all His works here below, so that nothing created is identical
with anything else, if harmonious progression reigns among all
terrestrial beings; and one common chain unites them; is it not
probable that this marvellous chain is prolonged throughout all the
planetary worlds; that it unites them all, and that they are only
constituent and infinitesimal parts of the same series?
"At present we can see only a few links of this great chain; we
are not even certain that we observe them in their habitual order;
we can only follow this admirable progression very imperfectly,
and through innumerable windings in which we meet with frequent
interruptions, but we always know that the breaches are not in the
chain, but in our knowledge.
"When it shall have been granted to us to contemplate this chain,
as I have supposed the intelligences for whom our world was chiefly
made to contemplate it; when, like them, we shall be able to
follow its coils in other worlds, then, and then only, we shall
understand their reciprocal dependence, their secret relations,
the exact meaning of every link, and we shall rise by a scale of
relative perfection to the most transcendent and luminous truths.
"With what feelings shall our souls be filled, when, having studied
to its depths the economy of a world, we shall fly to another,
and compare the two! How perfect shall our cosmology be then! How
wide the generalization and great the fecundity of our principles,
the succession, the mass, the exactness of our knowledge! What
light shall be shed from so many different objects upon the other
branches of our studies; upon physics, geometry, astronomy,
rational science, and especially upon that divine study whose
object is the Supreme Being.
"All these truths are chained together, and the most distant
are held to the nearest by hidden links, which it is the end of
understanding to discover. Newton, no doubt, exulted in having
discovered the secret relation between the fall of a stone and the
motion of a planet; when he shall be one day transformed into a
celestial intelligence, he will smile at this child's play, and his
profound geometry will be to him only the first elements of another
Infinite.
"Man's reason has already penetrated beyond all the planetary
worlds; it has raised itself up to heaven, where God dwells; it
contemplates the august throne of the Ancient of Days, it beholds
all the spheres rolling beneath His feet, and obeying the impulse
of His hand, it hears the acclamations of all the intelligences,
and, mingling its adoration and its praise with the majestic song
of the hierarchies, it cries with the deepest consciousness of its
own nothingness: 'Holy, holy, holy, is He who is eternal, and the
All Good; glory be to God in the highest, and good-will towards
man!' Oh! the depth of the riches of the Divine Goodness, which
is not satisfied with manifesting itself to men on the earth
by countless means, but will bring him one day to the celestial
dwelling-places, and satisfy the thirst of his soul with the
fulness of delight. There are many dwellings in our Father's home;
had it not been so, He whom He sent to us would have told us, and
He is gone thither to prepare a place for us. He will come back and
take us with Him; that where He is we may be also. Where He is, not
in the outer court, not in the vestibule, but in the sanctuary of
universal creation, in the holy of holies. _Where He is_, who is
the King of angels and of men, the Mediator of the new covenant,
the Author and Finisher of our Faith, who has made the new way for
us which leads to life, who has made us free to enter into the Holy
Place, who has brought us near to the city of the living God, to
the heavenly Jerusalem, to the innumerable multitude of angels, to
God Himself, who is the Judge of all.... In this eternal dwelling,
in the bosom of light, of perfection and happiness, we shall read
the general and particular history of Providence. Initiated, to
a certain extent, in the profound mysteries of His government,
His laws, His dispensations, we shall admiringly recognize the
secret reasons of the many general and particular events which
astonish us, confound us, and throw us into a state of doubt which
philosophy does not always dissipate, but which religion never
fails to allay. We shall ceaselessly meditate upon the great book
of the destinies of the worlds. We shall dwell particularly on the
pages which concern this little planet; the cradle of our infancy,
and the first monument of the paternal goodness of the Creator
towards man. We shall discover, with astonishment, the numerous
revolutions which this little globe has undergone before it assumed
its actual form, and we shall follow with our gaze those which it
is destined to undergo in the course of ages; but our admiration
and our gratitude will be chiefly excited by the wonders of that
great redemption, in which there are so many things beyond our
feeble reach, which have been the objects of the studious research
and the profound meditation of the prophets, and which the angels
have desired to look into. One line on this page will contain our
own history, and will develop to our view the why and the how
of those calamities, trials, and privations which in this world
try the patience of the just man, purify his soul, and enhance
his virtues, while they crush and destroy the weak. When we have
reached so elevated a degree of knowledge, the origin of physical
and moral evil will no longer embarrass us; we shall confront them
distinctly at their source, and in their most distant effects, and
we shall acknowledge, from the evidence before us, that all which
God does is well done.
"In this world we see effects only; and we even observe them in
a very superficial manner; all the causes are hidden from us:
then we shall see effects in their causes, consequences in their
principles, the history of the individual in that of the species,
the history of the species in that of the globe, the history of the
globe in that of the worlds, &c. Now we see things only confusedly,
and in a glass darkly; but then we shall see face to face, and
shall know in some sort as we have been known; in short, because we
shall have an infinitely more complete and distinct knowledge of
the work, we shall also acquire an incomparably deeper sense of the
perfections of the workman. And this knowledge, the most sublime,
the most vast, the most desirable of all, will be incessantly
perfected by intimate intercourse with the eternal source of all
perfection! I cannot express this sufficiently, I do but stammer
over it; words are wanting; would that I could know the language
of the angels. If it were possible to a finite intelligence ever
to exhaust the universe, it would still find the treasures of
truth from eternity to eternity in contemplation of its author;
and, after a thousand myriads of ages consumed in such meditation,
it would only have touched the edges of that science of which it
may be even the highest intelligences possess no more than the
rudiments. There is no true reality except in Him who _is_, for
all which is, is by Him, before being out of Him; there is but
one existence, because there is but one Being whose essence it is
to exist; and all which bears the inappropriate name of being had
remained shut up in necessary existence as the consequence in the
principal."[8]
Before concluding this chapter, let us remark that the deductions
of science concerning the sovereign part played by the sun in the
general economy of nature, are in perfect harmony with the religious
conceptions of the most ancient peoples. The worship of fire has
reigned from time immemorial in Asia, and especially in ancient Persia.
From the Persian shores sailed the first peoples, the Aryas, or Aryans,
who occupied and peopled Europe. Fire worship was the first religion
of ancient Asia. M. Burnouf dwells on this fact in his _Etudes sur la
Science des Religions_, from which we quote the following passages:
"The men of that time (the Aryas) perceived that all the movements
of inanimate things which take place on the earth's surface proceed
from heat, which manifests itself, either under the form of fire
which burns, or under the form of thunder, or under the form of
wind; but the thunder is fire hidden in the cloud, and rises with
it into the air;--fire which burns is, before it manifests itself,
shut up in the vegetable matters which supply it with aliment; wind
is produced when the air is stirred by heat, which rarefies it or
condenses it on its withdrawal.
"Vegetables, in their turn, derive their combustibility from the
sun, which makes them grow, by storing up his heat in them, and
the air is warmed by the rays of the sun, the same rays which
reduced the terrestrial waters to invisible vapours, and then
to thunder-bearing clouds. The clouds spread the rain, make the
rivers, feed the sea which the agitated winds trouble. Thus all
this mobility which animates nature around us is the work of heat,
and heat proceeds from the sun, which is at the same time "the
celestial traveller," and the universal motor.
"Life also seemed to them to be closely allied to the idea of fire.
The grand phenomenon of the accumulation of solar heat in plants, a
phenomenon which science has since elucidated, was early perceived
by the ancients. It is frequently pointed out in the Veddas in
expressive terms. When they lighted the wood on the hearth they
knew that they only 'forced' it to give out the fire which it
had received from the sun. When their attention was directed to
animals, the close bond which exists between heat and life, struck
them in all its force; heat maintains life, they found no living
animals in whom was life without heat; on the contrary, they saw
that vital energy displayed itself in the proportion in which the
animals shared in heat, and diminished in the same proportion. Life
exists and perpetuates itself on the earth on three conditions
only, that fire should penetrate the body under its three forms, of
which one resides in the sun's rays, one in the ignited aliments,
and the third in respiration, which is air renewed by motion. Now
these two latter proceed, each after its own fashion, from the
sun (sûrya); his celestial force is the universal motor, and the
father of life: that which he first engendered, is the fire here
below (agni) born of his rays, and his second eternal co-operator
is air put in motion, which is also called wind, or spirit
(vâyu)."[9]
The worship of the sun still exists among all the negro tribes which
inhabit the interior of Africa; it may even be said that it is the only
religion of the African tribes, and this religion has existed among
them in all times.
The ancient inhabitants of the new world had no other worship than
that of the sun. This fact is established by the historical archives
of the Indian races which we possess; such as the Aztecs or ancient
inhabitants of Mexico, and the _Incas_ or ancient Peruvians. Manco
Capac, who subjugated Peru, and imposed his own laws upon the country,
passed for the son of the sun.
Did not all these primitive people, whose customs extend back to the
origin of humanity, when they rendered religious homage to the sun,
obey a mysterious intuition, a secret voice of nature? However that may
be, it is very remarkable that the religious conceptions of the most
ancient people should be in such complete harmony with the most recent
and most authoritative deductions of modern science.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[8] "Palingénésie Philosophique," vol. ii. pp. 427 and following.
[9] "_Revue des Deux Mondes_," 15th April, 1868.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER THE TENTH.
WHAT ARE THE RELATIONS WHICH SUBSIST BETWEEN US, AND SUPERHUMAN BEINGS?
HAVING drawn a picture of the transmigrations of souls which, having
belonged to men, attain, according to our belief, to the sublime
dwelling-place of the solar spaces, we will now return to the
superhuman being, and endeavour to find out whether that being, who
immediately succeeds to man, who is a resuscitated man, incarnate in
a new body, and living in the plains of ether, can place himself in
relation with the inhabitants of the earth, notwithstanding the immense
space which divides them. We have already endeavoured (ch. iv.) to
discern the attributes of the superhuman being. Considering the number
and extent of the faculties with which we believe him to be endowed,
we cannot hesitate to accord to this mighty creature the power of
communicating with our earth, and of exerting a certain influence there.
But how and by what means can such a communication be established?
What is the agency whose existence we must presuppose, in order that
beings floating in the ethereal spaces can produce an impression here
below? What transcendent system of electric telegraphy does the
superhuman being employ? On this point we are absolutely ignorant, but
the fact that communication does exist between these beings and our
globe appears to us to be certain; a conviction which we base upon the
following grounds.
First, let us address ourselves to the popular feeling. As we have
already said, we are not afraid of invoking vulgar prejudices and
opinions, because they are almost always the expression of some great
moral truth. Observations repeated thousands of times, traditions
transmitted from generation to generation, and which have resisted the
control of time, without being either altered or destroyed, cannot
deceive. Only, when the people amidst whom this tradition has been
formulated and preserved, are unenlightened, they translate their
observations into a coarse form.
Let us inquire into the origin of those ghosts in which many civilized
people firmly believe! Take away the absurd white sheet, and the human
form with which the simple superstition of the peasantry invest them,
and you will find in ghosts the idea of communication between the souls
of the dead and the living, you will find the thought which we are
endeavouring to put before you in a scientific form.
This popular notion about ghosts has extended to persons who appear to
be educated and enlightened, but who are, in reality, as ignorant in
matters of philosophy as the simple peasants, and who are, in addition,
addicted to mysticism, which obscures their reason. We allude to
_spiritualists_.
The term _spiritualists_ is applied to the partisans of a new
superstition which sprung up in America and Europe in 1855, as a result
of the moral malady of _table-turning_. These good people imagine that
they can, by their will, and according to their fancy, cause the souls
of the dead, of great men, or of their own relatives and friends, to
descend to the earth. They evoke the soul of Socrates or Confucius,
as easily as that of a defunct relative, and they are so simple as to
imagine that these souls come at their call to converse with them. A
person who is called a _medium_ is the intermediary between the invoker
and the soul invoked. The medium, under the influence of an unconscious
and habitual hallucination, writes down on paper all the answers made
by the spirit, or rather he writes down everything that comes into
his own foolish head, imagining himself to be faithfully transmitting
messages from the other world. The people who listen to him take these
things, which are simply the thoughts of the ignorant medium, for
revelations from beyond the tomb.
In spiritualism there exists only one true and rational idea; it is the
possibility of man's placing himself in relation with the souls of the
dead; but the coarse means resorted to by the partisans of this mystic
doctrine, cause every enlightened and educated man to repudiate any
fellowship with them. We merely mention spiritualism in this place as a
vulgar and foolish phase of the popular belief in ghosts. It has higher
pretensions, but science and reason alike forbid us to admit them.
The fact of communication between superhuman beings and the dwellers
upon the earth being, it seems to us, proved, we shall now consider
how those superhuman beings and men who live on the earth or on the
other planets may be brought into relation with each other. It appears
to us that this communication is chiefly in action during sleep, and
through the medium of dreams. Sleep, that curious and ill-explained
state, is the condition of our being during which a portion of our
physiological functions, those which establish our connection with the
external world, are abolished, while the soul preserves a part of its
activity. In this condition, the body being seized by a kind of death,
the soul, on the contrary, continues to act, to feel, and to manifest
itself by the phenomena of dreams. Now, in the superhuman being, the
spiritual portion, the soul, dominates immensely over the material
portion. The superhuman being is, so to speak, all intelligence. Man,
when he is in the condition of sleep and dreaming, approaches nearer to
the superhuman being than when he is in a waking state; there is, then,
more resemblance, more natural affinity between them. Consequently
communications can be more easily established between these two beings
who are drawn together by analogy of condition.
There is a saying, the result of repeated observation, which is
logical and true. It is, _the night brings counsel_. Is not this as
much as to say that it is during the night we receive the secret
communications and the solitary advice of those beloved invisible
beings who watch over us, and inspire us with their supreme wisdom? It
is certain that when we have to make a decision, to unravel a thought,
it often happens that we fall asleep in the midst of perplexity and
uncertainty, and that the next day we awake, having taken our decision,
unravelled our thought, which explains the phrase, _the night brings
counsel_. Ancient times, and the middle ages, accorded an extraordinary
importance to dreams. They were considered to be sent by God, as His
warnings, hence the importance attached to their interpretation.
"During sleep," says Tertullian, "the honours which await men are
revealed to us; during sleep, remedies are indicated, thefts revealed,
treasures discovered."[10]
_Visions_ played a great part among Christians in mediæval times. It
was during sleep that saints, inspired persons, and devotees received
communications of an extraordinary order. We are far from believing
that it is during sleep and dreams only that we can feel the presence
and the influence of superhuman beings. There are few persons who have
not felt, while waking, an unaccountable influence of this kind. We
feel a soft, gentle impression, a sort of vague, mysterious push, which
excites a spontaneous resolution, a sudden inspiration, an unhoped-for
suggestion.
We must observe that all men are not recipients of these mysterious
impressions. The superhuman being cannot manifest himself except to
those whom he loves, and who remember him; to those whom he wishes to
protect against the dangers and difficulties of this terrestrial life.
A father, or a mother, snatched away from filial love by death, comes
to speak to the soul which remains and mourns here below. A son,
torn in the dawn of life from the tenderness of his parents, comes
to console them for his loss, to enlighten them with his advice, to
furnish them, by the inspiration of his lofty wisdom, with the means of
sustaining all the trials of this lower life. Two friends are united,
despite the barrier of the tomb. Two lovers, whom death has sundered,
are again brought together. An adored wife, taken by death from her
husband, reveals herself to his heart. Then all those sentiments of
mutual affection which subsisted between them spring up again; death,
which has appeared to sever the ties between these souls, does no more
than veil them from the eyes of strangers. Death is conquered; the
phantom is laid low, and we may cry with the prophet in the Scripture,
"Oh, Death! where is thy sting? Oh, Grave, where is thy victory?"
In order to receive these communications, a man must possess a pure
and noble mind, and he must have preserved the cultus of those whom he
has lost. A mother who has been indifferent to her child during his
life, or has forgotten him after his death, cannot expect to receive
secret manifestations from him for whom she has felt but little
tenderness. The friend from whose heart the image of the friend removed
by death has been effaced, must renounce such priceless manifestations.
The man who is abandoned to low and vicious instincts and perverse
inclinations, must not flatter himself, however faithfully he may
have preserved the memory of the dead, that these messages shall come
to him. A pure and noble creature only can communicate with these
privileged beings.
There exists in our hearts a moral force which no philosophy has been
able to explain, which no science has been able to analyze, which is
called _conscience_. Conscience is a sacred light burning within us,
which nothing can obstruct, obscure, or extinguish, and which has the
power of giving us sure and certain enlightenment on every occasion
in our lives. Conscience is infallible. Notwithstanding everything,
in spite of our real or apparent interest, at all times, and in all
places, speaking to the great and the small alike, to the powerful and
to the weak, it always teaches to discern good from evil, the honest
from the dishonest way. In our belief, conscience is the impression
transmitted to us by a beloved being, snatched from us by death. It is
a relative, a friend, who has left the earth, and who deigns to reveal
himself to us, that he may guide us in our actions, trace out the path
of safety for us, and labour for our good. Cowardly, perverse, base,
and lying men exist, of whom we say that _they have no conscience_.
They do not know how to distinguish good from evil; they are entirely
wanting in moral sense. It is because they have never loved any one,
and their souls, base and vile, are not worthy to be visited by any of
those superior beings, who only manifest themselves to men who resemble
them, or who have loved them. A man _without a conscience_ is, then,
one who is rendered unworthy, by the vicious essence of his soul, of
the lofty counsels and the protection of those who are no more.
Our readers will have perceived that this idea of a supreme and
invisible protector of man, who guides his heart, and enlightens
his reason, has already been formulated by the Christian religion,
which has derived it from Holy Scripture. It is the _Guardian Angel_,
a mysterious and poetic type, a seraphic creature, whom God has
charged to watch over the Christian, to guard him against snares, and
constantly to direct him to the ways of sanctity and virtue. We observe
this argument without having sought it. In short, we register our ideas
as they deduce themselves logically from each other, without any bias.
And when we find ourselves led into agreement with a dogma of the
Christian religion, we note that concord with pleasure.
We would ask those persons who have read these pages to question
themselves, to summon up their recollections, to reflect upon what
has passed around them, and we are convinced that they will discover
many facts in harmony with what we advance. The moral phenomenon of
the impressions made by the dead on the mind of the living who have
loved them, and who keep up the cultus of their memory, is one of those
truths which every one holds by intuition, and whose entire verity he
acknowledges when he finds it curtly formulated and put forward. We
will not give our readers second-hand information by invoking facts
of this kind which they may know; we can only recall a few which came
under our observation, briefly, as follows:
One of our friends, an Italian Count, B----, lost his mother nearly
forty years ago. He has assured us that he has been in communication
with her every day since, without intermission. He adds that he owes
the wise ordering of his life, his labours, his career, and the good
fortune which has always accompanied his enterprizes, to the constant
influence and secret counsels of his mother.