Kitabı oku: «The Day After Death (New Edition). Our Future Life According to Science», sayfa 13

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.

It was for this reason that Euclid, the founder of geometry in ancient times, laid down this truth as a simple axiom, requiring (hence the postulates of Euclid, from the Latin verb postulare, to demand), that the truth of this principle, which he acknowledged himself unable to prove by logical demonstration, should be granted.

A hundred geometricians, since Euclid, who renounced the attempt to demonstrate it, have tried to prove this theory of parallels, but not one has succeeded. It was on the occasion of a fresh attempt at demonstration by a mathematician in the provinces, that M. Lionville spoke before the Academy, to recall the principles almost unanimously professed by geometricians on this subject.

The question is, in reality, thoroughly understood; it is treated on all works on geometry, and has been for a long time a settled matter. But certain minds are tempted by the subtlety of certain subjects, and the question of the postulatum turns up periodically before the learned societies, as it does in the conversations between the teachers of mathematics.

M. Lionville reminded his audience that many demonstrations of this celebrated proposition had been attempted, but had not succeeded, because there are limits within which human reason ceases to be accepted by all. M. Lionville even proposed that the question of the postulatum should be classed among those whose examination is interdicted by the Academy, such as the quadrature of the circle, and the trisection of the angle. On this point M. Lionville quoted an anecdote relative to Lagrange. That great mathematician, believing that he had found an absolute solution of the postulatum, went to the Academy to read his demonstration, but on reflection, he changed his mind, and decided that it would be better not to publish it. He put his manuscript in his pocket, and it never came out.

Several geometricians spoke on this occasion, and confirmed the views of M. Lionville; and when the demonstration submitted by the professor was examined, it was found to be false. We must therefore recognize and proclaim that, in geometry, the axioms cannot be demonstrated.

Many people endeavour to derive an argument from that discussion against the certainty of geometry. Among them is M. Bouillaud, a learned physician and member of the Institute, who declared that he could not get over his astonishment at hearing it said that there were several geometries, and that even the bases of that science were doubtful. Reassure yourself, great and good physician, geometry has nothing to lose and nothing to hide, and the certainty of its methods is not imperilled in this question. That which really was at stake was the methodical, classical teaching of geometry. That which was discussed was the best means of instilling the principles of science into the mind. But, as to the truths of geometry, as to the facts themselves, they are secure from all uncertainty, all these disputes upon the truth which must be recognized as axioms, or demonstrated as theorems, are only fancies of the rhetoricians, as vain as they are subtle. No trace of them remains when they are transported into the practice of facts and of mathematical deductions. Ask the astronomers who calculate the orbit of the stars, who fix the moment of an eclipse with unerring precision, ask those who have calculated the parallaxes, whether they trouble themselves by inquiring how it may be demonstrated that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. All the scholastic subtleties are gotten rid of in the course of practical work.

If we may lay aside, without occupying ourselves with them, the mathematicians who amuse themselves by disputing the axioms of geometry, we may do the same with the few sophists who desire to dispute the axioms of philosophy and reason, and especially the principle of the existence of an immortal soul in man. Let us leave them to their disputations, and go on our way.

Second objection:—We have no recollection of having existed prior to our entrance into this world.

This is, we acknowledge the greatest and most serious argument against our system. But we must hasten to add, that if this difficulty did not exist, if the remembrance of a life anterior to our present existence were always before us, the doctrine of plurality of lives would need no reinforcement from the proofs for which we appeal to argument, to the facts of observation, and to logical induction. It would be plain before our eyes, it would be self-evident. All our merit, all our task in this work, is to endeavour to procure admission of the plurality of existences, though we have no remembrance of our past lives.

We have already treated this question incidentally, and we will now summarize all that has been advanced in former chapters to explain the absence of recollection of our past existences.

The soul in its first human incarnation, if it proceeds from a superior animal, could not possess memory, because in animals that faculty has a small range, and brief duration. If a second or third human incarnation is in question, the difficulty is serious, because it implies that the man who has lived and who is born again, has forgotten his previous life.

But, in the first place, this forgetfulness is not absolute. We have remarked before that in the human soul certain results of impressions received prior to the terrestrial life always linger. Natural aptitudes, special faculties, vocations, are the traces of impressions formerly received, of knowledge already acquired, and, being revealed from the cradle, cannot be explained otherwise than by a life gone by. We have lost the remembrance of the facts, but there remains the moral consequence, the resultant, the philosophy, so to speak, and thus the innate ideas indicated by Descartes, which exist in the soul from its birth, and also the principle of causality, which teaches us that every effect has a cause, are explained. This principle can only be derived from facts, because an abstraction can only be based upon concrete facts, upon accomplished events, and this abstraction, or this metaphysical idea, which we have from our birth, implies anterior facts, which must belong to a past life.

We have already said that when the soul gives free course to reverie, it beholds mysterious and undefined spectacles, which seem to belong to worlds which are not quite unknown to us, but in no wise resembling this earth. In this vague contemplation there is something like a confused remembrance of an anterior life. The love which we bear to flowers, plants, and all vegetation, may be as we have already pointed out, a grateful recollection of our first origin.

If, however, these considerations be not accepted as valid, there is another, which, to our mind, perfectly explains the absence of a remembrance of our former existences. It is, we believe, by a premeditated decree of nature, that the memory of our past lives is denied to us while we are on the earth. M. André Pezzani, the author of an excellent book called "Pluralité des existences de l'âme," replies to the argument of oblivion, thus:

"Our terrestrial sojourn is only a new trial, as Dupont de Nemours, that wonderful writer of the eighteenth century, who outstripped all modern beliefs, has said. If this be so, can we not perceive that the remembrance of past lives would embarrass these trials by removing the greater part of their difficulties, and, in proportion, of their merit, and destroying their spontaneity? We live in a world in which free-will is all powerful, the inviolable law of the advancement and the progressive initiation of men. If past existences were known, the soul would know the meaning and the bearing of the trials reserved for it here below; indolent and idle, it would harden itself against the designs of Providence, and would be either paralyzed by its despair of overcoming them, or, if better disposed and more virile, it would accept and accomplish them unfailingly. But neither one nor the other of these positions is fitting. Our efforts must be free, voluntary, sheltered from the influences of the past; the field of strife must be seemingly untrodden, so that the athlete shall show and exercise his virtue. Previously gained experience, the energies which he has acquired, help him in the new strife, but in a latent way of which he is unconscious, for the imperfect soul undergoes these re-incarnations, in order to develop its previously manifested qualities, and to strip itself of those vices and defects which oppose themselves to the law of its ascension. What would happen if all men remembered their previous lives? The order of the earth would be overturned, or at least, it would not remain in its present condition. Léthé, like free-will, is a law of the world as it is."¹⁸

To this it will be objected that there is destruction of identity where memory does not exist, and that expiation, in order to be profitable to the guilty soul, must co-exist with the remembrance of faults committed in the previous existence, for the man is not punished who does not know that he is punished. We may remark here that we do not use the word "expiation" precisely as theologians employ it, but rather as a new dwelling conferred on the soul, in order that it may resume the interrupted course of its advance towards perfection. We believe that the remembrance of our previous life, forbidden to us during our terrestrial sojourn, will come back when we shall have attained the happy realms of ether, in which we shall pass through the existences which are to succeed our life on earth. Among the number of the perfections and moral faculties forming the attributes of the superhuman being, the memory of his anterior lives will be included. Identity will be born again for him. Having suffered a momentary collapse, his individuality will be restored to him, with his conscience and his liberty.

Let us hearken awhile to Jean Reynaud, as he tells us in his fine book, Terre et Ciel, the marvels of that memory which shall be restored to man after his being shall have undergone a series of changes.

"The integral restitution of our recollections," says Jean Reynaud, "seems to us one of the inherent principal conditions of our future happiness. We cannot fully enjoy life, until we become, like Janus, kings of time, until we know how to concentrate in us, not only the sentiment of the present, but that of the future and the past. Then, if perfect life be one day given to us, perfect memory must also be given to us. And now, let us try to think of the infinite treasures of a mind enriched by the recollections of an innumerable series of existences, entirely different from each other, and yet admirably linked together by a continual dependence. To this marvellous garland of metempsychoses, encircling the universe, let us add, if the perspective seem worthy of our ambition, a clear perception of the particular influence of our life upon the ulterior changes of each of the worlds which we shall have successively inhabited; let us aggrandize our life in immortalizing it, and wed our history grandly with the history of the heavens. Let us confidently collect together every material of happiness, since thus the all-powerful bounty of the Creator wills it, and let us construct the existence which the future reserves for virtuous souls; let us plunge into the past by our faith, while we are waiting for more light, even as by our faith we plunge into the future. Let us banish the idea of disorder from the earth, by opening the gates of time beyond our birth, as we have banished the idea of injustice by opening other gates beyond the tomb; let us stretch duration in every direction, and, notwithstanding the obscurity which rests upon our two horizons, let us glorify the Creator in glorifying ourselves, who are God's ministers on earth, let us remember, with pious pride, that we are the younger brethren of the angels."

Under what condition does the soul regain the remembrance of its entire past? Jean Reynaud specifies two periods. 1. That which is fulfilled, as the Druids hold, in the world of journeys and trials, of which the earth forms a part. 2. The period during which the soul, set free from the miseries and vicissitudes of the terrestrial life, pursues its destinies in the ever widening and progressive circle of happiness; a period which passes outside of the earth. In the first period there is an eclipse of the memory at each passage into a new sphere; in the second period, whatever may be the displacements and transfigurations of the person, the memory is preserved full and entire. This theory of Reynaud's is admitted by M. Pezzani.

With the exception of that eclipse of the memory at each passage into a new sphere, which seems to us incomprehensible and useless, we think, with Jean Reynaud, that the complete remembrance of our previous existences will return to the soul when it shall inhabit the ethereal regions, the sojourn of the superhuman being. In this manner only, in our opinion, can the defect of man's memory, concerning his previous existences, be explained. Thus, the argument from that defect of memory does not remain without reply. Writers who have preceded us, and have meditated on this question, had already found the solution which we offer. This objection is not, then, of a nature to throw doubt on the doctrine of plurality of existences. Let us conclude, with M. Pezzani, that it is by a design of nature, that man, during this life, loses the remembrance of what he formerly was. If we retained the recollection of our anterior existences, if we had before our eyes, as if seen in a mirror, all that we had done during our former lives, we should be much troubled by the remembrance, which would harass the greater part of our actions, and deprive us of our complete free will.

Why is an invincible dread of death common to all men? Death is not, in reality, very dreadful, since it is not a termination, but a simple change of condition. If man feels terror of death to such an extent, we may be sure that nature imposes that sentiment upon him, in the interests of the preservation of his species. Thus, in our belief, the fear of death and the absence of memory of our former lives are referable to the same cause. The first is a salutary illusion imposed by God upon the weakness of humanity; the second is a means of securing to man full liberty of action.