THE FIVE ALTERNATIVES OF HUMANITY.

I. Materialist Doctrine. — II. Pantheist Doctrine. — III. Deist Doctrine. — IV. Dogmatic Doctrine. — V. Spiritist Doctrine.

Very few men live free of concern for the next day. Now, if everyone is anxious about what will come after the day that is passing, with all the more reason is it natural that he should be concerned about what there will be after the great day of life, since it is no longer a matter of a few moments, but of eternity. Shall we live, or shall we not live, once that great day is over? There is no middle ground; it is a question of life and death; it is the supreme alternative!… If we question the inner sentiment of nearly the whole of mankind, all will answer: “We shall live.” This hope constitutes a consolation. Nevertheless, a small minority strives, especially of late, to prove to them that they will not live. This school has won proselytes, it must be confessed, and chiefly among those who, fearing the responsibility of the future, find it more comfortable to enjoy the present without constraint, without troubling themselves over the prospect of the consequences. This, however, is the opinion of a small minority. If we are to live, how shall we live? In what conditions shall we find ourselves? Here the systems vary, according to religious and philosophical ideas. They may, however, be reduced to five, all the principal alternatives, which we shall now summarize, so that comparison may become easier and each may choose the one that seems to him most rational and best corresponds to his personal aspirations and to the requirements of society. The five alternatives are those that result from the doctrines of materialism, of pantheism, of deism, of dogmatism, and of Spiritism. I.

Materialist Doctrine.

The intelligence of man is a property of matter; it is born and dies with the organism. Man is nothing before, nor after, corporeal life.

Consequences. — Man being only matter, material enjoyments are the only real and desirable things; the moral affections have no future; the moral bonds death breaks without remission, and for the miseries of life there is no compensation; suicide becomes the rational and logical end of existence, when no alleviation can be hoped for the sufferings; useless is any constraint to overcome the evil inclinations; let each live for himself the best he can, while he is here; it is stupidity to distress oneself and sacrifice one's repose, one's well-being for the sake of others, that is, for the sake of beings who in their turn will be annihilated and whom no one will ever see again; social duties without foundation, good and evil mere conventions; for social restraint solely the material force of the civil law. NOTE. — It will perhaps not be useless to recall here to our readers some passages of an article we published on materialism, in the Review of August 1868.

“Materialism, we said, displaying itself as it never had in any epoch, presenting itself as the supreme regulator of the moral destinies of Humanity, had the effect of terrifying the masses by the inevitable consequences of its doctrines with respect to the social order. For that very reason, it provoked, in favor of the spiritualist ideas, an energetic reaction, which is bound to prove to it how far it is from possessing sympathies as general as it supposes, and that it singularly deludes itself if it hopes one day to impose its laws upon the world. “Certainly the spiritualist beliefs of the past do not satisfy this century: they are no longer on a level with the intellectual standing of our generation; on many points, they are found to be in contradiction with the positive data of Science; they leave in the mind ideas incompatible with the need for the positive that predominates in modern society: they commit, moreover, the error of imposing themselves by means of blind faith and of proscribing free examination; hence, without any doubt, the development of incredulity in the majority of creatures. It is altogether evident that, if men were nourished, from infancy, with ideas of a nature to be later confirmed by reason, there would be no unbelievers. How many, brought back by Spiritism to belief, have said to us: ‘Had God, the soul, and the future life always been presented to us in a rational manner, we should never have doubted.’ “From the fact that a bad or false application is given to a principle, does it follow that it ought to be rejected? It happens with spiritual things as is verified with legislation and with all social institutions. It is necessary to adapt them to the times, under penalty of their succumbing. But, instead of presenting something better than the old spiritualism, materialism preferred to suppress everything, which exempted it from research and seemed to it more comfortable for those to whom the idea of God and of the future is troublesome. What should one think of a physician who, finding the diet of a convalescent not substantial enough, should prescribe that he eat absolutely nothing at all? “What causes astonishment in the majority of the materialists of the modern school is the spirit of intolerance carried to the utmost limits, when at the same time they incessantly claim the right to liberty of conscience!…

“…There is, at this moment, in a certain party, a raising of bucklers against the spiritualist ideas in general, in which, naturally, those of Spiritism find themselves involved. What that party wants is not a better and more just God, it is the God matter, less embarrassing, because one does not have to render account to it. No one contests the said party's right to have its opinion, to discuss the contrary opinions; but what could not be granted it is the pretension, singular at least in men who give themselves out as apostles of liberty, of preventing others from believing in their own way and from discussing the doctrines they do not share. Intolerance for intolerance, the one is worth no more than the other…” II.

Pantheist Doctrine.

The intelligent principle, or soul, independent of matter, is drawn, at birth, from the universal whole; it is individualized in each being during life and returns, by the effect of death, to the common mass, like raindrops to the ocean.

Consequences. — Without individuality and without consciousness of itself, the being is as if it did not exist. The moral consequences of this doctrine are exactly the same as those of the materialist doctrine.

NOTE. — A certain number of pantheists admit that the soul, drawn, at birth, from the universal whole, retains its individuality for an indefinite time and returns to the mass only after having reached the last degrees of perfection. The consequences of this variety of belief are absolutely the same as those of the pantheist doctrine properly so called, for it is altogether useless for anyone to take the trouble to acquire some knowledge, the consciousness of which he will have to lose, by being annihilated after a relatively short time. If the soul, in general, refuses to admit such a conception, how much more painfully would it not feel shocked, considering that the instant in which it attained supreme knowledge and perfection would be the one in which it would see itself condemned to lose the fruit of all its labors, losing its individuality.

III.

Deist Doctrine.

Deism comprises two quite distinct categories of believers: the independent deists and the providentialist deists.

The first believe in God; they admit all his attributes as creator. God, they say, established the general laws that govern the Universe; but, once established, these laws function by themselves, and he who promulgated them concerns himself with nothing more. Creatures do what they will or what they can, without his being troubled by it. There is no providence; God not occupying himself with us, we have nothing to thank him for, nor anything to ask of him. Those who deny any providential intervention in the life of man are like children who think themselves much too sensible to be freed from the tutelage, the counsels, and the protection of their parents, or who think that these should occupy themselves no longer with them, once they have put them into the world.

Under the pretext of glorifying God, too great, they say, to lower himself to his creatures, they make of him a great egoist and lower him to the level of the animals that abandon their young to Nature.

This belief is the result of pride; it is always the idea that we are submitted to a superior power that wounds self-love and from which they seek to exempt themselves. While some deny that power absolutely, others consent to recognize its existence, although condemning it to nullity.

There is an essential difference between the independent deist, of whom we have just spoken, and the providentialist deist. This latter, indeed, believes not only in the existence and the creative power of God, at the origin of things, but also believes in his incessant intervention in the creation and prays to him, but does not admit the exterior worship and the present dogmatism. IV.

Dogmatic Doctrine.

The soul, independent of matter, is created at the time of the being's birth; it survives and retains its individuality after death; from that moment, its lot is irrevocably determined; null are any ulterior progressions for it; it will therefore be, for all eternity, intellectually and morally, what it was during life. The wicked being condemned to perpetual and irremissible punishments in hell, all repentance turns out to be completely useless for them; it thus appears that God refuses to grant them the possibility of repairing the evil they have done. The good are rewarded with the vision of God and perennial contemplation in heaven. The cases that may merit heaven or hell, for all eternity, are left to the decision and the judgment of fallible men, to whom is given the faculty of absolving or condemning. (NOTE. — Were one to object to this final proposition that God judges in the last instance, one might ask what value the decision pronounced by men has, since it can be invalidated.)

Definitive and absolute separation of the condemned and the elect. Uselessness of moral succor and of consolations for the condemned. Creation of angels or privileged souls, exempt from all labor to arrive at perfection, etc., etc.

Consequences. — This doctrine leaves without solution the following grave problems:

1st. Whence come the innate dispositions, intellectual and moral, that cause men to be born good or bad, intelligent or idiotic?

2nd. What is the lot of children who die at a tender age?

Why do they go to a blessed life, without the labor to which others are subjected during long years?

Why are they rewarded without having been able to do good, or are they deprived of a perfect happiness, without having done evil?

3rd. What is the lot of the cretins and the idiots who have no consciousness of their acts?

4th. Where is the justice of the miseries and the infirmities from birth, since they result from no act of the present life?

5th. What is the lot of the savages and of all those who necessarily die in the state of moral inferiority in which they were placed by nature itself, if it is not granted them to progress ulteriorly?

6th. Why does God create some souls more favored than others?

7th. Why does he call to himself prematurely those who would have been able to improve themselves had they lived longer, since they are not permitted to progress after death?

8th. Why did God create angels in a state of perfection without labor, while other creatures are submitted to the rudest trials, in which they have greater probabilities of succumbing than of emerging victorious, etc., etc.?

V.

Spiritist Doctrine.

The intelligent principle is independent of matter. The individual soul preexists and survives the body. The point of departure or of origin is the same for all souls, without exception; all are created simple and ignorant and subject to indefinite progress. No privileged creatures more favored than others. The angels are beings that have arrived at perfection, after having passed, like all other creatures, through all the degrees of inferiority. The souls or Spirits progress more or less rapidly, through the use of free will, by labor and by goodwill. The spiritual life is the normal life; the corporeal life is a temporary phase of the life of the Spirit, which during it clothes itself in a material envelope, of which it divests itself at the time of death.

The Spirit progresses in the corporeal state and in the spiritual state. The corporeal state is necessary to the Spirit, until it has climbed a certain degree of perfection. It there develops through the labor to which it is submitted by its own needs and acquires special practical knowledge. A single corporeal existence being insufficient for it to acquire all the perfections, it takes up a body as many times as are necessary for it, and each time it incarnates with the progress it has realized in its preceding existences and in the spiritual life. When, in one world, it attains all that it can obtain there, it leaves it to go to other worlds, intellectually and morally more advanced, each time less material, and so on, up to the perfection of which the creature is susceptible. The happy or unhappy state of the Spirits is inherent in their moral advancement; the punishment they suffer is a consequence of their hardening in evil, so that, by persevering in evil, they punish themselves, but the door of repentance never closes to them, and they can, as soon as they will it, return to the path of good and effect, in time, all progress.

Children who die at a tender age may be Spirits more or less advanced, inasmuch as they have already had other existences in which they either practiced good or committed evil actions. Death does not free them from the trials they are to suffer, and, in due time, they return to a new existence on Earth, or in superior worlds, according to the degree of elevation they have attained. The soul of the cretins and the idiots is of the same nature as that of any other incarnate being; they often possess great intelligence; they suffer through the deficiency of the means at their disposal to enter into relation with their companions of existence, as the mute suffer through not being able to speak. The fact is that they abused intelligence in past existences and voluntarily accepted the situation of powerlessness to use it, in order to expiate the evil they practiced, etc., etc.