The doctrine of the eternal life of souls and of reincarnation

— We have the pleasure of announcing to our brethren in doctrine that the French translation of a most interesting work by Sir Humphry Davy, made by Mr. Camille Flammarion, is already at press and will be published within a month.

Sir Humphry Davy, the celebrated chemist to whom we owe the fruitful theory of modern chemistry, which replaced that of Lavoisier, the discovery of chlorine, that of iodine, the decomposition of water by electricity, the miners' lamp, etc., Sir Humphry Davy, the learned professor of the Royal Institution of London, president of the Royal Society of England, member of the Institute of France – and greater still by his immense scientific works than by his titles – wrote, before 1830, a book that Cuvier himself qualified as sublime, but which is almost completely unknown in France, and which has for its title: “The Last Days of a Philosopher” - Google books; that is, “Os Últimos Dias de um Filósofo”.

This work begins with a vision in the Colosseum of Rome. The author, alone amid the ruins, is carried by a Spirit, whom he hears without seeing, to the world of Saturn and then to the comets. The Spirit explains to him that souls were created at the origin of time, free and independent; that their destiny is to progress ever onward; that they reincarnate in different worlds; that our present life is a life of trials, etc.; in a word, the truths that today constitute the foundation of the philosophical doctrine of Spiritism.

Various questions of Science, History, Philosophy and Religion together compose this admirable work.

Mr. Camille Flammarion had undertaken its translation two years ago, and we know that Mr. Allan Kardec was pressing the young astronomer to finish it.

We wished to make this good news known, even before the publication of the work. In our next issue we hope to be able to announce this publication definitively, already half printed (in popular format), and at the same time to give a synopsis of this interesting translation.

[July Review.]

The last days of a philosopher.

Conversations on the sciences, nature and the soul.

By Sir Humphry Davy. n Work translated from the English and annotated by Camille Flammarion.

(Second article. – See the Review of June 1869.)

As was our wish, we can today announce the appearance of this translation so long in the making. We already noted in the last issue of the Review that this work, written in the last years of his life by one of the greatest chemists in the world, set before the free examination of the thinkers of forty years ago – 1829 – the theories on which the Spiritist Doctrine rests today, that is, the plurality of inhabited worlds, the plurality of the soul's existences, reincarnation (on Earth and on other planets), communication with Spirits through dreams and presentiments, and even the theory of the perispirit.

Mr. Flammarion's translation appears today, at the same time as the Review. Soon this work will be in the hands of all our readers. Indeed, its reading will be all the more instructive in that the author reviews the principal themes of modern science and the great deeds of the history of Humanity, and that the translator took care to complete it by means of notes on the progress subsequently achieved by Science. The book is divided into six dialogues, which have for their titles: the Vision, – Religion, – the Unknown, – Immortality, – the Philosophy of Chemistry, – and Time. In announcing this excellent work, we have judged it well to extract some of its passages, which will give a just idea of the philosophical opinions of the illustrious English chemist. The first dialogue, the Vision, whose scene takes place in the Colosseum of Rome, has for its object a voyage to the planets, under the guidance of a Spirit, whom Sir Humphry Davy hears without seeing. The Spirit makes appear the tableau of the primitive phases of Humanity, and then addresses the following question to the author:

“You are going to say to me: ‘Is the Spirit begotten? Is the soul created with the body?’ Or this: ‘Is the mental faculty the result of organized matter and a new improvement given to the machine, which provokes movement and thought?’ “After having put this question into my head, as if I myself had had the intention of addressing it to him, says Davy, my unknown Genius modified the inflection of his voice which, instead of its melodious sweetness, took on a sonorous and majestic timbre. I proclaim to you, he said to me, that neither one nor the other of these views is true. My intention is to reveal to you the mysteries of spiritual natures; but it is to be feared that, veiled as you are by the bodily senses, these mysteries cannot be made comprehensible to you.

“Souls are eternal and indivisible, but their modes of being are as infinitely varied as the forms of matter. They have nothing in common with space and, in their transitions, are independent of time, so that they can pass from one part of the Universe to another, by laws completely foreign to movement. Souls are intellectual beings of diverse degrees, belonging in fact to the infinite Spirit. In the planetary systems (on one of which depends the globe you inhabit) they find themselves transitorily in a state of probation, constantly tending and, in general, ceaselessly gravitating toward a more elevated mode of existence.

“If it were possible for me to extend your vision to the destinies of individual existences, I could show you how the same Spirit, which in the body of Socrates developed the foundations of moral and social virtues, in the body of Czar Peter was endowed with supreme power, enjoying the incomparable happiness of improving a coarse people. I could show you the spiritual monad which, with the organs of Newton, displayed an almost superhuman intelligence, now situated in a greater and more elevated state of planetary existence, drawing intellectual light from a purer source and approaching ever closer to the infinite and divine Spirit. Prepare, then, your thought and you will at least sense that superior and splendid state, in which there live, since their death, the beings who already revealed a high intelligence on Earth, and who rise in their transitions to new and more celestial natures.’ Here, Sir Humphry, carried by the Spirit through our planetary system, makes a most interesting description of the spectacle that unfolds before his eyes and, in particular, the world of Saturn. – Lack of space obliges us to pass it over in silence. – Sir Humphry Davy was contemplating with admiration the strange aspect of the beings he had before his eyes, when the Spirit replied:

“I know what reflections are stirring you. Analogy fails you here and you do not possess the elements of knowledge to understand the scene that unfolds before you. At this moment you find yourself in the condition of a fly, whose multiple eye were suddenly metamorphosed into an eye similar to that of man, and you are completely incapable of putting what you see in relation with your normal prior knowledge. Well then, these beings before you are the inhabitants of Saturn. They live in the atmosphere. Their degree of sensibility and of intellectual happiness far surpasses that of the inhabitants of Earth. They are endowed with numerous senses, with means of perception whose action you are incapable of grasping. Their sphere of vision is much more extensive than yours, and their organs of touch are incomparably more delicate and more finely perfected. It is useless for me to attempt to explain their organization to you, for evidently you could not conceive it; as for their intellectual occupations, I shall try to give you some idea. “They have subjugated, modified and applied the physical forces of Nature, in a manner analogous to that which characterizes the industrial work of terrestrial man; but, enjoying superior powers, they have achieved equally superior results. Their atmosphere being much denser than yours, and the specific weight of their planet being smaller, they were able to determine the laws that pertain to the solar system with much more precision than you would be able to give of that knowledge; and the first of them you might meet could announce to you what are, in that world, the position and aspect of your Moon, with such precision that you would be convinced he sees it, whereas his knowledge is but the result of a calculation. “They have no wars and aspire only to intellectual greatness; they experience none of your passions, save a great sentiment of emulation in the love of glory. If I could show you the various parts of the surface of this planet, you would appreciate the marvelous results of the power with which these high intelligences are endowed, and the admirable manner in which they were able to apply and modify matter.

“I could now transport you to other planets and show you particular beings on each of them, offering certain analogies with one another, but differing essentially in their characteristic faculties.

“On Jupiter you would see creatures similar to those you have just observed on Saturn, but provided with very different means of locomotion. In the worlds of Mars and of Venus you would find races whose forms come closer to those that exist on Earth; but, in each part of the planetary system, there exists a character special to all intellectual natures: it is the sense of vision, the organic faculty of receiving the impressions of light.

“The most perfect organized systems, even in the other parts of the Universe, still possess this source of sensibility and of pleasure; but their organisms, of a subtlety inconceivable to you, are formed of fluids as elevated, above the general idea you form of matter, as the most subtle gases, which your studies have shown you, are above the heaviest terrestrial solids.

“The great Universe is occupied everywhere by life; but the mode of manifestation of that life is infinitely diversified, and it is necessary that the possible forms, infinite in number, be assumed by spiritual natures before the consummation of all things.

“The comet, vanishing in the heavens with its luminous train, has already shown itself to your gaze. Well then! these singular worlds are also the abode of living beings, who draw the elements and the joys of their existence from the diversity of the circumstances to which they are exposed; they traverse, so to speak, infinite space; they delight continually before the sight of new worlds and systems. Imagine, if you can, the immeasurable vastness of their knowledge!

“These beings, so great and glorious, endowed with functions incomprehensible to you, once belonged to the Earth; their spiritual natures, elevated in different degrees of planetary life, divested themselves of their dust and carried with them only intellectual power. They now inhabit those glorious stars, which put themselves in relation with the innumerable regions of the great Universe.

“You ask me in spirit whether they have any knowledge or remembrance of their transmigrations? Tell me your own recollections in the womb of your mother and I will give you my answer…

“Learn, then, the law of supreme wisdom: No Spirit brings to another state of existence habits or mental qualities other than those in relation with its new situation. Knowledge relative to the Earth would no more be useful to those glorified beings than would their organized terrestrial dust, which, at a similar temperature, would be reduced to its last atom. Even on Earth, the fluttering butterfly does not bring with it the organs or the appetites of the crawling caterpillar from which it arose. Nevertheless, there is a sentiment, a passion, which the monad or spiritual essence always preserves in all the stages of its existence, and which in happy and elevated beings increases perpetually: it is the love of knowing, that intellectual faculty which, in its last and most perfect development, is transformed into the love of infinite wisdom and into union with God. Such is the great condition of the soul's progress in its transmigrations in eternal life. “Even in the imperfect life of Earth, this passion exists in some degree; it increases with age, survives the perfecting of the bodily faculties and, at the moment of death, is preserved in the conscious being. The future destiny of the being depends on the manner in which this intellectual passion was exercised and increased during its transitory terrestrial trial. If it was ill applied, the being is degraded and continues to belong to the Earth or to some inferior system, until its defects are corrected by the painful trials of new existences. (We are what we make of ourselves). On the contrary, when the love of intellectual perfection is exercised upon noble objects, in the contemplation and discovery of the properties of created forms, when the Spirit has striven to apply to its studies a useful and beneficent end for Humanity, as well as to the knowledge of the laws ordained by the supreme intelligence, the destiny of the thinking principle continues to be effected in the ascending order and rises to a superior planetary world.” Here are some of his elevated conceptions on the nature of the soul:

“In the last analysis, for us the external or material world is but a heap of sensations. Going back to the first memories of our existence, we find a constantly present principle, which may be called the monad, or self, which associates itself intimately with the particular sensations produced by our organs. These organs are in relation with sensations of another kind and, properly speaking, accompany them through the bodily metamorphoses of our existence, temporarily leaving a line of sensation that unites them all; but the monad is never absent, and we could assign neither beginning nor end to its operations. During sleep, one sometimes loses the beginning and the end of a dream, but we remember the middle. One dream has not the least relation to another and yet we are conscious of an infinite variety of dreams that have succeeded one another, although most of the time we do not find their thread, since between them there are apparent diversities and lacunae. “We have the same analogies for believing in an infinity of prior existences, which among themselves must have had mysterious relations. Human existence may be regarded as the type of an infinite and immortal life, and its successive composition of sleeps and dreams could certainly offer us an approximate image of the succession of births and deaths of which eternal life is composed. It can no longer be denied that our ideas come from the sensations due to our organs, just as the relation that exists between mathematical truths and the formulas that demonstrate them is not denied. Nevertheless, by themselves these signs are not facts, just as the organs are not thought. “The entire history of the soul presents the picture of a development effected according to a certain law; we preserve only the remembrance of the changes that have been useful to us. The child has forgotten what it did in the mother's womb; soon it will no longer remember the sufferings and the diversions that constituted its first two years. Yet, we see that some habits of this age subsist in us throughout life; it is with the aid of the material organs that the thinking principle composes the treasure of its thoughts and the sensations of modification with the transformation of the organs. In old age, the dulled spirit falls into a kind of sleep, from which it will awaken to a new existence.” Being able to place before the eyes of our readers only a few brief fragments of this interesting publication, we shall conclude with a theory of the perispirit, which one would say was drawn from the modern Spiritist works. It is in these terms that Sir Humphry Davy expresses himself, in the dialogue Immortality, page 275 and following:

“To attempt to explain in what manner the body is united to thought would be a pure waste of time. Evidently, the nerves and the brain are there in intimate connection; but in what relation? That is what it is impossible to define. To judge by the rapidity and the infinite variety of the phenomena of perception, it appears extremely probable that there is in the brain and in the nerves a substance infinitely more subtle than observation and experience have permitted us to discover. Thus, it may be supposed that the immediate union of the body with the soul, of matter with spirit, takes place through the intermediary of an invisible fluidic body, of a kind of ethereal element inaccessible to our senses, and which perhaps represents to heat, to light and to electricity what these represent to gas. Movement is produced more easily by rarefied matter, and everyone knows that imponderable agents, such as electricity, overthrow the strongest constructions. It does not seem improbable to me that something of the refined and indestructible mechanism of the thinking faculty adheres, even after death, to the sensitive principle. For, despite the destruction by death of the material organs, such as the nerves and the brain, no doubt the soul can preserve, indestructibly, something of that more ethereal nature. Sometimes I think that the faculties called instinctive belong to this exquisite nature. Consciousness seems to have an inaccessible source and to remain in hidden relation with a prior existence.” These are the passages we wished to point out to our readers. Sir Humphry Davy was one of the great apostles of progress. Spiritism could have no better auxiliaries than in the indirect testimony of those illustrious scholars who, through the study of Nature, arrived at the discovery of new truths. Such works deservedly ought to form part of the library of Spiritism, and we owe gratitude to Mr. Camille Flammarion for having imposed upon himself the task of translating and annotating the notable work of Sir Humphry Davy.

[A. DESLIENS.]

[1] One vol. in-12. Price: 3 fr.

Paris, 1869, Didier, and at the Spiritist Bookshop, 7, rue de Lille. [Les derniers jours d’un philosophe - Google books.]