Lectures on the soul.

Innumerable are the modern works in which the principle of the plurality of existences is incidentally affirmed. But the one of which we speak seems to us one of those in which it is treated in the most complete manner. The author moreover endeavors to demonstrate that the idea grows and imposes itself more and more upon enlightened minds.

In the fragments which we transcribe below, the notes are by the author.

“The transmigration of souls, says Mr. Chaseray, is a philosophical idea at once among the most ancient and the most novel. Metempsychosis constitutes the foundation of the religion of the Hindus, a religion much anterior to Judaism, and Pythagoras may have received this belief from the Brahmins, if it be true that he was in India; but it is more probable that he brought it from Egypt, where he lived a long time. Civilization reigned on the banks of the Nile some thousands of years before the birth of Moses, and, according to Herodotus, the Egyptian priests were the first to announce that the soul is immortal and that it passes successively through all the species of animals before entering a human body. “For their part, the Greeks never entirely abandoned metempsychosis. Those among them who did not fully admit the doctrine of Pythagoras vaguely believed with Plato that the immortal soul had existed somewhere before manifesting itself in human form, or they believed in the river Lethe and in the rebirth of man within Humanity. Among the first Christians, many neophytes meant to retain of their former dogmas whatever seemed good to them; the Manicheans, for example, had retained the two principles of good and evil and the migration of souls; thus, as the heresiarchs came to multiply, the Fathers and the Councils had much to do to lead minds back to a uniform faith. Definitively victorious, the apostolic Church banished from its empire metempsychosis, which was replaced by the dogma of irrevocable judgment and of the division of men into the elect and the damned. Purgatory was introduced later, as a corrective to an extremely inflexible decision. “Just as I have not greatly regarded as a progress the spiritualism of Saint Thomas, of which no trace is seen in the holy books, so too I do not yet judge to be felicitous, nor in conformity with the ancient doctrine of original sin, which establishes so close a solidarity among all the generations of men, the dogmatic affirmation which consists in saying that the existence of each one of us has no roots in the past and leads to an eternal paradise or hell. In my opinion, here is a philosophical heresy, against which the modern spirit reacts forcefully. “The transmigration of souls reappears on every side. But, in our days, one generally conceives of a metempsychosis broader than that whose belief was attributed to the Ancients. The spirit of induction, having crossed the limits of the Earth and recognized in the suns and the planets inhabited worlds, no longer limited the destinies of man to the terrestrial globe. Instead of seeing the soul incessantly traversing the circle of plants, of animals, and of the human species, or constantly being reborn within Humanity, it was possible to imagine it taking its flight toward infinite worlds. n “I have only the embarrassment of choice in the matter of quotations, to show that the faith in a series of existences, some anterior, others posterior to the present life, grows and imposes itself more each day upon enlightened minds.

“Let us begin with Jean Reynaud. This philosopher insists on the natural connection presented by the two ideas of preexistence and of future life.

“If one were to examine, says he, all the men who have passed upon the Earth since the era of cultured religions began there, one would see that the great majority lived in the more or less fixed consciousness of an existence prolonged by invisible ways, on this side and beyond the limits of this life. Indeed, there is here a kind of symmetry so logical that it must have seduced the imaginations at first sight; the past here balances the future, and the present is but the pivot between what is no longer and what is not yet. Platonism awakened this light previously stirred by Pythagoras, and made use of it to enlighten the most beautiful souls that honored ancient times. n “This judgment of Jean Reynaud finds itself fully confirmed by the following note of Lagrange, the elegant translator of the poem of Lucretius:

[Lucrèce - Google Books.]

“Of all the philosophers who lived before Christianity, none upheld the immortality of the soul without first establishing its preexistence; one of these dogmas was regarded as the natural consequence of the other. It was believed that the soul must always exist, because it had always existed; and, on the contrary, they were persuaded that, granting that it had been generated with the body, one no longer had the right to deny that it must die with it. “ — Our soul, says Plato, existed somewhere before being in this form of men; that is why I do not doubt that it is immortal.” “The old druidism, continues the author of Earth and Heaven, speaks to my heart. This same soil which we inhabit today bore before us a people of heroes, who were all accustomed to regard themselves as having experienced the Universe long since, before their present incarnation, thus founding the hope of their immortality upon the conviction of their preexistence.”

“One of our best historians likewise lavishes high praise upon the principal teaching of the druids; Henri Martin is of the opinion that our fathers, the Gauls, represented in the ancient world “the firmest, the clearest notion of immortality that ever was.” n “In his turn, Eugène Sue says of the druidic faith:

“According to this sublime belief, immortal man, spirit and matter, coming from below and going toward above, passed through this Earth, dwelt here transiently, as he had dwelt and was to dwell in those other spheres which shine, innumerable, amid the abysses of space.” n “Already in the seventeenth century Cyrano de Bergerac said, [Oeuvres diverses / Cyrano de Bergerac - Google Books.] after the example of the Gallic priests:

“We die more than once; and as we are but parts of this Universe, we change form in order to take up life elsewhere, which is not an evil, but a way to perfect the being and to attain to an infinite number of bits of knowledge.”

“Several of our contemporaries, however, without appearing to draw their inspiration from the druids, likewise announce that the destiny of the soul is to travel from world to world.

“One reads, for example, in the Profession of faith of the nineteenth century, [Profession de foi du dix-neuvième siècle - Google Books.] of Eugène Pelletan:

“By the irresistible logic of the idea, I believe I can affirm that mortal life will have infinite space as its place of pilgrimage… Man will therefore go, ever from sun to sun, ever ascending, as upon the ladder of Jacob, the hierarchy of existence, passing ever, according to his merit and his progress, from man to angel, from angel to archangel.

“And in the Religious Renewal, [Rénovation religieuse - Google Books.] of Mr. Patrice Larroque, former rector of the Academy:

“One may conjecture that the greater part of the other globes which move in space harbor, as upon the Earth, organized and animate beings, and that these globes are the successive theaters of our future lives.”

“Lamennais expresses the idea of rebirth in an absolutely precise manner, though more restricted: He says: “The progress possible to the individual under his present organic form being accomplished, he returns to the elementary mass that worn-out organism, putting on another more perfect one.” n “Let us point out, further, the following passage of the discourse pronounced by Mr. Guéroult, of the Opinion nationale, beside the tomb of father Enfantin:

“No one was more religious than Enfantin; no one lived as much as he in the presence of eternal life, of which this life, which escapes us at every instant, is but one of the innumerable stages.

“One of our most celebrated novelists gives one to think that he believes in the passage of inferior beings into the superior species and, namely, of animals into Humanity:

“Let whoever will explain, says George Sand, those affinities between man and certain secondary beings of creation. They are as real as the insurmountable antipathies and terrors which certain inoffensive animals inspire in us… It is perhaps that all the types, distributed each one especially in each race of animals, are found in man. The physiognomists have noted physical resemblances; who can deny the moral resemblances? Are there not among us foxes, wolves, lions, eagles, beetles, and flies? Human coarseness is often base and ferocious, like the appetite of the pig…” “George Sand shows himself more explicit concerning the migration of souls, in the following lines of the same work: n “If we must not aspire to the beatitude of the pure Spirits of the region of chimeras, if we must always glimpse, beyond this life, a labor, a duty, trials, and an organization limited in its faculties before the infinite, at least it is permitted us by reason and commanded us by the heart to count upon a series of progressive existences, by reason of our good desires… We may regard this Earth as a place of passage and count upon a gentler awakening in the cradle which awaits us elsewhere. From worlds to worlds, we may, freeing ourselves from the animality which here in this world combats our spiritualism, become fit to put on a purer body, more suited to the needs of the soul, less combated and less hindered by the infirmities of human life, such as we endure it on the Earth. “Let us cite yet another novelist, Balzac. Novelists of this order, like exceptional poets, broach the most elevated questions and know how to scatter profound traits in their writings in a light and agreeable manner. Thus it is that in Les Misérables [Les Misérables - Google Books.], Victor Hugo lets fall from his pen this vague interrogation: “Whence do we come? is it quite certain that we did nothing before being born?” It is only in thinking of this, and without any preconceived idea of upholding a philosophical thesis, that the author of the Human Comedy [La Comédie humaine - Google Books.] speaks of successive existences. For this reason I can only catch this thought in several of his novels. “Here, for example, are some lines from The Lily of the Valley: [Lys dans la vallée - Google Books.]

“Man is composed of matter and of spirit; animality comes to end in him and in him the angel begins. Hence that struggle which we all experience between a future destiny, which we foresense, and the memories of our exterior instincts, from which we do not entirely detach ourselves: a carnal love and a divine love.”

“And I find in Séraphita - Google Books, that mystical novel, in which Balzac expounds with so powerful an interest and charm the religious doctrine of the Swede Swedenborg:

“The qualities acquired and which develop slowly within us are invisible bonds which link each one of our existences to the other.

“Finally, in The Unconscious Comedians, the sibyl, Madame Fontaine, asks Gazonal:

“— What flower do you love?

“— The rose.

“— What color do you like?

“— Blue.

“— What animal do you prefer?

“— The horse. Why these questions? he asks in his turn.

“— Man attaches himself to all forms by his anterior states, she says sententiously; thence come his instincts, and his instincts dominate his destiny.”

“Michelet bears witness to his sympathy for the same ideas, when he calls the dog a candidate for Humanity, and when he says, speaking of the birds:

“What are they? souls sketched out, souls still specialized in such functions of existence, candidates for the more general and more vastly harmonious life, to which the human soul has attained.” n “Pierre Leroux does not believe that man has passed through the inferior types of animals and plants. According to him, individuals perpetuate themselves within the bosom of the species and man is reborn indefinitely within Humanity. The solidarity among all the members of the human family is then evident; the good which a man does to his fellows redounds to his own profit, since he does not separate himself from them by death except soon to return and mingle with them again. By upholding the perpetuity of the being within the bosom of the species, Pierre Leroux departs from the authors I have just cited and does not find many who approve. n But he does not cease to be an ardent defender of the general idea, of extreme importance, which links the present life to a series of existences. “After having said that the child, coming into the world, is not, as the school of Locke claimed, a blank slate, and that it is to insult the Divinity to suppose that it draws from nothingness new creatures, which it embellishes at random with its gifts, or strikes at random with its wrath, Pierre Leroux concludes with these words:

“Thus, one must necessarily admit either the indeterminate system of the metempsychoses, or the determinate system of rebirth within Humanity, which I uphold. n “I am far from rejecting in an absolute manner the system of rebirth within Humanity; but Humanity had a beginning, posterior even to that of the majority of the animal and vegetable species which cover our globe; Humanity will have an end; and, since the soul does not perish, it is necessary that the permanent being, the self, plunge its roots elsewhere than in Humanity, and find its future development elsewhere than in Humanity, a transitory form.” The numerous quotations which the author makes, and which are far from being complete, prove how general is the idea of the plurality of existences and that before long it will have passed to the state of an acquired truth. On other points, he departs completely from the Spiritist Doctrine; we are far from sharing his opinion on all the questions he treats in his book, notably as concerns the divinity, to which he attributes a secondary role, and the intimate nature of the soul, whose spirituality he contests. His system is a kind of pantheism, which borders on Spiritism, and seems to be a middle term for certain creatures who want neither atheism, nor nihilism, nor dogmatic spiritualism.

However incomplete it may be, it is nonetheless a notable progress over materialist ideas, from which it is much farther removed than from ours. Save for a few much-controverted points, the work contains very profound and very just views, with which Spiritism can only associate itself.

[1]

Small in-12 volume. Price: 1 fr. 50; by post, 1 fr.

House of Germer-Baillière, 17, rue de l’École-de-médecine.

[Conférences sur l’âme - Google Books — See also by the same author:

Quelques notes de voyage - Google Books.]

[2] It was so natural to take advantage of the glorious opportunity opened to the soul by the astronomical discoveries, that I cannot believe that the metempsychosis of Pythagoras was really what the common people thought of it. For Pythagoras knew the true system of the world; the double movement of rotation and of translation of the Earth; the relative immobility of the Sun; the importance of the fixed stars, each of which is a Sun and the center of a group of planets, very probably inhabited; the course and the return of the comets: nothing of all this was unknown to Pythagoras. This philosopher, instructed by the learned Egyptian priests, who revealed their secrets only to a small number of initiates, judged it well to keep, after their example, secrecy concerning this part of his science. One of his disciples, less scrupulous, divulged it; but as proofs were lacking and the truths found themselves lost amid errors and mystical wanderings, the revelation passed unnoticed. It is not enough to emit a just idea; one must know how to make it accepted. Thus, Copernicus and Galileo, the popularizers of the true cosmological system, are regarded as its inventors, although the first notion is lost in the night of time. [3] Terre et ciel - Google Books.

[4] Histoire de France. Tome X - Google Books, 4th edition, volume I.

[5]

(Feuilleton of the Presse, of October 19, 1854.)

Not all the ancient authors were unaware of the beautiful side of the religion of the druids, as these verses of Lucan bear witness:

Vobis auctòribus, umbrae Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Dìtisque profundi Pallida regna petunt: regit idem spiritus artus Orbe alio: longae (canìtis si cognita) vitae Mors media est.