philosophy and the ordinary creeds maintain it to be, a solitary fact,
not to be repeated, it follows that the soul must be formed at the
same time as the body, and that at each birth of a human being, a new
soul must be created, to animate this body. We would ask, then, why
are not all these souls of the same type? Why, when all human bodies
are alike, is there so great a diversity in souls, that is to say, in
the intellectual and moral faculties which constitute them? We would
ask why natural tendencies are so diverse and so strongly marked, that
they frequently resist all the efforts of education to reform, or
repress them, or to direct them into any other line? Whence come those
instincts of vice and virtue which are to be observed in children,
those instincts of pride or of baseness, which are often seen in such
striking contrast with the social position of their families? Why do
some children delight in the contemplation of pain, and take pleasure
in torturing animals, while others are vehemently moved, turn pale,
and tremble at the sight or even the thought of a living creature's
pain? Why, if the soul in all men be cast in the same mould, does not
education produce an identical effect upon young people? Two brothers
follow the same classes at the same school, they have the same masters,
and the same examples are before their eyes. Nevertheless, the one
profits to the utmost by the lessons which he receives, and in manners,
education, and conduct, he is irreproachable. His brother, on the
contrary, remains ignorant and uncouth. If the same seed sown in these
two soils has produced such different fruit, must it not be that the
soil which has received the seed, _i.e._, the soul, is different in the
case of each?
Natural dispositions, vocations, manifest themselves from the earliest
period of life. This extreme diversity in natural aptitudes would
not exist if souls were all created of the same type. The bodies of
animals, the human body, the leaves of trees, are fabricated after the
same type, because we can observe but few and slight differences among
them. The skeleton of one man is always like the skeleton of another
man; the heart, the stomach, the ribs, the intestines are formed alike
in every man. It is otherwise with souls; they differ considerably in
individuals. We hear it said every day that such an one's child has a
taste for arithmetic, a second for music, a third for drawing. In the
case of others evil, violent, even criminal instincts are remarked,
and these dispositions break out in the earliest years of life.
That these natural aptitudes are carried to a very high degree and
unusual extent, we have celebrated examples recorded in history, and
frequently cited. We have Pascal, at twelve years old, discovering
the greater portion of plane geometry, and without having been taught
anything whatever of arithmetic, drawing all the figures of the first
book of Euclid's geometry on the floor of his room, exactly estimating
the mathematical relations of all these figures to each other; that
is to say, constructing descriptive geometry for himself. We have the
shepherd, Mangiamelo, calculating as an arithmetical machine, at five
years old. We have Mozart executing a sonata with his four-years-old
fingers, and composing an opera at eight. We have Theresa Milanollo
playing the violin with such art and skill, at four years old, that
Baillot said she must have played the violin before she was born. We
have Rembrandt drawing like a master of the art, before he could read.
Etc., etc.
Every one remembers these examples, but it must be borne in mind that
they do not constitute exceptions. They only represent a general
fact, which in these particular cases was so prominent as to attract
public attention. They are valuable as exponents to the public of a
fundamental law of nature, the diversity of natural faculties and
aptitudes, and the predominance of particular faculties among certain
children. Children endowed with these extraordinary and precocious
vocations are called _little prodigies_. This qualification is
sometimes used in a depreciatory sense, for the little prodigies are
accused of failing to carry out the promises of their childhood; it is
observed that the brilliant abilities of their early years have not
been guarantees of extraordinary success in their careers as grown men.
A child, whose drawings were wonderful at four years old, has become a
wretched dauber, as an established artist. A musician, who enchanted
his audience at eight years old, has grown up a very mediocre performer.
This remark is just, and the fact is explicable thus: If the little
prodigies have not become great men, it is because they have not
cultivated their faculties; because they have allowed sloth and disuse
to extinguish their talents. It does not suffice to possess natural
abilities for a science, or an art, work and study must strengthen
and develop them. Little prodigies are outstripped in their career by
hard workers, as is natural. They have come upon earth with remarkable
faculties which they had acquired during a previous life, but they have
done nothing to develop those faculties, which have remained as they
were at the moment of terrestrial birth. The man of genius is the man
who unceasingly cultivates and perfects such great natural aptitudes
and faculties as he has been endowed with at his birth.
The predominance of particular faculties in certain children is not
to be explained according to the common philosophy which discerns
the creation of a new soul in the birth of every infant. They are,
on the contrary, easily explicable according to the doctrine of
re-incarnations, indeed they are no more than a corollary of that
doctrine. Everything is comprehensible if a life, anterior to the
present, be admitted. The individual brings to his life here, the
intuition which is the result of the knowledge he has acquired during
his first existence. Men are of more or less advanced intelligence
and morality, according to the life which they have led before they
come into this world to play the parts which we can see. This is
self-evident in the case of a man who recommences his life. This man
had acquired certain faculties during his first, which are profitable
to him in his second existence. Perhaps he does not possess all the
faculties with which his first life was endowed, in their full and
perfect integrity, but he has what mathematicians call the _resultant_
of those faculties, and this resultant is a special aptitude, it
is _vocation_. He is a calculator, a painter, or a musician by
vocation, because, in his former human career he has had the faculty
of calculation, drawing, or music. We believe that it is impossible
to find any other explanation of our natural aptitudes. It will be
objected to this, that it is strange that aptitude and faculties should
be the resultant of a prior existence, of which we have, nevertheless,
no recollection. We reply to this objection that it is quite possible
to lose all remembrance of events which have happened, and yet to
preserve certain faculties of the soul which are independent of
particular and concrete facts, especially when those faculties are
powerful. We constantly see old men who have lost all recollection of
the events of their life, who no longer know anything of the history of
their time, nor indeed, of their own history, but who, nevertheless,
have not lost their faculties, or aptitudes. Linnæus, in his old age,
took pleasure in reading his own works, but forgot that he was their
author, and frequently exclaimed: "How interesting! How beautiful! I
wish I had written that!"
There is no reason to doubt that a child, after its re-incarnation,
may preserve the aptitudes of its previous existence, though it has
entirely lost the remembrance of the facts which took place and which
it witnessed during that period. These faculties reappear and become
active in the child, just as the half-extinguished flame of a fire
is rekindled by the breath of the wind. The breath which fans the
smouldering flame of human faculties is that of a second existence.
The absence of memory may be urged as an objection to re-incarnations
in the body of a child, but this argument does not apply to the
incarnation of the soul of an animal in a human body. The animal, being
almost without the faculty of memory, it is easy to understand that
its aptitudes only pass into the condition of man. The good or evil,
gentle or fierce instincts which human souls manifest so early, are
explained by the species of the animal through which the soul has been
transmitted. A child who has a faculty for music may have received the
soul of a nightingale, the sweet songster of our woods. A child who is
an architect by vocation may have inherited the soul of a beaver, the
architect of the woods and waters.
In short, the various aptitudes, the natural faculties, the vocations
of human beings, are easily explained by the doctrine of the
transmigration of souls. If we reject this system, we must charge God
with injustice, because we must believe that He has granted to certain
men useful faculties which He has refused to others, and made an
unequal distribution of intelligence and morality, these foundations
of the conduct and direction of life.
This reasoning appears to us to be beyond attack, for it does not rest
upon an hypothesis, but upon a fact: namely, the inequality of the
faculties among men, and of their intelligence and morality. This fact,
inexplicable by any theory of any received philosophy, is only to be
explained by the doctrine of re-incarnations, and forms the basis of
our reasoning.
Discussion for and against phrenology has been plentiful, and has
ended in the abandonment of the inquiry, because the ideas of ordinary
philosophy do not supply a sound theory on the subject. It has been
found more convenient to ignore the labours of Gall than to endeavour
to explain them. The truth is, that Gall has committed some errors of
detail, which is always the case with every founder of a new doctrine,
who cannot bring an unprecedented work to perfection by himself alone;
but his successors have rectified the errors of the system, and we are
now obliged to acknowledge that Gall's theory is correct. It is indeed
simply composed of observations which everyone may repeat for himself.
When Gall's theory, or _phrenology_, is applied to animals, the
evidence in its favour is astonishing. In the case of man the facts
are almost always confirmatory of the theory. It is certain that the
skull of an assassin does exhibit the abnormal developments indicated
by Gall, and that, according to the doctrine of the German anatomist,
the sentiments of affection, love, cupidity, discernment, &c., may
be recognised externally by the bumps in the human skull. It rarely
happens that the phrenologist, on examining the skull of a Troppmann,
or a Papavoine, fails to trace the hideous indications of evil passions
and brutality.
Unfortunately, many of our moralists find themselves seriously
embarrassed by philosophy, because their views are limited by the
commonplace philosophy of the day. Classic moralists ask themselves
whether a man with the bump of murder in his skull is responsible for
his crime, whether he is a free agent, whether he is so guilty as he is
held to be, when he yields to the cruel instincts with which nature,
in his case a wicked step-mother, has endowed him. Is it just to be
pitiless towards a man who has only obeyed his physical conformation,
almost as a madman obeys the impulses of his diseased mind? It would
seem that the punishment of assassination is an injustice, and men ask
themselves whether the criminal courts and the scaffold ought not to be
abolished, and whether the judge who condemns to death an individual,
who is not responsible for his actions, is not the real criminal?
The same reasoning, the same uncertainty apply to virtuous deeds. Is
much commendation due to the man who fulfils his duties exactly, to the
conscientious and faithful citizen, the honest and kindly individual,
if his wise and respectable conduct be simply obedience to the good
impulses communicated to him by his physical organization?
These results of phrenology were, it is evident, very embarrassing, and
almost immoral. Barbarity on the part of society which punishes the
guilty;--absence of merit in the well-behaved man! these consequences
were difficult and painful to admit, so the world got out of the
difficulty by rejecting phrenology.
It is quite unnecessary to reject phrenology; we may retain it,
and congratulate ourselves on a fresh conquest in the sphere of
the sciences of observation, if we hold the doctrine of previous
existences. Phrenology is most naturally explained, in fact, by that
doctrine. When it enters on the occupation of a human body, the soul
lends to the cerebral matter, which is the seat of thought, a certain
modification, a predominance in harmony with the faculties which that
soul possesses at the period of its birth, and which it has acquired in
an anterior animal or human existence. The brain is moulded by the soul
into conformity with its proper aptitudes, its acquired faculties; then
the bony covering of the skull, which moulds itself upon the cerebral
substance within its cavity, reproduces and gives expression to our
predominant faculties. The ancients who said, _Corpus cordis opus_ (the
body is the work of the soul, or the soul makes its body), expressed
this same idea with energetic conciseness.
There is, therefore, no need to excuse a murderer, there is no need to
deny his free will, there is no need to spare him the just chastisement
of his crime. It is not because there are certain protuberances on his
skull that the murderer dips his hands in the blood of his victims.
These protuberances are only the external indications of the evil
and vicious propensities with which he was born, by which he might
have been warned and corrected, and which he might have conquered by
the strength of his will, by a real and ardent desire to restore his
deformed and vicious soul to rectitude. It is always possible, by
adequate effort, to surmount the evil inclinations of one's nature;
every one of us can resist pride, idleness, and envy. The man who has
not corrected these bad impulses is guilty, and nothing can render a
crime committed in all the plenitude of his free will excusable. Thus,
neither God nor society is implicated in this question, if we accept
the doctrine of the plurality of existences.
Descartes and Leibnitz have demonstrated that the human understanding
possesses ideas called _innate_, that is to say, ideas which we bring
with us to our birth. This fact is certain. In our time, the Scotch
philosopher, Dugald Stewart, has put Descartes' theory into a more
precise form, by proving that the only real _innate_ idea, that which
has universal existence in the human mind after birth, is the idea,
or the _principle of causality_, a principle which makes us say and
think that there is no effect without cause, which is the beginning
of reason. In France, Laromiguière and Damiron have popularized this
discovery of the Scotch philosopher. Thus the classics of philosophy
record this proposition as a truth beyond the reach of doubt. We
unreservedly admit the principle of causality as the _innate_ idea
_par excellence_, and we take account of the fact. But we ask the
fashionable philosophy how it can explain it? In our minds there
are _innate ideas_, as Descartes has said; and the _principle of
causality_, which invincibly obliges us to refer from the effect to
the cause, is the most evident of those ideas which seem to make a
part of ourselves; but why have we innate ideas, where do they come
from, and how did they get into our minds? The classical philosophy,
the philosophy of Descartes, which reigns in France, at the Normal
School, and among the professors of the University of Paris, cannot
teach us that. It will be said, perhaps, to use the favourite argument
of Descartes, that we have innate ideas because it is the will of God,
who has created the soul. But such a reply is at once commonplace and
arbitrary, it may be used on all occasions--it is so used in fact--and
it is not a logical argument.
Innate ideas and the principle of causality are explained very simply
by the doctrine of the plurality of existences; they are, indeed,
merely deductions from that doctrine. A man's soul, having already
existed, either in the body of an animal or that of another man, has
preserved the trace of the impressions received during that existence.
It has lost, it is true, the recollection of actions performed during
its first incarnation; but the abstract principle of causality, being
independent of the particular facts, being only the general result of
the practice of life, must remain in the soul at its second incarnation.
Thus, the principle of causality, of which French philosophy cannot
offer any satisfactory theory, is explained in the simplest possible
manner, by the hypothesis of re-incarnations and of the plurality of
existences.
We have previously alluded to memory, and explained its relation
to re-incarnations, and the reasons why we are born without any
consciousness of a previous life. We have said, that if we come from
an animal, we have no memory, because the animal has none, or has
very little. We must now add, that if we come from a human soul,
reopening to the light of life, we are destitute of memory, because it
would disturb the trial of our terrestrial life, and even render it
impossible, as it is the intention of nature that we should recommence
the experience of existence without any trace, present to our minds,
of previous actions which might limit or embarrass our free will.
We cannot pass from this portion of our subject without calling
attention to the fact that the remembrance of a previous existence is
not always absolutely wanting to us. Who is there, who, in his hours of
solitary contemplation, has not seen a hidden world come forth before
his eyes from the far distance of a mysterious past? When, wrapped in
profound reverie, we let ourselves float on the stream of imagination,
into the ocean of the vague, and the infinite, do we not see magic
pictures which are not absolutely unknown to our eyes? do we not hear
celestial harmonies which have already enchanted our ears? These secret
imaginings, these involuntary contemplations, to which each of us can
testify, are they not the real recollections of an existence anterior
to our life here below?
Might we not also attribute to a vague remembrance, to an unconscious
sympathy, the real and profound pleasure which we derive from the mere
sight of plants, flowers, and vegetation? The aspect of a forest, of
a beautiful meadow, of green hills, touches us, moves us, sometimes
even to tears. Great masses of verdure, and the humble field daisy,
alike speak to our hearts. Each of us has a favourite plant, the flower
whose perfume he loves to inhale, or the tree whose shade he prefers.
Rousseau was moved by the sight of a yew tree, and Alfred de Musset
loved the willows so much, that he expressed a wish, piously fulfilled,
that a willow might over-shadow his grave.
This love of the vegetable world has a mysterious root in our hearts.
May we not recognize in so natural a sentiment, a sort of vague
remembrance of our original country, a secret and involuntary evocation
of the scene in which the germ of our soul was first loosed to the
light of the sun, the powerful promoter of life?
Besides the undecided and dim remembrance of pictures which seem to
belong to our anterior existences upon the globe, we sometimes feel
keen aspirations towards a kinder and calmer destiny than that which is
allotted to us here below. No doubt coarse beings, entirely attached
to material appetites and interests, do not feel these secret longings
for an unknown and happier destiny, but poetical and tender souls,
those who suffer from the wretched conditions of which human nature
is the slave and the martyr, take a vague pleasure in such melancholy
aspirations. In the radiant infinite they foresee celestial dwellings,
where they shall one day reside, and they are impatient to break the
ties which bind them to earth. Read the episode in Goethe's _Mignon_,
in which Mignon, wandering and exiled, pours out her young soul in
aspirations to heaven, in sublime longings for an unknown and blessed
future, which she feels drawing her towards itself, and ask yourself
whether the beautiful verses of the great poet, who was also a great
naturalist, do not interpret a truth of nature, _i.e._, the new life
which awaits us in the plains of ether. Why do all men, among all
peoples, raise their eyes to heaven in solemn moments, in the impulses
of passion, and the anguish of grief or pain? Does any one, under
such circumstances, contemplate the earth on which he stands? Our
eyes and our hearts turn towards the skies. The dying raise their
fallen orbs to heaven, and we look towards the celestial spaces in
those vague reveries which we have been describing. It is permitted
to us to believe that this universal tendency is an intuition of that
which awaits us after our terrestrial life, a natural revelation of
the domain which shall be ours one day, and which extends over the
celestial empyrean, to the bosom of ethereal space.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH.
A SUMMARY OF THE SYSTEM OF THE PLURALITY OF LIVES.
WE propose now to collect, within a few summary propositions, the
principal features of the system of nature which we have defined.
1. The sun is the primary agent of life and organization.
2. In the primitive time of our globe, life began to appear in aquatic
and aërial plants, as well as in zoophytes. The same order reproduces
itself at present, in the point of departure, and in the development
of life and of souls. The solar rays, falling on the earth, and into
the waters, produce the formation of plants and that of zoophytes. The
rays of the sun by depositing in the waters and on the earth, _animated
germs_, emanating from the spiritualized beings who inhabit the sun,
bring about the birth of plants and zoophytes.
3. Plants and zoophytes are endowed with sensation. They enclose an
animal germ, just as a seed encloses an embryo.
4. The animal germ contained in the plant and in the zoophyte, passes,
at the death of each animal, into the body of the animal which comes
next to it in the ascending scale of organic perfection. From the
zoophyte the animated germ passes into the mollusc, from thence into
the articulated animal, the fish, or the reptile. From the body of the
reptile, it passes into that of the bird, and then into the mammifers.
In the inferior beings, for instance zoophytes, several animated germs
may be united to form the soul of a single being of a superior order.
5. In passing through the entire series of animals, this rudimentary
soul becomes perfected and acquires the beginnings of faculties.
Conscience, will, and judgment succeed to sensation. When the soul has
attained the body of a mammifer, it has acquired a certain number of
faculties. In addition to feeling, it has the basis of reason, _i.e._,
the _principle of causation_. From the body of a mammiferous animal
belonging to the superior species, the soul passes into the body of a
newly-born infant.
6. The child is born without memory, like the superior animal whence it
has proceeded. At a year old it acquires this faculty, and gradually
obtains others; imagination and thought develop themselves, reason
grows strong, memory becomes firm and extensive.
7. If the child dies before the age of twelve months, his soul, still
very imperfect, and devoid of active faculties, passes into the body of
another newly-born child, and recommences a new existence.
8. When a man dies, his body remains upon the earth, his soul rises
through the atmosphere to the ether which surrounds all the planets,
and enters into the body of the angel, or _superhuman being_.