpetuates itself on the earth on three conditions only, that fire should penetrate the body under its three forms, of which one resides in the sun's rays, one in the ignited aliments, and the third in respiration, which is air renewed by motion. Now these two latter proceed, each after its own fashion, from the sun (sûrya); his celestial force is the universal motor, and the father of life: that which he first engendered, is the fire here below (agni) born of his rays, and his second eternal co-operator is air put in motion, which is also called wind, or spirit (vâyu)."9