Kitabı oku: «The Day After Death (New Edition). Our Future Life According to Science», sayfa 8

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.

"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.