The Fantastic Regiment.

We take the following passages from the critical appraisal that the Siècle gave of the above work, in its serial of June 22, 1868:

“It is a kind of philosophical novel, in which most of the questions that currently impassion minds are treated in an original and dramatic form; spiritualism and materialism, the immortality of the soul and nothingness, free will and fatalism, responsibility and irresponsibility, eternal punishments and expiation, then war, universal peace, standing armies, etc.

“Not all these questions are discussed with sufficient method and depth, but all are treated with a certain erudition, with evident good faith, almost always with grace, often with wit, and at times with eloquence.

“In sum, the work is by a liberal man, a friend of progress, of perfectibility, and of spiritualism, a friend of peace, although evidently a military man.

“Moreover, here is how the author speaks of himself:

“The author, who in this book took the name of François Pamphile, had the signal honor of being a corporal in the French army when he had the strange dream that constitutes the plan of the work you are about to read, if you have nothing better to do. Later our soldier wrote down his dream and then amused himself by embellishing it when he had the time.”

“The Fantastic Regiment, by Victor Dazur, is, then, a dream, like Paris in America, by Mr. Laboulaye, but it is a dream that transports you to a wholly imaginary world.

“Corporal François Pamphile enters his barracks after having shared, with a few comrades, in the pleasures of a public festival in Paris. Saturated with noise, with music, with open-air spectacles, with illuminations, with fireworks, his stomach well filled and his conscience at peace, having no quarrel with anyone, nor wounding any civilian with his saber, he falls into a deep sleep. After a span of time he cannot gauge, it seems to him that his bed is lifted, as if it were suspended from a balloon, in the manner of a gondola. “He opens his eyes and sees himself in space; a moving panorama unfolds below him; he sees Paris disappear, then the countryside, then the Earth. It seems to him that he is making one of the aerostatic voyages of our collaborator Flammarion, of whom he declares himself an assiduous reader, and whose beautiful spiritualist book entitled The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds he enthusiastically praises. [La pluralité des mondes habités – Google Books.]

“Suddenly, air fails him; he suffocates; but he enters another atmosphere; he resumes breathing; he perceives another globe, which his astronomical studies enable him to recognize as the planet Mars. He feels drawn toward this planet, whose globe grows rapidly before his eyes. He trembles, falling toward it by the force of the laws of gravity, fearful of being crushed. He dreads a terrible impact; but no! There he lies, stretched out upon a thick lawn, at the foot of marvelous trees, full of no less marvelous birds. “He believes himself in a new world, having passed from the rank of corporal to that of the first man. He calls for an Eve. It is the song of King Dagobert that answers him.

“The good corporal’s astonishment redoubles upon seeing that the singer is a great merrymaker, clad in the uniform of a sergeant-major of the French line infantry.

“— Who are you? asked the sergeant, with an air as surprised as his own.

“— Major, answers François Pamphile, I am the corporal; I come from the planet Earth, which I left involuntarily this night; and I should like you to tell me the name of the planet on which I have fallen.

“— By God! This planet is Soraï-Kanor.

“— Soraï-Kanor?… I supposed it was the planet Mars. It seems I was mistaken.

“— You were not mistaken. Only our planet, which the Earth-dwellers call Mars, is called Soraï-Kanor by our astronomers.

“The corporal marvels that the sergeant should know the name given by the inhabitants of the Earth to his planet. But the sergeant told him that he had only left the Earth after his terrestrial death and that there he had been king of France.

“At this unexpected reply, the corporal uncovers himself, that is, he removes the cotton cap he has on his head.

“The sergeant-major king tells him not to pay him so many honors, since he is nothing but a simple noncommissioned officer. On Earth he was called Francis I; on Mars he belongs to the fantastic regiment, a regiment composed of the majority of the sovereigns who reigned on the terrestrial globe. The colonel is Alexander the Great; the lieutenant-colonel, Julius Caesar (who, properly speaking, did not reign), and the major, Pericles (who reigned still less). The regiment numbers three battalions, and each battalion eight companies. The commander of the first battalion is Sesostris, and the deputy commander Attila; the commander of the second battalion, Charlemagne, and the deputy commander, Charles V; the commander of the third battalion, Hannibal, and the deputy commander, Mithridates. “Each company is composed of the sovereigns of one and the same nation. The French company is the first of the second battalion and has as its captain Louis XIV, which proves, possibly, that favoritism prevails on Mars as on Earth; for Francis I, who is only a sergeant-major, was surely a greater captain than Louis XIV, and moreover had seniority in his favor.

“The canteen-women of the fantastic regiment are Semiramis, Cleopatra, Elizabeth, Catherine II. Just as all the officers and soldiers of the regiment are former sovereigns or men who exercised sovereignty, all the canteen-women and the canteen servants are former sovereign ladies. The musicians are former composers: Beethoven, Mozart, Gluck, Piccini, Haydn, Bellini. The regiment did not adopt the French uniform until after the reign of Napoleon I, whose campaigns enthused Alexander the Great. Afterward, the regiment followed all the variations of our military dress, which is saying not a little. It was also from the reign of Napoleon I that the French language was adopted as the regulation language of the regiment. Nevertheless, it was not under the Empire that the French language shone most. Besides, the victor of Austerlitz is not among the number of the soldiers of the fantastic regiment. He is not on Mars; perhaps he is in a higher world, perhaps in a lower world: Francis I does not know. “Other sovereigns never figured in the fantastic regiment; others left it after thousands of centuries of service. The regiment never changes garrison and never makes war. It is a kind of penitentiary regiment in which the sovereigns, men and women, are placed to expiate the crimes they committed during their reigns.

“Well and good; but the musicians Beethoven, Mozart, and the others—what crimes did they commit to be detained in this expiatory regiment? That is what the author forgets to explain.

“The habitual torment of the soldiers and the canteen-women of the regiment is the torment of Tantalus. The warriors who, on Earth, delighted in blood and carnage, have kept their warlike instincts, which the sound of the bugle ceaselessly awakens and which the exercises and the mock combats overstimulate, without it ever being possible for them to satisfy them, since the divine power, which on Earth permits war, forbids it on Mars.

“The voluptuous men and the voluptuous women suffer a similar torment. All, men and women, retain the beauty they enjoyed in the most beautiful period of their lives, but they are subjected to a physiological condition that condemns them to an absolute chastity.

“Another punishment, which desolates them still more, is the torment of memories. An extraordinarily lucid memory recalls to them the acts of their terrestrial life. Only a continual occupation distracts them; but the discipline is rigorous; at every instant they are condemned to the guardroom, to prison, or to the room of memories. In the guardroom and in prison they are still allowed some distractions, but in the room of memories they are allowed none. There they find themselves shut in amid all the instruments of torment and torture employed during their reigns; on the walls are painted in fresco all the sufferings and all the murders ordered by the kings. “When Louis XI is imprisoned in the room of memories, he is placed in an iron cage, in use during his reign, and set before the scaffold of Nemours, from which the blood drips upon the heads of his children. Philip the Fair is stretched upon a pyre, from which he sees the torments of the Templars. Ferdinand the Catholic is bound to a rack, his head turned toward an auto-da-fé.

“Our corporal hears Nero complain in these terms to his comrade Caligula:

“— Three-quarters of the time I am punished with detention or in the guardroom. If I protest against a punishment, it is increased. When I am not in the guardroom, I am in the punishment squad, and when I am not in the punishment squad, I am on the barracks fatigue duty. In short, I am overwhelmed with vexations of every kind, not to mention my other sufferings. This has already lasted many centuries. When will it end?”

“— But this fantastic regiment of yours is a hell, says the good Pamphile to Francis I.

“— No, the latter answers him, for the punishments here are not eternal. The Great Unknown, who is supreme justice, does not pronounce eternal condemnations, since finite faults, however great they might be, could not entail infinite punishments. Our planet and a few others are not hells, but purgatories, where men, in one or in several successive existences, pay the moral debts they contracted in a previous existence.

“Conversing thus, now with the sergeant-major Francis I, now with the simple soldier Charles V, now with his colleague, the corporal Charles VII, the corporal Pamphile receives instructions and revelations on what concerns Humanity in the highest degree. At last, in an audience granted him by the colonel Alexander the Great, in the circle of the officers, the former conqueror lays before him a project for a universal international congress, charging him to propose it to the Earth, in order to establish, forever, on our globe, peace, concord, and fraternity. “My colonel, exclaims Pamphile, enthused, your project is so logical, it seems to me so utterly indispensable, and the idea in itself is so natural, that it seems to me that as soon as it is known on Earth everyone will say: How is it possible that no one thought sooner of establishing a universal congress?

“For all the good corporal’s hope, we doubt that the various governments of our planet will hasten to welcome Alexander’s project; but the peace congress, which will assemble at Bern next September, cannot fail to take it into consideration. We recommend it especially to the rapporteur charged with studying what the constitution of the United States of Europe might be.”

E.-D. de Biéville.

If Mr. Victor Dazur (this name must surely be a pseudonym) was inspired by The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds, by Mr. Flammarion, of whom he declares himself an assiduous reader, he also gleaned widely from the Spiritist works. Save for the framework he made use of, his philosophical theory of future punishments, of the plurality of existences, of the state of the Spirits freed from the body, of moral responsibility, etc., is evidently drawn from the Spiritist Doctrine, of which he reproduces not only the idea, but often even the form. The following passages can leave no doubt on this point:

“You are dreaming, my friend, I thought; you are dreaming! All these sovereigns of the Earth, who begin a new existence on the planet Mars, this diaphanous genius with blue wings, all this smacks of Spiritism… And yet, when you are awake, you do not believe in this invention. Then, addressing Francis I, I said to him:

“— Major, a singular idea comes to my mind; this idea makes me suppose that all I see and all I hear, since I arrived here, is nothing but the effect of a dream. Tell me, please, your opinion. Do you think, as I do, that I am dreaming?

“— Why no! you are not dreaming, Francis I answered me with an air as indignant as if I had asked him a very stupid question. No, you are not dreaming! If you were dreaming, a host of chimeras without head or tail would parade before your mind. The events of which you will be a witness would have among them no reasonable connection.

“— But that is not all, major. What still makes me believe I am dreaming is that I felt myself and did not find my body… I am feeling myself even now, and again I do not find myself. And yet, I feel myself living and I see myself with arms and legs. Needless to say that, these arms and legs being impalpable, they are nothing but fantastic appearances. I could well explain these appearances, but for this it would be necessary, for me who do not believe in Spiritism, to admit a certain Spiritist theory which, true or false, is, in any case, very ingenious. “That theory holds that the Spirit of a body is surrounded by a perispirit, that is, by a semi-material envelope, which can take the form of that body and become visible in certain cases. Once the perispirit is admitted, the same theory holds that an individual can sometimes be seen at the same instant in two places, even very far apart from each other, the body sleeping in one place and the appearance of the body, that is, the perispirit, acting elsewhere.

“If this assertion is true, I would be putting into practice the theory of which I have just spoken. One might see at this moment my body sleeping in Paris, while you see my perispirit as if it were my body. But I would believe in so extraordinary a thing only if it were proved.

“It would be, again, to adopt Spiritism, which admits as real this gathering of potentates, brought about here, as they claim, to expiate the errors they committed when they were on Earth.

“— If you wish, Francis I said to me, do not believe in what you have before your eyes. Suppose for a moment that, instead of being on this planet, you were in the ideal domain of reason, and tell me whether you believe that men who do evil, whatever their position in society, can be exempt from purgatory after their terrestrial life? — Major, I do not know what to answer. — But I know what you think. You think that purgatory exists, no matter where, but only for the persons who occupy the highest degrees of the social scale. And what leads you to think thus is that the faults of persons highly placed in the world are far more conspicuous than those of simple private persons. But you are going at once to modify this idea, by considering that, for the Supreme Being, there are no hidden faults. Indeed, the Great Unknown constantly sees on Earth simple private persons who, relatively, do as much evil in their small sphere of action as certain tyrants stained by History do in their States. The simple private persons of whom I speak, instead of exercising their tyranny over a kingdom, exercise it over their family and their circle, making wife, children, and subordinates suffer without pity. These petty tyrants have but one concern: to enjoy life, while escaping the penal code of the country in which they dwell. Now, I ask you, do you believe that these malefactors, who sometimes pass for virtuous creatures in the eyes of anyone who does not know their lives—I say, that these evildoers are at once transported to an abode of delights? — No, I do not believe it. — Do you not admit that, in doing evil, they contracted a certain moral debt? — Yes, major, I admit it. — Well then! then you must not be astonished that certain planets are true purgatories, in which men, in one or in several existences, pay the debts contracted in a previous existence. “— But, major, do not the sufferings that every man experiences in the course of his life sufficiently pay for the evil he may do from the age of reason until death?

“This would only be the case with a small number of individuals, because, most often, the evil that a man does falls upon a certain number of his fellow men, which multiplies all the more the sum of personal evil and almost always makes the debt so great that this man could not pay it in the course of his short existence. Now, when one has been unable to pay one’s debts in one life, one must necessarily pay them in another, since, in the case of criminal debts, the Great Unknown has arranged things in such a way that no bankruptcy is possible. “This admitted, you will also admit that it is impossible that monsters like Nero, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Borgia, and so many others, whose crimes cannot be enumerated, could have paid such debts by the little evil they suffered in life. Now, it is one of two things: Either these men fell into nothingness upon dying, or they began a new existence. If one admits that they fell into nothingness, one admits quite naturally that they must have gone completely bankrupt. You will agree that the idea of such a bankruptcy revolts the mind, whereas if one admits that each one began a new existence, the mind is satisfied in thinking that these new lives could be only existences of expiation or, better said, of purification. “— Major, is it not simpler to admit eternal damnation for the monsters of whom you speak? — I grant that it is simpler, but not more logical. Logic, which must be the soul of justice, refuses to admit eternal damnation, because finite faults could not merit infinite punishments.”

There follows a dissertation among the most interesting and most logical that we have read against hell and eternal punishments, on the justice of the proportionality of punishments, and on the doctrine of labor, but its length does not permit us to reproduce it.

“— Major, says the corporal Pamphile, I will point out to you that the negation of eternal hell, as well as the proportionality of punishments, is the very foundation of the doctrine of the Spiritists. Now, I have already told you that I do not believe in Spiritism. — Then… believe in eternal hell, if it gives you pleasure.”

Among the sovereigns whom the corporal Pamphile meets on the planet Mars, there are those who lived in the time of the deluge, kings of Assyria, at the time of the tower of Babel, pharaohs from the time of the crossing of the Red Sea by the Hebrews, etc. And each one gives on these events explanations which, for the most part, have the merit, if not of material proof, at least of logic.

In sum, the framework chosen by the author to set forth his ideas is a happy one, even his negation of Spiritism, which leads, in the final analysis, to an indirect affirmation. We will say, with the Siècle, that under an apparently light form, all the questions are treated there with a certain erudition, with evident good faith, almost always with grace, often with wit, and at times with eloquence. We will add that, not knowing the author, should this issue fall into his hands, we wish that he may here find the expression of our sincere congratulations, for he has made an interesting and very useful book. [1] One thick duodecimo volume. Price: 3 fr. 50 c.; by post: 4 fr. [Le régiment fantastique - Google Books.] This work was printed in Lyon and bears no name of a publisher; it merely says that it is to be found at all the booksellers of Paris. We acquired it at the International Bookshop, 15, boulevard Montmartre.

[2] Translator’s note: A remarkable prediction of the emergence of the European Economic Community, an institution created by the Treaty of Rome, in 1957, and which today groups together a good part of the European countries. In fact, the circulation of goods and of nationals of these countries is free, a common currency, the euro, already circulates, and the elaboration of a supranational constitution that would address the collective interests of the European people is already under way. Thus, many dreams of the so-called “visionaries” are nothing but the anticipation of facts that will come to pass in a more or less remote future, attesting to the reality of the law of progress or of evolution, one of the fundamental principles of Spiritism. [3] If the effect of the injustice or of the evil that one man commits in relation to another man stops at the individual, the necessity of reparation will be individual; but if, as a consequence, this evil little by little harms hundreds of individuals, his debt will be increased a hundredfold, because there will be hundreds of reparations to make. The more victims he has made, directly or indirectly, the greater the number of those who will call him to account for his conduct. As responsibility and the number of reparations increase with the extent of the authority with which one is invested, we are responsible for individuals whom we have never known, but who, none the less, have suffered the consequences of our acts. [4] [Paris en Amérique - Google Books.]