Jupiter and some other worlds.

Before entering into details of the revelations the Spirits have made to us concerning the state of the different worlds, let us see what logical conclusion we can reach by ourselves and solely through reasoning. Referring to the Spirit Scale that we gave in the previous issue, we beg those persons desirous of seriously delving into this new science to study this table carefully and to become thoroughly imbued with it: there they will find the key to more than one mystery.

The world of the Spirits is composed of the souls of all the human beings of this Earth and of other spheres, stripped of the corporeal bonds; in the same way, all human beings are animated by Spirits incarnated within them. There is, then, solidarity between these two worlds: men will have the qualities and the imperfections of the Spirits to which they are united. The Spirits will be more or less good or evil, according to the progress they have made during their corporeal existence. These few words sum up the whole doctrine. As the acts of men are the product of their free will, they bear the mark of the perfection or imperfection of the Spirit that prompts them. It will, then, be very easy for us to form an idea of the moral state of any world whatsoever, according to the nature of the Spirits that inhabit it; we could in some measure describe its legislation, trace the picture of its customs, its usages, and its social relations. Let us suppose, then, a globe inhabited exclusively by Spirits of the ninth class, by impure Spirits, and let us transport ourselves there in thought. There we shall see all the passions unleashed and without restraint; the moral state at the lowest degree of brutishness; animal life in all its brutality; no social bonds, since each one lives and acts only by himself and to satisfy his coarse appetites; egoism reigns there as absolute sovereign, dragging in its train hatred, envy, jealousy, cupidity, and murder.

Let us now pass to another sphere, where Spirits of all the classes of the third order are found: impure Spirits, frivolous ones, pseudo-wise ones, neutral ones. We know that evil predominates in all the classes of this order; yet, without having the thought of good, that of evil decreases as they move away from the last class. Egoism is always the principal motive of actions, but the customs are gentler, the intelligence more developed; evil is there somewhat disguised, embellished, dissimulated. These very qualities give rise to another defect: pride, for the more elevated classes are sufficiently enlightened to be conscious of their superiority, but not enough to understand what they lack; hence their tendency to enslave the inferior classes or the weaker races, which they keep under their yoke. Not possessing the sentiment of good, they have only the instinct of the self, putting intelligence to the profit of the satisfaction of the passions. If in such a society the impure element dominates, it will annihilate the other; if not, the less evil will seek to destroy their adversaries; in every case there will be struggle, bloody struggle, of extermination, because there are two elements that have opposing interests. To protect goods and persons, laws will be necessary; but these laws will be dictated by personal interest and not by justice; it is the strong who will make them, to the detriment of the weak. Let us now suppose a world where, among the evil elements we have just seen, are found some of the second order; in the midst of perversity we shall then see some virtues appear. If they are in the minority, the good will be victims of the evil; but, as their preponderance increases, the legislation will be more humane, more equitable and, for all, Christian charity ceases to be a dead letter. From this same good another vice will be born. Despite the incessant war that the evil declare upon the good, they cannot prevent themselves from esteeming them in their innermost being; perceiving the ascendancy of virtue over vice, and having neither the strength nor the will to practice it, they seek to parody it; they take on its mask; hence the hypocrites, so numerous in every society where civilization is imperfect. Let us continue our stroll through the worlds and stop at this one, which will give us a little rest from the sad spectacle we have just seen. It is inhabited only by Spirits of the second order. What a difference! The degree of purification they have reached excludes among them all thought of evil, and that word alone gives us an idea of the moral state of this happy land. The legislation there is quite simple, since men have no need to defend themselves against one another; no one wishes evil upon his neighbor, no one appropriates what does not belong to him, no one seeks to live at the expense of his neighbor. Everything breathes benevolence and love; men do not seek to harm one another, there is no hatred; egoism is unknown and hypocrisy would have no purpose. There, however, absolute equality does not reign, for such equality supposes a perfect identity in intellectual and moral development. Now, by the spiritual scale we see that the second order comprises several degrees of development; there will, then, be inequality in this world, because many incarnates will be more advanced than others; but, as among them there is only the thought of good, the more elevated will conceive neither pride nor the others envy. The inferior understands the ascendancy of the superior and submits to it, since this ascendancy is purely moral and no one uses it to oppress the others. The conclusions we draw from these pictures, although presented in a hypothetical manner, are no less rational, each one being able to deduce the social state of any world whatsoever according to the proportion of the moral elements that constitute it. We have already seen, leaving aside the revelation of the Spirits, that all probabilities point to the plurality of worlds; now, it is no less rational to think that not all are at the same degree of perfection and that, for that very reason, our suppositions may well be realities. We do not know, in a positive manner, anything but our own world. What position would it occupy in this hierarchy? Ah! One need only consider what happens here to see that it is far from deserving the first class; and we are convinced that, upon reading these lines, its position will already have been assigned to it. When the Spirits affirm that the Earth, if it is not in the last class, is in one of the last, unfortunately simple good sense tells us that they are not mistaken; we still have much to do to raise it to the category of the world we described last, and much need that Christ come once more to show us the way.

As for the application we can make of our reasoning to the different globes of our planetary whirlwind, we have only the teaching of the Spirits; now, for those who admit only palpable proofs, it is positive that their assertion, in this respect, does not have the certainty of direct experimentation. Nevertheless, do we not daily accept, trustingly, the descriptions that travelers give us of countries we have never seen? If we were to believe only in what we see, we would believe in very little. What here gives a certain value to what the Spirits say is the correlation existing among them, at least as regards the principal points. For us, who have witnessed these communications hundreds of times, who have appreciated them in their smallest details, who have investigated their weak and strong points, who have observed the similarities and the contradictions, we find in them all the characters of probability; nevertheless, we give them only as an inventory and by way of teachings, to which each one will be free to give the importance he judges suitable. According to the Spirits, the planet Mars would be even less advanced than the Earth. [2] The Spirits incarnated there seem to belong almost exclusively to the ninth class, that of the impure Spirits, so that the first picture, which we gave above, would be the image of that world. Several other small globes are, with some shades of difference, in the same category. The Earth would come next; the majority of its inhabitants belong incontestably to all the classes of the third order, and a much smaller part to the last classes of the second order. The superior Spirits, those of the second and third classes, here fulfill, sometimes, missions of civilization and of progress, but they constitute exceptions. Mercury and Saturn come after the Earth. The numerical superiority of the good Spirits gives them preponderance over the inferior Spirits, from which results a more perfect social order, less egoistic relations and, consequently, happier conditions of existence. The Moon and Venus are more or less at the same degree and, in all respects, more advanced than Mercury and Saturn. Juno [3] and Uranus would be still superior to these latter. It may be supposed that the moral elements of these two planets are formed of the first classes of the third order and, in their great majority, of Spirits of the second order. Men are there infinitely happier than on the Earth, by reason of not having to sustain the same struggles, nor suffer the same tribulations, just as they are not exposed to the same physical and moral vicissitudes. Of all the planets, the most advanced in all respects is Jupiter. It is the exclusive reign of good and of justice, since it has only good Spirits. One may form an idea of the happy state of its inhabitants by the picture we gave of a world inhabited only by Spirits of the second order.

The superiority of Jupiter does not lie only in the moral state of its inhabitants; it lies also in their physical constitution. Here is the description that was given to us of that privileged world, where we find the greater part of the men of goodwill who honored our Earth by their virtues and talents.

The conformation of the body is more or less the same as here, but it is less material, less dense, and of a greater specific lightness. While we crawl painfully on the Earth, the inhabitant of Jupiter transports himself from one place to another, gliding over the surface of the ground, almost without fatigue, like the bird in the air or the fish in the water. The matter of which the body is formed being more purified, it disperses after death without being subjected to putrid decomposition. There the majority of the maladies that afflict us are unknown, above all those that originate from excesses of every kind and from the devastation of the passions. The nourishment is in relation with this ethereal organization; it would not be sufficiently substantial for our coarse stomachs, ours being far too heavy for them; it is composed of fruits and plants; moreover, in some measure, they draw the greater part of it from the surrounding environment, whose nutritive emanations they breathe in. The duration of life is, proportionally, much greater than on the Earth; the average is equivalent to about five of our centuries; development is also much more rapid and childhood lasts only a few of our months. Under this light envelope, the Spirits detach themselves easily and enter into reciprocal communication merely by thought, without, however, excluding articulated language; for the greater part of them, also, second sight is a permanent faculty; their normal state may be compared to that of our lucid somnambulists; this is why they manifest themselves to us more easily than those incarnated in the coarser and more material worlds. The intuition they have of their future, the security given by a conscience free of remorse, make death cause them no apprehension; they see it approach without fear and as a simple transformation. The animals are not excluded from this progressive state, without, however, approaching that of man; their body, more material, is bound to the earth, like ours. Their intelligence is more developed than that of our animals; the structure of their limbs lends itself to all the requirements of work; they are charged with the execution of manual labors: they are the servants and the workers; the occupations of men are purely intellectual. For the animals, man is a tutelary divinity who never abuses his power to oppress them.

When they communicate with us, the Spirits who inhabit Jupiter generally take pleasure in describing their planet; when asked the reason, they answer that they do so with the aim of inspiring in us the love of good, with the hope of arriving there one day. It was with this intention that one of them, who lived on the Earth under the name of Bernard Palissy, celebrated potter of the sixteenth century, offered himself spontaneously, without anyone asking him, to produce a series of drawings, as remarkable for their singularity as for the talent of execution, destined to make known to us, down to the smallest details, this world so strange and so new to us. Some depict personages, animals, scenes of private life; the most striking, however, are those that represent dwellings, true masterpieces of which nothing on Earth could give us an idea, because they in no way resemble what we know;

it is a genre of architecture indescribable, so original and yet so harmonious, of an ornamentation so rich and so graceful that it defies the most fecund imagination. Mr.

Victorien Sardou, a young man of letters of our acquaintance, full of talent and of future, but in no way a draftsman, served him as intermediary.

Palissy promised us a series of drawings that, in a certain manner, will be the illustrated monograph of that marvelous world. We hope that this curious and interesting collection, to which we shall return in a special article devoted to drawing mediums, may one day be released to the public.

[see Concerning the drawings of Jupiter.]

The planet Jupiter, despite the seductive picture that was given to us, is not, by any means, the most perfect of worlds. There are others, unknown to us, that are far superior to it, from the physical and moral point of view, and whose inhabitants enjoy a happiness still more perfect; they are the abode of the most elevated Spirits, whose ethereal envelope no longer has anything of the known properties of matter.

We have already been asked several times whether we think that the condition of earthly man would be an absolute obstacle to his passage, without intermediary, from the Earth to Jupiter. To all the questions that concern the Spiritist Doctrine, we never answer according to our own ideas, against which we are always on guard. We limit ourselves to transmitting the teaching that is given to us by the Spirits, not accepting them in a frivolous manner and with unreflecting enthusiasm. To the above question we answer clearly, because such is the formal sense of our instructions and the result of our own observations: Yes; upon leaving the Earth, man can go immediately to Jupiter, or to another analogous world, for it is not the only one of that category.

Can one be certain of this? No. Yet he may go, since there are on the Earth, though in small number, very good Spirits and sufficiently dematerialized as not to feel out of place in a world where evil has no access. There is no certainty, because man may delude himself about his personal merit or has to fulfill, elsewhere, another mission. Assuredly, those who can hope for this favor are not the egoists, nor the ambitious, nor the avaricious, nor the ingrates, nor the jealous, nor the proud, nor the vain, nor the hypocrites, nor the sensual ones or any of those who have let themselves be dominated by attachment to earthly goods; for these, there will perhaps be necessary long and harsh trials. This depends on their will.

[see also: Bernard Palissy: Description of Jupiter.]

[1] Publisher's Note: See “Explanatory Note,” p. 537.

[2] Translator's Note:

This is a mere supposition, otherwise Kardec would not have employed the verb to be in the conditional. [See the description of the planet Mars by the Spirit of Maria João de Deus in her book Cartas de Uma Morta; as well as another description of Mars made by the Spirit Georges in the Spiritist Review of 1860 in comparison with those of Maria João de Deus and that of Humberto de Campos in his book Novas Mensagens. To learn about the spiritual conditions of Georges read: Preliminary Observations.]

[3] Translator's Note: Junon in the original. Today catalogued as an asteroid, Juno was considered a planet in the time of Allan Kardec.