The destiny of man in the two worlds.

— La Presse of July 27, 1862 published a critical appraisal of the work indicated above. It is connected in a very direct way to the Spiritist Doctrine, so that our readers will thank us for reproducing it. We ourselves could have made the analysis of the work, but we preferred that of a person with no interest in the matter. We shall limit ourselves to following it with a few considerations. The editor says:

“What could be more attractive to the spirit and more refreshing to the soul than to find, at the present hour, a man of sincere, true, and profound faith, a man who believes and yet reasons, and reasons without prejudice, in order to seek the truth in the light of his conscience? Such is Mr. Renaud. In him mathematics and Science have not annihilated feeling nor disturbed the mysterious forces that bind us to the infinite through faith. Mr. Renaud is a firm, convinced believer, even an excellent Christian, if indeed there exists such a thing as a bad Catholic, which he does not claim to be; on the contrary. His enlightened reason, no less than his affectionate heart, makes him repel far from himself the idea of a vengeful, jealous, and wrathful God, of a God who would have chosen wrath as the means to bind the creature to its author, a God who punishes the son for the father’s fault, a thing iniquitous in the eyes of human justice.

Mr. Renaud’s God is a God of light and of love. The harmony of his infinite work manifests his omnipotence and his goodness. Man is not his victim, but his collaborator in a minimal part, yet still a glorious one proportional to his strength. Why, then, evil, and how to explain it? Evil does not come from a primitive fall, which would have changed all the conditions of human life; it has for its cause the non-fulfillment of God’s law and the disobedience of man, who makes bad use of free will. We would have found it clearer had Mr. Renaud simply said that man begins with instinct, that only gradually can he develop his higher feelings and his intelligence. Man as a species, like all living beings, cannot suddenly seize hold of the fullness of his being. He goes through successive and normal evolutions. His social infancy is characterized by the dominion of the instincts; hence his ignorance, his misery, and his brutality. As he rises in life, little by little he frees himself from the mire of the early years. Intelligence grows, the feelings gain strength, he begins to become human. The more man understands, the more he binds himself to the law, the more religious he becomes, contributing, for his part, to the general harmony. Suffering is a warning, a stimulant to free oneself from evil, to withdraw from the shadow and march toward the light. The more he progresses, the more horror he has for the world of instinct, of struggle, of violence, and of war; the more he sees and understands, the better he aspires to the world of peace and order, to the empire of reason, to the reign of elevated feelings, which are the dignity and the sacred mark of his species. From this it results that, thanks to Science, to industry, to the incessant progress of sociability, the human race tends to constitute itself as the king, or, if a less ambitious term be preferred, as the manager of its globe. But afterward, and admitting for a moment this hypothesis which, to tell the truth, seems to become more certain each day, will there not always remain unsatisfied that insatiable desire of man, who cannot stop and limit himself to the present, however magnificent it may be?

What does it matter to me, after all, your material and earthly happiness, if it leaves my soul empty and disturbed? One feels seized by a supreme tedium and a great disgust in the presence of such happiness, which lasts so little.

This is true, answers Mr. Renaud, and it is here that he triumphs. Illuminated by Science, his robust faith in the eternal destinies of man shows him a whole infinite future of conscious activity and of paradisiacal joys.

At the first awakening of thought, at the first stirrings of the soul, man raises his gaze to the sky, questions its infinite depths, and seeks what may be his bond with the Universe he glimpses. This earthly existence, so short and often so sad, does not suffice him. He feels that he participates in the infinite and, at any cost, wishes to find a place in it. Man has a horror of nothingness, as Nature has a horror of the void. Rather than remain without an ideal, he will fling himself, distraught, into his strangest beliefs. Hence so many paradisiacal conceptions, more or less mad, but which attest to that absolute and fundamental need to feel oneself bound to the infinite, certain of immortality. We know the paradise of the Buddhists, the Elysian Fields of the Greeks, the paradise of the savages, with its forests and meadows abounding in game, the paradise of Muhammad, with its material delights and its immaculate houris. The Catholic paradise, which places Humanity in a state of infinite contemplative beatitude, is a conception in keeping with the cruel epochs in which labor is punishment and chastisement, in which the general suffering is such that resignation in this world and repose in the other could appear to be sovereign wisdom and the most elevated ideal. But, without a shadow of doubt, this hypothesis is entirely contradictory to the simplest and clearest notions of existence. To live is to be; to be is to act with all the forces of one’s faculties and of one’s vital energy. To live is to aspire and to transform oneself incessantly. The metempsychosis of Pythagoras, although respecting the idea of activity, is incomplete, for it limits transformation to passages into organisms that live on the face of the Earth and does not take into account the law of ascending progress, which governs all things.

According to Mr. Renaud, there is only one rational way to consider this question of immortality. To begin with, the author repels the conception that, after a sojourn in the visible world, a place of trial, would place man in the invisible world, paradise, in the state of a contemplative blessed one, more than uninterested in his fellow beings and in his earthly work. What chosen ones and what living beings are these creatures stripped of all desire and of all aspiration, of all fruitful activity, of all interest in their past and their fellows, in the infinite Universe where they labored, felt, and thought!… Mr. Renaud likewise repels this hypothesis of an indefinite series of existences, whether on Earth or on other globes. This kind of immortality already possesses a great advantage over the first conception, for it opens an indefinite field to human activity. Messrs. Jean Reynaud, Pierre Leroux, Henri Martin, Lamennais, more or less embrace this idea. But there is a capital point that destroys it at its foundation: it is the absence of memory. Of what use to me is an immortality of which I have no consciousness and which God alone knows? For my immortality to be real, it is necessary that, in a life different from my present life, I retain the remembrance of my prior existences and have consciousness of the continuity and the identity of my being. Only thus am I truly immortal, participating in the infinite and conscious of my role in the Universe. We do not know our being except through its manifestations; its virtual essence escapes us. In what, then, would it repel reason to admit that our being, whose persistence we observe here in its incessant modifications, should persist eternally? It merely changes form and organs according to the medium it passes through in its successive incarnations. It is thus that Mr. Renaud arrives at setting forth his conception, which satisfies this essential condition: to preserve memory. Moreover, it is in conformity with the justice and the omnipotent goodness of God.

There is no void in the Universe, just as there is no nothingness. Now, if the visible world is everywhere, the invisible world is nowhere, says Mr. Renaud precisely, unless it too is everywhere.

On this Earth man has two quite distinct states. In waking he generally remembers all his acts and has consciousness of himself; during sleep he loses memory and consciousness. Consequently, why should man not have two distinct modes of existence, always bound to one another, always united to the life of the species and of the planet? First, the existence we know on Earth, then another existence of a higher order, in which the individual organizes himself and incarnates by means of imponderable fluids, participates in a broader and more extensive way in the life of our vortex, preserves the memory of his prior existences, and possesses full consciousness of his role and his function in the Universe? Is the worldly or visible existence related to sleep? Does the transmundane or ethereal existence have an analogy with waking? In this hypothesis, the solidarity of the human race, in its present and future generations, appears to us complete and entire.

Each one of us has lived, lives, and will live in different epochs of the life of the species on this Earth, and in its double visible and invisible mode. Each one of us is born into it and goes out from it, according to the law of number, weight, and measure that presides over the harmony of the worlds. Our various alternations are counted like the days and the seasons. Each one of us is reborn on Earth, takes his class in the species and his function in the general work, according to his worth and according to the law of universal order. It is possible that each one of us passes through the various states and functions that the whole of the species presents to us. Surely the most absolute justice presides over these transformations, just as the most harmonious order shines in eternal creation, in the varied combinations that characterize every organism and every living being. We are reborn into ethereal life and go out from it under these same conditions of order and harmony. Such is Mr. Renaud’s conception, which I cannot here set forth with all the development that would be desirable. One must turn to his book, clear, simple, swift, where a profound faith, allied to a reason as elevated as it is impartial, constantly holds the reader under the charm of a theory as consoling as it is religious and grand. The free spontaneity of man, his intimate and incessant solidarity with his fellows, with his globe, with his vortex, with the Universe, his ever more progressive, effective, radiating activity, in harmony with the divine laws, an infinite chain for his eternal aspiration, the omnipotence and the goodness of God justified, explained, and glorified, love as the bond between God and man—such is what stands out from this opuscule, the most complete of all those that have been written under the inspiration of this great saying: “The desires of man are the promises of God.” E. de Pompéry.

— This article gave rise to the two following letters, likewise published in La Presse of July 31 and August 5, 1862.

“Paris, July 29, 1862.

“To the editor.

“Sir, “I have just read in yesterday afternoon’s Presse the following passage (article by Mr. de Pompéry, on the work of Mr. Renaud):

“Mr. Renaud repels the hypothesis of an indefinite series of existences, whether on Earth or on other globes… A hypothesis more or less embraced by Messrs. Jean Reynaud, Pierre Leroux, Henri Martin, Lamennais… There is a capital point that destroys it at its foundation: it is the absence of memory. Of what use to me is an immortality of which I have no consciousness and which God alone knows? For my immortality to be real, it is necessary that, in a life different from my present life, I retain the remembrance of my prior existences and have consciousness of the continuity and the identity of my being. “In my opinion Mr. Pompéry is right; an indefinite metempsychosis without memory is not immortality. But, if he is right as to the ideas, he is mistaken as to the persons. Of the four writers cited, only one professed the doctrine he combats: it is Mr. Pierre Leroux, in his book Humanité - Google Books. As for myself, since he has included me, though without warrant, to figure beside three celebrated philosophers, I must say that I have no other opinion than the one Mr. Pompéry has just expressed above.

“As for Mr. Jean Reynaud, in a certain way he made such an opinion the crowning of his book Terre et ciel - Google Books, where he presents the absence of memory as the condition of the inferior existences, and memory reacquired and preserved forever as an essential attribute of the superior life.

“Nor do I believe that Mr. Lamennais, at any period whatever of his career, ever, in any way, seemed inclined toward the idea of an unconscious and indefinite transmigration. It was very contrary to all his tendencies.

“I shall be grateful to you, Mr. Editor-in-Chief, if you would deign to receive this protest, and I beg you to accept my most distinguished sentiments.”

Henri Martin.

TO THE EDITOR.

— “Sir, “In making considerations on Mr. Renaud’s book I said, in accordance with him, that Messrs. Henri Martin, Jean Reynaud, Pierre Leroux, and Lamennais could not, in accordance with the systems they had adopted, admit that man preserved memory in his later existences. This does not at all imply that there was not, in the thought of these philosophers, the idea that man preserves, in his indefinite existences, the identity and the perpetuity of his being by means of memory.

“Mr. Henri Martin’s protest would, then, be very just, from the point of view of his intention, which I note with pleasure. It now remains to be seen whether Mr. Renaud, in discussing the systems of his illustrious opponents, is not right to conclude as to their insufficiency. Therein lies the whole question, which I cannot enter into. One must see the debate in Mr. Renaud’s book, which, moreover, bears witness to the highest sympathy for these eminent men.

“Accept, etc.”

E. de Pompéry.

— Here, then, is a debate carried on seriously in a newspaper, without vulgar and foolish anecdotes, on the question of the plurality of existences, one of the fundamental bases of the Spiritist Doctrine, by men whose intellectual worth could not be contested, which proves that it is not so absurd as it pleases some to say. If one wishes to delve deeply even into the ideas put forth in Mr. de Pompéry’s article, one will find in them those of the Spiritist Doctrine on this point; nothing is lacking to complete them, except the relations between the visible and invisible worlds, which are not considered. By the sole force of reasoning and intuition, these gentlemen, to whom many others might be joined, such as Charles Fourier and Louis Jourdan, have reached the culminating point of Spiritism without having passed through the intermediate steps. The only difference between them and us is that they found the thing for themselves, whereas to us it was revealed by the Spirits, therein lying, in the eyes of certain people, their greatest error. [1]

vol. in-18. Price: 2 fr.; Ledoyen; Palais-Royal.

Not to be confused with Jean Reynaud. [See more information about Claude Hélène Hippolyte Renaud , at:

Hippolyte Renaud et de Sainte-Agathe.]