Alexandre Dumas — Monte-Cristo.

“Listen, Valentine. Have you never felt for someone one of those irresistible sympathies, which cause that, on seeing a person for the first time, you believe you have known them for a long time, and you ask yourself where and when you saw them, although, being unable to recall either the place or the time, you come to believe that it was in a world prior to ours, and that this sympathy is nothing but the awakening of a memory?” (Monte-Cristo, 3rd part, chapter XVIII, The Lucerne Field.) “Have you never dared to rise, in a single flight, to the higher Spheres that God has peopled with invisible and exceptional beings? — Do you admit, gentlemen, that there exist higher spheres and that invisible beings mingle with us? — And why not? Do you by chance see the air you breathe, and without which you could not live? — Then do we not see these beings of whom you speak? — Yes; you see them when God permits them to materialize…” (Monte-Cristo, 3rd part, chapter IX, Ideology.) “And I, sir (Villefort), I tell you that it is not as you think. This night I slept a horrible sleep, for in a certain manner I saw myself sleeping, as if my soul were already hovering above my body; my eyes, which I strove to open, closed in spite of me; and yet… with my eyes closed, I saw, in the very place where you stand, enter without a sound a white form.” (Monte-Cristo, 4th part, chapter XIII, Madame Mairan.) “An hour before he expired, he said to me: My father, no man’s faith can be more living than mine, for I have seen and heard speak a soul separated from its body.” (François Picaut, continuation of Monte-Cristo.)

In these thoughts there is but a very small criticism to be made: it is the qualification of exceptional given to the invisible beings that surround us. Such beings have nothing exceptional about them, since they are the souls of men, and since all men, without exception, must pass through this state. Apart from this, would one not say that these ideas are taken textually from the doctrine? [1] [Le Monte-Cristo, Volumes 1-2 By Alexandre Dumas - Google Books.]