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

"We can question them, and every time we do so, we may be sure that they reply. Why should they not do so? Our absent friends render us such service, but only those of their number who inspire us with great respect. We can even experience something of the kind with regard to an imaginary personage, if he presents himself to our minds as uniting several good and heroic qualities. How often, in difficult circumstances and in the midst of the strife of different passages, I have asked myself,—In this case, what would Charles Grandison have done? What would Quesnay have thought? What would Turgot have approved of? What advice would Lavoisier have given me? How shall I gain the approval of the angels? What line of action will be most conformable to the order, the laws and the beneficent views of the wise and majestic King of the universe? For the homage, the aspirations of a soul eager to do good, and careful to avoid debasement, may also be raised to God, in salutary and pious invocation."11

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

WHAT IS AN ANIMAL?—THE SOULS OF ANIMALS.—MIGRATIONS OF SOULS THROUGH THE BODIES OF ANIMALS

HITHERTO we have left animals out of our plan, although, owing to their immense number, and their influence upon the places which they inhabit, they play a highly important part in the world. It is now time to define the place in nature which our system assigns to them.

Have animals souls? Yes, in our belief, animals have souls; but among animals of all classes the soul is far from being endowed with an equal degree of activity. The activity of the soul is different in the crocodile and in the dog, in the eagle and in the grasshopper. In inferior animals, zoophytes and mollusca, the soul exists only in the condition of a germ. This germ develops itself, and becomes amplified according to the elevation of animals in the series of organic perfection. The sponge and the coral are zoophytes (animal plants). In these beings, the characteristics of animality, although they exist very positively, are obscure and hardly discernible. Voluntary motion, which is the distinctive characteristic formerly demanded for animals, is wanting in them; they are motionless, like the plants. Nevertheless, their nutrition is the same as that of animals, therefore they belong to the animal world. We cannot, however, grant to them a complete soul, but only the germ, the originating point of a soul. Among mollusca (such as marine and land shells, the oyster, the snail, &c.), the motions and the conduct of life are dictated by the will, and that suffices, in our belief, to reveal their possession of a soul, imperfect and very elementary, but certainly existent. Among articulated animals, the insects especially, will, sensibility, acts which denote reason, deliberation, and action resulting from deliberation, are numerous, and recurrent at every moment. They denote intelligence already active.

The smallness of the bodies of these animals is not an argument to be used against the fact of their intelligence. In nature nothing is great, and nothing is little; the monstrous whale and the invisible gnat are equal in the presence of its laws; both one and the other have received as their inheritance the degree of intelligence which is suitable to its need, and it is not by the scale of grandeur that we must measure the degrees of mind among living creatures. Every one is familiar with the prodigies of intelligence performed by associated bees, and by the ants, in their camps and hills. The habits of these two species of insects, which have been studied and expounded only in our age, fill us with wonder, almost with awe. But the bees and the ants do not constitute an exception among the insect class. It is very probable that in the entire class intelligence exists to the same degree as in bees and ants, for we do not see why two species of hymenopterous insects should exclusively possess this privilege, to the exclusion of other species of the same order, and all the other orders of the insect class. The fact is, that the bee has been studied profoundly, because that insect is an object of agricultural industry, and that, in consequence, it was for man's interest to understand its customs. This accounts for the successful surmounting of the difficulties attendant on the study of bees.

We may add, that the observer to whom our knowledge of bees is due, Pierre Huber, of Geneva, who published his fine works at the end of the last century, was blind, and that he was obliged to have recourse for all his observations to the eyes of an illiterate servant, François Burnens, which is a proof that this kind of study was not inordinately difficult.

The habits of other species of insects, still unknown to us, must, according to this, conceal marvels quite as great as those which the Hubers have revealed in the case of bees and ants.

Let us conclude that insects have souls, since intelligence is a faculty of the soul.

We may apply the same reasoning to fishes, reptiles, and birds. In these three classes of animals intelligence progresses towards perfection, the faculty of reason is manifest, and the degree of intelligence seems to march at a progressive rate from the fish to the reptile, and from the reptile to the bird.

In mammiferous animals we observe a degree of advance in intelligence upon the classes of animals we have just named. But, ought we to calculate the degree of intelligence of the different mammifers according to the order in which naturalists have classed these animals? Ought we to say that the strength of intelligence increases as we follow the zoological distribution of Cuvier, that is to say, that it rises from cetacea to carnivora, from carnivora to pachyderms, and from pachyderms to ruminants, &c.? No, evidently not.

It would be absurd to apportion the intellect of animals to the place which they occupy in zoological classification. We do not possess any certain method by which to form such an appreciation in detail. We remain within the terms of a very acceptable philosophical thesis in advancing our belief, in a general manner, that the intellectual faculties of animals augment from the mollusk to the mammifer, following almost exactly the progressive scale of zoological classification, but to enter into the peculiarities of these orders would be to expose ourselves to certain contradiction. In zoophytes the soul exists as a germ; this germ develops itself and grows in mollusca, and then in articulated creatures and fishes. The soul acquires certain faculties, more or less obscure and dim, when it enters the body of a reptile, and these faculties are manifestly augmented in the body of a bird. The soul is provided with far more perfected faculties when it reaches the body of a mammifer. Such is the general outline of our system.

Let us now follow this system out to the end. In the first pages of this book, we have advanced our theory that the soul of man, at the close of its terrestrial existence, passes into the planetary ether, where it is lodged in the body of a new being, superior to man in intelligence and morality. If this theory be correct, if this migration of the soul of man into the body of the superhuman being be real, analogy obliges us to establish the same relation between the animals, and then between the animals and man.

We firmly believe that a transmigration, a transmission of souls, or of the germs of souls, throughout the entire series of the classes of animals takes place. The germ of a conscious soul which existed in the zoophyte and the mollusk passes, on the death of those beings, into the body of an articulated animal. In this first stage of its journey, the animate germ strengthens and ameliorates itself. The nascent soul acquires some rudimentary faculties. When this rudiment of a conscious soul passes out of the body of an articulated animal into that of a fish or a reptile, it undergoes a new degree of elaboration, and its power increases. When, escaping from the body of the reptile or the fish, it is lodged in the form of the bird it receives other impressions, which become the origin of new perfections. The bird transmits the spiritual element, already much modified and aggrandized, to the mammifer, and then, the soul, having again gained power, and the number of its faculties being augmented, passes into the body of man.

It is probable that in the case of the inferior animals many animate germs are united to form the superior being. For instance, the principal animators of a certain number of little zoophytes, of those beings who live in the waters by millions, may, probably, on quitting the bodies of those beings, be united in one in order to form the soul of a single individual of a superior order.

It would be impossible to specify from what particular mammifer the soul must escape, in order to penetrate a human organism. It would be impossible to decide whether, before reaching man the soul has successively traversed the bodies of several mammifers, of more or less complicated organism; if it has passed through the body of a cetacian, then of a carnivorous creature, then of a quadrumane, the last term of the animal series. A pretension to detail would be a stumbling block to such a system as ours.

To maintain, for instance, that our soul is transmitted to us by the quadrumane, would be incorrect. The intelligence of the quadrumane is inferior to that of many animals more highly placed than he in the zoological scale. Apes, which compose only one family in the very numerous order of quadrumana, are animals of middling intelligence. They are malicious, cunning and gross, and possess only a few features of the human face, and even these belong to but few species. All the other quadrumanes are bestial in the highest degree.

It is not, therefore, in the quadrumana that we must look for the soul to be transmitted to man. But there are animals endowed with intelligence which is both powerful and noble, who would have a title to be accredited with such an honour. Those animals would vary according to the inhabited parts of the earth. In Asia, it may be that the wise, grave, and noble elephant is the depositary of the spiritual principle which is to pass into man. In Africa, the lion, the rhinoceros, the numerous ruminants which fill the forests may, perhaps, be the ancestors of the human race. In America, the horse, the wild ranger of the pampas, the dog, the faithful friend, the devoted companion of man, everywhere are, it may be, charged with the elaboration of the spiritual principle, which, transmitted to the child, is destined to develop itself, to increase in that child, and become the human soul. A writer in our time has called the dog a candidate for humanity. He little knew how true his definition is.

It will be urged, in objection, that man cannot have received the soul of an animal, because he has not the smallest remembrance of such a genealogy. To this we reply that the faculty of memory is wanting in the animal, or is so fugitive that we may consider it nil. The child can therefore receive from the animal only a soul unendowed with memory. And, in fact, the child itself is totally destitute of that faculty. At the moment of his birth he differs not at all from the animal as regards the faculties of his soul. It is not until twelve months have elapsed that the soul makes itself evident in him, and it is afterwards perfected by education. How, therefore, should the child remember an existence prior to his birth? Have we any memory of the time which we passed in our mother's womb?

Let us observe here that the progressive order which we have indicated for the migration of soul through the bodies of different animals, is precisely that which nature followed in the first creation of the organized beings which people our globe. It will be seen in ch. xiv., pp. 196-200, that plants zoophytes, mollusca, and articulated animals are the first living beings which appeared on our globe. After them came the fishes, and then the reptiles. After the reptiles birds, and at a later period mammifers appeared. Thus our system responds to the routine which nature has followed in the creation of plants and animals.

Such is the system which we have conceived as explanatory of the part assigned to animals on our globe. The basis of this system, as will be seen, is the intelligence accorded to animals. We entirely repel the generally held opinion, that beasts do not possess intelligence, and that it is replaced by an obscure faculty which is called instinct. But this theory gives no reason, it merely puts a word in the place of an explanation. By a simple phrase people imagine they resolve one of the great problems of nature. The timid and conventional philosophy of our time has hitherto accommodated itself to this method of eluding great difficulties, but the moment now appears to have come for a deeper study of the problems of nature, and for no longer remaining content with the substitution of words for things.

There was no hesitation in ancient times about according intelligence to animals. Aristotle and Plato expressed themselves quite clearly on this point: they admitted no doubt of the reasoning powers of beasts. The most celebrated modern philosophers, Leibnitz, Locke, and Montaigne; the most eminent naturalists, Charles Bonnet, Georges Leroy, Dupont de Nemours, Swammerdam, Réaumur, &c., granted intelligence to animals. Charles Bonnet understood the language of many animals, and Dupont de Nemours has given us a translation of the "Chansons du Rossignol" and the "Dictionnaire de la Langue des Corbeaux." It is, therefore, difficult to understand how a contrary thesis became prevalent in this age, how Descartes and Buffon, the declared adversaries of animal intelligence, have succeeded in turning the scale in favour of their ideas.

Descartes regarded animals purely as machines, as automata provided with mechanical apparatus. It would be difficult to surpass our great philosopher in absurdity when he treats of these animal machines.12 Equidem bonus dormitat Descartes. The systematic errors of Buffon on the same subject are well known.

The partizans of Descartes and of Buffon have popularized the idea of instinct put in the place of intelligence, of the word replacing the thing. But, in simple truth, what difference is there between intelligence and instinct? None. These two words only represent two different degrees of the same faculty. Instinct is simply a weaker degree of intelligence. If we read the writings of naturalists of this country who have studied the question, Frederick Cuvier (brother to George Cuvier), and Flourens,13 who has but commented upon Frederick Cuvier's book on the more profound work of a learned contemporary writer, M. Fée of Strasbourg,14 we shall easily find that no fundamental distinction between intelligence and instinct can be established, and that the whole secret of our philosophers and naturalists consists in calling the intelligence of animals, which is weaker than ours, instinct.

It is, then, the pride of mankind which has attempted to place a barrier, which in reality has no existence, between us and the animal. The intelligence of the animal is less developed than that of the man, because his wants are fewer, his organs are less highly finished, and because the sphere of his activity is more limited, but that is all. And sometimes, even, we must not forget that the animal exceeds the man in intelligence. Look at the rude and brutal waggoner, beside his good and docile horse, which he mercilessly beats and abuses, while his faithful auxiliary fulfils his task with patient exactness, and say, is it not the master who is the brute, and the animal who is the intelligent being? In kindness—that sweet emanation of the soul—animals often excel men. Every one knows the horrid story of the man who carried his dog to a river to drown him, but who fell into the water himself, and was on the point of drowning. The faithful companion whom he had flung in to die was there; he swam to his master, and dragged him into safety. Then the dog's master, making his footing sure this time, seized the creature who had just rescued him, and drowned him.

According to our system, the human soul comes from an animal belonging to the superior orders. After having undergone, in the body of this animal, a suitable degree of perfecting and elaboration, it incarnates itself in the body of a newly-born child of the human race.

We said, in a former chapter, "Death is not a termination, but a change; we do not die, we experience a metamorphosis." We must add to this, "Birth is not a beginning, it is a consequence. To be born is not to begin, it is to continue a prior existence."

There is not, therefore, properly speaking, either birth or death for the human species; there is only a continuous succession of existences, extending from the visible world through space, and connecting each with those worlds which are hidden from our view.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

WHAT IS THE PLANT?—THE PLANT IS SENSIBLE.—HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO DISTINGUISH PLANTS FROM ANIMALS.—THE GENERAL CHAIN OF LIVING BEINGS

LINNÆUS has said, "The plant lives; the animal lives and feels; man lives, feels, and thinks." This aphorism represented the state of science in the times of Linnæus. But since the year 1778, that is to say, since the death of the great botanist, Upsal, natural science has progressed, botany and zoology have been enriched with innumerable facts and fundamental discoveries, so that the Linnæan formula no longer represents the present condition of the sciences of organization. We believe that the following proposition may be truthfully substituted: "The plant lives and feels; the animal and man live, feel, and think."

To accord sensibility to plants, is to transgress the classic laws of natural history, so that the considerations and facts which appear to us to justify this proposition ought to be most carefully stated.

1. The plant feels the sensations of pleasure and pain. Cold, for instance, impresses it painfully; it may be seen to contract itself, as if shivering, under the influence of a sudden or excessive fall of the temperature. An abnormal excess of temperature evidently causes it to suffer; when the heat is very great, leaves may be observed to hang down on the stems, curl up, and appear to wither; when the cool of the evening comes, the leaves rise up again, and the plant resumes its appearance of placid health. Drought also occasions manifest suffering to plants. Those who study nature with loving attention know that when, after a long period of drought, a plant is watered it exhibits signs of pleasure. On the other hand, a wounded plant, one from which a branch has been cut, appears to experience pain. A pathological liquid exudes from the wound, like the blood from a hurt animal; the plant is sick, and will die, if it do not receive the necessary succour. Thus persons who love plants will not cut flowers off their stems, they prefer to inhale their perfume, and contemplate their brilliant colours, on the stalk, without inflicting a painful mutilation upon the beautiful creatures which they admire.

The sensitive plant, if touched by the fingers, or even struck by a current of harsh air, folds up its leaves, and contracts itself. The botanist, Desfontaines, saw a sensitive plant, which he was bringing home in a carriage, contract its leaves while the vehicle was in motion, and expand them when it stopped, thus affording a proof that the movement distressed the plant. A drop of acid, or acrid liquid, placed on a leaf of a sensitive plant, will occasion a similar constriction. All vegetables present an analogous phenomenon. Their tissues contract when brought in contact with irritant substances. By rubbing the tips of a lettuce, the juice may be made to exude.

Vegetable sensibility exists by the same right as animal sensibility, since electricity kills plants as it kills animals, since narcotic poisons kill or stupefy plants as they kill and stupefy animals. One can narcotize a plant by watering it with opium dissolved in water, and MM. Gopport and Macaire have discovered that hydrocyanic acid kills plants as rapidly as animals.

2. Plants sleep at night. During the day they develop their vital activity, and when the night comes, or when they are in darkness, their leaves assume another position, that of repose; they fold themselves up. In the day-time, the upper surface of the leaf is turned to the sky, and the under surface towards the earth; this under surface, pierced with holes, or stomata, is the part through which absorption and exhalation take place, while the upper surface, in which there are no such openings, is only a sort of screen for the protection of the absorbing surface. It is therefore easy to understand that the horizontal attitude of the leaves is a position of vital activity, and that the refolding of those leaves during the night indicates a state of repose. It is precisely the same case with ourselves, when during the night we indulge our muscles, kept on the stretch during the day, with complete relaxation.

The sleep of plants, said to have been discovered by Linnæus, and which was certainly described for the first time in one of Upsal's Thèses de Botanique, and thoroughly elucidated by Linnæus, is not a phenomenon limited to certain families of plants. There are very few vegetables which, during the night, or in darkness, do not fold their leaves, and which do not present a different appearance by day and by night. The Sensitive is the classic plant selected for its exhibition of this phenomenon in all its intensity; but this small leguminous creature only presents us with an exaggeration of a fact which exists in a lesser degree among almost all vegetables with light leaves. We may quote the following passage from a former work on the subject of this phenomenon.

"The sleep of plants vaguely resembles that of animals. It is a remarkable circumstance that the slumbering leaf appears to wish to return to the epoch of its infancy. It folds itself almost as it was when in the bud, before it burst out, as it was in the lethargic sleep of winter, sheltered beneath its strong scales, or wrapped up in its warm down. One would think that the plant was trying every night to resume the position which it occupied in its early time, just as the sleeping animal gathers himself together, and folds his limbs as they were folded in his mother's womb."15

Is it possible to deny the possession of sensibility to creatures which give us alternate sign of repose and of activity, and who have the power of accommodating themselves to various external impressions? Fatigue cannot possibly be anything but the consequence of the experience of an impression.

3. Numerous physiological functions are fulfilled by plants as well as by animals; and when we consider the number and variety of these functions, it is difficult to understand how, if animals be, as the common consent of mankind declares them, possessed of sensibility, plants can be destitute of it. An ancient philosopher defined plants as animals with roots. We shall see, on examining the variety of functions performed by vegetables, whether this philosopher was not a far-seeing, wise man.

It would be difficult to name any function with which the animal is invested that the vegetable does not possess in a less degree. Respiration, for instance, is equally a property of plants and of animals. Among the latter, respiration consists in the absorption of the oxygen of the air and the emission of carbonic acid gas and watery vapour; among plants it consists in the emission of carbonic acid gas and watery vapour during the night, and during the day, under the influence of sunlight, of the emission of oxygen proceeding from the decomposition of carbonic acid. The function is evidently of the same nature in both the natural kingdoms.