and animal creations have appeared, and succeeded each other upon our
globe since its origin. At first the earth was simply a collection
of gas, and burning vapour which revolved round the sun. This mass of
gas and vapour grew cold by degrees in its passage through space, and
first becoming liquid, afterwards assumed the consistency of paste,
and ultimately became solid, by a gradual process of refrigeration.
Consolidation began on the surface, because the circumference of a
sphere is more exposed than the remainder of the mass to refrigerating
influences. Then the water and the vapours which still flowed upon the
consolidated globe became condensed, and, falling in burning showers
upon the hard soil, they formed the first seas.
The proof that the earth's primitive condition was like to a liquid
or half paste, is, that if we take a plastic sphere, for instance a
slightly fluid ball of quicksilver, and make it turn rapidly upon its
axis, we observe that it swells out in the middle, and becomes flat at
the two poles, or the extremities of the axis; this is the effect of
the centrifugal force engendered by the rotatory motion. Now the earth
is depressed at the poles, and slightly swelled out at the equator.
The other planets must have been formed by the same process as the
earth. They were, no doubt, composed of a collection of gas and
vapours, which became liquid, pasty, and eventually solid, by a
process of refrigeration. This process, taking effect especially upon
their surface, they began to put forth a skin, or exterior and solid
covering, which was the soil of the planet. On this resisting soil fell
the liquids resulting from the condensation of the water vapour, and
thus the first seas of the planets were formed.
We would remind those who doubt the correctness of this theory that
the poles of the globe of Saturn and that of Jupiter are much more
flat than those of the Earth; which is explained by the greater
velocity of the rotation of each upon its axis. Our days are 24 hours
long, whereas those of Jupiter and Saturn are only 10 hours. Greater
rapidity of rotation produces a correspondingly increased depression
at the extremities of the axis. This geometrical result demonstrates
the justice of the assimilation in their respective origin which we
maintain between the Earth and the other planets.
In the warm waters of the basin of the seas the first living beings
which existed upon our globe appeared. Animal life commenced in the
waters, in the primitive forms of zoophytes and mollusca, as we know,
because zoophytes and mollusca, with the addition of a few articulates,
composed the animal remains found in the transition strata which come
after the primary formations. The first vegetables are found in the
same transition strata, they are mosses, algæ, and ferns.
When the earth had become somewhat cooler, phanerogamous vegetables
appeared upon the continents. Numerous vegetable species were
simultaneously created, for the flora of the secondary formations is
extremely rich and varied.
It was the same in the case of animals. So the zoophytes, mollusca, and
fish which existed in the transition period succeeded reptiles, in the
secondary formation, which inhabited both land and sea. At this period
appeared those monstrous saurian reptiles, whose formidable shapes, and
colossal dimensions fill us with surprise and almost with dismay. Then
the gigantic mosasaurus ravaged the seas, the terrible ichthyosaurus
spread terror among the inhabitants of the waters, and the gigantic
iguanodon laid waste the forests. The secondary formation, which is
filled with their remains, shows us that at that period reptiles held
the first rank in creation.
At a later date, the atmosphere having become purer, birds began to
traverse the air. In the tertiary deposit we find the remains of
several kinds of birds, and these remains, which do not exist in the
earlier formations, sufficiently prove that it was in the tertiary
period that birds made their first appearance upon the terrestrial
globe.
Still later, at a more advanced period of the tertiary epoch, mammifers
appear upon the scene. We must observe that these animal species do not
replace each other, that the one does not exclude the other. Several
of the ancient animal species continue to exist after the appearance
of entirely novel kinds. We might quote as instances whole groups
of animals, such as the lingulæ (mollusca), the coral (zoophyte)
among animals, and among vegetables, the algæ, ferns, and lycopodes,
which appeared on our globe in the earliest period of the reign of
organization, and have never ceased to exist. It was not until the last
epoch in the history of the Earth, during the quaternary epoch, that
man appeared, the highest product of living creation, the ultimate term
of organic, intellectual, and moral progress, the crowning upon our
earth of the visible edifice of nature.
At present, man lives together with the animals which began to exist
during the quaternary epoch, and a great number of other kinds of
mammifers which were created during the tertiary epoch.
The various phases of the development of the animal and vegetable
kingdoms on our globe, these perfected organized species each
succeeding the other, and finally reaching the superior type which we
call man, must, in our opinion, have been produced in the selfsame
order, upon the other planets of our solar world. M. Flammarion
proves, in the work which we have already quoted, that the physical
and climatological constitution of the planets is similar to that of
our globe. There is therefore no reason why things should have taken
place otherwise in Mercury, Jupiter, or Venus, than in the Earth,
in respect to the successive order of the creation and appearance
of living beings, and, in our belief a precisely similar successive
appearance of vegetables and animals, has taken place in these planets.
The plants and animals of Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, &c., were certainly
not identical with those species which have had existence on the Earth,
and perhaps no resemblance could be traced between them, but all, in
their successive appearance, obeyed the principle of progress and
perfecting. Life, commencing in the burning waves of the primitive
seas, subsequently manifested itself upon the continents. Animals of
aërial organization have lived upon these continents, their species
have by degrees reached the perfection of their type, at length, and
finally, a creature appeared in these planets more complete, superior
in organization, intelligence, and sensibility to all the animal
creation which formed the population of each particular globe.
This superior being, this last step of the ascending scale of living
creation proper to the planetary worlds, the corresponding analogous
creature to terrestrial man, we shall take leave to call _planetary
man_.
In all the planets, then, there exist _men_, as on the earth, just as
there exist animals which are inferior to that noble and privileged
type.
According to the views which we have explained at the commencement
of this work, terrestrial man undergoes, after his death, a glorious
metamorphosis. Leaving his miserable material covering here below, his
soul springs upward into space, and becomes incarnate in a new being,
whose type is infinitely superior, by reason of its moral perfection,
to that of our poor humanity. He becomes that which we have called the
_superhuman being_. If this be true of the terrestrial man, it must be
equally true of the planetary man. So that the superhuman being must
proceed, not only from the earth, but from all the other planets.
Superhuman beings come from the human souls who have lived either
upon the Earth, or upon Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, &c. And
precisely as the superhuman being, who comes from the Earth passes into
the surrounding ether, so the planetary man, leaving Mars, Mercury,
Jupiter, &c., passes into the ether, which surrounds his own planet,
becomes incarnate in a superhuman being, and lives in the ethereal
plains adjoining the planet which he has quitted.
All these superhuman beings float in the clouds of ether which, in the
case of every planet, succeed to its atmosphere.
Thus, the principles upon which we have based terrestrial humanity, are
general, and apply to all planetary humanity. Not from the Earth only
do those souls proceed who are incarnate in new creatures in the bosom
of the ethereal spaces, these souls proceed from all the globes which,
together with the Earth, form the attendant court of the royal Sun.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.
PROOFS OF THE PLURALITY OF HUMAN EXISTENCES, AND OF
RE-INCARNATIONS.--APART FROM THIS DOCTRINE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EXPLAIN
THE PRESENCE OF MAN UPON THE EARTH, THE SAD AND UNEQUAL CONDITIONS OF
HUMAN LIFE, AND THE FATE OF CHILDREN WHO DIE IN INFANCY.
THE doctrine of the plurality of existences, and of re-incarnations,
which bind together, like so many links of the same chain, all living
creatures, from the most minute animal, even to those blessed beings
to whom it is given to behold God in His glory; which gives brethren
in the different planets to terrestrial humanity; which makes of the
inhabitants of our globe a nation of the universe; which sees but one
family in all the population of the worlds--a planetary family--whose
every member may raise himself by his merits and his struggles,
in the hierarchy of happiness, is supported by so many proofs. So
many, indeed, that we are puzzled to choose among all the methods of
demonstration which offer themselves in aid of it. To enumerate them
all would unduly enlarge the dimensions of this work, so that we shall
content ourselves with bringing forward the most striking.
Why are we on the earth? We did not ask to be placed there, we did
not express a wish to be born. If we had been consulted, we should
probably have objected to coming into this world at all, or at least
we should have wished to appear there at some other epoch. We should
probably have asked to be permitted to sojourn in some other planet
than the Earth. Our globe is, indeed, a very disagreeable habitation.
In consequence of its inclination on its axis, climate is very
unpleasantly distributed. Either we must succumb to cold, if we are not
artificially protected against it, or we must be terribly incommoded
with heat. Regarded from the moral point of view, the conditions of
humanity are very sad. Evil predominates in the world; vice is held
almost everywhere in honour, and virtue is so ill-treated, that to be
honest is, in this life, to be tolerably certain of evil fortune. Our
affections are causes of anguish and tears. If, for a while, we enjoy
the happiness of paternity, of love, of friendship, it is only to
see the objects of our love torn from us by death, or separated from
us by the accidents of a miserable life. The organs given us to be
exercised in this life are heavy, coarse, subject to maladies. We are
nailed to the earth, and our heavy mass can be moved only by fatiguing
exertion. If there are men of powerful organization, gifted with a good
constitution and robust health, how many are there who are infirm,
idiots, deaf and dumb, blind from their birth, ricketty, and mad! My
brother is handsome and well made, and I am ugly, feeble, ricketty,
and hump-backed; nevertheless, we are both sons of the same mother.
Some are born in opulence, others in the most hideous destitution.
Why am I not a prince and a great lord, instead of being a poor toiler
of the rebellious and ungrateful earth? Why was I born in Europe and
in France, where, by means of art and civilization, life is rendered
easy and endurable, instead of being born under the burning skies of
the tropics, where, with a bestial snout, a black and oily skin, and
woolly hair, I should have been exposed to the double torments of a
deadly climate and social barbarism? Why is not one of the unfortunate
African negroes in my place, comfortable and well off? We have done
nothing, he and I, that our respective places on the earth should have
been assigned to us. I have not merited the favour, he has not incurred
the disgrace. What is the cause of this unequal division of frightful
evils which fall heavily upon certain persons, and spare others? How
have they who live in happy countries deserved this partiality of fate,
while so many of their brethren are suffering and weeping in other
regions of the world?
Certain men are endowed with all the gifts of the intellect; others, on
the contrary, are devoid of intelligence, penetration, and memory. They
stumble at every step in the difficult journey of life. Their narrow
minds, their incomplete faculties, expose them to every kind of failure
and misfortune. They cannot succeed in anything, and destiny seems
to select them for the chosen victims of its most fatal blows. There
are beings whose whole life, from their birth to their death, is a
prolonged cry of suffering and despair. What crime have they committed?
Why are they upon the earth? They have not asked to be born, and if
they had been free, they would have entreated that this bitter cup
might be removed from their lips. They are here below in spite of
themselves, against their will. This is so true that some, in an excess
of despair, sever the thread of their own life. They tear themselves
away with their own hands from an existence which terrible suffering
has rendered insupportable to them.
God would be unjust and wicked to impose so miserable a life upon
beings who have done nothing to incur it, and who have not solicited
it. But God is neither unjust nor wicked; the opposite qualities are
the attribute of His perfect essence. Consequently, the presence of man
on certain portions of the earth, and the unequal distribution of evil
over our globe, are not to be explained. If any of my readers can show
me a doctrine, a philosophy, a religion by which these difficulties can
be resolved, I will tear up this book, and confess myself vanquished.
If, on the contrary, you admit the plurality of human existences and
_re-incarnations_, that is to say the passage of the same soul into
several different bodies, everything is wonderfully easily explained.
Our presence in certain portions of the globe is no longer the effect
of a caprice of fate, or the result of chance; it is simply a station
of the long journey which we are taking throughout the worlds. Previous
to our birth in this world we have lived either in the condition of
superior animals, or that of man. Our actual existence is only the
consequence of another, whether it be that we bear within ourselves
the soul of a superior animal, which we must purify, perfect, and
ennoble, during our sojourn on earth; or that, having already fulfilled
an imperfect and evil existence, we are condemned to re-commence it
under new obligations. In the latter case, the career of the man
re-commences, because his soul is not yet sufficiently pure to rise to
the rank of a superhuman being.
Our sojourn upon earth is then only a kind of trial, imposed upon
us by nature, during which we must refine our souls, free them from
earthly bonds, rid them of the defects which weigh them down, and
hinder them from rising, in radiance, towards the ethereal spheres.
Every ill-fulfilled human existence has to be recommenced. Thus, the
school-boy who has worked hard, who has studied well, goes into a
higher class at the end of the year; but if he has made no progress
in his studies, he must go through his class again. Perverse men are,
in our opinion, vicious beings who have had a previous life, and are
obliged to live it over again. They must go through it again and again,
until the day comes when their souls shall be fit to take higher rank
in the hierarchy of creatures, that is to say, until they shall be fit
to pass, after their death, into the condition of superhuman beings.
In proportion as the cause of our existence here below is obscure
and even inexplicable according to ordinary ideas, it is simple and
luminous in the light of the doctrine of the plurality of existences.
We must add that this doctrine is conformable to the justice of God. In
making earthly life a trial for man, God is equitable and good, like an
earthly father. Is it not better to subject a soul to a trial which
may begin over again if it have an unfortunate result, than to bind it
to one condition, failure in which must involve the condemnation of the
guilty person? It is better to offer the possibility of rehabilitation
by his own efforts, by his personal struggles, to a fallen creature,
than to utterly crush him, stained by his crimes and imperfections.
The justice and the goodness of God are manifest in this paternal
arrangement, much more than in the severe jurisdiction which would
irretrievably condemn a soul after one single trial had resulted
unfavourably.
If human life be a trial, if it be a period during which we are
preparing for a new and happier existence, there is no need to look
beyond that truth for an explanation of why we are on the earth,
why we are living to-day rather than to-morrow, and in one latitude
of our globe rather than in another; there is no need to ask why we
are born in the earth, and not in Mercury, Saturn, or Mars. Whether
we are living now, or are to live later, whether we have been born
in the earth, in Mercury, or in Mars, whether we inhabit Europe or
Africa,--all these things are utterly unimportant to our destiny. We
are undergoing a period of preparation indispensably necessary to be
accomplished before we pass into the superhuman condition; and the
place, the moment of our transit, the country in which we sojourn, the
planet which is assigned to us as the scene of this trial, are without
any importance in the part which we have to play in accordance with
the intentions of nature. We are making an immense journey through
the worlds, and a short sojourn on the Earth makes a part of our vast
itinerary. Whatever may be the corner of the universe in which we find
ourselves we cannot escape the trial imposed upon us by God, a trial by
strife and suffering, a period of moral and physical pain to which we
must submit before we can be promoted in the hierarchy of creatures.
The time, the place, the good or evil moral conditions ought therefore
to be indifferent to us. What is needful for us is a brief sojourn
on a planet in which this trial may be accomplished, and it may be
accomplished on the Earth, or in Mars, or in Mercury, and on any spot
of the Earth's surface one chooses to think of.
If, during the course of this trial, we meet with moral evil, if we
see vice triumphant and virtue persecuted, if we see the innocent
victims of the injustice, the cruelty, or the ignorance of man, we
have no right to murmur against Providence, we have no right to utter
maledictions against pain, to deplore the scandal of successful and
triumphant crime, and of suffering and weeping virtue. We have no right
to regret our bodily infirmities, the diseases which lay hold upon
us on the Earth, and which afflict us all our lives, or to complain
of the weakness of our minds, the decay of our faculties. All these
conditions, which are inimical to earthly happiness, are a portion of
the series of trials which we have to undergo here below. We ought to
bless those evils, and be grateful to those sufferings, for they are
the instruments of our eternal redemption, and the more piercing and
bitter they are the sooner will come the hour of our deliverance, the
happy moment when we shall leave this impure and filthy world which
our feet have trodden for a while. Besides, justice will speedily be
done. With brief delay the wicked shall be punished for his evil deeds
by having to recommence a new existence here, while the good shall be
elevated to the upper world, where a new, wide-ranging life awaits him,
far more happy and more wise, in truer harmony with the aspirations
of our nature than his previous and miserable existence here. Then we
shall be born again, radiant and strong, with our memory, our feelings,
and our liberty complete.
Thus difficulties vanish, and problems are solved: thus uncertainty
vanishes away, and mysteries which no doctrine, no religion, no
philosophy, could dissipate, and which almost made us doubt the justice
of God, are cleared up. The doctrine of re-incarnations and prior
existences explains everything, answers everything.
We pass on to one of the most interesting questions of the doctrine of
the pre-existence of souls, the question of children who have died in
infancy. What becomes of children who die at a few days old, or at the
age of eight or ten months, or at their birth? Until after all these
periods the human soul remains quite undeveloped; it is in almost the
same rudimentary state as at the hour of its birth. What, then, is the
fate of young children after their death? The doctrine of the plurality
of existences simplifies this question. It admits that when an infant
dies before it has lived one year (the period of dentition), its soul
remains upon the earth, and does not pass, like that of a grown man,
into the state of a superhuman being. The soul of an infant a year
old is still in a rudimentary condition, almost as much so as at the
moment of its birth. The soul of a child who dies at that age has to
begin life over again, disengaging itself from the little corpse, it
incarnates itself in another newly-born body, and after this fresh
incarnation, it begins a second life.
If the new incarnation does not last more than a year, there is no
reason why the soul should not undergo a third incarnation in the body
of a child, and so on until it shall have accomplished the period of
admission to the conditions common to all.
It is impossible that the soul of a child, which is as yet undeveloped,
which has added nothing to that which it has received, should be
treated as perfected souls, purified by the experience of life, by
physical and moral sufferings, who have used their sojourn upon earth
as a period of preparation and training. An infant child cannot
therefore be admitted to the super-terrestrial dwellings, he simply
recommences an interrupted trial. The mortality of children between the
day of their birth and the age of one year is so considerable, that
nature must have reserved to herself the means of annulling this cause
of disarrangement in the sequence and order of her operations.
This explanation of the destiny of young children is conformable to the
economy which is observed in the operations of nature. Nature wills
that nothing which is created should be lost. The soul of a criminal is
evil, but it is a soul, it exists, and it is eternal: it must not be
lost. But it must be corrected and perfected, which is done by means
of the new existences to which nature consigns that imperfect soul, in
order that it may enjoy the means of restoration. Thus the principle of
the soul is preserved, and nothing is lost of that which was created.
The soul of the child dying in infancy must not be lost either. A
second incarnation in another child will permit it to resume the course
of its evolution, accidentally interrupted by death. Thus the soul will
be preserved, and nothing will be lost.
Chemistry, since Lavoisier's time, has brought to light a great truth:
it is, that nothing of the elements of matter is lost; bodies change
their form, but the material element, the simple body, is imperishable,
indestructible, and always to be found intact, notwithstanding its
numerous transformations. If it is true that in the material world
nothing is lost, it is equally certain that neither is anything lost
in the spiritual world; that only transformation takes place. Thus,
nothing is lost, either of immaterial or material beings, and we may
lay down this new principle of moral philosophy by the side of the
principle of chemical philosophy established by the genius of Lavoisier.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.
FACULTIES PECULIAR TO CERTAIN CHILDREN, APTITUDES AND VOCATIONS
AMONG MEN, ARE ADDITIONAL PROOFS OF RE-INCARNATIONS.--EXPLANATION OF
PHRENOLOGY.--DESCARTES' INNATE IDEAS, AND DUGALD STEWART'S PRINCIPLE
OF CAUSALITY CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED BY THE PLURALITY OF LIVES.--VAGUE
RECOLLECTIONS OF OUR ANTERIOR EXISTENCES.