Is there a future life?

For the greater number, the future life offering no doubt, a demonstration becomes in a certain way superfluous, because it is more or less as if one wished to prove that the Sun rises every morning. However, since there are blind people who do not see the Sun rise, it is well to know how it may be proved to them; now, that is the task undertaken by the Phantom, author of this book. This Phantom is an illustrious engineer, whom we know by name, through other philosophical works that bear his name; but, since he did not wish to associate it with the name by which he was known, we do not consider ourselves entitled to commit an indiscretion, although we know perfectly well that he makes no mystery of his beliefs. This book proves, once more, that Science does not fatally lead to materialism, and that a mathematician can be a firm believer in God, in the soul, in the future life in all its consequences.

It is not a mere profession of faith, but a demonstration worthy of a mathematician, by its tight and irresistible logic. Nor is it an arid and dogmatic dissertation, but a polemic conducted in the form of a familiar conversation, in which the pros and cons are impartially discussed.

The author relates that, attending the burial of one of his friends, he fell into conversation along the way with several of the guests. The circumstances and the vicissitudes of the ceremony led the conversation to the lot of man after death. At first it was joined with a nihilist, to whom he undertook to demonstrate the reality of the future life by arguments linked together with an admirable art and, without shocking or wounding him, to lead him naturally to his ideas.

Beside the tomb two discourses are pronounced in a diametrically opposite sense on the question of the future, and they produce different impressions. On the way back, the new interlocutors join the first two; they agree to meet at the house of one of them, and there a serious polemic ensues, in which the various opinions assert the reasons upon which they rest.

This book, whose reading is engaging, has all the charm of a story, and all the depth of a philosophical thesis. We will add that, among the principles it advocates, we do not find a single one in contradiction with the Spiritist Doctrine, by which the author must have been inspired.

The necessity of reincarnation for progress, its evidence, its concordance with the justice of God, the expiation and the reparation through the reencounter of those who harmed one another in a preceding existence, are there demonstrated with a surprising clarity. Several examples cited prove that the forgetfulness of the past, in the life of relations, is a benefit of Providence, and that this momentary forgetfulness does not prevent one from profiting from the experience of the past, since the soul remembers in the moments of detachment. Here, in a few words, is one of the facts related by one of the interlocutors and which, according to him, is personal to him:

He was an apprentice in a large factory; by his conduct, intelligence and character, he won the esteem and friendship of the employer who, in consequence, makes him a partner in his firm. Several facts, of which he was not then aware, prove in him perception and intuition of things during sleep; this faculty even served him to prevent an accident that could have had disastrous consequences for the factory.

The employer's daughter, a charming little girl of eight years, showed him affection and amused herself with him; but, each time she approached, he felt a glacial cold and an instinctive repulsion; her contact did him harm. Little by little, however, such a feeling softened, then was extinguished. Later he married her. She was good, affectionate, provident, and the union was very happy.

One night he had a horrible dream. He saw himself in his preceding incarnation; his wife had conducted herself in an unworthy manner and had been the cause of his death, but, strange thing! he could not dissociate the idea of that woman from his present wife; it seemed to him that it was the same person. Disturbed by this vision upon waking, he became sad; pressed by his wife to tell her the cause, he decided to relate his nightmare. “It is singular,” she said, “I had a similar dream, and it was I who was the guilty one.” The circumstances cause both to recognize that they are not united for the first time; the husband explains the repulsion he had toward his wife, when she was a little girl; the wife redoubles her care to erase the past; but she is already forgiven, because the reparation has taken place and the union continues to be prosperous. Hence the conclusion: that these two beings found themselves united anew, one to repair, the other to forgive; that if they had had the remembrance of the past, they would have fled from one another and lost the benefit, the one that of reparation, the other that of forgiveness.

To give an exact idea of the interest of this book, it would be necessary to cite it almost in its entirety. We will limit ourselves to the following passage:

“You ask whether I believe in the future life,” said an old general; “whether we believe, we soldiers! And how would you have it be otherwise, unless we were a triple animal? On what would you have us think on the eve of a combat, of an assault, which everything foretells must be deadly?… After having bid farewell, in thought, to the beloved beings whom we are threatened with leaving, we return irresistibly to the maternal teachings, which showed us a future life, in which the sympathetic beings reunite. We gather from those remembrances a redoubling of courage, which makes us confront the greatest dangers, according to our temperament, with calm or with a certain exaltation and, more often still, with an enthusiasm, a joy, which are the characteristic traits of the French army. “After all, we are the descendants of those brave Gauls, whose belief in the future life was so great that they borrowed vast sums of money to repay in another existence. I go further: I am persuaded that we are still the sons of old Gaul who, between the epoch of Caesar and our own, passed through a great number of existences, in each of which they took a higher grade in the terrestrial phalanxes.”

This book will be read with profit by the firmest believers, because in it they will gather new arguments to refute their adversaries.

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I vol. in-12; 3 fr. [Y a-t-il une vie future ? : Opinions diverses sur ce sujet - Google books.]