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

The worship of the sun still exists among all the negro tribes which inhabit the interior of Africa; it may even be said that it is the only religion of the African tribes, and this religion has existed among them in all times.

The ancient inhabitants of the new world had no other worship than that of the sun. This fact is established by the historical archives of the Indian races which we possess; such as the Aztecs or ancient inhabitants of Mexico, and the Incas or ancient Peruvians. Manco Capac, who subjugated Peru, and imposed his own laws upon the country, passed for the son of the sun.

Did not all these primitive people, whose customs extend back to the origin of humanity, when they rendered religious homage to the sun, obey a mysterious intuition, a secret voice of nature? However that may be, it is very remarkable that the religious conceptions of the most ancient people should be in such complete harmony with the most recent and most authoritative deductions of modern science.

CHAPTER THE TENTH

WHAT ARE THE RELATIONS WHICH SUBSIST BETWEEN US, AND SUPERHUMAN BEINGS?

HAVING drawn a picture of the transmigrations of souls which, having belonged to men, attain, according to our belief, to the sublime dwelling-place of the solar spaces, we will now return to the superhuman being, and endeavour to find out whether that being, who immediately succeeds to man, who is a resuscitated man, incarnate in a new body, and living in the plains of ether, can place himself in relation with the inhabitants of the earth, notwithstanding the immense space which divides them. We have already endeavoured (ch. iv.) to discern the attributes of the superhuman being. Considering the number and extent of the faculties with which we believe him to be endowed, we cannot hesitate to accord to this mighty creature the power of communicating with our earth, and of exerting a certain influence there.

But how and by what means can such a communication be established? What is the agency whose existence we must presuppose, in order that beings floating in the ethereal spaces can produce an impression here below? What transcendent system of electric telegraphy does the superhuman being employ? On this point we are absolutely ignorant, but the fact that communication does exist between these beings and our globe appears to us to be certain; a conviction which we base upon the following grounds.

First, let us address ourselves to the popular feeling. As we have already said, we are not afraid of invoking vulgar prejudices and opinions, because they are almost always the expression of some great moral truth. Observations repeated thousands of times, traditions transmitted from generation to generation, and which have resisted the control of time, without being either altered or destroyed, cannot deceive. Only, when the people amidst whom this tradition has been formulated and preserved, are unenlightened, they translate their observations into a coarse form.

Let us inquire into the origin of those ghosts in which many civilized people firmly believe! Take away the absurd white sheet, and the human form with which the simple superstition of the peasantry invest them, and you will find in ghosts the idea of communication between the souls of the dead and the living, you will find the thought which we are endeavouring to put before you in a scientific form.

This popular notion about ghosts has extended to persons who appear to be educated and enlightened, but who are, in reality, as ignorant in matters of philosophy as the simple peasants, and who are, in addition, addicted to mysticism, which obscures their reason. We allude to spiritualists.

The term spiritualists is applied to the partisans of a new superstition which sprung up in America and Europe in 1855, as a result of the moral malady of table-turning. These good people imagine that they can, by their will, and according to their fancy, cause the souls of the dead, of great men, or of their own relatives and friends, to descend to the earth. They evoke the soul of Socrates or Confucius, as easily as that of a defunct relative, and they are so simple as to imagine that these souls come at their call to converse with them. A person who is called a medium is the intermediary between the invoker and the soul invoked. The medium, under the influence of an unconscious and habitual hallucination, writes down on paper all the answers made by the spirit, or rather he writes down everything that comes into his own foolish head, imagining himself to be faithfully transmitting messages from the other world. The people who listen to him take these things, which are simply the thoughts of the ignorant medium, for revelations from beyond the tomb.

In spiritualism there exists only one true and rational idea; it is the possibility of man's placing himself in relation with the souls of the dead; but the coarse means resorted to by the partisans of this mystic doctrine, cause every enlightened and educated man to repudiate any fellowship with them. We merely mention spiritualism in this place as a vulgar and foolish phase of the popular belief in ghosts. It has higher pretensions, but science and reason alike forbid us to admit them.

The fact of communication between superhuman beings and the dwellers upon the earth being, it seems to us, proved, we shall now consider how those superhuman beings and men who live on the earth or on the other planets may be brought into relation with each other. It appears to us that this communication is chiefly in action during sleep, and through the medium of dreams. Sleep, that curious and ill-explained state, is the condition of our being during which a portion of our physiological functions, those which establish our connection with the external world, are abolished, while the soul preserves a part of its activity. In this condition, the body being seized by a kind of death, the soul, on the contrary, continues to act, to feel, and to manifest itself by the phenomena of dreams. Now, in the superhuman being, the spiritual portion, the soul, dominates immensely over the material portion. The superhuman being is, so to speak, all intelligence. Man, when he is in the condition of sleep and dreaming, approaches nearer to the superhuman being than when he is in a waking state; there is, then, more resemblance, more natural affinity between them. Consequently communications can be more easily established between these two beings who are drawn together by analogy of condition.

There is a saying, the result of repeated observation, which is logical and true. It is, the night brings counsel. Is not this as much as to say that it is during the night we receive the secret communications and the solitary advice of those beloved invisible beings who watch over us, and inspire us with their supreme wisdom? It is certain that when we have to make a decision, to unravel a thought, it often happens that we fall asleep in the midst of perplexity and uncertainty, and that the next day we awake, having taken our decision, unravelled our thought, which explains the phrase, the night brings counsel. Ancient times, and the middle ages, accorded an extraordinary importance to dreams. They were considered to be sent by God, as His warnings, hence the importance attached to their interpretation. "During sleep," says Tertullian, "the honours which await men are revealed to us; during sleep, remedies are indicated, thefts revealed, treasures discovered."10

Visions played a great part among Christians in mediæval times. It was during sleep that saints, inspired persons, and devotees received communications of an extraordinary order. We are far from believing that it is during sleep and dreams only that we can feel the presence and the influence of superhuman beings. There are few persons who have not felt, while waking, an unaccountable influence of this kind. We feel a soft, gentle impression, a sort of vague, mysterious push, which excites a spontaneous resolution, a sudden inspiration, an unhoped-for suggestion.

We must observe that all men are not recipients of these mysterious impressions. The superhuman being cannot manifest himself except to those whom he loves, and who remember him; to those whom he wishes to protect against the dangers and difficulties of this terrestrial life. A father, or a mother, snatched away from filial love by death, comes to speak to the soul which remains and mourns here below. A son, torn in the dawn of life from the tenderness of his parents, comes to console them for his loss, to enlighten them with his advice, to furnish them, by the inspiration of his lofty wisdom, with the means of sustaining all the trials of this lower life. Two friends are united, despite the barrier of the tomb. Two lovers, whom death has sundered, are again brought together. An adored wife, taken by death from her husband, reveals herself to his heart. Then all those sentiments of mutual affection which subsisted between them spring up again; death, which has appeared to sever the ties between these souls, does no more than veil them from the eyes of strangers. Death is conquered; the phantom is laid low, and we may cry with the prophet in the Scripture, "Oh, Death! where is thy sting? Oh, Grave, where is thy victory?"

In order to receive these communications, a man must possess a pure and noble mind, and he must have preserved the cultus of those whom he has lost. A mother who has been indifferent to her child during his life, or has forgotten him after his death, cannot expect to receive secret manifestations from him for whom she has felt but little tenderness. The friend from whose heart the image of the friend removed by death has been effaced, must renounce such priceless manifestations. The man who is abandoned to low and vicious instincts and perverse inclinations, must not flatter himself, however faithfully he may have preserved the memory of the dead, that these messages shall come to him. A pure and noble creature only can communicate with these privileged beings.

There exists in our hearts a moral force which no philosophy has been able to explain, which no science has been able to analyze, which is called conscience. Conscience is a sacred light burning within us, which nothing can obstruct, obscure, or extinguish, and which has the power of giving us sure and certain enlightenment on every occasion in our lives. Conscience is infallible. Notwithstanding everything, in spite of our real or apparent interest, at all times, and in all places, speaking to the great and the small alike, to the powerful and to the weak, it always teaches to discern good from evil, the honest from the dishonest way. In our belief, conscience is the impression transmitted to us by a beloved being, snatched from us by death. It is a relative, a friend, who has left the earth, and who deigns to reveal himself to us, that he may guide us in our actions, trace out the path of safety for us, and labour for our good. Cowardly, perverse, base, and lying men exist, of whom we say that they have no conscience. They do not know how to distinguish good from evil; they are entirely wanting in moral sense. It is because they have never loved any one, and their souls, base and vile, are not worthy to be visited by any of those superior beings, who only manifest themselves to men who resemble them, or who have loved them. A man without a conscience is, then, one who is rendered unworthy, by the vicious essence of his soul, of the lofty counsels and the protection of those who are no more.

Our readers will have perceived that this idea of a supreme and invisible protector of man, who guides his heart, and enlightens his reason, has already been formulated by the Christian religion, which has derived it from Holy Scripture. It is the Guardian Angel, a mysterious and poetic type, a seraphic creature, whom God has charged to watch over the Christian, to guard him against snares, and constantly to direct him to the ways of sanctity and virtue. We observe this argument without having sought it. In short, we register our ideas as they deduce themselves logically from each other, without any bias. And when we find ourselves led into agreement with a dogma of the Christian religion, we note that concord with pleasure.

We would ask those persons who have read these pages to question themselves, to summon up their recollections, to reflect upon what has passed around them, and we are convinced that they will discover many facts in harmony with what we advance. The moral phenomenon of the impressions made by the dead on the mind of the living who have loved them, and who keep up the cultus of their memory, is one of those truths which every one holds by intuition, and whose entire verity he acknowledges when he finds it curtly formulated and put forward. We will not give our readers second-hand information by invoking facts of this kind which they may know; we can only recall a few which came under our observation, briefly, as follows:

One of our friends, an Italian Count, B–, lost his mother nearly forty years ago. He has assured us that he has been in communication with her every day since, without intermission. He adds that he owes the wise ordering of his life, his labours, his career, and the good fortune which has always accompanied his enterprizes, to the constant influence and secret counsels of his mother.

Dr. V–, a professed materialist, one who, according to the popular phrase, believes in nothing, believes, nevertheless, in his mother. Like Count B–, he lost her early, and has never ceased to feel her presence. He told us that he is more frequently with his dead mother, than he used to be when she was living. This professed apostle of medical materialism has, without being aware of it, conversations with an emancipated soul.

A celebrated journalist, M. R–, lost a son, twenty years of age, a charming, gentle youth, a writer, and a poet. Every day M. R– has an intimate conversation with this son. A quarter of an hour of solitary recollection admits him to direct communication with the beloved being snatched away from his love.

M. L–, a barrister, maintains constant relations with a sister who, when living, possessed, according to him, every human perfection, and who never fails to guide her brother in every difficulty of his life, great or small.

Another consideration suggests itself in support of the idea which occupies us at present. It has been remarked that artists, writers, and thinkers, after the loss of one beloved, have found their faculties, talents, and inspirations increased. We might surmise that the intellectual faculties of those whom they have loved have been added to their own. I know a financier who is remarkable for his business capacities. When he finds himself in a difficulty, he stops, without troubling himself to seek for its solution. He waits, knowing that the missing idea will come to him spontaneously, and, sometimes after days, sometimes after hours, the idea comes, just as he has expected. This happy and successful man has experienced one of the deepest sorrows the heart can know; he has lost an only son, aged eighteen years, and endowed with all the qualities of maturity, combined with the graces of youth. Our readers may draw the conclusion for themselves.

This last example may instruct us concerning a peculiarity of the superior manifestations which we are studying. We have just said that sometimes a certain time, some days for instance, are required for the production of the manifestations. The cause of this is that the superhuman being, to whom they are due, has much difficulty in putting himself in relation with the inhabitants of our globe. There are many beings on the earth whom he loves, and whom he would fain protect, and he cannot be in two different places at the same time. We may even suppose that the difficulties which human beings feel in putting themselves in relation with us, added to the spectacle of the sufferings and misfortunes which overwhelm their friends here below, are the causes of the only sorrows which trouble their existence, so marvellously happy in other respects. Absolute happiness exists nowhere in the world, and destiny has the power to let fall one drop of gall into the cup of happiness quaffed by the dwellers in ether, in their celestial abode.

Persons who receive communications from the dead have remarked that these communications sometimes cease quite suddenly. A celebrated actress, now retired from the stage, had manifest communications with a person whom she had lost by a tragical death. These communications abruptly ceased. The soul of the dead friend whom she mourned warned her that their intercourse was about to cease. The assigned reason serves to explain why such relation cannot be continuously maintained. The superhuman being who was in relations with the terrestrial person had already risen in rank in the celestial hierarchy, he had accomplished a new metamorphosis, and he could no longer correspond with the earth.

Among the French peasantry communication with the dead is a general habit. In the country death does not involve the lugubrious ideas which accompany it among the dwellers in cities. People love and cultivate the memory of those whom they have loved, they hold as most happy those whom the favour of Providence has early removed from the misfortunes, the failures, the bitterness of terrestrial life, they call on them, they confide in them, and the dead, grateful for this pious memory of them, respond to the simple prayers of these hearts. All the Orientals have that serene aspiration towards death which in Europe exists exclusively among country people. The Mussulmans love to invoke death, to spread the idea of death everywhere. Every one knows the melancholy proverb of the Arabs, "It is better to be seated than standing; it is better to be lying down than seated; it is better to be dead than living."

The preceding chapter terminated with a quotation from Charles Bonnet, the first of the naturalists who discerned the doctrine of the plurality of existences above the globe. We shall terminate this chapter with a quotation from another naturalist philosopher, a contemporary of Charles Bonnet, who defended that doctrine very cleverly. Dupont de Nemours, in his Philosophie de l'Univers, expresses himself thus, on the subject of the communications which may be established between us, and the superior beings, invisible inhabitants of other worlds, whom he calls angels, or genii.

"Why," said Dupont, "have we no evident knowledge of these beings, the necessity, convenience, and analogy of whom strike our reflective faculties which only can indicate them? of those beings who must surpass us in perfections, in faculties, in power, as much as we surpass the lower animals and the plants?—who must have a hierarchy as various, as finely graduated as that which we admire among the living and intelligent beings over which we dominate, and which are subordinate to us?—several others of whom may be our companions on earth, as we are of animals which, destitute of sight, hearing, and the sense of smell, of hands and of feet, do not know what we are even when we are doing them good, or harm?—some of whom are perhaps travelling from globe to globe, or, more excellent still, from one solar system to another, more easily than we go from Brest to Madagascar?

"It is because we have neither such organs or such senses as would be necessary to enable our intelligence to communicate with them.

"Thus do the worlds embrace the worlds, and thus are classified intelligent beings all composed of matter which God has more or less richly organized and vivified.

"Such is the probability, and, speaking to vigorous minds which do not shrink from novel suggestions, I will dare to say that such is the truth.

"Man is capable of calculating that it is frequently for his own interest to be useful to other species; and, which is more valuable, more moral, and more amiable, he is capable of rendering them services for his own satisfaction, and without any other motive than the pleasure which it affords him to do so.

"That which we do for our lower brethren, we, whose intelligence is circumscribed, and whose goodness is very limited, the genii, the angels,—permit me to employ terms in general use to designate beings whom I only divine but do not know,—these beings who are so much more worthy than we, ought to do, and doubtless do, the same for us, with much more beneficence, frequency, and extent on all occasions which concern them.

"We know perfectly well that these intelligences exist, and it is of little importance to us whether they are, as some persons think, formed of a sort of matter, composed of mixed material, or not. Their quota of intelligence is very brilliant, very remarkable, and evident; in strong contrast with the properties of inanimate nature, which can be measured, weighed, calculated, and analyzed.

"In order to comprehend what is the action of superhuman intelligences, who can only be known to us by induction, reason, and comparison between what we ourselves are to even the most intelligent animals, which are efficiently served by us, but have not the smallest idea of us, we must pursue analogy farther. These intelligences are above us, and out of the reach of our senses only because they are endowed with a greater number of senses, and with a more developed and more active life. These beings are more worthy than we are, they have many more organs and faculties, they must therefore, in employing their disposable faculties according to their will, just as we employ ours according to our will, be able to dispose, to work, to manœuvre all inanimate matter, and to do all this among themselves, and also with respect to intelligent beings who are their inferiors, with much more energy, rapidity, enlightenment, and wisdom than we possess, we who nevertheless do it for the beasts subordinate to us. It is, then, in harmony with the laws and the ways of nature that the superior intelligences should have power to render us, when it pleases them, most important services of which we are quite ignorant.

"These unknown protectors who observe us, unperceived, have not our imperfections, and must prize all that is good and beautiful in itself more highly than we can.

"We cannot, therefore, hope to please intelligences of a superior grade by actions which men themselves would condemn as odious. We cannot flatter ourselves with a hope of deceiving them, as we may deceive men, by exterior hypocrisy which only renders crime more despicable. They can behold our most secret actions, they can overhear our soliloquies, they can penetrate our unspoken thoughts. We know not in how many ways they can read what is passing in our hearts, we, whose coarseness, poverty, and unskilfulness limit our means of knowing to touch, sight, hearing, and sometimes analysis and conjecture.

"A celebrated Roman wished to have a house built, which should be open to the sight of the citizens. This house exists, and we inhabit it. Our neighbours are the chiefs and the magistrates of the great republic, who are invested with right and power to punish even our intentions, which are no mystery to them. And those who most completely penetrate them in their smallest variations, in their lightest inflections, are the most powerful and the most wise.

"Let us then try, in so far as it depends on us, to keep in accord with those in comparison with whom we are so small, and, above all, let us understand our littleness. If it be very important to us to admit to our complete friendship, to our entire confidence, to our constant society, none but men of the first rank of mind and character—if the sweet competition of affection, zeal, goodness, and capacity which is always going on between them and us, contributes to our improvement every day, what shall we not gain by giving them adjuncts, so to speak, higher and more perfect, who are not subject, either to our ignoble interests, our passions, or our errors, and before whom we cannot but blush. They do not vary, they do not abandon us, they never go away, so soon as we are alone we find them. They accompany us in travel, in exile, in prison, in a dungeon; they are always floating above the peaceful and reflecting brain.