science, the _Universe_, by Dr. Pouchet, director of the Museum
of Natural History at Rouen, we find a striking definition. Dr.
Pouchet informs us that a German naturalist, Bremser, lays down, as a
principle, that, in man, matter and spirit exist in almost equal parts;
that is, to say, that man is half spirit and half matter. Bremser, in
advancing this proposition, takes his stand upon the fact that, in man,
it is sometimes spirit which governs and subdues matter, and sometimes
matter which dictates laws to spirit, with equal power and success on
the side of each.[3]
Admitting, with the German philosopher, that this relation is true, we
would say, that, while in man the proportion of the soul is fifty in
one hundred, this proportion, in the superhuman being, is undoubtedly
from eighty to eighty-five in one hundred. Of course we only employ
this valuation to make our idea comprehensible, and give these figures
only to prove that facts in the intellectual order may be submitted to
weight, measure, and comparison, all which the world supposes to be
impossible.
The soul has a preponderating share in the superhuman being. That is
what we need to know, and to remember. Let us now endeavour to analyze
the soul of the superhuman being, as we have analyzed his senses.
If the senses of the superhuman being are numerous and exquisitely
acute, the faculties of his soul, which are intimately allied to the
exercise of the senses, and depend on their perfection, must also be
singularly active and powerful. We know that in men the faculties of
the soul are feeble and limited. We have so short a time to pass upon
the earth, that very powerful faculties would be of no use to us; they
would not have time to be developed, or efficaciously employed. But
everything is magnified and elevated in the superior world which awaits
us; consequently the faculties of the thinking creature who inhabits
the realms on high must be numerous and of vast extent.
We must repeat, concerning the faculties of the soul of the superhuman
being, what we have just said concerning his senses. The superhuman
being must be provided with new faculties, and also those faculties
which he has brought with him from the earth must be singularly
perfected. To determine the nature and the object of the new faculties
bestowed upon the superhuman being would be impossible, because
those faculties belong to the superior world which is unknown to us;
they respond to moral wants of which we have no conception. Let us,
therefore, renounce all idea of discovering the nature of those
new faculties, and content ourselves with examining the degree of
perfection which may be attained by those faculties of the soul which
actually belong to man.
Attention, thought, reason, will, and judgment, all which render us
what we are, must acquire special force and sureness in the superhuman
being. La Bruyère has said that there is nothing more rare in this
world than the _spirit of discernment_; which means that judgment and
good sense are excessively rare. When we have lived for a while among
men, we recognize how thoroughly well founded the saying is. We may
safely assert, without being over-misanthropical, that among a hundred
men there will be not more than one or two possessed of sound judgment.
In the majority of instances, ignorance, prejudices, and passion
contend with judgment, so that, as La Bruyère says, good sense is much
more rare than pearls and diamonds. This great and precious faculty of
judgment, in which the majority of human beings are deficient, cannot
be wanting in the inhabitants of the other world; there it must be the
universal rule, here it is the exception.
The most precious of all faculties, enabling us to form large and lofty
ideas and comparisons, whose outcome is knowledge, is memory. But how
imperfect, changeable, weak, and, one may say, sickly, is our memory!
It is absolutely mute respecting the whole period which preceded our
birth, and during which, nevertheless, we existed. It is also as silent
respecting all that concerns the early portion of our life. We retain
no recollection of the care which was lavished upon our childhood. A
child who loses its mother in infancy has never known a mother; for
it, the mother has never existed. If those who saw us in the cradle
did not recount our actions during that period, we should be entirely
ignorant of them. We have to witness the successive stages of infancy,
the sucking child, the long clothes, the staggering steps, the little
go-cart, in order to realize that we too have been like that infant,
have gone through those stages of being. Memory, which is not developed
at all in man until he is a year old, and which becomes extinct in old
men, is subject, even when it is at its highest point of activity, to
innumerable weaknesses, caused by illness or the want of exercise, so
that in fact our hold of this faculty is always precarious. We cannot
doubt that in the other life it will have the power, the certainty, and
scope which it lacks here below.
At the same time, our memory will be enriched by a number of new
subjects. The soul, beholding and understanding the worlds which
surround it, will be able to fix the geography of all those different
places in its memory. It will know the physical revolutions, the
populations, and the legislation of these thousand countries. The
superhuman being will know what exists in such planets and their
satellites as come within his reach, or as he shall visit. Just as,
in order to gain information, we visit America or Australia, so the
superhuman being visits Mars or Venus, and furnishes his memory with
millions of facts, which it retains and reproduces at will. What
immense power must memory, always supplied and always ready at call,
bestow on the mind and reason!
Languages are only the expression and the assembling of ideas.
Condorcet has said that a science always reduces itself to a
well-constructed language. The mathematical sciences employ a language
which is perfect, because the science of mathematics is perfect. The
language spoken in the planetary spaces must be perfect, because it
expresses all the knowledge of superhuman beings, and this knowledge
is immense. The more the mind knows, the better it expresses:--the
superhuman being, who is highly informed, will have a very expressive
language, which will also be universal.
The language of mathematics is understood by the peoples of both
hemispheres. Algebra can be read by a Frenchman or a German, as well
as by an Australian or a Chinese, on account of the simplicity and
perfection of the conventional signs which it uses. The language of
mathematics, which is truly universal, makes us infer that the language
spoken in the planetary space must be also universal, and common,
without distinction, to all the inhabitants of the ethereal worlds.
Owing to the immense scope of their faculties, and to the perfection of
their language, in itself a certain means of increasing and exalting
their knowledge, superhuman beings have a power of reasoning, and a
clearness of judgment, which, added to the immense number of facts
stored in their memory, place them in possession of absolute science.
Arduous questions, before which the mind of man humbly confesses its
powerlessness, or which drive him mad if he persists in the effort to
solve them, such as the thought of the Infinite, the idea of the First
Cause of the Universe, the Essence of Divinity, all these problems,
forbidden to us, are easily accessible to these mighty thinkers. He who
is regarded by mankind as a genius of the first order, an Aristotle,
a Keppler, a Newton, a Raphael, a Shakespeare, a Molière, a Mozart, a
Lavoisier, a Laplace, a Cuvier, a Victor Hugo, would be among them a
babbling child. No science, no moral idea is above their conception.
Beneath their feet rolls the earth, with the splendid train of the
planets, its sisters; they behold the planets of our solar system
gravitating in harmonious order round the great central star, which
deluges them with its light. From the height of their sublime abode
they witness the infinitely various spectacles furnished by the
elemental strife of our poor globe, and those which resemble it; and,
happier than terrestrial humanity, they admire the works of God, while
knowing the secret of their mechanism. In the moral order they have
penetrated the great _Wherefore_! They know why man exists, and why
they themselves exist. They know whence they come, and whither they
are going; and we, alas! know neither. Where, to our eyes, there is
only confusion, they perceive harmony and order. The designs of God
are distinctly apparent to them, and also the events of the lives of
nations and individuals, which often seem to us cruel, unjust, and bad
on the part of God; but they understand that these events are just and
useful, and worthy of our heartfelt gratitude.
We also think, that in the ethereal spaces time is an element which
does not count. We believe this, because time does not exist for God,
and all superhuman beings approach, by their perfections, the entirely
spiritual nature, and consequently approach God. We are confirmed in
this belief by the fact, that very profound grief resists time, that
there is no limit in duration to the great blows struck at the human
soul, that the loss of a beloved being is felt as keenly after a long
interval as when he was taken away.
Thus, time, which is everything to man, which is not only, according
to the English adage, "money," but is also the instrument of our
wisdom, our studies, and our attainments--far otherwise precious
than money--time does not count in the life of the superhuman being.
He awaits, without impatience and without suffering, the arrival of
the beings whom he has loved and left upon the earth at his peaceful
abode; and when their re-union takes place, he and they enjoy happiness
which no inquietude concerning the future can ever trouble. Enabled to
despise, to put aside the idea of time, the superhuman being looks on
with unutterable serenity, tranquillity, and majesty, at the majestic
spectacle, always new and always marvellous, of the revolutions of the
stars, and the great movements of the universe.
_The Life of the Superhuman Being._--In completion of our speculation
upon the attributes of the superhuman being, we shall consider the life
which animates him and gives his body its active qualities.
We have said that, in our belief, the superhuman being proceeds from
the soul of a man which has domiciled itself afresh, in a new body, in
the bosom of the world of ether. Is this body destined, at the end of
a more or less prolonged period to perish, to be dissolved, to restore
its elements to matter, as they are restored by the human body? Shall
life be withdrawn from the body of the superhuman being, and shall the
soul take flight thence?
We believe that it will be so. Life everywhere implies death, and is
its necessary term. We do not cast anchor in the current of the waters
of life. If the soul of the superhuman being resides in a living body,
this body must die, and its material elements must return to the common
reservoir of nature. The torch of life is extinguished in the spaces,
as it is extinguished upon earth.
We believe the superhuman being to be mortal. After an interval, whose
duration we shall not attempt to fix, he dies; and the soul which dwelt
within him escapes, like a sweet perfume from a broken vase. What
becomes of the soul which has torn itself away from the body, cold in
death? We shall seek after the answer to this question in our next
chapter.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[3] "We must consider," says Bremser, "that man is not a spirit, but
only a spirit limited, in different ways, by matter. In a word, man
is not a god, but, notwithstanding the captivity of his spirit in his
corporality, it retains sufficient freedom to enable him to perceive
that he is governed by a spirit more exalted than his own, that is to
say, by a God.
"It is to be presumed, in the supposition that there will be a new
creation, that beings far more perfect than those produced by preceding
creations will see the light. In the composition of man, spirit holds
to matter the proportion of fifty to fifty, with slight occasional
differences, because it is now matter, and again spirit which
predominates. In a subsequent creation, should that which has formed
man not prove to be the last, there will apparently be organizations
in which spirit will act more freely, and be in the proportion of
seventy-five to twenty-five.
"It results from this consideration that man, as such, was formed
at the most passive epoch of the existence of our earth. Man is a
wretched intermediary between animal and angel, he aspires to elevated
knowledge, and he cannot attain to it; though our modern philosophers
sometimes think so, it is really impossible. Man wishes to make out the
primary cause of all that exists, but he cannot get at it. With less
intellectual faculty, he would not have had the presumption even to
desire to know these causes; and, if he were more richly endowed, they
would have been clear to him."--_L'Univers_, pp. 760-761.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
WHAT BECOMES OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING AFTER DEATH?--DEATHS,
RESURRECTIONS, AND NEW INCARNATIONS IN THE ETHEREAL SPACES.
IN the living nature which surrounds us, there is a continually
ascending scale of gradual perfection, from the plant to man. Taking
mosses and algæ, which represent the rudimentary condition of vegetable
organization, as our point of departure, we pass on through the whole
series of the perfecting processes of the vegetable kingdom, and we
reach the inferior animals, zoophytes and mollusca. From thence we
ascend to the superior animals by insensible degrees, and thus fully
attain to man. Each step of this ladder is almost imperceptible, so
finely arranged are the transitions and the shades; so that there is
a really infinite chain of intermediate beings, at one end of which
are the algæ, and at the other ourselves. And yet we think it possible
that between us and God there should be no kind of intermediate being!
that in this scale of continual progress, there should be an immense
void between man and the Creator! We think it possible that all nature,
from the lowest vegetable to mankind, should be arranged in successive
and innumerable degrees, and that between man and God there should
exist only a desert, an immeasurable hiatus. Evidently, this is
impossible, and that such an error should ever have been countenanced
by religion and philosophy is only to be explained by ignorance of
natural phenomena. It is impossible to doubt that between man and God,
as between the plant and the animal, the animal and man, there exist a
great number of intermediate creations, which establish the transition
of humanity into the divinity which governs it, in infinite power and
majesty.
That these intermediate beings exist, we are certain. They are
invisible to us, but, if we refused to admit the existence of
everything which we cannot see, we should be very easily refuted. Let
a naturalist take a drop of water from a pond, and, shewing it to
an ignorant person, tell him, "this drop of water, in which you do
not see anything, is filled with little animals, and with miniature
plants, which live, are born and die, like the animals and plants,
which inhabit our farms." The ignorant person would probably shrug up
his shoulders, and consider the speaker crazy. But if he were induced
to apply his eye to the magnifier of a microscope, in order to examine
the contents of the drop of water, he must acknowledge that the truth
had been told him; because, in this drop of water, in which he could
at first see nothing, his eye, when assisted by science, would discern
whole worlds.
A great number of living beings can therefore exist where we see
nothing, and it is feasible to science to open the eyes of the
multitude in this respect.
We desire to assume the position of the naturalist of whom we have
spoken. Between man and God, the ignorant crowd and a blind philosophy
perceive nothing; but, when we replace the eyes of the body by those of
the spirit, that is to say, when we make use of reason, analogy, and
education, these mysterious beings come to light.
We have already, in studying the superhuman being, described one
of those intermediate creations between man and the divinity, and
defined the existence of one of those landmarks placed by nature on
the high-road of infinite space. But the ladder does not break off at
its first step, and we are convinced that numerous living hierarchies
intervene between the superhuman being and the radiant throne of the
Almighty. We have said elsewhere, that, in our belief, superhuman
beings are mortal. What becomes of them after their death? Let us now
take up the thread of our deductions.
We believe that--the superhuman being having died at the end of a term
whose duration we have no means of knowing--his soul, perfected by
the exercise of the new faculties which it has received, and the new
senses with which it has been endowed, enters into a new body, provided
with senses still more numerous and more exquisite, and endowed with
faculties of still greater power, and thus commences a fresh existence.
We call the being who succeeds to man _angel_, or superhuman; we
may call his succession in the ethereal realm, _arch-angel_, or
_arch-human_.
The actual moment of the passage from one life to another, must be,
as it is in the case of man, a time of moral and physical pain. The
supreme periods at which a metamorphosis takes place in a sensible
being are crises full of anguish and torment.
We will not endeavour to penetrate the secrets of the organization
of the new being whose existence we thus trace, and who is superior
to the superhuman being in the natural hierarchy; because our means
of investigation fail us at this point. We have ventured to form
some conjecture respecting the body, the soul, and the life of the
superhuman being, because in that case, however adventurous our
excursion into unknown spheres, we had a point of comparison and
induction in the human species. But all induction respecting the
arch-human being who succeeds the superhuman, is wanting, for we could
only perceive the latter by means of conjectures and analogies which we
must not carry farther.
We will, therefore, abstain from pursuing this kind of investigation,
permitting the reader to exercise his own imagination upon the form
of the body, the number and perfection of the senses, and the extent
of the faculties of the happy creature who succeeds to the superhuman
being, and who dwells, like him, in the immensity of ethereal space.
We will only add that we do not think a second, a third, or a fourth
incarnation arrests the succession of the chain of sublime creations,
which float in the infinitude of the heavens, and which proceed from
a primitive human soul, which has grown in perfection and in moral
power. It surpasses our faculty to define, by the unassisted light of
our reason and our knowledge, the number of these beings who go on
succeeding one another in ever-increasing perfection. We can only say
that we believe the creatures, which compose this ladder of perfections
in succession, must be very numerous.
At every stage of his promotion in the hierarchy of nature the
celestial being beholds the growth of those wings which symbolize his
marvellous power to us. Each time his organs become more numerous, more
flexible, have greater scope. He acquires new and exquisite senses.
He acquires more and more power of extending his beneficent empire,
of exercising his faculty of loving his fellows and all nature, and,
above all, of comprehending and reading the designs of God. Deeper and
deeper affections engage his soul, for the tenderness and the happiness
engendered in its pure satisfaction, are granted to him to console him
for the sufferings of death, to which he is always condemned. It is
thus that the happiness of the elect is augmented. It is thus that the
beings who inhabit the boundless plains of the invisible world employ
each of their lives in preparing for the life which is to follow, in
securing by a wise exercise of their freedom, industrious culture
of their faculties, strict observance of morality, and continuous
beneficence, a more noble, more animated, and happier destiny in the
new spaces which await them, in the development of their sublime
destiny.[4]
Nevertheless, as everything comes to an end in this world, so must
everything have an end in the surrounding spheres. After having
traversed the successive stages and rested in the successive stations
of their journey through the skies, the beings whom we are considering
must finally reach a defined place. What is this place, the ultimate
term of their immense cycle across the spaces? In our belief, it is the
sun.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] On this subject see the book of Dupont de Nemours, "_Philosophie de
l'Univers_," quoted by M. Pezzani in his "_Pluralité des existences de
l'âme_," pp. 216-218.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
PHYSICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF THE SUN.
ACCORDING to our system of thought the sun is the central place in
which souls which come from the ethereal spaces are finally gathered
together. After having undergone the successive incarnations which we
have described, souls, primitively human, finish by reaching the sun,
by dwelling within the borders of the star-king.
This, then, is a fitting place for a description of the sun from the
physical and astronomical point of view. Such a description will at
once reveal the entirely sovereign part played by that globe which
has no fellow. The astonishing attributes which belong to it, the
unimaginable power which it wields, will sufficiently explain the place
at the summit of the ascending scale of nature, which we assign to the
sun.
In the first place, the sun is totally different from the other stars
of our world. He resembles nothing, and nothing can be compared with
him. Neither planets, satellites, asteroids, nor comets can give us
any idea of him. His immense volume, his physical constitution, his
exceptional properties place him in a totally separate rank, and afford
full justification to those who claim for him a separate and sovereign
place.
The enormous mass of the sun at once proclaims his supremacy. The sun
is sufficiently vast to receive everything which could come to him from
all the other planets. He surpasses in volume the united size of all
the celestial bodies which revolve around him. He is six hundred times
larger than the entire assemblage of the planets with their satellites,
of the asteroids and the comets which compose what is called the
solar world; that is to say, the world of which we form a part. The
proportion in which the sun exceeds the earth in volume is, then,
necessarily enormous; since he is larger than all the other stars put
together. He is _one million three hundred thousand_ times larger than
our globe.
It is only by drawing that we can give an exact idea of the comparative
sizes of the sun and the other planets. The reader will find in the
accompanying illustration (Fig. 1) a figure which exactly represents
the comparative dimensions of the sun, and the largest planets of our
world. The earth, represented by a dot, gives an idea of what Mars,
Mercury, and Venus, which are smaller than the earth, must be.
It takes three years to circumnavigate the earth. To circumnavigate the
solar globe, under similar conditions, would take three hundred years.
If human life be not more prolonged in the sun than on the earth, an
existence would not suffice to enable a traveller to become acquainted
with the surface of the globe he inhabits.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Comparative Dimensions of the Sun and the
Planets.]
Weight is thirty times more intense on the surface of the sun than on
the earth. We know that a body which falls upon the earth traverses, in
the first second of its fall, a space of four metres, nine centimetres.
In the sun a falling body traverses 144 metres in the first second of
its fall. It follows from this, that a human body, if transported to
the sun, would weigh about 2000 kilogrammes, the weight of an elephant.
The body of a dog or of a horse would weigh twenty-eight times as much
as upon our earth, so that these animals would remain fixed to the
surface. The conditions of nature must therefore be entirely different
in the sun from what they are in the group of planets to which the
earth belongs.