"seems to us one of the inherent principal conditions of our future
happiness. We cannot fully enjoy life, until we become, like Janus,
kings of time, until we know how to concentrate in us, not only
the sentiment of the present, but that of the future and the past.
Then, if perfect life be one day given to us, perfect memory must
also be given to us. And now, let us try to think of the infinite
treasures of a mind enriched by the recollections of an innumerable
series of existences, entirely different from each other, and
yet admirably linked together by a continual dependence. To this
marvellous garland of metempsychoses, encircling the universe,
let us add, if the perspective seem worthy of our ambition, a
clear perception of the particular influence of our life upon
the ulterior changes of each of the worlds which we shall have
successively inhabited; let us aggrandize our life in immortalizing
it, and wed our history grandly with the history of the heavens.
Let us confidently collect together every material of happiness,
since thus the all-powerful bounty of the Creator wills it, and
let us construct the existence which the future reserves for
virtuous souls; let us plunge into the past by our faith, while we
are waiting for more light, even as by our faith we plunge into
the future. Let us banish the idea of disorder from the earth, by
opening the gates of time beyond our birth, as we have banished
the idea of injustice by opening other gates beyond the tomb; let
us stretch duration in every direction, and, notwithstanding the
obscurity which rests upon our two horizons, let us glorify the
Creator in glorifying ourselves, who are God's ministers on earth,
let us remember, with pious pride, that we are the younger brethren
of the angels."
Under what condition does the soul regain the remembrance of its entire
past? Jean Reynaud specifies two periods. 1. That which is fulfilled,
as the Druids hold, in the world of journeys and trials, of which the
earth forms a part. 2. The period during which the soul, set free from
the miseries and vicissitudes of the terrestrial life, pursues its
destinies in the ever widening and progressive circle of happiness; a
period which passes outside of the earth. In the first period there
is an eclipse of the memory at each passage into a new sphere; in the
second period, whatever may be the displacements and transfigurations
of the person, the memory is preserved full and entire. This theory of
Reynaud's is admitted by M. Pezzani.
With the exception of that _eclipse of the memory at each passage into
a new sphere_, which seems to us incomprehensible and useless, we
think, with Jean Reynaud, that the complete remembrance of our previous
existences will return to the soul when it shall inhabit the ethereal
regions, the sojourn of the superhuman being. In this manner only, in
our opinion, can the defect of man's memory, concerning his previous
existences, be explained. Thus, the argument from that defect of memory
does not remain without reply. Writers who have preceded us, and have
meditated on this question, had already found the solution which we
offer. This objection is not, then, of a nature to throw doubt on the
doctrine of plurality of existences. Let us conclude, with M. Pezzani,
that it is by a design of nature, that man, during this life, loses the
remembrance of what he formerly was. If we retained the recollection
of our anterior existences, if we had before our eyes, as if seen in a
mirror, all that we had done during our former lives, we should be much
troubled by the remembrance, which would harass the greater part of our
actions, and deprive us of our complete free will.
Why is an invincible dread of death common to all men? Death is not,
in reality, very dreadful, since it is not a termination, but a simple
change of condition. If man feels terror of death to such an extent,
we may be sure that nature imposes that sentiment upon him, in the
interests of the preservation of his species. Thus, in our belief,
the fear of death and the absence of memory of our former lives are
referable to the same cause. The first is a salutary illusion imposed
by God upon the weakness of humanity; the second is a means of securing
to man full liberty of action.
Another objection will be made to our doctrine. It will be said: The
re-incarnation of souls is not a new idea; it is, on the contrary, an
idea as old as humanity itself. It is the metempsychosis, which from
the Indians passed to the Egyptians, from the Egyptians to the Greeks,
and which was afterwards professed by the Druids.
The metempsychosis is, in fact, the most ancient of philosophical
conceptions; it is the first theory imagined by men, in order to
explain the origin and the destiny of our race. We do not recognize an
argument against our system of nature in this remark, but rather indeed
a confirmation of it. An idea does not pass down from age to age, and
find acceptance during five or six centuries, by the picked men of
successive generations, unless it rests upon some serious foundation.
We are not called upon to defend ourselves because our opinions
harmonize with the philosophical ideas which date from the most distant
time in the history of the peoples. The first observers, and the
oriental philosophers in particular, who are the most ancient thinkers
of all whose writings we possess, had not, like us, their minds warped,
prejudiced, turned aside by routine, or trammelled by the words of
teachers. They were placed very close to nature, and they beheld its
realities, without any preconceived ideas, derived from education in
particular schools. We cannot, therefore, but applaud ourselves when
we find that the logical deduction of our ideas has led us back to the
antique conception of Indian wisdom.
There is, however, a profound difference between our system of the
plurality of lives, and the oriental dogma of the metempsychosis. The
Indian philosophers, the Egyptians, and the Greeks, who inherited the
maxims of Pythagoras, admitted that the soul, on leaving a human body,
enters into that of an animal, to undergo punishment. We entirely
reject this useless step backward. Our metempsychosis is upward and
onward, it never steps down, or back.
A brief sketch of the dogma of the animal metempsychosis, such as it
was professed by the different philosophical sects of antiquity will
not be out of place here. We shall explain in what particulars the
oriental dogma differs from our system, and show, at the same time,
how popular the metempsychosis was among the peoples of antiquity, in
Europe as well as in Asia.
The most ancient known book is that of the _Védas_, which contains
the religious principles of the Indians or Hindoos. In this code of
the primary religions of Asia is found the general dogma of the final
absorption of souls in God. But, before it reaches its final fusion
with the great All, it is necessary that the human soul should have
traversed all the active orders of life. The soul, therefore, performed
a series of transmigrations and journeys, in various places, in
different worlds, and passed through the bodies of several different
animals. Men who had not done good works went into the moon or the
sun; or else they came back to the earth, and assumed the bodies of
certain animals, such as dogs, butterflies, adders, &c. There were
also intermediary places between the earth and the sun, whither souls
who had only been partly faulty, went to pass a period of expiation. We
find the following in the _Védas_:--
"If a man has done works which lead to the world of the sun, his
soul repairs to the world of the sun; if he has done works which
lead to the world of the Creator, his soul goes to the world of the
Creator."
The book of the _Védas_ says, very distinctly, that the animal, as well
as the man, has the right of passing to other worlds, as a recompense
for his good works. The oriental wisdom felt none of that uncalled-for
contempt for animals which is characteristic of modern philosophy and
religion.
"All animals, according to the degree of knowledge and intelligence
which they have had in this world, go into other worlds. The man
whose object was the recompense of his good works, being dead,
goes into the world of the moon. There he is at the service of the
overseers of the half of the moon in its crescent. They welcome
him joyfully, but he is not tranquil, he is not happy; all his
recompense is to have attained for a while to the world of the
moon. On the expiration of this time, the servant of the overseers
of the moon descends again into hell; and is born as a worm, a
butterfly, lion, fish, dog, or under any other form (even under a
human form)."[19]
"At the last stages of his descent, if one asks, who are you? he
replies: I come from the world of the moon, the wages of the deeds
done during my life merely for the sake of reward. I am again
invested with a body; I have suffered in the womb of my mother,
and in leaving it; I hope finally to acquire the knowledge of Him
who is all things, to enter into the right way of worship and of
meditation without any consideration of reward.
"In the world of the moon, one receives the reward of good works
which are done without renunciation of their fruits, of their
merits; but this reward has only a fixed time, after which one is
born again in an inferior world, a wicked world, a world which is
the recompense of evil.
"By the renunciation of all pleasure, and of all reward by seeking
God only, with unshaken faith, we reach the sun which has no end,
the great world, whence we return no more to a world which is the
recompense of evil."[20]
The Egyptians, having borrowed this doctrine from the Hindoos, made
it the basis of their religious worship. Herodotus informs us,[21]
that, according to the Egyptians, the human soul, on issuing from a
completely decomposed body, enters into that of some animal. The soul
takes three thousand years to pass from this body through a series of
others, and at the conclusion of this interval, the same soul returns
to the human species, entering the form of a newly-born infant.
The Egyptians employed excessive caution in the preservation of human
bodies. They embalmed the corpses of their relatives or of personages
of importance to the state, and thus prepared the mummies which are
to be seen in all our museums. The universal practice of embalming
was not intended, as has been supposed, to keep the human body ready
to receive the soul, returning at the end of three thousand years,
to seek its primitive abode. It had another object. It was supposed
that the soul did not commence its migrations after the death of the
human body, while any portion of the corpse remained entire. Hence the
efforts made by the Egyptians, to retard the moment of separation by
the preservation of the corpse as long as possible. Servius says:
"The Egyptians, renowned for their wisdom, prolonged the duration
of corpses, that the existence of the soul, attached to that of
the body, might be preserved, and might not pass away quickly to
others. The Romans, on the contrary, burn corpses, so that the
soul, resuming its liberty, might immediately re-enter nature."
The most ancient and remarkable of the Greek philosophers, Pythagoras,
found out the doctrine of the metempsychosis, in his travels in Egypt.
He adopted it in his school, and the whole of the Greek philosophy
held, with Pythagoras, that the souls of the wicked pass into the
bodies of animals. Hence the abstinence from flesh meat, prescribed
by Pythagoras to his disciples, a precept which he also derived from
Egypt, where respect for animals was due to the general persuasion that
the bodies of beasts were tenanted by human souls, and, consequently,
that by ill-treating animals, one ran the risk of injuring one's own
ancestors. Empedocles, the philosopher, adopted the Pythagorean system.
He says, in lines quoted by Clement of Alexandria:--
"I, too, have been a young maiden,
A tree, a bird, a mute fish in the seas."
Plato, the most illustrious of the philosophers of Greece, accords a
large place to the views of Pythagoras, even amid his most sublime
conceptions of the soul, and of immortality. He held that the human
soul passes into the body of animals, in expiation of its crimes. Plato
said that on earth we remember what we have done during our previous
existences, and that to learn is to remember one's self.
"Cowards," he says, "are changed into women, vain and frivolous
men into birds, the ignorant into wild beasts, lower in kind and
crawling upon the earth, in proportion as their idleness has
been more degrading; stained and corrupt souls animate fishes
and aquatic reptiles." Again, he says: "Those who have abandoned
themselves to intemperance and gluttony enter into the bodies of
animals with like propensities. They who have loved injustice,
cruelty, and rapine assume the bodies of wolves, hawks, and
falcons. The destiny of souls has relation to the lives which they
have led."
Plato held that the soul took only one thousand years to complete
its journey through the bodies of animals; but he believed that this
journey repeated itself ten times over, which gives a total of 10,000
years for the completion of the entire circle of existences. Between
each of these periods the soul made a brief sojourn in Hades. During
this sojourn it drank of the waters of the river Lethe, in order to
lose the recollection of its previous existence, before re-commencing
its new life.
Plato exalted the dogma of the animal metempsychosis by his grand
views upon spiritual immortality and the liberty of man, ideas which
even at the present time are quoted with admiration, but for whose
recapitulation we have not space.
The metempsychosis holds less rank in the Platonic doctrine than in
the Pythagorean and Egyptian systems. All its importance was resumed
among the philosophers of the Alexandrian school, who continued, in
Egypt, the traditions of the Platonic philosophy, and revived the
days of the schools of Athens on the soil of the Pharaohs. Plotinus,
the commentator of Plato, says, concerning the doctrine of the
transmigration of souls:
"It is a dogma recognized from the utmost antiquity, that if the
soul commits errors, it is condemned to expiate them by undergoing
punishment in the Shades, and then it passes into new bodies to
begin its trials over again."
This passage proves that the ancients held the sojourn of the soul in
hell to be only temporary, and that it was always followed by fresh
trials, terrible and painful in proportion to the errors which were to
be repaired.
"When," says Plotinus, "we have gone astray in the multiplicity
of our corporal passions, we are punished, first by the straying
itself, and afterwards, when we resume a body, by finding ourselves
in worse conditions. The soul, on leaving the body, becomes that
power which it has most developed. Let us, then, fly from base
things here below, and raise ourselves to the intelligent world, so
that we may not fall into the purely sensational life, by following
images which are merely of the senses, or into the vegetative life,
by indulging in mere physical pleasure and gluttony; let us raise
ourselves to the intelligent world, to intelligence, to God.
"Those who have exercised human faculties are born again as men.
Those who have used their senses only pass into the bodies of
brutes, and especially into the bodies of wild beasts, if they
have been accustomed to yield to violent impulses of anger; so
that the different bodies which they animate are conformable to
their various propensities. Those who have done nothing but indulge
their appetites pass into the bodies of luxurious and gluttonous
animals. Others, who, instead of indulging concupiscence or anger,
have degraded their senses by sloth, are reduced to vegetate in the
plants, because in their previous existences they have exercised
nothing but vegetative power, and have only worked to become trees.
Those who have loved the enjoyment of music over much, but have
led lives otherwise pure, pass into the bodies of melodious birds.
Those who have governed tyrannically, but have no other vice,
become eagles. Those who have spoken lightly of celestial things
are changed into birds which fly towards the higher regions of the
air. He who has acquired civil virtues becomes a man again, but
if he does not possess these virtues to a sufficient extent, he
is transformed into a sociable creature, such as the bee, or some
other being of that species."
Every one knows that among our own ancestors, and the Druids or
high-priests of the Gauls, the metempsychosis was held almost in the
same sense as among the Egyptians and the Greeks. It is, so to speak,
a national faith to us, for it has been held in honour, its dogmas
have flourished, in the same countries in which we now dwell. We
have recalled these facts, and collected these passages from ancient
writers, only in order to define the manner in which the Egyptians,
as well as the Greeks, and, in later times, the Gauls, understood the
metempsychosis. Our system differs from the old oriental conception,
which was embraced by the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Druids, in our
denial that the human soul can ever return to the body of an animal. We
believe that the human soul has already passed through this probation,
and that it never can be renewed. In nature, in fact, the animal has a
part inferior to that of man; it is below our species in its degree of
intelligence, and it cannot have either merit or demerit. Its faculties
do not invest it with the entire responsibility of its actions. It is
but an intermediate link between the plant and man; it has certain
faculties, but we cannot pretend that those faculties assimilate it to
moral man.
Thus, we reject this doctrine of the return of the human soul to
conditions through which it has already passed. Retrogression has no
place in our system. The soul, in its progressive march, may pause for
an instant, but it never turns back. We admit that man is condemned to
re-commence an ill-fulfilled existence, but this new experience is made
in a human body, in a new covering of the same living type, and not in
the form of an inferior being. The oriental dogma of the metempsychosis
misapprehended the great law of progress, which is, on the contrary,
the foundation of our doctrine.
Fourth objection. It will be said to us: You maintain that our souls
have already existed in the bodies of animals; do you, then, share the
belief of those naturalists who derive man from the monkey?
No, certainly not. The French and German naturalists, who, applying
Darwin's theory of the transformation of species to man, have declared
man to be derived from the monkey, rely entirely on anatomical
considerations. Vogt, Bruchner, Huxley, and Broca compare the skeleton
of the monkey with that of primitive man; they study the form of the
skull of each respectively, they measure the width and the prominence
of the jaws, &c., &c. From the results, they draw the conclusion that
man is anatomically derived from a species of quadrumane. The soul is
not taken into any consideration by these men of science, who argue
precisely as if nothing of the thinking kind existed in the anatomical
cavities which they explore and measure. It is, on the contrary, by
comparing the faculties of the human soul with the faculties of animals
that we arrive at our conclusion. The animal forms signify nothing to
us; the spirit, in its various manifestations, is our chief object.
Why, indeed, should we seek to derive man from the monkey, rather than
from any other mammiferous animal, rather than from the wolf, or the
fox? Is there much difference between the skeleton of the monkey and
that of the wolf, the fox, or any other carnivorous beast? Put three
or four of those skeletons together, and you will not find it easy to
distinguish one from the other, if, instead of selecting a monkey of a
superior species, you take an inferior quadrumane, a striated monkey, a
lemur, or a macao.
Interrogate the physiological functions of the monkey. You will find
them, and the organs which serve those functions, perfectly similar
in all animals, and those organs identical in their structure. Why,
then, should you derive man from the monkey, rather than from the
wolf or the fox? Is it because the monkeys in our menageries have a
distant resemblance to man, in their occasional vertical attitude,
and in certain features which are caricatures of those of the human
face? How many of the species among the immense simial family of the
two hemispheres present this resemblance? Hardly five or six. All the
others have the bestial snout in its fullest development, and are
very inferior in intelligence to most of the other mammifers. If it be
from the organic point of view that you derive man from the monkey,
because certain species of quadrumanes are caricatures of men in their
physiognomy, why may he not be derived as reasonably from the parrot,
which emits articulate sounds, the caricature of the human voice, or
even the nightingale, because that melodious songster of the woods
modulates his notes like our singers?
The consideration of animal forms is of very little importance in our
estimation, when the matter in hand is to determine the place occupied
by a living being in the scale of creation, for these forms are similar
in type among all the superior animals, the body varying very slightly
in structure in all the great class of mammifers; and also because the
physiological functions are discharged in a similar manner by all.
The basis on which we ground our researches is quite different, it is
the spiritual basis; we ask the faculties of the mind to supply our
materials of comparison.
It must not be supposed, therefore, that we espouse the doctrines of
Darwin and those who agree with him, because we hold that the soul has
a previous dwelling in the bodies of several animals, before it reaches
the human body; because we admit that the spiritual principle begins
in the germ of plants, and that this germ grows and develops itself in
passing through the bodies of a progressive series of animal species,
to issue at length in man, the end of its elaboration and perfection.
The Darwinists take into consideration only the anatomical structure,
and put aside the soul. We consider its faculties only. We are guided,
not by the materialistic idea which directs and inspires these men of
science, but on the contrary, on a reasoned-out spiritualism.
Our system of nature may be criticised, or rejected. We offer it merely
as a personal view, and would not impose it on any reader. The merit of
this philosophical and scientific conception, if it has any, consists
in the vast synthesis by which it binds together all the living
creatures which people the solar world, from the minute plant in which
the germ of organization first appears, to the animal; from the animal
to the man; and from the man to the series of superhuman and archhuman
beings who inhabit the ethereal spheres; and finally, from them to the
radiant dwellers in the solar star. In collecting together, on the
one hand, all that modern chemistry has learned of the composition of
plants, and the physical phenomena of their respiration, and on the
other hand, everything which is known of the physical and chemical
properties of solar light, the idea struck us that the rays of the sun
form the vehicle by whose means the animated germs are placed in the
plants. While meditating upon what has been written by the philosophers
Charles Bonnet, Dupont de Nemours, and Jean Reynaud, upon the physical
condition of resuscitated human beings, and dwelling upon the destiny
of men beyond the formidable barrier of the tomb, in short, while
drinking at the most various springs of philosophical and scientific
knowledge, we have composed this attempt at a new philosophy of the
universe.