THE FUTURE LIFE.

The future life has already ceased to be a problem. It is a fact established by reason and by demonstration for almost the totality of men, since those who deny it form an infinitesimal minority, in spite of the noise they attempt to make. It is not, then, its reality that we propose to demonstrate here. That would be to repeat ourselves without adding anything to the general conviction. The principle being admitted, as a first step, what we propose is to examine its influence upon the social order and upon moralization, according to the manner in which it is regarded.

The consequences of the contrary principle, that is, of nihilism, are already too well known and sufficiently understood for it to be necessary to develop them anew. We shall only say that, if the nonexistence of the future life were demonstrated, the present life would have no other purpose than the maintenance of a body that, tomorrow, within an hour, may cease to exist, everything in that case being entirely finished. The logical consequence of such a condition for Humanity would be that all thoughts would concentrate upon the increase of material enjoyments, without regard for the harm done to others. Why, then, would anyone endure privations, impose sacrifices upon himself? Why would he constrain himself in order to improve, in order to correct himself of defects? It would also be the absolute uselessness of remorse, of repentance, since nothing would be to be expected. It would be, in the end, the consecration of egoism and of the maxim: The world belongs to the strongest and the cleverest. Without the future life, morality is nothing more than mere constraint, a conventional code, arbitrarily imposed; it would have no root in the heart. A society founded on such a belief would have, as the only link to bind its members together, force, and it would very quickly fall into dissolution. Let it not be objected that, among the deniers of the future life, there are honest persons, incapable of knowingly causing harm to anyone whatsoever and susceptible of the greatest devotions. Let us say, first of all, that, among many unbelievers, the denial of the hereafter is more bravado, boastfulness, pride in passing for strong minds, than the result of an absolute conviction. In the inner forum of their consciences, there is a doubt that importunes them, on account of which they seek to stun themselves. It is not, however, without dissimulation that they pronounce the terrible nothingness, which deprives them of the fruit of all the labors of the intelligence and shatters forever the dearest affections. Many of those who rail most loudly are the first to tremble before the idea of the unknown; for that very reason, when the fatal moment approaches for them to enter into that unknown, very few are those who fall asleep, in the final sleep, in the firm persuasion that they will not awaken somewhere, seeing that Nature never abdicates its rights. We affirm, then, that, in the majority of unbelievers, the unbelief is very relative, that is, that, their reason being satisfied neither with the dogmas nor with the religious beliefs, and having found nowhere anything with which to fill the void that had been formed within them, they concluded that there is nothing and built systems with which to justify the denial. They are, consequently, unbelievers only for lack of something better. The absolutely incredulous are extremely rare, if indeed they exist.

A latent and unconscious intuition of the future is, therefore, capable of restraining a great number of them on the downward slope of evil, and an immensity of acts could be cited, even on the part of the most hardened, testifying to the existence of that secret sentiment that dominates them in spite of themselves.

It must also be said that, whatever the degree of unbelief, it is human respect that makes persons of a certain social condition reserved. The position they occupy obliges them to a very discreet line of conduct; they fear above all the disregard and the disdain that, by making them lose the attentions of the world through falling from the category in which they find themselves, would deprive them of the enjoyments they relish; if they lack a foundation of virtues, they have at least the veneer of them. But for those to whom no reason presents itself to concern themselves with the opinion of others, for those who scoff at “what people will say” — and it cannot be disputed that these form the majority — what brake can be imposed on the overflowing of brutal passions and coarse appetites? On what basis can the theory of good and evil be established, the necessity for them to reform their evil inclinations, the duty to respect what belongs to others, when they themselves possess nothing? What can be the stimulus to honesty, for creatures who have been persuaded that they are nothing more than simple animals? The law, they answer, is there to restrain them; but the law is not a code of morality that touches the heart; it is a force whose action they endure and which they elude, if they can. If they fall under its grip, this is regarded by them as the result of bad luck or of clumsiness, which they set about remedying at the first opportunity. Those who claim that unbelievers have more merit in doing good, because they expect no recompense in a future life in which they do not believe, avail themselves of a sophism equally ill-founded. Believers also say that the good practiced with a view to advantages that may be reaped is of little merit. They go even further, since they are persuaded that merit may be completely nullified, depending on the motive that determines the action. The prospect of the future life does not exclude disinterestedness in good works, because the felicity they procure is, above all, subordinated to the degree of moral advancement of the individual. Now, the proud and the ambitious are counted among the least favored. But are the unbelievers who practice good as disinterested as they claim? Is it that, expecting nothing from the other world, they also expect nothing from this one? Has self-love no part in the matter? Are they insensible to the applause of men? If such were the case, they would be at a rare degree of perfection, and we do not believe there are many who are induced to so much solely by the cult of matter. A more serious objection is this: If the belief in the future life is a moralizing element, how is it that those to whom this is preached from the moment they come into the world are equally so wicked?

In the first place, who tells us that without it they would not be worse? There can be no doubt of it, once one considers the inevitable results of the popularization of nihilism. Is it not proven, on the contrary, by observing the different gradations of Humanity, from savagery to civilization, that intellectual and moral progress goes at the forefront, producing the softening of customs and a more rational conception of the future life? That conception, however, being very imperfect, cannot yet exercise the influence it will necessarily have, in proportion as it is better understood and as more exact notions are acquired concerning the future that is reserved for us.

However solid the belief in immortality may be, man does not concern himself with his soul except from a mystical point of view. The future life, defined with extreme lack of clarity, impresses him only very vaguely; it is nothing more than an objective that is lost far in the distance, and not a means, because his lot is irrevocably assigned to him and is nowhere presented to him as progressive, from which it is concluded that whatever we may be, on leaving here, that we shall be for all eternity. Moreover, the picture they draw of the future life, the conditions determining the happiness or the misfortune that are experienced there, are far, above all in a century of examination, like ours, from completely satisfying reason. Add to this that it is not very directly bound to terrestrial life, there being no solidarity between the two, but rather an abyss, so that one who concerns himself principally with one of the two almost always loses sight of the other. Under the dominion of blind faith, that abstract belief would suffice for the inspirations of men who, at that time, let themselves be led. Today, however, under the reign of free examination, they wish to conduct themselves by themselves, to see with their own eyes and to understand. Those vague notions of the future life are no longer at the level of the new ideas and no longer correspond to the needs that progress has created. With the development of ideas, everything has to progress around man, because everything is connected, everything is interdependent in Nature: sciences, beliefs, forms of worship, legislations, means of action. The movement forward is irresistible, because it is the law of the existence of beings. Whatever lags behind, below the social level, is set aside, like clothing that has become useless and, finally, swept away by the swelling wave. The same happens with the puerile ideas about the future life with which our fathers contented themselves; to persist today in imposing them would be to propagate unbelief. In order for general opinion to accept it, and in order for it to exercise its moralizing action, the future life must be presented under the aspect of something positive, in a certain way tangible and capable of supporting any examination, satisfying reason without leaving anything in the shadow. At the moment when the precariousness of the notions about the hereafter was opening the door to doubt and to unbelief, new means of investigation were conferred upon man, to penetrate that mystery and to make him understand the future life in its reality, in its positivism, in its intimate relations with corporeal life.

Why, in general, is so little thought given to the future life? It is, nevertheless, a matter of present concern, since every day thousands of men depart for that unknown destiny. Each of us having to depart in turn, and the hour of departure being able to sound from one moment to the next, it would seem natural that all should concern themselves with what will happen. Why does this not occur? Precisely because the destiny is unknown and because, up to the present, no one had a means of knowing it. Inexorable Science dislodged it from the places where it had confined it. Is it near? Is it far? Is it lost in the infinite? The philosophies of former times answer nothing, because they know nothing about it. One then says: “It will be what it will be.” Indifference.

They teach us that we shall be happy or unhappy, according to whether we shall have lived well or ill. But this is so vague! In what do that happiness and that unhappiness consist? The picture they draw for us of the one and the other is so much at odds with the idea we form of the justice of God, so full of contradictions, of inconsistencies, of radical impossibilities, that involuntarily doubt presents itself, if not absolute unbelief. Furthermore, it is considered that those who were mistaken with regard to the places indicated for future dwellings may also have been led into error as to the conditions they establish for happiness and for suffering. Besides, how shall we be in that other world? Shall we be concrete or abstract beings? Shall we have a form or an appearance? If we have nothing material, how shall we be able to experience material sufferings? If the blissful have nothing to do, perpetual idleness, instead of a recompense, will be a torment, unless one admits the Nirvana of Buddhism, which is no more desirable than that idleness. Man will not concern himself with the future life except when he sees in it a clear and positively defined end, a logical situation, in correspondence with all his aspirations, which resolves all the difficulties of the present and in which nothing is encountered that reason cannot admit. If he concerns himself with the following day, it is because the life of the following day is intimately bound to the life of the preceding day; the one and the other are interdependent; he knows that on what he does today depends his position tomorrow, and that on what he does tomorrow will depend his position on the very next day, and so on.

Such must the future life be for him, when it is no longer lost in the nebulosities of abstraction and is a palpable present reality, a necessary complement of the present life, one of the phases of the general life, as the days are phases of corporeal life. When he sees the present react upon the future, by the force of things, and, above all, when he understands the reaction of the future upon the present; when, in short, he verifies that the past, the present and the future are linked together by inflexible necessity, like yesterday, today and tomorrow in present life, oh! then his ideas will change completely, because he will see in the future life not only an end, but also a means; not a distant effect, but a present one. Then, likewise, that belief will exercise without doubt, and as a quite natural consequence, a preponderant action upon the social state and upon the moralization of Humanity. Such is the point of view from which Spiritism makes us consider the future life.