PRIVATE LIBRARY OF CHARLES A. KOFOID. ! if>£2.? Cost.X/k THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID THE DAY AFTER DEATH. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/dayafterdeathoroOOfigurich THE DAY AFTER DEATH; ODE FDTORE LIFE, ACCOEDINO TO SCIENCE %v&nshitb frmtt the Jfrentk of LOUIS FIGDIER. ILLUSTRATED BY TEN ASTRONOMICAL PLATES. NEW EDITION. LONDON: EICHAED BENTLEY AND SON. 1874. [All rights reserved.] ItlH CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER THE FIRST. MAN IS THE RESULT OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE OF THE BODY, THE SOUL, AND LIFE. OF WHAT DOES DEATH CONSIST? 6 CHAPTER THE SECOND. WHAT BECOMES, AFTER DEATH, OF THE BODY, THE SOUL, AND LIFE? 9 CHAPTER THE THIRD. WHERE DOES THE SUPERHUMAN BEING RESIDE? . . 1G CHAPTER THE EOURTH. DO ALL MEN PASS AFTER DEATH TO THE STATE OF SUPER- HUMAN BEINGS ? RE-INCARNATIONS OF PERVERSE SOULS. RE-INCARNATION OF CHILDREN WHO HAVE DIED IN INFANCY. . 24 CHAPTER THE EIFTH. WHAT ARE THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING ? PHYSICAL SHAPE, SENSES, DEGREE OF INTELLIGENCE. FACULTIES OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING . . .30 CONTENTS. CHAPTEE THE SIXTH. WHAT BECOMES OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING AFTER DEATH ? DEATHS, RESURRECTIONS, AND NEW INCARNATIONS IN THE ETHEREAL SPACES . . . . .55 CHAPTEE THE SEVENTH. PHYSICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SUN . 61 CHAPTEE THE EIGHTH. THE SUN. DEFINITIVE SOJOURN OF SOULS ARRIVED AT THE HIGHEST DEGREE OF THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY. THE SUN IS THE FINAL AND COMMON SOJOURN OF THE SOULS WHICH COME FROM THE EARTH. — PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION OF THE SUN. THIS HEAVENLY BODY IS A MASS OF BURN- ING GAS 89 CHAPTEE THE NINTH. THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN ARE PURELY SPIRITUAL BEINGS. THE SOLAR RAYS ARE EMANATIONS FROM SPIRITUAL BEINGS THAT LIVE IN THE SUN. THESE BEINGS THUS PRODUCE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE ON EARTH. THE CONTINUITY OF SOLAR RADIATION, IN- EXPLICABLE BY PHYSICISTS, EXPLAINED BY EMANATIONS FROM THE SOULS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN. THE WORSHIP OF FIRE, AND THE ADORATION OF THE SUN IN DIFFERENT NATIONS, ANCIENT AND MODERN . 104 CHAPTEE THE TENTH. WHAT ARE OUR RELATIONS WITH SUPERHUMAN BEINGS? . 122 CHAPTEE THE ELEVENTH. WHAT IS THE ANIMAL ? — THE SOULS OF ANIMALS. MIGRA- TIONS OF SOULS THROUGH THE BODIES OF ANIMALS . 138 CHAPTEE THE TWELFTH. WHAT IS THE PLANT? THE PLANT CAN FEEL. HOW CONTENTS. vii PAGE DIFFICULT IT IS TO DISTINGUISH PLANTS FROM ANIMALS. GENERAL CHAIN OF LIVING BEINGS . . . .149 CHAPTEE THE THIETEENTH. DOES MAN EXIST ELSEWHERE THAN ON THE EARTH? DESCRIPTION OF THE PLANETS. PLURALITY OF THE INHABITED WORLDS 177 CHAPTEE THE FOUETEENTH. THAT WHICH TOOK PLACE ON EARTH FOR THE CREATION OF ORGANIZED BEINGS MUST HAVE EQUALLY TAKEN PLACE IN THE OTHER PLANETS. — SUCCESSIVE ORDER OF THE APPEARANCE OF LIVING BEINGS ON OUR GLOBE. THE SAME SUCCESSION MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE IN EACH PLANET. THE PLANETARY MAN. THE PLANE- TARY MAN, LIKE THE TERRESTRIAL MAN, IS TRANS- FORMED, AFTER DEATH, INTO A SUPERHUMAN BEING, AND PASSES INTO THE ETHER 195 CHAPTEE THE FIFTEENTH. PROOFS OF THE PLURALITY OF HUMAN EXISTENCES, AND OF RE-INCARNATIONS. WITHOUT THE AID OF THIS DOCTRINE THE PRESENCE OF MAN UPON THE EARTH IS INEXPLICABLE, LIKEWISE THE UNEQUAL CONDITIONS OF HUMAN LIFE, AND THE FATE OF CHILDREN WHO DIE IN INFANCY ' 202 * CHAPTEE 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^ PRINCIPLE OF CAUSALITY CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED BY THE PLURALITY OF LIVES. VAGUE REMEMBRANCES OF OUR FORMER EXISTENCES 212 viii CONTENTS. CHAPTEE THE SEVENTEENTH. SUMMARY OP THE SYSTEM OP PLURALITY OF EXIST- ENCES 226 CHAPTEE THE EIGHTEENTH. ANSWERS TO SOME OBJECTIONS. — FIRST I THE IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL, WHICH SERVES AS THE BASIS TO THIS SYSTEM, IS NOT DEMONSTRATED.— SECOND I WE HAVE NO REMEMBRANCE OF FORMER EXISTENCES. — THIRD : THIS SYSTEM IS ONLY THE METEMPSYCHOSIS OF THE ANCIENTS. FOURTH : THIS SYSTEM IS CONFOUNDED WITH DARWINISM 232 CHAPTEE THE NINETEENTH. SEQUEL TO OBJECTIONS. DIFFICULTY OF UNDERSTANDING HOW THE RAYS OF THE SUN, MATERIAL SUBSTANCES, CAN BE THE GERMS OF SOULS, IMMATERIAL SURSTANCES . 259 CHAPTEE THE TWENTIETH. PRxVCTICAL RULES RESULTING FROM THE FACTS AND PRIN- CIPLES DEVELOPED IN THIS WORK. TO ELEVATE ONE'S SOUL BY THE PRACTICE OF VIRTUES, AND BY TRYING T6 ACQUIRE A KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE AND ITS LAWS THROUGH SCIENCE. TO RENDER PUBLIC WORSHIP TO THE DIVINITY. WE SHOULD PRESERVE THE REMEM- BRANCE OF THE DEAD. — WE SHOULD NOT FEAR DEATH. DEATH IS BUT AN INSENSIBLE TRANSITION FROM ONE STATE TO ANOTHER; IT IS NOT AN END, BUT A METAMORPHOSIS. — IMPRESSIONS OF THE DYING. THOSE WHO DIE YOUNG ARE LOVED BY THE GODS . . .269 EPILOGUE. IN WHICH WE SEEK GOD, AND IN OUR SEARCH DESCRIBE THE UNIVERSE . 284 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. INTRODUCTION. 7EADEK, you must die. You may perhaps die to-morrow. What will become of you 1 What shall you be, ou the day after your death ? I do not now allude to your body; that is of no more importance than the clothes which it wears, or the shroud in which it will be buried. Like these garments, like that cere- cloth, your body must be decomposed, and its elements distri- buted among Nature's great reservoirs of material, earth, air, and water. But your soul, whither shall it go 1 That which was free within you, that which thought, loved, and suffered, what shall become of it % Of course you do not believe that your soul will be extinguished with your life on the day of your decease, and that nothing will remain of that which has palpitated in your breast, vibrating to the emotions of joy and sorrow, to the tender affections, the numberless passions and disturbances of your life. Where shall that sensible, existing soul, which must sur- 1 1 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. vive the tomb, go to ? What will it become, what shall you be, my reader, the day after your death ? To the consideration of this question this book is devoted. Almost all thinkers have declared that the problem of the future life defies solution. They have argued that the human mind is^ powerless to foresee so profound a mystery, and that therefore the only rational course is to abstain from the en- deavour. This is the reasoning of the majority of mankind, partly from carelessness, or partly from conviction. Besides, when we venture to look at this tremendous question closely, we find ourselves immediately surrounded with such thick dark- ness that we lack courage to pursue the investigation. And thu s we are led to turn away from all thought of the future life. There are, nevertheless, circumstances which force us to re- flect on this dark and difficult subject. "When one finds oneself in danger of death, or when one has lost a dearly beloved object, there is no escape from meditation upon the future life. When we have dwelt long and earnestly upon the idea, we may be brought to acknowledge that the problem is not, as it has so long been believed, beyond the reach of the human mind. ' During the greater portion of his life, the author of this book believed, in common with everybody else, that the pro- blem of the future life is out of our reach, and that true wis- dom consists in not troubling our minds about it. But, one dreadful day, a thunderbolt fell in his path. He lost the son in whom centred all the hope and ambition of his life. Then, in the bitterness of his grief he reflected deeply on the new THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 3 life which must open for each of us, above the tomb. After long dwelling on this idea in solitary meditation, he asked of the exact sciences what positive information, on this question, they could furnish him with, and subsequently, he interrogated ignorant and simple people, peasants in their villages, and unlettered men in towns, an ever precious source of aid in re-ascending towards the true principles of nature, for it is not perverted by the progress of education, or by the routine of a commonplace philosophy. Thus the author of this book succeeded in constructing for himself an entire system of ideas concerning the new life of man, which is to follow his terrestrial existence. But his system is all contained in nature. Each organized being is attached to another which precedes, and another which follows it, in the chain of the living creation. The plant and the animal, the animal and the man, are linked, soldered to one another ; the moral and physical order meet and mingle. It results from this, that any one who believes himself to have discovered the explanation of any one fact concerning this organization, is speedily led to extend this ex- planation to all living beings, to reconstruct, link by link, the great chain of nature. Thus it was with the author of this book. After having sought out the destination of man, when dismissed from his terrestrial life, he was led to apply his views to all other living beings, to animals, and then to plants. The power of logic forced him to study those beings, impossible to be seen by our organs of vision, by which he holds the planets, the suns, and all the innumerable stars dispersed 1—2 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. over the vast extent of the heavens, to be inhabited. So that you will find in this book, not only an attempt at the solution of the problem of the future life by science, but also the statement of a complete theory of nature, of a true philo- sophy of the universe. It may be that I am deceiving myself ; it may be that I am taking the dreams of my imagination for serious views ; I may lose myself in that dark region through which I am trying to grope my way ; but at least I write with absolute sincerity, and that is my excuse for writing this book at all. I hope that others may be induced by my example to attempt similar efforts, to apply the exact sciences to the study of the great question of the destinies of man after this life. A series of works undertaken in this branch of learning, would be the greatest service which could be rendered to natural philo- sophy, and also to the progress of humanity. After the terrible misfortunes of 1870 and 1871, there is not a family in France which has not had to mourn a kins- man or a friend. I found, not indeed consolation for my grief, but tranquillity for my mind, in thecomposition of this work ; and I have therefore hoped that, in reading its pages, they who suffer and they who grieve might find some of the same hope and assurance which have lifted up my stricken heart. Society is in our day the prey of a deadly disease, of a moral canker, which threatens it with destruction. This dis- ease is materialism. Materialism, which was preached first in Germany, in the universities, and in books of philosophy, and the natural sciences, afterwards spread rapidly in France. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. With brief delay, it came down from the level of the savans to that of the educated classes, and thence it penetrated the ranks of the people ; and the people have undertaken to teach us the practical consequences of materialism; Little by- little they have flung off every bond, they have discarded all respect of persons and principles; they no longer value re- ligion or its ministers ; the social hierarchy, their country, or liberty. That this must lead to some terrible result it was easy to foresee. After a long period of political anarchy, a body of furious madmen carried death, terror, and fire through the capital of France. It was not patriotism which fired the illustrious and sacred monuments of Paris, it was materialism. ^Nothing can be more evident than that, from the moment one is convinced that everything comes to an end in this world, that there is nothing to follow this life, we have nothing better to do, one and all of us, than to appeal to violence, to excite disturbance, and invoke anarchy everywhere, in order to find, amid such propitious disorder, the means of satisfying our brutal desires, our unruly ambition, and our sensual passions. Civilization, society, and morals, are like a string of beads, whose fastening is the belief in the immortality of the soul. Break the fasten- ing, and the beads are scattered. Materialism is the scourge of our day, the origin of all the evils of European society. ~Now, materialism is fiercely fought in this book, which might be entitled, " Spiritualism De- monstrated by Science." Because this is its aim, and its motive, my friends have induced me to publish it. CHAPTEE THE FIEST. MAN THE RESULT OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE OF THE BODY, THE SOUL, AND THE LIFE. WHAT CONSTITUTES DEATH. 'ARTHEZ, Lordat, and the Medical School of Montpellier have created the doctrine of the hu- man aggregate, which, in our opinion, affords the only explanation of the true nature of man. This doctrine, of which we shall avail ourselves, as a guide in the earlier portions of this work, may be defined as follows : — There exists in man three elements : — 1. The body, or the material substance. 2. The Life, or as Barfchez calls it, the Vital Force. 3. The Soul, or as Lordat calls it, the Intimate Sense. We must not confound the soul with the life, as the ma- terialists and certain shallow philosophers have done. The soul and the life are essentially distinct. The life is perish- able, while the soul is immortal ; the life is a temporary condition, destined to decline and destruction ; while the soul is impervious to every ill, and escapes from death. Life, like heat and electricity, is a force engendered by certain causes ; after having had its commencement, it has its termi- nation, which is altogether final. The soul, on the contrary, has no end. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. Man may be defined as a perfected soul dwelling in a living body. This definition permits ns to specify what it is that con- stitutes death. Death is the separation of the soul and the body. This separation is effected when the body has ceased to be animated by the life. Plants and animals cannot live except under certain condi- ditions : plants in the air or in the water, animals in the air, fish in the water ; and if they are deprived of these condi- tions, they .perish immediately. Again, there are existences which require special conditions for their support within the general ones. Certain polypoid-worms can live only in carbonic acid, or azotic gas ; the germs of cryptogams produced by damp can be developed only in aqueous infusions of vegetable matters ; the fish which live in the sea, die in fresh, or only moderately salt, water. Every living being has then its special habitat. The soul does not form an exception to this rule. The place, the habitat of the soul is a living body. The soul disappears from the body when this body ceases to live, just as a man forsakes a house when that house has been destroyed by fire. Such, is the doctrine of the triple alliance of the body, the soul, and the life, as formulated by the School of Montpellier, and such, as a consequence of this doctrine, is the mechanism of death. It must be added that this triple alliance of the body, the THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. soul, and the life, is not peculiar to man ; it exists also in all animals. The animal has also a living body, and soul ; but the soul in animals is much inferior to the soul in men, in the number and extent of its faculties. Having few wants, the animal has a very small number of faculties, which are all in a rudimentary condition. It is only in the very considerable development of the faculties of the soul that man differs from the superior animals, to which he bears a strong resemblance in his physiological functions, and his anatomical structure. It must be remarked that the Montpellier School does not admit this view of the condition of animals. In another part of this work,* a fuller explanation of the distinctions- which divide man from animal will be found. * Ch. XV. CHAPTER THE SECOND. WHAT BECOMES OF THE BODY, THE SOUL, AND THE LIFE, AFTER DEATH. ^FTEB death, the body, whether of a man, or of an animal, being no longer preserved from destruc- tion by vital force, falls under the dominion of chemical forces. If the body of a dead animal, or a human corpse be kept in a place where the temperature is below 0°, or if it be shut up in a space entirely air-tight, or if it be impregnated with antiseptic substances, it will remain intact, as at the moment at which life has abandoned it. Such is the process of embalming. The effect of the various chemical substances with which a corpse is impregnated, is to coagulate the albumen of the tissues, and thus to preserve the animal substance from putrefaction. A similar result will be obtained if the corpse be placed between two layers of ice, or in a coffin entirely surrounded with ice constantly renewed. If kept at a temperature of 0°, the body will not be subject to decomposition, because putrid fermentation can- not take place at so low a temperature. This was the process by which the entire carcasses of the mammoths, or extinct elephants, which belonged to the qua- 10 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. ternity period, were preserved. In 1802 a perfectly pre- served carcass of this gigantic pachyderm was found on the bank of the Lena, a river which runs into the Arctic Sea, after traversing a portion of the Asiatic continent in the vici- nity of the North Pole. The frozen earth and the ice which covers the banks of the river into which the mammoth had plunged, had so effectually preserved it from putrefaction, that the flesh of the huge creature, dead for more than a hundred thousand years, made a feast for the fishermen of that desert place. In northern countries, if one would preserve the body of a man, it could be effectually done by simply keeping it constantly wrapped in ice. "When the body of a man, or of an animal, is exposed to the combined influences of air, of water, and of a moderately high temperature, it undergoes a series of chemical decompo- sitions, whose final term is its transformation into carbonic acid gas, and some compounds, gaseous or solid, which repre- sent the less advanced products of destruction. Gases of various kinds, carbonic acid, hydrosulphuric, and ammoniac, and the vapour of water, spread themselves through the atmo- sphere, or dissolve into the humidity of the soil. At a later stage these compounds, thus dissolved into the water which bathes the earth, are absorbed by the little roots of the plants which live on it, and aid in their nutrition and develop- ment. As for the gas, it begins by spreading through the air ; and then falling to the earth again dissolved in the rain- water, it also equally supplies the needs of vegetable life. The ammoniac and carbonic acid in the water which pene- THE DA Y AFTER LEA TIL 1 1 trates the soil, is absorbed by the roots, introduced into the tubes of the plants, and supplies them with nourish- ment. Thus, the matter which forms the bodies of men and ani- mals is not destroyed ; it only changes its form, and under its new conditions it aids in the composition of fresh organic substances. In all this the human body does but obey the common laws of nature. That which it undergoes, every organized substance, vegetable or animal, exposed to the combined in- fluences of air, water, and temperature, equally undergoes. A piece of cotton or woollen stuff, a grain of wheat, a fruit — they all ferment, and reduce themselves to new products, exactly as our bodies do. The cere cloth which enfolds a corpse is destroyed by precisely the same process which destroys the corpse. But, if the material substance which forms man's body does but transform itself, journeying through the globe, passing from animals to plants and from plants to animals ; it is quite otherwise with life. Life is a force. Like the other forces, heat, light, and electricity, it is born, and it transmits itself ; it has a beginning and an end. Like light, heat, and electri- city — the physical agents which make us comprehend life, and which have certainly the same essence and the same origin — life has its producing causes, and its causes of destruction. It cannot rekindle itself when it has been extinguished ; it cannot re-commence its course when its fatal term has arrived. Life cannot perpetuate itself; it is a simple condition of 12 THE BAY AFTER DEATH. bodies, a fugitive and precarious condition, subject to count- less influences, accidents, and chances. The life is therefore greatly inferior in importance to the soul, which is indestructible and immortal. The soul is the essential element in all nature. It has active and positive qualities in all respects where the two other elements, the body and the life, have only negative qualities. Whilst the body dissociates itself and disappears, while the life becomes annihilated, the soul can neither disappear nor become anni- hilated. "We have seen what becomes of a man's body after his death, and also of his life ; let us now examine into the con- dition of his soul. ~No philosopher, no learned man, none of those who know the immensity of the universe and the eternity of the ages, can admit that our existence on the earth is a definite thing, — that human life has no link with anything above or beyond itself. Man dies at thirty, or twenty years old ; he may live only a few months, or a few minutes. The average length of life, according to DuvilarcVs tables, is twenty-eight years. At present it is thirty-three. One fourth of mankind die before their seventh year, and one half do not outlive their seventeenth. Those who survive this time enjoy a privilege which is denied to the rest of the human race.* What is so short an interval, compared to the general duration of time, to the age of the earth and of the world v? It is one minute in eternity. Our brief life is not, cannot be * Rambosson. " The Laws of Life." Paris, 1871. P. 121. THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 1 3 anything but an accident, a rapid and passing phenomenon, which hardly counts for anything in the history of nature. ■ On the other hand, the physical conditions of terrestrial life are detestable. Man is a martyr, exposed to every sort of suffering : owing partly to the defective organization of his body, incessantly menaced with danger from external causes, dreading the extremes of heat and cold; weak and ailing, coming into the world naked, and without any natural de- fence against the influence of climate. If, in one portion of Europe, and in America, the progress of civilization has se- cured comfort for the rich, what are the sufferings of the poor in those very same countries 1 Life is perpetual suffering to the greater number of the men who inhabit the insalubrious regions of Asia, Africa, and Oceania. And then, before there was any civilization at all, during the period of Primitive Man, a period so immense that it stretches back to a hun- dred thousand years before our epoch, what was the fate of humanity 1 It was a perpetual succession of suffering, danger, and pain. The conditions of human existence are as evil from the moral as from the physical point of view. It is granted that here below happiness is impossible. The Holy Scriptures, when they tell us that the earth is a valley of tears, do but render an incontestable truth in a poetic form. Yes, man has no destiny here but suffering. He suffers in his affec- tions, and in his unfulfilled desires, in the aspirations and im- pulses of his soul, continually thrust back, baffled, beaten down by insurmountable obstacles and resistance. Happiness 14 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. is a forbidden condition. The few agreeable sensations which we experience, now and then, are expiated by the bitterest grief. We have affections, that we may lose and mourn their dearest objects ; we have fathers, mothers, children, that we may see them die. It is impossible that a state so abnormal can be a defini- tive condition. Order, harmony, equilibrium reign through- out the physical world, and it must be that the same are to be found again in the moral world. If, on looking around us, we are forced to acknowledge that suffering is the common and constant rule, that injustice and violence dominate, that force triumphs, that victims tremble and die under the iron hand of cruelty aud oppression ; then it must be that this is only a temporary order of things. It cannot be otherwise than a moment of transition, an intermediary period which Providence condemns us to pass through rapidly, on our way to a better state. But, what is this new condition, what is this second exist- ence which is to succeed to our terrestrial life ? In other words, what becomes of the human soul after death has broken the bonds which held it to the body ? This is what we have to investigate. That being, superior to man in the scale of the living crea- tures which people the universe, has no name in any language. The angel acknowledged by the Christian religion, and honoured by an especial cultus, is the only approach we have to a realization of the idea. Thus Jean Eeynaud calls the superior creature, who is, he believes, to succeed to man THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 15- after his death, an angel. But we will put aside the word altogether, and call the perfected creature who, in our be- lief, comes after man in the ascending series of nature, the superhuman being. CHAPTER THE THIRD. WHERE DOES THE SUPERHUMAN BEING DWELL ? E have seen that of the three elements which com- pose the human aggregate, one only, the soul, re- sists destruction. After the dissolution of the body, after the extinction of the life, the soul, -detached from the material bonds which chained it to the earth, goes away, to feel, to love, to conceive, to be free, in a new body, endowed with more powerful faculties than those allotted to humanity. It goes away to compose that which we call the superhuman being. But where does this new creature dwell? All students of nature know that life is spread over our -globe in prodigious proportions. We cannot take a step, our eyes cannot glance around us, without everywhere encoun- tering myriads of living beings. The earth is nothing but a vast reservoir of life. Examine a blade of grass in a field, and you will find it covered with insects, or inferior animals. But your eyes will not suffice for this examination; you must have recourse to the microscope. With the aid of the magni- fying glass, you will discover that this blade of grass is the refuge of an active population, which are born, multiply, and THE BAY AFTER BE ATE. 17 die with prodigious rapidity on their almost imperceptible domain. From tliis blade of grass you may draw inferences and conclusions respecting the vegetation of the entire globe. The fresh waters which flow upon the surface of the earth are also the receptacle of a prodigious quantity of organic existence. Without mentioning the plants, and the animals which live in the waters of the rivers and streams, and are visible to the naked eye, if you take a drop of water from a pool, and place it under the microscope, you will see that it is filled with living beings, who, though so small that they escape our unassisted vision, are none the less active, and all hold their appointed place in the economy of nature. We know how thickly peopled with inhabitants is the great drop ; but, without speaking of beings visible to all, the fishes, the Crustacea, and the zoophytes, or of the marine plants, creatures, invisible except under microscopical examination, abound to such an extent in sea water, that one single drop of it, so ex- amined, displays innumerable quantities of these microscopic animals and plants. From this drop of water you may draw inferences and conclusions respecting the entire mass of waters which occupy the basins of the seas, and form three-fourths of the surface of our globe. In order that some conception may be reached of the enormous numbers of the living beings contained in the seas now, and formerly, we may fitly recall in this place a fact well known to geologists. It is, that all building stone, all the 2 18 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. calcareous earth of which chalk hills and banks are formed, are entirely composed of the pulverized and agglomerated remains of the shells of mollusca, visible or microscopic, which, in the most remote ages of the existence of the globe, peopled the basin of the seas. The whole of this forma- tion is composed of the accumulation of shells. If life has been lavished with such profusion in the waters during the geological periods, it must be equally lavished now, in almost similar ways, because the actual conditions of nature do not differ from what they were in the primitive ages of the globe. The air which surrounds us is, like the earth and the seas, a vast receptacle of living creatures. We see only a few animals cleaving the aerial space, but the savant, who looks beyond the simple appearance of things, discovers myriads of existences in the air. The air seems to us very pure, very transparent, but only because it is not sufficiently illumined by light to enable us to perceive the particles, or foreign bodies, which are floating about in it. When we allow one ray of daylight to penetrate into a closed room, one thread of solar light, we can discern a luminous streak flung across the chamber, while the remaining portion is still in darkness. We all know that, thanks to the powerful light, and its contrast with the surrounding obscurity, the luminous streak is seen to be filled with light, slender floating bodies, rising, descending, fluttering with the motion of the air. That which is perceptible in the atmosphere of a brightly-lighted room is necessarily existent in the entire THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 19 atmosphere surrounding our globe, so that the air is every- where filled with these specks of dust. Of what are these specks of dust formed? Almost en- tirely of living creatures, of the germs of microscopic plants (cryptogamia), or of the eggs of inferior animals (zoophytes). So-called spontaneous generation, so largely discussed of late in France and other countries, is merely due to these organic germs which fill the atmosphere, and which, falling into the water, or into the infusions of plants, give birth to forms of vegetation, which have been imputed to spontaneous genera- tion ; that is to say, to a creation without a germ, a generation without a cause, which is an error. Every living thing has parents, which are always discoverable by science and atten- tion. Those animals and plants which are called parasites fur- nish another example of the extraordinary profusion with which life is distributed over the earth. Animals and plants which live on other animals or on other plants, and which feed on the substance of their involuntary entertainers, are called parasites. Each of the mammals has its parasites, such as fleas, lice, &c, and man has the flea, the louse, and the bug. So each vegetable has its parasite. The oak gives shelter and food to lichens and various cryptogamia, and even on its roots we find particular kinds of cryptogamia, such as the truffle. Thus we see that life plants itself, grafts itself upon life. But, more than this, these parasites in their turn have their smaller parasites, so minute as only to be microscopically 2—2 20 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. discerned. Take a lichen off an oak and examine it with a magnifying glass, and also examine a flea, or a nit, and you will behold the curious spectacle of a parasite attached to another parasitical creature, and living upon its substance. From the great vegetable the alimentary substance passes to the visible parasite, and from that to the invisible. In this little space life is superposed and concentrated. Such a fact proves with what prodigious abundance life is spread over our globe. Thus, then, we see that the surface of the globe, the fresh waters, and the salt seas, and, finally, the atmosphere, are in- habited by immense numbers of living beings. Life abounds on the earth, in the waters, and in the air. Our globe is like an immense vase, in which life is accumulated, pressed down, and running over. Eut, the earth, the air, and the waters are not the only places at the command of nature. Above the atmosphere there extends another region, with which astronomers and physicists are acquainted, and which they call ether or plane- tary ether. The atmosphere which surrounds our globe, and is drawn with it in its course through space, as it is drawn with it in its rotation upon its own axis, is not very high. It does not extend beyond thirty or forty leagues, and it diminishes in substance in proportion to its elevation above the earth. At three or four leagues in height the air is so rarefied that it becomes impossible for men or animals to breathe it. In aerostatic ascents it is impossible to go beyond seven or eight kilometres, because at that height^the air loses so much THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 21 density, is so highly rarefied, that it no longer serves for purposes of respiration, nor counterbalances the effect of the interior pressure of the body on the exterior. After that height, the density of the air decreases more and more, until there is absolutely no air. At that point begins the fluid which astronomers and physicists call ether. This ether is a true fluid, a gas, analogous to the air we breathe, but infinitely more rarefied and lighter than air. The existence of the planetary ether cannot be disputed, since astronomers take account of its resistance in calculating the speed of heavenly bodies, just as they take account of the resistance of the air in calculating the motions of bodies traversing our atmosphere. Ether is, then, the fluid which succeeds to atmospheric air. It is spread, not only around the earth, but around the other planets. More than this, it exists throughout all space, it occupies the intervals between the planets. It is, in fact, in ether that the planets, which, with their satellites, compose our solar world, revolve. The comets, too, in their immense journeys through space pass through ether. The uneducated mind is disposed to believe that .above the air which surrounds the terrestrial globe, there is nothing more, that all is void. But no void exists anywhere in nature. Space is always occupied by something, whether it be by earth, by water, by atmospheric air, or, finally, by -planetary ether. It has just been said that life abounds upon the globe, swarms upon the earth, clusters in the air and in the waters. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. Is the ethereal fluid which succeeds to our atmosphere, and which fills space, equally inhabited by living beings 1 This is a question which no savant has ever yet asked himself. In our opinion, it would be very surprising that life, which we may say overflows in the waters and in the air, should be absolutely wanting in the fluid which is contiguous to the air. Everything, then, indicates that the ether is inhabited. But who are the beings who dwell in the planetary ether 1 We believe that they are those superhuman beings, whom we consider to be resuscitated men, endowed with every kind of moral perfection. The chemical composition of planetary ether is not known. Astronomical phenomena have taught us its existence, but not its components. We believe it may safely be asserted that the ether does not contain oxygen. In fact, oxygen is the fundamental element of atmospheric air ; and as, in pro- portion as they ascend into that air, the respiration of men and animals becomes more and more difficult, it is, in our opinion, presumable, that this difficulty is caused by the approach of a description of gas impossible to breathe ; and which, therefore, excludes human life from the superior regions of the air. A man, rising in a balloon towards the ether, is like a fish half drawn out of the water, half exposed to the air. The fish is breathless and palpitating in a place which is fatal to him ; thus it is with man, when he rises by degrees through our nether atmosphere, and draws near to the ether. It seems to us that we may, at once, conclude, from this, that there is no oxygen in planetary ether. THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 23 It seems not unlikely that the planetary ether may be com- posed of hydrogen gas, excessively rarefied, that is to say, of an extremely light gas, still further rarefied, and rendered infinitely more subtle by the absence of all pressure. We are induced to conclude that the ether in which the planets revolve is hydrogen, because, from observations made of late years during the solar total eclipses, it has been ascertained that the sun is surrounded by burning hydrogen gas. In the language of every nation, the space which lies beyond our atmosphere is called by the same name, that of heaven. It is, then, in the universally recognized heaven that we place our superhuman beings. In this we are in accord with popular belief and prejudice, and we recognize this argument with satisfaction. These prejudices, these presenti- ments are frequently the outcome of the wisdom and the observation of an infinite number of generations of men. A tradition which has a uniform and universal existence, has all the weight of scientific testimony. In accordance with this phrase, and the immemorial tradi- tion, the most widely-spread modern religions, Christianity, Buddhism, and Mahometanism, assign heaven as the sojourn of the elect of God. Thus, we find science, tradition, and religion at one on this point ; and that it was a scientific truth which found utterance by the lips of the priest who said to the martyred king upon the scaffold : " Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven." CHAPTEE THE EOUETH. DO ALL MEN, WITHOUT DISTINCTION, PASS, AFTER DEATH, INTO THE CONDITION OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING 1 — RE-INCARNA- TION OF IMPENITENT SOULS. RE-INCARNATION OF CHILDREN WHO HAVE DIED IN INFANCY. pEATH is not a termination, it is a change. We do not die ; we experience a metamorphosis. The fall of the curtain of death is not the catastrophe, it is only a deeply moving scene in the drama of human destiny. The agony is not the pre- lude to annihilation, it is only the obligatory suffering which, throughout all nature, accompanies every change. Every one knows that the insect world, the cold and motionless chry- salis, rends itself asunder that the brilliant butterfly may come forth. If you examine the butterfly a moment after it has left its temporary tomb, you will find it trembling and panting with the pain of bursting through the trammels which had held it. It needs to rest, to calm itself, and to collect its strength before it soars away into the air which it is destined to traverse. This is a symbol of our death agony. In order that we may cast aside the material covering which we leave behind us here below, and rise to the unknown TEE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. 2* spheres which await us beyond the tomb, Ave must suffer.. We suffer, in the body, from physical pain, and in the soul, from the anguish with which we contemplate our approaching destiny, wrapped, as it is, in the most appalling darkness. But here a difficulty presents itself. Do all men, without distinction, pass into the condition of the superhuman being 1 An infinite range of qualities and of moral perversion is an attribute of humanity. To it belong good and evil, the honest man and the criminal. Let us inhabit whatsoever spot of earth we may, let the culture of our minds be what it may, whether we be savages or civilized men, learned or ignorant, whether we contemplate contemporary genera- tions or those of far distant times, there exists one universal morality, one law of absolute equity. Everywhere, in all times, it has been a bad action to kill one's neighbour, to take another's goods, to ill-treat one's children, to be ungrateful to parents, to live on bad terms with one's wife, to conspire against the liberty of others, to lie, and to commit suicide.. From one end of the earth to the other, these actions have been esteemed evil. There exists, therefore, in the sphere of nature, and in the absolute meaning of the words, good souls and perverse souls- Must we believe that both the good and the wicked are called, without distinction, to undergo the change of nature which elevates us to the condition of superhuman beings 1 Are both classes admitted, upon the same footing, to the feli- city of the new life,. which is reserved for us beyond the tomb? Our conscience, that exquisitely accurate sentiment THE DAY AFTER DEATH. which dwells within us, and which never deceives, tells us that this could not be. But how is the separation of the good grain from the tares to be effected by natural forces only 1 How is the process of sorting, in itself extremely difficult to explain, when one takes into account the complication of the natural question by the mingling of moral and physical influences, to be carried out 1 "We can only state our individual sentiment, not in the dog- matic sense of imposing it on any one, but simply as a testi- mony to be registered. It seems to us that the human soul, in order to rise to the ethereal spaces, needs to have acquired that last degree of perfection which sets it free from every besetting weight; that it must be subtle, light, purified, beautiful, and that only under such conditions can it quit the earth and soar towards the heavens. To our fancy, the human soul is like a celes- tial aerostat, who flies towards the sublimest heights with swift strength, because it is free from all impurity. But the soul of a perverse, wicked, vile, gross, base, cowardly man has not been purified, perfected, or lightened. It is weighed down by evil passions and gross appetites, which he has not sought to repress, but has, on the contrary, cultivated. It cannot rise to the celestial heights, it is constrained to dwell upon our melancholy and miserable earth. We believe that the wicked and impenitent man is not called to the immediate enjoyment of the blessed life of the ethereal regions. His soul remains here below, to re-com- mence life a second time. Let us remark, at once, that he TEE DAY AFTER DEATH, re-commences this life without preserving any recollection of his previous existence. It will be objected to this, that to be born again without retaining any remembrance of a past life, would be to fall into the nothingness to which we are condemned by the materialists. In fact, it is identity which constitutes the resurrection ; and without memory there is no identity. The individual, therefore, as an individual, would fall into nothing- ness if he were born again without memory. This remark is just. If, after our resurrection to the state of superhuman beings, we were to lose, absolutely and irre- parably, all remembrance of our former life, we should be, indeed, the prey of nothingness. But, let us hasten to add, that this loss of memory is of but short duration. Oblivion of our past life is only a temporary condition of our new exis- tence, a sort of punishment. The remembrance of his first terrestrial life will return to each individual, when, by per- fecting processes meet for the needs of his soul, he shall have merited the attainment of the condition of a superhuman being. Then he shall recall the evil actions of his first existence, or of his numerous existences, if it has been his lot to have several probations, and the thought of those evil deeds will still be his chastisement, even in the blissful abode to which he shall at length have attained. To such persons as refuse assent to these views, we would remark that the question of rewards and punishments after death is the rock upon which all religions and all philoso- phers have split. The explanation of the- punishment of the 28 TEE DA Y AFTER BE A TE. wicked which we offer, is at least preferable to the hell of the Christian creed. A return to a second terrestrial life is a less cruel, a more reasonable, and a more just punishment than condemnation to eternal torment. In the one case the penalty is in proportion to the sin. It is equitable and indulgent, like the chastisement of a father. It is not eternal punish- ment for a sin of short duration, it is a merciful form of justice, which places beside the penalty the means of freedom from the sin. It does not shut out all return to good by a condemnation without appeal to all eternity, it leaves to man the possibility of retracing the road to happiness from which his passions have led him astray, and of recovering, by de- serving them, the blessings which he has forfeited. Thus, in our opinion, if the human soul, during its sojourn here below, instead of perfecting, purifying, and ennobling itself, has lost its strength, and its primitive qualities, — if, in other words, it has been misused by a perverse, gross, unculti- vated, mean, and wicked individual, — then, in that case, it will not quit the earth. After the death of that individual, the soul will tenant a new human body, losing all recollection of its previous existence. In this second incarnation the im- perfect and earth-laden soul, deprived of all noble faculties and bereft of memory, will have to re-commence its moral education. This man, born again as an infant, will recom- mence his existence with the same uncultivated and feeble soul which he possessed at the moment of his death. These re-incarnations in a human body may be numerous. They must repeat themselves until the faculties of the soul THE DA Y AFTER LEA TIL 29 are sufficiently developed, or until its instincts are sufficiently ameliorated and perfected for the man to be raised above the general level of our species. Then only the soul, purified and lightened of all its imperfections, can quit the earth, and after the death of the flesh soar into space, and pass into the new organism which succeeds that of man in the hierarchy of nature. We must add, here, that the fate of children who die young, either while at the breast or only a few months old, before the soul has undergone any development, is analogous. Their souls pass into the bodies of other children, and re-commence a novel existence. CHAPTEE THE FIFTH. WHAT ARE THE ATTRIBUTES OP THE SUPERHUMAN BEING? THE PHYSICAL FORM, SENSES, DEGREE OF INTELLIGENCE, AND FACULTIES OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING. >OT WITHSTANDING the daring of such an at- tempt, let us now endeavour to form some idea of the radiant creatures which float in the mys- terious and sublime regions of that empyrean which hides them from our view. Let us try to discern the attributes, form, and qualities of the superhuman being. Like the human, the superhuman being possesses the three elements of the aggregate, the body, the soul, and the life. In order to gain some idea of him, we must examine each of these three elements separately. The Body of the Superhuman Being. — We might perhaps conceive a superhuman being without a body ; we might ima- gine that the soul, purely spiritual, constitutes the blessed dweller in ethereal space. But it is not thus that we do con- ceive him. Absolute immateriality appears to us to apply only to a being much more elevated in the moral hierarchy than the superhuman one — a being' of whom w T e shall speak hereafter. We believe that the inhabitant of the ethereal spaces has a body ; that the soul, leaving its terrestrial dwell- THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 3 1 ing, incarnates itself in a body, as it did here below. But tbis body must be provided with qualities infinitely superior to those which belong to the human body. First, let us in- quire what the form of this body may be. The painters of the Eenaissance, whom modern artists follow in this respect, give to the angel the form of a young and handsome man, furnished with white wings, which bear him through the air on his celestial missions. This image is both coarse and poetic. It is poetic because it responds to the idea which we have of the radiant creature who dwells in ethereal space ; and it is coarse; because it gives to a being far superior to- man the physical attributes of man, which is inadmissible. Painters who, like Eaphael, represent the angel by the head of a child, with wings, give a far more profound expres- sion to the same thought. By suppressing the larger portion of the body, and reducing the seraphic being to the head, the seat of intelligence, they indicate that in the angel of the Christian belief the spiritual dominates, in immense propor- tion, over the material part. We shall not be expected to delineate the form of the dwellers in the realms of ether. We can only say, that, as ether is an excessively subtle and rarefied fluid, it necessarily follows that the superhuman being who is to float and fly in its light masses, must be wonderfully light, must be composed of extraordinary subtle substances. A slight material tissue, animated by life, a vaporous, diaphanous drapery of living matter, such do we represent the superhuman being to our fancy. 32 u THE BAY AFTER DEATH, How is this body supported % Does it need food for its maintenance, like the bodies of men and of animals ? We may reply with confidence that food — that tyrannous obliga- tion of the human and the animal species — is spared to the inhabitants of the planetary ether. Their bodies must be supported and refreshed by mere respiration of the fluid in which they exist. Let us consider the immense space occupied in the lives of animals by their need of alimentation. Many animals, ♦especially those which live in the water, have an incessant need of food. They must eat always, without intermission, or they die of inanition. Among superior animals, the ne- cessity for eating and drinking is less imperious, because the respiratory function comes to their aid, bringing into the body, by the absorption of oxygen and a small proportion of azote, a certain amount of reparative element, as a supplement to alimentary substances. Man profits largely by this advan- tage. Our respiration is a function of the highest importance, and it bears a great share in the reparation of all our organs. The oxygen which our blood borrows from the air in breath- ing, contributes largely to our nutrition. The respiratory func- tion in birds is very active, and the organs which exercise it are largely developed, and in their nutrition also oxygen counts largely, and takes the place of a certain quantity of food. It is our belief that the respiration of the ether in which ne lives, suffices for the support of the material body of the superhuman being, and that the necessity for eating and drinking has no place in his existence. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 33 I do not know whether my reader forms an exact concep- tion of the consequences which would result from the theory, that the superhuman beings whom we are contemplating are exempted from all need of food. Those consequences will be most readily comprehended, if we consider that it is the press- ing obligation of procuring food which renders the lives of animals so miserable. Forced incessantly to seek their sub- sistence, animals are entirely given up to this grovelling occu- pation ; thence come their passions, their quarrels, and their sufferings. It is much the same in the case of man, though in a less degree. The necessity for providing for the aliment of every day, the obligation of earning his daily bread — as the popular phrase has it — is the great cause of the labours and the sufferings of the human species. Supposing that man could live, develop himself, and sustain his life without eat- ing — that the mere respiration of air would supply the waste of his organs — what a revolution would be effected in human society. Hateful passions, wars, and rivalries would disap- pear from the earth. The golden age, dreamed of by the poets, would be the certain consequence of such an organic disposition. This blessing of nature, refused to man, assuredly belongs to the superhuman being. We may conclude also that the evil passions, which are a sad attribute of our species, would be unknown in the home of these privileged creatures. Ee- leased from the toil of seeking their food, living and repairing their functions by the mere effect of respiration — an involun- tary and unconscious act (as the circulation of the blood and 3 34 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. absorption are unconscious acts in men and animals) — the in- habitants of the ethereal spaces must be able to abandon themselves exclusively to impressions of unmixed happiness and serenity. The forces of our body become rapidly exhausted ; we can- not exercise our functions for a certain time without experi- encing fatigue. In order to transport ourselves from one place to another, to carry burthens, to go up or down any height, to walk, we are obliged to expend these forces, and lassitude immediately ensues. We cannot exercise the faculty of thought for more than a certain time. At the end of a short period attention fails, and thought is suspended. In short, our corporeal machine, beautifully ordered, is sub- ject to a thousand derangements, which we call diseases. From the sense of fatigue, from the continual menace of illness by organic derangement, the dwellers in the ether are free. Rest is not for them, as for us, a necessity ensuing on exercise. The body of the superhuman being, inaccessible to fatigue, does not need repose. Unembarrassed by the me- chanism of a complicated machine, it subsists and sustains itself by the unaided force of the life which animates it. Its sole physiological function, probably, is the inhalation of ether, a function which, it is easy to conceive, may be exer- cised without the aid of numerous organs, if we see a whole class of animals — the Batrachian — for whose respiration the bare and simple skin suffices. If we admit, that the only function which the superhuman being has to exercise is that of respiration, the extreme sim- THE DAY AFTER DEATH. plicity of his body will be easily understood. The numerous and complicated organs and apparatus which exist in the bodies of men and animals, have for their object the exercise of the functions of nutrition and reproduction. These func- tions being suppressed in the creature whom we are consider- ing, his body must be proportionably lightened. Everything is reduced to respiration, and the preservation and mainte- nance of the faculties of the soul ; all is in harmony with those ends. We admire, with good reason, the wise mechan- ism of the bodies of men and animals ; but, if human anatomy reveals prodigies in our structure, marvellous provision in securing the preservation of the individual and his reproduc- tion, what infinitely greater marvels would, if we were but permitted to study it, be revealed by the organization of the body of the superhuman being, in which everything is calcu- lated to secure the maintenance and the perfection of the soul. With what astonishment should we learn the use and the purpose of the different parts of that glorious body, discover the relations of resemblance or of origin between the living economy of the human, and the living economy of the super- human, being, and divine the relations which might exist be- tween the organs of the superhuman being and those which he should assume in another life, still superior, in which he should be the same being, again resuscitated in new glory and fuller perfection ! The special organization of the being whom we are describ- ing would give him the power of transporting himself in a very short space of time from one place to another, and of 3—2 36 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. traversing great distances with, extraordinary rapidity. We are but simple human beings, and yet by thought we devour space, and travel, in a twinkling, from one end of the globe to another ; may we not therefore believe that the bodies of superhuman beings, in whom the spiritual principle is domi- nant, are endowed with the privilege of passing from one point in space to another, with a rapidity which the speed of electricity enables us to measure ? The superhuman being, who does not require to eat or drink, or rest, who is always active, and incessantly sensible, has no need of sleep. Sleep is no more necessary for the reparation of his forces, than food for their creation. We know that man is deprived of one third of his existence, by the imperious necessity for sleep. A man who dies at thirty years of age, has in reality lived for twenty only; he has slept all the rest of the time ! What a poor notion this conveys of the condition of man ! Whence arises this need of sleep 1 It arises from the fact that our forces, impaired by their exer- cise, require inaction and motionlessness for their repair — this is attained in the kind of temporary death produced by the suspension of the greater portion of the vital action, in sleep. During sleep, man prepares and stores up the forces which he will require to expend during the ensuing period. He devotes the night to this physical reparation, as much in obedience to what he observes in all the other portions of creation, as in obedience to the customs of civilization. But it is probable that all the forces of the superhuman being are inexhaustible, and that they do not require sleep, which is one of the hardest TEE DA Y AFTER DEA TIL 37 conditions of human existence. Everything leads us to be- lieve that perpetual wakefulness is the permanent state of the superhuman being, and that the word " sleep" would have no meaning for him. Darkness must be equally unknown to all those beings who float in the ethereal spaces. Our night and day are produced alternatively by the rotation of the earth upon her axis, a rotation which hides the sun from her view during one half of her revolution. This rotatory motion draws our atmosphere with it, but its influence extends no further, the ether which surmounts our atmosphere is not subject to it. That fluid mass remains motionless, while the earth and its atmosphere turn upon their axis. The superhuman beings, who, according to our ideas, inhabit the planetary ether, are not drawn into this motion. They behold the earth revolv- ing beneath them, but, being placed outside its movements, they never lose sight of the radiant sun-star. Night, we repeat, is an accidental phenomenon, which be- longs to the planets only, because they have a hemisphere now illumined, and then not illumined by the sun ; but night is unknown to the remainder of the universe. The superhuman beings, who people the regions far above the planets, never lose sight of the sun, and their happy days pass in the midst of an ocean of light. Let us pass on to the consideration of the senses which these superhuman beings probably possess, pre- mising : 1. That the superhuman being must be endowed with the 38 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. same senses which we possess, but that those senses are infi- nitely more acute and exquisite than ours. 2. That he must possess special senses, unknown to us. What are the new senses enjoyed by the superhuman being ? It would be impossible to return a satisfactory reply to this question. We have no knowledge of any other senses than those with which we ourselves are endowed, and no amount of genius could enable any man to divine the object of a sense denied to him by nature. Try to give a man born blind an idea of the colour, red ; and he will answer : " Yes, I understand ! It is piercing, like the sound of a trumpet !" Try to give a man born deaf an idea of the sound of the harp, and he will answer : " Yes ! It is gentle and tender, like the green grass of the fields !" Let us renounce, once for all, any attempt to define the senses with which nature endows the beings who people the ethereal plains; these senses belong to objects and ideas the mere notion of which is forbidden to us. There is a well-known story of a man born blind, upon whom the famous surgeon Childesen operated. Having re- covered his sight, the patient was a long time learning the use of his eyes ; he was obliged to educate those organs, step by step, and by slow degrees to form his intelligence. Equally well known is Condillac's beautiful fiction, in which he imagines a man born into the world without the senses of sight, speech, and hearing, and who is, therefore, destitute of ideas. By degrees, he is endowed with each of these senses, and the philosopher thus composes, bit by bit, a soul which THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 39 feels, and a mind which thinks. This philosophical idea has been greatly admired. Like the man-statue of Condillac, we are only, while here below, imperfect statues, endowed with but a small number of senses. When, however, we shall have reached the superior regions destined to our ennobled condition, we shall be put in possession of new senses, such as our xeason dimly perceives, and our hearts long for. "We caunot, as we have previously said, divine what the new senses which shall be granted to the superhuman being are to be, because they belong to objects and ideas of which we are ignorant, and to forms which are exclusively proper to worlds at present hidden from our eyes. The kingdom of the planetary ether has its geography, its powers, its passions, and its laws ; and the new senses of men, resuscitated to that glorious existence, will be exercised upon those objects. The only thing which we can safely prognosticate is that all the senses which we now possess will then exist in their full perfection — sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. It is allowable to deduce this process of future perfection by rea- soning from the extraordinary development of certain senses in the case of animals. The sense of smell is developed in the hunting dog to a degree which surpasses our imagination. How can we under- stand this quite ordinary fact, that the dog perceives the scent which has emanated from a hare or a partridge which has passed by the place at which he is smelling many hours previously, and is now several leagues away,! The perfection of sight in the eagle and other birds of prey astonishes us 40 TEE DA Y AFTER DEATH. equally. These birds, floating at an immense height, see their prey upon the earth, creatures much smaller than them- selves, and descend upon them without deviating from the perpendicular line of their flight. The bat, accidentally de- prived of sight, supplies this deficiency so well by the sense of touch, by means of his membranous wings, that he guides himself through the air, and finds his way to the interior of human dwellings, as unerringly as if he had the full use of his eyesight. To such a degree of exquisite sensibility has the sense of hearing attained among native Indian tribes, that a man, laying his ear against the earth, will detect the tread of an enemy at the distance of a league. Among mu- sicians, also, how must the sense of hearing be cultivated by a man, who, partly by a natural gift, and partly T)y practice, comes to be able to detect the most minute difference in the tone of one instrument among fifty different kinds, all played at once, in an orchestra. Supposing that the senses of the superhuman being should have acquired the degree of extra- ordinary activity which is common to animals, and, in certain cases, to man, we can form some estimate of the power and extent of such a sensorial system. We can also arrive at some idea of the perfection of the senses attained by resuscitated man, by considering the ac- cession of power which our own senses may receive by the assistance of science and art. Before the invention of the microscope, no one ever imagined that the eye could pene- trate the mysteries of that world in miniature well named the Infinitely Little, until then absolutely unknown ; no one had TEE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 41 ever divined, for instance, that in one drop pf water might be seen myriads of living beings. These beings have existed throughout all time, but man has been able to contemplate them for only two centuries. Our visual power over micro- scopic beings was until then unknown. The least enlightened, the most careless student of this day, regards with indiffer- ence things which Aristotle, Hippocrates, Pliny, Galienus, Albertus Magnus, and Eoger Bacon could not have contem- plated, or even suspected to exist. The discovery of the telescope, in the days of Kepler and Galileo, hurled back the boundaries of the human intellect and threw open to its investigation a domain hitherto sealed from its sight. There, where Hipparchus and Ptolemy had seen nothing, Galileo, Huyghens, Kepler, made, in a few nights, by the aid of the telescope, discoveries of hitherto unsuspected celestial splen- dour. The satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, a multitude of new stars, the phases of Yenus, and, at a later period, the discovery of new planets only to be seen by the telescope, the observation of spots on the sun, and the revolution of the nebulae into collections of stars, were the almost immediate consequences of the invention of the telescope. Thus we learned that, by the aid of art, the human eye can penetrate the most distant regions of heaven. Let us now suppose all the powers of the telescope and all those of the microscope concentrated in the sense of vision ; that is to say, that in addition to all objects placed at ordi- nary distances, it can discern all microscopic objects, and at the same time all the celestial bodies invisible to the naked 42 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. eye, and you will have an idea of what the sense of sight is, in the superhuman being. There is no occasion to dwell upon the extraordinary propor- tions which our accumulated knowledge would assume, if our sight could enjoy those extraordinary powers of extension, if it could perform simultaneously the functions of the telescope and the microscope. Science would march forward with the tread of a giant. What enormous progress would be made by chemistry if our eyes could penetrate into the interior of all bodies, be- holding their molecules, estimating their relative volume, their arrangement, and the form and colour of their atoms. A glance would reveal to us secrets of chemical solutions such as the genius of a Lavoisier could not penetrate. Physics would contain no further mysteries for us, for we should know, by simply using our eyes, everything which we are now painfully striving to divine by reason, and by the aid of difficult and uncertain experiments. We should see why and how bodies are warmed and acquire electricity. We should have the explanation of the mathematical laws in obedience to which the physical forces, light, heat, and mag- netism are exercised. Our eyes would suffice for the solution of those physical and mechanical problems before which the genius of such men as Newton, Malus, Ampere, and Gay- Lussac stands still. We do not doubt that the superhuman being is en- dowed with sight thus marvellously perfect. We might carry this argument out in detail, applying it to all the other senses, but enough has been said to illustrate the THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 43 exaltation and perfecting of those senses which man possesses only in their rudiments, in the favoured dwellers in a supe- rior sphere. We will only add, that the result of such a degree of perfection of the senses is, that the superhuman being can move with a rapidity, of which light and electricity only can give us some notion, that is to say, that these per- fected senses can he used at great distances, and with great promptitude. If the entire body of the superhuman being can transport itself with wonderful rapidity from one place to another, as we have already admitted, his senses can also act from, and at great distances. We do not think we can err in comparing the actions of the dwellers in the invisible world which we presume to investigate, with the phenomena of light and electricity. Does sex exist in the superhuman being % Assuredly not. The Christian religion defines its absence in the angel. The angel of the Christian creeds has the features of either man or woman, the mild face of a youth, or the pathetic beauty of a girl. Sex is suppressed, the individual is androgynous. Thus, too, it must be in the case of the superhuman being. The reciprocal affection which reigns among the blessed dwellers in the ether does not require diversity of sex. The affections undergo a purifying process, according as they are elevated, from those of the animals to those of man. The animals have but little of the sentiment of friendship. Love, with its material impulses, is almost all they know. The sentiments of affection possessed by animals, apart from their carnal instincts, reduce themselves to those of maternity, 44 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. which are strong and sincere, but of short duration. Their young are the objects of attentive care and caresses while their helplessness demands such aid, but as soon as they can live on their own resources they are abandoned by the mothers, who no longer even recognize them. There is no constant, lasting affection in animals, except the sentiment of love, which is caused by their sexual necessities. The senti- ments of affection entertained by man are numerous, and fre- quently noble and pure. "We love our mothers and our sons as long as our hearts beat in our breasts. We love our brothers, our sisters, and our relations with a sentiment in which there is nothing carnal, and which is deeply rooted in the soul. If love is often inseparably attached to physical desires, it can, nevertheless, shake itself free from them, and a disinterested friendship frequently survives the extinction of sensual feeling. In this respect we are far superior to the animals. Let us go a step further, even to the supernatural being, the next link in the chain to ourselves, and we shall find the sentiment of affection entirely detached from the con- sideration of sex. In that sublime and blessed realm which they inhabit, superhuman beings are all of the same organic type. They need not, in order to love one another, to belong to two opposite sexes, or different groups of organization : their tenderness is the result of the serenity of the infinite purity of souls, of the sympathy evoked by common perfections. On the other hand, the ethereal region which awaits us is the scene of the reunion of those who have loved one another in this world. There the father will find the son, and the THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 45 mother will rejoin the daughter, torn from each by death, there husbands and wives will meet, and the separation of friends come to an end. But, under their new form, in the perfected body wherein their regenerated souls shall dwell, there is no more sex, and love is for all an ideal, noble, and exquisitely pure sentiment. How blind and self-interested is love here below ! How narrow and egotistical a sentiment is friendship. It cannot enlarge itself without pain and difficulty, to embrace the totality of the human kind. Why is it so hard for it to lift itself up to the sublime Creator of the worlds ? Why do we not love God as we love our neighbours 1 In the upper world it will be far otherwise. Our faculty of loving, limited here by fleshly bonds, will be set free there, from every sensual restraint. Man, resuscitated to glory, will love his wife as he loves his children, his friends, and his brethren. His affec- tions will never more be degraded by his senses. The happi- ness which this purified sentiment, constantly received from ever living sources, will afford him, will suffice to fill and satisfy his soul. His power of loving will be extended to all nature, it will be spread abroad over the most elevated spheres ; his soul will be exalted by the sublime sensations of this universal love, this wide sympathy with the whole creation. True charity, comprehending the entire universe, will burn in all hearts. The love of God will rule over all these multiplied affections, from the height of His infinite power, and the fervour of our sentiments of love for our kind will be crowned by our sublime adoration of the Creator of all. 46 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. But, it will be said, if superhuman beings are of no sex, bow are they to be reproduced, bow is the species to be kept up, and multiplied 1 There will be no need of reproduction, the species of the superhuman being will not require to be maintained, or multiplied. The reproduction, the preser na- tion of his species is the business of the inhabitants of the inferior worlds, of the earth and the planets. Such is their lot, such the task imposed upon them by nature. But repro- duction is unknown and unnecessary to the fortunate beings who dwell in the planetary ether. From the earth and the other planets fresh and ever fresh phalanxes are despatched to them. The battalions of the elect are recruited by arrivals from the lower worlds. Below is the multiplication of indi- viduals ; above is the sojourn of blessed beings, who have no need of maintaining their species, because the laws of their destiny differ from those which rule the lot of terrestrial man. Eeproduction is the task of inferior worlds, permanence is the inheritance of the world above. The Soul of the Superhuman Being. In an excellent volume of popular science, the Universe, by Dr. Pouchet, director of the Museum of Natural History at Eouen, we find a striking definition. Dr. Pouchet informs us that a German naturalist, Bremser, lays down, as a principle, that, in man, matter and spirit exist in almost equal parts ; that is, to say, that man is half spirit and half matter. Bremser, in advancing this pro- position, takes his stand upon the fact that, in man, it is sometimes spirit which governs and subdues matter, and THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 47 sometimes matter which dictates laws to spirit, with equal power arid success on the side of each.* Admitting, with the German philosopher, that this relation is true, we would say, that, while in man the proportion of the soul is fifty in one hundred, this proportion, in the super- human being, is undoubtedly from eighty to eighty-five in one hundred. Of course we only employ this valuation to make our idea comprehensible, and give these figures only to prove that facts in the intellectual order may be submitted * " We must consider," says Bremser, " that man is not a spirit, but only a spirit limited, in different ways, by matter. In a word, .man is not a god, but, notwithstanding the captivity of his spirit in his corporality, it retains sufficient freedom to enable him to perceive that he is governed by a spirit more exalted than his own, that is to say, by a God. "It is to be presumed, in the supposition that there will be a new creation, that beings far more perfect than those produced by preceding creations will see the light. In the composition of man, spirit holds to matter the proportion of fifty to fifty, with slight occasional differences, because it is now matter, and again spirit which predominates. In a subsequent creation, should that which has formed man not prove to be the last, there will apparently be organizations in which spirit will act more freely, and be in the proportion of seventy-five to twenty-five. " It results from this consideration that man, as such, was formed at the most passive epoch of the existence of our earth. Man is a wretched intermediary between animal and angel, he aspires to elevated knowledge, and he cannot attain to it ; though our modern philosophers sometimes think so, it is really impos- sible. Man wishes to make out the primary cause of all that exists, but he cannot get at it. With less intellectual faculty, he would not have had the presumption even to desire to know these causes ; and, if he were more richly endowed, they would have been clear to him."— L'Univers, pp. 760-761. 48 TEE DA Y AFTER DEATH. to weight, measure, and comparison, all which the world sup- poses to be impossible. The soul has a preponderating share in the superhuman being. That is what we need to know, and to remember. Let us now endeavour to analyze the soul of the superhuman being, as we have analyzed his senses. If the senses of the superhuman being are numerous and •exquisitely acute, the faculties of his soul, which are intimately allied to the exercise of the senses, and depend on their per- fection, must also be singularly active and powerful. We know that in men the faculties of the soul are feeble and limited. We have so short a time to pass upon the earth, that very powerful faculties would be of no use to us ; they would not have time to be developed, or efficaciously em- ployed. But everything is magnified and elevated in the superior world which awaits us ; consequently the faculties of the thinking creature who inhabits the realms on high must ~be numerous and of vast extent. We must repeat, concerning the faculties of the soul of the superhuman being, what we have just said concerning his senses. The superhuman being must be provided with new faculties, and also those faculties which he has brought with him from the earth must be singularly perfected. To deter- mine the nature and the object of the new faculties bestowed upon the superhuman being would be impossible, because those faculties belong to the superior world which is unknown to us; they respond to moral wants of which we have no conception. Let us, therefore, renounce all idea of discover- THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 43 ing the nature of those new faculties, and content ourselves with examining the degree of perfection which may be at- tained by those faculties of the soul which actually belong to man. Attention, thought, reason, will, and judgment, all which render us what we are, must acquire special force and sure- ness in the superhuman being. La Bruyere has said that there is nothing more rare in this world than the spirit of discern- ment ; which means that judgment and good sense are ex- cessively rare. When we have lived for a while among men, we recognize how thoroughly well founded the saying is. We may safely assert, without being over-misanthropical, that among a hundred men there will be not more than one or two possessed of sound judgment. In the majority of instances, ignorance, prejudices, and passion contend with judgment, so that, as La Bruyere says, good sense is much more rare than pearls and diamonds. This great and precious faculty of judgment, in which the majority of human beings are de- ficient, cannot be wanting in the inhabitants of the other world; there it must be the universal rule, here it is the exception. The most precious of all faculties, enabling us to form large and lofty ideas and comparisons, whose outcome is know- ledge, is memory. But how imperfect, changeable, weak, and, one may say, sickly, is our memory ! It is absolutely mute respecting the whole period which preceded our birth, and during which, nevertheless, we existed. It is also as silent respecting all that concerns the early portion of our 4 50 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. life. We retain no recollection of the care which was lavished upon our childhood. A child who loses its mother in infancy has never known a mother; for it, the mother has never existed. If those who saw us in the cradle did not recount our actions during that period, we should be entirely ignorant of them. We have to witness the successive stages of infancy, the sucking child, the long clothes, the staggering steps, the little go-cart, in order to realize that we too have been like that infant, have gone through those stages of being. Memory, which is not developed at all in man until he is a year old, and which becomes extinct in old men, is subject, even when it is at its highest point of activity, to innumerable weak- nesses, caused by illness or the want of exercise, so that in fact our hold of this faculty is always precarious. We cannot doubt that in the other life it will have the power, the cer- tainty, and scope which it lacks here below. At the same time, our memory will be enriched by a num- ber of new subjects. The soul, beholding and understanding the worlds which surround it, will be able to fix the geography of all those different places in its memory. It will know the physical revolutions, the populations, and the legislation of these thousand countries. The superhuman being will know what exists in such planets and their satellites as come within his reach, or as he shall visit. Just as, in order to gain infor- mation, we visit America or Australia, so the superhuman being visits Mars or Yenus, and furnishes his memory with millions of facts, which it retains and reproduces at will. What immense power must memory, always sup- THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 51 plied and always ready at call, bestow on the rnind and reason ! Languages are only the expression and the assembling of ideas. Condorcet has said that a science always reduces itself to a well-constructed language. The mathematical sciences employ a language which is perfect, because the science of mathematics is perfect. The language spoken in the planet- ary spaces must be perfect, because it expresses all the know- ledge of superhuman beings, and this knowledge is immense. The more the mind knows, the better it expresses : — the superhuman being, who is highly informed, will have a very expressive language, which will also be universal. The language of mathematics is understood by the peoples of both hemispheres. Algebra can be read by a Frenchman or a German, as well as by an Australian or a Chinese, on account of the simplicity and perfection of the conventional signs which it uses. The language of mathematics, which is truly universal, makes us infer that the language spoken in the planetary space must be also universal, and common, without distinction, to all the inhabitants of the ethereal worlds. Owing to the immense scope of their faculties, and to the perfection of their language, in itself a certain means of in- creasing and exalting their knowledge, superhuman beings have a power of reasoning, and a clearness of judgment, which, added to the immense number of facts stored in their memory, place them in possession of absolute science. Ardu- ous questions, before which the mind of man humbly con- 4—2 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. fesses its powerlessness, or which drive him mad if he persists in the effort to solve them, such as the thought of the Infinite, the idea of the First Cause of the Universe, the Essence of Divinity, all these problems, forbidden to us, are easily acces- sible to those mighty thinkers. He who is regarded by mankind as a genius of the first order, an Aristotle, a Keppler, a Newton, a Eaphael, a Shakespeare, a Moliere, a Mozart, a Lavoisier, a Laplace, a Cuvier, a Victor Hugo, would be among them a babbling child. No science, no moral idea is above their conception. Beneath their feet rolls the earth, with the splendid train of the planets, its sisters ; they be- hold the planets of our solar system gravitating in harmonious order round the great central star, which deluges them with its light. From the height of their sublime abode they wit- ness the infinitely various spectacles furnished by the ele- mental strife of our poor globe, and those which resemble it ; and, happier than terrestrial humanity, they admire the works of God, while knowing the secret of their mechanism. In the moral order they have penetrated the great Wherefore ! They know why man exists, and why they themselves exist. They know whence they come, and whither they are going ; and we, alas ! know neither. Where, to our eyes, there is only confusion, they perceive harmony and order. The de- signs of God are distinctly apparent to them, and also the events of the lives of nations and individuals, which often seem to us cruel, unjust, and bad on the part of God ; but they understand that these events are just and useful, and worthy of our heartfelt gratitude. THE LAY AFTER DEATH. 53 We also think, that in the ethereal spaces time is an ele- ment which does not count. We believe this, because time does not exist for God, and all superhuman beings approach, by their perfections, the entirely spiritual nature, and conse- quently approach God. We are confirmed in this belief by the fact, that very profound grief resists time, that there is no limit in duration to the great blows struck at the human soul, that the loss of a beloved being is felt as keenly after a long interval as when he was taken away. Thus, time, which is everything to man, which is not only, according to the English adage, " money," but is also the instrument of our wisdom, our studies, and our attain- ments — far otherwise precious than money — time does not count in the life of the superhuman being. He awaits, with- out impatience and without suffering, the arrival of the beings whom he has loved and left upon the earth at his peaceful abode ; and when their re-union takes place, he and they en- joy happiness which no inquietude concerning the future can ever trouble. Enabled to despise, to put aside the idea of time, the superhuman being looks on with unutterable serenity, tranquillity, and majesty, at the majestic spectacle, always new and always marvellous, of the revolutions of the stars, and the great movements of the universe. The, Life of the Superhuman Being. — In completion of our speculation upon the attributes of the superhuman being, we shall consider the life which animates him and gives his body its active qualities. We have said that, in our belief, the superhuman being 54 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. proceeds from the soul of a man which has domiciled itself afresh, in a new body, in the bosom of the world of ether. Is this body destined, at the end of a more or less prolonged period to perish, to be dissolved, to restore its elements to matter, as they are restored by the human body ? Shall life be withdrawn from the body of the superhuman being, and shall the soul take flight thence ? We believe that it will be so. Life everywhere implies death, and is its necessary term. We do not cast anchor in the current of the waters of life. If the soul of the super- human being resides in a living body, this body must die, and its material elements must return to the common reservoir of nature. The torch of life is extinguished in the spaces, as it is extinguished upon earth. We believe the superhuman being to be mortal. After an interval, whose duration we shall not attempt to fix, he dies ; and the soul which dwelt within him escapes, like a sweet perfume from a broken vase. What becomes of the soul which has torn itself away from the body, cold in death 1 ? We shall seek after the answer to this question in our next chapter. CHAPTER THE SIXTH. WHAT BECOMES OP THE SUPERHUMAN BEING AFTER DEATH 1 DEATHS, RESURRECTIONS, AND NEW INCARNATIONS IN THE ETHEREAL SPACES. j N the living nature which surrounds us, there is a continually ascending scale of gradual perfection, from the plant to man. Taking mosses and algse, which represent the rudimentary condi- tion of vegetable organization, as our point of departure, we pass on through the whole series of the perfecting processes of the vegetable kingdom, and we reach the inferior animals, zoophytes and mollusca. From thence we ascend to the superior animals by insensible degrees, and thus fully at- tain to man. Each step of this ladder is almost impercepti- ble, so finely arranged are the transitions and the shades ; so that there is a really infinite chain of intermediate beings, at one end of which are the algae, and at the other ourselves. And yet we think it possible that between us and God there should be no kind of intermediate being ! that in this scale of continual progress, there should be an immense void be- tween man and the Creator ! We think it possible that all nature, from the lowest vegetable to mankind, should be ar- ranged in successive and innumerable degrees, and that be- 56 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. tween man and God there should exist only a desert, an im- measurahle hiatus. Evidently, this is impossible, and that such an error should ever have been countenanced by religion and philosophy is only to be explained by ignorance of natural phenomena. It is impossible to doubt that between man and God, as between the plant and the animal, the ani- mal and man, there exist a great number of intermediate creations, which establish the transition of humanity into the divinity which governs it, in infinite power and ma- jesty. That these intermediate beings exist, we are certain. They are invisible to us, but, if we refused to admit the existence of everything which we cannot see, we should be very easily refuted. Let a naturalist take a drop of water from a pond, and, shewing it to an ignorant person, tell him, " this drop of water, in which you do not see anything, is filled with little animals, and with miniature plants, which live, are born and die, like the animals and plants, which inhabit our farms. n The ignorant person would probably shrug up his shoulders, and consider the speaker crazy. But if he were induced to apply his eye to the magnifier of a microscope, in order to exa- mine the contents of the drop of water, he must acknowledge that the truth had been told him ; because, in this drop of water, in which he could at first see nothing, his eye, when assisted by science, would discern whole worlds. A great number of living beings can therefore exist where we see nothing, and it is feasible to science to open the eyes of the multitude in this respect. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 57 We desire to assume the position of the naturalist of whom we have spoken. Between man and God, the ignorant crowd and a blind philosophy perceive nothing ; but, when we re- place the eyes of the body by those of the spirit, that is to say, when we make use of reason, analogy, and education, these mysterious beings come to light. We have already, in studying the superhuman being, de- scribed one of those intermediate creations between man and the divinity, and denned the existence of one of those land- marks placed by nature on the high-road of infinite space. But the ladder does not break off at its first step, and we are convinced that numerous living hierarchies intervene between the superhuman being and the radiant throne of the Almighty. "We have said elsewhere, that, in our belief, superhuman beings are mortal. What becomes of them after their death 1 Let us now take up the thread of our deductions. We believe that — the superhuman being having died at the end of a term whose duration we have no means of knowing — his soul, perfected by the exercise of the new faculties which it has received, and the new senses with which it has been endowed, enters into a new body, provided with senses still more numerous and more exquisite, and endowed with facul- ties of still greater power, and thus commences a fresh existence. We call the being who succeeds to man angel, or super- human; we may call his succession in the ethereal realm,. arcli-angel, or arch-human. The actual moment of the passage from one life to another. 58 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. must be, as it is in the case of man, a time of moral and physical pain. The supreme periods at which a metamor- phosis takes place in a sensible being are crises full of anguish and torment. We will not endeavour to penetrate the secrets of the organization of the new being whose existence we thus trace, and who is superior to the superhuman being in the natural hierarchy ; because our means of investigation fail us at this point. We have ventured to form some conjecture respecting the body, the soul, and the life of the superhuman being, because in that case, however adventurous our excursion into unknown spheres, we had a point of comparison and induction in the human species. But all induction respecting the arch- human being who succeeds the superhuman, is wanting, for we could only perceive the latter by means of conjectures and analogies which we must not carry farther. We will, therefore, abstain from pursuing this kind of in- vestigation, permitting the reader to exercise his own imagi- nation upon the form of the body, the number and perfection of the senses, and the extent of the faculties of the happy creature who succeeds to the superhuman being, and who dwells, like him, in the immensity of ethereal space. We will only add that we do not think a second, a third, or a fourth incarnation arrests the succession of the chain of sublime creations, which float in the infinitude of the heavens, and which proceed from a primitive human soul, which has grown in perfection and in moral power. It surpasses our faculty to define, by the unassisted light of our reason and our THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 59 knowledge, the number of these beings who go on succeeding one another in ever-increasing perfection. We can only say- that we believe the creatures, which compose this ladder of perfections in succession, must be very numerous. At every stage of his promotion in the hierarchy of nature the celestial being beholds the growth of those wings which symbolize his marvellous power to us. Each time his organs become more numerous, more flexible, have greater scope. He acquires new and exquisite senses. He acquires more and more power of extending his beneficent empire, of exer- cising his faculty of loving his fellows and all nature, and, above all, of comprehending and reading the designs of God. Deeper and deeper affections engage his soul, for the tender- ness and the happiness engendered in its pure satisfaction, are granted to him to console him for the sufferings of death, to which he is always condemned. It is thus that the hap- piness of the elect is augmented. It is thus that the beings who inhabit the boundless plains of the invisible world employ each of their lives in preparing for the life which is to follow, in securing by a wise exercise of their freedom, industrious culture of their faculties, strict observance of morality, and continuous beneficence, a more noble, more animated, and happier destiny in the new spaces which await them, in the development of their sublime destiny.* Nevertheless, as everything comes to an end in this world, * On this subject see the book of Dupont de Nemours, " Philo~ sophie de VUnivers" quoted by M. Pezzani in his " Plurality des existences de Vame" pp. 216-218. , 60 THE DA Y AFTER LEA TH. so must everything have an end in the surrounding spheres. After having traversed the successive stages and rested in the successive stations of their journey through the skies, the "beings whom we are considering must finally reach a defined place. What is this place, the ultimate term of their immense cycle across the spaces ? In our belief, it is the sun. CHAPTEE THE SEVENTH. PHYSICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF THE SUN. r CCOKDLN"G to our system of thought the sun is the central place in which souls which come from the ethereal spaces are finally gathered together. After having undergone the suc- cessive incarnations which we have described, souls, primi- tively human, finish by reaching the sun, by dwelling within the borders of the star-king. This, then, is a fitting place for a description of the sun from the physical and astronomical point of view. Such a description will at once reveal the entirely sovereign part played by that globe which has no fellow. The astonishing attributes which belong to it, the unimaginable power which it wields, will sufficiently explain the place at the summit of the ascending scale of nature, which we assign to the sun. In the first place, the sun is totally different from the other stars of our world. He resembles nothing, and nothing can be compared with him. Neither planets, satellites, asteroids, nor comets can give us any idea of him. His immense volume, his physical constitution, his exceptional properties place him in a totally separate rank, and afford full 62 TEE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. justification to those who claim for him a separate and sove- reign place. The enormous mass of the sun at once proclaims his supremacy. The sun is sufficiently vast to receive everything which could come to him from all the other planets. He surpasses in volume the united size of all the celestial bodies which revolve around him. He is six hundred times larger than the entire assemblage of the planets with their satellites, of the asteroids and the comets which compose what is called the solar world ; that is to say, the world of which we form a part. The proportion in which the sun exceeds the earth in volume is, then, necessarily enormous ; since he is larger than all the other stars put together. He is one million three, hundred thousand times larger than our globe. It is only by drawing that we can give an exact idea of the comparative sizes of the sun and the other planets. The reader will find in the accompanying illustration (Fig. 1) a figure which exactly represents the comparative dimensions of the sun, and the largest planets of our world. The earth, represented by a dot, gives an idea of what Mars, Mercury, and Yenus, which are smaller than the earth, must be. It takes three years to circumnavigate the earth. To cir- cumnavigate the solar globe, under similar conditions, would take three hundred years. If human life be not more pro- longed in the sun than on the earth, an existence would not suffice to enable a traveller to become acquainted with the surface of the globe he inhabits. Weight is thirty times more intense on the surface of the Fig. 1,— Comparative Dimensions of the $un and the Planets. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 65 sun than on the earth. We know that a body which falls upon the earth traverses, in the first second of its fall, a space of four metres, nine centimetres. In the sun a falling body traverses 144 metres in the first second of its fall. It follows from this, that a human body, if transported to the sun, would weigh about 2000 kilogrammes, the weight of an ele- phant. The body of a dog or of a horse would weigh twenty- eight times as much as upon our earth, so that these animals would remain fixed to the surface. The conditions of nature must therefore be entirely different in the sun from what they are in the group of planets to which the earth belongs. The sun sheds rays from perpetual fire, a characteristic that appertains to him alone among all the stars of our world. Of himself he burns, and sheds abroad light and heat. The other stars are neither warm nor luminous, and if the sun did not exist, they would be plunged into eternal darkness and eternal cold. This privilege alone ought to make U8 comprehend the immense importance of the central star. The light and heat which emanate from the sun are con* stant ; they are never interrupted, and they never lose their force. Thus, a second characteristic — constancy of illumina- tion — separates the sun from all the other celestial bodies of our world. The intensity of the real heat of the sun has been mea- sured by the physicists. This result was attained in an endeavour to determine by experience the quantity of heat which accumulates in a given time, upon a certain portion of the earth's surface, exposed to the sun's rays, and adding 5 66 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. to that element the quantities of heat which would be ab- sorbed by the atmospheric air, the ethereal spaces, and the soil. Pouillet, the French physicist, who undertook this critical investigation, arrived at certain results, which he states as follows : " If the total quantity of heat emitted by the sun was ex- clusively employed to melt a layer of ice applied to the solar globe, and covering it completely in all its parts, that quantity of heat would be able to melt, in one minute, a layer of eleven metres, eighty centimetres, and in one day a layer of seven- teen kilometres in thickness. ,, " 'This same quantity of heat/ says Professor Tyndall, 1 would boil 2900 milliards of cubical kilometres of water, at the temperature of ice/ " The astronomer Herschel found, that, in order to extinguish the sun, to prevent his " giving out caloric," according to the scientific phrase, it would be necessary to dash a stream of iced water, or a cylindrical column of ice, eighteen leagues in diameter, against its surface, at a rate of speed of 70,000 leagues per second. A comparison adopted by Professor Tyndall gives us an amazing view of the intensity of the calorific force of the sun. " Imagine," says he, " that the sun is surrounded by a layer of peat, seven leagues in thickness, the heat pro- duced by its combustion would be the same as that produced by the sun in one year." The physicists have measured the intensity of the sun's light with exactitude, as they had pre- viously measured his heat. It is known that the solar light is 300,000 times stronger THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. ' 67 than that of the full moon, and 765,000,000 stronger than that of Sirius, the most brilliant of the stars. Bouguer discovered, by experiments made in 1725, that the sun, at a height of 31° above the horizon, gives a light equal to that of 11,664 candles, placed within 43 centimetres of the object to be lighted, and equal to 62,177 candles placed within one metre. According to this result, if we take account of atmospheric absorption, and of the law of the variation of the intensity of light, which decreases in inverse ratio to the square of dis- tance, the light given by the sun at its zenith would be 75,200 times greater than that of a single candle, placed within one metre. Wollaston had arrived at a similar con- clusion. By means of experiments of another kind, made during the months of May and June, 1799, Wollaston found that 59,882 candles, at one metre, give as much light as the sun. Supposing the sun to be in the zenith, the lightening power of that great star would be equivalent to 68,009 candles. There is but little difference between this valuation and that of Bouguer, who states the result at 75,200 candles. Whatever may be the intensity of the light of the sun, we now possess other sources of light which approach to it. Such is the oxhyclric light, produced by burning hydrogen gas by means of a current of oxygen gas, or air, a method of lighting which has recently been employed in Paris and in London. This light is equal in power to more than 200 candles, A thread of magnesium burning in the air, develops a prodigious 5—2 68 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. quantity of light, which may be taken as equivalent to that of 500 candles. The electric light produced by a voltaic battery of from 60 to 80 coils, produces a luminous arc equal to the light of 800 or 1000 candles. In the latter instance the voltaic arc, according to Bouguer and Wollaston, would give 75 times less light than the sun, supposing the luminous elec- tric point to be placed at a distance of one metre. With very powerful batteries, it has been possible to go further, and produce a light not much inferior to that of the sun. Messieurs Fizeau and Foucault, by comparing the light of a voltaic arc, produced by the action of three series of Bunsen's coils, of forty-six couples each, with the light of the sun in a clear sky in April, have established that the light- giving power of the sun is not more than twice and a half that of the electric light. The preceding numbers represent the light-giving power of the sun upon our globe, taking into account atmospheric ab- sorption. Arago, on endeavouring to determine the intrinsic light-giving power of the sun, found that the intensity of the solar light is 52,000 times greater than that of a candle placed at one metre. But, according to more recent researches for which we are indebted to Mr. Edmond Becquerel, the result obtained by Arago is greatly inferior to the truth, and the light of the central^ star is 180,000 times greater than that of a candle placed at one metre. All the planets, attended by their satellites, and all the comets which accidentally manifest themselves to us, turn round the sun. The sun remains motionless in the midst THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 69 of this imposing procession of stars, which circulate around him, like so many courtiers paying him homage. Thus, the sun is the heart of our planetary system ; every- thing is drawn, everything converges towards him. Half-informed persons will exclaim, " What can be more simple ! The sun being six hundred times the size of all the other stars put together, the phenomenon of the condition of all those stars around the sun is explained by the law of at- traction, which prescribes that bodies shall attract in propor- tion to their mass. If the sun attracts the stars of our world to itself, it is because his mass is greater than that of all the other stars collectively. ,, But such an answer would be erro- neous, involving the common error of taking a word for a thing, an hypothesis for an explanation, of putting a term of language in the place of a logical consideration. When Newton conceived the hypothesis (and the phrase) of re- ciprocal attraction of matter, he was careful to state that he only proposed to characterise by a name a phenomenon which in itself is entirely inexplicable, and of which we know no- thing but the exterior mode of its manifestation, that is to say, the mathematical law. We know that bodies go to- wards each other in the ratio of their masses, and in the in- verse ratio of the square of their distances ; but why do they go towards each other 1 This is what we do not know, and what we probably never shall know. If, for the word attrac- tion we were to substitute the word electrization, or, as Kep- pler did, the words affection, sympathy, obedience, &c, we should have a new hypothesis, with a new name, but the 70 . THE DA Y AFTER DEATH, mathematical law would remain the same, the hypothesis only would be changed. The real cause which makes small bodies rush towards large ones, and the stars 'of lesser magni- tude revolve round the stars of greater magnitude, is an impenetrable mystery to mankind. Whatever may be the hypothesis by which we seek to ex- plain the fact, it is certain that the sun holds the planets with their satellites, the asteroids and the comets, suspended above the abysses of space, and that they journey through the heavens in unintermitting obedience to his guiding influence. The sun draws with him all the stars which follow and sur- round him, like flatterers of his power, like humble slaves of his universal preponderance. Like the father of a family in the midst of his progeny, the sun peacefully governs the numerous children of sidereal creation. Obedient to the irresistible impulsion which emanates from the central star, the earth and the other planets circulate, roll, gravitate, around him, receiving light, heat and electricity from his be- neficent rays, which are the first agents of life. The sun marks out for the planets their path through the heavens, and distributes to them their day and night, their seasons and their climate. The sun is, then, the hand which holds the stars above the unfathomable abysses of infinite space, the centre from which they obtain heat, the torch which gives them light, and the source whence they derive the principle of life. From all time the immense and unique task fulfilled by the sun in the economy of nature has been understood. But this THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. 71 great truth has only been deeply studied in our days. Sci- ence has gone far beyond all the imagination the poets had conceived relative to the preponderance of the sun in our world. By means of numerous experiments and abstruse calculations, modern physicists have proved that the sun is the first cause of almost all the phenomena which take place on our globe, and that, without the sun, the earth and no doubt all the other planets would be nothing but immense wastes, gigantic corpses, rolling about, frozen and useless, in the deserts of infinite space. Professor Tyndall, who has added largely to the discoveries of physics and mechanics, has brought out this truth very strongly, and the results to which he has been led may be said to form the most brilliant page of contemporary physical science. We shall now endeavour to explain how it is that every- thing on the earth, and no doubt on all the other planets also, is derived from the sun, so entirely, that we may affirm that vegetables, animals, man, in short, all living beings, are but the productions, the children of the sun ; that they are, so to speak, woven out of solar rays. In the first place, the sun is the primary cause of all those movements which we observe, in the air, in the water, or in the ground under our feet, and which keep up life, feeling, and activity on the surface of our globe. Let us consider the winds, which have such important re- lations with all the physical phenomena of our globe. Whence proceed the winds ? From the action of the sun. The sun 72 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. heats the different portions of the earth very unequally, be- stowing much more warmth on the tropical and equatorial regions than on the other latitudes, which he leaves exposed to cold. On each point of the earth which is struck by the rays of the sun, the layers of air near the ground are dilated and raised, and immediately replaced by colder layers from the temperate regions. Thus the periodical winds are pro- duced. Across the hemispheres two great aerial currents are perpetually blowing, going from the equator to each of the poles ; one, the upper current, towards the north-east in the northern hemisphere, and towards the south-east in the southern hemisphere ; the other, the lower current, in a con- trary direction. The movement of the earth gives rise to other regular winds. The action of heat and of evaporation, added to the unequal distribution of the continents and the seas, produce others, which are irregular. Thus, for example, in the great valleys of the Alps, as in those of the Cordilleras, the warmth of the air regulates the afflux of the cold air of the mountains, and brings on tumultuous winds, and, in fact, hurricanes. The sea breezes arise from the difference in the tempe- rature of the shore during the day and the night. By day, the sun has warmed the shore and produced a considerable dilatation of the air. When the sun quits the horizon, this hot air is replaced by cool currents from the inland. The same phenomenon is reversed in the morning, when the sun returns; the shore is warmed, the hot air rises, and is re- placed by the colder air of the sea, which then goes inland. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 73 Thus, the evening breeze comes from landward, and the morning breeze from seaward. We see, therefore, that the great atmospheric movements which we call the winds, are due to the successive appear- ances and disappearances of the sun, as are also the lesser movements which we call breezes. The position of the sun, constantly varying according to the ^period of the year, and the hour of the day, explains the inequality and the continuous existence of the aerial current. The general cause of the winds which preserve the homo- geneity of the air in all the terrestrial regions, is the heat of the sun dilating the atmospheric air ; its absence, on the other hand, causes that gaseous mass to contract. The watering of the globe, that is to say the rain, an element indispensable to the exercise of life, is another consequence of solar heat. The waters of the seas, the rivers, and the lakes, those winch steep the soil, or are exhaled from vegetable matter, are gradually transformed into vapour by the action of the sun's heat, and form clouds and invisible vapour. When the sun has quitted the horizon, these vapours grow cold in the bosom of the atmosphere in which they floated, and fall down upon the earth again in the form of dew, of fog, and of rain. When the cooling of the watery vapour in the bosom of the atmosphere is more intense, instead of rain we have snow, that is to say, a fall of congealed water. It is chiefly on the summit of mountains that snow falls and accumulates, because the temperature of elevated places is always cold. In very great altitudes the snow, remaining for long periods on the tops 74 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. of the mountains, passes into an intermediate condition, between snow and pure ice, and ends by forming those great expanses of congealed water which are called glaciers. During the hot seasons the glaciers melt by degrees ; the water resulting from this melting process, flows down the slopes of the mountains into the valleys, and gives rise to springs, rivers, and streams. These streams and rivers run into the ocean, from which they are again evaporated by the action of solar heat, and reconstitute clouds and invisible vapour. Thus is established and maintained that incessant circula- tion of the waters which lie on the surface of the earth, their continual exchange with the aerial masses, whose effect is to water the globe, a phenomenon necessary to the exercise of the functions of organized beings. The regular currents which furrow the waters of the ocean are also the result of the action of solar heat. From the poles to the equator the waters of the sea are unequally heated, and this absence of equilibrium in the temperature of the sea occasions a regular furrow, or line from the poles to the equator, resulting from the displacement of the waters, the cold waves rushing in to replace the hot. The unequal evaporation caused by the unequal distribution of heat at the equator and the poles, concurs to produce a similar result, by augmenting the degree of saltness at the equator, without augmenting it at the poles, occasioning a certain difference in density, and finally displacement for want of equilibrium. The currents of the sea are thus entirely produced by the action of the sun. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 75 We see, therefore, that the winds, the watering of the globe, and the currents of the sea are the consequence of solar heat. The movement of the magnet is another physical result of the action of the sun, if it be true, as Ampere says, that the magnetic currents which traverse the terrestrial globe are nothing but thermo-electric currents engendered by the unequal distribution of heat on the surface of the globe. In addition to being the agent of powerful physical forces, the sun is a valuable agent of chemical forces, — indeed, this is the greatest part which he plays in the phenomena of nature. The light and heat of the sun produce the most important chemical actions on the earth's surface ; those on which the exercise of vegetable and animal functions depend. If the sun did not exist, life would be banished from the terrestrial globe. Life is the child of the sun, as I shall endeavour to prove to you. The operations of photography serve to make us under- stand how it is that the sun presides over chemical action in the vegetable world. What is photography? What does that curious phenomenon which fixes a drawing formed by light upon a sheet of paper, consist of? A paper steeped in chloride or iodide of silver is placed in the focus of the lens of a dark camera, and the image formed by the lens is made to fall upon paper sprinkled with water. The portions of the picture not exposed to light produce no effect upon the salt of silver, which is incorpo- rated with the paper, but the portions exposed to light de- 76 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. compose the salt of silver, and turn it black, or dark violet colour. On withdrawing this paper from the apparatus, where the operations have been carried on in darkness, we have a drawing which reproduces, in black, the luminous image formed by the lens. By certain means this image, solely produced by the chemical action of light, is rendered fixed and unalterable. All the salts of silver thus exposed to light undergo an analogous decomposition. Nor are they the only salts which light modifies. Compounds of gold, platinum, and cobalt, properly prepared, may also be altered under the influence of direct or indirect rays, when exposed to the sun, or to his diffused light. The light of the sun possesses the power of bringing about the combination of several other bodies. This is the case with hydrogen and chloric gas. If you mix equal parts of chloric gas and hydrogen in a bottle, and expose the mixture to the sun, an immediate combination will take place between the two gases, and chlorohydric acid gas will be formed. The combination will take place with so much force that it will be attended by a considerable escape of Jieat. If you throw the bottle containing the mixture up into the air, towards a space where the sun is shining, the bottle will break before it falls, with a violent explosion, at the moment of its contact with the light. We might multiply examples of the chemical action pro- duced by light only on substances belonging to the mineral kingdom, but it is sufficient for our purpose to say that the THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 77 chemical action of light is still more powerful and more ge- neral in the vegetable than in the inorganic realm. This is a phenomenon of such importance that it is impossible to believe it otherwise than a premeditated design of nature. One of the most fruitful discoveries of modern science is the recognition of the fact, that the respiration of plants de- pends upon the presence and the direct action of light, that is to say, that the decomposition of the carbonic acid which circulates in the tissue of vegetables, and which has been breathed up from the soil by the roots, takes place only when the plants are exposed to the sun. The labours of Priestley, Charles Bonnet, Ingenhouz and Sennebier, have taught us that the decomposition of carbolic acid into carbon, which remains fixed in the tissue of the plant, and into oxygen, which disengages itself from it, can take place only under the direct or indirect influence of the sun's rays. Our readers may easily convince themselves of this fact. Place a handful of green leaves in a glass full of water, and expose the glass to the sun. At the close of the day the upper portion of the glass will be filled with gas, which is nothing but pure oxy- gen, the result of the breathing of the leaves. All the importance, all the value of such a phenomenon will be evident, if we reflect that it takes place over the whole extent of the globe, and that the respiration, which means the life of all the vegetable masses which cover the earth, depends solely upon the light of the sun. It is by means of the respiration of the plants, which restores oxygen to the atmospheric air, that nature makes up for the with- 78 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. drawal of oxygen by the respiration of animals, by the con- tinual absorption of that gas by numerous mineral substances, and by the frequent combustions, natural and artificial, which occur in the world. The result of these combustions would be the disappearance of the greater portion of the oxygen contained in the air, if there did not exist a permanent ma- chinery for the restitution of that oxygen. This permanent machinery is the respiration of plants, produced by solar light. So absolute is the dependence of plants for their respiration on the action of the sun's light, that if it be intercepted by clouds, the escape of oxygen from them suffers a marked diminution. If the light of the sun be suddenly stopped, which occurs during a total solar eclipse, the escape of oxygen ceases, and the plants transpire carbonic acid only, as they always do during the night. It is for this reason that a plant kept in complete darkness loses its colour, and becomes white. It does not respire, it emits carbonic acid gas without retaining carbon, it becomes etiolated, according to the scientific phrase, which means that the plant no longer lives at the cost of the external air, or of gas furnished by the soil, but consumes its own substance. The whitened salads which we prefer are not green only because they are grown in darkness, and the mush- rooms brought to table are white only because they are reared in cellars. M. Boussingault, who has studied vegetation in darkness, finds that the leaves of a vegetable which has never had any light at all, in its first appearance and development, never THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 79 exhales oxygen, its respiration furnishes carbonic acid gas only. The plant, therefore, breathes just as an animal does. We must observe in this case that the substance of the seed only supplies this product. The plant borrows nothing from without, consumes nothing but the elements which were contained in the seeds, and dies when those nutritive ele- ments are exhausted. The duration of its existence depends entirely on the weight of the seed whence it has sprung. If a well-developed plant be kept in darkness, the same fact may be observed. The plant gives out nothing but carbonic acid, and, as it borrows nothing from without, it perishes when it has thus devoured its own substance. M. Sachs says, in his Physiologic Vegetale, that the movements proper to the leaves of many vegetables cannot take place if the plant is kept in darkness. Plants so kept remain always in the condition which Linnaeus defined as sleep. Flowers contained in natural coverings, which in a great measure debar them from the light of the sun, do indeed produce colours, but those flowers are formed inside their natural coverings, at the expense of substances contained in their leaves, which could not be produced except under the influence of light. The same truth applies to fruits. Leaves, flowers, fruits, are then, as the German physiolo- gist, Moleschott, has said, "beings woven of air by light." The same author adds : " When we contemplate the brilliant colours of the flowers, and when their delicious perfume gives serene satisfaction to that poetic faculty which exists, though it may slumber deeply, in the soul of every man, 80 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH, it is still the light which is the mother of colour and of per- fume." The influence of the sun on vegetation is of fundamental importance. Without the sun no plant would grow upon our globe. In those regions which are permanently deprived of the powerful and beneficent torch of nature, towards the extreme north, all vegstation is stunted, and higher still, it does not exist. Absence of light, and cold, are the causes of the complete disappearance of the natural adornment, and the useful tribute, which elsewhere vegetation furnishes to the earth. In the hot regions, vegetation is vigorous and extensive, in proportion to the abundance of sunshine poured upon them. There is nothing to be compared to the luxuri- ant vegetation of the tropical countries in both hemispheres. The vegetation of Brazil, of equatorial Africa, and the inter- tropical regions of India, is renowned for its abundance and variety. Agriculture, enlightened by modern chemistry, has brought to light the special importance of the sun in promoting the activity of vegetation, and producing combinations of sub- stances not to be attained by any action except that of the sun. M. Georges Yille, a professor at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, states,* as the result of numerous experi- ments, that the activity imparted to vegetable production by the sun is truly miraculous. !No chemical fact, no theory, according to the learned professor, can explain the mystery of solar influence, and its prodigious power over the development and produce of vegetables. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 81 Let us remark, before we leave this subject, that by a pro- -vidential circumstance the present generations of mankind .are profiting by the chemical force of the sun which nature has stored in her great vegetable depots for thousands of centuries. For instance, what is coal, which feeds all our industries, supplies our steam machines, ships, engines, and locomotives ? It is the residue of those gigantic forests which covered the earth during the geological periods. The sub- stance of the trees of the forests of the ancient world was at first changed into peat, which, becoming more and more com- pact by the action of ages, was finally pressed into the hard and heavy body which we call coal. But what was the cause, what was the first agent, which produced the trees of those forests, in the antediluvian times % It was the chemical force of the sun. This force, or, if the term be preferred, the pro- ducts of the chemical force of the sun, have been accumulated and preserved in the wood, and then in the coal which that wood has become. We find it thus, and we use it, to our present profit. Thus, the glowing sunshine which lighted and warmed the ancient world, is not lost to us. Contemporary generations inherit those very rays, and that same chemical force. The power of the sun, which has slumbered in the coal for millions of years, arouses itself for us, comes forth into the day, and transforms itself in our hands into a mechanical agent. The light and heat of the sun, which play so great a part in the vegetable kingdom, exercise influence of a similar kind over the animal kingdom. If we reflect that plants are indis- 6 82 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. pensable to the food of the majority of animals, that the creation of vegetables necessarily preceded that of terrestrial animals (since vegetables constitute their food), and that animals must inevitably disappear from the earth if plants ceased to exist ; we shall be led to acknowledge that animals originate as certainly, though indirectly, from the force of the sun as the plants themselves. Besides, . it can be proved that the action of the sun is directly indispensable to the maintenance of animal life. In the first place, is it not the fact that solar light and heat exercise an immense influence on the health of animals and of man ? To convince ourselves of that, we need only com- pare men who pass the greater part of their lives in the air and sunshine, with men who live in dark houses, in the narrow streets and lanes of great cities. Not only are these dwellings unwholesome because they are damp, but they are fatal to health because they are not enlivened by the presence of the sun. Light, altogether indispensable to the exercise of respira- tion in plants, is not indispensable in the same degree to the respiration of animals. It is, however, certain that the products of the respiration of man and animals are less abundant by night than by day. Moleschott has found that the quantity of carbonic acid gas exhaled by an animal is augmented by the intensity of the light of day, and is at its minimum in complete darkness ; "which amounts to this,"' adds that author, "that the light of the sun accelerates molecular action in animals." THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 83 Thus, the rays of the sun are a primary condition of the existence of animals, because they produce the formation of plants, the essential basis of the alimentation of animals and of man, and because they preside over the fulfilment of many of their physiological functions. We find views of precisely the same order as those we have endeavoured to express, eloquently put forward in Professor Tyndall's work on " Heat :" " And as surely as the force which moves a clock's hands- is derived from the arm which winds up the clock, so surely is all terrestrial power drawn from the sun. Leaving out of account the eruptions of volcanoes and the ebb and flow of the tides, every mechanical action on the earth's surface, every manifestation of power, organic and inorganic, vital and physical, is produced by the sun. His warmth keeps the sea liquid, and the atmosphere a gas, and all the storms which agitate both are blown by the mechanical force of the sun. He lifts the rivers and the glaciers up the mountains ; and thus the cataract and the avalanche shoot with an energy derived immediately from him. Thunder and lightning are also his transmuted strength. Every tire that burns and every flame that glows dispenses light and heat which origi- nally belonged to the sun. In these days, unhappily, the news of battle is familiar to us, but every shock and every change, is only an application or misapplication of the me- chanical force of the sun. * * * * The sun comes to- ils as heat ; he quits us as heat ; and between his entrance and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear. They are all special forms of solar power ; the moulds into which his strength is temporarily poured, in passing from its source through infinitude." — p. 431. 6—2 84 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. * The mecliaiiical force which the heat of the sun represents has been calculated, and the numbers thus ascertained are curious. In order to understand how a heat agent can be expressed by figures of mechanical force, we must have a general idea of that theory which constitutes the most valuable creation of natural philosophy in our day ; we allude to the mechanical theory of heat, or the doctrine of the mutual trans- formation of physical forces. Experience has proved that heat changes, under our eyes, into a mechanical force. See how, by the action of the steam engine, watery vapour becomes cold, and the dispersed heat immediately produces a mechanical force, and you will under- stand how it is that we maintain that heat tranforms itself into force. This being admitted, it is easily explicable that one of those elements may be represented by the others, or that at least we may represent the value of both force and heat by a common unit. This common unit is called a calorie, and expresses the quantity of heat requisite to raise the temperature of a kilogram of water one degree. On the other hand, the term hilogr ammeter is used to express the quantity of force requisite to raise a kilogram to the height of one yard (metre) in a second. Physicists have succeeded in solving the difficult problem, which consists of ascertaining how many kilogrammeters may be produced by a calorie, transformed into mechanical labour. The works of Mayer, Joule, Helmholtz, Hirn, Eeg- nault, &c, establish that a calorie is equivalent to 425 kilogrammeters, that is to say that the quantity of heat THE DA Y AFTER LEA Til. 85 requisite to raise the temperature of a kilogram of water to 1 degree centigrade produces a mechanical action re- presented by the elevation of a weight of 425 kilograms 1 yard {metre) in height in the space of a sound. 425 kilograms are called the mechanical equivalent of heat "With this information at our service, we are enabled to calculate in units of mechanical force the work done by solar heat, by transforming itself into mechanical force. And, if we calculate the total heat of the sun diffused over the earth, during a given time, we can calculate the sum of the forces which all this distributed heat would develop on the surface of the earth, if it were all employed in mechanical labour. In one year every square yard of the surface of the earth receives 2,318,157" calories, that is to say, more than 23,000,000,000,000 of calories to each space of 2 acres, 1 rood, 35 perches. * To understand the intensity of this force, we must conceive a steam engine, which, instead of working at 200 or 300 horse-power, like the engines of our larger steamers, should work at 4,163 horse-power. And this, we must bear in mind, refers only to the small space above mentioned. If we cal- culate the entire surface of the earth, we arrive at the as- tounding total of 217,316,000,000,000 horse-power. In order to conceive such a force, we must picture to ourselves 543,000,000,000,000 steam engines each working without relaxation day and night, at 400 horse-power. That is the * Represented by the French word hectare. 86 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL amount of work which the heat of the sun does for our globe alone. The physical and mechanical actions which take place on our planet, vegetation, the phenomena of animal life, indus- trial and agricultural operations absorb only a very small quantity of this enormous mass of forces. Professor Tyndall says on this subject, in the book we have already quoted : — " Look at the integrated energy of our world — the stored power of our coal-fields ; our winds and rivers ; our fleets, armies, and guns. What are they? they are all generated by a portion of the sun's energy which does not amount to iio Woooo o^ °f the whole. This, in fact, is the entire frac- tion of the sun's force intercepted by the earth, and in reality we convert but a small fraction of this fraction into mechani- cal energy. Multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the sun's expenditure." — p. 433. In this chapter we have analyzed the different physical and vital effects produced upon our globe by the light and heat given out by the sun. We have considered its action upon animate and inanimate nature. We have seen that the sun is really the great cause of physical action on our globe, and that he is also the first principle of both vegetable and animal life. Without the sun life would be banished from the terres- trial globe ; as we have already said, life is the offspring of the sun. We know that in speech, heat and life are almost synony- mous words. In every language we find it said that persons are frozen by death, in the icy sleep of death, that cold is death- like, &c. This image is an exact expression of the reality. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 87 An animal or a plant, when deprived of life is necessarily- cold. A shiver is the precursor of every malady, and the sure forerunner of death. Every dead body is a cold body. It may be said that in the animal form cold takes the place of life, as in inanimate bodies cold succeeds to heat. Let us now consider the following facts. It is solely by the pro- longed action of heat that plants can germinate, grow, and develop themselves; in order to come to perfection, every plant requires an ascertained number of degrees of heat, and botanists and agriculturists know quite accurately the total number of degrees of heat requisite to ripen their cereals, and make their fruit-trees bear. A prolonged and undisturbed accumulation of heat is indispensable to produce life in the impregnated egg of a bird, so that by employing caloric in a hatching machine, the process of hatching may be artificially perfected. The eggs of viviparous animals are sustained by the heat of the mother's body, and besides, as Hervey says, everything that has life proceeds from an egg (omne vivum ex ovo). If we recall to mind that, after the development of the germ in mammiferous animals, the unvarying maternal heat is indispensable to the formation of the organs of the foetus, we shall be led to inquire whether heat does not directly produce life, whether heat does not transform itself into vital force. Modern philosophers who have propounded the Mechanical Theory of Heat, that is to say the profound and admirable doctrine of the mutual conversion of forces, the professors who have proved by mathematical evidence that heat converts itself into mechanical force, and the con- THE DAY AFTER DEATH. verse, might perhaps complete their brilliant synthesis by adding that heat, which converts itself into mechanical force, can also transform itself into life, or into vital force, and that the splendid theory of the transformation of forces does not apply to inanimate bodies only, but finds an astonishing con- firmation in animate bodies. Thus heat and life would be the manifestation of one and the same power, and the cause of life would be found to- dwell, like the cause of mechanical force, in the sun. CHAPTEE THE EIGHTH. THE SUN THE DEFINITIVE ABODE OF SOULS WHO HAVE ATTAINED THE HIGHEST RANK IN THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY. THE SUN THE FINAL AND COMMON DWELLING OF SOULS WHO HAVE COME FROM THE EARTH. THE PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION OF THE SUN. — THE SUN IS A MASS OF BURNING GASES. >HE fundamental importance of the sun in the general economy of our world being finally established, our readers will not be surprised to hear that we assign that radiant and sub- lime abode to the human souls released from the earth, and successively purified and perfected by the long series of their multiplied incarnations in the bosom of the interplanetary spaces. Some philosophers have perceived this truth. The astronomer Bode placed the most elevated intelligences in the sun. "The happy creatures which inhabit this privileged abode," he says, " have no need of the alternate succession of day and night ; a pure and unextinguishablelight illumines it for ever. In the centre of the light of the sun, they enjoy perfect security, under the shelter of the wings of the, Almighty."* Under what form may we picture to our fancy the inhabitants of the sun 1 We cannot answer this question * Quoted by Flammarion in his "PluraliU des mondes halites.'' 90 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL without being acquainted with the geography of the sun, or as astronomers call it, his physical constitution, which differs essentially from that of the planets, of their satellites, and of the comets. He is unique in his position and office in the planetary system, — he must therefore be specially consti- tuted. "What is this special constitution 1 What is the geography of the sun ? Would that it were in our power to reply to this question with precision ; would that we could describe the configura- tion of the sun. Unhappily, science has not yet reached that point. The problem of the sun's true nature is full of un- certainty. Astronomers are divided between two opposite theories, and that which seems to be the best supported, is too recent to be set forth in a dogmatic fashion. We can only summarize the actual condition of our knowledge on this question, explain the theory which seems conformable to ascertained facts, and applying it to the subject on which we are engaged, endeavour to deduce the physical condition, which, in our opinion, would belong to the inhabitants of the king-star. Until the great epoch of the discovery of the telescope, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in the time of Keppler and Galileo, only vague and arbitrary ideas respecting the sun prevailed. The educated, as well as the vulgar, be- held in it merely a globe of fire ; the most learned declared that they found in it pure fire, elementary fire, the principle of light, and of fire. But as no means existed of examining the surface of the sun, and as his real distance from the earth THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 91 was either unknown, or very imperfectly understood, a prudent reserve was maintained on this question. The discovery of the telescope immediately placed the astronomers in possession of the celestial realm ; it enabled them to sound the depths of space, and to study the apparent configuration of the stars, including the sun himself. A few hours' observation with the astronomical spy-glass, and more was learned of the nature of the sun, than in the two thousand years of more or less philosophical reverie which preceded the discovery of the telescope. With a glass which magnified the apparent diameter of the sun only twenty-sixfold, Galileo, repeating the observations of Fabricius, discovered the spots on the sun. Although Galileo did not use the smoked glasses which have since been found so useful, and although he limited his observations to the horizon, watching the great star at its rising and its setting, or when it was veiled by slight clouds, he studied its spots carefully, and described them faithfully. We may observe that this discovery astonished the philo- sophers of that period, who were entirely submissive to the authority of Aristotle. The incorruptibility of the sun was held in the schools as a sacred principle, according to Aristotle, and these unfortunate spots perplexed the philoso- phers. The peripatetics vied with each other in proving to the Florentine astronomer that the purity of the sun was an unassailable principle, and that the spots which he had perceived existed only on his eyes, or on the lens of his glasses. 92 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. But Galileo had seen correctly, and soon every one could convince himself of the reality of the phenomenon he had proclaimed. Not only do spots exist upon the disc of the sun, but they furnish the only means which we possess of becoming acquainted with the physical and astronomical peculiarities and properties of the great star. The examina- tion of these spots led to the discovery that the sun revolves like the other jnanets, and that he accomplishes the entire revolution upon his axis in a period of twenty-five days. The sun's days are therefore twenty-five times as long as ours. Here, however, we must remark upon the word day. To us, the day signifies theVperiodical return of the earth to the same point, after a complete revolution upon its axis, with an alternation of light and darkness. It is quite otherwise in the case of the sun, which, being self-luminous in all his parts, can never have any night. We have said that the examination of the sun's spots esta- blished his rotation upon his axis. In fact, if we patiently observe the motion of a spot, or of a group of spots, we re- mark that it advances slowly from one edge of the solar disc to the other ; for instance, if the point of departure be the eastern edge, the spot or group will advance with uniform speed towards the western edge, taking fourteen days to ac- complish the distance. If we wait fourteen days more, we shall again perceive the same spot making its appearance on the eastern edge of the disc, the interval having been con- sumed in passing over the opposite and, of course, invisible side of the sun. The spot has therefore taken twenty-eight days THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 93 to reappear, which twenty-eight days do not, however, represent the exact duration of the revolution of the sun himself. It must not he forgotten that the earth has not remained motion- less during this long ohservation ; she, too, has gone round in the sun, as the spots have done. This sort of advance, which causes us to see the same spot for a longer time than we should have seen it, if the earth remained motionless, is of three days' extent, the deduction of which from the twenty-eight given days, allows twenty-five days for the real duration of the sun's rotation upon his axis. In the sun seasons are unknown as well as days. Time seems to have no existence for the heings who occupy that radiant dwelling-place. The changes, and the succession of things for us which constitute time, are unknown to their sublime essence. Duration has no measure in that blessed world. The dweller in the sun must behold the revolution of the planets around him, performed according to the same laws, but with different rates of speed. The phases of the planets and their satellites, the phases of Mars and Venus, or those of the moon, which we perceive from the earth, are unknown to them ; they see only the hemisphere of those globes which is illumined by their own immense country. They behold, in larger dimensions, the globes of Mercury and Venus, and in lesser dimensions the Earth and Mars. The distant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, must seem very small to them. -Neptune they probably cannot see at all. The comets must be for a long time invisible to the inhabitants of the sun, who 94 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. behold tlieir flaming mass rushing towards them in ever- increasing size. They also see some comets sinking away into space, and others falling on the surface of the sun himself, to he lost and absorbed in his substance. Thus, the spots, on the sun have revealed to us an im- portant peculiarity of his astronomical character, his revo- lution upon his axis. They have also given us the only exact ideas which we possess of the physical constitution of the sun. The accompanying plate conveys an idea of what the spots on the sun consist of. Figures 2 and 3 represent the general aspect of these appearances. In the centre is a black space perfectly marked. To this succeeds a space in grey tinting, whose outlines melt by degrees into the rest of the luminous mass. The first region is called the Umbra ; the second, the Penumbra. These words must be distinctly understood. The part in- dicated by the term Umbra is only dark relatively to the illumined portion. This Umbra is very luminous, its brilliancy is two thousand times that of the full moon. "We are merely dealing with comparisons here. The solar spots are often of very considerable dimensions. They have been found 30,000 leagues in breadth, and could swallow up the earth, which is only one-tenth of that magnitude. They are not permanent, sometimes they remain for months, or even years, but the greater number increase and decrease rapidly, and dis- appear in a few weeks. They are incessantly changing in form and in extent, and they grow and^diminish. It is evident ^^A;&AiM Tig. 2. — Group of Solar Spots observed in 1864 by Nasinytk. THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 97 that they are regulated by a violent interior movement, and that they are the seat of tumultuous motion. Something like whirlwinds are seen to sweep across the regions occupied *■ 'i : \ ^\ ,.W^- \A Fig. 3. — Another Solar Spot observed by Nasmyth. by the spots, and to carry them away, like the waves of a furious sea, or the flames of a conflagration. Gigantic bridges of apparently burning matter have been observed, thrown 7 98 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. froni one edge to the other of adjacent spots, uniting them by a shining band, and then this same band has stretched itself out and caught hold of other spots. Of a sudden the whole edifice has been seen to be swept away by fresh whirlwinds. Signs of a prodigious commotion, of gigantic perturbation, are always evident. These hurricanes, these tempests of flame, are of a widely different grandeur from the hurricanes and the tempests of our atmosphere, because the atmosphere of the sun is several thousands of yards in height, and covers an extent of surface 1,300,000 times greater than ours. We have just said that the sun has an atmosphere. Such Is the conclusion to which the careful examination of the great star has led. From the earliest times at which the sun was observed, a theory of its constitution was formulated, which was perpetuated down to the present age, without receiving authoritative contradiction. In the eighteenth century the astronomers Herschel and Wilson developed this theory, which was popularized in our time by the writings of Hum- "boldt and Arago. According to this theory, the sun is composed of a dark nucleus, and a burning atmosphere, which is the only source •of the light proper to this star. Arago and Humboldt called the incandescent atmosphere of the sun, the photosphere. Heat and light would not, therefore, come to us from the nucleus, b>ut only from the photosphere. The spots are explained, according to this theory, by ad- mitting that they are openings accidentally formed in the sun's THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 99 atmosphere by gases discharged from volcanic craters, or in some other way. Through these openings the dark nucleus of the sun is seen. The 'penumbra of the spots are formed by the lower parts of the atmosphere of the sun, which is either hot or luminous. This lower portion of the atmo- sphere, reflecting the light emitted by the upper portion or photosphere, is slightly warm, and only partially illu- mined. This theory of the constitution of the sun, and of the solar spots, seemed for a long time satisfactory. A similar explana- tion, that is to say, by partial eruptions of gas from volcanic craters, was assigned to the kind of black dotted appearance observed on the surface of the solar disc, and which is exactly reproduced in the two figures here given. The brilliant spots scattered over the surface of the sun, which touched here and there with points of intense lumi- nosity, are called faculce. These brilliant points are said to proceed from local accidents, which cause an escape of light and heat from certain parts of the solar atmosphere. Thus, according to this theory, the sun would be a solid body, opaque and dark like the planets, surrounded by an atmospheric layer, which would prevent any heat in the nucleus. Outside that layer would be a second atmosphere, the photosphere, which only would be luminous, and capable of emitting light and heat. Dark nucleus, dark atmosphere, luminous photosphere, such would be the constituent ele- ments of the sun, according to "Wilson, William Herschel, Humboldt, and Arago. To any who hold this theory, it is 7—2 100 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. not impossible to believe that the sun may be inhabited by- beings who differ but slightly to man, or who are endowed with an organization similar to that of the inhabitants of the earth. If the body of the sun be preserved by the interposi- tion of a cold, and but slightly conducting atmosphere from the rays of the photosphere which burns at an immense dis- tance, we can believe that creatures organized almost like ourselves could live within it. The heat of the burning photosphere can reach it through the thickness of the lower atmosphere with only the degree of heat necessary to main- tain life. The light thus filtered is brilliant, but not dazzling, and admits of the existence of beings of organization similar to those who live on the earth. To this conclusion Arago came : " If I were asked," said the astronomer, " is the sun in- habited 1 I must reply that I do not know. But, if I were asked whether the sun can be inhabited by beings of organ- ization similar to that of dwellers upon our globe, I should not hesitate to reply in the affirmative." At the present day Arago would hesitate, for science has made a great advance in the question of the physical con- stitution of the sun. The new method invented by MM. Kirchhoff and Bunsen, and known as analysis of the luminous spectrum, being applied to the solar rays, has given rise to an entirely new conception of the nature of the sun. We have returned to the opinion of the physicists of the middle ages, who regarded the sun as a globe of fire, a sort of gigantic torch. THE DA Y AFTER DEA TIL 101 It would be impossihle to enter into the details of the op- tical experiments which rendered accurate analysis of the solar rays possible, and enabled us to deduce a new theory of the constitution of the sun from their properties. We shall confine ourselves to explaining this theory, as it evolves itself from the experiments of M. Kirchhoff. According to the German philosopher, the sun is not, as it has hitherto been supposed, a cold, dark, and solid body, surrounded by a burning atmosphere ; it is a globe, a sphere, probably liquid, which burns throughout its whole mass, and in all its parts. This incandescent globe is surrounded by a very heavy atmosphere, formed of the vapours which proceed from the incandescent globe, and which are themselves kept burning in consequence of the high temperature of all those masses of fire. How are the spots on the sun to be explained according to this theory? M. Kirchhoff admits that, owing to unknown causes, a cooling process may take place in the vaporous at- mosphere which surrounds the body of the sun. This cooling process would form at certain points condensations of vapour analagous to the condensation of the vapour of water, which on our globe produces clouds and rain. These agglomerations of condensed vapours would form a species of cloud in the atmosphere of the sun, and those clouds, which would inter- cept the light of the solar disc from us, would produce the effect of a spot on this disc. The cloud, once formed, cools portions of the neighbouring vapours, and, by provoking a partial condensation, gives rise to the penumbra which sur- 102 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. round the umbra. Thus, according to M. Kirchhoff, the solar spots are clouds suspended in the sun's atmosphere. Galileo had previously propounded an analogous hypothesis. Without abandoning M. Kirchhoff s theory we may mention another explanation of the spots. A German physicist con- siders the spots, not as clouds in the sun's atmosphere, but as. partial solidifications of the liquid matter which forms the body of the sun ; a kind of scoria, analogous to those which may be observed in crucibles containing matters in a state of fusion, and which come from particles of metal not yet melted, or which are beginning to solidify. The penumbra of the spots would be the half-molten, and consequently, half-trans- parent pollicule which always surrounds the edges of metallic scoria with a semi-liquid ring. M. Faye, a French astronomer, has propounded a theory, which somewhat modifies that of M. Kirchhoff. He thinks that the nucleus of the sun is neither solid nor liquid, but entirely gaseous. The solar spot, he, like M. Kirchhoff, takes to be an opening made accidentally in the sun's atmosphere by the condensation of vapours on certain points of that atmosphere. According to M. Faye, the spots are due to ver- tical currents of vapour ascending and descending, and the interception of the light of the sun's atmosphere by the predominant intensity of the ascending current.* The new theory, the result of the optical experiments of the German physicists, appears to explain all the facts which have been observed, and it has therefore been generally accepted. * See "Le Soleil," by M. A. Guillemin, pp. 194—208. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 103 Some divergences exist on questions of detail, but astronomers are nowadays almost unanimous in regarding the sun as a great body, incandescent in all its parts, as a globe in a state of fusion, surrounded by a burning atmosphere, or, as M. Faye states it, a simple agglomeration of incandescent gases. CHAPTER THE ]S T IXTH. THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN ARE PURELY SPIRITUAL BEINGS. THE SOLAR RAYS ARE EMANATIONS FROM THE SPIRITUAL BEINGS WHO LIVE IN THE SUN. THESE BEINGS THUS PRODUCE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE UPON THE EARTH. THE CON- TINUITY OF SOLAR RADIATION, INEXPLICABLE BY PHYSICISTS, EXPLAINED BY THE EMANATION FROM THE SOULS OF THE IN- HABITANTS OF THE SUN. THE WORSHIP OF FIRE,. AND THE ADORATION OF THE SUN AMONG DIFFERENT PEOPLES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. I BOM the discussion of physical astronomy con- tained in the preceding chapters, we have con- cluded, with MM. Kirchhoff and Faye, that the sun is a mass of burning gases. But, our readers w r ill ask, if this be so — if the sun is a gaseous incan- descent mass, or a globe of matter in a state of fusion, sur- rounded by an atmosphere of burning gas, where do you place its inhabitants, and under what form do you picture them ? We have already said, that at each step of their promotion in the hierarchy, the creatures who live in the planetary spaces and have succeeded to the superhuman being, grow in perfection, their senses are multiplied, their intellectual power is considerably extended. In proportion as the crea- ture, who in the beginning w r as human, is raised by successive THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 105 deaths and resurrections in the scale of inter-planetary being, the material substance, which, united to its spiritual prin- ciple, formed its radiant individuality, is diminished. In further exposition of our system, we must state our belief that this superior being, when he has been sufficiently per- fected and exalted, by his different incarnations, by the multi- plied stages in the immensity of the heavens, finally becomes pure spirit. When he attains the sun, he is free from all material substance, from all carnal alloy. He is a flame, a breath ; all is intelligence, sentiment, thought, in him ; no- thing impure is mingled with his perfect essence. He is an absolute soul, a soul without a body. The gaseous and burn- ing mass of which the sun is composed is, therefore, appro- priate to receive these quintessential beings. A throne of fire is a fitting throne for souls. We might even go further, and maintain that not only is the sun the asylum and receptacle of souls which have finished the course of their peregrinations in this world, but that it is nothing else than a collection of those souls which have come to it from" the other planets, after having passed through the intermediate states which we have described. The sun may be only an aggregation of souls. Since the sun is the first cause of life on our globe, since he is, as we have proved, the origin of life, feeling, and thought, since he is the determining cause of the existence of every- thing possessing organization upon the earth, why may we not hold that the rays which the sun pours upon the earth and the other planets are nothing else than the emanations 106 THE DA Y AFTER LEA Til. from these souls ? that they are emissions from the pure spirits dwelling in the central star, directed towards us, and the other planets, under the visible form of rays 1 If this hypothesis were accepted, what magnificent, what sublime relations existing between the sun and the globes which gravitate around him, would be revealed to us ! A con- tinual exchange would be established between the sun and the surrounding planets, an unbroken circle, an inexhaustible communion, radiant emanations which should generate and maintain activity and motion, thought and sentiment, which should keep the flame of life burning everywhere ! Let us think of the emanations from souls dwelling in the sun de- scending upon the earth in solar rays. Light gives existence to plants, and produces vegetable life, accompanied by sensi- bility. Plants, having received this sensible germ from the sun, communicate it, aided by heat likewise emanating from the sun, to animals. Let us think of the germs of souls, placed in the breasts of animals, developing themselves, becoming perfected by degrees, from one animal to another, and finish- ing by becoming incarnate in a human body. Let us think, then, of the superhuman being succeeding to man, springing up into the vast plains of ether, and beginning the series of numerous transmigrations which, from one step to another, will lead him to the summit of the scale of spiritual perfection, from which every material substance has been eliminated, and where the soul, thus exalted to the purest degree of its essence, penetrates into the supreme abode of happiness, and of intel- lectual and moral power— the sun. THE DA Y AFTER LEA TIL 107 Such may be tliis endless circle, such this unbroken chain,, binding together all beings in nature, and passing from the visible to the invisible world. To those persons who may declaim with severity against, the system which we have ventured to put forward, we shall put a question which cannot fail to embarrass them, for science has never been able to solve it. We shall ask them how the light of the sun, and the heat which results from it, are maintained % It is evident that the enormous quantities of heat and light which the sun sends out in torrents into space, must come from a source which cannot be inexhaustible, which has need of renewal, otherwise the sun would become, extinct. As there is no effect without a cause, it is plain that the inconceivable quantity of forces which the sun distributes by his burning rays, must be derived from some place. M. Guillemin, in his work on the sun, passes in review the dif- ferent theories which have been adopted, up to the present day, to explain solar radiation. The following is an analysis- of a chapter of M. Guillemin's work on the " Maintenance of Solar Kadiation." Pouillet has calculated that if the sun were not supplied with something to make up for the losses he sustains, he must cool at the rate of one degree in a century. But this calcula- tion falls short of the truth. Pouillet supposed that the specific heat of the sun is the greatest which can be conceived. The specific heat of the sun is, it is true, unknown, but in- stead of placing it at the maximum power, which it is not proved to be, we might suppose it, by an allowable hypothesis, 108 . THE DAY AFTER DEATH. to be equal to that of water, which is well known. Now if we grant to the sun the specific heat of water, we rectify Pouillet's calculation, and we arrive at the conclusion that the sun, if not furnished with any resources from which to repair Lis losses, would be entirely extinct at the end of 10,000 years. Professor Tyndall, whose experiments are more recent than those of Pouillet, and inspire greater confidence, says : " If the sun were a block of coal, and it were supplied with sufficient oxygen to enable it to burn at the degree of heat proper to that star, it would be entirely consumed at the end of 5000 years." Now the sun has existed for millions of years, for the transition periods of our globe, in which the first living beings were manifested, are traced back to millions of years. And yet his heat has not sensibly diminished since those distant ages. The proof that it has not diminished, is that the climates of the globe at the present time are the same as they were in the tertiary or quaternary epoch. In the tertiary or quaternary strata the same plants and the same animals which exist at present are found. Speaking of times nearer to our own, we may observe that the productions of the soil remain unchanged during the 2000 or 3000 years, whose traditions and historical archives we possess. The sun has lost none of his heat during millions of years. Where has he gotten this heat from 1 Where does he get it from now? By what means is that unquenched fire kept up. , To this question neither astronomy nor physics has ever TEE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 109- furnished a satisfactory reply. Treatises, whether astrono- mical or physical, give us nothing but hypotheses, which we cannot accept. At first it was said that the sun, turning on his axis in twenty-five days, produced by this movement a perpetual friction of his surface against the element in which he moves, in other words, against the ether. But if that were the case r this friction ought to engender a similar heat on the surface of the planets, whose rotatory motion, and especially the motion of translation in their orbit, is much more rapid than that of the sun turning on his axis. Besides, if we calculate- the elevation of the temperature which would result from the friction of the sun against the ether, we shall find that the heat would hardly suffice to maintain the radiation of the solar star during one century. This hypothesis is therefore untenable. Another theory, better supported, has been put forward by the physicists Mayer, Watt erst on, and Thompson ; it explains the maintenance of the solar heat by a constant fall of meteors on the surface of the solar star. A multitude of corpuscles gravitate round the sun, and approach him with sufficient nearness to be attracted by his surface, and fall upon it. These are asteroids, which turn in? whirling swarms around the sun. A shower of corpuscles, of meteorolites, may be always falling on his surface. Their fall would cause a great development of caloric, in consequence of the transformation of their enormous speed into heat, and this caloric would suffice, according to the authors of this theory. 110 TEE DA Y AFTER DEATH. for the maintenance of solar radiation. Let us quote Professor Tyndall on this point : " It is easy to calculate both the maximum and the minimum velocity imparted by the sun's attraction to an asteroid circu- lating round him. The maximum is generated when the body approaches from an infinite distance, the entire •pull of the sun being then exerted upon it. The minimum is that velocity which "would barely enable the body to revolve round the sun close to its surface. The final velocity of the former, just before striking the sun, would be 390 miles a second, that of the latter 276 miles a second. The asteroid, on striking the sun with the former velocity, would develop more than 9000 times the heat generated by the combustion of an equal asteroid of solid coal ; while the shock, in the latter case, would generate heat equal to that of the combustion of up- wards of 4000 such asteroids. It matters not therefore whether the substances falling into the sun be combustible or not ; their being combustible would not add sensibly to the tremendous heat produced by their mechanical collision. Here then we have an agency competent to restore his lost energy to the sun, and to maintain a temperature at his sur- face which transcends all terrestrial combustion. " The very quality of the solar rays — their incomparably penetrative power — enables us to infer that the temperature •of their origin must be enormous ; but in the fall of asteroids we find the means of producing such a temperature. " — P. 423. The fall of these asteriods on the surface of the sun would be followed by an increase in the bulk of that star, and there has been no such increase since the earliest period of its obser- vation. Also, the augmentation of the sun's bulk by these foreign bodies, would have produced an accelerant motion in THE DAY AFTER DEATH. ill the orbits of all the stars, which, however slight, would be dis- tinctly perceptible ; whereas, for the 2000 years of celestial observation, whose records we possess, unbroken and perfect regularity in the progression of the stars of our solar world is registered. There is another objection to this hypothesis. It is that it presupposes a solid and resistant medium in the sun. This medium does not exist, according to the new solar theory, which considers this star to be formed of vapour and of gas, or, at most, of a liquid sphere. Another proof that this resistant medium does not exist, is to be found in the fact that several comets, among others those of 1680, and of 1843, have passed so close to the sun at their perihelion, that their movements must have been greatly disturbed by the resist- ance of a dense medium. The movements of these comets, were, however, quite unaffected by this cause ; they were ob- served to reappear at the moment indicated by the regular curve of their orbit. The absence of a resistant medium in the sun has been regarded as so grave an objection by one of the authors of this theory, Air. Thompson, that he has abandoned it, as in- compatible with facts. Another hypothesis has been proposed, for explaining the maintenance of solar heat. The substances which now form the sun have not always been collected together in their present state of aggregation. At first, his molecules were, relatively, extremely distant from one another, and formed a chaotic, or confused mass. Under the influence of attraction. 112 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TIL they drew together by degrees, and agglomerated themselves into a nucleus, which has become the centre of attraction of the whole mass. This simply amounts to saying that the sun began by being in the state of nebulosity, and passed at a later period into the condition of adherent and continuous matter. " The molecules of solar nebulosity," says Ealfour Stewart, " precipitating themselves upon one another, produced heat ; as, when a stone is thrown with force from the top of a precipice, heat is also the ultimate form into which the potential energy of the stone is converted." This system of explanation of the primary origin of the planets is in general favour. Having drawn themselves toge- ther to form a continuous whole, the elements of the sun would have changed their physical condition, and the result of this change would have been an enormous escape of heat, sufficient to explain the origin of the solar focus. We know, in fact, that condensation of matter always accompanies an escape of heat ; and it has been calculated that a dimunition of only a thousandth part from the actual bulk of the sun would suffice to maintain the solar heat for 20,000 years. M. Helmholtz, the author of this ingenious theory, has also calculated that " the mechanical force equivalent to the mutual gravitation of the particles of the nebulous mass would have been originally equal to 454 times the quantity of mechanical force actually disposable in our system," Jff of the force coming from the conatus to the gravitation would therefore have been already expended. The author adds that THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 113 tho T \ T which remains of this original heat, would suffice to raise the temperature of a mass of water equal to the com- bined birth of the sun and the planets, to 28,000,000 of de- grees centigrade ; this is a quantity of heat equal to 2500 times that which would be engendered by the combustion of the entire solar system, supposing it to be turned into a mass of coal. These calculations are, doubtless, most interesting, but their defect is that they rest upon the conception of the sun's ne- bulosity, an hypothesis which requires closer examination before it ought to be accepted as the basis of so important a de- duction. Besides, if the sun were warmed by a physical cause not in action at the present time, his heat, however great it may be estimated to be, must necessarily have been diminish- ing as long as the sun has been in existence. Now, we repeat that it does not appear that the heat of the sun has ever suf- fered any diminution. The theory of nebulosity is therefore no more securely founded in principle than the other hypotheses which have preceded it. Thus, we find that neither astronomy nor physical science offers us any satisfactory explanation of the constant main- tenance of solar radiation. Common sense tells us that this furnace, constantly in activity, must be as unceasingly fed, but science is as yet unable to discover the nature and source of its aliment. There, where science places nothing, we venture to place something. In our belief solar radiation is maintained by the continuous, unbroken succession of souls, in the sum 114 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL These pure and burning spirits are perpetually replacing the emanations perpetually sent through space by the sun, to the globes which surround him. Thus we complete that unin- terrupted circle of which we have previously spoken, which binds together all the creatures of nature by the links of a common chain, and attaches the visible to the invisible world. We may venture to put forward this explanation of the maintenance of solar radiation with some confidence, since science can give us no exact information upon the point, and philosophy in this case only fills up the void left by astronomy and physics. In short, the sun, the centre of the planetary aggregation, the constant source of light and heat, which sends forth mo- tion, sensation, and life upon the earth, is, in our belief, the final sojourn of purified perfected souls, which have attained their most exquisite subtlety. They are entirely devoid of ma- terial alloy, they are pure spirits who dwell in the midst of the blazing atmosphere and the burning masses which compose the sun. That star, whose size far surpasses the bulk of all the others put together, is sufficiently vast to contain them. From their throne of fire, these souls, all intelligence and ac- tivity, behold the marvellous spectacle of the march of all the planetary globes which compose the solar world, through space. Placed in the centre of this vast world, understand- ing the secrets of nature, and all the mysteries of the uni- verse, they are in possession of perfect happiness, of absolute wisdom, and of illimitable knowledge. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 115 The Genoese naturalist, Charles Bonnet, was the first to bring forward general ideas upon the philosophy of the uni- verse, in the same order as those which we have just developed. In his Palingenesle Philosophique, published in 1771, he intro- duces the doctrine of divers existences for the human soul, outside that of the earth. In a chapter appended to that work, and entitled, " Conjectures on the blessings to come," he draws a picture of the perfect happiness which we shall -enjoy in that abode, and dwells, in the following eloquent words, on the transcendent knowledge which we shall possess, which will unfold to our view all the secrets of the physical and moral worlds : — " If the Supreme Intelligence," says Charles Bonnet, " has varied 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 pro- longed throughout all the planetary worlds: that it unites them all, and that they are only constituent and infinitesimal parts of the same series 1 " 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 8—2 116 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH 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 cos- mology 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 tmths 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 plane- tary 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 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 117 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 under- gone 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 118 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. chiefly excited by tlie 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 con- tain 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. ]N T ow we see things only confusedly, and in a glass darkly ; but then we. shall see lace to face, and shall know in some sort as we have been known ; in short, because we shall have an in- finitely 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 TEE DA 7 AFTER DEATH. 119 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."* 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 imme- morial 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 ; * " Palinge" aesie Philosophique," vol. ii. pp. 427 and following. 120 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. — 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 eluci- dated, 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 propor- tion. 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 (surya) ; his celestial force is THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 121 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 (vayu)."* 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 duductions of modern science. * " Revue dcs Deux Mondes," 15th April, 1868. CHAPTEE THE TENTH. WHAT ARE THE RELATIONS WHICH SUBSIST BETWEEN US, AND SUPERHUMAN BEINGS? f AVING 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 inhabi- tants 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 1 "What is the agency whose existence we must presuppose, in order that beings floating in the ethereal spaces can produce an impression here below 1 What tran- THE BAY AFTER DEATH. 12a scendent 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. A& 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 re- peated thousands of times, traditions transmitted from genera- tion to generation, and which have resisted the control of time, without being either altered or destroyed, cannot de- ceive. 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. 124 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 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 ima- gine 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 mes- sages from the other world. The people who listen to him take these things, which are simply the thoughts of the igno- rant 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 enlight- ened 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 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 125> 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 sleerj, 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 con- trary, continues to act, to feel, and to manifest itself by the phemonena 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 resem- blance, 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 hap- 126 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. pens that we fall asleep in the midst of perplexity and uncer- tainty, 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."* Visions played a great part among Christians in mediaeval 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 super- liuman 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 inspi- Tation, an unhoped-for suggestion. We must observe that all men are not recipients of these mysterious impressions. The superhuman being cannot mani- fest himself except to those whom he loves, and who remem- ber 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 * " Liber de anima," ch. xlvi. THE BAY AFTER DEATH. 127 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 V In order to receive these communications, a man must pos- sess 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 mani- festations. 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. 128 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL There exists in our hearts a moral force which no philoso- phy 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. iNbth withstanding 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 be- cause 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 ivithout 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 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 12* 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 con- vinced that they will discover many facts in harmony with what we advance. The moral phenemenon of the impres- sions 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 9 130 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. life, his labours, Iris career, and trie good fortune which has always accompanied his enterprizes, to the constant influence and secret counsels of his mother. Dr. Y , a professed materialist, one who, according to the popular phrase, believes in nothing, believes, nevertheless, in his mother. Like Count B , he lost her early, and has never ceased to feel her presence. He told us that he is more frequently with his dead mother, than he used to be when she was living. This professed apostle of medical materialism has, without being aware of it, conversations with an emancipated soul. A celebrated journalist, M. E , lost a son, twenty years of age, a charming, gentle youth, a writer, and a poet. Every day M. E has an intimate conversation with this son. A quarter of an hour of solitary recollection admits him to direct communication with the beloved being snatched away from his love. M. L , a barrister, maintains constant relations with a sister who, when living, possessed, according to him, every human perfection, and who never fails to guide her brother in every difficulty of his life, great or small. Another consideration suggests itself in support of the idea which occupies us at present. It has been remarked that artists, writers, and thinkers, after the loss of one beloved, have found their faculties, talents, and inspirations increased. "We might surmise that the intellectual faculties of those whom they have loved have been added to their own. I know a financier who is remarkable for his business capacities. When he finds THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 131 himself in a difficulty, he stops, without troubling himself to seek for its solution. He waits, knowing that the missing idea will come to him spontaneously, and, sometimes after days, sometimes after hours, the idea comes, just as he has expected. This happy and successful man has experienced one of the deepest sorrows the heart can know ; he has lost an only son, aged eighteen years, and endowed with all the qualities of maturity, combined with the graces of youth. Our readers may draw the conclusion for themselves. This last example may instruct us concerning a peculiarity of the superior manifestations which we are studying. We have just said that sometimes a certain time, some days for instance, are required for the production of the manifestations. The cause of this is that the superhuman being, to whom they are due, has much difficulty in putting himself in relation with the inhabitants of our globe. There are many beings on the earth whom he loves, and whom he would fain pro- tect, and he cannot be in two different places at the same time. We may even suppose that the difficulties which human beings feel in putting themselves in relation with us, added to the spectacle of the sufferings and misfortunes which overwhelm their friends here below, are the causes of the only sorrows which trouble their existence, so marvellously happy in other respects. Absolute happiness exists nowhere in the world, and destiny has the . power to let fall one drop of gall into the cup of happiness quaffed by the dwellers in ether, in their celestial abode. Persons who receive communications from the dead have 9—2 132 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. remarked that these communications sometimes cease quite suddenly. A celebrated actress, now retired from the stage, had manifest communications with a person whom she had lost by a tragical death. These communications abruptly ceased. The soul of the dead friend whom she mourned warned her that their intercourse was about to cease. The assigned reason serves to explain why such relation cannot be continuously maintained. The superhuman being who- was in relations with the terrestrial person had already risen in rank in the celestial hierarchy, he had accomplished a new metamorphosis, and he could no longer correspond with the- earth. Among the French peasantry communication with the- dead is a general habit. In the country death does not in- volve the lugubrious ideas which accompany it among the- dwellers in cities. People love and cultivate the memory of those whom they have loved, they hold as most happy those whom the favour of Providence has early removed from the- misfortunes, the failures, the bitterness of terrestrial life, they call on them, they confide in them, and the dead, grateful for this pious memory of them, respond to the simple prayers of these hearts. All the Orientals have that serene aspiration towards death which in Europe exists exclusively among country people. The Mussulmans love to invoke death, to spread the idea of death everywhere. Every one knows the melancholy proverb of the Arabs. "It is better to be seated than standing ; it is better to be lying down than seated ; it is better to be dead than living." THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 133 The preceding chapter terminated with a quotation from Charles Bonnet, the first of the naturalists who discerned the doctrine of the plurality of existences above the globe. We shall terminate this chapter with a quotation from another naturalist philosopher, a contemporary of Charles Bonnet, who defended that doctrine very cleverly. Dupont de Nemours, in his Philosophic, deTUhivers, expresses himself thus, on the subject of the communications which may be established be- tween us, and the superior beings, invisible inhabitants of other worlds, whom he calls angels, or genii, " Why," said Dupont, " have we no evident knowledge of these beings, the necessity, convenience, and analogy of whom strike our reflective faculties which only can indicate them ! of those beings who must surpass us in perfections, in facul- ties, in power, as much as we surpass the lower animals and the plants 1 — who must have a hierarchy as various, as finely graduated as that which we admire among the living and in- telligent beings over which we dominate, and which are subordi- nate to us ? — several others of whom may be our companions on ■earth, as we are of animals which, destitute of sight, hearing, .and the sense of smell, of hands and of feet, do not know what we are even when we are doing them good, or harm ? — some of whom are perhaps travelling from globe to globe, or, more excellent still, from one solar system to another, more easily than we go from Brest to Madagascar 1 " It is because we have neither such organs or such senses as would be necessary to enable our intelligence to communi- cate with them. " Thus do the worlds embrace the worlds, and thus are classified intelligent beings all composed of matter which God has more or less richly organized and vivified. 134 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. " Such is the probability, and, speaking to vigorous minds which do not shrink from novel suggestions, I will dare to say that such is the truth. " Man is capable of calculating that it is frequently for his- own interest to be useful to other species ; and, which is more valuable, more moral, and more amiable, he is capable of rendering them services for his own satisfaction, and with- out any other motive than the pleasure which it affords him to do so. " That which we do for our lower brethren, we, whose in- telligence is circumscribed, and whose goodness is very limited,, the genii, the angels, — permit me to employ terms in general use to designate beings whom I only divine but do not know, — these beings who are so much more worthy than we, ought to do, and doubtless do, the same for us, with much more bene- ficence, frequency, and extent on all occasions which concern them. " We know perfectly well that these intelligences exist, and it is of little importance to us whether they are, as some per- sons think, formed of a sort of matter, composed of mixed material, or not. Their quota of intelligence is very brilliant,. very remarkable, and evident ; in strong contrast with the properties of inanimate nature, which can be measured,, weighed, calculated, and analyzed. " In order to comprehend what is the action of superhuman intelligences, who can only be known to us by induction, reason, and comparison between what we ourselves are to even the most intelligent animals, which are efficiently served by us, but have not the smallest idea of us, we must pursue analogy farther. These intelligences are above us, and out of the reach of our senses only because they are endowed with a greater number of senses, and with a more developed THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 1 35 and more active life. These beings are more worthy than we are, they have many more organs and faculties, they must there- fore, in employing their disposable faculties according to their will, just as we employ ours according to our will, be able to dispose, to work, to manoeuvre all inanimate matter, and to do all this among themselves, and also with respect to intel- ligent beings who are their inferiors, with much more energy, rapidity, enlightenment, and wisdom than we possess, we who nevertheless do it for the beasts subordinate to us. It is, then, in harmony with the laws and the ways of nature that the superior intelligences should have power to render us, when it pleases them, most important services of which we are quite ignorant. " These unknown protectors who observe us, unperceived, have not our imperfections, and must prize all that is good and beautiful in itself more highly than we can. " We cannot, therefore, hope to please intelligences of a su- perior grade by actions which men themselves would condemn as odious. We cannot natter ourselves with a hope of deceiv- ing them, as we may deceive men, by exterior hypocrisy which only renders crime more despicable. They can behold our most secret actions, they can overhear our soliloquies, they can penetrate our unspoken thoughts. We know not in how many ways they can read what is passing in our hearts, we, whose coarseness, poverty, and unskilfulness limit our means of knowing to touch, sight, hearing, and sometimes analysis and conjecture. " A celebrated Eoman wished to have a house built, which should be open to the sight of the citizens. This house exists, and we inhabit it. Our neighbours are the chiefs and the magistrates of the great republic, who are invested with right and power to punish even our intentions, which are 136 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH no mystery to them. And those who most completely pene- trate them in their smallest variations, in their lightest inflec- tions, are the most powerful and the most wise. " Let us then try, in so far as it depends on us, to keep in accord with those in comparison with whom we are so small, and, above all, let us understand our littleness. If it be very important to us to admit to our complete friendship, to our entire confidence, to our constant society, none but men of the first rank of mind and character — if the sweet competition of affection, zeal, goodness, and capacity which is always going on between them and us, contributes to our improvement every day, what shall we not gain by giving them adjuncts, so to speak, higher and more perfect, who are not subject, either to our ignoble interests, our passions, or our errors, and before whom we cannot but blush. They do not vary, they do not abandon us, they never go away, so soon as we are alone we find them. They accompany us in travel, in exile, in prison, in a dungeon; they are always floating above the peaceful and reflecting brain. " We can question them, and every time we do so, we may be sure that they reply. Why should they not do so 1 Our absent friends render us such service, but only those of their number who inspire us with great respect. We can even experience something of the kind with regard to an imaginary personage, if he presents himself to our minds as uniting several good and heroic qualities. How often, in difficult circumstances and in the midst of the strife of different pas- sages, I have asked myself, — In this case, what would Charles Grandison have done ? What would Quesnay have thought ? What would Turgot have approved of? What advice would Lavoisier have given me 1 How shall I gain the approval of the angels ? What line of action will be most conformable to the order, the laws and the beneficent views of the wise THE DA Y AFTER LEA TIL 1 37 and majestic King of the universe 1 For the homage, the aspirations of a soul eager to do good, and careful to avoid debasement, may also be raised to God, in salutary and pious invocation." * * Pezzani : " Plurality des Existences de Vdme," pp. 206-210. I CHAPTEE THE ELEVENTH. WHAT IS AN ANIMAL 1 THE SOULS OF ANIMALS. MIGRATIONS OF SOULS THROUGH THE BODIES OF ANIMALS. ITHEETO we have left animals out of our plan, although, owing to their immense number, and their influence upon the places which they in- habit, they play a highly important part in the w^orld. It is now time to define the place in ^nature which our system assigns to them. Have animals soids *? Yes, in our belief, animals have souls ; but among animals of all classes the soul is far from being endowed with an equal degree of activity. The activity of the soul is different in the crocodile and in the dog, in the eagle and in the grasshopper. In inferior animals, zoophytes and mollusca, the soul exists only in the condition of a germ. This germ develops itself, and becomes amplified according to the elevation of animals in the series of organic perfection. The sponge and the coral are zoophytes (animal plants). In these beings, the characteristics of animality, although they exist very positively, are obscure and hardly discernible. Yoluntary motion, which is the distinctive characteristic for- merly demanded for animals, is wanting in them ; they are motionless, like the plants. Nevertheless, their nutrition is Br TEE DA Y AFTER LEA TH. 131> the same as that of animals, therefore they belong to the animal world. We cannot, however, grant to them a complete soul r hut only the germ, the originating point of a soul. Among, mollusca (such as marine and land shells, the oyster, the snail, &c), the motions and the conduct of life are dictated by the will, and that suffices, in our belief, to reveal their pos- session of a soul, imperfect and very elementary, but certainly existent. Among articulated animals, the insects especially, will, sensibility, acts which denote reason, deliberation, and action resulting from deliberation, are numerous, and recurrent at every moment. They denote intelligence already active. The smallness of the bodies of these animals is not an argu- ment to be used against the fact of their intelligence. In nature nothing is great, and nothing is little ; the monstrous whale and the invisible gnat are equal in the presence of its laws ; both one and the other have received as their inherit- ance the degree of intelligence which is suitable to its need, and it is not by the scale of grandeur that we must measure the degrees of mind among living creatures. Every one is familiar with the prodigies of intelligence performed by asso- ciated bees, and by the ants, in their camps and hills. The habits of these two species of insects, which have been studied and expounded only in our age, fill us with wonder, almost with awe. But the bees and the ants do not constitute an exception among the insect class. It is very probable that in the entire class intelligence exists to the same degree as in bees and ants, for we do not see why two species of hymenop- terous insects should exclusively possess this privilege, to the- 140 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. """ ~ — ' ' i * exclusion of other species of the same order, and all the other orders of the insect class. The fact is, that the bee has been studied profoundly, because that insect is an object of agri- cultural industry, and that, in consequence, it was for man's interest to understand its customs. This accounts for the successful surmounting of the difficulties attendant on the study of bees. We may add, that the observer to whom our knowledge of bees is due, Pierre Huber, of Geneva, who published his fine works at the end of the last century, was blind, and that he was obliged to have recourse for all his observations to the eyes of an illiterate servant, Francois Burnens, which is a proof that this kind of study was not inordinately difficult. The habits of other species of insects, still unknown to us, must, according to this, conceal marvels quite as great as those which the Hubers have revealed in the case of bees and ants. Let us conclude that insects have souls, since intelligence is a faculty of the soul. We may apply the same reasoning to fishes, reptiles, and birds. In these three classes of animals intelligence progresses towards perfection, the faculty of reason is manifest, and the degree of intelligence seems to march at a progressive rate from the fish to the reptile, and from the reptile to the bird. In mammiferous animals we observe a degree of advance in intelligence upon the classes of animals we have just named. But, ought we to calculate the degree of intelligence of the diffe- rent mammifers according to the order in which naturalists have classed these animals ] Ought we to say that the strength of THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 141 intelligence increases as we follow the zoological distribution of Cuvier, that is to say, that it rises from cetacea to carnivora, from carnivora to pachyderms, and from pachyderms to rumi- nants, &c. 1 ]S r o, evidently not. It would be absurd to apportion the intellect of animals to the pace which they occupy in zoological classification. We do not possess any certain method by which to form such an appreciation in detail. We remain within the terms of a very acceptable philosophical thesis in advancing our belief, in a general manner, that the intellectual faculties of animals aug- ment from the mollusk to the mammifer, following almost exactly the progressive scale of zoological classification, but to enter into the peculiarities of these orders would be to expose ourselves to certain contradiction. In zoophytes the soul exists as a germ; this germ develops itself and grows in mollusca, and then in articulated creatures and fishes. The soul acquires certain faculties, more or less obscure and dim, when it enters the body of a reptile, and these faculties are manifestly augmented in the body of a bird. The soul is provided with far more perfected faculties when it reaches the body of a mammifer. Such is the general outline of our system. Let us now follow this system out. to the end. In the first pages of this book, we have advanced our theory that the soul of man, at the close of its terrestrial existence, passes into the planetary ether, where it is lodged in the body of a new being,, superior to man in intelligence and morality. If this theory be correct, if this migration of the soul of man into the body 142 TEE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. of the superhuman being be real, analogy obliges us to estab- lish the same relation between the animals, and then between the animals and man. We firmly believe that a transmigration, a transmission of souls, or of the germs of souls, throughout the entire series of "the classes of animals takes place. The germ of a conscious •soul which existed in the zoophyte and the mollusk passes, on the death of those beings, into the body of an articulated animal. In this first stage of its journey, the animate germ •strengthens and ameliorates itself. The nascent soul acquires some rudimentary faculties. When this rudiment of a con- scious soul passes out of the body of an articulated animal into that of a fish or a reptile, it undergoes a new degree of elaboration, and its power increases. When, escaping from the body of the reptile or the fish, it is lodged in the form of the bird it receives other impressions, which become the origin of new perfections. The bird transmits the spiritual element, already much modified and aggrandized, to the mammifer, and then, the soul, having again gained power, and the number of its faculties being augmented, passes into the body of man. It is probable that in the case of the inferior animals many -animate germs are united to form the superior being. For instance, the principal animators of a certain number of little .zoophytes, of those beings who live in the waters by millions, may, probably, on quitting the bodies of those beings, be united in one in order to form the soul of a single individual of a superior order. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 143 It would be impossible to specify from what particular mammifer the soul must escape, in order to penetrate a human organism. It would be impossible to decide whether, before reaching man the soul has successively traversed the bodies of several mammifers, of more or less complicated organism ; if it has passed through the body of a cetacian, then of a carnivorous creature, then of a quadrumane, the last term of the animal series. A pretension to detail would be a stumbling block to such a system as ours. To maintain, for instance, that our soul is transmitted to us by the quadrumane, would be incorrect. The intelligence of the quadrumane is inferior to that of many animals more highly placed than he in the zoological scale. Apes, which compose only one family in the very numerous order of quadrumana, are animals of middling intelligence. They are malicious, cunning and gross, and possess only a few features of the human face, and even these belong to but few species. All the other quadrumanes are bestial in the highest degree. It is not, therefore, in the quadrumana that we must look for the soul to be transmitted to man. But there are animals endowed with intelligence which is both powerful and noble, who would have a title to be accredited with such an honour. Those animals would vary according to the inhabited parts of the earth. In Asia, it may be that the wise, grave, and noble elephant is the depositary of the spiritual principle which is to pass into man. In Africa, the lion, the rhino- ceros, the numerous ruminants which fill the forests may, perhaps, be the ancestors of the human race. In America, 144 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. the horse, the wild ranger of the pampas, the dog, the faithful friend, the devoted companion of man, everywhere are, it may be, charged with the elaboration of the spiritual principle, which, transmitted to the child, is destined to develop itself, to increase in that child, and become the human soul. A writer in our time has called the dog a candidate for humanity. He little knew how true his defi- nition is. It will be urged, in objection, that man cannot have received the soul of an animal, because he has not the smallest remembrance of such a genealogy. To this we reply that the faculty of memory is wanting in the animal, or is so fugitive that we may consider it nil. The child can therefore receive from the animal only a soul unendowed with memory. And, in fact, the child itself is totally destitute of that faculty. At the moment of his birth he differs not at all from the animal as regards the faculties of his soul. It is not until twelve months have elapsed that the soul makes itself evident in him, and it is afterwards perfected by education. How, therefore, should the child remember an existence prior to his birth 1 Have we any memory of the time which we passed in our mother's womb ? Let us observe here that the progressive order which we have indicated for the migration of soul through the bodies of different animals, is precisely that which nature followed in the first creation of the organized beings which people our globe. It will be seen in ch. xiv., pp. 196 — 200, that plants zoophytes, mollusca, and articulated animals are the first THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 145 living beings which appeared on our globe. After them came the fishes, and then the reptiles. After the reptiles birds, and at a later period mammifers appeared. Thus our system responds to the routine winch nature has followed in the creation of plants and animals. Such is the system which we have conceived as explanatory of the part assigned to animals on our globe. The basis of this system, as will be seen, is the intelligence accorded to animals. We entirely repel the generally held opinion, that beasts do not possess intelligence, and that it is replaced by an obscure faculty which is called instinct. But this theory gives no reason, it merely puts a word in the place of an explanation. By a simple phrase people imagine they resolve one of the great problems of nature. The timid and conven- tional philosophy of our time has hitherto accommodated itself to this method of eluding great difficulties, but the moment now appears to have come for a deeper study of the problems of nature, and for no longer remaining content with the substitution of words for things. There was no hesitation in ancient times about according intelligence to animals. Aristotle and Plato expressed them- selves quite clearly on this point : they admitted no doubt of the reasoning powers of beasts. The most celebrated modern philosophers, Leibnitz, Locke, and Montaigne ; the most eminent naturalists, Charles Bonnet, Georges Leroy, Dupont de [Nemours, Swammerdam, Beaumur, &c, granted intelligence to animals. Charles Bonnet understood the language of many animals, and Dupont de Nemours has 10 146 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. given us a translation of the " Chansons clu Bossignol " and the " Dictionnaire de la Langue des Corbeaux." It is, therefore, difficult to understand how a contrary thesis became prevalent in this age, how Descartes and Buffon, the declared adversaries of animal intelligence, have succeeded in turning the scale in favour of their ideas. Descartes regarded animals purely as machines, as automata provided with mechanical apparatus. It would be difficult to surpass our great philosopher in absurdity when he treats of these animal machines.* Equidem bonus dormitat Descartes. The systematic errors of Buffon on the same subject are well known. The partizans of Descartes and of Buffon have popularized the idea of instinct put in the place of intelligence, of the word replacing the thing. But, in simple truth, what difference is there between intelligence and instinct 1 None. These two words only represent two different degrees of the same faculty. Instinct is simply a weaker degree of intelligence. If we read the writings of naturalists of this country who have studied the question, Frederick Cuvier (brother to George Cuvier), and Flourens,t who has but commented upon Frederick Cuvier's book on the more profound work of a learned con- temporary writer, M. F6e of Strasbourg, J we shall easily find that no fundamental distinction between intelligence and * This question is specially considered in Descartes' " Discours sur la Mtihode." f "De V Instinct et de V Intelligence des Animaxix" Paris, 1861. % u Etudes Philosophiques sur V Instinct et V Intelligence des Animaux" Strasbourg, 1853. THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 147 instinct can be established, and that the whole secret of our philosophers and naturalists consists in calling the intelligence of animals, which is weaker than ours, instinct It is, then, the pride of mankind which has attempted to place a barrier, which in reality has no existence, between us and the animal. The intelligence of the animal is less de- veloped than that of the man, because his wants are fewer, his organs are less highly finished, and because the sphere of his activity is more limited, but that is all. And sometimes, even, we must not forget that the animal exceeds the man in intelligence. Look at the rude and brutal waggoner, beside his good and docile horse, which he mercilessly beats and abuses, while his faithful auxiliary fulfils his task with patient exactness, and say, is it not the master who is the brute, and the animal who is the intelligent being 1 In kindness — that sweet emanation of the soul — animals often excel men. Every one knows the horrid story of the man who carried his dog to a river to drown him, but who fell into the water himself, and was on the point of drowning. The faithful companion whom he had flung in to die was there; he swam to his master, and dragged him into safety. Then the dog's master, making his footing sure this time, seized the creature who had just rescued him, and drowned him. According to our system, the human soul comes from an animal belonging to the superior orders. After having under- gone, in the body of this animal, a suitable degree of perfect- ing and elaboration, it incarnates itself in the body of a newly- born child of the human race. 10—2 148 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. We said, in a former chapter, " Death is not a termination but a change ; we do not die, we experience a metamorphosis. " We must add to this, " Birth is not a beginning, it is a con- sequence. To be born is not to begin, it is to continue a prior existence." There is not, therefore, properly speaking, either birth or death for the human species ; there is only a continuous suc- cession of existences, extending from the visible world through space, and connecting each with those worlds which are hidden from our view. CHAPTEE THE TWELFTH. WHAT IS THE PLANT? THE PLANT IS SENSIBLE. HOW DIFFI- CULT IT IS TO DISTINGUISH PLANTS FROM ANIMALS. — THE GENERAL CHAIN OF LIVING BEINGS. [INN*iEUS has said, "The plant lives; the ani- mal lives and feels; man lives, feels, and thinks." This aphorism represented the state of science in the times of Linnaeus. But since the year 1778, that is to say, since the death of the great botanist, Upsal, natural science has progressed, botany and zoology have been enriched with innumerable facts and fundamental discoveries, so that the Linmean formula no longer repre- sents the present condition of the sciences of organization. We believe that the following proposition may be truthfully substituted : " The plant lives and feels ; the animal and man live, feel, and think." To accord sensibility to plants, is to transgress the classic laws of natural history, so that the considerations and facts which appear to us to justify this proposition ought to be most carefully stated. 1. The plant feels the sensations of pleasure and pain. Cold, for instance, impresses it painfully ; it may be seen to contract itself, as if shivering, under the influence of a sudden 150 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. or excessive fall of the temperature. An abnormal excess of temperature evidently causes it to suffer; when the heat is very great, leaves may be observed to hang down on the stems, curl up, and appear to wither ; when the cool of the evening comes, the leaves rise up again, and the plant re- sumes it appearance of placid health. Drought also occasions manifest suffering to plants. Those who study nature with loving attention know that when, after a long period of drought, a plant is watered it exhibits signs of pleasure. On the other hand, a wounded plant, one from which a branch has been cut, appears to experience pain. A pathological liquid exudes from the wound, like the blood from a hurt animal ; the plant is sick, and will die, if it do not receive the necessary succour. Thus persons who love plants will not cut flowers off their stems, they prefer to inhale their per- fume, and contemplate their brilliant colours, on the stalk, without inflicting a painful mutilation upon the beautiful creatures which they admire. The sensitive plant, if touched by the fingers, or even struck by a current of harsh air, folds up its leaves, and con- tracts itself. The botanist, Desfontaines, saw a sensitive plant, which he was bringing home in a carriage, contract its leaves while the vehicle was in motion, and expand them when it stopped, thus affording a proof that the movement distressed the plant. A drop of acid, or acrid liquid, placed on a leaf of a sensitive plant, will occasion a similar constric- tion. All vegetables present an analogous phenomenon. Their tissues contract when brought in contact with irritant THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 151 substances. By rubbing the tips of a lettuce, the juice may- be made to exude. Vegetable sensibility exists by the same right as animal sensibility, since electricity kills plants as it kills animals, since narcotic poisons kill or stupefy plants as they kill and stupefy animals. One can narcotize a plant by watering it with opium dissolved in water, and MM. Gopport and Macaire have discovered that hydrocyanic acid kills plants as rapidly as animals. 2. Plants sleep at night. During the day they develop their vital activity, and when the night comes, or when they are in darkness, their leaves assume another position, that of repose ; they fold themselves up. In the day-time, the upper surface of the leaf is turned to the sky, and the under surface towards the earth ; this under surface, pierced with holes, or stomata, is the part through which absorption and exhalation take place, while the upper surface, in which there are no such openings, is only a sort of screen for the protection of the absorbing surface. It is therefore easy to understand that the horizontal attitude of the leaves is a position of vital activity, and that the refolding of those leaves during the night indicates a state of repose. It is precisely the same case with ourselves, when during the night we indulge our muscles, kept on the stretch during the day, with complete relaxation. The sleep of plants, said to have been discovered by Lin- naeus, and which was certainly described for the first time in one of Upsars Theses de Botaniqiie, and thoroughly elucidated 152 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. by Linnrcus, is not a phenomenon limited to certain families of plants. There are very few vegetables which, during the night, or in darkness, do not fold their leaves, and which do not present a different appearance by day and by night. The Sensitive is the classic plant selected for its exhibition of this phenomenon in all its intensity ; but this small leguminous creature only presents us with an exaggeration of a fact which exists in a lesser degree among almost all vegetables with light leaves. We may quote the following passage from a former work on the subject of this phenomenon. " The sleep of plants vaguely resembles that of animals. It is a remarkable circumstance that the slumbering leaf appears to wish to return to the epoch of its infancy. It folds itself almost as it was when in the bud, before it burst out, as it was in the lethargic sleep of winter, sheltered beneath its strong scales, or wrapped up in its warm down. One would think that the plant was trying every night to resume the position which it occupied in its early time, just as the sleep- ing animal gathers himself together, and folds his limbs as they were folded in his mother's womb."* Is it possible to deny the possession of sensibility to crea- tures which give us alternate sign of repose and of activity, and who have the power, of accommodating themselves to various external impressions? Fatigue cannot possibly be anything but the consequence of the experience of an im- pression. 3. ^Numerous physiological functions are fulfilled by plants as well as by animals ; and when we consider the number and * " Hisioire des Plantes" Paris, p. 111. THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 153 variety of these functions, it is difficult to understand how, if animals be, as the common consent of mankind declares them, possessed of sensibility, plants can be destitute of it. An an- cient philosopher defined plants as animals with roots. We shall see, on examining the variety of functions performed by vege- tables, whether this philosopher was not a far-seeing, wise man. It would be difficult to name any function with which the animal is invested that the vegetable does not possess in a less degree. Respiration, for instance, is equally a property of plants and of animals. Among the latter, respiration con- sists in the absorption of the oxygen of the air and the emis- sion of carbonic acid gas and watery vapour; among plants it consists in the emission of carbonic acid gas and watery vapour during the night, and during the day, under the influence of sunlight, of the emission of oxygen proceeding from the de- composition of carbonic acid. The function is evidently of the same nature in both the natural kingdoms. Exhalation is a function common to vegetables and to ani- mals. By the stomata of leaves, as by the pores of the skin of animals, watery vapour and various gases, according to the vital phenomena which take place in the interior of the tis- sues, are constantly being disengaged. Absorption takes place in both kingdoms. If you pour water on the lower surface of a leaf, you will see that it will be absorbed with great rapidity. Sprinkle a bouquet of flowers with water, and the freshness of the withered blossoms will revive. Absorption is even more active in vegetable than in animal tissues. 154 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. The circulation of liquids in the interior of plants is accom- plished by a complicated system of channels and vessels of every order and of every calibre, absorbent vessels, exhalant vessels. Nothing is more varied than the disposition of these chan- nels in the interior of plants, and their multiplicity indicates a circulatory function as complicated as that of animals. It is then evident that vegetables have the same physiolo- gical functions as animals, but as yet we know those functions very imperfectly. It is very strange that while animal physio- logy is so far advanced in our day, vegetable physiology is almost in its infancy. "We know very well how the digestion of food takes place in man and animals, we know how our blood circulates in a double system of vessels, called arteries and veins, and we know the central organ, the heart, through which the two liquids are carried by this double system. We see and we touch the organs of sensation and motion, that is to say, the nerves. More than this, we distinguish the nerves which produce sensation from those which rule motion. We know that the centre of nervous action in man and animals is double ; that its seat is equally in the brain and in the spinal marrow. Briefly, science has shed its brightest light on all the functions belonging to animal organization, while vegetable physiology remains in obscurity. Notwithstanding the labours of naturalists within the last two centuries, we cannot explain the life of plants with certainty. We cannot posi- tively state how the sap, which is vegetable blood, circulates THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 155. in their channels. We do not even know with precision whether a tree grows from the outside to the inside, or from the inside to the outside. All the physiological functions in the vegetable kingdom are hidden from us by a thick veil,, and it is only by lifting a corner of it with great difficulty that we can catch a few gleams of light through the obscurity. Nevertheless, all unexplained though they be as yet, physio- logical functions do exist in plants. Considering these numerous functions, it appears entirely impossible that plants should not have received the gift of sensibility. It is difficult to believe, as Linnaeus would have us believe, that they pos- sess life, and nothing more. We shall be told that vegetables have no nerves, and that- in the absence of every organ of sensation, we cannot accord them the faculty of sensibility. But, we reply, that the im- perfect state of vegetable anatomy and physiology forbids us to come to any conclusion touching the existence or the absence of nerves in plants. We are convinced that these organs exist, but that botanists do not know how to discern them, or have no means of distinguishing between them and other organs. 4. The manner of multiplication and reproduction among plants and animals is so analogous, that it seems impossible, when we consider this extraordinary resemblance in the most, important functions, to refuse sensibility to plants, and accord it to animals. Let us consider the various modes of reproduction proper to vegetables. Eeproduction, or rather the fecundation whick 156 TEE DA Y AFTER DEATH. precedes it, is executed in certain vegetables, by means of an apparatus of the same typical form as that of the animal kingdom. It is composed of a male organ, the stamen, which contains the impregnating dust, pollen, and of a female organ, the ovary, supported by a stalk, the pistil. The pollen impregnates the ovula contained in the grains of pollen in the ovary, as the seed of the male impregnates the ovula con- tained in the egg of the animal. In both cases the fruit of the impregnation develops itself afterwards with the aid of warmth and time. The vegetable egg grows and ripens, just .as the animal egg grows and ripens. We may add that the analogy between the modes of re- production, in the two kingdoms, animal and vegetable, does not limit itself to these conditions of likeness; we may observe resemblances in the specialities of the function. Particular vitality, a turgid state of the tissues, accompanied by eleva- tion of the local temperature, occur in the case of certain plants at the moment of impregnation, especially in the species of the family of Aro'ides. On placing a thermometer, .at that time, in the great floral covering of the Arums, an excess of from 1° to 2° on the temperature of the surrounding «air will be denoted, an extraordinary fact in vegetable life, for vegetables are always colder than the external air. How can we believe that the plant in which this excitement takes place has no feeling of its own condition ? The plant, like the animal, has its seasons of love, can it be that it has no consciousness of them? Are we to believe that the plant which becomes warm, in which life rises at the moment of THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 157 impregnation, has no more sensation than a stone 1 Such is not our opinion. We cannot understand life without sensi- bility — the one appears to us to be the indication of the other. The analogy between the plant and the animal in their func- tions of reproduction is nowhere more evident or more curious' than in a vegetable production which abounds in the waters of the Khone, and has received the name of Vallisneria spiralis. In this plant the male and female organs are placed on diffe- rent branches of the same plant. The female flowers are fixed to the ground by long, twisted, spiral stalks. But, when seeding time comes, the spirals of the stems unroll themselves, and the female flowers come up to the surface of the water and spread themselves out. The male flowers, not being placed like the female on elastic stems, cannot come up to the surface of the water. What do they do? They burst through their covering, and float around their females on the surface of the water. After that the current carries away the detached male flowers ; and the female stem folds itself up again, and sinks to the bottom of the river, there to ripen its impregnated ovules. The function of reproduction in plants is rich in conclu- sions in support of our thesis. The plants called phanero- gamous are not reproduced only by impregnation by means of the visible sexual organs, the pistil and the stamen, they are also multiplied by grafts, buds, and cuttings. Cryptogamous plants, which have no sexual organs, are multiplied either by effects which detach themselves from the individual plant at 158 THE DA Y AFTER BE A Til. a certain period of its vegetation as we see in the case of fungi, algse, mushrooms, &c, or by fragments of the indi- vidual itself, which, being thrown into the ground, germinate &nd multiply themselves. Animals, in their several classes, represent all these modes of reproduction ; there is not one which does not exist among them. Animals are not reproduced by eggs only, either interior or exterior, and by living young ones, they are equally multiplied, like vegetables, by offsets, by cuttings, and by ingraftment. Multiplication by offsets may be observed in the fresh- water polype. Little buds which grow and lengthen come y passing from the mollusc or articulated animal to the fish. This germ of a soul thus becomes a rudimentary soul, provided with certain faculties. In the zoophyte and the mollusc it had only sensibility ; in the fish, and then in the reptile, and ihe bird, it has attention and judgment. The faculties are augmented in proportion as the animal mounts higher in the organic scale. Arrived at its summit, the human being, the soul is in possession of all its faculties, and especially of memory, which during the animal stages of the ascent is -obscure and uncertain. To accord sensibility to plants permits us to unite all the creatures of the living creation, and thus to complete our general system of terrestrial nature. CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH. DOES MAN EXIST ELSEWHERE THAN ON THE EARTH ? — DESCRIP- TION OF THE PLANETS. PLURALITY OP INHABITED WORLDS. THROUGHOUT the preceding chapters we have reasoned as if the earth were the whole universe. Indeed, almost all men believed that such was the case, from the first establishment of society until the last century. Great mathematical knowledge, pro- found study, and highly perfected optical instruments are requisite to rectify the false ideas, the errors, and the illusions which are the result of a simple view of the earth and the sky. Great efforts of the mind, and a very difficult struggle against the testimony of our senses are necessary to the recog- nition that the earth moves, and that the sun is motionless. In order to distinguish the place and the office of each of those softly beaming globes, in the midst of the uniformity of aspect presented by the stars which shine during the night, patient and severe observations, transmitted and repeated from age are indispensable, and, in addition, an excellent scientific method. Let us therefore not be surprised that men have taken so much time to comprehend the ordering of the universe, and that they had only the most childish con- 12 1 78 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL ception of them for thousands of years. The ancients, the Greeks, the Bomans, the Egyptians, knew nothing of the universe, except the earth (nor did the Orientals, with the exception of some truly learned men, who had divined the general mechanism of the universe by methods unknown to us, but they concealed their knowledge from the profane). These ancients could speak of only a small portion of the globe : of Europe, Asia, and the North of Africa. The re- mainder was a dead letter for the peoples of antiquity. After them, and following their example, the first Christians re- duced the universe to what they knew of it ; they believed there was but one world, because they saw only one. The earth was for them the universe. In the stars they saw only brilliant spots, like silver nails in the celestial vault, to en- hance the azure, and charm the eyes of men in the quiet of the night. The moon was the natural beacon of the earth. In the sky there was a shining track followed by the sun, and the torch of day was no larger than the beacon of night. The celestial region which spread itself above the sun and the moon was the Empyrean of the ancients, the Paradise of the Christians and the Mussulmans. It was at once the sojourn of clouds and of light, the habitation of the elect of God, of the saints and the just. Under the earth, and in its interior, were immense abysses, gulfs, and cavities, the dark dwellings of the damned. This simple cosmogony, which merely translates what our eyes show us, has been that believed by every people in their infancy. Among the savage tribes of the two worlds, in THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 179 America and in Africa, as in the ancient East, among the Eomans as among the Egyptians and the ancient Greeks, this coarse simplicity and absolute ignorance of the constitu- tion of the world prevailed. On this profoundly false basis all the ancient religions were founded. The social customs of modern peoples are based upon the same errors. Language has consecrated them ; the earth is everywhere called the world, as the ancients called it (mundus, %6