"Those theories which you call wild dreams," cried the Doctor, rising
to his feet as he spoke, his features glowing with enthusiasm under
the moon, "are but the mystic veils with which the eternal Isis veils
her awful face. Your deep German philosophy is shallow--your modern
pantheism vaguer than smoke--compared with the mighty knowledge of the
East. The theories of the greatest modern thinkers were taught in India
before the name of Rome was heard in the world; and our scientific
researches of to-day simply confirm most ancient Oriental beliefs,
which we, in our ignorance, have spoken of as dreams of madmen."
"Yes, but surely, you cannot otherwise characterize the idea of the
transmigration of souls?"
"Ah! souls, souls," replied the stranger, drawing at his cigar
until it glowed like a carbuncle in the night--"we have nothing
to do with souls, but with facts. The metempsychosis is only the
philosophic symbol of a vast natural fact, grotesque only to those who
understand it not,--just as the most hideous Indian idol, diamond-eyed
and skull-chapleted, represents to the Brahmin a hidden truth
incomprehensible to the people. Conscious of the eternity of Matter
and Force;--knowing that the substance of whirling universes, like clay
in the hands of the potter, has been and is being and will be forever
fashioned into myriad shifting forms;--knowing that shapes alone are
evanescent, and that each atom of our living bodies has been from the
beginning and will always be, even after the mountains have melted like
wax in the heat of a world's dissolution--it is impossible to regard
the theory of transmigration as a mere fantasy. Each particle of our
flesh has lived before our birth through millions of transmigrations
more wonderful than any poet has dared to dream of; and the life-force
that throbs in the heart of each one of us has throbbed for all time
in the eternal metempsychosis of the universe. Each atom of our blood
has doubtless circulated, before our very civilization commenced,
through the veins of millions of living creatures--soaring, crawling,
or dwelling in the depths of the sea; and each molecule that floats in
a sunbeam has, perhaps, vibrated to the thrill of human passion. The
soil under my foot has lived and loved; and Nature, refashioning the
paste in her awful laboratory into new forms of being, shall make this
clay to live and hope and suffer again. Dare I even whisper to you of
the past transformations of the substance of the rosiest lips you have
kissed, or the brightest eyes which have mirrored your look? We have
lived innumerable lives in the past; we have lived in the flowers, in
the birds, in the emerald abysses of the ocean;--we have slept in the
silence of solid rocks, and moved in the swells of the thunder-chanting
sea;--we have been women as well as men;--we have changed our sex a
thousand times like the angels of the Talmud; and we shall continue the
everlasting transmigration long after the present universe has passed
away and the fires of the stars have burned themselves out. Can one
know these things and laugh at the theories of the East?"
"But the theory of Cycles--"
"It is not less of a solemn truth. Knowing that Force and Matter are
eternal, we know also that the kaleidoscope of changing shapes must
whirl forever. But as the colored particles within a kaleidoscope are
limited, only a certain number of combinations may be produced. Are
not the elements of eternal matter limited? If so, their combinations
must also be; and as the everlasting force must forever continue to
create forms, it can only repeat its work. Then, we must believe that
all which has already happened must have happened before throughout all
time, and will happen again at vast intervals through all eternity. It
is not the first time we have sat together on the night of September
6;--we have done so in other Septembers, yet the same; and in other New
Orleanses, the same yet not the same. We must have done it centrillions
of times before, and will do it centrillions of times again through the
æons of the future. I shall be again as I am, yet different; I shall
smoke the same cigar, yet a different one. The same chair with the same
scratches on its polished back will be there for you to sit in; and we
shall hold the same conversation. The same good-natured lady will bring
us a bottle of wine of the same quality; and the same persons will
be reunited in this quaint Creole house. Trees like these will fling
their shadows on the pavement; and above us shall we again behold as
now the golden swarm of worlds sparkling in the abysses of the infinite
night. There will be new stars and a new universe, yet we shall know
it only as we know it at this moment that centrillions of years ago we
must have suffered and hoped and loved as we do in these weary years.
Good-bye, friends!"
He flung the stump of his cigar among the vines, where it expired in
a shower of rosy sparks; and his footsteps died away forever. NAY,
not forever; for though we should see him no more in this life, shall
we not see him again throughout the Cycles and the Æons? YEA, alas,
forever; for even though we should see him again throughout the Cycles
and the Æons, will it not be so that he always departeth under the same
circumstances and at the same moment, in sæcula sæculorum?