CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PLURALITY OF EXISTENCES.

The dogma of reincarnation, some say, is not new; they have resurrected it from the doctrine of Pythagoras. We have never said that the Spiritist Doctrine was a modern invention.

Constituting a law of Nature, Spiritism must have existed since the origin of time, and we have always striven to demonstrate that signs of it are to be found in the most remote antiquity.

Pythagoras, as is known, was not the author of the system of metempsychosis; he gathered it from the Indian philosophers and the Egyptians, who had held it since time immemorial. The idea of the transmigration of souls thus formed a common belief, accepted by the most eminent men. In what manner did they acquire it? Through a revelation, or through intuition? We do not know. Be that as it may, however, what is beyond doubt is that an idea does not traverse century after century, nor manage to impose itself upon select intelligences, unless it contains something serious. Thus, the antiquity of this doctrine, instead of being an objection, would be proof in its favor.

Nevertheless, between the metempsychosis of the ancients and the modern doctrine of reincarnation there is, as is also known, a profound difference, marked by the fact that the Spirits reject, in absolute fashion, the transmigration of man's soul into animals and reciprocally.

Therefore, in teaching the dogma of the plurality of corporeal existences, the Spirits renew a doctrine that originated in the earliest ages of the world and that has been preserved in the depths of many persons, down to our own days. They simply present it from a more rational point of view, more in accord with the progressive laws of Nature and more in conformity with the wisdom of the Creator, stripping it of all the accessories of superstition.

A circumstance worthy of note is that it is not only in this book that the Spirits have taught it during recent times: even before its publication, numerous communications of the same nature were obtained in various countries, and afterward they multiplied considerably.

Perhaps this would be the place to examine why the Spirits do not all seem to agree on this question. Later, however, we shall return to this subject.

Let us examine the matter from another point of view and, setting aside any intervention of the Spirits, let us leave them aside for the moment. Let us suppose that this theory has nothing to do with them; let us even suppose that Spirits had never been thought of at all. Let us place ourselves, momentarily, on neutral ground, admitting the same degree of probability for both hypotheses, that is, that of the plurality and that of the unity of corporeal existences, and let us see to which side reason and our own interest will incline us.

Many reject the idea of reincarnation for the sole reason that it does not suit them. They say that one existence is already more than enough for them and that, therefore, they would not wish to begin another like it. We know of some who fly into a rage at the mere thought of having to return to Earth. We shall ask them only whether they imagine that God asked their opinion, or consulted their tastes, in order to regulate the Universe.

One of two things: either reincarnation exists, or it does not; if it exists, it matters not at all that it displeases them; they will have to undergo it, without God asking their permission for that. Those who speak in this way seem to us like a sick person saying: I have suffered enough today, I do not want to suffer any more tomorrow. Whatever his ill humor may be, he will not for that suffer any less on the following day, nor on the days that succeed it, until he is healed. Consequently, if those who express themselves in such a manner are to live again, corporeally, they will live again, they will reincarnate. It will avail them nothing to rebel, like children who do not want to go to school, or condemned men who do not want to go to prison. They will go through what they have to go through.

Such objections are too puerile to deserve being examined more seriously. We shall say, however, to those who formulate them that they may set their minds at ease, that the Spiritist Doctrine, with regard to reincarnation, is not so terrible as they judge it to be; that, had they studied it thoroughly, they would not show themselves so terrified; they would know that the conditions of the new existence depend upon themselves, that it will be happy or unhappy according to what they have done in this world; that from now on they may rise so high that a relapse into the mire need no longer be feared by them.

We assume we are addressing persons who believe in a future after death, and not those who fashion for themselves the prospect of nothingness, or who claim that their souls will be swallowed up in a universal whole, where they lose their individuality, like raindrops in the ocean, which comes to almost the same thing.

Now then: if you believe in any future, you surely do not admit that it is identical for all, for, otherwise, what would be the usefulness of doing good? Why should man constrain himself? Why should he refrain from satisfying all his passions, all his desires, even at another's expense, since by that he would become neither better nor worse? You believe, on the contrary, that this future will be more or less fortunate or unfortunate, according to what you have done during life, and then you wish it to be as fortunate as possible, since it is to last for eternity, do you not? But would you, perchance, have the pretension of being among the most perfect men who have ever existed on Earth and, therefore, entitled to attain at a single bound the supreme felicity of the elect? No.

You then admit that there are men of greater worth than yours and entitled to a better place, without its following that you are to be counted among the reprobate. Very well! Place yourselves mentally, for an instant, in that intermediate situation, which will be yours, as you have just acknowledged, and imagine that someone comes to tell you: You suffer; you are not as happy as you might be, whereas before you are beings who enjoy complete happiness. Do you wish to exchange your position for theirs? — Certainly, you will answer; what must we do? — Almost nothing: begin again the work that was poorly done and do it better. Would you hesitate to accept, even at the cost of many existences of trials?

Let us make another, more prosaic comparison. Let us picture a man who, without having reached extreme misery, nevertheless suffers privations through scarcity of means, and someone comes to tell him: Here is an immense fortune that you may enjoy; for this it is only necessary that you work hard for one minute. Were he the laziest man on Earth, he would say without hesitation: Let us work one minute, two minutes, an hour, a day, if need be. What does that matter, so long as it brings me to end my days in abundance? Now, what is the duration of corporeal life, compared with eternity? Less than a minute, less than a second.

We have seen some persons reason in this way: It is not possible that God, sovereignly good as He is, should impose upon man the obligation of beginning anew a series of miseries and tribulations. Will these persons, perchance, find that there is more goodness in God condemning man to suffer perpetually, on account of a few moments of error, than in granting him the means of repairing his faults?

“Two manufacturers hired two workmen, each of whom could aspire to become a partner of his respective employer. It happened that these two workmen on one occasion made very poor use of their day, both deserving to be dismissed. One of the manufacturers, notwithstanding the entreaties of his workman, sent him away, and the poor workman, having found no more work, ended by dying in misery. The other said to his: You have lost a day; you owe me compensation for it. You did your work poorly; you remain in my debt for a reparation. I consent that you begin it again. See that you do it well, and I will keep you in my service, and you may continue to aspire to the superior position that I promised you.” Need we ask which of the manufacturers was more humane? Can it be that God, who is clemency itself, should be more inexorable than a man?

There is something poignant in the idea that our lot may be decided forever, by the effect of a few years of trials, even when the attainment of perfection has not depended on us, whereas eminently consoling is the opposite idea, which allows us hope. Thus, without pronouncing for or against the plurality of existences, without preferring one hypothesis to the other, we declare that, if men were given the choice, no one would want a judgment without appeal.

A philosopher said that, if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, for the happiness of the human race. As much could be said of the plurality of existences. But, as we observed above, God does not ask our permission, nor consult our tastes. Either it is, or it is not.

Let us see on which side the probabilities lie, and let us regard the subject from another point of view, solely as a philosophical study, still abstracting from the teaching of the Spirits.

If there is no reincarnation, there is evidently only one corporeal existence. If our present corporeal existence is unique, the soul of each man was created at the time of his birth, unless one admits the anteriority of the soul, in which case it would be fitting to ask what it was before birth and whether the state in which it found itself did not constitute an existence under some form.

There is no middle ground: either the soul existed, or it did not exist before the body. If it existed, what was its situation? Did it, or did it not, have consciousness of itself? If it did not, it is almost as if it did not exist. If it had individuality, was it progressive, or stationary? In either case, to what degree had it arrived upon taking on the body?

Admitting, in accordance with the common belief, that the soul is born with the body, or, what comes to the same thing, that, before incarnating, it possesses only negative faculties, we ask:

— 1. Why does the soul show aptitudes so diverse and independent of the ideas that education has caused it to acquire?

— 2. Whence comes the abnormal aptitude that many children at a tender age reveal, for this or that art, for this or that science, while others remain inferior or mediocre throughout their entire life?

— 3. Whence, in some, the innate or intuitive ideas that do not exist in others?

— 4. Whence, in certain children, the precocious instinct they reveal for vices or for virtues, the innate sentiments of dignity or of baseness, contrasting with the environment in which they were born?

— 5. Why, abstracting from education, are some men more advanced than others?

— 6. Why are there savages and civilized men? If you take a newborn Hottentot child and educate him in our best lyceums, will you ever make of him a Laplace or a Newton?

What philosophy or theosophy is capable of resolving these problems?

It is beyond doubt that either souls are equal at birth, or they are unequal. If they are equal, why, among them, such great diversity of aptitudes? It will be said that this depends on the organism. But, in that case, we find ourselves in the presence of the most monstrous and immoral of doctrines. Man would be a mere machine, the plaything of matter; he would cease to bear responsibility for his acts, since he could attribute everything to his physical imperfections.

If souls are unequal, it is because God created them so. In that case, however, why the innate superiority granted to some? Would such partiality correspond to the justice of God and to the love that He bestows equally upon all His creatures?

Let us admit, on the contrary, a series of progressive prior existences for each soul, and everything is explained. At birth, men bring the intuition of what they learned before: they are more or less advanced, according to the number of existences they count, according to how far they are already removed from the point of departure. There occurs here exactly what is observed in a gathering of individuals of all ages, where each will have a development proportionate to the number of years he has lived.

The successive existences will be, for the life of the soul, what the years are for that of the body. Gather together, on a given day, a thousand individuals from one to eighty years of age; suppose that a veil conceals all the days preceding that on which you gathered them, and that, consequently, you believe they were all born on the same occasion. You would naturally ask how it is that some are big and others small, some old and others young, some instructed and others still ignorant. If, however, the cloud that conceals their past being dispelled, you come to learn that they have all lived a longer or shorter time, everything will be explained to you.

God, in His justice, cannot have created souls unequally perfect. With the plurality of existences, the inequality we observe presents nothing further in opposition to the most rigorous equity: it is simply that we see only the present and not the past.

Does this reasoning rest upon some system, some gratuitous supposition? No. We start from a patent, incontestable fact: the inequality of aptitudes and of intellectual and moral development, and we ascertain that none of the current theories explains it, whereas another theory gives it a simple, natural, and logical explanation. Would it be rational to prefer those that do not explain to the one that does explain?

In view of the sixth question above, they will naturally say that the Hottentot is of an inferior race. We shall then ask whether the Hottentot is or is not a man. If he is, why did God deprive him and his race of the privileges granted to the Caucasian race? If he is not, why try to make him a Christian?

The Spiritist Doctrine has greater breadth than all this. According to it, there are not many species of men, there are only men whose Spirits are more or less backward, but all susceptible of progressing. Is this principle not more in conformity with the justice of God?

We have just appraised the soul in relation to its past and to its present. If we consider it with a view to its future, we shall run up against the same difficulties:

— 1st. If it is our present existence that, by itself alone, will decide our future lot, what, in the future life, are the respective positions of the savage and of the civilized man? Will they be on the same level, or will they find themselves distanced from one another, with regard to the sum of eternal happiness that falls to them?

— 2nd. Will the man who labored all his life to improve himself come to occupy the same category as another who remained at an inferior degree of advancement, not through his own fault, but because he had neither the time nor the possibility of becoming better?

— 3rd. Will he who did evil, for not having been able to instruct himself, be guilty of a state of things whose existence in no way depended on him?

— 4th. One works continually to enlighten, to moralize, to civilize men. But, in contrast to one who becomes enlightened, millions of others die every day before the light has reached them. What is the lot of these latter? Will they be treated as reprobate? In the contrary case, what have they done to occupy a category identical to that of the others?

— 5th. What lot awaits those who die in infancy, when they have not yet been able to do either good or evil? If they go among the elect, why this favor, when they have done nothing to merit it? By virtue of what privilege do they find themselves exempt from the tribulations of life?

Will there be any doctrine capable of resolving these problems?

Admit the consecutive existences, and everything will be explained in conformity with the justice of God. What could not be done in one existence is done in another. Thus it is that no one escapes the law of progress, that each one will be rewarded according to his real merit, and that no one is excluded from the supreme felicity, to which all may aspire, whatever the obstacles they meet on the way.

These questions could easily be multiplied to infinity, for innumerable are the psychological and moral problems that find their solution only in the plurality of existences. We limit ourselves to formulating those of a more general order.

Be that as it may, it will perhaps be alleged that the Church does not admit the doctrine of reincarnation; that it would subvert religion. We have no intention of treating that question at this moment. It suffices for us to have demonstrated that this doctrine is eminently moral and rational. Now, that which is moral and rational cannot be in opposition to a religion which proclaims that God is goodness and reason par excellence.

What would have become of religion if, against universal opinion and the testimony of science, it had obstinately refused to yield to evidence and had expelled from its bosom all those who did not believe in the movement of the Sun or in the six days of creation? What credit would it have deserved, and what authority would it have had, among cultivated peoples, a religion founded on manifest errors and imposing them as articles of faith? As soon as the evidence became apparent, the Church, judiciously, placed itself on the side of the evidence.

Once it is proved that certain existing things would be impossible without reincarnation, that, except by this means, certain points of dogma cannot be explained, it behooves us to admit it and to recognize as merely apparent the antagonism between this doctrine and dogmatics.

Further on we shall show that the distance which separates the doctrine of successive lives from religion is perhaps much smaller than is thought, and that this doctrine would do religion no greater harm than was done to it by the discoveries of the movement of the Earth and of the geological periods, which, at first sight, seemed to contradict the sacred texts.

Moreover, the principle of reincarnation stands out in many passages of the Scriptures, being especially formulated, in explicit fashion, in the Gospel: “When they came down from the mountain (after the transfiguration), Jesus gave them this charge: Tell no one of what you have just seen, until the Son of man has risen from the dead. His disciples then asked Him:

Why do the scribes say that Elijah must first come? Jesus answered them: It is true that Elijah is to come and that he will restore all things. But I declare to you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him and made him suffer as they pleased. In the same way they will put the Son of man to death. The disciples then understood that it was of John the Baptist that He was speaking to them.” (Matthew, chapter XVII.)

Since John the Baptist had been Elijah, there was reincarnation of the Spirit or of the soul of Elijah in the body of John the Baptist.

In sum, whatever opinion we hold concerning reincarnation, whether we accept it or not, that will be no reason for us to fail to undergo it, provided it exists, in spite of all beliefs to the contrary.

The essential thing is that the teaching of the Spirits is eminently Christian; it rests upon the immortality of the soul, upon future penalties and rewards, upon the justice of God, upon the free will of man, upon the morality of Christ. Hence, it is not antireligious.

We have reasoned, abstracting, as we said, from any Spiritist teaching which, for certain persons, lacks authority. It is not solely because it came from the Spirits that we and so many others have made ourselves adherents of the plurality of existences. It is because this doctrine appears to us the most logical and because it alone resolves questions hitherto insoluble.

Even were it the work of a mere mortal, we would have adopted it just the same and would not have hesitated a second longer to renounce the ideas we espoused. Once error is demonstrated, self-love has much more to lose than to gain by obstinately persisting in the maintenance of a false idea.

Likewise, we would have rejected it, even coming from the Spirits, if it had appeared to us contrary to reason, as we have rejected many others, for we know, from experience, that one should not blindly accept everything that comes from them, just as one should not blindly adopt everything that proceeds from men.

The best claim that, in our view, recommends the idea of reincarnation is that of being, above all, logical. Yet another it presents: that of being confirmed by facts, positive facts and, one might well say, material facts, which an attentive and judicious study reveals to whoever takes the trouble to observe with patience and perseverance, and in the face of which there is no longer room for doubt. When these facts have become commonly known, like those of the formation and the movement of the Earth, all will of necessity yield to the evidence, and those who set themselves in opposition to them will find themselves constrained to retract.

Let us therefore recognize, in summary, that the doctrine of the plurality of existences alone explains what, without it, remains inexplicable; that it is highly consoling and in conformity with the most rigorous justice; that it constitutes for man the anchor of salvation that God, in His mercy, has granted him.

The very words of Jesus permit no doubt in this regard. Here is what is read in the Gospel of Saint John, chapter III: (vv. 3, 4 and 5.)

Answering Nicodemus, Jesus said: Verily, verily I say unto you that, if a man is not born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to Him:

How can a man be born when he is already old? Can he return to his mother's womb to be born a second time?

Jesus answered: Verily, verily I say unto you that, if a man is not born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that I have said to you: it is necessary that you be born again. (See, further on, the paragraph Resurrection of the flesh: no. 1010.)