SOLUTION OF SOME PROBLEMS BY THE SPIRITIST DOCTRINE - Items 105-107.

(Summary)

Plurality of worlds. — Of the soul.

— Man during earthly life.

— Man after death.

PLURALITY OF WORLDS.

— Will the different worlds that circulate in space be inhabited like the Earth?

All the Spirits affirm it, and reason says that it must be so. The Earth occupies no special place in the Universe, neither by its position nor by its volume, and nothing would justify the exclusive privilege of being inhabited. Moreover, God would not have created thousands of globes with the sole purpose of delighting our sight, all the more so since the greater number of them are beyond our reach. (The Spirits' Book, no. 55; Spiritist Review, March 1858, p. 65: “Plurality of worlds,” by Flammarion.)

— If the worlds are populated, will their inhabitants be in all respects similar to those of the Earth? In a word, could they live among us, and we among them?

The general form could be more or less the same, but the organism must be adapted to the environment in which they have to live, just as fish are made to live in water and birds in air. If the environment is different, as everything leads us to believe and as astronomical observations seem to demonstrate, their physical organization must also be different; it is not, therefore, probable that, in their normal state, they could live in such worlds with the same bodies, which is confirmed by all the Spirits.

— Admitting that these worlds are populated, will they be in the same position as the Earth, from the intellectual and moral point of view?

According to the teaching of the Spirits, the worlds are at very different degrees of advancement; some are at the same point as our own; others are more backward, their humanity being more brutish, more material, and more prone to evil. Others, on the contrary, are much more advanced, morally, intellectually, and physically; in them moral evil is unknown, the arts and the sciences have already reached a degree of perfection that escapes our comprehension; the physical organization, less material, is not subject to sufferings, ailments, and infirmities; there men live in peace, without seeking to harm one another, free from the displeasures, cares, afflictions, and necessities that beset them on Earth. There are, finally, others still more advanced, where the corporeal envelope, almost fluidic, approaches more and more the nature of the angels. In the progressive series of worlds, the Earth occupies neither the first nor the last place, although it is one of the most material and backward. (Spiritist Review, March 1858, p. 67: “Jupiter and some other worlds”; Idem, April 1858, p. 108: “Description of Jupiter”; Id., August 1858, p. 223: “Dwellings of the planet Jupiter”; Id., October 1860, p. 318: “Mars”; p. 320: “Jupiter”; The Morality of the Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter III.)