THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 /
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH,
 
 THE 
 
 DAY AFTER DEATH 
 
 OR, 
 
 OUR FUTURE LIFE, ACCORDINa TO SCIENCE. 
 
 <Airvitusliitci5 from the ^Ifvcuch of 
 LOUIS FIGUIER. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY TEN ASTRONOMICAL TLATES. 
 A KEir AXD CIIEAPEIl EDITION. 
 
 LOXDON : 
 
 RICHARD B E N T L E Y AND SON, 
 
 JJiiiilislurs in fflrbinnrji to ^cr (fttajcsti) the Qnrcn. 
 
 1884. 
 {All Uiijhts Reserved. "[
 
 ^0 i 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PA OS 
 
 INTRODUCTIOIT 1 
 
 CHAPTEE THE FIEST. 
 
 MAN IS THE RESULT OP THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE OP THE 
 BODY, THE SOUL, AND LIFE. — OP WHAT DOES DEATH 
 CONSIST? G 
 
 CHAPTEE THE SECOND. 
 
 WHAT BECOMES, AFTER DEATH, OP THE BODY, THE SOUL, 
 
 AND LIFE? 9 
 
 CHAPTEE THE THIED. 
 
 WHERE DOES THE SUPERHUMAN BEING RESIDE? . .16 
 
 CHAPTEE THE FOUETH. 
 
 DO ALL MEN PASS AFTER DEATH TO THE STATE OF SUPER- 
 HUMAN BEINGS? RE-INCARNATIONS OP PERVERSE SOULS. 
 
 RE-INCARNATION OF CHILDREN WHO HAVE DIED IN 
 
 INFANCY 24 
 
 CHAPTEE THE FIFTH. 
 
 WHAT ARE THE ATTRIBUTES OP THE SUPERHUMAN BEING ? 
 
 PHYSICAL SHAPE, SENSES, DEGREE OP INTELLIGENCE. 
 
 FACULTIES OP THE SUPERHUMAN BEING . . ,30 
 
 iC26248
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAQB 
 
 CHAPTEE THE SIXTH. 
 
 WHAT BECOMES OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING AFTER DEATH 1 
 
 DEATHS, RESURRECTIONS, AND NEW INCARNATIONS IN 
 
 THE ETHEREAL SPACES 55 
 
 CHAPTER THE SEVENTH. 
 
 PHYSICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SUN . Gl 
 
 CHAPTEE THE EIGHTH. 
 
 THE SUN. — DEFINITIVE SOJOURN OF SOULS ARRIVED AT THE 
 
 HIGHEST DEGREE OF THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY. THE 
 
 SUN IS THE FINAL AND COMMON SOJOURN OF THE SOULS 
 
 WHICH COME FROM THE EARTH. PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION 
 
 OF THE SUN. THIS HEAVENLY BODY IS A MASS OP BURN- 
 ING GAS 89 
 
 CHAPTEE THE NINTH. 
 
 THE INHABITANTS OP THE SUN ARE PURELY SPIRITUAL 
 BEINGS. — THE SOLAR RAYS ARE EMANATIONS FROM 
 SPIRITUAL BEINGS THAT LIVE IN THE SUN. — THESE 
 BHtNGS THUS PRODUCE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE 
 ON EARTH. THE CONTINUITY OF SOLAR RADIATION, IN- 
 EXPLICABLE BY PHYSICISTS, EXPLAINED BY E3IANATI0NS 
 
 FROM THE SOULS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OP FIRE, AND THE ADORATION OF THE 
 SUN IN DIFFERENT NATIONS, ANCIENT AND MODERN . 104 
 
 CHAPTEE THE TENTH. 
 
 WHAT ARE OUR RELATIONS WITH SUPERHUMAN BEINGS ? . 122 
 
 CHAPTEE THE ELEVENTH. 
 
 WHAT IS THE ANIMAL ? — THE SOULS OP ANIMAI^. — MIGRA- 
 TIONS OF SOULS THROUGH THE BODIES OP ANIMALS . 138 
 
 CHAPTEE THE TWELFTH. 
 
 WHAT IS THE PLANT? — THE PLANT CAN FEEL. — HOW
 
 CONTENTS. vu 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DIFFICULT IT IS TO DISTINGUISH PLANTS FROM ANIMALS. 
 
 — GENERAL CHAIN OF LIVING BEINGS . . . .149 
 
 CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH. 
 
 DOBS MAN EXIST ELSEWHERE THAN ON THE EARTH 1 — 
 DESCRIPTION OP THE PLANETS. — PLURALITY OF THE 
 INHABITED WORLDS . . . . . . .177 
 
 CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH. 
 
 THAT WHICH TOOK PLACE ON EARTH FOR THE CREATION 
 OP ORGANIZED BEINGS MUST HAVE EQUALLY TAKEN 
 PLACE IN THE OTHER PLANETS. — SUCCESSIVE ORDER OP 
 
 THE APPEARANCE OF LIVING BEINGS ON OUR GLOBE. 
 
 THE SAME SUCCESSION MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE IN 
 EACH PLANET. THE PLANETARY MAN. THE PLANE- 
 TARY MAN, LIKE THE TERRESTRIAL MAN, IS TRANS- 
 FORMED, AFTER DEATH, INTO A SUPERHUJIAN BEING, 
 AND PASSES INTO THE ETHER . . . . .195 
 
 CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH. 
 
 PROOFS OP THE PLURALITY OP HUMAN EXISTENCES, AND 
 OF RE-INCARNATIONS. — WITHOUT THE AID OP THIS 
 DOCTRINE THE PRESENCE OF MAN UPON THE EARTH IS 
 INEXPLICABLE, LIKEWISE THE UNEQUAL CONDITIONS OF 
 HUMAN LIFE, AND THE FATE OF CHILDREN WHO DIE 
 IN INFANCY 
 
 CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH. 
 
 FACULTIES PECULIAR TO CERTAIN CHILDREN, APTITUDES 
 AND VOCATIONS AMONG MEN, ARE ADDITIONAL PROOFS 
 
 OP RE-INCARNATIONS. EXPLANATION OF PHRENOLOGY. 
 
 DESCARTES' INNATE IDEAS, AND DUGALD STEWART'S 
 
 PRINCIPLE OP CAUSALITY CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED BY 
 
 THE PLURALITY OP LIVES. VAGUE REMEMBRANCES OF 
 
 OUR FORMER EXISTENCES ...... 212 
 
 203
 
 Tiii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTEE THE SEVENTEENTH. 
 
 SUMMARY OF THE SYSTEM OP PLURALITY OP EXIST- 
 ENCES 226 
 
 CHAPTEE THE EIGHTEENTH. 
 
 ANSWERS TO SOME OBJECTIONS. — FIRST : THE IMMORTALITY 
 OF THE SOUL, "WHICH SERVFS AS THE BASIS TO THIS 
 SYSTEM, IS NOT DEMONSTRATED. — SECOND : "WE HAVE NO 
 REMEMBRANCE OF FORMER EXISTENCES. — THIRD : THIS 
 SYSTEM IS ONLY THE METEMPSYCHOSIS OP THE ANCIENTS. 
 — FOURTH : THIS SYSTEM IS CONFOUNDED "WITH DARWINISM 232 
 
 CHAPTEE THE NINETEENTH. 
 
 SEQUEL TO OBJECTIONS. DIFFICULTY OF UNDERSTANDING 
 
 HOW THE RAYS OF THE SUN, MATERIAL SUBSTANCES, CAN 
 
 BE THE GERMS OP SOULS, IMMATERIAL SURSTANCES . 259 
 
 CHAPTEE THE TWENTIETH. 
 
 PRACTICAL RULES RESULTING PROM THE FACTS AND PRIN- 
 CIPLES DEVELOPED IN THIS WORK. TO ELEVATE ONE's 
 
 SOUL BY THE PRACTICE OF VIRTUES, AND BY TRYING 
 TO ACQUIRE A KNOWLEDGE OP NATURE AND ITS LAWS 
 THROUGH SCIENCE. — TO BENDER PUBLIC WORSHIP TO 
 THE DIVINITY. WE SHOULD PRESERVE THE REMEM- 
 BRANCE OF THE DEAD. WE SHOULD NOT FEAR DEATH. 
 
 DEATH IS BUT AN INSENSIBLE TRANSITION FROM 
 
 ONE STATE TO ANOTHER; IT IS NOT AN END, BUT A 
 METAMORPHOSIS. — IMPRESSIONS OF THE DYING. — THOSE 
 WHO DIE YOUNG ARE LOVED BY THE GODS . . . 269 
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 IN WHICH WE SEEK GOD, AND IN OUR SEARCH DESCRIBE 
 
 THE UNIVERSE . 284
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 [EADEE, you must die. You may perhaps die 
 to-morrow. What will become of you 1 What 
 shall you be, on the day after your death 1 I do 
 not now allude to your body; that is of no more 
 importance than the clothes which it wears, or the shroud in 
 which it will be buried. Like these garments, like that cere- 
 cloth, your body must be decomposed, and its elements distri- 
 buted among Nature's great reservoirs of material, earth, air, 
 and water. But your soul, whither shall it go ? That which 
 was free within you, that which thought, loved, and sufferei', 
 what shall become of it? Of course you do not believe that 
 your soul will be extinguished with your life on the day of 
 your decease, and that nothing Avill remain of that which has 
 palpitated in your breast, vibrating to the emotions of joy 
 and sorrow, to the tender affections, the numberless passions 
 and disturbances of your life. 
 
 Where shall that sensible, existing soul, which must sur- 
 
 1 
 
 5,
 
 TEE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 vive the tomb, go to ? What will it become, what shall you 
 be, my reader, the day after your death 1 
 
 To the consideration of this question this book is devoted. 
 Almost all thinkers have declared that the problem of the 
 future life defies solution. They have argued that the human 
 mind is powerless to foresee so profound a mystery, and that 
 therefore the only rational course is to abstain from the en- 
 deavour. This is the reasoning of the majority of mankind, 
 partly from carelessness, or partly from conviction. Besides, 
 when we venture to look at this tremendous question closely, 
 we find ourselves immediately surrounded with such thick dark- 
 ness that we lack courage to pursue the investigation. And thus 
 we are led to turn away from all thought of the future life. 
 
 There are, nevertheless, circumstances which force us to re- 
 flect on tliis dark and difficult subject. When one finds 
 oneself in danger of death, or when one has lost a dearly 
 beloved object, there is no escape from meditation upon the 
 future life. When we have dwelt long and earnestly upon 
 the idea, we may be brought to acknowledge that the problem 
 is not, as it has so long been believed, beyond the reach of 
 the human mind. 
 
 During the greater portion of his life, the author of this 
 book believed, in common with everybody else, that the pro- 
 blem of the future life is out of our reach, and that true wis- 
 dom consists in not troubling our minds about it. But, one 
 dreadful day, a thunderbolt fell in his path. He lost the son 
 in whom centred all the hope and ambition of his life. Then, 
 in the bitterness of his grief he reflected deeply on the new
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 life which must open for each of us, above the tomb. After 
 long dwelling on this idea in solitary meditation, he asked of 
 the exact sciences what positive information, on this question, 
 they could furnish him with, and subsequently, he interrogated 
 ignorant and simple people, peasants in their villages, and 
 unlettered men in towns, an ever precious source of aid in 
 re-ascending towards the true principles of nature, for it is 
 not perverted by the progress of education, or by the routine 
 of a commonplace philosophy. 
 
 Thus the author of this book succeeded in constructing for 
 himself an entire system of ideas concerning the new life of 
 man, which is to follow his terrestrial existence. 
 
 Eut his system is all contained in nature. Each organized 
 being is attached to another which precedes, and anothea." 
 which follows it, in the chain of the living creation. The 
 plant and the animal, the animal and the man, are linked, 
 soldered to one another ; the moral and physical order meet 
 and mingle. It results from this, that any one who believes 
 himself to have discovered the explanation of any one fact 
 concerning this organization, is speedily led to extend this ex- 
 planation to all living beings, to reconstruct, link by link, the 
 great chain of nature. Thus it was with the author of this 
 book. After having sought out the destination of man, when 
 dismissed from his terrestrial life, he was led to apply his views 
 to all other living beings, to animals, and then to plants. 
 The power of logic forced him to study those beings, impossible 
 to be seen by our organs of vision, by which he holds the 
 planets, the suns, and all the innumerable stars dispersed 
 
 1—2
 
 TEE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 over the vast extent of the heavens, to be inhabited. So 
 that you will find in this book, not only an attempt at the 
 solution of the problem of the future life by science, but also 
 the statement of a complete theory of nature, of a true philo- 
 sophy of the universe. 
 
 It may be that I am deceiving myself ; it may be that I am 
 taking the dreams of my imagination for serious views ; I may 
 lose myself in that dark region through which I am trying to 
 grope my way ; but at least I write with absolute sincerity, 
 and that is my excuse for writing this book at all. I hope 
 that others may be induced by my example to attempt similar 
 efforts, to apply the exact sciences to the study of the great 
 question of the destinies of man after this life. A series of 
 works undertaken in this branch of learning, would be the 
 greatest service which could be rendered to natural philo- 
 sophy, and also to the progress of humanity. 
 
 After the terrible misfortunes of 1870 and 1871, there is 
 not a family in France which has not had to mourn a kins- 
 man or a friend. I found, not indeed consolation for my grief, 
 but tranquillity for my mind, in the composition of this work ; 
 aoa I have therefore hoped that, in reading its pages, they 
 who suffer and they who grieve might find some of the same 
 hope and assurance which have lifted up my stricken heart. 
 
 Society is in our day the prey of a deadly disease, of a 
 moral canker, which threatens it with destruction. This dis- 
 ease is materialism. Materialism, which was preached first in 
 Germany, in the universities, and in books of philosophy, and 
 the natural sciences, afterwards spread rapidly in France.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATU. 
 
 With brief delay, it came clown from the level of the savans 
 to that of the educated classes, and thence it penetrated 
 the ranks of the people ; and the people have undertaken to 
 teach us the practical consequences of materialism. Little by 
 little they have flung off every bond, they have discarded all 
 respect of persons and principles ; they no longer value re- 
 ligion or its ministers ; the social hierarchy, their country, or 
 liberty. That this must lead to some terrible result it was 
 easy to foresee. After a long period of political anarchy, a 
 body of furious madmen carried death, terror, and fire through 
 the capital of France. 
 
 It was not patriotism which fixed the illustrious and sacred 
 monuments of Paris, it Avas materialism. ISTothing can be 
 more evident than that, from the moment one is convinced 
 that everything comes to an end in this world, that there is 
 nothing to follow this life, we have nothing better to do, one 
 and all of us, than to appeal to violence, to excite disturbance, 
 and invoke anarchy everywhere, in order to find, amid such 
 propitious disorder, the means of satisfying our brutal desires, 
 our unruly ambition, and our sensual passions. Civilization, 
 society, and morals, are like a string of beads, whose fastening 
 is the belief in the immortality of the soul. Break the fasten- 
 ing, and the beads are scattered. 
 
 Materialism is the scourge of our day, the origin of all the 
 evils of European society. Now, materialism is fiercely fought 
 in this book, which miglit be entitled, " Spiritualism De- 
 monstrated by Science." Because this is its aim, and its 
 motive, my friends have induced me to publish it.
 
 CHAPTER THE FIEST. 
 
 MAN THE RESULT OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE OF THE BODY, THE 
 SOUL, AKD THE LIFE. WHAT CONSTITUTES DEATH. 
 
 AETHEZ, Lordat, and the Medical School of 
 Montpellier have created the doctrine of the hu- 
 man aggregate, which, in our opinion, affords the 
 only explanation of the true nature of man. 
 This doctrine, of which we shall avail ourselves, as a guide in 
 the earlier portions of this work, may he defined as follows : — 
 There exists in man three elements : — 
 
 1. The body, or the material suhstance. 
 
 2. The Life, or as Barthez calls it, the Vital Force. 
 
 3. The Soul, or as Lordat calls it, the Intimate Sense. 
 
 We must not confound the soul with the life, as the nia- 
 teriahsts and certain shallow philosophers have done. The 
 soul and the life are essentially distinct. The life is perish- 
 able, while the soul is immortal ; the life is a temporary 
 condition, destined to decline and destruction ; while the 
 soul is impervious to every ill, and escapes from death. Life, 
 like heat and electricity, is a force engendered by certain 
 causes ; after having had its commencement, it has its termi- 
 nation, which is altogether final. The soul, on the contrary, 
 has no end.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 Man may be defined as a ■perfected soul dtvelUng in a living 
 body. 
 
 This definition permits us to specify wliat it is that con- 
 stitutes death. 
 
 Death is the separation of the soul and the body. This 
 separation is effected when the body has ceased to be animated 
 by the life. 
 
 Plants and animals cannot live except under certain condi- 
 ditions : plants in the air or in the water, animals in the air, 
 fish in the water ; and if they are deprived of these condi- 
 tions, they perish immediately. Again, there are existences 
 which require special conditions for their support within the 
 general ones. 
 
 Certain polypoid-worms can live only in carbonic acid, or 
 azotic gas ; the germs of cryptogams produced by damp can 
 be developed only in aqueous infusions of vegetable matters ; 
 the fish which live in the sea, die in fresh, or only moderately 
 salt, water. 
 
 Every living being has then its special hahitat. The soul 
 does not form an exception to this rule. The place, the 
 hahitat of the soul is a living body. The soul disappears from 
 the body when this body ceases to live, just as a man forsakes 
 a house when that house has been destroyed by fire. 
 
 Such is the doctrine of the trijDle alliance of the body, the 
 soul, and the life, as formulated by the School of MontpeUier, 
 and such, as a consequence of this doctrine, is the mechanism 
 of death. 
 
 It must be added that this triple alliance of the body, the
 
 8 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 soul, and the life, is not peculiar to man ; it exists also in all 
 animals. The animal has also a living body, and soul ; but 
 the soul in animals is much inferior to the soul in men, in 
 the number and extent of its faculties. Having few wants, 
 the animal has a very small number of faculties, which 
 are all in a rudimentary conclition. It is only in the very 
 considerable development of the faculties of the soul that 
 man differs from the superior animals, to which he bears a 
 strong resemblance in his physiological functions, and his 
 anatomical structure. 
 
 It must be remarked that the Montpellier School does not 
 admit this view of tlie condition of animals. In another 
 part of this work,* a fuller explanation of the distinctions 
 which divide man from animal will be found. 
 
 * CkXV.
 
 CHAPTER THE SECOND. 
 
 WHAT BECOMES OF TUB EDDY, THE SOUL, AND THE LIFE, AFTER 
 
 DEATU. 
 
 [FTER death, the body, -whether of a man, or of an 
 animal, being no longer preserved from destruc- 
 tion by vital force, falls under the dominion of 
 chemical forces. If the body of a dead animal, 
 or a human corpse be kept in a place where the temperature is 
 below 0*^, or if it be shut up in a space entirely air-tight, or 
 if it be impregnated with antiseptic substances, it will remain 
 intact, as at the moment at which life has abandoned it. 
 Such is the process of embalming. The effect of the various 
 ehemical substances with which a corpse is impregnated, is to 
 coagulate the albumen of the tissues, and thus to preserve the 
 animal substance from putrefaction. A similar result will 
 be obtained if the corpse be placed between two layers of 
 ice, or in a coffin entirely surrounded with ice constantly 
 renewed. If kept at a temperature of 0", the body will not 
 be subject to decomposition, because putrid fermentation can- 
 not take place at so low a temperature. 
 
 This was the process by which the entire carcasses of the 
 mammoths, or extinct elephants, which belonged to the qua-
 
 10 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 ternity period, were preserved. In 1802 a perfectly pre- 
 served carcass of this gigantic pachyderm was found on the 
 hank of the Lena, a river which runs into the Arctic Sea, 
 after traversing a portion of the Asiatic continent in the vici- 
 nity of the North Pole. The frozen earth and the ice which 
 covers the banks of the river into which the mammoth had 
 plunged, had so effectually preserved it from putrefaction, that 
 the flesh of the huge creature, dead for more than a hundred 
 thousand years, made a feast for the fishermen of that desert 
 place. In northern countries, if one would preserve the body 
 of a man, it could be effectually done by simply keeping it 
 constantly wrapped in ice. 
 
 When the body of a man, or of an animal, is exposed to 
 the combined influences of air, of water, and of a moderately 
 high temperature, it undergoes a series of chemical decompo- 
 sitions, whose final term is its transformation into carbonic 
 acid gas, and some compounds, gaseous or solid, which repre- 
 sent the less advanced products of destruction. Gases of 
 various kinds, carbonic acid, hydrosulphuric, and ammoniac, 
 and the vapour of water, spread themselves through the atmo- 
 sphere, or dissolve into the humidity of the soil. At a later 
 stage these compounds, thus dissolved into the water which 
 bathes the earth, are absorbed by the little roots of the plants 
 which live on it, and aid in their nutrition and develop- 
 ment. As for the gas, it begins by spreading through the 
 air ; and then falling to the earth again dissolved in the rain- 
 water, it also equally supplies the needs of vegetable life. 
 The ammoniac and carbonic acid in the water which pene-
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. \\ 
 
 trates the soil, is absorbed by the roots, introduced into the 
 tubes of the plants, and supplies them with nourish- 
 ment. 
 
 Thus, the matter which forms the bodies of men and ani- 
 mals is not destroyed ; it only changes its form, and under 
 its new conditions it aids in the composition of fresh organic 
 substances. 
 
 In all this the human body does but obey the common 
 laws of nature. That which it undergoes, every organized 
 substance, vegetable or animal, exposed to the combined in- 
 fluences of air, water, and temperature, equally undergoes. 
 A piece of cotton or woollen stuff, a grain of wheat, a fruit — 
 they all ferment, and reduce themselves to new products, 
 exactly as our bodies do. The cere cloth which enfolds a 
 corpse is destroyed by precisely the same process which 
 destroys the corpse. 
 
 But, if the material substance which forms man's body 
 does but transform itself, journeying through the globe, passing 
 from animals to plants and from plants to animals ; it is quite 
 otherwise with life. Life is a force. Like the other forces, 
 heat, light, and electricity, it is born, and it transmits itself ; 
 it has a beginning and an end. Like light, heat, and electri- 
 city — the physical agents which make us comprehend life, and 
 which have certainly the same essence and the same origLa — 
 life has its producing causes, and its causes of destruction. 
 It cannot rekindle itself when it has been extinguished j it 
 cannot re-commence its course when its fatal term has arrived. 
 Life cannot perpetuate itself; it is a simple condition of
 
 12 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 bodies, a fugitive and precarious condition, subject to count- 
 less influences, accidents, and chances. 
 
 The life is therefore greatly inferior in importance to the 
 soul, which is indestructible and immortal. The soul is the 
 essential element in all nature. It has active and positive 
 qualities in all respects wher'? the two other elements, the 
 body and the life, have only negative qualities. Whilst the 
 body dissociates itself and disappears, while the life becomes 
 annihilated, the soul can neither disappear nor become anni- 
 hilated. 
 
 We have seen what becomes of a man's body after his 
 death, and also of his life ; let us now examine into the con- 
 dition of his soul. 
 
 1^0 philosopher, no learned man, none of those who know 
 the immensity of the universe and the eternity of the ages, 
 can admit that our existence on the earth is a definite thing, 
 — tliat human life has no link with anything above or beyond 
 itself. Man dies at thirty, or twenty years old ; he may live 
 only a few months, or a few minutes. The average length of 
 life, according to Duvilard's tables, is twenty-eight years. 
 At present it is thirty-three. One fourth of mankind die 
 before their seventh year, and one half do not outlive their 
 seventeenth. Those who survive this time enjoy a privilege 
 which is denied to the rest of the human race.* 
 
 What is so short an interval, compared to the general 
 duration of time, to the age of the earth and of the worlds % 
 It is one minute in eternity. Our brief life is not, cannot ba 
 * Rambosson. " The Laws of Life." Paris, 1871. P. 121.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 13 
 
 anything but an accident, a rapid and passing plienonienon, 
 which hardly counts for anything in the history of nature. 
 
 On the other hand, the physical conditions of terrestrial 
 life are detestable. Man is a martyr, exposed to every sort of 
 suffering : owing partly to the defective organization of his 
 body, incessantly menaced with danger from external causes, 
 dreading the extremes of heat and cold ; weak and ailing, 
 coming into the world naked, and without any natural de- 
 fence'against the influence of climate. If, in one portion of 
 Europe, and in America, the progress of civilization has se- 
 cured comfort for the rich, what are the sufferings of the poor 
 in those very same countries 1 Life is perpetual suffering to 
 the greater number of the men who inhabit the insalubrious 
 regions of Asia, Africa, and Oceania. And then, before there 
 was any civilization at all, during the period of Primitive 
 Man, a period so immense that it stretches back to a hun- 
 dred thousand years before our epoch, what was the fate of 
 humanity % It was a perpetual succession of suffering, danger, 
 and pain. 
 
 The conditions of human existence arc as evil from the 
 moral as from the physical point of view. It is granted that 
 here below happiness is impossible. The Holy Scriptures, 
 when they tell us that the earth is a valley of tears, do but 
 render an incontestable truth in a poetic form. Yes, man 
 has no destiny here but suffering. He suffers in his affec- 
 tions, and in his unfullilled desires, in the aspirations and im- 
 pulses of his soul, continually thrust back, baffled, beaten 
 down by insurmountable obstacles and resistance. Happiness
 
 14 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 is a forbidden condition. The few agreeable sensations which 
 we experience, now and then, are expiated by the bitterest 
 grief. "We have affections, that we may lose and mourn their 
 dearest objects ; we have fathers, mothers, children, that we 
 may see them die. 
 
 It is impossible that a state so abnormal can be a defini- 
 tive condition. Order, harmony, eqnihbrium reign through- 
 out the physical world, and it must be that the same are to 
 be found again in the moral world. If, on looking around us, 
 we are forced to acknowledge that suffering is the common 
 and constant rule, that injustice and violence dominate, that 
 force triumphs, that victims tremble and die under the iron 
 hand of cruelty and oppression ; then it must be that this is 
 only a temporary order of things. It cannot be otherwise 
 than a moment of transition, an intermediary period which 
 Providence condemns us to pass through rapidly, on our way 
 to a better state. 
 
 Eut, what is this new condition, what is this second exist- 
 ence which is to succeed to our terrestrial life? In other 
 words, what becomes of the human soul after death has broken 
 the bonds which held it to the body ? This is what we have 
 to investigate. 
 
 That being, superior to man in the scale of the living crea- 
 tures which people the universe, has no name in any language. 
 The angel acknowledged by the Christian religion, and 
 honoured by an especial cultus, is the only approach we have 
 to a realization of the idea. Thus Jean Eeynaud calls the 
 superior creature, who is, he believes, to succeed to man
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 15 
 
 after his death, an angel. But we will put aside the word 
 altogether, and call the perfected creature who, in our be- 
 lief, comes after man in the ascending series of nature, the 
 superhuman being.
 
 CHAPTER THE THIRD. 
 
 WHERE DOES THE SUPERHUJIAN BEING DWELL? 
 
 E have seen that of the three elements which com- 
 pose the human aggregate, one only, the soul, re- 
 sists destruction. After the dissolution of the 
 body, after the extinction of the life, the soul, 
 detached from the material bonds Avhich chained it to the 
 earth, goes away, to feel, to love, to conceive, to be free, 
 in a new body, endowed with more powerful faculties than 
 those allotted to humanity. It goes away to compose that 
 which we call the superhuman being. But where does this 
 new creature dwell ? 
 
 All students of nature know that life is spread over our 
 globe in prodigious proportions. "We cannot take a step, our 
 ej'^es cannot glance around us, without everywhere encoun- 
 tering myriads of living beings. The earth is nothing but a 
 vast reservoir of life. Examine a blade of grass in a field, 
 and you wUl find it covered with insects, or inferior animals. 
 But your eyes will not suffice for this examination; you must 
 have recourse to the microscope. "With the aid of the magni- 
 fying glass, you will discover that this blade of grass is the 
 refuge of an active population, which are born, multiply, and
 
 TEE DAY AFTER BE ATE. 17 
 
 die with prodigious rapidity on their ahnost imperceptible 
 domain. 
 
 From this blade of grass you may draw inferences and 
 conclusions respecting the vegetation of the entire globe. 
 
 The fresh waters which flow upon the surface of the earth 
 are also the receptacle of a prodigious quantity of organic 
 existence. "Without mentioning the ]3lants, and the animals 
 which live in the waters of the rivers and streams, and are 
 visible to the naked eye, if you take a drop of Avater from a 
 pool, and place it under the microscope, you will see that it 
 is filled with living beings, who, though so small that they 
 escape our unassisted vision, are none the less active, and all 
 hold their appointed place in the economy of nature. "VYe 
 know how thickly peopled with inhabitants is the great drop ; 
 but, without speaking of beings visible to all, the fishes, the 
 Crustacea, and the zoophytes, or of the marine plants, creatures, 
 invisible except under microscopical examination, abound to 
 such an extent in sea water, that one single drop of it, so ex- 
 amined, displays innumerable quantities of these microscopic 
 animals and plants. 
 
 From this drop of water you may draw inferences and 
 conclusions respecting the entire mass of waters which occupy 
 the basins of the seas, and form three-fourths of the surface of 
 our globe. 
 
 In order that some conception may be reached of the 
 enormous numbers of the living beings contained in the seas 
 now, and formerly, we may fitly recall in this place a fact well 
 known to geologists. It is, that all building stone, all the 
 
 2
 
 18/' - THE DA Y A FTER DEA TH. 
 
 J* 
 
 calcareous earth of "vvhicli chalk hills and banks are formed, 
 are entirely composed of the pidverized and agglomerated 
 remains of the shells of mollusca, visible or microscopic, 
 which, in the most remote ages of the existence of the globe, 
 peopled the basin of the seas. The whole of this forma- 
 tion is composed of the accnmulation of shells. If life has 
 been lavished with such profusion in the waters during the 
 geological periods, it must be equally lavished now, in almost 
 similar ways, because the actual conditions of nature do not 
 differ from what they were in the primitive ages of the 
 globe. 
 
 The air which surrounds us is, like the earth and the seas, 
 a vast receptacle of living creatures. We see only a few 
 animals cleaving the aerial space, but the savant, who looks 
 beyond the simple appearance of things, discovers myriads of 
 existences in the air. 
 
 The air seems to us very pure, very transparent, but only 
 because it is not sufficiently illumined by light to enable us 
 to perceive the particles, or foreign bodies, which are floating 
 about in it. When we allow one ray of daylight to penetrate 
 into a closed room, one thread of solar light, we can discern a 
 luminous streak flung across the chamber, while the remaining 
 portion is still in darkness. We all know that, thanks to the 
 powerful light, and its contrast with the surrounding obscurity, 
 the luminous streak is seen to be filled with light, slender 
 floating bodies, rising, descending, fluttering with the motion 
 of the au\ That which is perceptible in the atmosphere of a 
 brightly-lighted room is necessarily existent in the entire
 
 THE JDA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 atmosphere surrounding our globe, so tliat the air is every- 
 where filled with these specks of dust. 
 
 Of what are these specks of dust formed? Almost en- 
 tirely of living creatures, of the germs of microscopic plants 
 (cryptogamia), or of the eggs of inferior animals (zoophytes). 
 So-called spontaneous generation, so largely discussed of late 
 in France and other countries, is merely due to these organic 
 germs which fill the atmosphere, and which, falling into the 
 water, or into the infusions of plants, give birth to forms of 
 vegetation, which have been imputed to spontaneous genera- 
 tion ; that is to say, to a creation without a germ, a generation 
 without a cause, which is an error. Every living thing has 
 parents, which are always discoverable by science and atten- 
 tion. 
 
 Those animals and plants which are called parasites fur- 
 nish, another example of the extraordinary profusion with 
 which life is distributed over the earth. Animals and plants 
 which live on other animals or on other plants, and which 
 feed on the substance of their involuntary entertainers, aro 
 called parasites. Each of the mammals has its parasites, 
 such as fleas, lice, &c., and man has the flea, the louse, and 
 the bug. So each vegetable has its parasite. The oak gives 
 shelter and food to lichens and various cryptogamia, and even 
 on its roots we find particular kinds of cryptogamia, such as 
 the truffle. Thus we see that life plants itself, grafts itself 
 upon life. 
 
 But, more than this, these parasites in their turn have 
 their smaller parasites, so minute as only to be microscopically 
 
 2—2
 
 20 THE DA Y AFTER BE A Til. 
 
 discerned. Take a lichen off an oak and examine it with a 
 magnifying glass, and also examine a flea, or a nit, and you 
 will behold the curious spectacle of a parasite attached to 
 another parasitical creature, and living upon its substance. 
 From the great vegetable the alimentary substance passes 
 to the visible parasite, and from that to the invisible. In 
 this little space life is superposed and concentrated. Such a 
 fact proves with what prodigious abundance life is spread 
 over our globe. 
 
 Thus, then, we see that the surface of the globe, the fresh 
 waters, and the salt seas, and, finally, the atmosphere, are in- 
 habited by inmiense numbers of living beings. Life abounds 
 on the earth, in the waters, and in the air, Oui- globe is like 
 an immense vase, in which life is accumulated, pressed down, 
 and running over. 
 
 But, the earth, the air, and the waters are not the only 
 places at the command of nature. Above the atmosphere 
 there extends another region, with which astronomers and 
 physicists are acquainted, and which they call ether or plane- 
 tary ether. The atmosphere which surrounds our globe, and 
 is drawn with it in its course through space, as it is drawn 
 with it in its rotation upon its own axis, is not very high. 
 It does not extend beyond thirty or forty leagues, and it 
 diminishes in substance in proportion to its elevation above the 
 earth. At three or four leagues in height the air is so rarefied 
 that it becomes impossible for men or animals to breathe it. 
 In aerostatic ascents it is impossible to go beyond seven or 
 eight kilometres, because at tliat height the air loses so much
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TIL 2i 
 
 density, is so higlily rarefied, that it no longer serves for 
 purposes of respiration, nor counterbalances the effect of ths 
 interior pressure of the body on the exterior. After that 
 height, the density of the air decreases more and more, until 
 there is absolutely no air. At that point begins the fluid 
 which astronomers and physicists call ether. 
 
 This ether is a true fluid, a gas, analogous to the air we 
 breathe, but infinitely more rarefied and lighter than air. 
 The existence of the planetary ether cannot be disputed, 
 since astronomers take account of its resistance in calculating 
 the speed of heavenly bodies, just as they take account of the 
 resistance of the air in calculating the motions of bodies 
 traversing our atmosphere. 
 
 Ether is, then, the fluid which succeeds to atmospheric air. 
 It is spread; not only around the earth, but around the other 
 planets. More than this, it exists throughout all space, it 
 occupies the intervals between the planets. It is, in fact, in 
 ether that the planets, which, with their satellites, compose 
 our solar world, revolve. The comets, too, in their immense 
 journeys through space pass through ether. 
 
 The uneducated mind is disposed to believe that above the 
 air which surrounds the terrestrial globe, there is nothing 
 more, that all is void. But no void exists anywhere in 
 nature. Space is always occupied by something, whether it 
 be by earth, by water, by atmospheric air, or, finally, by 
 j)lanetary ether. 
 
 It has just been said that life abounds upon the globe, 
 swarms upon the earth, clusters in the air and in the waters.
 
 22 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 
 
 Es the ethereal fluid which succeeds to our atmosphere, and 
 which fills space, equally inhabited by living beings 1 This 
 is a question -which no savant has ever yet asked himself. 
 In our opinion, it would be very surprising that life, which 
 we may say overflows in the waters and in the air, should bo 
 absolutely wanting in the fluid which is contiguous to the 
 air. Everytliing, then, indicates that the ether is inhabited. 
 But who are the beings who dwell in the planetary ether? 
 We believe that they are those superhuman beings, whom we 
 consider to be resuscitated men, endowed with every kind of 
 moral perfection. 
 
 The chemical composition of planetary ether is not known. 
 Astronomical phenomena have taught us its existence, but 
 not its components. We beheve it may safely be asserted 
 that the ether does not contain oxygen. In fact, oxygen is 
 the fundamental element of atmospheric air ; and as, in pro- 
 portion as they ascend into that air, the respiration of men 
 and animals becomes more and more difiicult, it is, in our 
 opinion, presumable, that this difiiculty is caused by the 
 approach of a description of gas impossible to breathe ; and 
 which, therefore, excludes human life from the superior 
 regions of the air. A man, rising in a balloon towards the 
 ether, is like a fish half drawn out of the water, half exposed 
 to the air. The fish is breathless and palpitating in a place 
 which is fatal to him ; thus it is with man, when he rises 
 by degrees through our nether atmosphere, and draws near 
 to the ether. It seems to us that we may, at once, conclude, 
 from this, that there is no oxygen in planetary ether.
 
 THE DA Y A FTER D EA TH. 23 
 
 It seems not unlikely that the planetary ether may be com- 
 posed of hydrogen gas, excessively rarefied, that is to say, of 
 an extremely light gas, still further rarefied, and rendered 
 infinitely more subtle by the absence of all pressure. We are 
 induced to conclude that the ether in which the planets 
 revolve is hydrogen, because, from observations made of late 
 years during the solar total eclipses, it has been ascertained 
 that the sun is surrounded by burning hydrogen gas. 
 
 In the language of every nation, the space which lies 
 beyond our atmosphere is called by the same name, that of 
 heaven. It is, then, in the universally recognized heaven that 
 we place our superhuman beings. In this we are in accord 
 with popular belief and prejudice, and we recognize this 
 argument with satisfaction. These prejudices, these presenti- 
 ments are frequently the outcome of the wisdom and the 
 observation of an infinite number of generations of men. A 
 tradition which has a uniform and universal existence, has all 
 the weight of scientific testimony. 
 
 In accordance with this phrase, and the immemorial tradi- 
 tion, the most widely-spread modern religions, Christianity, 
 Buddhism, and Mahometanism, assign heaven as the sojourn 
 of the elect of God. 
 
 Thus, we find science, tradition, and religion at one on 
 this point ; and that it was a scientific truth which found 
 utterance by the lips of the priest who said to the martyred 
 king upon the scafiold : " Son of Saint Louis, ascend to 
 heaven."
 
 CnAPTER THE FOURTH. 
 
 DO ALL HEX, 'WITHOUT DISTINCTION, PASS, AFTER DEATH, INTO 
 THE CONDITION OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING ? — RE-INCARNA- 
 TION OF IMPENITENT SOULS. RE-INCARNATION OF CHILDREN 
 
 VHO HAVE DIED IN INFANCY. 
 
 '^^^SAlpEATH is not a termination, it is a change. We 
 do not die ; we experience a metamorphosis. 
 The fall of the curtain of death is not the 
 catastrophe, it is only a deeply moving scene 
 in the drama of human destiny. The agony is not the pre- 
 lude to annihilation, it is only the ohligatory suffering which, 
 throughout all nature, accompanies every change. Every one 
 knows that the insect world, the cold and motionless chry- 
 salis, rends itself asunder that the brilliant butterfly may 
 come forth. If you examine the butterfly a moment after it 
 has left its temporary tomb, you will find it trembling and 
 panting with the pain of bursting through the trammels which 
 had held it. It needs to rest, to calm itself, and to collect 
 its strength before it soars away into the air which it is 
 destined to traverse. This is a symbol of our death agony. 
 In order that we may cast aside the material covering which 
 we leave behind us here below, and rise to the unknown
 
 THE DA Y A FTER BE A TIL 26 
 
 spheres which await us beyond the tomb, we must suffer. 
 We suffer, in the body, from physical pain, and in the soul, 
 from the anguish with which we contemplate our approaching 
 destiny, wrapped, as it is, in the most appalling darkness. 
 
 But here a difficulty presents itself. Do all men, without 
 distinction, pass into the condition of the superhuman being 1 
 An infinite range of qualities and of moral perversion is an 
 attribute of humanity. To it belong good and evil, the 
 honest man and the criminal. Let us inhabit whatsoever 
 spot of earth Ave may, let the culture of our minds be what 
 it may, whether we be savages or civilized men, learned 
 or ignorant, whether we contemplate contemporary genera- 
 tions or those of far distant times, there exists one universal 
 morality, one law of absolute equity. Everywhere, in all 
 times, it has been a bad action to kiU one's neighbour, to take 
 another's goods, to iU-treat one's children, to be ungrateful to 
 parents, to live on bad terms with one's wife, to conspire 
 against the liberty of others, to lie, and to commit suicide. 
 From one end of the earth to the other, these actions have 
 been esteemed evil- 
 There exists, therefore, in the sphere of nature, and in the 
 absolute meaning of the words, good souls and perverse souls. 
 Must we believe that both the good and the wicked are 
 called, without distinction, to undergo the change of nature 
 which elevates us to the condition of superhuman beings'? 
 Are both classes admitted, upon the same footing, to the feli- 
 city of the new life, which is reserved for us bej'^ond the 
 tombi Our conscience, that exquisitely accurate sentiment
 
 25 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 wliicli dwells within us, and wliicli never deceives, tells us • 
 that this could not be. 
 
 But how is the separation of the good grain from the tares 
 to be effected by natural forces only ? How is the process of 
 sorting, in itself extremely difficult to explain, when one takes 
 into account the complication of the natural question by the 
 mingling of moral and physical influences, to be carried out ? 
 We can only state our individual sentiment, not in the dog- 
 matic sense of imposing it on any one, but simply as a testi- 
 mony to be registered. 
 
 It seems to us that the hiunan soul, in order to rise to the 
 ethereal spaces, needs to have acquired that last degree of 
 perfection which sets it free from every besetting weight; 
 that it must be subtle, light, purified, beautiful, and that only 
 under such conditions can it quit the earth and soar towards 
 the heavens. To our fancy, the human soul is like a celes- 
 tial aerostat, who flies towards the sublimest heights with 
 swift strength, because it is free from all impurity. But the 
 soul of a perverse, wicked, vile, gross, base, cowardly man 
 has not been purified, perfected, or lightened. It is weighed 
 down by evU passions and gross appetites, which he has not 
 sought to repress, but has, on the contrary, cultivated. It 
 cannot rise to the celestial heights, it is constrained to dwell 
 upon our melancholy and miserable earth. 
 
 "We believe that the wicked and impenitent man is not 
 called to the immediate enjoyment of the blessed life of the 
 ethereal regions. His soul remains here below, to re-com- 
 mence life a second time. Let us remark, at once, that ht;
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 27 
 
 re-commences this life without preserving any recollection of 
 his previous existence. 
 
 It will be objected to this, that to bo born again without 
 retaining any remembrance of a past life, would be to fall 
 into the nothingness to which we are condemned by the 
 materialists. In fact, it is identity which constitutes the 
 resurrection ; and without memory there is no identity. The 
 individual, therefore, as an individual, would fall into nothing- 
 ness if he were born again without memory. 
 
 This remark is just. If, after our resurrection to the state 
 of superhuman beings, we were to lose, absolutely and irre- 
 parably, all remembrance of our former life, we should be, 
 indeed, the prey of nothingness. But, let us hasten to add, 
 that this loss of memory is of but short duration. Oblivion 
 of our past life is only a temporary condition of our new exis- 
 tence, a sort of punishment. The remembrance of his first 
 terrestrial life will return to each individual, when, by per- 
 fecting processes meet for the needs of his soul, he shall have 
 merited the attainment of the condition of a superhuman 
 being. Then he shall recall the evil actions of his first 
 existence, or of his numerous existences, if it has been his 
 lot to have several probations, and the thought of those evil 
 deeds will still be his chastisement, even in the blissful abode 
 to which he shall at length have attained. 
 
 To such persons as refuse assent to these views, we would 
 remark that the question of rewards and punishments after 
 death is the rock upon wliich all religions and all philoso- 
 phers have split. The explanation of the punishment of the
 
 28 THE Da Y after DEA TIL 
 
 -svicked whicli we offer, is at least jDieferable to the hell of the 
 Christian creed. A return to a second terrestrial life is a less 
 cruel, a more reasonable, and a more just punishment than 
 condemnation to eternal torment. In the one case the penalty 
 is in proportion to the sin. It is equitable and indulgent, 
 like the chastisement of a father. It is not eternal punish- 
 ment for a sin of short duration, it is a merciful form of 
 justice, which places beside the penalty the means of freedom 
 from the siu. It does not shut out all return to good by a 
 condemnation without appeal to all eternity, it leaves to man 
 the possibility of retracing the road to happiness from which 
 his passions have led him astray, and of recovering, by de- 
 serving them, the blessings which he has forfeited. 
 
 Thus, in our opinion, if the human soul, during its sojourn 
 here below, instead of perfecting, purifying, and ennobling 
 itself, has lost its strength, and its primitive qualities, — if, in 
 other words, it has been misused by a perverse, gross, unculti- 
 vated, mean, and wicked individual, — then, in that case, it 
 will not quit the earth. After the death of that individual, 
 the soul will tenant a new human body, losing all recollection 
 of its previous existence. In this second incarnation the im- 
 perfect and earth-laden soul, deprived of all noble faculties 
 and bereft of memory, will have to re-commence its moral 
 education. This man, born again as an infant, will recom- 
 mence his existence with the same uncultivated and feeble 
 soul which he possessed at the moment of his death. 
 
 These re-incarnatioiis in a human body may be numerous. 
 They must repeat themselves until the faculties of the soul
 
 THE DA Y A FTER DEA TIL 29 
 
 are sufficiently developed, or until its instincts are sufficiently 
 ameliorated and perfected for the man to be raised above the 
 general level of our species. Then only the soul, purified 
 and lightened of all its imperfections, can quit the earth, 
 and after the death of the flesh soar into space, and pass into 
 the new organism which succeeds that of man in the hierarchy 
 of nature. 
 
 We must add, here, that the fate of children who die young, 
 either while at the breast or only a few months old, before 
 the soul has undergone any development, is analogous. Their 
 souls pass into the bodies of other children, and re-commence 
 a novel existence.
 
 CHAPTER THE FIFTH. 
 
 VTHAT ARE THE ATTRIBUTES OP THE SUPERHUMAN BEING'? — 
 THE PHYSICAL FORM, SENSES, DEGREE OP INTELUGENCE, 
 AND FACULTIES OP THE SUPERHUMAN BEING. 
 
 iOTWITHSTANDIIs^G the daring of such an at- 
 tempt, let us now endeavour to form some idea 
 of the radiant creatures which float in the mys- 
 terious and subKme regions of that empyrean 
 which hides them from our view. Let us try to discern the 
 attributes, form, and qualities of the superhuman being. 
 
 Like the human, the superhuman being possesses the three 
 elements of the aggregate, the body, the soul, and the life. 
 In order to gain some idea of him, we must examine each of 
 these three elements separately. 
 
 The Body of the Su;perhuman Being. — We might perhaps 
 conceive a superhuman being Avithout a body ; we might ima- 
 gine that the soul, purely spiritual, constitutes the blessed 
 dweller in ethereal space. But it is not thus that we do con- 
 ceive him. Absolute immateriality appears to us to apply 
 only to a being much more elevated in the moral hierarchy 
 than the superhuman one — a being of whom we shall speak 
 hereafter. We believe that the inhabitant of the ethereal 
 spaces has a body ; that the soul, leaving its tenestrial dwell-
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. ' 31 
 
 ing, incarnates itself in a body, as it did here loelow. Eut 
 this body must be provided with qualities infinitely superior 
 to those which belong to the human body. First, let us in- 
 quu-e what the form of this body may be. The painters of 
 the Eenaissance, whom modern artists follow in this respect, 
 give to the angel the form of a young and handsome man, 
 furnished with white wings, which bear him through the air 
 on his celestial missions. This image is both coarse and 
 poetic. It is poetic because it responds to the idea which wo 
 have of the radiant creature who dwells in ethereal space ; 
 and it is coarse, because it gives to a being far superior to 
 man the physical attributes of man, which is inadmissible. 
 
 Painters who, like Eaphael, represent the angel by the 
 head of a child, with wings, give a far more profound expres- 
 sion to the same thought. By suppressing the larger portion 
 of the body, and reducing the seraphic being to the head, the 
 seat of intelligence, they indicate that in the angel of the 
 Christian belief the spiritual dominates, in immense propor- 
 tion, over the material part. 
 
 We shall not be expected to delineate the form of the 
 dwellers in the realms of ether. "VVe can only say. that, as 
 ether is an excessively subtle and rarefied fluid, it necessarily 
 follows that the superhuman being who is to float and fly in 
 its light masses, must be wonderfully light, must be composed 
 of extraordinary subtle substances. A slight material tissue, 
 animated by life, a vaporous, diaphanous drapery of living 
 matter, such do we represent the superhuman being to our 
 fancy.
 
 32 TEE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 
 
 How is this body supported ? Does it need food for its 
 maintenance, like the bodies of men and of animals? Wo 
 may reply with confidence that food — that tyrannous obliga- 
 tion of the human and the animal species — is spared to tho 
 inhabitants of the planetary ether. Their bodies must bo 
 sujDported and refreshed by mere respiration of the fluid in 
 which they exist. 
 
 Let us consider the immense space occupied in the lives 
 of animals by their need of alimentation. Many animals, 
 especially those which live in the water, have an incessant 
 need of food. They must eat always, without intermission, 
 or they die of inanition. Among superior animals, the ne- 
 cessity for eating and drinking is less imperious, because the 
 respiratory function comes to their aid, bringing into the 
 body, by the absorption of oxygen and a small proportion of 
 azote, a certain amount of reparative element, as a supplement 
 to alimentary substances. Man profits largely by this advan- 
 tage. Our respiration is a function of the highest importance, 
 and it bears a great share in the reparation of all our organs. 
 The oxygen which our blood borrows from the air in breath, 
 ing, contributes largely to our nutrition. The respiratory func- 
 tion in birds is very active, and the organs which exercise it 
 are largely developed, and in their nutrition also oxygen counts 
 largely, and takes the place of a certain quantity of food. 
 
 It is our belief that the respiration of the ether in which 
 lie lives, suffices for the support of the material body of tho 
 superhuman being, and that the necessity for eating and 
 drinking has no place in his existence.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 33 
 
 I do not know whether my reader forma an exact concep- 
 tion of the consequences which woidd result from the theory, 
 that the superhuman beings whom we are contemplating are 
 exempted from all need of food. Those consequences will be 
 most readily comprehended, if we consider that it is the press- 
 ing obligation of procuring food which renders the lives of 
 animals so miserable. Forced incessantly to seek their sub- 
 sistence, animals are entirely given up to this grovelling occu- 
 pation ; thence come their passions, their quarrels, and their 
 sufferings. It is much the same in the case of man, though 
 in a less degree. The necessity for providing for the aliment 
 of every day, the obligation of earning his daily bread — as the 
 popular phrase has it — is the great cause of the labours and 
 the sufferings of the human species. Supposing that man 
 could live, develop himself, and sustain his life without eat- 
 ing — that the mere respiration of air Avould supply the waste 
 of his organs — what a revolution would be effected in luiman 
 society. Hateful passions, wars, and rivalries would disap- 
 pear from the earth. The golden age, dreamed of by the 
 poets, would be the certain consequence of such an organic 
 disposition. 
 
 This blessing of nature, refused to man, assuredly belongs 
 to the superhuman being. We may conclude also that the 
 evil passions, which are a sad attribute of our species, Avould 
 be unknown in the home of these privileged creatures. Ee- 
 leased from the toil of seeking their food, living and repairing 
 their functions by the mere effect of respiration — an involun- 
 tary and unconscious act (as the circulation of the blood and 
 
 3
 
 34 THE DA 7 AFTER DEATH. 
 
 absorption are tinconscious acts in men and animals) — the in- 
 habitants of the ethereal spaces must be able to abandon 
 themselves exclusively to impressions of unmixed happiness 
 and serenity. 
 
 The forces of our body become rapidly exhausted ; we can- 
 not exercise our functions for a certain time without experi- 
 encing fatigue. In order to transport ourselves from one 
 place to another, to carry burthens, to go up or down any 
 height, to walk, we are obliged to expend these forces, and 
 lassitude immediately ensues. We cannot exercise the 
 faculty of thought for more than a certain time. At the end 
 of a short period attention fails, and thought is suspended. 
 In short, our corporeal machine, beautifully ordered, is sub- 
 ject to a thousand derangements, which we call diseases. 
 
 Prom the sense of fatigue, from the continual menace of 
 illness by organic derangement, the dwellers in the ether are 
 free. Eest is not for them, as for us, a necessity ensuing on 
 exercise. The body of the superhuman being, inaccessible to 
 fatigue, does not need repose. Unembarrassed by the me- 
 chanism of a complicated machine, it subsists and sustains 
 itself by the unaided force of the life which animates it. Its 
 sole physiological function, probably, is the inhalation of 
 ether, a function which, it is easy to conceive, may be exer- 
 cised without the aid of numerous organs, if we see a whole 
 class of animals — the Batrachian — for whose respiration the 
 bare and simple skin suffices. 
 
 If we admit, that the only function which the superhuman 
 being has to exercise is that of respiration, the extreme sim-
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 plicity of h'is body will be easily understood. The numerous 
 and complicated organs and apparatus wliich exist in the 
 bodies of men and animals, have for their object the exercise 
 of the functions of nutrition and reproduction. These func- 
 tions being suppressed in the creature whom we are consider- 
 ing, his body must be proportionably lightened. Everything 
 is reduced to respiration, and the preservation and mainte- 
 nance of the faculties of the soul ; all is in harmony with 
 those ends. We admire, with good reason, the wise mechan- 
 ism of the bodies of men and animals ; but, if human anatomy 
 reveals prodigies in our structure, marvellous provision in 
 securing the preservation of the individual and his reproduc- 
 tion, what infinitely greater marvels would, if we were but 
 permitted to study it, be revealed by the organization of the 
 body of the superhuman being, in which everything is calcu- 
 lated to secure the maintenance and the perfection of the soul. 
 With what astonishment should we learn the use and the 
 purpose of the different parts of that glorious body, discover 
 the relations of resemblance or of origin between the living 
 economy of the human, and the living economy of the super- 
 human, being, and divine the relations which might exist be- 
 tween the organs of the superhuman being and those which 
 he should assume in another life, still superior, in which he 
 should be the same being, again resuscitated in new glory and 
 fuller perfection ! 
 
 The special organization of the being whom we are describ- 
 ing would give him the power of transporting himself in a 
 very short space of time from one place to another, and of 
 
 3—2
 
 36 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 traversing great distances with extraordinary rapidity. We 
 are but simple human beings, and yet by thought we devour 
 space, and travel, in a twinkling, from one end of the globe 
 to another ; may we not therefore believe that the bodies of 
 superhuman beings, in whom the spiritual principle is domi- 
 nant, are endowed with the privilege of passing from one 
 point in space to another, with .a rapidity which the speed of 
 electricity enables us to measure ? 
 
 The superhuman being, who docs not require to eat or 
 drink, or rest, who is always active, and incessantly sensible, 
 has no need of sleep. Sleep is no more necessary for the 
 reparation of his forces, than food for their creation. We 
 know that man is deprived of one third of his existence, by 
 the imperious necessity for sleep. A man who dies c,t thirty 
 years of age, has in reality lived for twenty only; he has slept 
 all the rest of the time ! What a poor notion this conveys of 
 the condition of man ! Whence arises this need of sleep 1 
 It arises from the fact that our forces, impaired by their exer- 
 cise, require inaction and motionlessness for their repair — this 
 is attained in the kind of temporary death produced by the 
 suspension of the greater portion of the vital action, in sleep. 
 During sleep, man prepares and stores up the forces which he 
 will require to expend during the ensuing period. He devotes 
 the night to tliis physical reparation, as much in obedience to 
 what he observes in aU the other portions of creation, as in 
 obedience to the customs of civilization. But it is probable 
 that all the forces of the superhuman being are inexhaustible, 
 and that they do not require sleep, which is one of the hardest
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 37 
 
 conditions of human existence. Everything leads us to be- 
 lieve that perpetual wakefulness is the permanent state of 
 the superhuman being, and that the word "sleep" would 
 have no meaning for him. 
 
 Darkness must be equally unknown to all those beings 
 who float in the ethereal spaces. Our night and day are 
 produced alternatively by the rotation of the earth upon her 
 axis, a rotation which hides the sun from her view during 
 one half of her revolution. This rotatory motion draws our 
 atmosphere with it, but its influence extends no further, the 
 ether which surmounts our atmosphere is not subject to it. 
 That fluid mass remains motionless, while the earth and its 
 atmosphere turn upon their axis. The superhuman beings, 
 who, according to our ideas, inhabit the planetary ether, are 
 not drawn into this motion. They behold the earth revolv- 
 ing beneath them, but, being placed outside its movements, 
 they never lose sight of the radiant sun-star. 
 
 Night, we repeat, is an accidental phenomenon, which be- 
 longs to the planets only, because they have a hemisphere 
 now illumined, and then not illumined by the sun ; but 
 nif^ht is unknown to the remainder of the uj^iverse. The 
 superhuman beings, who people the regions far above the 
 planets, never lose sight of the sun, and their happy days 
 pass in the midst of an ocean of light. 
 
 Let us pass on to the consideration of the senses 
 which these superhuman beings probably possess, pre- 
 mising : 
 
 1. That the superhuman being must be endowed with the
 
 38 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. 
 
 same senses "which we possess, but that those senses are infi- 
 nitely more acute and exquisite than ours. 
 
 2. That he must possess special senses, unknown to us. 
 
 "What are the new senses enjoyed by the superhuman 
 being ? It would be impossible to return a satisfactory reply 
 to this question. "We have no knowledge of any other senses 
 than those with which we ourselves are endowed, and no 
 amount of genius could enable any man to divine the object 
 of a sense denied to him by nature. Try to give a man born 
 blind an idea of the colour, red ; and he will answer : " Yes, 
 I understand ! It is piercing, hke the sound of a trumpet !"' 
 Try to give a man born deaf an idea of the sound of the 
 harp, and he will answer : " Yes ! It is gentle and tender, 
 like the green grass of the fields !" Let us renounce, once 
 for all, any attempt to define the senses with which nature 
 endows the beings who people the ethereal plains; these 
 senses belong to objects and ideas the mere notion of which 
 is forbidden to us. 
 
 There is a well-known story of a man born bhnd, upon 
 whom the famous surgeon Childesen operated. Having re- 
 covered his sight, the patient was a long time learning the 
 use of his eyes ; he was obliged to educate those organs, step 
 by step, and by slow degrees to form his intelligence. 
 Equally well known is Condillac's beautiful fiction, in which 
 he imagines a man born into the world without the senses of 
 sight, speech, and hearing, and who is, therefore, destitute of 
 ideas. By degrees, he is endowed with each of these senses, 
 and the philosopher thus composes, bit by bit, a soul which
 
 THE LA Y AFTER BE A TH. 39 
 
 feels, and a mind which thinks. This philosoi^liical idea has 
 been greatly admired. Like the man-statue of CondUlac, we 
 are only, while hers below, imperfect statues, endowed with 
 but a small number of senses. When, however, we shall 
 have reached the superior regions destined to our ennobled 
 condition, we shall be put in possession of new senses, such 
 as our reason dimly perceives, and our hearts long for. 
 
 We cannot, as we have previously said, divine what the 
 new senses which shall be granted to the superhuman being 
 are to be, because they belong to objects and ideas of which 
 we are ignorant, and to forms which are exclusively proper 
 to worlds at present hidden from our eyes. The kingdom of 
 the planetary ether has its geography, its powers, its passions, 
 and its laws ; and the new senses of men, resuscitated to that 
 glorious existence, will be exercised upon those objects. 
 
 The only thing which we can safely prognosticate is that 
 all the senses which we now possess will then exist in their 
 full perfection — sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. It is 
 allowable to deduce this process of future perfection by rea- 
 soning from the extraordinary development of certain senses 
 in the case of animals. 
 
 The sense of smell is developed in the hunting dog to a 
 degree which surpasses our imagination. How can we under- 
 stand this quite ordinary fact, that the dog perceives the 
 scent which has emanated from a hare or a partridge which 
 has passed by the place at which he is smelling many hours 
 previously, and is now several leagues away ! The perfection 
 of sight in the eagle and other birds of prey astonishes us
 
 40 THE BAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 equally. These birds, floating at an immense height, see 
 their prey upon the earth, creatures much smaller than them- 
 selves, and descend upon them without deviating from the 
 perpendicular line of their flight. The bat, accidentally de- 
 prived of sight, supplies this deficiency so well by the sense 
 of touch, by means of his membranous wings, that he guides 
 himself through the air, and finds his way to the interior of 
 human dwellings, as unerringly as if he had the full use of 
 his eyesight. To such a degree of exquisite sensibility has 
 the sense of hearing attained among native Indian tribes, 
 that a man, laying his ear against the earth, Avill detect the 
 tread of an enemy at the distance of a league. Among mu- 
 sicians, also, how must the sense of hearing be cultivated by 
 a man, who, partly by a natural gift, and partly by practice, 
 comes to be able to detect the most minute difference in the 
 tone of one instrument among fifty different lands, all played 
 at once, in an orchestra. Supposing that the senses of the 
 superhuman being should have acquired the degree of extra- 
 ordinary activity which is common to animals, and, in certain 
 cases, to man, we can form some estimate of the power and 
 extent of such a sensorial system. 
 
 We can also arrive at some idea of the perfection of the 
 senses attained by resuscitated man, by considering the ac- 
 cession of power which our own senses may receive by the 
 assistance of science and art. Before the invention of the 
 microscope, no one ever imagined that the ey^ could pene- 
 trate the mysteries of that world in miniatui'e Avell named the 
 Injinitehj Little, until then absolutel}^ unknown ; no one had
 
 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. 41 
 
 ever divined, for instance, that in one drop of water might 
 be seen myriads of living beings. These beings have existed 
 throughout all time, but man has been able to contemplate 
 them for only two centuries. Our visual power over micro- 
 scopic beings was until then unknown. The least enlightened, 
 the most careless student of this day, regards vdth indiffer- 
 ence things which Aristotle, Hippocrates, Pliny, Galienu'', 
 Albertus Magnus, aid Eoger Bacon could not have contem- 
 plated, or even suspected to exist. The discovery of the 
 telescope, in the days of Kepler and Galileo, hurled back the 
 boundaries of the human intellect and threw open to its 
 investigation a domain hitherto sealed from its sight. There, 
 where Hipparchus and Ptolemy had seen nothing, Galileo, 
 Huyghens, Kepler, made, in a few nights, by the aid of the 
 telescope, discoveries of hitherto unsuspected celestial splen- 
 dour. The satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, a multitude of 
 new stars, the phases of Venus, and, at a later period, the 
 discovery of new planets only to be seen by the telescope, 
 the obf5ervation of spots on the sun, and the revolution of the 
 nebulae into collections of stars, Avere the almost immediate 
 consequences of the invention of the telescope. Thus we 
 learned that, by the aid of art, the human eye can penetrate 
 the most distant regions of heaven. 
 
 Let us now suppose all the powers of the telescope and all 
 those of the microscope concentrated in the sense of vision ; 
 that is to say, that in addition to all objects placed at ordi- 
 nary distances, it can discern all microscopic objects, and at 
 the same time all the celestial bodies invisible to the naked
 
 42 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 eye, and you "will have an idea of -what the sense of sight is, 
 in the superhuman being. 
 
 There is no occasion to dwell upon the extraordinary propor- 
 tions which our accumulated knowledge would assume, if our 
 sight could enjoy those extraordinary powers of extension, if it 
 could perform simultaneously t}\e functions of the telescope and 
 the microscope. Science would march forward with the tread of 
 a giant. What enormous progress would be made by chemistry 
 if our eyes could penetrate into the interior of all bodies, be- 
 holding their molecules, estimating their relative volume, their 
 arrangement, and the form and colour of their atoms. A 
 clance would reveal to us secrets of chemical solutions such 
 as the genius of a Lavoisier could not penetrate. Physics 
 would contain no further mysteries for us, for we should 
 know, by simply using our eyes, everything which we are 
 now painfully striving to divine by reason, and by the aid of 
 difficult and uncertain experiments. We should see why 
 and how bodies are warmed and acquire electricity. We 
 should have the explanation of the mathematical laws in 
 obedience to which the physical forces, light, heat, and mag- 
 netism are exercised. Our eyes would suffice for the solution 
 of those physical and mechanical problems before which the 
 genius of such men as ISTewton, Malus, Ampere, and Gay- 
 Lussac stands still. 
 
 We do not doubt that the superhuman being is en- 
 dowed with sight thus marvellously perfect. 
 
 We might carry this argument out in detail, applying it to 
 all the other senses, but enough has been said to illustrate tho 
 
 \
 
 TEE DAY AFTER DEATH. 43 
 
 exaltation and perfecting of those senses wliich man possesses 
 only in tlieir rudiments, in the favoured dwellers in a supe- 
 rior sphere. We will only add, that the result of such a 
 degree of perfection of the senses is, that the superhuman 
 being can move with a rapidity, of which light and electricity 
 only can give us some notion, that is to say, that these per- 
 fected senses can he used at great distances, and with great 
 promptitude. If the entire body of the superhuman being 
 can transport itself with wonderful rapidity from one place 
 to another, as we have already admitted, his senses can also 
 act from, and at great distances. "We do not think we can 
 err in comparing the actions of the dwellers in the invisible 
 world which we presume to investigate, with the phenomena 
 of light and electricity. 
 
 Does sex exist in the superhuman being ? Assuredly not. 
 The Christian religion defines its absence in the angel. The 
 angel of the Christian creeds has the features of either man 
 or woman, the mild face of a youth, or the pathetic beauty of 
 a girl. 'Sex is suppressed, the individual is androgynous. 
 Thus, too, it must be in the case of the superhuman being. 
 The reciprocal affection which reigns among the blessed 
 dwellers in the ether does not require diversity of sex. 
 
 The affections undergo a purifying process, according as 
 they are elevated, from those of the animals to those of man. 
 The animals have but little of the sentiment of friendship. 
 Love, with its material impulses, is almost all they know. 
 The sentiments of aifection possessed by animals, apart from 
 their carnal instincts, reduce themselves to those of maternity,
 
 44 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 which are strong and sincere, but of short duration. Their 
 young are the objects of attentive care and caresses while 
 their helplessness demands such aid, but as soon as they can 
 live on their own resources they are abandoned by the 
 mothers, who no longer even recognize them. There is no 
 constant, lasting affection in animals, except the sentiment of 
 love, which is caused by their sexual necessities. The senti- 
 ments of affection entertained by man are numerous, and fre- 
 quently noble and pure. We love our mothers and our sons 
 as long as our hearts beat in our breasts. "We love our 
 brothers, our sisters, and our relations with a sentiment in 
 which there is nothing carnal, and which is deeply rooted in 
 the soul. If love is often inseparably attached to physical 
 desires, it can, nevertheless, shake itself free from them, and 
 a disinterested friendship frequently survives the extinction 
 of sensual feeling. In this respect we are far superior to the 
 animals. Lot us go a step further, even to the supernatural 
 being, the next link in the chain to ourselves, and we shaU 
 find the sentiment of affection entirely detached from the con- 
 sideration of sex. In that sublime and blessed realm which 
 they inhabit, superhuman beings are all of the same organic 
 type. They need not, in order to love one another, to belong 
 to two opposite sexes, or different groups of organization : their 
 tenderness is the result of the serenity of the infinite purity 
 of souls, of the sympathy evoked by common perfections. 
 
 On the other ha»d, the ethereal region which awaits us is 
 the scene of the reunion of those who have loved one another 
 in this world. There the father avlU find the son, and the
 
 TUE JDA Y AFTER DEATH. 45 
 
 motlier -will rejoin the daughter, torn from each by death, 
 there husbands and wives will meet, and the separation of 
 friends come to an end. But, under their new form, in the 
 perfected body wherein their regenerated souls shall dwell, 
 there is no more sex, and love is for all an ideal, noble, and 
 exquisitely pure sentiment. 
 
 How blind and self-interested is love here below ! How 
 narrow and egotistical a sentiment is friendship. It cannot 
 enlarge itself without pain and difficulty, to embrace the 
 totality of the human kind. Why is it so hard for it to lift 
 itself up to the sublime Creator of the worlds 1 Why do we 
 not love God as we love our neighbours "? In the upper world 
 it will be far otherwise. Our faculty of loving, limited here 
 by fleshly bonds, will be set free there, from ever}' sensual 
 restraint. Man, resuscitated to glory, will love his wife as he 
 loves his children, his friends, and his brethren. His aff'ec- 
 tions will never more be degraded by his senses. The happi- 
 ness which this purified sentiment, constantly received from 
 ever living sources, will afford him, will suffice to fill and 
 satisfy his soul. His power of loving will be extended to all 
 nature, it will be spread abroad over the most elevated 
 spheres ; his soul wiU be exalted by the sublime sensations 
 of this universal love, this wide sympathy with the whole 
 creation. True charity, comprehending the entire universe, 
 wiU burn in all hearts. The love of God wiU rule over all 
 these multiplied affections, from the height of His infinite 
 power, and the fervour of our sentiments of love for our kind 
 will be crowned by our sublime adoration of the Creator of all.
 
 46 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 But, it will be said, if superhuman beings are of no sex, 
 how are they to be reproduced, how is the species to be kept 
 up, and multiplied ? There will be no need of reproduction, 
 the species of the superhuman being will not require to be 
 maintained, or multiplied. The reproduction, the preserva- 
 tion of his species is the business of the inhabitants of the 
 inferior worlds, of the earth and the planets. Such is their 
 lot, such the task imposed upon them by nature. But repro- 
 duction is unknown and unnecessary to the fortunate beings 
 who dwell in the planetary ether. From the earth and the 
 other planets fresh and ever fresh phalanxes are despatched 
 to them. The battalions of the elect are recruited by arrivals 
 from the lower worlds. Below is the multiplication of indi- 
 viduals ; above is the sojourn of blessed beings, who have no 
 need of maintaining their species, because the laws of their 
 destiny differ from those which rule the lot of terrestrial man. 
 Eeproduction is the task of inferior worlds, permanence is the 
 inheritance of the world above. 
 
 The Soul of the Superhuman Being. In an excellent volume 
 of popular science, the Universe, by Dr. Pouchet, director of 
 the Museum of Il^atural History at Eouen, we find a striking 
 definition. Dr. Pouchet informs us that a German naturalist, 
 Bremser, lays down, as a principle, that, in man, matter and 
 spirit exist in almost equal parts ; that is, to say, that man is 
 half spirit and half matter. Bremser, in advancing this pro- 
 position, tafces his stand upon the fact that, in man, it is 
 sometimes spirit which governs and subdues matter, and
 
 THE BA Y AFTER DEATH. 47 
 
 sometimes matter which dictates laws to spirit, with equal 
 power and success on the side of each. * 
 
 Admitting, with the German philosopher, that tliis relation 
 is true, we would say, that, while in man the proportion of 
 the soul is fifty in one hundred, this proportion, in the super- 
 human being, is undoubtedly from eighty to eighty-five in 
 one hundred. Of course we only employ this valuation to 
 make our idea comj)rehensible, and give these figures only 
 to prove that facts in the intellectual order may be submitted 
 
 * " We must consider," says Bremser, "that man is not a spirit, 
 but only a spirit limited, in different ways, by matter. In a word, 
 man is not a god, but, notwithstanding the captivity of his spirit 
 in his corporality, it retains sufficient freedom to enable him to 
 perceive that he is governed by a spirit more exalted than his own, 
 that is to say, by a God. 
 
 " It is to be presumed, in the supposition that there will be a 
 new creation, that beings far more perfect than those produced by 
 preceding creations will see the light. In the composition of man, 
 spirit holds to matter the proportion of fifty to fifty, with slight 
 occasional differences, because it is now matter, and again spirit 
 which predominates. In a subsequent creation, should that which 
 has formed man not prove to be the last, there will apparently be 
 organizations in which spirit will act more freely, and be in the 
 proportion of seventy-five to twenty-five. 
 
 " It residts from this consideration that man, as such, was 
 formed at the most passive epoch of the existence of our earth. 
 Man is a wretched intermediary between animal and angel, he 
 aspires to elevated knowledge, and he cannot attain to it ; though 
 our modern philosophers sometimes think so, it is really impos- 
 sible. Man wishes to make out the primary cause of all that exists, 
 but he cannot get at it. With less intellectual faculty, he would 
 not have had the presumption even to desire to know these causes ; 
 and, if he were more richly endowed, they would have been clear 
 to him." — Wnivsrsy pp. 760-761.
 
 48 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 to weigM, measure, and comparison, all which the world, sup- 
 poses to be impossible. 
 
 The soul has a preponderating share in the superhuman 
 being. That is what we need to know, and to remember. 
 Let us now endeavour to analyze the soul of the superhuman 
 being, as we have analyzed his senses. 
 
 If the senses of the superhuman being are numerous and 
 exquisitely acute, the faculties of his soul, which are intimately 
 allied to the exercise of the senses, and depend on their per- 
 fection, must also be singularly active and powerful. AVe 
 know that in men the faculties of the soul are feeble and 
 limited. "We have so short a time to pass upon the earth, 
 that very powerful faculties would be of no use to us ; they 
 ■would not have time to be developed, or efficaciously em- 
 ployed. But everything is magnified and elevated in the 
 superior world which awaits us ; consequently the faculties of 
 the thinking creature who inhabits the realms on high must 
 be numerous and of vast extent. 
 
 "We must repeat, concerning the faculties of the soul of the 
 superhuman being, what we have just said concerning his 
 senses. The superhuman being must be provided with new 
 faculties, and also those faculties which he has brought with 
 him from the earth must be singularly perfected. To deter- 
 mine the nature and the object of the new faculties bestowed 
 upon the superhuman being would be impossible, because 
 those faculties belong to the superior world which is unknown 
 to us ; they respond to moral wants of which we have no 
 conception. Let us, therefore, renounce all idea of discover-
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TU. 49 
 
 iii<7 the nature of those new faculties, and content ourselves 
 with examining the degree of perfection which may be at- 
 tained by those faculties of the soul which actually belong to 
 
 man. 
 
 Attention, thought, reason, will, and judgment, all which 
 render us what we are, must acquire special force and sure- 
 ness in the superhuman being. La Bruyere has said that there 
 is nothing more rare in this Avorld than the spirit of discern- 
 ment ; which means that judgment and good sense are ex- 
 cessively rare. "When Ave have lived for a while among men, 
 we recognize how thoroughly well founded the saying is. We 
 may safely assert, without being over-misantluopical, that 
 amons a hundred men there will be not more than one or two 
 possessed of sound judgment. In the majority of instances, 
 ignorance, prejudices, and passion contend with judgment, so 
 that, .as La Bruyere says, good sense is much more rare than 
 pearls and diamonds. This great and precious faculty of 
 judgment, in which the majority of human beings are de- 
 ficient, cannot be wanting in the inhabitants of the other 
 vforld; there it must be the universal rule, here it is the 
 exception. 
 
 The most precious of all faculties, enabling us to form large 
 and lofty ideas and comparisons, whose outcome is know- 
 ledge, is memory. But how imperfect, changeable, weak, 
 and, one may say, sickly, is our memory ! It is absolutely 
 mute respecting the whole period which preceded our birth, 
 and during which, nevertheless, we existed. It is also as 
 silent respecting all that concerns the early portion of our 
 
 4
 
 60 TEE DA Y A FTER BE A TE. 
 
 life. "We retain no recollection of the care whicli was lavished 
 upon our childhood. A child who loses its mother in infancy- 
 has never known a mother ; for it, the mother has never 
 existed. If those who saAV us in the cradle did not recount 
 our actions during that period, we should be entirely ignorant 
 of them. We have to witness the successive stages of infancy, 
 the sucking child, the long clothes, the staggering steps, the 
 little go-cart, in order to realize that we too have been like 
 that infant, have gone through those stages of being. Mamory, 
 which is not developed at all in man until he is a year old, 
 and which becomes extinct in old men, is subject, even when 
 it is at its highest point of activity, to innumerable weak- 
 nesses, caused by illness or the want of exercise, so that in fact 
 our hold of this faculty is always precarious. We cannot 
 doubt that in the other life it will have the power, the cer- 
 tainty, and scope wliich it lacks here below. 
 
 At the same time, our memory will be enriched by a num- 
 ber of new subjects. The soul, beholding and understanding 
 the worlds which surround it, will be able to fix the geography 
 of all those different places in its memory. It wiU know the 
 physical revolutions, the populations, and the legislation of 
 these thousand countries. The superhuman being will know 
 what exists in such planets ami their satellites as come witliin 
 his reach, or as he shall visit. Just as, in order to gain infor- 
 mation, we visit America or Australia, so the superhuman 
 being visits Mars or Venus, and furnishes his memory 
 with millions of facts, Avhich it retains an(J. reproduces at 
 will. What immense power must memory, always sup-
 
 TJIE DA Y AFTER DEA TIL 5] 
 
 plied and always ready at call, bestow on the mind and 
 
 reason 
 
 Languages are only the expression aud the assembling of 
 ideas. Condorcet has said that a science always reduces itself 
 to a well-constructed language. The mathematical sciences 
 employ a language Avhich is perfect, because the science of 
 mathematics is perfect. The language spoken in the planet- 
 ary spaces must be perfect, because it expresses all the know- 
 ledge of superhuman beings, and this knowledge is immense. 
 The more the mind knows, the better it expresses : — the 
 superhuman being, who is highly informed, will have a very 
 expressive language, which will also be univei-sal. 
 
 The language of mathematics is understood by the peoples 
 of both hemispheres. Algebra can be read by a Frenchman 
 or a German, as well as by an Australian or a Chinese, on 
 account of the simplicity and perfection of the conventional 
 signs which it uses. The language of mathematics, which is 
 truly universal, makes us infer that the language spoken in 
 the planetary space must be also universal, and common, 
 without distinction, to all the inhabitants of the ethereal 
 worlds. 
 
 Owing to the immense scope of their faculties, and to the 
 perfection of their language, in itself a certain means of in- 
 creasing and exalting their knowledge, superhuman beings 
 have a power of reasoning, and a clearness of judgment, 
 which, added to the immense number of facts stored in their 
 memory, place them in possession of absolute science. Ardu- 
 ous questions, before which the mind of man hiimbly con- 
 
 4—2
 
 52 THE DAT AFTER DEATH. 
 
 fesses its powaiiessness, or which, drive him mad if he persists 
 in the effort to solve them, such as the thought of the Infinite, 
 the idea of the First Cause of the Universe, the Essence of 
 Divinity, all these prohlems, forhidden to us, are easily acces- 
 sible to those mighty thinkers. He who is regarded hy 
 mankind as a genius of the first order, an Aristotle, a Keppler, 
 a Newton, a Eaphael, a Shakespeare, a Moliere, a Mozart, a 
 Lavoisier, a Laplace, a Cuvier, a Victor Hugo, would ha 
 among them a babbling child. No science, no moral idea 
 is above their conception. Beneath their feet rolls the earth, 
 with the splendid train of the planets, its sisters ; they be- 
 hold the planets of our solar system gravitating in harmonious 
 order round the great central star, which deluges them with 
 its light. From the height of their sublime abode they wit- 
 ness the infinitely various spectacles furnished by the ele- 
 mental strife of our poor globe, and those which resemble it ; 
 and, happier than terrestrial humanity, they admire the works 
 of God, while knowing the secret of their mechanism. In 
 the moral order they have penetrated the great JFIiercfore ! 
 They know why man exists, and why they themselves exist. 
 They know whence they come, and whither they are going ; 
 and we, alas ! know neither. Where, to our eyes, there is 
 only confusion, they perceive harmony and order. The de- 
 signs of God are distinctly apparent to them, and also the 
 events of the lives of nations and individuals, which often 
 seem to us cruel, unjust, and bad on the part of God ; but 
 they understand that these events are just and useful, and 
 worthy of our heartfelt gratitude.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 "We also tliink, that in the ethereal spaces time is an ele- 
 ment which does not count. "We helieve this, because time 
 does not exist for God, and all superhuman beings approach, 
 by their perfections, the entirely spiritual nature, and conse- 
 quently approach God. We are confirmed ip this belief by 
 the fact, that very profound grief resists time, that there is 
 no limit in duration to the great blows struck at the human 
 soul, that the loss of a beloved being is felt as keenly after a 
 long interval as when he was taken away. 
 
 Thus, time, which is everything to man, which is not 
 only, according to the English adage, " money," but is also 
 the instrument of our wisdom, our studies, and our attain- 
 ments — far otherwise precious than money — time does not 
 count in the life of the superhuman being. He awaits, with- 
 out impatience and without suffering, the arrival of the beings 
 whofa' Jie has loved and left upon the earth at his peaceful 
 abode ; and when their re-union takes place, he and they en- 
 joy happiness which no inquietude concerning the future 
 can ever trouble. Enabled to despise, to put aside the idea 
 of time, the superhuman being looks on Avith unutterable 
 serenity, tranquillity, and majesty, at the majestic spectacle, 
 always new and always marvellous, of the revolutions of the 
 stars, and the great movements of the universe. 
 
 The Life of the Superhuman Being. — In completion of our 
 speculation upon the attributes of the superhuman being, we 
 shall consider the life which animates him and gives his body 
 its active qualities. 
 
 We have said that, in our belief, the superhuman being
 
 54 TEE DAT AFTER DEATH. 
 
 proceeds from the soul of a man which has domiciled itself 
 afresh, in a new l»ody, in the bosom of the world of ether. 
 Is this body destined, at the end of a more or less prolonged 
 period to perish, to be dissolved, to restore its elements to 
 matter, as they are restored by the human body 1 Shall life 
 be withdrawn from the body of the superhuman being, and 
 shall the soul take flight thence 1 
 
 We believe that it will be so. Life everywhere implies 
 death, and is its necessary term. "We do not cast anchor in 
 the current of the watei-s of life. If the soul of the super- 
 human being resides in a living body, this body must die, and 
 its material elements must return to the common reservoir of 
 nature. The torch of life is extinguished in the spaces, as it 
 is extinguished upon earth. 
 
 We believe the superhuman being to be mortal. After an 
 interval, Avhose duration we shall not attempt to fix, he dies ; 
 and the soul Avhich dwelt within him escapes, like a sweet 
 perfume from a broken vase. What becomes of the soul 
 which has torn itself away from the body, cold in death? 
 We shall seek after the answer to this question in our next 
 chapter.
 
 CHAPTER THE SIXTH. 
 
 WHAT BECOMES OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING AFTER DEATH 1 — 
 DEATHS, RESURRECTIONS, AND NEW INCARNATIONS IN THE 
 
 ETHEREAL SPACES. 
 
 N the living nature wliicli surrounds us, there is a 
 continually ascending scale of gradual perfection, 
 from the plant to man. Taking mosses and 
 algoe, which represent the rudimentary condi- 
 tion of vegetable organization, as our point of departure, we 
 pass on through the whole series of the perfecting processes 
 of the. vegetable kingdom, and we reach the inferior animals, 
 zoophytes and mollusca. From thence we ascend to the 
 superior animals by insensible degrees, and thus fully at- 
 tain to man. Each step of this ladder is almost impercepti- 
 ble, so finely arranged are the transitions and the shades ; so 
 that there is a really infinite chain of intermediate beings, at 
 one end of which are the algae, and at the other ourselves. 
 And yet we think it possible that between us and God there 
 should be no kind of intermediate being ! that in this scale 
 of continual progress, there should be an immense void be- 
 tween man and the Creator ! We think it possible that all 
 nature, from the lowest vegetable to manliind, should be ar- 
 ranged in successive and innumerable degrees, and that be-
 
 56 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 tween man and God there sliould exist only a desert, an im- 
 measurable hiatus. Evidently, this is impossible, and that 
 such, an error should ever have been countenanced by religion 
 and philosophy is only to be explained by ignorance of natural 
 phenomena. It is impossible to doubt that between man 
 and God, as between the plant and the animal, the ani- 
 mal and man, there exist a great number of intermediate 
 creations, which establish the transition of humanity into 
 the divinity which governs it, in infinite power and ma- 
 jesty. 
 
 That these intermediate beings exist, we are certain. They 
 are invisible to us, but, if we refused to admit the existence 
 of everything which we cannot see, we should be very easily 
 refuted. Let a naturalist take a drop of water from a pond, 
 and, shewing it to an ignorant person, tell him, " this drop of 
 water, in which you do not see anything, is filled with little 
 animals, and with miniature plants, which live, are born and 
 die, like the animals and plants, which inhabit our farms." 
 The ignorant person would probably shrug up his shoulders, 
 and consider the speaker crazy. But if he were induced to 
 apply his eye to the magnifier of a microscope, in order to exa- 
 mine the contents of the drop of water, he must acknowledge 
 that the truth had been told him ; because, in this drop of 
 water, in which he could at first see nothing, his eye, when 
 assisted by science, would discern whole worlds. 
 
 A great number of living beings can therefore exist where 
 we see nothing, and it is feasible to science to open the eyes 
 of the multitude in this respect.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 57 
 
 We desire to assume the position of tlie naturalist of wliom 
 ■we have spoken. Between man and God, the ignorant crowd 
 and a blind philosophy perceive nothing ; but, when we re- 
 place the eyes of the body by those of the spirit, that is to 
 say, when we make use of reason, analogy, and education, 
 these mysterious beings come to light. 
 
 "We have already, in studying the superhuman being, de- 
 scribed one of those intermediate creations between man and 
 the divinity, and defined the existence of one of those land- 
 marks j)laced by nature on the high-road of infinite space. 
 But the ladder does not break off at its first step, and we are 
 convinced that numerous living hierarchies intervene between 
 the superhuman being and the radiant throne of the Almighty. 
 "We have said elsewhere, that, in our belief, superhuman beings 
 are mortal. What becomes of them after their death ? Let 
 us now take up the thread of our deductions. 
 
 We believe that — the superhuman being having died at the 
 end of a term whose duration we have no means of knowing — 
 his soul, perfected by the exercise of the new faculties which 
 it has received, and the new senses with which it has been 
 endowed, enters into a new body, provided with senses still 
 more numerous and more exquisite, and endowed with facul- 
 ties of still greater power, and thus commences a fresh 
 existence. 
 
 We call the being who succeeds to man angel, or super- 
 human; we may call his succession in the ethereal realm, 
 arch-angel, or arch-human. 
 
 The actual moment of the passage from one life to another,
 
 58 TEE DA Y AFTER LEA TH. 
 
 must be, as it is in tlie case of man, a time of moral and 
 physical pain. The supreme periods at Avhich a metamor- 
 phosis takes place in a sensible being are crises full of anguish 
 and torment. 
 
 We will not endeaA'our to penetrate the secrets of the 
 organization of the new being whose existence we thus trace, 
 and who is superior to the superhuman being in the natural 
 hierarchy ; because our means of investigation fail us at this 
 point. We have ventured to form some conjecture respecting 
 the body, the soul, and the life of the superhuman being, 
 because in tliat case, however adventurous our excursion into 
 unknown spheres, Ave had a jjoint of comparison and induction 
 in the human species. But all induction respecting the arch- 
 human being who succeeds the superhuman, is wanting, for 
 we could only perceive tlie latter by means of conjectures and 
 analogies which we must not carry farther. 
 
 We will, therefore, abstain from pursuing this kind of in- 
 vestigation, permitting the reader to exercise his own imagi- 
 nation upon the form of the body, the number and perfection 
 of the senses, and the extent of the faculties of the happy 
 creature who succeeds to the superhuman being, and who 
 dwells, nke him, in the immensity of ethereal space. We 
 will only add that we do not think a second, a third, or a 
 fourth incarnation arrests the succession of the chain of 
 sublime creations, which float in the infinitude of the heavens, 
 and which proceed from a primitive human soul, which has 
 grown in perfection and in moral power. It surpasses our 
 faculty to define, by the unassisted light of our reason and our
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH 59 
 
 kuowledge, the number of these beings Avho go on succeeding 
 one another in ever-increasing perfection. We can only say 
 that we believe the creatures, Avhich compose tliis ladder of 
 perfections in succession, must be very numerous. 
 
 At every stage of his promotion in the hierarchy of nature 
 the celestial being beholds the growth of those wings which 
 symbolize his marvellous power to us. Each time his organs 
 become more numerous, more flexible, have greater scope. 
 He acquires new and exquisite senses. He acquires more 
 and more power of extending his beneficent empire, of exer- 
 cising his faculty of loving his fellows and all nature, and, 
 above all, of comprehending and reading the designs of God. 
 Deeper and deeper affections engage his soul, for the tender- 
 ness and the happiness engendered in its pure satisfaction, 
 are granted to him to console him for the sufferings of death, 
 to which he is always condemned. It is thus that the hap- 
 piness of the elect is augmented. It is thus tliat the beings 
 who inhabit the boundless plains of the invisible world employ 
 each of their lives in preparing for the life which is to follow, 
 in securing by a wise exercise of their freedom, industrious 
 culture of their faculties, strict observance of morality, and 
 continuous beneficence, a more noble, more animated, and 
 happier destiny in the new spaces which await them, in the 
 development of their sublime destiny.* 
 
 Nevertheless, as everything comes to an end in this world, 
 
 * On this subject see the book of Diipont de Nemours, " Philo- 
 Sophie de VUnivers," quoted by M, Pezzani in his " Pluralite des 
 existences dr Z'awp," pp. 216-218.
 
 60 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 so must everything have an end in the surrounding spheres. 
 After having traversed the successive stages and rested in the 
 successive stations of their journey through the skies, the 
 beings whom we are considering must finally reach a defined 
 place. What is this place, the ultimate term of their immense 
 cycle across the spaces 1 In our belief, it is the sun. 

 
 
 'BK3^ 
 
 CHAPTER THE SEVENTH. 
 
 PnTSICAL AXD GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OP THE SUN". 
 
 I CCOEDIi!>J'G to our system of tlionght the sun 
 is the central place in which souls which come 
 from the ethereal spaces are finally gathered 
 together. After having undergone the suc- 
 cessive incarnations which Ave have described, souls, primi- 
 tively human, finish by reaching the sun, by dwelling within 
 the borders of the star-king. 
 
 This, then, is a fitting place for a description of the sun 
 from , the physical and astronomical point of view. Such a 
 description will at once reveal the entirely sovereign part 
 played by that globe which has no fellow. The astonishing 
 attributes which belong to it, the unimaginable power which 
 it wields, will sufficiently explain the place at the summit 
 of the ascending scale of nature, which we assign to the 
 sun. 
 
 In the first place, the sun is totally different from the 
 other stars of our world. He resembles nothing, and nothing 
 can be compared with him. I^either planets, satellites, 
 asteroids, nor comets can give us any idea of him. His 
 immense volume, his physical constitution, his exceptional 
 properties place him in a totally separate rank, and afi"ord full
 
 62 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TIL 
 
 justification to those wlio claim for liim a separate and sove- 
 reign place. 
 
 The enormous mass of the sun at once proclaims his 
 supremacy. The sun is sufficiently vast to receive everything 
 ■vvliich could come to him from all the other planets. He 
 surpasses in volume the united size of all the celestial hodies 
 ■which revolve around him. He is six hundred times larger 
 than the entire assemblage of the planets with their satellites, 
 of the asteroids and the comets which compose what is called 
 the solar world ; that is to say, the world of which we form 
 a part. The proportion in Avhich the sun exceeds the earth 
 in volume is, then, necessarily enormous ; since he is larger 
 than all the other stars put together. He is one million three 
 hundred thousand times larger than our "lobe. 
 
 It is only by drawing that we can give an exact idea o\ 
 the comparative sizes of the sun and the other planets. Tho 
 reader will find in the accompanying illustration (Kg. 1 ) a 
 figure which exactly represents the comparative dimensions 
 of the sun, and the largest planets of our world. The earth, 
 represented by a dot, gives an idea of what Mars, Mercury, 
 and Venus, which are smaller than the earth, must be. 
 
 . It takes three years to circumnavigate the earth. To cir- 
 cumnavigate the solar globe, under similar conditions, would 
 
 _ take three hundred years. If human life be not more pro- 
 longed in the sun than on the earth, an existence would not 
 suffice to enable a traveller to become acquainted with the 
 surface of the globe he inhabits. 
 
 "Weight is thirty times more intense on the suriace of the
 
 w;^*' 
 
 ■^ 
 
 Saturn Uranus Neptune E.irtt« 
 
 Fig. 1.— CtJEpaiatiye DitttEticus tf the £i:riand the Planets.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TIL 65 
 
 sun than on the earth. We know tliat a body which foils 
 upon the earth traverses, in the first second of its fall, a space 
 of four metres, nine centimetres. In the sun a falling body 
 traverses 144 metres in the first second of its fall. It. follows 
 from this, that a human body, if transported to the sun, 
 would weigh about 2000 kilogrammes, the weight of an ele- 
 phant. The body of a dog or of a horse would weigh twenty- 
 eight times as much as upon our earth, so that these animals 
 would remain fixed to the surface. The conditions of nature 
 must therefore be entirely different in the sun from what they 
 are in the group of planets to which the earth belongs. 
 
 The sun sheds rays from perpetual fire, a characteristic that 
 appertains to him alone among all the stars of our world. Of 
 himself he burns, and sheds abroad light and heat. The 
 other stars are neither warm nor luminous, and if the sun 
 did not exist, they would be plunged into eternal darkness 
 and eternal cold. This privilege alone ought to make us 
 comprehend the immense importance of the central star. 
 
 The light and heat which emanate from the sun are con- 
 stant ; they are never interrupted, and tliey never lose their 
 force. Thus, a second characteristic — constancy of illumina- 
 tion—separates the sun from all the other celestial bodies of 
 our world. 
 
 The intensity of the real heat of the sun has been mea- 
 sured by the physicists. This result was attained in an 
 endeavour to determine by experience the quantity of heat 
 which accumulates in a given time, upon a certain portion 
 of the earth's surface, exposed to the sun's rays, and adding 
 
 5
 
 C3 THE DA Y A FTER DEA Til. 
 
 to that element the quantities of heat Avhich would be ab- 
 sorbed by the atmospheric air, the ethereal spaces, and the soil. 
 Pouillet, the French physicist, "vvho undertook this critical 
 investigation, arrived at certain results, which he states as 
 follows : 
 
 " If the total quantity of heat emitted by the sun was ex- 
 clusively employed to melt a layer of ice applied to the solar 
 globe, and covering it completely in all its parts, that quantity 
 of heat would be able to melt, in one minute, a layer of eleven 
 metres, eighty centimetres, and in one day a layer of seven- 
 teen kilometres in thickness." 
 
 " 'This same quantity of heat,' says Professor Tyndall, 
 ' would boil 2900 milliards of cubical kilometres of water, at 
 the temperature of ice.' " 
 
 The astronomer Herschel found, that, in order to extinguish 
 the sun, to prevent his " giving out caloric," according to the 
 scientific phrase, it would be necessary to dash a stream of 
 iced water, or a cyHndrical column of ice, eighteen leagues in 
 diameter, against its surface, at a rate of speed of 70,000 leagues 
 per second. A comparison adopted by Professor Tyndall gives 
 us an amazing view of the intensity of the calorific force of 
 the sun. *' Imagine," says he, " that the sun is surrounded 
 by a layer of peat, seven leagues in thickness, the heat pro- 
 duced by its combustion would be the same as that produced 
 by the sun in one year." The physicists have measured the 
 intensity of the sun's hght with exactitude, as they had pre- 
 viously measured his heat. 
 
 It is known that the solar light io 300,000 times stronger
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. eV 
 
 than that of the full moon, and 765,000,000 stronger than 
 that of Sirius, the most brilliant of the stars. 
 
 Bouguer discovered, by experiments made in 1725, that the 
 sun, at a height of 31° above the horizon, gives a light equal 
 to that of 11,664 candles, placed within 43 centimetres of the 
 object to be lighted, and equal to 62,177 candles placed 
 within one metre. 
 
 According to this result, if we take account of atmospheric 
 absorption, and of the law of the variation of the intensity of 
 light, which decreases in inverse ratio to the square of dis- 
 tance, the light given by the sun at its zenith would be 
 75,200 times greater than that of a single candle, placed 
 within one metre. "VVollaston had arrived at a similar con- 
 clusion. By means of experiments of another kind, made 
 during the months of May and Juue, 1799, Wollaston found 
 that 59^882 candles, at one metre, give as much light as the 
 sun. Supposing the sun to be in the zenith, the lightening 
 power of that great star would be equivalent to 68,009 
 candles. 
 
 There is but little difference between this valuation and 
 that of Bouguer, who states the result at 75,200 candles. 
 
 "Whatever may be the intensity of the light of the sun, we 
 now possess other sources of light which approach to it. Such 
 is the oxhydric light, produced by burning hydrogen gas by 
 means of a current of oxygen gas, or air, a method of lighting 
 which has recently been employed in Paris and in London. 
 This light is equal in power to more than 200 candles. A 
 thread of magnesium burning in the air, develops a prodigious 
 
 5—2
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 quantity of light, which may be taken as equivalent to that 
 of 500 candles. The electric light produced hy a voltaic 
 battery of from 60 to 80 coils, produces a luminous arc equal 
 to the light of 800 or 1000 candles. In the latter instance the 
 voltaic arc, according to Eouguer and Wollaston, would give 
 75 times less light than the sun, supposing the luminous elec- 
 tric point to be placed at a distance of one metre. 
 
 With very powerful batteries, it has been possible to go 
 further, and produce a light not mucli inferior to that of the 
 sun. Messieurs Fizeau and Foucault, by comparing the light 
 of a voltaic arc, produced by the action of three series of 
 Bunsen's coils, of forty-six couples each, with the hght of the 
 sun in a clear sky in April, have established that the light- 
 giving power of the sun is not more than twice and a half 
 that of the electric light. 
 
 The preceding numbers represent the light-giving power of 
 the sun upon our globe, taking into account atmospheric ab- 
 sorption. Arago, on endeavouring to determine the intrinsic 
 light-giving power of the sun, found that the intensity of the 
 solar light is 52,000 times greater than that of a candle placed 
 at one metre. But, according to more recent researches for 
 which we are indebted to Mr. Edmond Becquerel, the result 
 obtained by Arago is greatly inferior to the truth, and the 
 light of the central star is 180,000 times greater than that of 
 a candle placed at one metre. 
 
 AH the planets, attended by their satellites, and aU the 
 comets which accidentally manifest themselves to us, turn 
 round the sun. The sun remains motionless in the midst
 
 THE DA 7 AFTER DEATH. 69 
 
 of this imposing procession of stars, "which circulate around 
 him, like so many courtiers paying him homage. 
 
 Thus, the sun is the heart of our planetary system ; every- 
 thing is drawn, everything converges towards him. 
 
 Half-informed persons will exclaim, " What can be more 
 simple ! The sun being six hundred times the size of all the 
 other stars put together, the phenomenon of the condition of 
 all those stars around the sun is explained by the law of at- 
 traction, which prescribes that bodies shall attract in propor- 
 tion to their mass. If the sun attracts the stars of our Avorld 
 to itself, it is because his mass is greater than that of all the 
 other stars collectively." But such an answer wouid be erro- 
 neous, involving the common error of taking a word for a 
 thing, an hypothesis for an explanation, of putting a term of 
 language in the place of a logical consideration. When 
 Kewton oonceived the hypothesis (and the phrase) of re- 
 ciprocal attraction of matter, he was careful to state that he 
 only proposed to characterise by a name a phenomenon which 
 in itself is entirely inexplicable, and of which we know no- 
 thing but the exterior mode of its manifestation, that is to 
 say, the mathematical law. We know that bodies go to- 
 wards eacli other in the ratio of their masses, and in the in- 
 verse ratio of the square of their distances ; but why do they 
 go towards each other 1 This is Avhat Ave do not know, and 
 what we probably never shall know. If, for the Avord attrac- 
 tion we were to substitute the word electrization, or, as Kep- 
 pler did, the words affection, sympafhj, obedience, &c., we 
 should have a new hypothesis, with a new name, but tho
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 mathematical law would remain the same, the hypothesis 
 only would be changed. The real cause which makes small 
 bodies rush towards large ones, and the stars of lesser magni- 
 tude revolve round the stars of greater magnitude, is an 
 impenetrable mystery to mankind. 
 
 Whatever may be the hypothesis by which we seek to ex- 
 plain the fact, it is certain that the sun holds the planets with 
 their satellites, the asteroids and the comets, suspended above 
 the abysses of space, and that they journey through the 
 heavens in unintermitting obedience to his guiding influence. 
 The sun draws with him aU the stars which follow and sur- 
 round him, like flatterers of his power, like humble slaves of 
 his universal preponderance. Like the father of a family in 
 the midst of his progeny, the sun peacefully governs the 
 numerous children of sidereal creation. Obedient to the 
 irresistible impulsion Avhich emanates from the central star, 
 the earth and the other planets circulate, roll, gravitate, 
 around him, receiving light, heat and electricity from his be- 
 neficent rays, which are the first agents of life. The sun 
 marks out for the planets their path through the heavens, and 
 distributes to them their day and night, their seasons and 
 their climate. 
 
 The sun is, then, the hand which holds the stars above the 
 unfathomable abysses of infinite space, the centre from which 
 they obtain heat, the torch which gives them light, and the 
 source whence they derive the principle of life. 
 . From all time the immense and unique task fulfilled by the 
 sun in the economy of nature has been understood. . Eut this
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 great truth has onl}^ been deeply studied in our days. Sci- 
 ence has gone far beyond all the imagination the poets had 
 conceived relative to the preponderance of the sun in our 
 world. By means of numerous experiments and abstruse 
 calculations, modern physicists have proved that the sun is 
 the first cause of almost all the phenomena which take place 
 on our globe, and that, without the sun, the earth and nO' 
 doubt all the other planets would be nothing but immense 
 Avastes, gigantic corpses, rolling about, frozen and useless, in 
 the deserts of infinite space. 
 
 Professor Tyndall, who has added largely to the discoveries 
 of physics and mechanics, has brought out this truth very 
 strongly, and the results to which he has been led may be 
 said to form the most brilliant page of contemporary physical 
 science. 
 
 "We shall now endeavour to explain how it is that every- 
 thing on the earth, and no doubt on all the other planets also, 
 is derived from the sun, so entirely, that we maj' affirm that 
 vegetables, animals, man, in short, all living beings, are but 
 the productions, the children of the sun ; that they are, so 
 to speak, woven out of solar rays. 
 
 In the first place, the sun is the primary cause of all those 
 movements which we observe, in the air, in the water, or in 
 the ground under our feet, and which keep up life, feeling, 
 and activity on the surface of our globe. 
 
 Let us consider the winds, which have such important re- 
 lations with all the physical phenomena of our globe. Whence 
 proceed the winds 1 From the action of the sun. The sun
 
 72 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 heats the different portions of the earth very unequally, be- 
 stowing much more warmth on the tropical and equatorial 
 regions than on the other latitudes, which he leaves exposed 
 to cold. On each point of the earth which is struck by the 
 rays of the sun, the layers of air near the ground are dilated 
 and raised, and iiniuediately replaced by colder layers from 
 the temjDerate regions. Thus the periodical winds are pro- 
 duced. Across the hemispheres two great aerial currents are 
 perpetually blowing, going from the equator to each of the 
 jjoles ; one, the upper current, towards the north-east in the 
 northern hemisphere, and towards the south-east in the 
 southern hemisphere ; the other, the lower current, in a con- 
 trary direction. 
 
 The movement of the earth gives rise to other regular 
 winds. The action of heat and of evaporation, added to the 
 unequal distribution of the continents and the seas, produce 
 others, which are irregular. Thus, for example, in the great 
 valleys of the Alps, as in those of the Cordilleras^ the warmth 
 of the air regulates the afilux of the cold air of the mountains, 
 and brings on tumultuous winds, and, in fact, hurricanes. 
 , The sea breezes arise from the difference in the tempe- 
 rature of the shore during the day and the night. By day, 
 the sun has warmed the shore and produced a considerable 
 dilatation of the air. When the sun quits the horizon, this 
 hot air is replaced by cool currents from the inland. The 
 same phenomenon is reversed in the morning, when the sun 
 returns; the shore is warmed, the hot air rises, and is re- 
 placed by the colder air of the sea, which then goes inland.
 
 THE DAY AFTFAl DEATH. 
 
 Thus, the evening breeze comes from landward, and the 
 morning breeze from seaward. 
 
 We see, therefore, that the great atmospheric movements 
 which we call the winds, are dne to the successive appear- 
 ances and disappearances of the sun, as are also the lesser 
 movements which we call breezes. The position of the sun, 
 constantly varying according to the period of the year, and 
 the hour of the day, explains the inequality and the continuous 
 existence of the aerial current. 
 
 The general cause of the winds which preserve the homo- 
 geneity of the air in all the terrestrial regions, is the heat of 
 the sun dilating the atmospheric air; its absence, on the other 
 hand, causes that gaseous mass to contract. 
 
 The watering of the globe, that is to say the rain, an element 
 indispensable to the exercise of life, is another consequence 
 of solar heat. The waters of the seas, the rivers, and the 
 lakes, those which steep the soil, or are exhaled from vegetable 
 matter, are gradually transformed into vapour by the action of 
 the sun's heat, and form clouds and invisible vapour. When 
 the sun has quitted the horizon, these vapours grow cold in the 
 bosom of the atmosphere m Avhicli they floated, and fall down 
 upon the earth again in the form of dew, of fog, and of rain. 
 
 When the cooling of the watery vapour in the bosom of 
 the atmosphere is more intense, instead of rain we have snow, 
 that is to say, a fall of congealed water. It is chiefly on the 
 summit of mountains that snow falls and accumulates, because 
 the temperature of elevated places is always cold. In very 
 great altitudes the snow, remaining for long periods on the tops
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 of the mountains, passes into an intermediate condition, 
 between snow and pure ice, and ends by forming those great 
 expanses of congealed water which are called glaciers. During 
 the hot seasons the glaciers melt by degrees ; the water 
 resulting from this melting process, flows down the slopes of 
 the mountains into the valleys, and gives rise to springs, 
 rivers, and streams. These streams and rivers run into the 
 ocean, from which they are again evaporated by the action of 
 solar heat, and reconstitute clouds and invisible vapour. 
 
 Thus is established and maintained that incessant circula- 
 tion of the waters which lie on the surface of the earth, their 
 continual exchange with the aerial masses, whose effect is to 
 water the globe, a phenomenon necessary to the exercise of 
 the functions of organized beings. 
 
 The regular currents which furrow the waters of the ocean 
 are also the result of the action of solar heat. From the 
 poles to the equator the waters of the sea are unequally 
 heated, and this absence of equilibrium in the temperature of 
 the sea occasions a regular furrow, or line from the poles to 
 the equator, resulting from the displacement of the waters, 
 the cold waves rushing in to replace the hot. The unequal 
 evaporation caused by the unequal distribution of heat at the 
 equator and the poles, concurs to produce a sunilar result, by 
 augmenting the degree of saltness at the equator, ^vithout 
 augmenting it at the j)oles, occasioning a certain difference 
 in density, and finally displacement for want of equilibrium. 
 The currents of the sea are thus entirely produced by the 
 action of the sun.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 75 
 
 We see, therefore, that the -winds, the watering of the 
 globe, and the currents of the sea are the consequence of solar 
 heat. 
 
 The movement of the magnet is another physical result 
 of the action of the sun, if it be true, as Ampere says, that 
 the magnetic currents which traverse the terrestrial globe are 
 nothing but thermo-electric currents engendered by the unequal 
 distribution of heat on the surface of the globe. 
 
 In addition to being the agent of powerful physical forces, 
 the sun is a valuable agent of chemical forces, — indeed, this 
 is the greatest part which he plays in the phenomena of 
 nature. The light and heat of the sun produce the most 
 important chemical actions on the earth's surface ; those on 
 vy'hich the exercise of vegetable and animal functions depend. 
 If the sun did not exist, life would be banished from the 
 terrestrial globe. Life is the child of the sun, as I shall 
 endeavour to prove to you. 
 
 The operations of photography serve to make us under- 
 stand how it is that the sun presides over chemical action 
 in the vegetable Avorld. What is photography? "What 
 does that curious phenomenon which fixes a drawing 
 formed by light upon a sheet of paper, consist of? A 
 paper steeped in chloride or iodide of silver is placed 
 in the focus of the lens of a dark camera, and the image 
 formed by the lens is made to fall upon paper sprinkled 
 with water. The portions of the picture not exposed to light 
 produce no effect upon the salt of silver, which is incorpo- 
 rated with the paper, but the portions exposed to light de-
 
 76 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 compose the salt of silver, and turn it black, or dark violet 
 colour. On withdrawing this paper from the apparatus, 
 where the operations have been carried on in darkness, we 
 have a drawing which reproduces, in black, the luminous 
 image formed by the lens. By certain means this image, 
 solely produced by the chemical action of light, is rendered 
 fixed and unalterable. 
 
 All the salts of silver thus exposed to light undergo an 
 analogous decomposition. Kor are they the only salts which 
 light modifies. Compounds of gold, platinum, and cobalt, 
 properly prepared, may also be altered under the influence of 
 direct or indirect rays, when exposed to the sun, or to his 
 diffused light. 
 
 The light of the sun possesses the power of bringing about 
 the combination of several other bodies. This is the case 
 with hydrogen and chloric gas. If you mix equal parts of 
 chloric gas and hydrogen in a bottle, and expose the mixture 
 to the sun, an immediate combination will take place between 
 the two gases, and chlorohydric acid gas Avill be formed. The 
 combination will take place with so much force that it will 
 be attended by a considerable escape of heat. If you throw 
 the bottle containing the mixture up into the air, towards a 
 space where the sun is shining, the bottle will break before it 
 falls, with a violent explosion, at the moment of its contact 
 with the light. 
 
 We might multiply examples of the chemical action pro- 
 duced by light only on substances belonging to the mineral 
 kingdom, but it is sufficient for our purpose to say that the
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 77 
 
 chemical action of light is still more powerful and more ge- 
 neral in the vegetable than in the inorganic realm. Tliis is 
 a phenomenon of such importance that it is impossiljle to 
 believe it otherwise than a premeditated design of nature. 
 
 One of the most fruitful discoveries of modern science is 
 the recognition of the fact, that the respiration of plants de- 
 pends upon the presence and the direct action of light, that 
 is to say, that the decomposition of the carbonic acid which 
 circulates in the tissue of vegetables, and which has been 
 breathed up from the soil by the roots, takes place only when 
 the plants are exposed to the sun. The labours of Priestley, 
 Charles Bonnet, Ingenhouz and Sennebier, have taught us 
 that the decomposition of carbolic acid into carbon, which 
 remains fixed in the tissue of the plant, and into oxygeu, 
 which disengages itself from it, can take place only under the 
 direct or indirect influence of the sun's rays. Our readers 
 may easily convince themselves of this fact. Place a handful 
 of green leaves in a glass full of Avater, and expose the glass 
 to the sun. At the close of the day the upper portion of the 
 glass will be filled with gas, which is nothing but pure oxy- 
 gen, the result of the breathing of the leaves. 
 
 All the importance, all the value of such a phenomenon 
 will be evident, if we reflect that it takes place over the 
 whole extent of the globe, and that the respiration, which 
 means the life of all the vegetable masses which cover the 
 earth, depends solely upon the light of the sun. It is by 
 means of the respiration of the plants, which restores oxygen 
 to the atmospheric air, that nature makes up for the with-
 
 78 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 drawal of oxygen by the respiration of animals, by tbe con- 
 tinual absorption of that gas by numerous mineral substances, 
 and by the frequent combustions, natural and artificial, which 
 occur in the world. The result of these combustions would 
 be the disappearance of the greater portion of the oxygen 
 contained in the air, if there did not exist a permanent ma- 
 chinery for the restitution of that oxygen. This permanent 
 machinery is the respiration of plants, produced by solar light. 
 So absolute is the dependence of plants for their respiration 
 on tlie action of the sun's light, that if it be intercepted by 
 clouds, the escape of oxygen from them suffers a marked 
 diminution. If the light of the sun be suddenly stopped, 
 which occurs during a total solar eclipse, the escape of oxygen 
 ceases, and the plants transpire carbonic acid only, as they 
 always do during the night. 
 
 It is for this reason that a plant kept in complete darkness 
 loses its colour, and becomes white. It does not respire, it 
 emits carbonic acid gas without retaining carbon, it becomes 
 etiolated, according to the scientific phrase, which means 
 that the plant no longer lives at the cost of the external 
 air or of gas furnished by the soil, but consumes its own 
 substance. The whitened salads which Ave prefer are not 
 "•reen only because they are grown in darkness, and the mush- 
 rooms brought to table are white only because they are reared 
 in cellars. 
 
 M. Boussingault, who has studied vegetation in darkness, 
 finds that the leaves of a vegetable which has never had any 
 li"ht at all, in its first appearance and development, never
 
 THE DA Y A FT Ell DEA TIT, 79 
 
 exhales oxygen, its respiration furnishes carbonic acid gas 
 only. The plant, therefore, hreathes just as an animal does. 
 We must observe in this case that the substance of the seed 
 only supplies this product. The plant borrows nothing from 
 without, consumes nothing but the elements which were 
 contained in the seeds, and dies Avhen those nutritive ele- 
 ments are exhausted. The duration of its existence depends 
 entirely on the weight of the seed whence it has sprung. If 
 a well-developed plant be kept in darkness, the same fact 
 may be observed. The plant gives out nothing but carbonic 
 acid, and, as it borrows nothing from Avithout, it perishes 
 when it has thus devoured its own substance. M. Sachs 
 says, in his Physiologk V^gitale, that the movements proper to 
 the leaves of many vegetables cannot take place if the plant 
 is kept in darkness. Plants so kept remain always in the 
 condition which Linnaeus defined as sleep . Flowers contained 
 in natural coverings, winch in a great measure debar them 
 from the light of the sun, do indeed produce colours, but 
 those flowers are formed inside their natural coverings, at the 
 expense of substances contained in their leaves, which could 
 not be produced except under the influence of light. The 
 same truth applies to fruits. 
 
 Leaves, flowers, fruits, are then, as the German physiolo- 
 gist, Moleschott, has said, " beings woven of air by light." 
 The same author adds : " When we contemplate the brilliant 
 colours of the flowers, and Avhen their delicious perfume 
 gives serene satisfaction to that poetic faculty which exists, 
 though it may slumber deeply, in tlie soul of every man,
 
 80 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 it is still the light which is the mother of colour and of per- 
 fume." 
 
 The influence of the sun on vegetation is of fundamental 
 importance. Without the sun no plant would grow upon our 
 globe. In those regions which are permanently deprived of 
 the powerful and beneficent torch of nature, towards the 
 extreme north, all vegetation is stunted, and higher still, it 
 does not exist. Absence of light, and cold, are the c.iuses 
 of the complete disappearance of the natural adornment, and 
 the useful tribute, which elsewhere vegetation furnishes to 
 the earth. In the hot regions, vegetation is vigorous and 
 extensive, in proportion to the abundance of sunshine poured 
 upon them. There is nothing to be compared to the luxuri- 
 ant vegetation of tho tropical countiies in both hemispheres. 
 The vegetation of Erazil, of equatorial Africa, and the inter- 
 tropical regions of India, is renowned for its abundance and 
 variety. 
 
 Agriculture, enlightened by modem chemistry, has brought 
 to light the special importance of the sun in promoting the 
 activity of vegetation, and producing combinations of sub- 
 stances not to be attained by any action except that of the 
 sun. ]\I. Georges Ville, a professor at the Museum of Natural 
 History in Paris, states, as the result of numerous experi- 
 ments, that the activity imparted to vegetable production by 
 the sun is truly miraculous. jS^o chemical fact, no theory, 
 according to the learned professor, can explain the mystery of 
 solar influence, and its prodigious povrer over the development 
 and produce of vegetables.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER BE A Til. tjl 
 
 Let us remark, before we leave this subject, tliat by a i^ro- 
 vidential circumstauce the present generations of mankind 
 are profiting by the chemical force of the sun which nature 
 has stored in her great vegetable dciMs for thousands of 
 centuries. For instance, what is coal, which feeds all our 
 industries, supplies our steam machines, ships, engines, and 
 locomotives % It is the residue of those gigantic forests which 
 covered the earth during the geological periods. The sub- 
 stance of the trees of the forests of the ancient world Avas at 
 first changed into peat, which, becoming more and more com- 
 pact by the action of ages, Avas finally pressed into the hard 
 and heavy body which we call coal. Eut what was the cause, 
 what v/as the first agent, which produced the trees of those 
 forests, in the antediluvian times % It was the chemical force 
 of the sun. This force, or, if the term be preferred, the pro- 
 ducts of the chemical force of the sun, have been accumulated 
 and preserved in the wood, and then in the coal which that 
 wood has become. We find it thus, and we use it, to our 
 present profit. 
 
 Thus, the glowing sunshine which lighted and warmed the 
 ancient world, is not lost to us. Contemporary generations 
 inherit those very rays, and that same chemical force. The 
 power of the sun, Avhich has slumbered in the coal for millions 
 of years, arouses itself for us, comes forth into the day, and 
 transforms itself in our hands into a mechanical agent. 
 
 The light and heat of the sun, which play so great a part 
 in the vegetable kingdom, exercise influence of a similar kind 
 over the animal kingdom. If we reflect that plants are indis- 
 
 G
 
 82 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 pensable to the food of the majority of animals, that the 
 creation of vegetables necessarily preceded that of terrestrial 
 animals (since vegetables constitute their food), and that 
 animals must inevitably disappear from the earth if plants 
 ceased to exist ; we shall be led to acknowledge that animals 
 originate as certainly, though indirectly, from the force of the 
 sun as the plants themselves. 
 
 Besides, it can be proved that the action of the sun is 
 directly indispensable to the maintenance of animal life. 
 In the first place, is it not the fact that solar light and heat 
 exercise an immense influence on the health of animals and 
 of man ? To convince ourselves of that, we need only com- 
 pare men who pass the greater part of their lives in the air 
 and sunshine, with men who live in dark houses, in the 
 narrow streets and lanes of great cities. ISTot only are these 
 dwellings unwholesome because they are damp, but they are 
 fatal to health because they are not enlivened by the presence 
 of the sun. 
 
 Light; altogether indispensable to the exercise of respira- 
 tion in plants, is not indispensable in the same degree 
 to the respiration of animals. It is, however, certain that 
 the products of the respiration of man and animals are less 
 abundant by night than by day. Moleschott has found that 
 the quantity of carbonic acid gas exhaled by an animal is 
 augmented by the intensity of the light of day, and is at its 
 minimum in complete darkness ; " which amounts to this,'' 
 adds that author, "that the light of the sun accelerates 
 molecular action in animals."
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 83 
 
 Thus, the rays of the sun are a primary couditiou of the 
 existence of animals, because they produce the formation of 
 plants, the essential basis of the alimentation of animals and 
 of man, and because they preside over the fulfilment of many 
 of their physiological functions. We find views of precisely 
 the same order as those we have endeavoured to express, 
 eloquently put forward in Professor Tyndall's work on 
 " Heat :" 
 
 " And as surely as the force Avliich moves a clock's hands 
 is derived from the arm which winds up the clock, so surely 
 is all terrestrial power drawn from the sun. Leaving out of 
 account the eruptions of volcanoes and the ebb and flow of 
 the tides, every mechanical action on the earth's surface, 
 every manifestation of power, organic and inorganic, vital and 
 physical, is produced by the sun. His warmth keeps the 
 sea liquid, and the atmosphere a gas, and all the storms 
 which agitate both are blown by the mechanical force of the 
 sun,. He lifts the rivers and the glaciers up the mountains ; 
 and thus the cataract and the avalanche shoot Avith an energy 
 derived immediately from him. Thunder and lightning are 
 also his transmuted strength. Every fire that burns and 
 every flame that glows dispenses light and heat which origi- 
 nally belonged to the sun. In these days, unhappily, the 
 news of battle is familiar to us, but every shock and every 
 change, is only an application or misapplication of the me- 
 chanical force of the sun. "' '* "' '" The sun comes to 
 us as heat ; he quits us as heat ; and between his entrance 
 and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear- 
 They are all special forms of solar power ; the moulds into 
 which his strength is temporarily poured, in passing from its 
 source through infinitude." — p. 431. 
 
 6—2
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 The mechanical force which the heat of the sun represents 
 has been calculated, and the numbers thus ascertained are 
 curious. In order to understand how a heat agent can be 
 expressed by figures of mechanical force, we must have a 
 general idea of that theory A^'hich constitutes the most valuable 
 creation of natural philosophy in our day ; we allude to the 
 mechanical theory of heat, or the doctrine of the mutual trans- 
 formaiion of 2Jhijsical forces. 
 
 Experience has proved that heat changes, under our eyes, 
 into a mechanical force. See how, by the action of the steam 
 engine, watery vapour becomes cold, and the dispersed heat 
 immediately produces a mechanical force, and you will under- 
 stand how it is that we maintain that heat tranforms itself 
 into force. This being admitted, it is easily explicable that 
 one of those elements may be represented by the others, or 
 that at least we may represent the value of both force and 
 heat by a common unit. This common unit is called a 
 calorie, and expresses the quantity of heat requisite to raise 
 the temperature of a kilogram of water one degree. On the 
 other hand, the term kilogrammeter is used to express the 
 quantity of force requisite to raise a kilogram to the height 
 of one yard (metre) in a second. 
 
 Physicists have succeeded in solving the difficult problem, 
 which consists of ascertaining how many kilogrammeters 
 may be produced by a calorie, transformed into mechanical 
 labour. The works of jMayer, Joule, Helmholtz, Him, Eeg- 
 nault, &c., establish that a calorie is equivalent to 425 
 kilogrammeters, that is to say that the quantity of heat
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 85 
 
 requi-tite to raise tlie temperature of a kilogram of water 
 to 1 degree centigrade produces a mechanical action re- 
 presented by the elevation of a weight of 425 kilograms 
 1 yard [metre) in height in the space of a sound. 425 
 kilograms are called the mechanical cqiuvalent of heat. 
 
 With this information at our service, we are enabled to 
 calculate in units of mechanical force the work done by solar 
 heat, by transforming itself into mechanical force. And, if 
 we calculate the total heat of the sun diffused over the earth, 
 during a given time, we can calculate the sum of the forces 
 which all this distributed heat would develop on the surface 
 of the earth, if it were all employed in mechanical labour. 
 In one year every square yard of the surface of the earth 
 receives 2,318,157 calories, that is to say, more than 
 23,000,000,000,000 of calories to each space of 2 acres, 1 
 rood, 35 perches.* 
 
 ,To understand the intensity of this force, we must conceive 
 a steam engine, which, instead of working at 200 or 300 
 horse-power, like the engines of our larger steamers, should 
 work at 4,1G3 horse-power. And this, we must bear in mind, 
 refers only to the small space above mentioned. If we cal- 
 culate the entire surface of the earth, we arrive at the as- 
 tounding total of 217,316,000,000,000 horse-power. In order 
 to conceive such a force, we must picture to ourselves 
 643,000,000,000,000 steaux engines each working without 
 relaxation day and night, at 400 horse-power. That is the 
 
 -= Hepresented by the French word hectare.
 
 86 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 amount of Avork Avhicli the heat of the sun does for our globe 
 alone. 
 
 The physical and mechanical actions which take place on 
 our planet, vegetation, the phenomena of animal life, indus- 
 trial and agricultural operations absorb only a very small 
 quantity of this enormous mass of forces. Professor Tyndall 
 says on this subject, in the book Ave have already quoted : — 
 
 " Look at the integrated energy of our Avorld — the stored 
 poAA'er of our coal-fields ; our Avinds and rivers ; our fleets, 
 armies, and guns. What are theyl they are all generated 
 by a portion of the sun's energy Avhich does not amount to 
 _____i_____th of the Avhole. This, in fact, is the entire frac- 
 tion of the sun's force intercepted by the earth, and in reality 
 Ave convert but a small fraction of this fraction into mechani- 
 cal energy. Multiplying all our poAvers by millions of 
 millions, Ave do not reach the sun's expenditure." — p. 433. 
 
 In this chapter Ave have analyzed the different physical and 
 vital effects produced upon our globe by the light and heat 
 given out by the sun. We have considered its action upon 
 animate and inanimate nature. We have seen that the sun is 
 really the great cause of physical action on our globe, and 
 that he is also the first principle of both vegetable and animal 
 life. Without the sun life Avould be banished from the terres- 
 trial globe ; as Ave have already said, life is the offspring of 
 the sun. 
 
 We knoAV that in speech, irtat and life are almost synony- 
 mous Avords. In every language Ave find it said that persons 
 ave frozen by death, in ihe icy sleep of death, that cold is deatli- 
 like, &c. This image is an exact expression of the reality.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 87 
 
 An animal or a plant, when deprived of life is necessarily 
 cold. A shiver is the precursor of every malady, and tlie 
 sure forerunner of death. Every dead body is a cold body. 
 It may be said that in the animal form cold takes the place 
 of life, as in inanimate bodies cold succeeds to heat. Let us 
 now consider the following facts. It is solely by the pro- 
 longed action of heat that plants can germinate, grow, and 
 develop themselves; in order to come to perfection, every 
 plant requires an ascertained number of degrees of heat, and 
 botanists and agriculturists know quite accurately the total 
 number of degrees of heat requisite to ripen their cereals, 
 and make their fruit-trees bear. A prolonged and undisturbed 
 accumulation of heat is indispensable to produce life in the 
 impregnated egg of a bird, so that by employing caloric in a 
 hatching machine, the process of hatching may be artificially 
 perfected. The eggs of viviparous animals are sustained by 
 the heat of the mother's body, and besides, as Hervey says, 
 everything that has life proceeds from an egg (omne vivum 
 ex ovo). If we recall to mind that, after the development of 
 the germ in mammiferous animals, the unvarying maternal 
 heat is indispensable to the formation of the organs of the 
 foetus, we shall be led to inquire whether heat does not 
 directly produce life, whether heat does not transform itself 
 into vital force. Modern philosophers wlio have propounded 
 the Mechanical Theory of lieu that is to say the profound 
 and admirable doctrine of the mutual conversion of forces, 
 the professors who have proved by mathematical evidence 
 that heat converts itself into mechanical force, and the con-
 
 88 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 Terse, might perhaps complete their brilliant synthesis by 
 adding that heat, which converts itself into mechanical force, 
 can also transform itself into life, or into vital force, and that 
 the splendid theory of the transformation of forces does not 
 apply to inanimate bodies only, but finds an astonishing con- 
 firmation in animate bodies. 
 
 Thus heat and life wou-ld be the manifestation of one and 
 the same power, and the cause of life would be found to 
 dwell, like the cause of mechanical force, in the sun.
 
 CHAPTER THE EIGHTH. 
 
 THE SUN THE DEFINITIVE ABODE OF SOULS WHO HAVE ATTAINED 
 THE HIGHEST RANK IN THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY. — THE 
 SUN THE FINAL AND COMMON DWELLING OP SOULS WHO 
 
 HAVE COME FROJI TEE EARTH. THE PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION 
 
 OF THE SUN. — THE SUN IS A MASS OF BURNING GASES. 
 
 >HE fundamental importance of the sun in the 
 general economy of our world being finally 
 established, our readers will not be surprised 
 to hear that we assign that radiant and sub- 
 lime abode to tlie human souls released from the earth, and 
 successively purified and perfected by the long series of their 
 multiplied incarnations in the bosom of the interplanetary 
 spaces. Some philosophers have perceived this truth. The 
 astronomer Bode placed the most elevated intelligences in the 
 sun. "The happy creatures which inhabit this privileged 
 abode," he says, " have no need of the alternate succession of 
 day and night ; a pure and unextinguishable light illumines it 
 for ever. In the centre of the light of the sun, they enjoy 
 perfect security, under the shelter of the wings of the 
 Almighty."* Under wdiat form may we picture to our fancy 
 the inhabitants of the sun 1 "We cannot answer this question 
 
 * Quoted by Flammarion iu his ^'PlimiU/e des mondes Jiahiles."
 
 90 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 without being acquainted with the geography of the sun, or as 
 astronomers call it, his 2^h}/sical const Uution, which differs 
 essential!}'' from that of the planets, of their satellites, and of 
 the comets. He is unique in his position and office in the 
 planetary system, — he must therefore be sjDecially consti- 
 tuted. What is this special constitution? What is the 
 geography of the sun ? 
 
 Would that it were in our power to reply to this question 
 with precision ; would that we could describe the configura- 
 tion of the sun. Unhappily, science has not yet reached that 
 point. The problem of the sun's true nature is full of un- 
 certainty. Astronomers are divided between two opposite 
 theories, and that which seems to be the best supported, is 
 too recent to be set forth in a dogmatic fashion. We can 
 only summarize the actual condition of our knowledge on this 
 question, explain the theory which seems conformable to 
 ascertained facts, and applying it to the subject on which we 
 are engaged, endeavour to deduce the physical condition, 
 which, in our opinion, would belong to the inhabitants of the 
 king-star. 
 
 Until the great epoch of the discovery of the telescope, at 
 the beginning of the seventeenth century, in the time of 
 Keppler and Galileo, only vague and arbitrary ideas respecting 
 the sun prevailed. The educated, as well as the vulgar, be- 
 held in it merely a globe of fire ; the most learned declared 
 that they found in it pure fire, elementary fire, the principle of 
 light, and of fire. But as no means existed of examining the 
 surface of the sun, and as his real distance from the earth
 
 THE DA Y AFTER D EA TIL 9 1 
 
 was either unknown, or very imperfectly understood, a prudent 
 reserve was maintained on tins question. The discovery of 
 the telescope immediately placed the astronomers in possession 
 of the celestial realm ; it enabled them to sound the depths 
 of space, and to study the apparent configuration of the stars, 
 including the sun himself. A few hours' observation with 
 the astronomical spy-glass, and more was learned of the nature 
 of the sun, than in the two thousand years of more or less 
 philosophical reverie which preceded the discovery of the 
 telescope. 
 
 "With a glass which magnified the apparent diameter of the 
 sun only twenty-sixfold, Galileo, repeating the observations 
 of Fabricius, discovered the spots on the sun. Although 
 Galileo did not use the smoked glasses which have since been 
 found so useful, and although he limited his observations to 
 the horizon, watching the great star at its rising and its 
 setting, or when it was veiled by slight clouds, he studied its 
 spots carefully, and described them faithfully. 
 
 "VYe may observe that this discovery astonished the philo- 
 sophers of that period, who were entirely submissive to the 
 authority of Aristotle. The incorruptibility of the sun was 
 held in the schools as a sacred principle, according to 
 Aristotle, and these unfortunate spots perplexed the philoso- 
 phers. The peripatetics vied with each other in proving to 
 the Florentine astronomer that the purity «f the sun was an 
 unassailable principle, and that the spots Avhich he had 
 perceived existed only on his eyes, or on the lens of his 
 glasses.
 
 92 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 But Galileo liad seen correctly, and soon every one could 
 convince himself of tlio reality of the phenomenon he had 
 l^roclaimed. !N"ot only do spots exist upon the disc of the 
 su]i, lout they furnish the only means which we possess of 
 becoming acquainted Avith the physical and astronomical 
 l^eculiarities and properties of the great star. The examina- 
 tion of these spots led to the discovery that the sun revolves 
 like the other planets, and that he accomplishes the entire 
 revolution upon his axis in a period of twenty-five days. 
 The sun's days are therefore twenty-five times as long as ours. 
 Here, however, we must remark upon the word day. To us, 
 the day signifies the periodical return of the earth to the same 
 point, after a complete revolution upon its axis, with an 
 alternation of light and darkness. It is quite otherwise in 
 the case of the sun, Avhich, being self-luminous in all his 
 parts, can never have any night. 
 
 We have said that the examination of the sun's spots esta- 
 blished liis rotation upon his axis. In fact, if we patiently 
 observe the motion of a spot, or of a group of sjjots, we re- 
 mark that it advances slowly from one edge of the solar disc 
 to the other; for instance, if the j)oint of departure be the 
 eastern edge, the spot or group AviU advance with uniforia 
 speed towards the western edge, taking fourteen days to ac- 
 complish the distance. If we wait fourteen days more, we 
 sliall again perceive the same spot making its appearance on 
 the eastern edge of the disc, the interval having been con- 
 sumed in passing over the opposite and, of course, invisible 
 side of the sun. The spot has therefore taken twenty-eight days
 
 THE Da Y after be a til 93 
 
 to reappear, which twenty-eiglit days do not, however, represent 
 the exact duration of the revolution of the sun himself. It 
 must not be forgotten that the earth has not remained motion- 
 less during this long observation ; she, too, has gone round in 
 the sun, as the spots have done. This sort of advance, whicli 
 causes us to see the same spot for a longer time than we should 
 have seen it, if the earth remained motionless, is of three days' 
 extent, the deduction of which from the tv/enty-eight given 
 days, allows twenty-live days for the real duration of the sun's 
 rotation upon his axis. 
 
 In the sun seasons are unknown as "well as days. Time 
 seems to have no existence for the beings who occupy that 
 radiant dwelling-place. The changes, and the succession of 
 things for us which constitute time, are unknown to their 
 sublime essence. Duration has no measure in that blessed 
 world. 
 
 * The dweller in the sun must behold the revolution of tho 
 planets around him, performed according to the same laws, 
 but with different rates of speed. The phases of the planets 
 and their satellites, the phases of ]\Iars and Venus, or those of 
 the moon, which we perceive from the earth, are unknown to 
 them ; they see only the hemisphere of those globes whicli 
 is illumined by their own immense country. They behold, 
 in larger dimensions, the globes of Mercury and Venus, and 
 in lesser dimensions the Earth and jMars. The distant planets, 
 Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, must seem very small to them. 
 Neptune they probably cannot see at all. The comets must 
 bo for a long time invisible to the inhabitants of the suu, wlio
 
 94 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 "behold their flaming mass rushing towards them in ever- 
 increasing size. They also see some comets sinking away into 
 space, and others falling on the surface of the sun himself, to 
 he lost and absorbed in his substance. 
 
 Thus, the spots on the sun have revealed to us an im- 
 portant peculiarity of his astronomical character, his revo- 
 lution upon his axis. They have also given us the only 
 exact ideas Avhich we possess of the physical constitution of 
 the sun. 
 
 The accompanying plate conveys an idea of what the spots 
 on the sun consist of. Figures 2 and 3 represent the general 
 aspect of these appearances. In the centre is a black space 
 perfectly marked. To this succeeds a space in grey tinting, 
 whose outlines melt by degrees into the rest of the luminous 
 mass. The first region is called the Umbra ; the second, the 
 Penumbra. 
 
 These words must be distinctly understood. The part in- 
 dicated by the term Umbra is only dark relatively to the 
 illumined portion. This Umbra is very luminous, its brilliancy 
 is two thousand times that of the full moon. We are merely 
 dealing with comparisons here. The solar spots are often 
 of very considerable dimensions. They have been found 
 30,000 leagues in breadth, and could swallow up the earth, 
 which is only one-tenth of that magnitude. They are not 
 permanent, sometimes they remain for months, or even years, 
 but the greater number increase and decrease rapidly, and dis- 
 appear in a few weeks. They are incessantly changing in form 
 and ia extent, and they grow and diminish. It is evident
 
 
 
 
 
 Fig. 2.— Group ©f Solar Spots observed in 1864 by Nasmith.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 97 
 
 that they are regulated by a violent interior movement, and 
 that they are the seat of tumultuous motion. Something 
 like whirlwinds are seen to sweep across the regions occupied 
 
 rig. 3. — Another Solar Spot observed by Nasmyth. 
 
 by the spots, and to carry them away, like the waves of a 
 furious sea, or the flames of a conflagration. Gigantic bridges 
 of apparently burning matter have been observed, thrown 
 
 7
 
 98 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 from one edge to the other of adjacent spots, uniting them by 
 a shining band, and then this same band has stretched itself 
 out and caught hold of other spots. Of a sudden the whole 
 edifice has been seen to be swept away by fresh whirlwinds. 
 Signs of a prodigious commotion, of gigantic perturbation, are 
 always evident. These hurricanes, these tempests of flame, 
 are of a widely different grandeur from the hurricanes and the 
 tempests of our atmosphere, because the atmosphere of the 
 sun is several thousands of yards in height, and covers an 
 extent of surface 1,300,000 times greater than ours. 
 
 We have just said that the sun has an atmosphere. Such 
 is the conclusion to which the careful examination of the 
 great star has led. 
 
 From the earliest times at which the sun was observed, 
 a theory of its constitution was formulated, which was 
 perpetuated down to the present age, without receiving 
 authoritative contradiction. In the eighteenth century the 
 astronomers Herschel and "Wilson developed this theory, 
 which was popularized in our time by the writings of Hum- 
 boldt and Arago. 
 
 According to this theory, the sun is composed of a dark 
 nucleus, and a burning atmosphere, which is the only source 
 of the light proper to this star. Arago and Humboldt called 
 the incandescent atmosphere of the sun, the pJwtosj)here. Heat 
 and light would not, therefore, come to us from the nucleus, 
 but only from the photosphere. 
 
 The spots are explained, according to this theory, by ad- 
 mitting that they are openings accidentally formed in the sun's
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TIL 99 
 
 atmosphere by gases discharged from volcanic craters, or in 
 some other way. Through these openings the dark nucleus 
 of the sun is seen. The penumbra of the spots are formed 
 by the lower parts of the atmosphere of the sun, which is 
 either hot or luminous. This lower portion of the atmo- 
 sphere, reflecting the light emitted by the upper portion 
 or photosphere, is shghtly warm, and only partially illu- 
 mined. 
 
 This theory of the constitution of the sun, and of the solar 
 spots, seemed for a long time satisfactory. A similar explana- 
 tion, that is to say, by partial eruptions of gas from volcanic 
 craters, was assigned to the kind of black dotted appearance 
 observed on the surface of the solar disc, and which is exactly 
 reproduced in ihe two figures here given. 
 
 The brilKant spots scattered over the surface of the sun, 
 which touched here and there with points of intense lumi- 
 nosity, are called faculm. These brilliant points are said to 
 proceed from local accidents, which cause an escape of light 
 and heat from certain parts of the solar atmosphere. 
 
 Thus, according to this theory, the sun would be a soHd 
 body, opaque and dark like the planets, surrounded by an 
 atmospheric layer, which would prevent any heat in the 
 nucleus. Outside that layer would be a second atmosphere, 
 the ;pJiotos^Jiere, which only would be luminous, and capable 
 of emitting light and heat. Dark nucleus, dark atmosphere, 
 luminous photosphere, such would be the constituent ele- 
 ments of the sun, according to Wilson, WiUiam Herschel, 
 Humboldt, and Arago. To any Avho hold this theory, it is 
 
 7—2
 
 100 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 not impossible to believe that the sun may be inliabited by 
 beings wlio differ but slightly to man, or who are endowed 
 with an organization similar to that of the inhabitants of the 
 earth. If the body of the sun be preserved by the interposi- 
 tion of a cold, and but slightly conducting atmosphere from 
 the rays of the photosphere which burns at an immense dis- 
 tance, we can believe that creatures organized almost like 
 ourselves could live within it. The heat of the burning 
 photosphere can reach it through the thickness of the lower 
 atmosphere with only the degree of heat necessary to main- 
 tain life. The light thus filtered is brilliant, but not dazzling, 
 and admits of the existence of beings of organization similar 
 to those who live on the earth. 
 To this conclusion Arago came : 
 
 " If I were asked," said the astronomer, " is the sun in- 
 habited? I must reply that I do not know. But, if I were 
 asked whether the sun can be inhabited by beings of organ- 
 ization similar to that of dwellers upon our globe, I should 
 not hesitate to reply in the affirmative." 
 
 At the present day Arago would hesitate, for science has 
 made a great advance in the question of the physical con- 
 stitution of the sun. The ncAv method invented by MM, 
 Kirchhoff and Bunsen, and known as analysis of the luminous 
 spectrum, being applied to the solar rays, has given rise to 
 an entirely new conception of the nature of the sun. "We 
 have returned to the opinion of the physicists of the middle 
 ages, who regarded the sun as a globe of fixe, a sort of gigantic 
 torch.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. lOl 
 
 It would be impossihle to enter into the details of the op- 
 tical experiments which rendered accurate analysis of the 
 solar rays possible, and enabled us to deduce a new theory of 
 the constitution of the sun from their properties. We shall 
 confine ourselves to explaining this theory, as it evolves itself 
 from the experiments of M. Kirchhoff. 
 
 According to the German philosopher, the sun is not, as it 
 has hitherto been supposed, a cold, dark, and solid body, 
 surrounded by a burning atmosphere ; it is a globe, a sphere, 
 probably liquid, which burns throughout its whole mass, and 
 in all its parts. This incandescent globe is surrounded by a 
 very heavy atmosphere, formed of the vapours which proceed 
 from the incandescent globe, and which are themselves kept 
 burning in consequence of the high temperature of all those 
 masses of fire. 
 
 How are the spots on the sun to be explained according to 
 this- theory? M. Kirchhoff admits that, owing to unknown 
 causes, a cooling process may take place in the vaporous at- 
 mosphere which surrounds the body of the sun. This cooling- 
 process would form at certain points condensations of vapour 
 analagous to the condensation of the vapour of water, which 
 on our globe produces clouds and rain. These agglomerations 
 of condensed vapours would form a species of cloud in the 
 atmosphere of the sun, and those clouds, which would inter- 
 cept the light of the solar disc from us, would produce the 
 effect of a spot on this disc. The cloud, once formed, cools 
 portions of the neighbouring vapours, and, by provoking a 
 partial condensation, gives rise to the lomumhm which sur-
 
 102 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 round the iimlra. Thus, according to M. Kirchhoff, the 
 solar spots are clouds suspended in the sun's atmosphere. 
 Galileo had previously propounded an analogous hypothesis. 
 Without abandoning M. Kirchhoff's theory we may mention 
 another explanation of the spots. A German physicist con- 
 siders the spots, not as clouds in the sun's atmosphere, but as 
 partial solidifications of the liquid matter which forms the 
 body of the sun ; a kind of scoria, analogous to those which 
 may be observed in crucibles containing matters in a state of 
 fusion, and which come from particles of metal not yet melted, 
 or which are beginning to solidify. The penumbra of the 
 spots would be the half-molten, and consequently, half-trans- 
 parent poUicule which always surrounds the edges of metallic 
 scoria with a semi-liquid ring. 
 
 M. Faye, a French astronomer, has propounded a theory, 
 which somewhat modifies that of M. Kirchhoff. He thinks 
 that the nucleus of the sun is neither solid nor liquid, but 
 entirely gaseous. The solar spot, he, like M. Earchhoff, takes 
 to be an opening made accidentally in the sun's atmosphere 
 by the condensation of vapours on certain points of that 
 atmosphere. According to M. Faye, the spots are due to ver- 
 tical currents of vapour ascending and descending, and the 
 interception of the light of the sun's atmosphere by the 
 predominant intensity of the ascending current.* 
 
 The new theory, the result of the optical experiments of the 
 German physicists, appears to explain all the facts which have 
 been observed, and it has therefore been generally accepted. 
 
 * See "Le Soleil," by M. A. Guillemin, pp. 19-4—208.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 lOS 
 
 Some divergences exist on questions of detail, but astronomers 
 are nowadays almost unanimous in regarding the sun as a 
 great body, incandescent in all its parts, as a globe in a state 
 of fusion, surrounded by a burning atmosphere, or, as M. Faye 
 states it, a simple agglomeration of incandescent gases.
 
 CHAPTER THE XIXTH. 
 
 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN ARE PURELY SPIRITUAL BEINGS. 
 
 THE SOLAR RATS ARE EMANATIONS FROM THE SPIRITUAL 
 
 BEINGS WHO LIVE IN THE SUN. THESE BEINGS THUS PRODUCE 
 
 ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE UPON THE EARTH. — THE CON- 
 TINUITY OF SOLAR RADIATION, INEXPLICABLE BY PHYSICISTS, 
 EXPLAINED BY THE EMANATION FROM THE SOULS OP THE IN- 
 HABITANTS OF THE SUN. — THE WORSHIP OF FIRE, AND THE 
 ADORATION OF THE SUN AMONG DIFFERENT PEOPLES, ANCIENT 
 AND MODERN. 
 
 EOM the discussion of physical asttonomy con- 
 tained in the preceding chapters, we have con- 
 cluded, with MM. Kirchhoff and Faye, that the 
 sun is a mass of burning gases. But, our 
 readers will ask, if this he so — if the sun is a gaseous incan- 
 descent m'ss, or a glohe of matter in a state of fusion, sur- 
 rounded by an atmosphere of burning gas, where do you place 
 its inhabitants, and under what form do you picture them 1 
 
 We have already said, that at each step of their promotion 
 in the hierarchy, the creatures who live in the planetary 
 spaces and have succeeded to the superhuman being, grow 
 in perfection, their senses are multiplied, their intellectual 
 power is corsiderably extended. lu proportion as the crea- 
 ture, who in the beginning was human, is raised by successive
 
 THE DAY A FTER DEA TH. 105 
 
 deaths and resurrections in the scale of inter-planetary being, 
 the material substance, Avhich, united to its spiritual prin- 
 ciple, formed its radiant individuality, is diminished. In 
 further exposition of our system, we must state our belief 
 that this superior being, when he has been sufficiently per- 
 fected and exalted, by his different incarnations, by the multi- 
 plied stages in the immensity of the heavens, finally becomes 
 pure spirit. When he attains the sun, he is free from all 
 material substance, from all carnal alloy. He is a flame, a 
 breath ; all is intelligence, sentiment, thought, in him ; no- 
 thing impure is mingled with his perfect essence. He is an 
 absolute soul, a soul without a body. The gaseous and burn- 
 ing mass of which the sun is composed is, therefore, appro- 
 priate to receive these quintessential beings. A throne of firo 
 ■ is a fitting throne for souls. 
 
 We might even go further, and maintain that not only is 
 thfr sun the asylum and receptacle of souls which have 
 finished the course of their peregrinations in this world, but 
 that it is nothing else than a collection of those souls Avhich 
 have come to it from the other planets, after having passed 
 through the intermediate states which we have described. 
 The sun may be only an aggregation of souls. 
 
 Since the sun is the first cause of life on our globe, since 
 he is, as we have proved, the origin of life, feeling, and thought, 
 since he is the determining cause of the existence of every- 
 thing possessing organization upon tlie earth, why may we 
 not hold that the rays which the sun pours upon the earth 
 and the other planets are nothing else than the emanations
 
 106 THE DAY AFTER DEATH, 
 
 from these souls ? that they are emissions from the pure spirits 
 dwelling in the central star, directed towards us, and the 
 other planets, under the visible form of rays 1 
 
 If this hypothesis were accepted, what magnificent, what 
 sublime relations existing between the sun and the globes 
 which gravitate around him, would be revealed to us ! A con- 
 tinual exchange would be established between the sun and 
 the surrounding planets, an unbroken circle, an inexhaustible 
 communion, radiant emanations which should generate and 
 maintain activity and motion, thought and sentiment, which 
 should keep the flame of life burning everywhere ! Let us 
 think of the emanations from souls dwelling in the sun de- 
 scending upon the earth in solar rays. Light gives existence 
 to plants, and produces vegetable life, accompanied by sensi- 
 bility. Plants, having received this sensible germ from the 
 sun, communicate it, aided by heat likewise emanating from 
 the sun, to animals. Let us think of the germs of souls, placed 
 in the breasts of animals, developing themselves, becoming 
 perfected by degrees, from one animal to another, and finish- 
 ing by becoming incarnate in a human body. Let us think, 
 then, of the superhuman being succeeding to man, springing 
 up into the vast plains of ether, and beginning the series of 
 numerous transmigrations which, from one step to another, 
 will lead him to the summit of the scale of spiritual perfection, 
 from which every material substance has been eliminated, and 
 ■where the soul, thus exalted to the purest degree of its essence, 
 penetrates into the supreme abode of happiness, and of intel- 
 lectual and moral power— the sun.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 107 
 
 Such may be tliis endless circle, such this unbroken chain, 
 binding together all beings in nature, and passing from the 
 visible to the invisible world. 
 
 To those persons who may declaim with severity against 
 the system which we have ventured to put forward, we 
 shall put a question which cannot fail to embarrass them, for 
 science has never been able to solve it. We shall ask them 
 how the light of the sun, and the heat which results from it, 
 are maintained ? It is evident that the enormous quantities 
 of heat and light which the sun sends out in torrents into 
 space, must come from a source which cannot be inexhaustible, 
 which has need of renewal, otherwise the sun would become 
 extinct. As there is no effect without a cause, it is plain that 
 the inconceivable quantity of forces which the sun distributes 
 by his burning rays, must be derived from some place. M. 
 Guillemin, in his work on the sun, passes in review the dif- 
 ferent theories which have been adopted, up to the present 
 day, to explain solar radiation. Tlie following is an analysis 
 of a chapter of M. Guillemin's work on the " Maintenance of 
 Solar Eadiation." 
 
 Pouillet has calculated that if the sun were not supplied 
 with something to make up for the losses he sustains, he must 
 cool at the rate of one degree in a century. But this calcula- 
 tion falls short of the truth. Pouillet supposed that the 
 specific heat of the sun is the greatest which can be conceived. 
 The specific heat of the sun is, it is true, unknown, but in- 
 stead of placing it at the maximum power, which it is not 
 proved to be, we might suppose it, by an allowable hypothesis.
 
 108 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 to be equal to that of water, which is well known. ]N^ow if 
 we grant to the sun the specific heat of water, we rectify 
 Pouillet's calculation, and we arrive at the conclusion that the 
 sun, if not furnished Avith any resources from which to repair 
 his losses, would be entirely extinct at the end of 10,000 
 years. Professor Tyndall, whos'^/ experiments are more recent 
 than those of Pouillet, and inspire greater confidence, says : 
 " If the sun were a block of coal, and it were supplied with 
 sufficient oxygen to enable it to burn at the degree of 
 heat proper to that star, it would be entirely consumed at 
 the end of 5000 years." 'Sow the sun has existed for 
 milhons of years, for the transition periods of our globe, 
 in which the first livirig beings were manifested, are traced 
 back to millions of years. And yet his heat has not sensibly 
 diminished since those distant ages. The proof that it has 
 not diminished, is that the climates of the globe at the 
 present time are the same as they were in the tertiary or 
 quaternary epoch. In the tertiary or quaternary strata the 
 same plants and the same animals which exist at present are 
 found. Speaking of times nearer to our own, we may observe 
 that the productions of the soil remain unchanged during the 
 2000 or 3000 years, whose traditions and historical archives 
 ■we possess. 
 
 The sun has lost none of his heat during millions of years. 
 Where has he gotten this heat from 1 Where does he get 
 it from now % By what means is that unquenched fire 
 kept up. 
 
 To this question neither astronomy nor physics has ever
 
 THE BAY AFTER DEATH. 109 
 
 furnished a satisfactory reply. Treatises, whether astrono- 
 mical or physical, give ua nothing but hypotheses, which we 
 cannot accept. 
 
 1' At first it was said that the sun, turning on his axis in 
 twenty-five days, produced by this movement a perpetual 
 friction of his surface against the element in which he moves, 
 in other words, against the ether. But if that were the case, 
 this friction ought to engender a similar heat on the surface. 
 of the planets, whose rotatory motion, and especially the 
 motion of translation in their orbit, is much more rapid than 
 that of the sun turning on his axis. Besides, if we calculate 
 the elevation of the temperature which would result from the 
 friction of tlie sun against the ether, we shall find that the 
 heat would hardly suffice to maintain the radiation of the 
 solar star during one century. This hypothesis is therefore 
 untenable. 
 
 Another theory, better supported, has been put forward by 
 the physicists Mayer, Watterston, and Thompson; it explains 
 the maintenance of the solar heat by a constant fall of meteors 
 on the surface of the solar star. 
 
 A multitude of corpuscles gravitate round the sun, and 
 approach him with sufficient nearness to be attracted by his 
 surface, and fall upon it. These are asteroids, which turn in 
 whirling swarms around the sun. A shower of corpuscles, of 
 meteorolites, may be always falling on his surface. Their fall 
 would cause a great development of caloric, in consequence of 
 the transformation of theii- enormous speed into heat, and this 
 caloric would suffice, according to the authors of this theory,
 
 110 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 for tlie maintenance of solar radiation. Let us quote Professor 
 Tyndall on this point : 
 
 " It is easy to calculate both, the maximum and the minimum 
 velocity imparted by the sun's attraction to an asteroid circu- 
 lating round him. The maximum is generated when the 
 body approaches from an infinite distance, the entire jpuU of 
 the sun being then exerted upon it. The minimum is that 
 velocity -whichjWOuld barely enable the body to revolve round 
 the sun close to its surface. The final velocity of the former, 
 just before striking the sun, would be 390 miles a second, that 
 of the latter 276 miles a second. The asteroid, on strilcing 
 the sun with the former velocity, would develop more than 
 9000 times the heat generated by the combustion of an equal 
 asteroid of solid coal ; while the shock, in the latter case, 
 would generate heat equal to that of the combustion of up- 
 wards of 4000 such asteroids. It matters not therefore 
 whether the substances falling into the sun be combustible or 
 not ; their being combustible would not add sensibly to the 
 tremendous heat produced by their mechanical collision. 
 Here then we have an agency competent to restore his lost 
 energy to the sun, and to maintain a temperature at his sur- 
 face which transcends aU terrestrial combustion. 
 
 " The very quahty of the solar rays — their incomparably 
 penetrative power — enables us to infer that the temperature 
 of their origin must be enormous ; but in the fall of asteroids 
 we find the means of producing such a temperature." — P. 423. 
 
 The fall of these asteriods on the surface of the sun would 
 be followed by an increase in the bulk of that star, and there 
 has been no such increase since the earliest period of its obser- 
 vation. Also, the augmentation of the sun's bulk by these 
 foreign bodies, would have produced an accelerant motion in
 
 TEE DA Y A FTER BE A TH. Ill 
 
 the orbits of all the stars, which, however slight, would be dis- 
 tinctly perceptible ; whereas, for the 2000 years of celestial 
 observation, whose records we posses?, unbroken and perfect 
 regularity in the progression of the stars of our solar world is 
 registered. 
 
 There is another objection to this hypothesis. It is that it 
 presupposes a solid and resistant medium in the sun. This 
 medium does not exist, according to the new solar theory, 
 which considers this star to be formed of vapour and of gas, 
 or, at most, of a liquid sphere. Another proof that this 
 resistant medium does not exist, is to be found in the fact 
 that several comets, among others those of 1680, and of 1843, 
 have passed so close to the sun at their perihelion, that their 
 movements must have been greatly disturbed by the resist- 
 ance of a dense medium. Tlie movements of these comets, 
 were, however, quite unaffected by this cause ; they were ob- 
 served to reappear at the moment indicated by the legular 
 curve of their orbit. 
 
 The absence of a resistant medium in the sun has been 
 regarded as so grave an objection by one of the authors of 
 this theory, Mr. Thompson, that he has abandoned it, as in- 
 compatible with facts. 
 
 Another hypothesis has been proposed, for explaining the 
 maintenance of solar heat. The substances which now form 
 the sun have not always been collected together in their 
 present state of aggregation. At first, his molecules were, 
 relatively, extremely distant from one another, and formed a 
 chaotic, or confused mass. Under the influence of attraction.
 
 112 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 they drew together by degrees, and agglomerated themselves 
 into a nucleus, which has become the centre of attraction of 
 the whole mass. This simply amounts to saying that the sun 
 began by being in the state of nebulosity, and passed at a 
 later period into the condition of adherent and continuous 
 matter. 
 
 " The molecules of solar nebulosity," says Balfour Stewart, 
 ** precipitating themselves upon one another, produced heat ; as, 
 when a stone is thrown with force from the top of a precipice, 
 heat is also the ultimate form into which the potential energy 
 of the stone is converted." 
 
 This system of explanation of the primary origin of the 
 planets is in general favour. Having drawn themselves toge- 
 ther to form a continuous whole, the elements of the sun 
 would have changed their physical condition, and the result 
 of this change would have been an enormous escape of heat, 
 sufficient to explain the origin of the solar focus. We know, 
 in fact, that condensation of matter always accompanies an 
 escape of heat ; and it has been calculated that a dimunition 
 of only a thousandth part from the actual bulk of the sun 
 would suffice to maintain the solar heat for 20,000 years. 
 
 M. Helmholtz, the author of this ingenious theory, has 
 also calculated that " the mechanical force equivalent to the 
 mutual gravitation of the particles of the nebulous mass 
 would have been originally equal to 454 times the quantity 
 of mechanical force actually disposable in our system," f |^ of 
 the force coming from the conatus to the gravitation would 
 therefore have been already expended. The author adds that
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 113 
 
 the -ri-r "\vhich remains of this original heat, would suffice to 
 raise the temperature of a mass of Avater equal to the com- 
 bined birth of the sun and the planets, to 28,000,000 of de- 
 grees centigrade ; this is a quantity of heat equal to 2500 
 times that which would be engendered by the combustion of 
 the entire solar system, supposing it to be tuvaed into a mass 
 of coal. 
 
 These calculations are, doubtless, most interesting, but their 
 defect is that they rest upon the conception of the sun's ne- 
 bulosity, an hypothesis which requires closer examination 
 before it ought to be accepted as the basis of so important a de- 
 duction. Besides, if the sun were warmed by a physical cause 
 not in action at the present time, his heat, however great it 
 may be estimated to be, must necessarily have been diminish- 
 ing as long as the sun has been in existence, j^ow, avc repeat 
 that it does not appear that the heat of the sun has ever suf- 
 fered any diminution. The theory of nebulosity is therefore no 
 more securely founded in principle than the other hypotheses 
 which have preceded it. . 
 
 Thus, we find that neither astronomy nor physical science 
 offers us any satisfactory explanation of the constant main- 
 tenance of solar radiation. Common sense tells us that this 
 furnace, constantly in activity, must be as unceasingly fed, 
 but science is as yet unable to discover the nature and source 
 of its aliment. 
 
 There, where science places nothing, we venture to place 
 something. In our belief solar radiation is maintained by 
 the continuous, unbroken succession of souls, in the sun. 
 
 8
 
 114 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 
 
 These pure and burning spirits are perpetually replacing the 
 emanations perpetuall}'' sent through space by the sun, to the 
 globes which surround him. Thus we complete that unin- 
 terrupted circle of which we have previously spoken, which 
 binds together all the creatures of nature by the links of a 
 common chain, and attache.^ the visible to the invisible 
 world. We may venture to put forward this explanation of 
 the maintenance of solar radiation with some confidence, 
 since science can give us no exact information upon the 
 point, and philosophy in this case only fiUs up the void left 
 by astronomy and j)hysics. 
 
 In short, the sun, the centre of the planetary aggregation, 
 the constant source of light and heat, wliich sends forth mo- 
 tion, sensation, and life upon the earth, is, in our belief, the 
 final sojourn of purified perfected souls, which have attained 
 their most exquisite subtlety. They are entirely devoid of ma- 
 terial alloy, they are pure spirits who dwell in the midst of 
 the blazing atmosphere and the burning masses which compose 
 the sun. That star, whose size far surpasses the bulk of all 
 the others put together, is sufficiently vast to contain them. 
 Prom their throne of fire, these souls, all intelligence and ac- 
 tivity, behold the marvellous spectacle of the march of all 
 the planetary globes which compose the solar world, through 
 space. Placed in the centre of this vast world, understand- 
 ing the secrets of nature, and aU the mysteries of the uni- 
 verse, they are in possession of perfect happiness, of absolute 
 wisdom, and of illimitable knowledge.
 
 THE DA Y A FTER DEATH. 115 
 
 The Genoese naturalist, Charles Bonnet, was the first to 
 bring forward general ideas upon the philosophy of the uni- 
 verse, in the same order as those which we have just developed. 
 In his Palingenesie Philosophiqite, published in 1.771, he intro- 
 duces the doctrine of divers existences for the human soul, 
 outside that of the earth. In a chapter appended to that 
 work, and entitled, " Conjectures on the blessings to come," 
 he draws a picture of the perfect happiness which we shall 
 enjoy in that abode, and dwells, in the following eloquent 
 words, on the transcendent knowledge which we shall possess, 
 which will unfold to our view all the secrets of the physical 
 and moral worlds : — 
 
 " If the Supreme Intelligence," says Charles Bonnet, " has 
 varied all His works here below, so that nothing created is 
 identical with anything else, if harmonious progression reigns 
 among all terrestrial beings ; and one common chain unites 
 therd ; is it not probable that this marvellous chain is pro- 
 longed throughout all the planetary worlds: that it unites 
 them all, and that they are only constituent and infinitesimal 
 parts of the same series 1 
 
 " At present we can see only a few links of this great chain; 
 we,^?''3 not even certain that Ave observe them in their habitual 
 order; we can only follow this admirable progression very 
 imperfectly, and through innumerable windings in which we 
 meet with frequent interruptions, but we always know that 
 the breaches are not in the chain, but in our knowledge. 
 
 "When it shall have been granted to us to contemplate this 
 chain, as I have supposed the intelligences for whom our 
 Avorld was chiefly made to contemplate it ; when, like them, 
 we shall be able to follow its coils in other worlds, then, and 
 
 8—2
 
 1 16 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 then only, we shall understand their reciprocal dependence, 
 their secret relations, the exact meaning of every link, and 
 we shall rise by a scale of relative perfection to the most 
 transcendent and luminous trutlis. 
 
 " With what feelings shall our souls be filled, when, having 
 studied to its depths the economy of a world, we shall fly to 
 another, and compare the two ! How perfect shall our cos- 
 mology be then ! How wide the generalization and great the 
 fecundity of our principles, the succession, the mass, the 
 exactness of our knowledge ! "What light shall be shed from 
 so many different objects upon the other branches of our 
 studies ; upon physics, geometry, astronomy, rational science, 
 and especially upon that divine study whose object is the 
 Supreme Being. 
 
 " All these truths are chained together, and the most distant 
 are held to the nearest by hidden links, which it is the end 
 of understanding to discover. K"ewton, no doubt, exulted in 
 having discovered the secret relation between the fall of a 
 stone and the motion of a planet ; Avhen he shall be one day 
 transformed into a celestial intelligence, he will smile at this 
 child's play, and his profound geometry will be to him only 
 the first elements of another Infinite. 
 
 " Man's reason has already penetrated beyond all the plane- 
 tary worlds; it has raised itself up to heaven, where God 
 dwells ; it contemplates the august throne of the Ancient of 
 Days, it beholds all the spheres rolling beneath His feet, and 
 obeying the impulse of His hand, it hears the acclamations of 
 all the intelligences, and, mingling its adoration and its praise 
 Avith the majestic song of the hierarchies, it cries with the 
 deepest consciousness of its own nothingness : ' Holy, holy, 
 holy, is He who is eternal, and the All Good ; glory be to 
 God in the highest, and good-will towards man !' Gh ! the 
 depth of the riches of the Divine Goodness, Avhich is not
 
 THE DA Y A FTER DEA TIL 1 1 7 
 
 satisfied with manifesting itself to men on the earth by- 
 countless means, but will bring him one day to the celestial 
 dwelling-places, and satisfy the thirst of his soul with the 
 fulness of delight. There are many dwellings in our Father's 
 home ; had it not been so, He Avhom He sent to us would have 
 told us, and He is gone thither to prepare a place for us. He 
 will come back and take us with Him ; that where He is we 
 may be also. Where He is, not in the outer court, not in the 
 vestibule, but in the sanctuary of universal creation, in the 
 holy of holies. Where He is, Avho is the King of angels and 
 of men, the IMediator of the new covenant, the Author and 
 Finisher of our Faith, who has made the new way for us which 
 leads to life, who has made us free to enter into the Holy 
 Place, who has brought us near to the city of the living God, 
 to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the innumerable multitude of 
 
 angels, to God Himself, who is the Judge of all In 
 
 this eternal dwelling, in the bosom of light, of perfection and 
 happiness, we shall read the general and particular history of 
 Providence. Initiated, to a certain extent, in the profound 
 mysteries of His government. His laws, His dispensations, we 
 shall admiringly recognize the secret reasons of the many 
 general and particular events which astonish us, confound us, 
 and throw us into a state of doubt which philosophy does not 
 always dissipate, but which religion never fails to allay. "VYe 
 shall ceaselessly meditate upon the great book of the destinies 
 of the w^orlds. We shall dwell p;irticularly on the pages 
 which concern this little planet ; the cradle of our infancy, 
 and the first monument uf tlie paternal goodness of the 
 Creator towards man. We shall discover, Avith astonishment, 
 the numerous revolutions Avhich this little globe has under- 
 gone before it assumed its actual form, and we shall follow 
 with our gaze those which it is destined to undergo in the 
 course of ages ; but our admiration and our gratitude will bo
 
 118 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 chiefly excited by tlie Avonclers of that great redemption, in 
 which there are so many things beyond our feeble reach, 
 which have been the objects of the studious research and the 
 profound meditation of the prophets, and which the angels 
 have desired to look into. One line on this jjage will con- 
 tain our own history, and will develop to our view the why 
 and the how of those calamities, trials, and privations which 
 in this Avorld try the patience of the just man, purify his 
 soul, and enhance his virtues, while they crush and destroy 
 the weak. When we have reached so elevated a degree of 
 knowledge, the origin of physical and moral evil will no 
 longer embarrass us; we shall confront them distinctly at 
 their source, and in their most distant effects, and we shall 
 acknowledge, from the evidence before us, that all which God 
 does is well done. 
 
 " In this world we see effects only ; and Vt^e even observe 
 them in a very superficial manner ; all the causes are hidden 
 from us : then we shall see effects in their causes, consequences 
 in their principles, the history of the individual in that of the 
 species, the history of the species in that of the globe, the 
 history of the globe in that of the worlds, &c. INow we see 
 things only confusedly, and in a glass darkly ; but then we 
 shall see face to face, and shall know in some sort as we 
 have been known ; in short, because we shaU have an in- 
 finitely more complete and distinct knowledge of the work, 
 we shall also acquire an incomparably deeper sense of the 
 perfections of the workman. And this knowledge, the most 
 sublime, the most vast, the most desirable of all, will be 
 incessantly perfected by intimate intercourse Avith the eternal 
 source of all perfection ! I cannot express this sufficiently, I 
 do but stammer over it ; words are wanting ; would that I 
 could know the language of the angels. If it were possible 
 to a finite intelligence ever to exhaust the universe, it would
 
 THE BA Y AFTER DEATH. 119 
 
 still find the treasures of truth from eternity to eternity in 
 contemplation of its author ; and, after a thousand myriads of 
 ages consumed in such meditation, it would only have 
 touched the edges of that science of which it may be even 
 the highest intelligences possess no more than the rudiments. 
 There is no true reality except in Him who ^5, for all which is, 
 is by Him, before being out of Him ; there is but one existence, 
 because there is but one Being whose essence it is to exist ; 
 and all which bears the inappropriate name of being had 
 remained shut up in necessary existence as the consequence 
 in the principaL"* 
 
 Before concluding this chapter, let us remark that the 
 deductions of science concerning the sovereign part played 
 by the sun in the general economy of nature, are in perfect 
 harmony with the religious conceptions of the most ancient 
 peoples. The worship of fire has reigned from time imme- 
 morial in Asia, and especially in ancient Persia. From the 
 Persian shores sailed the first peoples, the Aryas, or Aryans, 
 who occupied and peopled Europe. Fire worship was the 
 first religion of ancient Asia. M. Burnouf dwells on this 
 fact in his Etudes sur la Science des Eelkjions, from which we 
 qitf^*o the following passages : 
 
 " The men of that time (the Aryas) perceived that all the 
 movements of inanimate things which take place on the 
 earth's surface proceed from heat, which manifests itself, 
 either under the form of fire which burns, or under the form 
 of thunder, or under the form of wind ; but the thunder is 
 fire hidden in the cloud, and rises with it into the air; 
 
 * " Palingdn^sie Philosophique," vol. ii. pp. 427 and following.
 
 120 THE LA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 — fire -whicli burns is, before it manifests itself, shut up in 
 tlie vegetable matters Avhich supply it with aliment ; wind is 
 produced Avhen the air is stirred by heat, which rarefies it or 
 condenses it on its withdrawal. 
 
 " Yegetables, in their turn, derive their combustibility from 
 the sun, Avhich makes them grow, by storing up his heat in 
 them, and the air is warmed by the rays of the sun, the same 
 rays Avhich reduced the terrestrial waters to invisible vapours, 
 and then to thunder-bearing clouds. The clouds spread the 
 rain, make the rivers, feed the sea which the agitated winds 
 trouble. Thus all this mobility which animates nature 
 around i;s is the work of heat, and heat proceeds from the 
 sun, which is at the same time " the celestial traveller," and 
 the universal motor. 
 
 " Life also seemed to them to be closely allied to the idea 
 of fire. The grand phenomenon of the accumulation of solar 
 heat in plants, a phenomenon Avdiich science has since eluci- 
 dated, was early perceived by the ancients. It is frequently 
 l^ointed out in the Yeddas in expressive terms. When the}'- 
 lighted the wood on the hearth they knew that they only 
 ' forced ' it to give out the fire which it had received from the 
 sun. "When their attention was directed to animals, the close 
 bond which exists between heat and life, struck them in all 
 its force; heat maintains life, they found no living animals in 
 whom Avas life without heat ; on the contrary, they saw that 
 vital energy disjilayed itself in the proportion in which the 
 animals shared in heat, and diminished in the same propor- 
 tion. Life exists and perpetuates itself on the earth on three 
 conditions only, that fire should penetrate the body under its 
 three forms, of Avhich one resides in the sun's rays, one in the 
 ignited aliments, and the third in respiration, which is air 
 renewed by motion. Now these two latter proceed, each after 
 its own fashion, from the sun (surya) ; his celestial force is
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 151 
 
 the uinversal motor, and the father of life : that which he first 
 engendered, is the fire here below (agui) born of his rays, and 
 his second eternal co-operator is air put in motion, which is 
 also called wind, or spirit (vayu)."'^ 
 
 The Avorship of the sun still exists among all the negro 
 tribes which inhabit the interior of Africa ; it may even be 
 said that it is the only religion of the African tribes, and this 
 religion has existed among them iu all times. 
 
 The ancient inhabitants of the new world had no other 
 worship than that of the sun. This fact is established by the 
 historical archives of the Indian races which we possess; such 
 as the Aztecs or ancient inhabitants of Mexico, and the Incas 
 or ancient Peruvians. Manco Capac, who subjugated Peru, 
 and imposed his own laws upon the country, passed for the 
 son of the sun. 
 
 Did not all tliese primitive people, whose customs extend 
 baciv t^ th,e origin of humanity, when they rendered religious^, 
 homage to the sun, obey a mysterious intuition, a secret voice 
 of nature 1 However that maj' be, it is very remarkable that 
 the religious conce2:)tions of the most ancient jieople should be 
 ill oUch complete harmony with the most recent and most 
 authoritative duductions of modern science. 
 
 * " Eevue d<s Deux Mondcs," 15th April, 1808.
 
 CHAPTEE THE TENTH. 
 
 WHAT AnE THE EELATIOXS WHICH SUBSIST BETWEEN US, AND 
 SUPERHUMAN BEINGS 1 
 
 'AYIXG clraAvn a picture of the transmigrations 
 of souls which, having belonged to men, attain, 
 according to our helief, to the sublime dwelling- 
 place of the solar spaces, we will now return to 
 the superhuman being, and endeavour to find out whether 
 that being, who immediately succeeds to man, who is a 
 resuscitated man, incarnate in a new body, and living in the 
 plains of ether, can place himself in relation with the inhabi- 
 tants of the earth, notwithstanding the immense space which 
 divides them. We have already endeavoured (eh. iv.) to 
 discern the attributes of the superhuman being. Considering 
 the number and extent of the faculties with which we believe 
 him to be endowed, w^e cannot hesitate to accord to this 
 mighty creature the power of communicating with our earth, 
 and of exerting a certain influence there. 
 
 Eut how and by Avhat means can such a communication be 
 established 1 "What is the agency whose existence we must 
 presuppose, in order that beings floating in the ethereal 
 spaces can produce an impression here below 1 What tran-
 
 THE BA Y AFTER DEATH. 123 
 
 scendent system of electric telegraphy does the superhuman 
 being employ? On this point we are absolutely ignorant, but 
 the fact that communication does exist between these beings 
 and our globe appears to its to be certain ; a conviction which 
 we base upon the following grounds. 
 
 First, let us address ourselves to the popular feeling. As 
 we have already said, we are not afraid of invoking vulgar 
 prejudices and opinions, because they are almost always the 
 expression of some great moral truth. Observations re- 
 peated thousands of times, traditions transmitted from genera- 
 tion to generation, and which have resisted the control of 
 time, without being either altered or destroyed, cannot de- 
 ceive. Only, when the people amidst whom this tradition 
 has been formulated and preserved, are unenlightened, they 
 translate their observations into a coarse form. 
 VLet us inquire into the origin of those ghosts in which 
 many civilized people firmly believe ! Take away the 
 absurd white sheet, and the human form with which the 
 simple superstition of the peasantry invest them, and you 
 will find in ghosts the idea of communication between the 
 souls of the dead and the living, you will find the thought 
 which we are endeavouring to put before you in a scientific 
 form. 
 
 This popular notion about ghosts has extended to persons 
 who appear to be educated and enlightened, but who are, in 
 reality, as ignorant in matters of philosophy as the simple 
 peasants, and who are, in addition, addicted to mysticism, 
 which obscures their reason. We allude to sinrituallsis.
 
 124 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 The term sjnritualists is applied to the partisans of a new 
 superstition which sprang up in America and Europe in 1855, 
 as a result of the moral malady of talle-iurning. These good 
 people imagine that they can, by their will, and according to 
 their fancy, cause the souls of the dead, of great men, or of 
 their own relatives and friends, to descend to the earth. 
 They evoke the soul of Socrates or Confucius, as easily as 
 that of a defunct relative, and they are so simple as to ima- 
 gine that these souls come at their call to converse with them. 
 A person who is called a medium is the intermediary between 
 the invokcr and the soul invoked. The medium, under the 
 influence of an unconscious and habitual hallucination, writes 
 down on paper all the answers made by the spirit, or rather 
 he writes down everything that comes into his own foolish 
 head, imagining himself to be faithfully transmitting mes- 
 sages from the other world. The peoj)le who listen to him 
 take these things, which are simj^ly the thoughts of the igno- 
 rant medium, for revelations from beyond the tomb. 
 
 In spiritualism there exists only one true and rational 
 idea ; it is the possibility of man's placing himself in relation 
 Avith the souls of the dead ; but the coarse means resorted to 
 by the partisans of this mystic doctrine, cause every enlight- 
 ened and educated man to repudiate any fellowship with 
 them. We merely mention spiritualism in this place as a 
 vulgar and foolish phase of the popular belief in ghosts. It 
 has higher pretensions, but science and reason alike forbid us 
 to admit them. 
 
 The fact of communication between superhuman being's 
 
 .*••
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TIF. 125 
 
 and the dwellers upon the earth being, it seems to us, proved, 
 ■we shall now consider how those superhuman beings and 
 men who live on the earth or on the other planets may be 
 brought into relation with each other. It appears to us that 
 this communication is chiedy in action during sleep, and 
 through the medium of dreams. Sleep, that curious and ill- 
 explained state, is the condition of our being during which a 
 portion of our physiological functions, those which establish 
 our connection with the external world, are abolished, while 
 the soul preserves a part of its activity. In this condition, the 
 body being seized by a kind of death, the soul, on the con- 
 trary, continues to act, to feel, and to manifest itself by the 
 phemonena of dreams. jS'ow, in the superhuman being, the 
 spiritual portion, the soul, dominates immensely over the 
 material portion. The superhuman being is, so to speak, aU. 
 intelligence. Man, when he is in the condition of sleep and 
 dreaming, approaches nearer to the superhuman being than 
 when he is in a Avaking state ; there is, then, more resem- 
 blance, more natural affinity between them. Consequently 
 communications can be more easily established between these 
 two beings who are drawn together by analogy of condition. 
 There is a saying, the result of repeated observation, which 
 is logical and true. It is, the night hrings counsel. Is not 
 this as much as to say that it is duriug the night we receive 
 the secret communications and the solitary advice of those 
 beloved invisible beings who watch over us, and inspire us 
 with their supreme wisdom"? It is certain that when we 
 have to make a decision, to unravel a thought, it often hap- 
 
 ^
 
 126 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 pens that we fall asleep in the midst of perplexity and uncer- 
 tainty, and that the next day we awake, having taken our 
 decision, unravelled our thought, which explains the phrase, 
 the night brings counsel. Ancient times, and the middle ages, 
 accorded an extraordinary importance to dreams. They were 
 considered to be sent by God, as His warnings, hence the 
 importance attached to their interpretation. " Daring sleep," 
 says Tertullian, " the honours which await men are revealed 
 to us ; during sleep, remedies are indicated, thefts revealed, 
 treasures discovered."* 
 
 Visions played a great part among Christians in mediaeval 
 times. It was during sleep that saints, inspired persons, and 
 devotees received communications of an extraordinary order. 
 "We are far from believing that it is during sleep and dreams 
 only that we can feel the presence and the influence of super- 
 human beings. There are few persons who have not felt, 
 while waking, an unaccountable influence of this kind. We 
 feel a soft, gentle impression, a sort of vague, mysterious 
 push, which excites a spontaneous resolution, a sudden inspi- 
 ration, an unhoped-for suggestion. 
 
 We must observe that all men are not recipients of these 
 mysterious impressions. The superhuman being cannot mani- 
 fest himself except to those whom he loves, and who remem- 
 ber him ; to those whom he Avishes to protect against the 
 dangers and difficulties of this terrestrial life. A father, or a 
 mother, snatched away from filial love by death, comes to 
 speak to the soul which remains and mourns here below. A 
 * " Liber de anima," eh. xlvi
 
 TEE DAY AFTER DEATH. 127 
 
 son, torn in tlie dawn of life from the tenderness of liis 
 parents, comes to console them for his loss, to enlighten them | 
 with his advice, to furnish them, by the inspiration of his , 
 lofty wisdom, with the means of sustaining all the trials of ' 
 this lower life. Two friends are united, despite the harrier 
 of the tomb. Two lovers, whom death has sundered, are 
 again brought together. An adored wife, taken by death 
 from her husband, reveals herself to his heart. Then all 
 those sentiments of mutual affection which subsisted betweau 
 them spring up again ; death, which has appeared to sever tlw 
 ties between these souls, does no more than veil them from 
 the eyes of strangers. Death is conquered ; the phantom is 
 laid low, and we may cry with the prophet in the Scripture, 
 " Oh, Death ! where is thy sting 1 Oh, Grave, where is thy 
 victory ?" 
 
 In order to receive these communications, a man must pos- 
 sess' "a pure, and noble mind, and he must have preserved the 
 cultus of those whom he has lost. A mother who has been 
 indifferent to her child during his life, or has forgotten him 
 after his death, cannot expect to receive secret manifestations 
 from him for whom she has felt but little tenderness. The 
 friend from whose heart the image of the friend removed by 
 death has been effaced, must renounce such priceless mani- 
 festations. The man who is abandoned to low and vicious 
 instincts and perverse inclinations, must not flatter himself, 
 however faithfully he may have preserved the memory of the 
 dead, that these messages shall come to him. A pure and noble 
 creature only can communicate Avitli these privileged beings.
 
 128 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 There exists in our hearts a moral force which no philoso- 
 phy has been able to explain, which no science has been 
 able to analyze, "which is called conscience. Conscience is a 
 sacred light burning within u.?, which nothing can obstruct, 
 obscure, or extinguish, and which has the power of giving us 
 sure and certain enlightenment on every occasion in our 
 lives. Conscience is infallible. Xothwithstanding everything, 
 in spite of our real or apparent interest, at all times, and in 
 all places, speaking to the great and the small alilce, to the 
 powerful and to the weak, it always teaches to discern good 
 from evil, the honest from the dishonest way. In our belief, 
 conscience is the impression transmitted to us by a beloved 
 being, snatched from us by death. It is a relative, a friend, 
 Avho has left the earth, and Avho deigns to reveal himself to 
 us, that he may guide us in our actions, trace out the path of 
 safety for us, and labour for our good. CoAvardly, perverse, 
 base, and lying men exist, of whom we say that the^J have no 
 conscience. They do not know how to distinguish good from 
 evil ; they are entirely wanting in moral sense. It is be- 
 cause they have never loved any one, and their souls, base 
 and vile, are not worthy to be visited by any of those superior 
 beings, who only manifest themselves to men who resemble 
 them, or who have loved them. A man ivithoiit a conscience 
 is, then, one who is rendered unworthy, by the vicious essence 
 of his soul, of the lofty counsels and the protection of those 
 who are no more. 
 
 Our readers wUl have perceived that this idea of a supreme 
 and invisible protector of man, who guides his heart, and 
 
 \
 
 THE DA Y AFTER LEA TIL 129 
 
 enlightens his reason, has ah-eady been formulated by the 
 Christian religion, Avhich has derived it from Holy Scripture. 
 It is the Guardian Angel, a mysterious and poetic type, a 
 seraphic creature, whom God has charged to watch over the 
 Christian, to guard him against snares, and constantly to 
 direct him to the ways of sanctity and virtue. We observe 
 this argument without having sought it. In short, we register 
 our ideas as they deduce themselves logically from each 
 other, without any bias. And when we find ourselves led 
 into agreement with a dogma of the Christian religion, we 
 note that concord with pleasure. 
 
 We would ask those persons who have read these pages to 
 question themselves, to summon up their recollections, to 
 reflect upon what has passed around them, and we are con- 
 vinced that they will discover many fticts in harmony with 
 what we advance. The moral phenemenon of the impres- 
 sions-made by the dead on the mind of the living who have 
 loved them, and who keep up the cultus of their memory, is 
 one of those truths which every one holds by intuition, and 
 Avhose entire verity he acknowledges when he finds it curtly 
 formulated and put forward. We will not give our' readers 
 second-hand information by invoking facts of this kind which 
 they may know ; we can only recall a few which came under 
 our observation, briefly, as follows : 
 
 One of our friends, an Italian Count, B , lost his 
 
 mother nearly forty years ago. He has assured us that he 
 has been in communication with her every day since, without 
 intermission. He adds that he owes the wise ordering of his 
 
 9
 
 130 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 life, his labours, his career, and the good fortune which has 
 always accompanied his enterprizes, to the constant influence 
 and secret counsels of his mother. 
 
 Dr. V , a professed materialist, one who, according to 
 
 the popular phrase, believes in nothing, believes, nevertheless, 
 
 in his mother. Like Count B , he lost her early, and 
 
 has never ceased to feel her presence. He told us that he is 
 more frequently with his dead mother, than he used to be 
 when she was living. This professed apostle of medical 
 materialism has, without being aware of it, conversations with 
 an emancipated soul. 
 
 A celebrated journalist, M. E , lost a son, twenty 
 
 years of age, a charming, gentle youth, a writer, and a poet. 
 
 Every day M. R has an intimate conversation with this 
 
 son. A quarter of an hour of solitary recollection admits him 
 to direct communication with the beloved being snatched 
 away from his love. 
 
 M. L , a barrister, maintains constant relations with a 
 
 sister who, when living, possessed, according to him, every 
 human perfection, and who never fails to guide her brother 
 in every difficulty of his life, great or small. 
 
 Another consideration suggests itself in support of the idea 
 which occupies us at present. It has been remarked that 
 artists, writers, and thinkers, after the loss of one beloved, have 
 found their faculties, talents, and inspirations increased. We 
 might surmise that the intellectual faculties of those whom they 
 have loved have been added to their own. I know a financier 
 who is remarkable for his business capacities. Wlien he finds
 
 THE BAY AFTER DEATH. 131 
 
 Liraself in a difficulty, he stops, without troubling himself to 
 seek for its solution. He waits, knowing that the missing idea 
 will come to him spontaneously, and, sometimes after days, 
 sometimes after hours, the idea comes, just as he has expected. 
 This happy and successful man has experienced one of the 
 deepest sorrows the heart can know ; he has lost an only son, 
 aged eighteen years, and endowed with all the qualities of 
 maturity, combined with the graces of youth. Our readers 
 may draw the conclusion for themselves. 
 
 This last example may instruct us concerning a peculiarity 
 of the superior manifestations which we are studying. We 
 have just said that sometimes a certain time, some days for 
 instance, are required for the production of the manifestations. 
 The cause of this is that the superhuman being, to whom they 
 are due, has much difficulty in putting himself in relation 
 with the inhabitants of our globe. There are many beings 
 on the" earth whom he loves, and whom he would fain pro- 
 tect, and he cannot be in two different places at the same 
 time. "We may even suppose that the difficulties which 
 human beings feel in putting themselves in relation with us, 
 added to the spectacle of the sufferings and misfortunes which 
 overwhelm their friends here below, are the causes of the 
 only sorrows which trouble their existence, so marvellously 
 happy in other respects. Absolute happiness exists nowhere 
 in the world, and destiny has the power to let fall one drop 
 of gall into the cup of happiness quaffed by the dwellers in 
 ether, in their celestial abode. 
 
 Persons who receive communications from the dead have 
 
 9—2
 
 132 THE DA 7 AFTER DEATH. 
 
 remarked that these communications sometimes cease quite 
 suddenly. A celebrated actress, now retired from the stage, 
 had manifest communications with a person whom she had 
 lost by a tragical death. These communications abruptly 
 ceased. The soul of the dead friend whom she mourned 
 warned her that their intercourse was about to cease. The 
 assigned reason serves to explain why such relation cannot 
 be continuously maintained. The superhuman being who 
 was in relations with the terrestrial person had already risen 
 in rank in the celestial hierarchy, he had accomplished a new 
 metamorphosis, and he could no longer correspond with the 
 earth. 
 
 Among the French peasantry communication with the 
 dead is a general habit. In the country death does not in- 
 volve the lugubrious ideas which accompany it among the 
 dwellers in cities. People love and cultivate the memory of 
 those whom they have loved, they hold as most happy those 
 whom the favour of Providence has early removed from the 
 misfortunes, the failures, the bitterness of terrestrial life, they 
 call on them, they confide in them, and the dead, grateful for 
 this pious memory of them, respond to the simple prayers of 
 these hearts. AU the Orientals have that serene aspiration 
 towards death wliich in Europe exists exclusively among 
 country people. The Mussulmans love to invoke death, to 
 spread the idea of death everywhere. Every one knows the 
 melancholy proverb of the Arabs. " It is better to be seated 
 than standing ; it is better to be lying down than seated ; it is 
 better to be dead than living."
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 133 
 
 Tlie preceding chapter terminated witli a quotation from 
 Charles Bonnet, the first of the naturalists who discerned the 
 doctrine of the plurality of existences above the globe. We 
 shall terminate this chapter with a quotation from another 
 naturalist philosopher, a contemporary of Charles Bonnet, who 
 defended that doctrine very cleverly. Dupont de i^emours, 
 in his Philosophie de V Univers, expresses himself thus, on the 
 subject of the communications which may be established be- 
 tween us, and the superior beings, invisible inhabitants of 
 other worlds, whom he calls angels, or genii. 
 
 " Why," said Dupont, " have we no evident knowledge of 
 these beings, the necessity, convenience, and analogy of whom 
 strike our reflective faculties which only can indicate them I 
 of those beings who must surpass us in perfections, in facul- 
 ties, in power, as much as we surpass the lower animals and 
 the plants 1 — who must have a hierarchy as various, as finely 
 graduated as that which we admire among the living and in- 
 telligent beings over which we dominate, and which are subordi- 
 nate to us % — several others of whom may be our companions on 
 earth, as we are of animals which, destitute of sight, hearing, 
 and the sense of smell, of hands and of feet, do not know 
 what we are even when we are doing them good, or harm % — 
 some of whom are perhaps travelling from globe to globe, or, 
 more excellent still, from one solar system to another, more 
 easily than we go from Brest to Madagascar ? 
 
 *' It is because we have neither such organs or such senses 
 as would be necessary to enable our intelligence to communi- 
 cate with them. 
 
 " Thus do the worlds embrace the worlds, and thus are 
 classified intelligent beings all composed of matter which God 
 has more or less ricldy organized and vivified.
 
 134 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 " Such is the probability, and, speaking to vigorous minds 
 which do not shrinlc from novel suggestions, I will dare to say 
 that such is the truth. 
 
 " Man is capable of calculating that it is frequently for his 
 own interest to be useful to other species ; and, which is more 
 valuable, more moral, and more amiable, he is capable of 
 rendering them services for his own satisfaction, and with- 
 out any other motive than the pleasure which it affords him 
 to do so. 
 
 " That which we do for our lower brethren, we, whose in- 
 telligence is circumscribed, and whose goodness is very limited, 
 the genii, the angels, — permit me to employ terms in general 
 use to designate beings whom I only divine but do not know, — 
 these beings who are so much more worthy than we, ought to 
 do, and doubtless do, the same for us, with much more bene- 
 ficence, frequency, and extent on all occasions which concern 
 them, 
 
 " "We know perfectly well that these intelligences exist, and 
 it is of little importance to us whether they are, as some per- 
 sons think, formed of a sort of matter, composed of mixed 
 material, or not. Their quota of intelligence is very brilhant, 
 very remarkable, and evident ; in strong contrast with the 
 properties of inanimate nature, which can be measured, 
 weighed, calculated, and analyzed. 
 
 " In order to comprehend what is the action of superhuman 
 intelligences, who can only be known to us by induction, 
 reason, and comparison between what we ourselves are to 
 even the most intelligent animals, which are efficiently 
 served by us, but have not the smallest idea of us, we must 
 pursue analogy farther. These intelligences are above us, and 
 out of the reach of our senses only because they are endowed 
 with a greater number of senses, and with a more developed
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 135 
 
 and more active life. These beings are more worthy than we 
 are, they have many more organs and faculties, they must there- 
 fore, in employing their disposable faculties according to their 
 ■will, just as we employ ours according to our will, be able to 
 dispose, to work, to manoeuvre all inanimate matter, and to 
 do all this among themselves, and also with respect to intel- 
 ligent beings who are their inferiors, with much more energy, 
 rapidity, enlightenment, and wisdom than we possess, we 
 who nevertheless do it for the beasts subordinate to us. It 
 is, then, in harmony with the laws and the ways of 
 nature that the superior intelligences should have power to 
 render us, when it pleases them, most important services of 
 which we are quite ignorant. 
 
 " These unknown protectors who observe us, unperceived, 
 have not our imperfections, and must prize all that is good and 
 beautiful in itself more highly than we can. 
 
 " We cannot, therefore, hope to please intelligences of a su- 
 perior grade by actions which men themselves would condemn 
 as odious. We cannot flatter ourselves with a hope of deceiv- 
 ing them, as we may deceive men, by exterior hypocrisy which 
 only renders crime more despicable. They can behold our 
 most secret actions, they can overhear our soliloquies, they 
 can penetrate our unspoken thoughts. We know not in how 
 many ways they can read what is passing in our hearts, we, 
 Avhose coarseness, poverty, and uuskilfulness limit our means 
 of knowing to touch, sight, hearing, and sometimes analysis 
 and conjecture. 
 
 " A celebrated Eoman wished to have a house built, which 
 should be open to the sight of the citizens. This house exists, 
 and we inhabit it. Our neighbours are the chiefs and the 
 magistrates of the great republic, who are invested with 
 ri"ht and power to punish even our intentions, Aviiich are
 
 1 36 THE DA Y A FTER DEA TH. 
 
 no mystery to tliem. And those who most completely pene- 
 trate them in their smallest variations, in their lightest inflec- 
 tions, are the most powerful and the most wise. 
 
 " Let us then try, in so far as it depends on us, to keep 
 in accord with those in comparison with whom we are so 
 small, and, above all, let us understand ovir littleness. If it 
 be very important to us to admit to our complete friendship, 
 to our entire confidence, to our constant society, none but 
 men of the first rank of mind and character — if the sweet 
 competition of affection, zeal, goodness, and capacity which 
 is always going on between them and us, contributes to our 
 improvement every day, what shall we not gain by giving 
 them adjuncts, so to speak, higher and more perfect, who are 
 not subject, either to our ignoble interests, our passions, or our 
 errors, and before whom we cannot but blush. They do not 
 vary, they do not abandon us, they never go away, so soon 
 as we are alone we find them. They accompany us in travel, 
 in exile, in prison, in a dungeon ; they are always floating 
 above the peaceful and reflecting brain. 
 
 " We can qviestion them, and every time we do so, we may 
 be sure that they reply. Why should they not do so ? Our 
 absent friends render us such service, but only those of their 
 number who inspire us with great respect. We can even 
 experience something of the kind with regard to an imaginary 
 personage, if he presents himself to our minds as uniting 
 several good and heroic qualities. How often, in difficult 
 circumstances and in the midst of the strife of different pas- 
 sages, I have asked myself, — In this case, what would Charles 
 Grandison have done 1 What would Quesnay have thought ? 
 What would Turgot have approved of? What advice would 
 Lavoisier have given me 1 How shall I gain the approval of 
 the angels ? What line of action will be most conformable 
 to the order, the laws and the beneficent views of the wise
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 137 
 
 and majestic King of the universal For the homage, the 
 aspirations of a soul eager to do good, and careful to avoid 
 debasement, may also be raised to God, in salutary and pious 
 invocation." * 
 
 • Pezzani ; " Pltiralite dts Existences de Vame^'' pp. 206-210.
 
 CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH. 
 
 WHAT 18 AN ANIMAL.? THE SOULS OP ANIMALS. — MIGRATIONS 
 
 OF SOULS THROUGH THE BODIES OP ANIMALS. 
 
 -4^^ ITHEETO we have left animals out of our plan, 
 
 i lV -^ although, owing to their immense number, and 
 
 M P^ 2. their influence upon the places -which they in- 
 
 habit, they play a highly important part in the 
 
 world. It is now time to define the place in nature which 
 
 our system assigns to them. 
 
 Have animals souls 1 Yes, in our belief, animals have souls ; 
 but among animals of all classes the soul is far from being 
 endowed with an equal degree of activity. The activity of the 
 soul is different in the crocodile and in the dog, in the eagle 
 and in the grasshopper. In inferior animals, zoophytes and 
 mollusca, the soul exists only in the condition of a germ. 
 This germ develops itself, and becomes amplified according 
 to the elevation of animals in the series of organic perfection. 
 The sponge and the coral are zoophytes (animal plants). In 
 these beings, the characteristics of animality, although they 
 exist very positively, are obscure and hardly discernible. 
 Voluntary motion, which is the distinctive characteristic for- 
 merly demanded for animals, is wanting in them ; they are 
 motionless, like the plants. Nevertheless, their nutrition is
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 139 
 
 the same as that of animals, therefore they belong to the animal 
 world. We cannot, however, grant to them a complete soul. 
 but only the germ, the originating point of a soul. Among 
 moUusca (such, as marine and land shells, the oyster, the 
 snail, &c.), the motions and the conduct of life are dictated by 
 the will, and that suffices, in our belief, to reveal their pos- 
 session of a soul, imperfect and very elementary, but certainly 
 existent. Among articulated animals, the insects especially, 
 will, sensibility, acts which denote reason, deliberation, and 
 action resulting from deliberation, are numerous, and recurrent 
 at every moment. They denote intelligence already active. 
 
 The smallness of the bodies of these animals is not an argu- 
 ment to be used against the fact of their intelligence. In 
 nature nothing is great, and nothing is little ; the monstrous 
 whale and the invisible gnat are equal in the presence of its 
 laws ; both one and the other have received as their inherit- 
 ance the degree of intelligence which is suitable to its need, 
 and it is not by the scale of grandeur that we must measure 
 the degrees of mind among living creatures. Every one is 
 familiar with the prodigies of intelligence performed by asso- 
 ciated bees, and by the ants, in their camps and hills. The 
 habits of these two species of insects, which have been studied 
 and expounded only in our age, fill us with wonder, ahnost 
 with awe. But the bees and the ants do not constitute an 
 exception among the insect class. It is very probable that in 
 the entire class intelhgence exists to the same degree as in 
 bees and ants, for we do not see why two species of hymenop- 
 terous insects should exclusively possess this privilege, to the
 
 UO THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 ~- . — — _ . . 
 
 exclusion of other species of the same order, and all the other 
 orders of the insect class. The fact is, that the bee has been 
 studied profoundly, because that insect is an object of agri- 
 cultural industry, and that, in consequence, it was for man's 
 interest to understand its customs. This accounts for the 
 successful surmountiuEC of the difficulties attendant on the 
 study of bees. 
 
 We may add, that the observer to whom our knowledge of 
 bees is due, Pierre Huber, of Geneva, who published his fine 
 works at the end of the last century, was blind, and that he 
 was obliged to have recourse for all his observations to the 
 eyes of an illiterate servant, Frangois Burnens, which is a 
 proof that this kind of study was not inordinately difficult. 
 
 The habits of other species of insects, still unknown to us, 
 must, according to this, conceal marvels quite as great as those 
 which the Hubers have revealed in the case of bees and ants. 
 
 Let us conclude that insects have souls, since intelligence 
 is a faculty of the soul. 
 
 We may apply the same reasoning to fishes, reptiles, and 
 birds. In these three classes of animals intelligence progresses 
 towards perfection, the faculty of reason is manifest, and the 
 degree of intelligence seems to march at a progressive rate 
 from the fish to the reptUe, and from the reptile to the bird. 
 
 In mammiferous animals we observe a degree of advance in 
 intelligence upon the classes of animals we have just named. 
 But, ought we to calculate the degree of intelligence of the diffe- 
 rent mamraifers according to the order in which naturalists have 
 classed these animals ? Ought we to say that the strength of
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 141 
 
 intelligence increases as we follow the zoological distribution 
 of Cuvier, that is to say, that it rises from cetacea to carnivora, 
 from carnivora to pachyderms, and from pachyderms to rumi- 
 nants, &c. 1 !N"o, evidently not. 
 
 It would be absurd to apportion the intellect of animals to 
 the place which they occupy in zoological classification. AVe 
 do not possess any certain method by which to form such an 
 appreciation in detail. We remain within the terms of a very 
 acceptable philosophical thesis in advancing our belief, in a 
 general manner, that the intellectual faculties of animals aug- 
 ment from the mollusk to the mammifer, following almost 
 exactly the progressive scale of zoological classification, but to 
 enter into the peculiarities of these orders would be to expose 
 ourselves to certain contradiction. In zoophytes the soul 
 exists as a germ ; this germ develops itself and grows in 
 mollusca, and then in articulated creatures and fishes. The 
 soul aicquires certain faculties, more or less obscure and dim, 
 when it enters the body of a reptile, and these faculties are 
 manifestly augmented in the body of a bird. The soul is 
 provided with far more perfected faculties when it reaches the 
 body of a mammifer. Such is the general outline of our 
 system. 
 
 Let us now follow this system out to the end. In the first 
 pages of this book, we have advanced our theory that the soul 
 of man, at the close of its terrestrial existence, passes into the 
 planetary ether, where it is lodged in the body of a new being, 
 superior to man in intelligence and morality. If this theory 
 be correct, if this migration of the soul of man into the bod v
 
 142 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 
 
 of the superhuman being be real, analogy obliges us to estab- 
 lish the same relation between the animals, and then between 
 the animals and man. 
 
 We firmly believe that a transmigration, a transmission of 
 souls, or of the germs of souls, throughout the entire series of 
 the classes of animals takes place. The germ of a conscious 
 soul which existed in the zoojDhyte and the mollusk passes, 
 on the death of those beings, into the body of an articulated 
 animal. In this first stage of its journey, the animate germ 
 strengthens and ameliorates itself. The nascent soul ac€[uires 
 >?ome rudimentary faculties. When this rudiment of a con- 
 scious soul passes out of the body of an articulated animal 
 into that of a fish or a reptile, it imdergoes a new degree of 
 elaboration, and its power increases. When, escaping from 
 the body of the reptUe or the fish, it is lodged in the form of 
 the bird it receives other impressions, which become the 
 origin of new perfections. The bird transmits the spiritual 
 element, already much modified and aggrandized, to the 
 mammifer, and then, the soul, having again gained power, and 
 the number of its faculties being augmented, passes into the 
 body of man. 
 
 It is probable that in the case of the inferior animals many 
 animate germs are united to form the superior being. For 
 instance, the principal animators of a certain number of little 
 zoophytes, of those beings who live in the waters by roillions, 
 may, probably, on quitting the bodies of those beings, be 
 united in one in order to form the soul of a single individual 
 of a superior order.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 143 
 
 It would be impossible to specify from what particular 
 mammifer the soul must escape, in order to i5enetrate a 
 humfin organism. It would be impossible to decide whether, 
 before reaching man the soul has successively traversed the 
 bodies of several mammifers, of more or less complicated 
 organism ; if it has passed through the body of a cetacian, 
 then of a carnivorous creature, then of a quadrumiue, the last 
 term of the animal series. A pretension to detail would be a 
 stumbling block to such a system as ours. 
 
 To maintain, for instance, that our soul is transmitted to 
 us by the quadrumane, would be incorrect. The intellige-ice 
 of the quadrumane is inferior to that of many animals more 
 highly placed than he in the zoological scale. Apes, which 
 compose only one family in the very numerous order of 
 quadrumana, are animals of middling intelligence. They are 
 malicious, cunning and gross, and possess only a few features 
 of the human face, and even these belong to but few species. 
 All the other quadrumanes are bestial in the highest degree. 
 
 It is not, therefore, in the quadrumana that we must look 
 for the soul to be transmitted to man. But there are animals 
 endowed with intelligence which is both powerful and noble, 
 who would have a title to be accredited with such an honour. 
 Those animals would vary according to the inhabited parts oi 
 the earth. In Asia, it may be that the wise, grave, and 
 noble elephant is the depositary of the spiritual princijile 
 which is to pass into man. In Africa, the lion, the rhino- 
 ceros, the numerous ruminants which fiU the forests may, 
 perhaps, be the ancestors of the human race. In America,
 
 144 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 the horse, the wild ranger of the pampas, the dog, the 
 faithful friend, the devoted companion of man, everywhere 
 are, it may be, charged with the elaboration of the spiritual 
 principle, which, transmitted to the child, is destined to 
 develop itself, to increase in that child, and become the 
 human soul. A writer in our time has called the dog a 
 candidate for humanity. He little knew how true his defi- 
 nition is. 
 
 It will be urged, in objection, that man cannot have 
 received the soul of an animal, because he has not the smallest 
 remembrance of such a genealogy. To this we reply that the 
 faculty of memory is wanting in the animal, or is so fugitive 
 that we may consider it nil. The child can therefore receive 
 from the animal only a soul unendowed with memory. And, 
 in fact, the child itself is totally destitute of that faculty. 
 At the moment of his birtli he differs not at all from the 
 animal as regards the faculties of his soul. It is not until 
 twelve months have elapsed that the soul makes itself evident 
 in him, and it is afterwards perfected by education. How, 
 therefore, should the child remember an existence prior to liis 
 birth ] Have we any memory of the time which we passed 
 in our mother's womb ? 
 
 Let us observe here that the progressive order which we 
 have indicated for the migration of soul through the bodies 
 of different animals, is precisely that which nature followed 
 in the first creation of the organized beings which people our 
 globe. It will be seen in ch. xiv., pp. 196 — 200, that plants 
 zoophytes, mollusca, and articulated animals are the first
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 145 
 
 living beings which appeared on our globe. After them came 
 the fishes, and then the reptiles. After the reptiles birds, 
 and at a later period mammifers appeared. Thus our sj'stem 
 responds to the routine which natui-e has followed in the 
 creation of plants and animals. 
 
 Such is the system which we have conceived as explanatory 
 of the part assigned to animals on our globe. The basis of 
 this system, as will be seen, is the intelligence accorded to 
 animals. We entirely repel the generally held opinion, that 
 beasts do not possess intelligence, and that it is replaced by 
 an obscure faculty which is called instinct. But this theory 
 gives no reason, it merely puts a word in the place of an 
 explanation. By a simple phrase people imagine they resolve 
 one of the great problems of nature. The timid and conven- 
 tional philosophy of our time has hitherto accommodated 
 itself to this method of eluding great difficulties, but the 
 moment iiow appears to have come for a deeper study of the 
 problems of nature, and for no longer remaining content with 
 the substitution of words for things. 
 
 There was no hesitation in ancient times about ac .ording 
 intelligence to animals. Aristotle and Plato expressed them- 
 selves quite clearly on this point : they admitted no doubt 
 of the reasoning powers of beasts. The most celebrated 
 modern philosophers, Leibnitz, Locke, and Montaigne ; the 
 most eminent naturalists, Charles Bonnet, Georges Leroy, 
 Dupont de Nemours, Swammerdam, E^aumur, &c., granted 
 intelligence to animals. Charles Bonnet understood the 
 language of many animals, and Dupont de IS'emours has 
 
 10
 
 1 46 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. 
 
 given us a translation oC tlie " Chansons du Rossignol " and 
 the ^' Didionnaire de la Langue des Corhaux." It is, therefore, 
 difficult to understand how a contrary thesis became prevalent 
 in this age, how Descartes and Buffon, the declared adversaries 
 of animal intelligence, have succeeded in turning the scale in 
 favour of their ideas, 
 
 Descartes regarded animals purely as machines, as automata 
 provided with mechanical apparatus. It would be difficult 
 to surpass our great philosopher in absurdity when he treats 
 of these animal machines.* Equidem bonus dormitat Descartes. 
 The systematic errors of Buffon on the same subject are well 
 known. 
 
 The partizans of Descartes and of Buffon have popularized 
 the idea of instinct put in the place of intelligence, of the word 
 replacing the thing. But, in simple truth, what difference is 
 there between intelligence and instinct 1 Kone. These two 
 words only represent two different degrees of the same faculty. 
 Instinct is simply a weaker degree of intelhgence. If we read 
 the writings of naturalists of this country who have studied 
 the question, Frederick Cuvier (brother to George Cuvier), 
 and Flourens,t who has but commented upon Frederick 
 Cuvier's book on the more profound work of a learned con- 
 temporary writer, M. F6e of Strasbourg,^ we shall easily find 
 that no fundamental distinction between intelligence and 
 
 * This question is specially considered in Descartes' " Discours 
 sur la Methode." 
 
 t " J)e V Instinct et de T Intelligence des Animmtx,^^ Paris, 1861. 
 
 X " Etudes Philosophiques sur V Instinct et V Intelligence des 
 AnimauXy^ Strasbourg, 1853.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 147 
 
 instinct can be established, and that the whole secret of our 
 philosophers and naturalists consists in calling the intelligence 
 of animals, which is weaker than ours, instincf. 
 
 It is, then, the pride of mankind which has attempted to 
 place a barrier, which in reality has no existence, between us 
 and the animal. The intelligence of the animal is less de- 
 veloped than that of the man, because his wants are fewer, 
 his organs are less higlily finished, and because the sphere of 
 his activity is more limited, but that is all. And sometimes, 
 even, we must not forget that the animal exceeds the man in 
 intelligence. Look at the rude and brutal waggoner, beside 
 his good and docile horse, which he mercilessly beats and 
 abuses, while his faithful auxiliary fulfils his task with patient 
 exactness, and say, is it not the master who is the brute, and 
 the animal who is the intelligent being ? In kindness — that 
 sweet emanation of the soul — animals often excel men. Every 
 one knows the horrid story of the man who carried his dog 
 to a river to drown him, but who fell into the water himself, 
 and was on the point of drowning. The faithful companion 
 whom he had flung in to die was there; he swam to his 
 master, and dragged him into safety. Then the dog's master, 
 making his footing sure this time, seized the creature who had 
 just rescued him, and drowned him. 
 
 According to our system, the human soul comes from an 
 animal belonging to the superior orders. After having under- 
 gone, in the body of this animal, a suitable degree of perfect- 
 ing and elaboration, it incarnates itself in the body of a newly- 
 born child of the human race. 
 
 10—2
 
 148 THE DAT AFTER DEATH. 
 
 We said, in a former chapter, " Death is not a termination, 
 "but a change ; we do not die, we experience a metamorphosis." 
 "We must add to this, " Birth is not a beginning, it is a con- 
 sequence. To be born is not to begin, it is to continue a 
 prior existence." 
 
 There is not, therefore, properly speaking, either birth or 
 death for the human species ; there is only a continuous suc- 
 cession of existences, extending from the visible world through 
 space, and connecting each with those worlds which are 
 hidden from our view.
 
 CHAPTER THE TWELFTH. 
 
 WHAT TS THE PLANT? — THE PLANT IS SENSIBLE. — HOW DIFFI- 
 CULT IT IS TO DISTINGUISH PLANTS FROM ANIMALS. — THE 
 GENERAL CHAIN OP LIVING BEINGS. 
 
 ' INN-^US has said, "The plant lives ; the ani- 
 mal lives and feels ; man lives, feels, and thinks." 
 This aphorism represented the state of science 
 in the times of Linnseus. Eut since the year 
 1778, that is to say, since the death of the great botanist, 
 Upsal, natural science has progressed, botany and zoology 
 have .been enriched with innumerable facts and fundamental 
 discoveries, so that the Linna?an formula no longer repre- 
 sents the present condition of the sciences of organization. 
 We believe that the folio-wing proposition may be truthfully 
 substituted: "The plant lives and feels; the animal and 
 man live, feel, and think." 
 
 To accord sensibility to plants, is to transgress the classic 
 laws of natural historj'-, so that the considerations and facts 
 which appear to us to justify this proposition ought to bo 
 most carefully stated. 
 
 1. The plant feels the sensations of pleasure and pain. 
 Cold, for instance, impresses it painfully ; it may be seen to 
 contract itself, as if shivering, under the influence of a sudden
 
 .150 THE DAY AFTER DEATU. 
 
 or excessive fall of the temperature. An abnormal excess of 
 temperature evidently causes it to suffer; wlien the heat is 
 very great, leaves may be observed to hang down on the 
 stems, curl up, and appear to wither ; when the cool of the 
 evening comes, the leaves rise up again, and the plant re- 
 sumes it appearance of placid health. Drought also occasions 
 manifest suffering to plants. Those who study nature with 
 loving attention know that when, after a long period of 
 drought, a plant is watered it exhibits signs of pleasure. On 
 the other hand, a wounded plant, one from which a branch 
 has been cut, appears to experience pain. A pathological 
 liquid exudes from the wound, like the blood from a hurt 
 animal ; the plant is sick, and will die, if it do not receive 
 the necessary succour. Thus persons who love plants will 
 not cut flowers off their stems, they prefer to inhale their per- 
 fume, and contemplate their brilliant colours, on the stalk, 
 without inflicting a painful mutilation upon the beautiful 
 creatures which they admire. 
 
 The sensitive plant, if touched by the fingers, or even 
 struck by a current of harsh air, folds up its leaves, and con- 
 tracts itseK. The botanist, Desfontaines, saw a sensitive 
 plant, which he was bringing home in a carriage, contract its 
 leaves while the vehicle was in motion, and expand them 
 when it stopped, thus affording a proof that the movement 
 distressed the plant. A drop of acid, or acrid liquid, placed 
 on a leaf of a sensitive plant, will occasion a similar constric- 
 tion. All vegetables present an analogous phenomenon. 
 Their tissues contract when brought in contact with irritant
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 151 
 
 substances. By ruLbing the tips of a lettuce, the juice may 
 be made to exude. 
 
 Vegetable sensibility exists by tbe same right as animal 
 sensibility, since electricity kills plants as it kills animals, 
 since narcotic poisons kill or stupefy plants as they kill and 
 stupefy animals. One can narcotize a plant by watering it 
 ■with opium dissolved in Avater, and MM. Gopport and 
 Macaire have discovered that hydrocyanic acid lulls plants as 
 rapidly as animals. 
 
 2. Plants sleep at night. During the day they develop 
 their vital activity, and when the night comes, or when they 
 are in darkness, their leaves assume another position, that of 
 repose ; they fold themselves up. In the day-time, the upper 
 surface of the leaf is turned to the sky, and the under surface 
 towards the earth ; this under surface, pierced with holes, or 
 stamata, is the part through which absorption and exhalation 
 take' place, while the upper surface, in which there are no 
 such openings, is only a sort of screen for the protection of 
 the absorbing surface. It is therefore easy to understand 
 that the horizontal attitude of the leaves is a position of vital 
 activity, and that the refolding of those leaves during the 
 night indicates a state of repose. It is precisely the same 
 case with ourselves, when during the night we indulge our 
 muscles, kept on the stretch during the day, with complete 
 relaxation. 
 
 The sleep of plants, said to have been discovered by Lin- 
 naeus, and which was certainly described for the first time in 
 one of Upsal's Theses de Botanique, and thoroughly elucidated
 
 152 TEE BA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 by Linnseus, is not a phenomenon limited to certain families 
 of plants. There are very few vegetables which, during the 
 night, or in darkness, do not fold their leaves, and which do 
 not present a different appearance by day and by night. The 
 Sensitive is the classic plant selected for its exhibition of this 
 phenomenon in all its intensity ; but this small leguminous 
 creature only ^resents us with an exaggeration of a fact 
 which exists in a lesser degree among almost all vegetables 
 with light leaves. We may quote the following passage from 
 a former work on the subject of this phenomenon. 
 
 " The sleep of plants vaguely resembles that of animals. It 
 is a remarkable circumstance that the slumbering leaf appears 
 to wish to return to the epoch of its infancy. It folds itself 
 almost as it was when in the bud, before it burst out, as it 
 was in the lethargic sleep of winter, sheltered beneath its 
 strong scales, or wrajDped up in its warm down. One would 
 think that the plant was trying every night to resume the 
 position which it occupied in its early time, just as the sleep- 
 ing animal gathers himself together, and folds his limbs as 
 they were folded in his mother's womb."* 
 
 Is it possible to deny the possession of sensibility to crea- 
 tures which give us alternate sign of repose and of activity, 
 and who have the power of accommodating themselves to 
 various external impressions'? Fatigue cannot possibly be 
 anything but the consequence of the experience of an im- 
 pression. 
 
 3. Numerous physiological functions are fulfilled by plants 
 as well as by animals ; and when we consider the number and 
 * "Ilisloire des riantes" Paris, p. 111.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 153 
 
 variety of these fauctions, it is difficult to understand how, if 
 animals be, as the common consent of mankind declares them, 
 possessed of sensibility, plants can be destitute of it. An an- 
 cient philosopher defined plants as animals with roots. We shall 
 see, on examining the variety of functions performed by vege- 
 tables, whether this philosopher was not a far-seeing, wise man. 
 
 It would be difficult to name any function^ with which tlie 
 
 J. 
 animal is invested that the vegetable does no possess in a 
 
 less degree. Eesjjiration, for instance, is equally a property 
 of plants and of animals. Among the latter, respiration con- 
 sists in the absorption of the oxygen of the air and the emis- 
 sion of carbonic acid gas and watery vapour; among plants it 
 consists in the emission of carbonic acid gas and watery vapour 
 during the night, and during the day, under the influence of 
 sunlight, of the emission of oxygen proceeding from the de- 
 composition of carbonic acid. The function is evidently of 
 the same nature in both the natural kingdoms. 
 
 Exhalation is a function ctrnmon to vegetables and to ani- 
 mals. By the stomata of leaves, as by the pores of the skiu 
 of animals, watery vapour and various gases, according to the 
 vital phenomena which take place in the interior of the tis- 
 sues, are constantly being disengaged. 
 
 Absorption takes place in both kingdoms. If you pour 
 water on the lower surface of a leaf, you will see that it will 
 be absorbed with great rapidity. Sprinkle a bouquet of 
 flowers with Avater, and the freshness of the withered blossoms 
 will revive. Absorption is even more active in vegetable 
 than in animal tissues.
 
 154 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 The circulation of liquids in the interior of plants is accom- 
 plished by a complicated system of channels and vessels of 
 every order and of every calibre, absorbent vessels, exhalant 
 vessels. 
 
 Nothing is more varied than the disposition of these chan- 
 nels in the interior of plants, and their multiplicity indicates 
 a circulatory function as complicated as that of animals. 
 
 It is then evident that vegetables have the same physiolo- 
 gical functions as animals, but as yet we know those functions 
 very imperfectly. It is very strange that while animal physio- 
 logy is so far advanced in our day, vegetable physiology is 
 almost in its infancy. "We know very well how the digestion 
 of food takes place in man and animals, we know how our 
 blood circulates in a double system of vessels, called arteries 
 and veins, and we know the central organ, the heart, through 
 which the two liquids are carried by this double system. We 
 see and we touch the organs of sensation and motion, that is 
 to say, the nerves. More than this, we distinguish the nerves 
 which produce sensation from those which rule motion. We 
 know that the centre of nervous action in man and animals 
 is double ; that its seat is equally in the brain and in the 
 spinal marrow. 
 
 Briefly, science has shed its brightest light on all the 
 functions belonging to animal organization, while vegetable 
 physiology remains in obscurity. Notwithstanding the 
 labours of naturalists within the last two centuries, we cannot 
 explain the life of plants with certainty. We cannot posi- 
 tively state how the sap, which is vegetable blood, circulates
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 155 
 
 in their channels. We do not even know with precision 
 whether a tree grows from the outside to the inside, or from 
 the inside to the outside. All the physiological functions ic 
 the vegetable kingdom are hidden from us by a thick veil, 
 and it is only by lifting a corner of it with great difficulty 
 that we can catch a few gleams of light through the obscurity. 
 ISTevertheless, all unexplained though they be as yet, physio- 
 logical functions do exist in plants. Considering these 
 numerous functions, it appears entirely impossible that plants 
 should not have received the gift of sensibility. It is difficult 
 to believe, as Linnseus would have us believe, that they pos- 
 sess life, and nothing more. 
 
 "We shall be told that vegetables have no nerves, and that 
 in the absence of every organ of sensation, we cannot accord 
 them the faculty of sensibility. But, we reply, that the im- 
 perfect state of vegetable anatomy and physiology forbids us 
 to come to any conclusion touching the existence or the 
 absence of nerves in plants. We are convinced that these 
 organs exist, but that botanists do not know how to discern 
 them, or have no means of distinguishing between them and 
 other organs. 
 
 4. The manner of multiplication and reproduction among 
 plants and animals is so analogous, that it seems impossible, 
 when we consider this extraordinary resemblance in tlie mosr 
 important functions, to refuse sensibility to plants, and accord 
 it to animals. 
 
 Let us consider the various modes of reproduction proper 
 to vegetables. Eeproduction, or rather the fecundation which
 
 156 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 precedes it, is executed in certain vegetables, by means of 
 an apparatus of the same typical form as that of the animal 
 kingdom. It is composed of a male organ, the stamen, 
 which contains the impregnating dust, pollen, and of a female 
 organ, the ovary, supported by a stalk, the pistil. The pollen 
 impregnates the ovula contained in the grains of poUen in the 
 ovary, as the seed of the male impregnates the ovula con- 
 tained in the egg of the animal. In both cases the fruit of 
 the impregnation develops itself afterwards with the aid of 
 warmth and time. The vegetable egg grows and ripens, just 
 as the animal egg grows and ripens. 
 
 "VVe may add that the analogy between the modes of re- 
 production, in the two kingdoms, animal and vegetable, does 
 not limit itself to these conditions of likeness ; we may observe 
 resemblances in the specialities of the function. Particular 
 vitality, a turgid state of the tissues, accompanied by eleva- 
 tion of the local temperature, occur in the case of certain 
 j)lants at the moment of impregnation, especially in the 
 species of the family of Aroides. On placing a thermometer, 
 at that time, in the great floral covering of the Arums, an 
 excess of from 1° to 2° en the temperature of the surrounding 
 air will be denoted, an extraordinary fact in vegetable life, 
 for vegetables are always colder than the external air. How 
 can we believe that the plant in which this excitement takes 
 place has no feeling of its own condition ? The plant, like 
 the animal, has its seasons of love, can it be that it has no 
 consciousness of them? Are we to believe that the plant 
 which becomes warm, in which life rises at the moment of
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 157 
 
 impregnation, has no more sensation than a stone 1 Such is 
 not our opinion. We cannot understand life without sensi- 
 bility — the one appears to us to be the indication of the 
 other. 
 
 The analogy between the plant and the animal in their func- 
 tions of reproduction is nowhere more evident or more curious 
 than in a vegetable production which abounds in the waters 
 of the Ehone, and has received the name of Fallisneria sjjiralis. 
 In this plant the male and female organs are placed on diffe- 
 rent branches of the same plant. The female flowers are 
 fixed to the ground by long, twisted, spiral stalks. But, 
 when seeding time comes, the spirals of the stems unroll 
 themselves, and the female flowers come up to the surface of 
 tlie water and spread themselves out. The male flowers, not 
 being placed like the female on elastic stems, cannot come up 
 to -the surface ef the water. What do they do 1 They 
 burst through their covering, and. float around their females 
 on the surface of the water. After that the current carries 
 away the detached male flowers ; and the female stem folds 
 itself up again, and sinks to the bottom of the river, there to 
 ripen its impregnated ovules. 
 
 The function of reproduction in plants is rich in conclu- 
 sions in support of our thesis. The plants called phanero- 
 gamous are not reproduced only by impregnation by means of 
 the visible sexual organs, the pistil and the stamen, they are 
 also multiplied by grafts, buds, and cuttings. Cryptogamous 
 plants, which have no sexual organs, are multiplied either by 
 effects which detach themselves from the individual jplant at
 
 158 TEE DA Y AFTER BE A TE. 
 
 a certain period of its vegetation as we see in the, case of 
 fungi, alg£E, mushrooms, &c., or by fragments of the indi- 
 vidual itself, which, being thrown into the ground, germinate 
 and multiply tliemselves. 
 
 Animals, in their several classes, represent aU these modes 
 of reproduction ; there is not one which does not exist amons 
 them. Animals are not reproduced by eggs only, either 
 interior or exterior, and by living young ones, they are equally 
 multiplied, like vegetables, by offsets, by cuttings, and by 
 ingraftment. 
 
 Multiplication by offsets may be observed in the fresh- 
 water polype. Little buds which grow and lengthen come 
 out of the body of this animal. While the bud is length- 
 ening, he throws off other and smaller offsets, which throw 
 off still smaller ones. All these are so many little polypes, 
 which derive their nourishment from the principal polype. 
 Having attained a certain size, these offsets separate them- 
 selves from the primitive individual, and constitute so many 
 new polypes. Coral multiplies itself in the same manner. 
 From the principal branch spring secondary branches which 
 have originated in a bud or shoot, and these branches, insert- 
 ing themselves into the chief stem, form new individuals. 
 Thus the exterior aspect of the coral resembles a ramified tree 
 father than an animal. 
 
 Madrepores, another kind of zoophytes, resemble trees so 
 closely, that for centuries they were supposed to be marine 
 plants ; they too, like coral, are reproduced by offsets. 
 
 Multiplication by cuttings is seen in the fresh-water
 
 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TU. 159 
 
 polype. Take a fresh-water polype, and cut it into as many 
 fragments as you choose. Each of these fragments, left to 
 itself, "will become a polype. These new individuals may 
 be in their turn cut into pieces, ^yhicll will produce as many 
 ncAv ones. This is multiplication by cuttings, exactly similar 
 to the process in plants, so that the generation of fresh-water 
 polypes does not differ from that of one of our fruit-trees. It 
 is not only the entire polype which, thus cut to fragments, 
 furnishes a new polype ; the skin of this animal can also 
 produce one new individual or several. Is not tliis a vege- 
 table ingraftment ? 
 
 A similar generation by ingraftment is to be observed in 
 another instance, in the case of the fresh-water polype. 
 Take different portions of the same polype, or those of 
 different polypes, and join them at the ends, or lay them upon 
 ong another, and you will combine them so closely that they 
 reciprocately nourish each other, and ultimately form only 
 one individual. Here is vegetable ingraftment carried out in 
 an animal. 
 
 5. Other points of resemblance exist between plants and 
 animals. If they are not generally remarked, it is because 
 the authors of the classics of natural history do not direct the 
 attention of the reader to these facts. We are about to sup- 
 plement their silence, and to bring the analogies between the 
 two natural kingdoms into view. 
 
 Firstly, there exists in both a common and equally asto- 
 nishing fecundity. Among plants, as among animals, one in- 
 dividual can give birth to thousands of individuals like him
 
 160 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 self. Vegetables are even more fertile than tlie superior 
 animals. Trees produce every year, and sometimes for a 
 century. Mammiferous animals, birds, and reptiles produce 
 infinitely less than trees ; their pregnancy is less frequent, 
 and takes place during a certain period in the life of the 
 animal only. The elm produces every year more than 
 300,000 seeds, and this may continue for a hundred years. 
 Fish and insects approach most nearly to trees in fecundity. 
 A tench spawns 10,000 eggs yearly, a carp 20,000. Among 
 insects, a female bee produces from 40,000 to 50,000 eggs. 
 To these animals we may compare, among vegetables, the 
 poppy, the fern, the mustard plant, which produce incalcula- 
 ble quantities of seeds. We must not forget, besides, that 
 vegetables multiply themselves in many ways, whereas each 
 animal possesses but one mode of reproduction. 
 
 "What we wish to establish, what is evident, is that among 
 both animals and plants fecundity is equal, and equally pro- 
 digious. From the point of view of this analogy, we may 
 also quote the size of the species, which is extremely variable 
 in both kingdoms, because both produce at the same time giant 
 species and dwarf species. Among animals, there are some 
 of monstrous size, such as the whale, the cachalot, and the ele- 
 phant, such as the gigantic reptiles of the ancient world, the 
 ichthyosaurus, which was longer than the whale, the mega- 
 losaurus and the iguanadon, which Avere as large as the ele- 
 phant. 
 
 To these colossi of the animal kingdom, we may oppose 
 the colossi of the vegetable kingdom ; the monstrous baobab
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. IGI 
 
 gourd, which covers hundreds of square yards with its shade, 
 the elm, whose trunk may grow to the size of a whale's girth, 
 the Eucalyptus globulus, an Australian tree which is being 
 acclimatized in Algeria and in the south of France, the Sequiocea 
 gigantea, the giant of Californian forests. 
 
 If the two kingdoms of nature have their colossi, they 
 have also their dwarfs, and their infinitely little. There are 
 cryptogamic vegetables Avhich are only to be seen with the 
 microscope, and there are animalculte equally invisible to the 
 naked eye. If the animal kingdom can show, in its scale of 
 size, the whale, and the microscopic acarus, the vegetable 
 kingdom possesses a similar decreasing scale from the baobab 
 to the lichens. 
 
 The same places are inhabited or resorted to by plants and 
 animals. Both live on the same soil, as if for mutual aid. 
 The two kingdoms combine at all points of the globe. "\Ve 
 might name a number of places in which certain plants and 
 certain animals thrive together. The chamois and the maple 
 tree love the same mountains, the same high places ; the 
 truffle and the earth-worm dwell in the same underground 
 region ; the birch and the hare are found in the same place ; 
 the water-lily grows in the same fresh water with the aquatic 
 worm ; and the cod and the alga^ prosper in the same subma- 
 rine depths. 
 
 All vegetables and animals have an original country, but 
 they can be acclimatized under other skies by human indus- 
 try and skill. The chestnut-tree and the Indian cock, the 
 
 11
 
 162 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 
 
 peach-tree and the turkey, transported to Europe, has each 
 forgotten its native land. 
 
 Among both animals and plants there are amphibious crea- 
 tures. The frog, and the other batrachians, live, like the 
 reeds, on the earth and in the water. Both animals and 
 plants can live as parasites. The animal world has the flea, 
 the louse, the acarus ; the vegetable world has its lichens, and 
 its mushrooms. 
 
 Thus, equal fecundity, similar variety in the scale of size, 
 analogy in habitation, which implies ideality of organization, 
 possibility of transplantation and of acclimatization out of 
 their original country, possibility of amphibious existence, 
 parasitical life, all general conditions which suppose a great 
 analogy of organization ; we estabhsh aU these things in draw- 
 ing the parallel between plants and animals. How, then, if 
 we grant sensibility to one of these kingdoms, can we deny 
 it to the other 1 
 
 6. Plants, like animals, have their maladies. We do not now 
 allude to maladies caused by parasites, like the sickness of the 
 vine, due to the didium Tuckeri, the sickness of the petals, 
 caused by other small mushrooms, that of the rose-tree, the 
 olive-tree, of corn, &c., produced by parasitical cryptogams, 
 which fix themselves on the plant, and change the normal 
 course of its life ; we speak of morbid affections, properly so 
 called. The pathological condition and its consequences 
 exist in the plant as in the animal. Stoppage, or febrile and 
 abnormal acceleration of the sap in the vegetable, answer to 
 stagnation of the blood, or its acceleration during fever, in the
 
 TEE BA Y AFTER DEATH. 163 
 
 animal ; various excrescences of the bark, analogous to affec- 
 tions of the skin ; the abortion of certain organs, and the 
 capricious development of others ; the secretion of pathological 
 liquids which flow outside. This is a brief catalogue of the 
 maladies to which trees, shrubs, and herbaceous vegetables are 
 subject. A plant which passes too quicldy and too often 
 from intense cold to extreme heat, soon becomes ill, and 
 necessarily perishes, like an animal exposed to those dangerous 
 alterations. A shrub left in a current of cold air could no 
 more live than an animal if kept in a similar place. In a 
 word, the plant exhibits health or sickness, according to its 
 conditions of existence. How can we admit that the beincc 
 in which such changes take place, can be merely the passive 
 subject of them, that it experiences neither pain nor pleasure 
 in passing from health to sickness, or from sickness to health ? 
 
 7. Sicknesses, or other causes, produce anomalies of form, 
 or irregularities of structure in plants, as in animals. Just as 
 in the animal kingdom monstrosities exist, there are mon- 
 strosities in the vegetable kingdom. The science wliich 
 occupies itself with monstrosities in animals is called teratology. 
 Geoffrey St. Hilaire has made some most interesting studies 
 of the causes of the productions of monsters in the different 
 classes of animals ; but it has been perceived of late that an 
 analogous science must be created, for the explanation of 
 monstrosities proper to the vegetable kingdom, and Moquiu 
 Tandon has published a book upon vegetable teratology. 
 
 8. Old age and death are common to both plants and 
 animals. Plants, after having survived the various mala- 
 
 U— 2
 
 164 THE DAT A FTER DBA TB. 
 
 dies whicli threaten them, do not escape a slow old age, and 
 death necessarily follows. With time, their vessels become 
 hardened, their size becomes reduced, they can no longer give 
 passage to the sap, or other liquids which ought to go through 
 them. Liquids are not aspired with the same regularity, they 
 no longer transude through the vegetable tissue with the 
 same precision ; they remain stagnant in the vessels, become 
 corrupt there, and transfer their decomposition to the vessels 
 which enclose them. Thenceforth the vital functions cease 
 to be performed, and the plant dies. Things happen in a 
 like manner among animals. The thickening of the vessels, 
 the decrease of their power bring on the condition of old age, 
 in wliich the functions are disturbed and slackened ; then 
 comes death, the inevitable end of all, in each kingdom of 
 nature. 
 
 Thus, when we compare animals and plants, and especially 
 when we consider the inferior beings in both kingdoms, it is 
 impossible to establish a precise hne of demarcation between 
 them. The characteristics by which the old naturalists defined 
 the distinction between plants and animals, are now acknow- 
 ledged to be without meaning, and this distinction becomes 
 more and more difficult in proportion as we make progress in 
 our knowledge of these creatures. Voluntary motion was re- 
 garded as the principal distinctive characteristic between the 
 two kingdoms of nature ; but at the present day this charac- 
 teristic can no longer be invoked. Elementary works on 
 botany now tell us about the fly-catching plant, which catches 
 the insect that crawls over its leaves, exactly as a spider
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 165 
 
 catches flies, and about the oscillating plant, whose leaves are 
 endowed by voluntary luotion, more distinct than that be- 
 longing to many animals. 
 
 AjDart from these examples, dra-vvn from classical works, we 
 would ask what becomes of the argument for the immobility 
 of plants, considered as a distinctive characteristic of the 
 vegetable kingdom, when we see that zoophytes are fixed to 
 the earth, and when, on the other hand, we see certain young 
 plants, or their germs, such as the germs of algae, mosses, 
 and ferns, possessing the faculty of motion. 
 
 The spores, or reproductive organs of algoe, and the im- 
 pregnating corpuscles of the mosses and ferns, possess the 
 fundamental characteristics of animality, that is to say, they 
 are provided with locomotive organs, and they execute move- 
 ments which appear to be voluntary. Those singular crea- 
 tures aye seen to go and come in the interior of liquids, to 
 endeavour to penetrate into cavities, to witlidraw, return, 
 and definitively introduce themselves with an apparent effort. 
 The German botanists regard these vegetable germs as be- 
 longing to the animal kingdom. Considering that only 
 animals have the organs of motion, and that the spores of 
 algcC and the impregnating corpuscles of mosses and ferns are 
 provided with organs of motion, they do not hesitate to declare 
 that in the commencement of their life, algoe, mosses, and 
 ferns are in truth animals, which become plants when they 
 fix themselves, and begin to germinate. Erench botanists 
 have not yet ventured to adopt that view ; they are content 
 to call the movable impregnating corpuscles of alga3, mosses,
 
 16G THE DA Y AFTER LEA TU. 
 
 and ferns, anther ozdides, "but they do not dare to pronounce 
 upon their aniniality. M. Pouchet says, in his work L'Uni- 
 vers, page 444 : 
 
 " Motion manifests itself spontaneously with extraordinary 
 intensity in the animalcule of several plants, Avhich have 
 spinal organs for this purpose, hairs hy means of which they 
 swim about in the liquid which contains them. 
 
 " Some of these, real animalcide plants, have the shape of 
 eels, and move themselves hy means of two long filaments 
 attached to their heads ; others exactly resemble the tadpoles 
 of frogs, and jump about in the cells of the mosses. 
 
 " JSTevertheless, it is su.ch creatures as these, whose loco- 
 motive organs are so plainly to be discerned, and which we 
 can see, under tlie microscope, jumping about as nimbly as 
 our acrobats, that certain botanists persist in considering, on 
 theory alone, as motionless and insensible. Some philoso- 
 phers certainly possess eyes, that tliey may not see !" 
 
 There are these germs of plants, and young plants which 
 move, and on the other hand, almost all the adult zoophytes, 
 sponges, corals, madrepores, sea-stars, byssus, &c., &c., to 
 which we may add several mollusca (all those in shells), are 
 f xed to the earth. In these cases we must take the plant 
 for the animal, and the animal for the plant, if we positively 
 hold by voluntary motion as an absolute distinction between 
 animals and plants. 
 
 On the borders of the two kingdoms, — when we consider 
 zoophytes in the animal, and cryptogams in the vegetable 
 kingdom, — there is no longer, so to speak, either animal or 
 plant ; the two seem to be confounded, and fused together. 
 
 If, before the discovery of the fresh-water polyj)e, that
 
 THE DAY A FTER DEA TH. 167 
 
 living creature had been presented to a naturalist, lie would 
 have felt puzzled how to class it. Seeing it multiplying itself 
 by buds, by offshoots, by engraftment, he would doubtless 
 have declared that this organized being was a plant. But 
 if he had been made to remark that this same creature fed on 
 living prey, which it seized and swallowed, that it had long 
 and flexible arms, of which it formed a kind of net for the 
 purpose of seizing this prey, which it conveyed into the in- 
 terior of a digestive tube, our naturalist would have made 
 haste to place the polype in the ranks of the animals. He 
 would have been asked to observe that the polj^pe may be 
 turned inside out, like a glove, so that his interior skin be- 
 comes his exterior skin, and that, thus turned inside out, he 
 lives, grows, and multiplies himself, precisely as he does be- 
 fore this curious reversal. Our naturalist, much embarrassed 
 • in the presence of so unheard of a fact, would doubtless im- 
 mediately have begun to seek some intermediate kingdom 
 between the animal and the vegetable, to which he might 
 relegate this paradoxical being, which could not, with abso- 
 lute certainty, be classed either v.'ith plants, or with animals. 
 The fact is, classifications are products of human science, 
 nature knows nothing about them. V/'e descend, by insensible 
 degrees, from one kingdom to the other ; v/e go from the 
 man to the polype, and from the polype to the rose tree, by 
 infinite gradations, and, on the confines of the two king- 
 doms, there is a whole series of creatures which it is very 
 difficult to range under any system. For how long did 
 naturalists hesitate before they regarded infusoria, coral,
 
 168 THE DAY AFTER DEA TH. 
 
 sponges, star-fish, gorgons, sea-anemones, and madrepores 
 as animals 1 Even in the present day micrographers who 
 study the microscopic beings proper to vegetable and animal 
 infusions, such as the monads, polypoid worms, and nume- 
 rous others, find the utmost difficulty in assigning these 
 creatures to such or such a kingdom, and they sometimes 
 decide rather arbitrarily upon placing them among animals 
 or plants. 
 
 From all the considerations, all the facts which we have 
 just advanced, we conclude that the sensibility of plants is 
 not to be contested, since no one can think of denying that 
 privilege to certain zoophytes which can with difficulty be 
 distinguished from vegetables. 
 
 "We see an imposing tree, a stately oak with sturdy 
 branches, grooving on the sea coast. Not far off", on the sand 
 of the shore, lies a star-fish flung there by the waves. A few 
 yards below, on the surface of the water, floats a sponge, a 
 branch of coral, a madrepore. "When the icy wind blows, 
 when the hurricane lifts the angry waves, which is it, the 
 animal or the plant that will manifest sensibility to the 
 tempest ? The sponge, the coral, the madrepore will remain 
 as indifferent to the fury of the elements as the rock in which 
 they are incrusted, or as the pebble on which the star-fish 
 stretches out its four motionless arms. But, the majestic oak 
 will shudder at every gust of the tempest ; he will bend his 
 branches and shut up his leaves to shelter himself from the 
 icy blast or the furious storm; and a mere glance at his 
 attitude will indicate to you that an abnormal perturbation
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 159 
 
 reigns in the atmosphere. "Would you seriously say, in that 
 case, that the vegetable feels nothing, and that the animal is 
 sensible 1 Would you not, on the contrary, be inclined to 
 declare that the tree is the sentient being, and that the star- 
 fish, the sponge, the madrepore, are the creatures which are 
 destitute of feeling? 
 
 Pause beside still water and seek for the polype or fresh- 
 water hydra which we have just mentioned. You will find 
 it difficult to disentangle this zoophyte from the reeds and 
 willows which surround it. You will find, at length, a kind 
 of membranous tube, a few centimetres in length. Is that 
 the polype you were looking for? Is it not rather the stubble 
 of some reed or grass plant ? This living twig, with nothing 
 to distinguish it in appearance from a herbaceous plant, is 
 constantly fixed in the same place, like an aquatic vegetable. 
 It makes some faint movements, consisting simply of the open- 
 ing and "shutting of the orifice of the tube, which solely con- 
 stitutes its being. Sometimes it lengthens, sometimes it con- 
 tracts itself, by stretching out membranous arms, as fine as 
 threads, by means of which it seizes and drags towards it 
 the water insects which chance to pass near it. This is tho 
 one single characteristic of its animality. At this rate, an 
 aerial plant, the fly-catcher, would be just as much an animal 
 as our polype, since it catches the insects which venture to 
 crawl upon its leaves. 
 
 At the bottom of the sea there is a very curious zoophyte, 
 the actinium, or sea-anemone. For a long time this creature 
 was confounded with the plants, and held to be an ocean
 
 1 70 THE DA Y A FTER DEA TH. 
 
 flower. Those who admire the beautiful, hright-coloured 
 actinia, in the Garden of Acclimatization, in Paris, who look 
 at them, waving on their flexible stem, shaking the coloured 
 appendages and fringes which adorn their heads, find it hard 
 to regard these charming queens of the waters otherwise than 
 as real flowers. And, in fact, for ages, the sea-anemones were 
 held to be marine plants. 
 
 In the last century, coral was held to be a marine 
 shrub, and it was even believed that the flowers of the coral 
 had been discovered. An academician of Paris, Count de 
 IMarsigli, created a European reputation for himself by this 
 supposed discovery. Peyssonnel, a Provengal naturalist, 
 found the utmost difficulty in opposing this idea, and in 
 establishing the fact that these supposed flowers of the coral 
 were in reality young corals. He had the whole Academy of 
 Sciences against him ; and his opposition to the ideas of the 
 Academy brought him into such disgrace, that he was obliged 
 to leave Prance and to go to the Antilles, where he died in 
 obscurity as a doctor of medicine. And all this because he 
 maintained that coral is not a plant, and does not produce 
 flowers ! 
 
 The famous Genevese naturalist, Charles Bonnet, antici- 
 pating the knowledge of our day by more than a century, 
 has given a most interesting form to the parallel between 
 aniiiiLils and plants, in his work entitled Contemplation de la 
 Nature. We cannot resist the pleasure of quoting the following 
 passage, in which Charles Bonnet shows in a striking manner 
 what are the difficulties in the way of distinguishing the
 
 THE BA Y A FTEll DBA TIL 1 7 1 
 
 plant from the animal, and how those difficulties are disposed 
 of by those who dispute the sensibility of plants : — 
 
 " Everything is graduated in nature," says Charles Bonnet, 
 " and, in refusing to admit that plants are sentient, we force 
 nature to make a jump without any assignable reason. 
 
 " We observe that feeling decreases by degrees from man 
 to the nettle, and to the mussel, and we persuade ourselves 
 that it stops there, because we regard these animals as the 
 least perfect. But there are, perhaps, many degrees between 
 the feeling of the mole and of the plant. There are, jDcrhaps, 
 still more between the most and the least sensible of the 
 plants. The gradations, which wo observe, ought to persuade 
 us to this philosophy; the new beauty which it adds to the 
 systeni of the Avorld, and the pleasure to be derived from 
 the multiplication of sentient creatures ought to contri- 
 bute to induce us to admit it. I willingly admit that this 
 philosophy is much to my taste, I love to think that those 
 flowers which adorn our fields and our gardens with a bright- 
 ness constantly renewed, those fruit trees Avhich are so 
 j)leasant to our eyes and our palate ; those majestic trees that 
 compose the vast forests, which time seems to have respected, 
 are so many sentient creatures partaking after their fashion in 
 the sweetness of existence. 
 
 "Plants offer some facts to our observation which seem to 
 indicate that they possess feeling, but we are not likely to 
 perceive those facts, because of the strong persuasion that 
 they are insensible, which has prevailed among us for so 
 long. "We ought to agree to consider the question tahula rasa, 
 and to subject plants to a new, impartial, and unjjrejudiced 
 examination. An inhabitant of the moon, possessed of intel- 
 lectual faculties like ours, but Avithout any i^reconceived ideas 
 about the insensibility of plants, would be the jDhilosopher 
 whom we require. Let us imagine such an observer engaged
 
 172 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 
 
 in studying the productions of our earth, and, after 
 having given his attention to the polypes and other insects 
 multiplied by the process of grafting, passing on to the con- 
 templation of vegetables. He would, doubtless, take them 
 at the period of their birth. With this view, he would sow 
 seed of various species, and he would carefully watch tbeir 
 germination. Let us suppose that some of those seeds have 
 been reversed in the sowing, the sprouting part turned down- 
 wards, the stem upAvards ; and the observer has the skill to 
 distinguish one end of the seed from the other, and knows 
 their functions. After some days, he will remark that the 
 seed has grown into this reversed position, that the stem is 
 turned upward, and the sprouting portion downward. He 
 win feel no surprise ; he will attribute a circumstance which 
 is so hurtful to the life of the plant, to the mistake he has 
 made in sowing the seed. But, continuing to observe, he 
 will see the sprout and the stem each bending itself in the 
 opposite direction, and trying to attain the right position. 
 This change of direction will strike him as very remarkable, 
 and he will begin to suspect that the organized being which 
 he is studying is endowed with a certain amount of discern- 
 ment. Too prudent, however, to pronounce upon these early 
 indications, he will suspend his judgment and pursue his in- 
 vestigations. The plants whose germination our physicist 
 has been observing, have been raised in the neighbourhood 
 of a hedge. Thus favoured, and carefully cultivated, they 
 have made great progress in a very short time. The soil 
 which surrounds them at some distance is of two opposite 
 qualities. That on the right of the plants is rich, damp, 
 and spongy ; that on the left is dry, hard, and gravelly. 
 Our observer remarks that the roots, after having begun 
 by extending equally on both sides, have changed their 
 direction, and have spread out towards the rich and humid 
 soil; over which they are stretching, and thus threatening
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 173 
 
 to deprive the plants already there of their due share of 
 nourishment. To prevent this inconvenience, he digs a ditch 
 between the plants -which he is observing and those they 
 threaten to starve, and now he thinks he has provided against 
 everything. But the plants, which he believes he has governed, 
 disconcert all his precautions by extending their roots down- 
 wards, nnder the ditch, and gaining the other side. 
 
 " Surprised at this, he uncovers one of these roots, but 
 without exposing it to heat, and holds a sponge steeped in 
 water towards it. The root turns itself to the sponge, and 
 when he changes its position, the root accommodates itself to 
 each alteration. 
 
 "While our philosopher is meditating profoundly upon 
 these facts, other facts equally remarkable present themselves 
 almost simultaneously. He observes that all these plants have 
 leaned away from the hedge, and are bending forward as though 
 to present every portion of their bodies to the beneficent smiles 
 of the sun. He sees that all the leaves are so turned that 
 their upper surface is exposed to the sun, or to the fresh air, 
 and that the lower surface is directed towards the hedge, or 
 the ground. Former experience Avill have taught him that 
 the upper surface of leaves serves chiefly as a defence for the 
 lower surface, and that the latter is principally destined to 
 pump up the moisture rising from the earth, and provide for 
 the evacuation of what is superfluous. The direction of the 
 leaves which he notices appears quite in harmony with his 
 experiences. He studies this portion of the plant with in- 
 creased attention. 
 
 " He remarks that the leaves of some species seem to follow 
 the movements of the sun, so that in the morning they turn 
 to the east, in the evening to the west. He sees that some 
 leaves close themselves against the sun, others against the 
 dew. He observes an analogous movement in certain flowers.
 
 174 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 Afterwards, he observes that no matter what the direction of 
 the plants relative to the horizon has been, the direction of 
 the leaves is always that which he has at first noticed, he be- 
 thinks him of changing this direction, and of placing the 
 leaves in a position exactly contrary to their natural one. He 
 has already had recourse to similar means in order to assure 
 himself of the instinct of animals, and to ascertain its bearings. 
 With this view he bends perpendicular plants towards the 
 horizon, and keeps them in that position. Thus, the direction 
 of the leaves is absolutely changed ; the upper surface, which 
 previously turned to the sun or to the fresh air, now looks 
 towards the earth or the interior of the j)lant, and the lower 
 surface, which formerly looked towards the earth or the interior 
 of the plant, now turns to the sun, or the fresh air. But very- 
 soon all these leaves begin to move, they turn on thek stem 
 as on a pivot, and in an hour they will have resumed their 
 former position. Our observer, wishing to assure himself 
 whether leaves and branches when detached and plunged into 
 water wiU- preserve the inclinations which they manifest when 
 upon the plant of which they formed a portion, subjects them 
 to an experiment whose results leave him no doubt of the fact. 
 
 " He j)laces wet sponges under the leaves, and he sees the 
 leaves turn towards the sponges and endeavour to adhere to 
 them by their lower surfaces. He also observes that certain 
 plants, which he has shut up in his cabinet and in a cellar, 
 have turned towards the window, or the grating respectively. 
 
 " Finally, the phenomena of the Sensitive Plant, its varied 
 movements, the promptitude with which it contracts when 
 touched, form the interesting subject which terminates his 
 researches. 
 
 " Thus plentifully supplied with facts which all seem to 
 tend to the support of belief in the sensibility of plants, 
 which side will our philosopher take ] Will he surrender
 
 TEE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 175 
 
 to these proofs ] Will lie suspend his judgment ? I think 
 he will take the first part."* 
 
 Charles Bonnet believes, in short, that the plant, as well as 
 the animal, is endowed with sensibility^ 
 
 According to the system wliich we have developed, the 
 animal is possessed of a soul, which is still very imperfect, and 
 endowed only with faculties corresponding to its needs. But, 
 sin6e the animal, in addition to the sensibility enjoyed by the 
 plant, possesses intelligence also, we must conclude from thence 
 that the plant has not a soul, properly so called, but only the 
 rudiment, the commencement, in other words, the germ of a 
 soul. 
 
 "We know that the sun has the privilege of giving birth to 
 organic life upon our globe, his rays have power to produce 
 the formation of living tissues, plants or zoophytes, when they 
 fall upon the earth or the v/aters, and we may draw this con- 
 clusion from' all that has gone before, that the sun sends down 
 upon the earth animated germs under the form of his rays, 
 which emanate from the spiritualized creatures who dwell in 
 the king-star. 
 
 Thus our system of nature completes itself; thus, thanks to 
 solar radiation, the two ends of the immense chain of organized 
 beings whose place and part in the vast theatre of the worlds 
 we have attempted to define are united. Life begins in the 
 waters, its first appearance is in plants and zoophytes ; for 
 these two classes of living creatures obey the same laws, and 
 
 * " Contemplation de la Nature (CE'ivres d'Histoire Naturelle 
 de Charles Bonne!.'''') Neucheitel, 1781.
 
 176 THE BAY A FT Eli BE A TH. 
 
 apjDear to have the same origin. The sun, by sending his 
 vivifying rays upon theearth, produces the for mation of plants 
 and zoophytes, which are the points of departure of organiza- 
 tion. The animated germ deposited by the sun in plants and 
 zoophytes grows, passes from the zoophyte to the moUusc, or 
 articulated animal, and then undergoes a further development, 
 by passing from the mollusc or articulated animal to the fish. 
 This germ of a soul thus becomes a rudimentary soul, provided 
 with certain faculties. In the zoophyte and the mollusc it 
 had only sensibility ; in the fish, and then in the reptile, and 
 the bird, it has attention and judgment. The faculties are 
 augmented in proportion as the animal mounts higher in the 
 organic scale. Arrived at its summit, the human being, the 
 soul is in possession of all its faculties, and especially of 
 memory, which during the animal stages of the ascent is 
 obscure and uncertain. 
 
 To accord sensibility to plants permits us to unite all the 
 creatures of the living creation, and thus to complete oui 
 general system of terrestrial nature.
 
 CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH. 
 
 DOES MAN EXIST ELSEWHERE THAN ON THE EARTH 1 — DESCRIP- 
 TION OF THE PLANETS, — PLURALITY OF INHABITED WORLDS. 
 
 THROUGHOUT tlie preceding chapters we have 
 reasoned as if the earth were the whole universe. 
 Indeed, almost all men believed that such was 
 the case, from the first establishment of society 
 until the last century. Great mathematical knowledge, pro- 
 found study, and highly perfected optical instruments are 
 requisite to rectify the false ideas, the errors, and the illusions 
 which are" the result of a simple view of the earth and the 
 sky. Great efforts of the mind, and a very difficult struggle 
 against the testimony of our senses are necessary to the recog- 
 nition that the earth moves, and that the sun is motionless. 
 In order to distinguish the place and the office of each of 
 those softly beaming globes, in the midst of the uniformity of 
 aspect presented by the stars which shine during the night, 
 patient and severe observations, transmitted and repeated 
 from age are indispensable, and, in addition, an excellent 
 scientific method. Let us therefore not be surprised that 
 men have taken so much time to comprehend the ordering of 
 the universe, and that they had only the most childish con- 
 
 U
 
 1 78 THE DA Y AFTER LEA TH. 
 
 ception of them for thousands of years. The ancients, the 
 Greeks, the Komans, the Egyptians, knew nothing of the 
 universe, except the earth (nor did the Orientals, with the 
 exception of some truly learned men, who had divined the 
 general mechanism of the universe by methods unknown to 
 us, but they concealed their knowledge from the profane). 
 These ancients could speak of only a small portion of the 
 globe : of Europe, Asia, and the North of Africa. The re- 
 mainder was a dead letter for the peoples of antiquity. After 
 them, and following their example, the first Christians re- 
 duced the universe to what they knew of it ; they believed 
 there was but one world, because they saw only one. The 
 earth was for them the universe. In the stars they saw only 
 brilhant spots, like silver nails in the celestial vault, to en- 
 hance the azure, and charm the eyes of men in the quiet of 
 the night. The moon was the natural beacon of the earth. 
 In the sky there was a shining track followed by the sun, 
 and the torch of day was no larger than the beacon of night. 
 The celestial region which spread itself above the sun and the 
 moon was the Empyrean of the ancients, the Paradise of the 
 Christians and the INIussulmans. It was at once the sojourn 
 of clouds and of light, the habitation of the elect of God, of 
 the saints and the just. Under the earth, and in its interior, 
 were immense abysses, gulfs, and cavities, the dark dwellings 
 of the damned. 
 
 This simple cosmogony, which merely translates what our 
 eyes show us, has been that believed by every people in their 
 infancy. Among the savage tribes of the two worlds, in
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 179 
 
 America and in Africa, as in the ancient East, among the 
 Eomans as among the Egyptians and the ancient Greeks, 
 this coarse simplicity and absolute ignorance of the constitu- 
 tion of the world prevailed. On this profoundly false basis 
 all the ancient religions were founded. The social customs of 
 modern peoples are based upon the same errors. Language 
 has consecrated them ; the earth is everywhere called the 
 ivorlcl, as the ancients called it (tmmdus, xCa/Mo;) ; every one 
 says the sun travels, or goes, from east to west, and that the 
 stars rise and set 
 
 Poetry has set its eternal seal on this vicious system, and 
 has, so to speak, consecrated it, by clothing it with all the 
 prestige of genius and imagination. 
 
 Modern astronomy has caused the false skies of antiquity 
 to vanish away ; it has dispersed the pretensions of the celes- 
 tisir vault, sown with brilliant spots, and substituted a simple 
 mass of coloured air. It has revealed the true office of each of 
 those stars which we see by day or by night. It has fixed, 
 in an indisputable manner, the real place of the earth in the 
 universe, and, to say the truth, that place is singularly small. 
 
 We know now, that the earth, far from being herself the 
 world, is only an imperceptible point of the world. If we 
 only compare it with the sun, we know that our globe is one 
 million three hundred thousand times smaller than the sun. 
 This takes us far away from the idea of the ancient Greeks, 
 who thought they ventured much in asserting that the sun 
 was as big as the Peloponnesus. 
 
 In addition, the earth has been dispossessed of all privi- 
 
 12—2
 
 1 80 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. 
 
 leges. It was believed formerly to be unique and unrivalled, 
 we now know that there are an infinity of other globes similar 
 to the earth, so that she is no more than one individual in a 
 group of other individuals who resemble her. We know 
 that the earth figures among the planets, that she is only a 
 planet of our system. 
 
 What, then, is a planet % the reader will ask. An attentive 
 gaze directed to the stars of night will make him understand 
 it. Let him examine, on any fine evening, the star which is 
 pointed out to him as Mars or Jupiter, and to which a certain 
 position is assigned at a given hour. Then, a few hours 
 later, let him come and look once more for Mars or Jupiter, 
 and he will perceive that the position of Mars or Jupiter, 
 with respect to the other stars, is changed. Or he may do better 
 still. Let him look at Mars or Jupiter through the telescope 
 of an observatory, or the glass of one of those open-air astro- 
 nomers who are to be found in the public ways in Paris and 
 other great cities. Thus he may see Mars or Jupiter change 
 his place under his own eyes. While the other stars remain 
 motionless, Jupiter or Mars will pass away from the field of 
 the glass. 
 
 Tliore are, then, fixed stars and movable stars. The 
 movable stars are the planets {^'kav/iTra, from 'irXdvo;, wan- 
 dering). The fixed stars are what we call stars. It is not 
 difficult to distinguish the planets from the stars with the 
 naked eye. The stars emit sparkling light, whence comes 
 their name, from the Latin stellare, to shine, and their light 
 twinkles. The planets, on the contrary, shine with a steady,
 
 THE DA Y A FTER DEA TIL 181 
 
 mild, imvacillating liglit. The reason of this difference is, 
 that the light shed by the stars is their own. The stars are 
 so many suns resembling ours. They illumine Avorlds like 
 our world, so prodigiously distant that we cannot even per- 
 ceive them. The planets do not shine of themselves ; they 
 merely reflect, like gigantic mirrors, the light of the sun 
 which illumines them, and renders them visible to us. Thus, 
 the planets are stars which travel. They revolve around the 
 sun. The earth, being a planet, is a travelling star, which 
 revolves around the sun. 
 
 Eut the earth is not the only planet of our solar system. 
 There are seven others, which do not differ essentially from 
 the earth. The names of the eight planets which compose 
 our solar system, are as follows, arranged according to their 
 distance from the sun: Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, 
 Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and IsTeptune. Between Mars and 
 Jupiter there is a collection of small bodies, which seem to be 
 fragments of broken j)lanets ; they are called asteroids. At 
 present, in 1871, more than a hundred are known, and it is 
 not yet fifty years since they were first sought for in the sky. 
 These asteroids may be collected together in our fancy, and 
 formed into a separate group, which would be a ninth planet. 
 Let us glance at the planets Avhich compose our solar system. 
 
 Plates 4 and 5, which accompany these pages, Avill suffice 
 to give an idea of the relative dimensions of the planets. In 
 these two plates the planets are arranged according to tho 
 order of their distance from the sun. In plate 4, Mercury, 
 Venus, the Earth, and Mars are represented ; in plate 5, the
 
 182 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 asteroids Jupiter. Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Mercury is 
 the nearest planet to the sun, his distance from the central 
 orb heing only fourteen millions of leagues, which, in astro- 
 nomy, is near neighbourhood. This planet revolves upon its 
 axis with the same rapidity as the earth. The day, in Mer- 
 cury, is only three minutes longer than ours (24h. 3ms.) 
 Being closer to the sun than the earth is. Mercury turns more 
 quickly round the sun, so that its year is only 88 days, 
 whereas ours is 365 days. 
 
 We know that the sole cause of the inequality of the 
 seasons, as well as oi day and night in the planets, is the 
 inclination of the star on its axis of rotation. If the planets, 
 while revolving round the sun, retained the verticality of the 
 axis which joins these north and south poles, there would be 
 i:)erfect equality in the distribution of the solar light and heat 
 over the same latitudes ; along each parallel there would be a 
 complete regularity in the lighting and warming of the planet ; 
 the differences of heat and cold would not depend on any- 
 thing but their greater or less distance from the sun. But 
 this verticality only exists for two or three planets of our 
 system. The others, and among them Mercury, Yenus, the 
 Earth, and Mars, are strongly inclined on their axis of rotation. 
 
 They revolve in a bent position, as if they had received a 
 great blow on the shoulder, which had caused them to deviate 
 from their primitive and regular situation. From this there 
 results a very variable disposition of the duration of the 
 light, and consequently of the heat, which these inclined 
 planets receive from the horizontal rays of the solar star.
 
 
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 THE BA Y AFTER DEATH. 185 
 
 Thus tlie inequality ia the length of the days and nights, and 
 the diversity of the four seasons on the same parallel, are ac- 
 counted for.* 
 
 The inclination of the axis of the terrestrial sphere is 23", 
 which is a considerable deviation, and occasions great dif- 
 ferences in the duration of days and of seasons on different 
 points of our globe. The inclination of the axis of the planet 
 Mercury is enormous : it is 70°. This planet bends over 
 itself as if about to fall. Hence results prodigious variation 
 of light and heat on the same parallel, and seasons whose 
 abrupt changes must be painful and hard to bear by the in- 
 habitants of this planet, if such inhabitants exist. 
 
 Mercury is five times less than the Earth, as is shoAvn in 
 plate 4. Venus comes after Mercury, according to distance 
 from the Sun. 
 
 Venus, which is 27,000,000 of leagues from the Sun, 
 
 * Milton, in his Paradise Lost, says that before the fall of our 
 first parents, perpetual spring reigned upon the Earth, but that as 
 soon as Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, angels, with 
 flaming swords, were sent from Heaven to incline the poles of the 
 Earth more than 20 degrees. It is well for us that the angels did 
 not cause them to incline farther, or our seasons would have been 
 still shorter and more defective. Fourier pretends that it would 
 be possible for humanity to produce an effect sufficiently great to 
 set the globe straight upon its axis, and thus restore the equably of 
 the seasons, and perpetual spring. This philosopher forgot to indi- 
 cate one thing only, the mechanical means by which man is to pro- 
 duce this effect. This theory reminds us of the drowning man 
 who fancied he could save himself by catching hold of his own 
 hair, while he was struggling in the water.
 
 lae TEE LA 7 AFTER DEATH. 
 
 receives twice as much light and heat as our globe. Its days 
 are of nearly the same length as ours (23 hours, 21 minutes), 
 but its year, necessarily shorter than that of the Earth, since 
 it is nearer to the Sun, lasts only 224 days. Its seasons last 
 two months each. Its globe is nearly of the same bulk as 
 that of the Earth. Venus is almost always wrapped in 
 clouds, which must fall in rain, forming rivers and seas. 
 These waters refresh the plains, which must be scorched by 
 the heat of the burning sun. The seasons are still shorter 
 and more unequal in Venus than in Mercury ; its axis is, in 
 fact, inclined at 75°. 
 
 After Venus comes the Earth, which is almost of the same 
 bulk, but 28,000,000 of leagues from the Sun. Its diameter 
 is nearly 3000 leagues. It accomplishes its revolution on its 
 axis in 24 hours (23 hours, 5G minutes, 4 seconds), and in 
 365 days, 5 hours its revolution around the sun. 
 
 The inclination of the Earth's axis is 23°, which produces 
 the differences of days and nights, and the inequality of the 
 seasons, according to latitude. The Earth possesses a privi- 
 lege denied to the planets ]\Iercury, Venus, and Mars ; she 
 has a secondary star, or satellite, called the Moon. Placed at 
 a distance of only 90,000 leagues from the Earth, the Moon 
 accomplishes her revolution around it in 27 days. It is not 
 the object of this work to give any description of our globe. 
 We will suppose our readers to be sufficiently acquainted with 
 it, and pass on to the planet which comes next to it in the 
 £cale of distance from the Sun. This is the planet Mars. 
 
 An extraordinary resemblance exists between Mars and the
 
 THE DA Y A FTER DEA TIL 1 87 
 
 Eartli. Physical, geographical, and climatological conditions, 
 days and nights, seasons, celestial perspectives, all are alike 
 in these two planets, with the sole difference that the globe 
 of Mars is half as small again as that of the Earth ; so that, 
 if a man were transported to Mars, he might believe himself 
 to be, not in a strange planet, but in a little known corner of 
 the Earth, such as Australia or Polynesia. 
 
 As we pursue our journey through the heavens, ever in- 
 creasing our distance from the Sun, we shall find, after Mars, 
 the group of the Asteroids. AVe shall not linger before this 
 cluster of small stars, which is no doubt nothing but a 
 collection of the dismembered fragments of a planet, Avhich 
 formerly existed in this particular point of space, and was 
 dashed to pieces by some formidable accident in the universe. 
 These little stars, like the important planets, have each their 
 names, such as Vesta, Pallas, Circe, &c., &c. MaximiUana, 
 and Ferohia -are placed at the two extremities, with respect to 
 distance from the Sun. These remains of a broken star con- 
 tinue to circulate around the Sun, like the planet which they 
 formerly composed. 
 
 After the Asteroids comes great Jupiter. 
 
 Jupiter is the largest planetary sphere in our solar system, 
 "being 1400 times greater than the Earth. Its distance from 
 the Sun is 200,000,000 miles. In consequence of this dis- 
 tance, its year is as long as twelve of our years. Notwith- 
 standing its colossal dimensions, Jupiter turns with such 
 rapidity upon its axis, that it accomplishes an entire revolution 
 in twelve hours, so that its day and night are respectively only
 
 188 TEE BAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 ten hours long. The shortness of Jupiter's nights are com- 
 pensated by the existence of four moons, or satellites, which 
 revolve around this planet, and give it permanent light. This 
 illumination by reflection, added to very long twilights, 
 must make Jupiter's nights nearly equal to the day in 
 brightnccs. 
 
 Though Jupiter suffers imder the disadvantage of very 
 short days, it has on the other hand the inappreciable ad- 
 vantage of perfect equality in the length of its days and 
 nights, and of that of the four seasons over all its parallels. 
 The axis of Jupiter -'s hardly at all oblique, and therefore 
 Jupiter, like the planet Saturn, enjoys a sort of perpetual 
 spring, that is to say, an equable distribution of solar heat and 
 light along the same degrees of latitude. Jupiter, unlilce Mars 
 and Venus, has no vicissitudes of seasons, no sudden and pain- 
 ful transitions from cold to heat in the same place. The cli- 
 mates are invariable in each latitude, and the seasons are 
 hardly discernible. 
 
 The globe of Saturn is 734 times larger than that of the 
 Earth, and is 364,000,000 leagues from the Sun. It takes 
 thirty years to perform its revolution around the central star, 
 and its year is therefore thirty times as long as ours. 
 
 Saturn, like Jupiter, has very short days. It revolves on 
 its axis in ten hours, so that its day and night respectively are 
 but five hours. But it has eight moons, or satellites, which 
 accompany it, and give it light, thus, as in the case of Jupiter, 
 supplementing the shortness of its days. There is hardly any 
 obliquity of the axis of Saturn, so that its days and nights
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 189 
 
 are always equal. There is a perpetual cqiiinox, and the 
 climates are invariahle, while variation of seasons hardly 
 exists. In Saturn, as in Jupiter, perpetual spring reigns. 
 Saturn has one peculiarity which does not belong to any other 
 body in our solar system. It is placed in the centre of a 
 ring, of the same nature as its oAvn, and which surrounds it 
 on every side. This ring (see plate 5), is surrounded by a 
 second, and tlie second by a third, and the whole are called 
 the rings of Saturn. This circular envelope is exceedingly 
 thin— only ten leagues in thickness — but very wide; its 
 width is 12,000 leagues. It is not motionless, but it revolves 
 with the globe which it surrounds. 
 
 The strange disposition of the rings of Saturn affords a 
 proof of the inexhaustible riches of nature, and the variety of 
 forms which the Creator has called into being in the vast 
 universe. It ought to guard us against our constant tendency 
 to model all the worlds which we do not know, upon the type 
 of the earth. 
 
 Hardly anything is known about the peculiarities of 
 Uranus, a planet which is only eighty-two times larger than 
 the earth, but which is 732,000,000 of miles from the sun, 
 and takes eighty-four years to accomplish its revolution around 
 the central star. 
 
 Plate 5 shows the relative proportions of Uranus and the 
 earth. The prodigious distance of Uranus from our globe, 
 added to its smaU size, renders it almost inaccessible to 
 observation. 
 
 Tor the same reason, nothing can be ascertained respecting
 
 1 90 THE DA Y AFTER LEA TH. 
 
 the physical and geographical conditions of Neptune, the last 
 planet of our solar system, which was discovered in our time 
 by M. Le Verrier, thanks to the simple force of calculation, 
 thereby affording the most brilliant proof ever given of the 
 utUity of the mathematical sciences, l^eptune is so small 
 and so far from us, that it is probable mere observation of the 
 heavens would never have detected its existence. In this 
 case mathematical analysis was more powerful than the tele- 
 scope. It would be impossible to give particulars analogous 
 to those which we have supplied concerning the foregoing 
 planets, in reference to a star only 105 times larger than the 
 earth, which revolves at the distance of one, milliard 150 
 millions of leagues from the sun, and the duration of whose 
 year is 164 times that of the terrestrial year, so that if the 
 ages cf the Christian era were counted according to the 
 Keptunian chronology, instead of being in the 19th century, 
 we should be in the 12th year of that era. All we can say 
 about K"eptune, therefore, is that it forms the boundary of the 
 domain of our visible world. 
 
 AVe cannot, however, state positively that our solar world 
 terminates at this limit. Xo doubt the range of our astro- 
 nomical glasses goes no farther, but assuredly they do not 
 sweep the boundariesof the empire of the sun. It is known, 
 in fact, that comets return to us after having (as indicated by 
 their geometrical curve), swept over the depths of space to a 
 distance of thirty-two milliards of leagues. Thus the distance of 
 one milliard 150 millions of leagues, which is that of IXeptune 
 from the sun, by no means represents the confines of our
 
 
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 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 193 
 
 solar world, but simply defines the limits of the range of our 
 telescopes. 
 
 This rapid glance at our solar system in its entirety, proves 
 that the earth is not in possession of any privilege. The 
 part which she plays in the economy of the universe is 
 equally fulfilled by other stars, and there is nothing to justify 
 the pre-eminence assigned to her by the ancients. She is not 
 the largest, the warmest, or the brightest of the planets. She 
 simply forms a portion of a group of stars, and is but one 
 individual of that group. 
 
 These considerations tend to lead us to a very important 
 deduction. Since the earth is in no way distinguished from 
 the other planets of our solar system, there must exist in 
 other planets the things which are found on our globe ; air, 
 water, a hard soil, rivers and seas, mountains and valleys. 
 Even vegetation and forests ought to be there, regions 
 covered with verdure and with shade. So there surely ought 
 to exist in the other planets, animals, and even men, or at 
 least creatures superior to animals, corresponding to our 
 human type. 
 
 But is this possible 1 is it true ] are the planets which, like 
 the earth, and together with it, turn round the sun, consti- 
 tuted physically as the earth is? Are they covered with 
 vegetable growth? are they tenanted by animals and by 
 beings belonging to the human type % 
 
 This grave question has been profoundly discussed by 
 M. Camilla Flammarion, in a work entitled Phralite des 
 Mondes Habites, and in a later publication, Les Mondes Ima- 
 
 13
 
 194 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. 
 
 ginaires et les Mondes Reels. It would be outside the province 
 ,of tills book to follow the author through the various scientific 
 considerations, from which he reasons that the planets which 
 form a portion of our solar system, are, like the earth, the 
 scene of life, organization, thought, and feeling. In the 17th 
 century, Fontenelle and Huygens had successfully approached 
 this successful problem, which M. Camille Flammarion has 
 lately treated with especial care and development, invoking 
 the lessons of contemporaneous astronomy and physics, which 
 refer to the subject. We therefore refer the reader, who 
 wishes to be instructed upon the question of the possibility 
 of the planets being inhabited, to M. Flammarion's works.
 
 CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH. 
 
 THAT WHICH HAS TAKEN PLACE UPON THE EARTH WITH RE- 
 GARD TO THE CREATION OP ORGANIZED BEINGS HAS PRO- 
 BABLY ALSO TAKEN PLACE IN THE OTHER PLANETS. — THE 
 SUCCESSIVE ORDER OP THE APPEARANCE OP LIVING BEINGS 
 
 ON OUR GLOBE. THIS SAME SUCCESSION HAS PROBABLY 
 
 TAKEN PLACE IN EACH OF THE PLANETS. PLANETARY MAN. 
 
 THE PLANETARY, LIKE THE TERRESTRIAL MAN, IS TRANS- 
 FORMED, AFTER DEATH, INTO A SUPERHUMAN BEING, AND 
 PASSES INTO THE ETHER. 
 
 •E believe, with M. Camille Flammarion, that 
 organized beings exist in all the planets. But 
 are these beings who live in the distant worlds 
 accompanied, like terrestrial man, by a superior 
 type ? This is the subject which we now propose to examine. 
 In the absence of observation analogy is our only means of 
 investigation, and, guided by analog}^ w^e must admit that the 
 processes which have taken place upon the earth, since the 
 epoch of its formation, must have similarly taken place upon 
 all the other planets, the earth's congeners. 
 
 We are now perfectly acquainted with the manner in 
 which the vegetable and animal creations have appeared, and 
 succeeded each other upon our globe since its origin. At first 
 
 13—3
 
 196 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 
 
 the earth was simply a collection of gas, and burning vapour 
 ■which revolved round the sun. This mass of gas and vapour 
 grew cold by degrees in its passage through space, and first 
 becoming liquid, afterwards assumed the consistency of paste, 
 and ultimately became solid, by a gradual process of refrige- 
 ration. Consolidation began on the surface, because the cir- 
 cumference of a sphere is more exposed than the remainder 
 of the mass to refrigerating influences. Then the water and 
 the vapours which still flowed upon the consolidated globe 
 became condensed, and, falling in burning showers upon the 
 hard soil, they formed the first seas. 
 
 The proof that the earth's primitive condition was like to 
 a liquid or half paste, is, that if we take a plastic sphere, for 
 instance a slightly fluid ball of quicksilver, and make it turn 
 rapidly upon its axis, we observe that it swells out in the 
 middle, and becomes flat at the two poles, or the extremities 
 of the axis ; this is the effect of the centrifugal force engen- 
 dered by the rotatory motion. ISTow the earth is depressed 
 at the poles, and slightly swelled out at the equator. 
 
 The other planets must have been formed by the same process 
 as the earth. They were, no doubt, composed of a collection of 
 gas and vapours, which became liquid, pasty, and eventually 
 solid, by a process of refrigeration. This process, taking 
 effect especially upon their surface, they began to put forth a 
 skin, or exterior and solid covering, which was the soil of 
 the planet. On this resisting soil fell the liquids resulting 
 from the condensation of the water vapour, and thus the first 
 seas of the planets were formed.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TIL 197 
 
 Wc -would remind those who doubt the correctness of this 
 theory that the poles of the globe of Saturn and that of Ju- 
 piter are much more flat than those of the Earth ; which is 
 explained by the greater velocity of the rotation of each upon 
 its axis. Our days are 24 hours long, whereas those of Jupi- 
 ter and Saturn are only 10 hours. Greater rapidity of rota- 
 tion produces a correspondingly increased depression at the 
 extremities of the axis. This geometrical result demonstrates 
 the justice of the assimilation in their respective origin which 
 we maintain between the Earth and the other planets. 
 
 In the warm waters of the basin of the seas the first living 
 beings which existed upon our globe appeared. Animal life 
 commenced in the waters, in the primitive forms of zoophytes 
 and mollusca, as we know, because zoophytes and moUusca, 
 with the addition of a few articulates, composed the animal 
 remains found ia the transition strata which come after the 
 primary formations. The first vegetables are found in the 
 same transition strata, they are mosses, algae, and ferns. 
 
 When the earth had become somewhat cooler, phaneroga- 
 mous vegetables appeared upon the continents, ISTumerous 
 vegetable species were simultaneously created, for the flora 
 of the secondary formations is extremely rich and varied. 
 
 It was the same in the case of animals. So the zoophytes, 
 mollusca, and fish which existed in the transition period suc- 
 ceeded reptiles, in the secondary formation, which inhaliited 
 both land and sea. At this period appeared those monstrous 
 saurian reptiles, whose formidable shapes, and collossal dimen- 
 sions fill us with surprise and almost with dismay. Then
 
 198 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 the gigantic mososaurus ravaged the seas, the terrible ich- 
 thyosaurus spread terror among the inhabitants of the waters, 
 and the gigantic iguanodon laid waste the forests. The 
 secondary formation, which is filled with their remains, 
 shows us that at that period reptiles held the first rank in 
 creation. 
 
 At a later date, the atmosphere having become purer, birds 
 began to traverse the air. In the tertiary deposit we find the 
 remains of several kinds of birds, and these remains, which 
 do not .exist in the earlier formations, sufficiently prove that 
 it was in the tertiary period that birds made their first appear- 
 ance upon the terrestrial globe. 
 
 Still later, at a more advanced period of the tertiary epoch, 
 mammifers appear upon the scene. "VVe must observe that 
 these animal species do not replace each other, that the one 
 does not exclude the other. Several of the ancient animal 
 species continue to exist after the appearance of entirely 
 novel kinds. We might quote as instances whole groups of 
 animals, such as the lingulas (moUusca), the coral (zoophyte) 
 among animals, and among vegetables, the algje., ferns, and 
 lycopodes, which appeared on our globe in the earliest period 
 of the reign of organization, and have never ceased to exist. 
 It was not until the last epoch in the history of the Earth, 
 during the quaternary epoch, that man appeared, the high- 
 est product of living creation, the ultimate term of organic, 
 intellectual, and moral progress, the crowning upon our earth 
 of the visible edifice of nature. 
 
 At present, man lives together with the animals wliich be-
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 199 
 
 gan to exist during the quaternary epoch, and a great numher 
 of other kinds of mammifers which were created during the 
 tertiary epoch. 
 
 The various phases of the development of the animal and 
 vegetable kingdoms on our globe, these perfected organized 
 species each succeeding the other, and finally reaching the 
 superior type which we call man, must, in our opinion, have 
 been produced in the selfsame order, upon the other planets 
 of our solar world. ]\I. Flammarion proves, in the work 
 which we have already quoted, that the physical and climatolo- 
 gical constitution of the planets is similar to that of our globe. 
 There is therefore no reason why things should have taken 
 place otherwise in Mercury, Jupiter, or Venus, than in tho 
 Earth, in respect to the successive order of the creation and 
 appearance of living beings, and, in our belief a precisely 
 similar successive appearance of vegetables and animals, has 
 taken place in these planets. The plants and animals of Mer- 
 cury, Jupiter, Saturn, &c., were certainly not identical with 
 those species which have had existence on the Earth, and 
 perhaps no resemblance could be traced between them, but 
 all, in their successive appearance, obeyed the principle of 
 progress and perfecting. Life, commencing in the burning 
 waves of the primitive seas, subsequently manifested itself 
 upon the continents. Animals of aerial organization have 
 lived upon these continents, their species have by degrees 
 reached the perfection of their type, at length, and finally, a 
 creature appeared in these planets more complete, superior in 
 organizatioL', intelligence, and sensibility to all the animal
 
 200 TEE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 creation which formed the population of each particular 
 globe. 
 
 This superior being, this last step of the ascending scale of 
 living creation proper to the j^lanetary worlds, the corre- 
 sponding analogous creature to terrestrial man, we shall take 
 leave to call planetary man. 
 
 In all the planets, then, there exist men, as on the earth, 
 just as there exist animals which are inferior to that noble 
 and privileged type. 
 
 According to the views which we have explained at the 
 commencement of this work, terrestrial man undergoes, after 
 his death, a glorious metamorphosis. Leaving his miserable 
 material covering here below, his soul springs upward into 
 space, and becomes incarnate in a new being, whose type is 
 infinitely sujierior, by reason of its moral perfection, to that 
 of our poor humanity. He becomes that which we have 
 called the superhuman being. If this be true of the terrestrial 
 man, it must be equally true of the planetary man. So that 
 the superhuman being must proceed, not only from the earth, 
 but from aU the other planets. 
 
 Superhuman beings come from the human souls who have 
 lived either upon the Earth, or upon Mercury, Jupiter, Yenus, 
 Saturn, &c. And precisely as the superhuman being, who 
 comes from the Earth passes into the surrounding ether, so the 
 planetary man, lea'V'ing Mars, IMercury, Jupiter, &c., passes 
 into the ether, which surrounds his own planet, becomes in- 
 carnate in a superhuman being, and lives in the ethereal plains 
 adjoining the planet which he has quitted.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 201 
 
 All these superhuman beings float in the clouds of ether 
 which, in the case of every planet, succeed to its atmosphere. 
 
 Thus, the principles upon which we have based terrestrial 
 humanity, are general, and apply to all planetary humanity. 
 Not from the Earth only do those souls proceed who are in- 
 carnate in new creatures in the bosom of the ethereal spaces, 
 these souls proceed from all the globes which, together with 
 the Earth, form the attendant court of the royal Sun. 
 
 ^vr
 
 CHAPTEE THE FIFTEENTH. 
 
 PROOFS OF THE PLURALITY OP HUMAX EXISTENCES, AND OF 
 RE-INCARNATIONS. APART FROM THIS DOCTRINE IT IS IM- 
 POSSIBLE TO EXPLAIN THE PRESENCE OF MAN UPON THE 
 EARTH, THE SAD AND UNEQUAL CONDITIONS OF HUMAN 
 LIFE, AND THE FATE OF CHILDREN WHO DIE IN INFANCY. 
 
 QJ^™""^^kHE doctrine of the plurality of existences, and of 
 ^ ~^ re-incarnations, which hind together, like so 
 many links of the same chain, all living crea- 
 tures, from the most minute animal, even to 
 those blessed beings to whom it is given to behold God in 
 His glory ; which gives brethren in the different planets to 
 terrestrial humanity ; which makes of the inhabitants of our 
 globe a nation of the universe ; which sees but one family in 
 all the population of the worlds — a planetary famUy — whose 
 every member may raise himself by his merits and his 
 struggles, in the hierarchy of happiness, is supported by so 
 many proofs. So many, indeed, that we are puzzled to 
 choose among all the methods of demonstration which offer 
 themselves in aid of it. To enumerate them all would unduly 
 enlarge the dimensions of this work, so that we shall content 
 ourselves with bringing forward the most striking.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 203 
 
 Why are we on the earth ? We did not ask to be placed 
 there, we did not express a wish to be born. If we had 
 been consulted, we should probably have objected to coming 
 into this world at all, or at least we should have wished to 
 appear there at some other epoch. We should probably have 
 asked to be permitted to sojourn in some other planet than 
 the Earth. Our globe is, indeed, a very disagreeable habita- 
 tion. In consequence of its inclination on its axis, climate is 
 very unpleasantly distributed. Either we must succumb to 
 cold, if we are not artificially protected against it, or we 
 must be terribly incommoded with heat. Eegarded from the 
 moral point of view, the conditions of humanity are very sad. 
 Evil predominates in the world ; vice is held almost every- 
 where in honour, and virtue is so ill-treated, that to be 
 honest is, in this life, to be tolerably certain of evil fortune. 
 Our affections are causes of anguish and tears. If, for a while, 
 we enjoy the happiness of paternity, of love, of friendship, 
 it is only to see the objects of our love torn from us by death, 
 or separated from us by the accidents of a miserable life. The 
 organs given us to be exercised in this life are heavy, coarse, 
 subject to maladies. We are nailed to the earth, and our 
 heavy mass can be moved only by fatiguing exertion. If 
 there are men of powerful organization, gifted with a good 
 constitution and robust health, how many are there Avho are 
 infirm, idiots, deaf and dumb, blind from their birth, ricketty, 
 and mad ! My brother is handsome and well made, and I 
 am ugly, feeble, ricketty, and hump-backed ; nevertheless, we 
 are both sons of the same mother. Some are born in opu-
 
 204 THE DAY A FTER LEA TH. 
 
 lence, others in the most hideous destitution. Why am I 
 not a prince and a great lord, instead of being a poor toiler of 
 the rebellious and ungrateful earth 1 Why was I born in 
 Europe and in France, where, by means of art and civilization, 
 life is rendered easy and endurable, instead of being born 
 under the burning skies of the tropics, where, with a bestial 
 snout, a black and oily skin, and wooUy hair, I should have 
 been exposed to the double torments of a deadly climate and 
 social barbarism % Why is not one of the unfortunate Afi^can 
 negroes in my place, comfortable and well off? We have 
 done nothing, he and I, that our respective places on the 
 earth should have been assigned to us. I have not merited 
 the favour, he has not incurred the disgrace. What is the 
 cause of this unequal division of frightful evils which fall 
 heavily upon certain persons, and spare others ? How have 
 they who live in happy countries deserved this partiality of 
 fate, while so many of their brethren are suflPering and weep- 
 ing in other regions of the world ? 
 
 Certain men are endowed with all the gifts of the intellect ; 
 others, on the contrary, are devoid of intelligence, penetration, 
 and memory. They stumble at every step in the difficult 
 journey of life. Their narrow minds, their incomplete facul- 
 ties, expose them to every kind of failure and misfortune. 
 They cannot succeed in anything, and destiny seems to select 
 them for the chosen victims of its most fatal blows. There 
 are beings whose whole life, from their birth to their death, 
 is a prolonged cry of suffering and despair. What crime have 
 they committed ? Why are they upon the earth % They
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 205 
 
 have not asked to be born, and if they had been free, they 
 would have entreated that this bitter cup might be removed 
 from their hps. They are here below in spite of themselves, 
 against their will. This is so true that some, in an excess of 
 despair, sever the thread of their own life. They tear them- 
 selves away with their own hands from an existence which 
 terrible suffering has rendered insupportable to them. 
 
 God would be unjust and wicked to impose so miserable 
 a life upon beings who have done nothing to incur it, and 
 who have not solicited it. But God is neither unjust nor 
 wicked ; the opposite qualities are the attribute of His perfect 
 essence. Consequently, the presence of man on certain por- 
 tions of the earth, and the unequal distribution of evil over 
 our globe, are not to be explained. If any of my readers can 
 show me a doctrine, a philosophy, a religion by which these 
 difficulties can be resolved, I will tear up this book, and con- 
 fess myself vanquished. 
 
 If, on the contrary, you admit the plurality of human 
 existences and re-incarnations, that is to say the passage of the 
 same soul into several different bodies, everything is wonder- 
 fully easUy explained. Our presence in certain portions of the 
 globe is no longer the effect of a caprice of fate, or the result 
 of chance ; it is simply a station of the long journey which we 
 are taking throughout the worlds. Previous to our birth in 
 this world we have lived either in the condition of superior 
 animals, or that of man. Our actual existence is only the 
 consequence of another, whether it be that we bear within 
 ourselves the soul of a superior animal, which we must
 
 206 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 purify, perfect, and ennoble, during our sojourn on earth ; or 
 that, having already fulfilled an imperfect and evil existence, 
 we are condemned to re-commence it under new obligations. 
 In the latter case, the career of the man re-commences, because 
 his soul is not yet sufficiently pure to rise to the rank of a 
 superhuman being. 
 
 Our sojourn upon earth is then only a kind of trial, im- 
 posed upon us by nature, during which we must refine our 
 souls, free them from earthly bonds, rid them of the defects 
 which weigh them down, and hinder them from rising, in 
 radiance, towards the ethereal spheres. Every ill-fulfilled 
 human existence has to be recommenced. Thus, the school- 
 boy who has worked hard, who has studied well, goes into a 
 higher class at the end of the year ; but if he has made no 
 progress in his studies, he must go through his class again. 
 Perverse men are, in our opinion, vicious beings who have 
 had a previous life, and are obliged to live it over again. 
 They must go through it again and again, until the day comes 
 when their souls shall be fit to take higher rank in the hier- 
 archy of creatures, that is to say, imtil they shall be fit to 
 pass, after their death, into the condition of superhuman 
 beings. 
 
 In proportion as the cause of our existence here below is 
 obscure and even inexplicable according to ordinary ideas, it 
 is simple and luminous in the light of the doctrine of the 
 plurality of existences. We must add that this doctrine is 
 conformable to the justice of God. In making earthly life a 
 trial for man, God is equitable and good, like an earthly
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 207 
 
 father. Is it not Letter to subject a soul to a trial which 
 may begin over again if it have an unfortunate result, than to 
 bind it to one condition, failure in wliich must involve the 
 condemnation of the guilty person ? It is better to offer the 
 possibility of rehabilitation by his own efforts, by his personal 
 struggles, to a fallen creature, than to utterly crush him, 
 stained by his crimes and imperfections. The justice and the 
 goodness of God are manifest in this paternal arrangement, 
 much more than in the severe jurisdiction which would irre- 
 trievably condemn a soul after one single trial had resulted 
 unfavourably. 
 
 If human life be a trial, if it be a period during which we 
 are preparing for a new and happier existence, there is no 
 need to look beyond that truth for an explanation of why we 
 are on the earth, why we are living to-day rather than to- 
 morrow, and in one latitute of our globe rather than in 
 another ; there is no need to ask why we are born in the 
 earth, and not in Mercmy, Saturn, or Mars. Whether we 
 are living now, or are to live later, whether we have been 
 born in the earth, in Mercury, or in Mars, whether we inhabit 
 Europe or Africa, — all these things are utterly unimportant 
 to our destiny. We are undergoing a period of preparation 
 indispensably necessary to be accomplished before we pass 
 into the superhuman condition ; and the place, the moment 
 of our transit, the country in which we sojourn, the planet 
 which is assigned to us as the scene of this trial, are without 
 any importance in the part which we have to play in accord- 
 ance with the intentions of nature. We are making an im-
 
 208 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 mense journey through the worlds, and a short sojourn on 
 the Earth makes a part of our vast itinerary. "Whatever may 
 be the corner of the universe in which we find ourselves we 
 cannot escape the trial imposed upon us hy God, a trial by 
 strife and suffering, a period of moral and physical pain to 
 which we must submit before we can be promoted in the 
 hierarchy of creatures. The time, the place, the good or evil 
 moral conditions ought therefore to be indifferent to us. 
 What is needful for us is a brief sojourn on a planet in which 
 this trial may be accomplished, and it may be accomplished 
 on the Earth, or in Mars, or in Mercury, and on any spot of 
 the Earth's surface one chooses to think of. 
 
 If, during the course of this trial, we meet with moral evil, 
 if we see vice triumphant and virtue persecuted, if we see 
 the innocent victims of the injustice, the cruelty, or the igno- 
 rance of man, we have no right to murmur against Providence, 
 we have no right to utter maledictions against pain, to de- 
 plore the scandal of successful and triumphant crime, and of 
 suffering and weeping virtue. We have no right to regret 
 our bodily infirmities, the diseases which lay hold upon us on 
 the Earth, and which afflict us aU our lives, or to complain of 
 ■ the weakness of our minds, the decay of our faculties. All 
 these conditions, which are inimical to earthly happiness, are 
 a portion of the series of trials which Ave have to undergo 
 here below. We ought to bless those evils, and be grateful 
 to those sutferings, for they are the instruments of our eternal 
 redemption, and the more piercing and bitter they are the 
 sooner will come the hour of cur deliverance, the happy mo-
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 209 
 
 ment when we shall leave this impure and filthy world which 
 our feet have trodden for a while. Besides, justice will 
 speedily he done. With brief delay the wicked shall be 
 punished for his evil deeds by having to rscommence a new 
 existence here, while the good shall be elevated to the upper 
 world, where a new, wide-ranging life awaits him, far more 
 happy and more wise, in truer harmony with the aspirations 
 of our nature than his previous and miserable existence here. 
 Then we shall be born again, radiant and strong, with our 
 memory, our feelings, and our liberty complete. 
 
 Thus difficulties vanish, and problems are solved : thus 
 uncertainty vanishes away, and mysteries which no doctrine, 
 no religion, no philosophy, could dissipate, and which almost 
 made us doubt the justice of God, are cleared up. The doctrine 
 of re-incarnations and prior existences explains everything, 
 answers everything. 
 
 We' pass oij to one of the most interesting questions of the 
 doctrine of the pre-existence of souls, the question of children 
 who have died in infancy. What becomes of children who 
 die at a few days old, or at the age of eight or ten months, or 
 at their birth"? Until after all these periods the human soul 
 remains quite undeveloped ; it is in almost the same rudi- 
 mentary state as at the hour of its birth. What, then, is the 
 fate of young children after their death 1 The doctrine of the 
 plurality of existences simplifies this question. It admits that 
 when an infant dies before it has lived one year (the period of 
 dentition), its soul remains upon the earth, and does not pass, 
 like that of a grown man, into the state of a superhuman 
 
 U
 
 210 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 being. The soul of an infant a year old is still in a rudi- 
 mentary condition, almost as much so as at the moment of its 
 birth. The soul of a child who dies at that age has to begin 
 life over again, disengaging itself from the httle corpse, it 
 incarnates itself in another newly-born body, and after this 
 fresh incarnation, it begins a second life. 
 
 If the new incarnation does not last more than a year, 
 there is no reason why the soul should not undergo a third 
 incarnation in the body of a child, and so on until it shall 
 have accomplished the period of admission to the conditions 
 common to aU. 
 
 It is impossible that the soul of a child, which is as yet 
 undeveloped, which has added nothing to that which it has 
 received, should be treated as perfected souls, purified by the 
 experience of life, by physical and moral sufferings, who have 
 used their sojourn upon earth as a period of preparation and 
 training. An infant child cannot therefore be admitted to 
 the super-terrestrial dwellings, he simply recommences an 
 interrupted trial. The mortality of children between the day 
 of their birth and the age of one year is so considerable, that 
 nature must have reserved to herself the means of annulling 
 this cause of disarrangement in the sequence and order of her 
 operations. 
 
 This explanation of the destiny of young children is con- 
 formable to the economy which is observed in the operations 
 of nature. Nature wiUs that nothing which is created should 
 be lost. The soul of a criminal is evil, but it is a soul, it 
 exists, and it is eternal : it must not be lost. But it must bo
 
 THE DA 7 AFTER DEATH. 211 
 
 corrected and perfected, -wliich is done by means of the new 
 existences to wlucli nature consigns that imperfect soul, in 
 order that it may enjoy the means of restoration. Thus the 
 principle of the soul is preserved, and nothing is lost of that 
 which was created. The soul of the child dying in infancy 
 must not be lost either. A second incarnation in another 
 child will permit it to resume the course of its evolution, 
 accidentally interrupted by death. Thus the soul will be 
 preserved, and nothing will be lost. 
 
 Chemistry, since Lavoisier's time, has brought to light a 
 great truth : it is, that nothing of the elements of matter is 
 lost ; bodies change their form, but the material element, the 
 simple body, is imperishable, indestructible, and always to be 
 found intact, notwithstanding its numerous transformations. 
 If it is true that in the material world nothing is lost, it is 
 equally certain that neither is anything lost in the spiritual 
 world j that only transformation takes place. Thus, nothing 
 is lost, either of immaterial or material beings, and we may 
 lay down this new principle of moral philosophy by the side 
 of the principle of chemical philosophy established by the 
 genius of Lavoisier.
 
 CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH. 
 
 FACULTIES PECULIAR TO CERTAIN CHILDREN, APTITUDES AND 
 VOCATIONS AMONG MEN, ARE ADDITIONAL PROOFS OF RE-IN- 
 CARNATIONS. EXPLANATION OP PHRENOLOGY. DESCARTES' 
 
 INNATE IDEAS, AND DUGALD STEWART's PRINCIPLE OP 
 CAUSALITY CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED BY THE PLURALITY 
 OF LIVES. — VAGUE RECOLLECTIONS OF OUR ANTERIOR 
 EXISTENCES. 
 
 E there are no re-incarnations, if our actual exist- 
 ence is, as modern philosophy and the ordinary- 
 creeds maintain it to be, a solitary fact, not to 
 be repeated, it follows that the soul must be 
 formed at the same time as the body, and that at each birth 
 of a human being, a new soul must be created, to animate 
 this body. We would ask, then, why are not all these sovJs 
 of the same type 1 Why, when all human bodies are alike, 
 is there so great a diversity in souls, that is to say, in the 
 intellectual and moral faculties which constitute them 1 We 
 would ask why natural tendencies are so diverse and so 
 strongly marked, that they frequently resist all the efforts of 
 education to reform, or repress them, or to direct them into 
 any other line ? Whence come those instincts of vice and 
 virtue which are to be observed in children, those instincts of
 
 THE DA Y AFTER BEAT IT. 213 
 
 pride or of baseness, which are often seen in such striking 
 contrast with the social position of their families ? Why do 
 some children delight in the contemplation of pain, and take 
 pleasure in torturing animals, while others are vehemently 
 moved, turn pale, and tremble at the sight or even the 
 thought of a living creature's pain 1 Why, if the soul in all 
 men be cast in the same mould, does not education produce 
 an identical effect upon young people 1 Two brothers follow 
 the same classes at the same school, they have the same 
 masters, and the same examples are before their eyes. ISTever- 
 theless, the one profits to the utmost by the lessons which he 
 receives, and in manners, education, and conduct, he is irre- 
 proachable. His brother, on the contrary, remains ignorant 
 and uncouth. If the same seed sown in these two soils has 
 produced such different fruit, must it not be that the soil 
 which has received the seed, i.e., the soul, is different in the 
 case of each ? 
 
 Natural dispositions, vocations, manifest themselves f^om 
 the earliest period of life. This extreme diversity in natural 
 aptitudes would not exist if souls were all created of the same 
 type. The bodies of animals, the human body, the leaves of 
 trees, are fabricated after the same type, because we can 
 observe but few and slight differences among them. The 
 skeleton of one man is always like the skeleton of another 
 man ; the heart, the stomach, the ribs, the intestines are 
 formed alike in every man. It is otherwise with souls ; they 
 differ considerably in individuals. We hear it said every 
 day that such an one's child has a taste for arithmetic, a 
 second for music, a third for drawing. In the case of others
 
 214 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 evil, violent, even criminal instincts are remarked, and these 
 dispositions break out in the earliest years of Hfe. 
 
 That these natural aptitudes are carried to a very high 
 degree and unusual extent, we have celebrated examples 
 recorded in history, and frequently cited. "We have Pascal, 
 at twelve years old, discovering the greater portion of plane 
 geometry, and without having been taught anything whatever 
 of arithmetic, drawing aU the figures of the first book of 
 Euclid's geometry on the floor of his room, exactly estimating 
 the mathematical relations of all these figures to each other ; 
 that is to say, constructing descriptive geometry for himself. 
 We have the shepherd, Mangiamelo, calculating as an arith- 
 metical machine, at five years old. We have Mozart execu- 
 ting a sonata with his four-years-old fingers, and composing an 
 opera at eight. We have Theresa MilanoUo playing the 
 violin with such art and skill, at four years old, that Baillot 
 said she must have played the viohn before she was born. 
 We have Eembrandt drawing like a master of the art, before 
 he could read. Etc., etc. 
 
 Every one remembers these examples, but it must be borne 
 in mind that they do not constitute exceptions. They only 
 represent a general fact, which in these particular cases was 
 so prominent as to attract public attention. They are valu- 
 able as exponents to the public of a fundamental law of 
 nature, the diversity of natural faculties and aptitudes, and 
 the predominance of particular faculties among certain chil- 
 dren. Children endowed with these extraordinary and pre- 
 cocious vocations are called little prodigies. This qualification 
 is sometimes used in a depreciatory sense, for the little prodi-
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 215 
 
 gies are accused of failing to carry out the promises of their 
 childhood ; it is observed that the brilliant abilities of their 
 earlj'' years have not been guarantees of extraordinary success 
 in their careers as grown men. A child, whose drawings 
 were wonderful at four years old, has become a wretched 
 daiiber, as an established artist. A musician, who enchanted 
 his audience at eight years old, has grown up a very mediocre 
 performer. 
 
 This remark is just, and the llict is explicable thus : If 
 the little prodigies have not become great men, it is because 
 they have not cultivated their faculties ; because they have 
 allowed sloth and disuse to extinguish their talents. It does 
 not suffice to possess natural abilities for a science, or an art, 
 work and study must strengthen and develop them. Little 
 prodigies are outstripped in their career by hard workers, as 
 is natural. They have come upon earth with remarkable 
 faculties which they had acquired during a previous life, but 
 they have done nothing to develop those faculties, which 
 have remained as they were at the moment of terrestrial birth. 
 The man of genius is the man who unceasingly cultivates and 
 perfects such great natural aptitudes and faculties as he has 
 been endowed with at his birth. 
 
 The predominance of particular faculties in certain children 
 is not to be explained according to the common philosophy 
 which discerns the creation of a new soul in the birth of every 
 infant. They are, on the contrary, easily explicable according 
 to the doctrine of re-incarnations, indeed they are no more than 
 a corollary of that doctrine. Everything is comprehensible if 
 a life, anterior to the present, be admitted. The individual
 
 216 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 brings to Ms life here, the intuition which is the result of the 
 knowledge he has acquired during his first existence. Men 
 are of more or less advanced intelligence and morality, accord- 
 ing to the life which they have led hefore they come into 
 this world to play the parts which we can see. This is self- 
 evident in the case of a man who recommences his life. This 
 man had acquired certain faculties during his first, which are 
 profitable to him in his second existence. Perhaps he does 
 not possess aU the faculties with which his first life was 
 endowed, in their full and perfect integrity, but he has what 
 mathematicians call the resultant of those faculties, and this 
 resultant is a special aptitude, it is vocation. He is a calcu- 
 lator, a painter, or a musician by vocation, because, in his 
 former human career he has had the faculty of calculation, 
 drawing, or music. We believe that it is impossible to find 
 any other explanation of our natural aptitudes. It will be 
 objected to this, that it is strange that aptitude and faculties 
 should be the resultant of a prior existence, of which we 
 have, nevertheless, no recollection. We reply to this objec- 
 tion that it is quite possible to lose all remembrance of events 
 which have happened, and yet to preserve certain faculties of 
 the soul which are independent of particular and concrete 
 facts, especially when those faculties are powerful. We con- 
 stantly see old men Avho have lost all recollection of the 
 events of their life, who no longer know anything of the his- 
 tory of their time, nor indeed, of their own history, but who, 
 nevertheless, have not lost their faculties, or aptitudes. 
 Linnaeus, in his old age, took pleasure in reading his own 
 works, but forgot that he was their author, and frequently
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 217 
 
 exclaimed : " How interesting ! How beautiful ! I wish I 
 had written that !" 
 
 There is no reason to doubt that a child, after its re-incar- 
 nation, may preserve the aptitudes of its previous existence, 
 though it has entirely lost the remembrance of the facts 
 which took place and which it witnessed during that period. 
 These faculties reappear and become actiA'^e in the child, just 
 as the half-extinguished flame of a fixe is rekindled by the 
 breath of the wind. The breath which fans the smouldering 
 flame of human faculties is that of a second existence. 
 
 The absence of memory may be urged as an objection to 
 re-incarnations in the body of a child, but this argument does 
 not apply to the incarnation of the soul of an animal in a 
 human body. The animal, being almost without the faculty 
 of memory, it is easy to understand that its aptitudes only 
 pass into the condition of man. The good or evil, gentle or 
 fierce instincts which human souls manifest so early, are ex- 
 plained by the species of the animal through which the soul 
 has been transmitted. A child who has a faculty for music 
 may have received the soul of a nightingale, the sweet song- 
 ster of oiir woods. A child who is an architect by vocation 
 may have inherited the soul of a beaver, the architect of the 
 woods and waters. 
 
 In short, the various aptitudes, the natural faculties, the 
 vocations of human beings, are easily explained by the doc- 
 trine of the transmigration of souls. If we reject this sys- 
 tem, we must charge God with injustice, because we must be- 
 lieve that He has granted to certain men usel'al faculties 
 which He has refused to others, and made an unequal distri-
 
 218 TEE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 bution of intelligence and morality, these foundations of the 
 conduct and direction of life. 
 
 This reasoning appears to us to be beyond attack, for it does 
 not rest upon an hypothesis, but upon a fact : namely, the 
 inequality of the faculties among men, and of their intelli- 
 gence and morality. This fact, inexplicable by any theory of 
 any received philosophy, is only to be explained by the doc- 
 trine of re-incarnations, and forms the basis of our reasoning. 
 
 Discussion for and against phrenology has been plentiful, 
 and has ended in the abandonment of the inquiry, because 
 the ideas of ordinary philosophy do not supply a sound theory 
 on the subject. It has been found more convenient to ignore 
 the labours of Gall than to endeavour to explain them. The 
 truth is, that Gall has committed some errors of detail, which 
 is always the case with every founder of a new doctrine, who 
 cannot bring an unprecedented work to perfection by himself 
 alone ; but his successors have rectified the errors of the 
 system, and we are now obHged to acknowledge that Gall's 
 theory is correct. It is indeed simply composed of observations 
 which everyone may repeat for himself. 
 
 When Gall's theory, or j^hrenology, is applied to animals, 
 the evidence in its favour is astonishing. In the case of 
 man the facts are almost always confirmatory of the theory. 
 It is certain that the skuU of an assassin does exhibit 
 the abnormal developments indicated by Gall, and that, ac- 
 cording to the doctrine of the German anatomist, the senti- 
 ments of affection, love, cupidity, discernment, &c., may be 
 recognised externally by the bumps in the human skull. It 
 rarely happens that the phrenologist, on examining the skull
 
 TEE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 219 
 
 of a Troppmann, or a Papavoine, fails to trace the hideous in- 
 dications of evil passions and brutality. 
 
 Unfortunately, many of our moralists find themselves seri- 
 ously embarrassed by philosophy, because their views are 
 limited by the commonplace philosophy of the day. Classic 
 moralists ask themselves whether a man with the bump of 
 murder in his skull is responsible for his crime, whether he is 
 a free agent, whether he is so guilty as he is held to be, when 
 he yields to the cruel instincts with which nature, in his case 
 a wicked step-mother, has endowed him. Is it just to be 
 pitiless towards a man who has only obeyed his physical con- 
 formation, almost as a madman obeys the impulses of his dis- 
 eased mind ? It would seem that the punishment of assassi- 
 nation is an injustice, and men ask themselves whether the 
 criminal courts and the scaffold ought not to be abolished, and 
 whether the judge who condemns to death an individual, who 
 is not responsible for his actions, is not the real criminal 1 
 
 The same reasoning, the same uncertainty apply to virtuous 
 deeds. Is much commendation due to the man who fulfils 
 his duties exactly, to the conscientious and faithful citizen, 
 the honest and kindly individual, if his wise and respectable 
 conduct be simply obedience to the good impulses communi- 
 cated to him by his physical organization ? 
 
 These results of phrenology were, it is evident, very em- 
 barrassing, and almost immoral. Barbarity on the part of 
 society which punishes the guilty ; — absence of merit in the 
 well-behaved man ! these consequences were difiicult and 
 painful to admit, so the world got out of the difficulty by re- 
 jecting jphrenology.
 
 220 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 It is quite unnecessary to reject phrenology ; we may retain 
 it, and congratulate ourselves on a fresli conquest in the sphere 
 of the sciences of observation, if we hold the doctrine of pre- 
 vious existences. Phrenology is most naturally explained, in 
 fact, by that doctrine. When it enters on the occupation of 
 a human body, the soul lends to the cerebral matter, which is 
 the seat of thought, a certain modification, a predominance in 
 harmony with the faculties which that soul possesses at the 
 period of its birth, and which it has acquired in an anterior 
 animal or human existence. The brain is moulded by the soul 
 into conformity with its proper aptitudes, its acquired facid- 
 ties ; then the bony covering of the skull, which moulds itself 
 upon the cerebral substance within its cavity, reproduces and 
 gives expression to our predominant faculties. The ancients 
 who said. Corpus cm'dis opus (the body is the work of the 
 soul, or the soul makes its body), expressed this same idea 
 with energetic conciseness. 
 
 There is, therefore, no need to excuse a murderer, there is 
 no need to deny his free will, there is no need to spare 
 him the just chastisement of his crime. It is not because 
 there are certain protuberances on his skull that the murderer 
 dips his hands in the blood of his victims. These protube- 
 rances are only the external indications of the evil and vicious 
 propensities with which he was born, by which he might 
 have been warned and corrected, and which he might have 
 conquered by the strength of his will, by a real and ardent 
 desire to restore his deformed and vicious soul to rectitude. 
 It is always possible, by adequate effort, to surmount the evil 
 inclinations of one's nature; every one of us can resist
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 221 
 
 pride, idleness, and envy. The man who has not corrected 
 these bad impulses is guilty, and nothing can render a crime 
 committed in aU the plenitude of his free will excusable. 
 Thus, neither God nor society is implicated in this question, 
 if we accept the doctrine of the plurality of existences. 
 
 Descartes and Leibnitz have demonstrated that the human 
 understanding possesses ideas called innate, that is to say, 
 ideas which we bring with us to our birth. This fact is cer- 
 tain. In our time, the Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart, 
 has put Descartes' theory into a more precise form, by proving 
 that the only real innate idea, that which has universal exist- 
 ence in the human mind after birth, is the idea, or the prin- 
 ciple of causality, a principle which makes us say and think 
 that there is no effect without cause, which is the beginning 
 of reason. In France, Laromiguiere and Dam iron have popu- 
 larized this discovery of the Scotch philosopher. Thus the 
 classics of philosophy record this proposition as a truth beyond 
 the reach of doubt. We unreservedly admit the principle of 
 causality as the innate idea par excellence, and we take account 
 of the fact. But we ask the fashionable philosophy how it 
 can explain it 1 In our minds there are innate ideas, as Des- 
 cartes has said ; and ihQ principle of causality, which invincibly 
 obliges us to refer from the effect to the cause, is the most 
 e-vident of those ideas which seem to make a part of ourselves ; 
 but why have we innate ideas, where do they come from, and 
 how did they get into our minds 1 The classical philosophy, 
 the philosophy of Descartes, which reigns in France, at the 
 Normal School, and among the professors of the University 
 of Paris, cannot teach us that. It wiU be said, perhajps, to
 
 222 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 use the favourite argument of Descartes, that we have innate 
 ideas because it is the mil of God, who has created the souL 
 But such a reply is at once commonplace and arbitrary, it may 
 be used on all occasions — it is so used in fact — and it is not a 
 logical argument. 
 
 Innate ideas and the principle of causality are explained 
 very simply by the doctrine of the plurality of existences ; 
 they are, indeed, merely deductions from that doctrine. A 
 man's soul, having already existed, either in the body of an 
 animal or that of another man, has preserved the trace of the 
 impressions received during that existence. It has lost, it is 
 true, the recollection of actions performed during its first in- 
 carnation ; but the abstract principle of causality, being inde- 
 pendent of the particular facts, being only the general result 
 of the practice of life, must remain in the soul at its second 
 incarnation. 
 
 Thus, the principle of causality, of which French philo- 
 sophy cannot offer any satisfactory theory, is explained in the 
 simplest possible manner, by the hypothesis of re-incarnations 
 and of the plurality of existences. 
 
 "We have previously alluded to memory, and explained its 
 relation to re-incarnations, and the reasons why we are born 
 without any consciousness of a previous life. We have said, 
 that if we come from an animal, we have no memory, because 
 the animal has none, or has very little. We must now add, 
 that if we come from a human soul, reopening to the light of 
 life, we are destitute of memory, because it would disturb the 
 trial of our terrestrial life, and even render it impossible, as it 
 is the intention of nature that we should recommence the expe-
 
 TEE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 223 
 
 rience of existence without any trace, present to our minds, of 
 previous actions which might limit or embarrass our free wUl. 
 
 "We cannot pass from this portion of our subject without 
 calling attention to the fact that the remembrance of a pre- 
 vious existence is not always absolutely wanting to us. Who 
 is there, who, in his hours of solitary contemplation, has not 
 seen a hidden world come forth before his eyes from the far 
 distance of a mysterious past % When, wrapped in profound 
 reverie, we let ourselves float on the stream of imagination, 
 into the ocean of the vague, and the infinite, do we not see 
 magic pictures which are not absolutely unknoAvn to our eyes % 
 do we not hear celestial harmonies which have already en- 
 chanted our ears % These secret imaginings, these involuntary 
 contemplations, to which each of us can testify, are they not 
 the real recollections of an existence anterior to our life here 
 below? 
 
 Might vre not also attribute to a vague remembrance, to 
 an unconscious sympathy, the real and profound pleasure which 
 we derive from the mere sight of plants, flowers, and vegeta- 
 tion ] The aspect of a forest, of a beautiful meadow, of green 
 hiUs, touches us, moves us, sometimes even to tears. Great 
 masses of verdure, and the humble field daisy, alike speak to 
 our hearts. Each of us has a favourite plant, the flower 
 whose perfume he loves to inhale, or the tree whose shade he 
 prefers. Eousseau was moved by the sight of a yew tree, 
 and Alfred de Musset loved the willows so much, that he 
 expressed a wish, piously fulfilled, that a willow might over- 
 shadow his grave. 
 
 This love of the vegetable world has a mysterious root in
 
 224 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TH. 
 
 our hearts. May we not recognize in so natural a sentiment, 
 a sort of vague remembrance of our original country, a secret 
 and involuntary evocation of the scene in which the germ of 
 our soul was first loosed to the light of the sun, the power- 
 ful promoter of life ? 
 
 Besides the undecided and dim remembrance of pictures 
 which seem to belong to our anterior existences upon the 
 globe, we sometimes feel keen asj^irations towards a kinder 
 and calmer destiny than that which is allotted to us here 
 below. Ko doubt coarse beings, entirely attached to material 
 appetites and interests, do not feel these secret longings for an 
 unknown and happier destiny, but poetical and tender souls, 
 those who suffer from the wretched conditions of which 
 human nature is the slave and the martyr, take a vague plea- 
 sure in such melancholy aspirations. In the radiant infinite 
 they foresee celestial dwellings, where they shall one day 
 reside, and they are impatient to break the ties which bind 
 them to earth. Eead the episode in Goethe's Mignon, in 
 which Mignon, wandering and exiled, pours out her young 
 soul in aspirations to heaven, in sublime longings for an un- 
 known and blessed future, which she feels drawing her to- 
 wards itself, and ask yourself whether the beautiful verses of 
 the great poet, who was also a great naturalist, do not interpret 
 a truth of nature, i.e., the new life which awaits us in the 
 plains of ether. Why do all men, among all peoples, raise 
 their eyes to heaven in solemn moments, in the impulses of 
 passion, and the anguish of grief or pain? Does any one, 
 under such circumstances, contemplate the earth on which he 
 stands 1 Our eyes and our hearts turn towards the skies.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 225 
 
 The dying raise their fallen orbs to heaven, and we look to- 
 wards the celestial spaces in those vague reveries which we 
 have been describing. It is permitted to us to believe that 
 this universal tendency is an intuition of that which awaits 
 us after our terrestrial life, a natural revelation of the domaiu 
 which shall be ours one day, and which extends over the 
 celestial empyrean, to the bosom of ethereal space. 
 
 15
 
 CHAPTEE THE SEVENTEE:s^TH. 
 
 A SUMMARY OP THE SYSTEM OP THE PLURALITY OP LIVES. 
 
 E proj)ose now to collect, •within a few summary 
 propositions, the principal features of the system 
 of nature which we have defined. 
 
 1. The sun is the primary agent of life and 
 organization. 
 
 2. In the primitive time of our glohe, life began to appear 
 in aquatic and aerial plants, as well as in zoophytes. The 
 same order reproduces itself at present, in the point of depar- 
 ture, and in the development of life and of souls. The solar 
 rays, falling on the earth, and into the waters, produce the 
 formation of plants and that of zoophytes. The rays of the 
 sun by depositing in the waters and on the earth, animated 
 germs, emanating from the spiritualized beings who inhabit 
 the sun, bring about the birth of plants and zoophytes. 
 
 3. Plants and zoophytes are endowed with sensation. They 
 enclose an animal germ, just as a seed encloses an embryo. 
 
 4. The animal germ contained in the plant and in the zoo- 
 phyte, passes, at the death of each animal, into the body of 
 the animal which comes next to it in the ascending scale of 
 organic perfection. From the zoophyte the animated germ
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEiiTIL 227 
 
 passes into the mollusc, from thence into the articulated 
 animal, the fish, or the reptile. From the body of the 
 reptile, it passes into that of the bird, and then into the 
 mammifers. 
 
 In the inferior beings, for instance zoophytes, several ani- 
 mated germs may be united to form the soul of a single being 
 of a superior order. 
 
 5. In passing through the entire series of animals, this ru- 
 dimentary soul becomes perfected and acquires the beginnings 
 of faculties. Conscience, will, and judgment succeed to sen- 
 sation. When the soul has attained the body of a mammi- 
 fer, it has acquired a certain number of faculties. In addi- 
 tion to feeling, it has the basis of reason, i.e., the ^principle of 
 causation. From the body of a mammiferous animal belong- 
 ing to the superior species, the soul passes into the body of a 
 newly-born infant. 
 
 6. The child is born without memory, like the superior 
 animal whence it has proceeded. At a year old it acquires 
 this faculty, and gradually obtains others ; imagination and 
 thought develop themselves, reason grows strong, memory 
 becomes firm and extensive. 
 
 7. If the child dies before the age of twelve months, his 
 soul, still very imperfect, and devoid of active faculties, passes 
 into the body of another newly-born child, and recommeaces 
 a new existence. 
 
 8. When a man dies, his body remains upon the earth, his 
 soul rises through the atmosphere to the ether which sur- 
 rounds all the planets, and enters into the body of the angel, 
 or suj^erliuman leing. 
 
 15—2
 
 228 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 9. If, during its sojourn upon the earth, the soul has not 
 undergone a sufficient amount of purification and ennobling, 
 it recommences a second existence, passing into the body of 
 a newly-born child, and losing the remembrance of its first life. 
 Only when the soul has attained the suitable degree of per- 
 fection, and, after having been re-incarnate once, or many 
 times, is empowered to leave our globe, to assume a new body 
 in the bosom of the ethereal plains, and thus become a super- 
 human being, can it recover the recollection of its past exis- 
 tences. 
 
 10. That which occurs upon the Earth also takes place in 
 the other planets of our solar system. In these planets vege- 
 tables, or beings analogous to vegetables are produced by the 
 action of the sun. By means of his rays animated germs are 
 carried into these globes, and plants and inferior animals are 
 produced. Then these animated germs contained in the plants 
 and inferior animals, passing successively through the whole 
 series of animals, end by producing a being, superior, in in- 
 telligence and sensibility, to all the other living creatures. 
 This superior being, the analogue of the human being, we caU 
 planetary man. 
 
 1 1 . The planetary man, who inhabits Mercury, Mars, Venus, 
 &c., being dead, his material form remains upon the planetary 
 globe, and his soul, provided it has acquired the necessary 
 degree of purity, passes into the surrounding ether, is incar- 
 nate in a new body, and produces a superhuman being. 
 
 12. Phalanxes of these superhuman beings float in the 
 planetary ether. It witnesses the reunion of all the purified 
 soul'-: which have come from our globe and from the other
 
 THE DA Y A FTER DBA TH. 229 
 
 planets. The organic types of these beings is the same, Avhat- 
 ever may be their planetary abode. 
 
 13. The superhtimau being is provided with special attri- 
 butes, he is endowed with mighty faculties wliich raise him 
 to a height infinitely above terrestrial or planetary humanity. 
 In this being, matter, in comparison with the spiritual prin- 
 ciple, is reduced to a much smaller proportion than in man. 
 His body is light and vaporous. He possesses senses which 
 are unknown to us, and the senses which he possesses in com- 
 mon with us, are prodigiously intensified, subtilised, and per- 
 fected. He ean transport himself, in a short space of time, to 
 any distance, he can travel, without fatigue, from one point 
 in space to another. His vision is of immeasurable extent. 
 He has intuitive knowledge of many facts of nature which 
 are hidden by an impenetrable veil from feeble human percep- 
 tion. 
 
 1 4. The superhuman being who comes from the earth can 
 place himself in communication with men who are worthy of 
 the privilege. He directs their conduct, watches over their 
 actions, enlightens their understanding, inspires their hearts. 
 When, in their turn, they too reach the celestial dwellings, he 
 receives them on the threshold of their new abode, and initi- 
 ates them into the life of blessedness beyond the tomb. 
 
 15. The superhuman being is mortal. When he has termi- 
 nated the normal course of his existence in the ethereal 
 spaces, he dies, and his spiritual principle enters into a new 
 body, that of the archangel, or arch-human being, in whom tho 
 proportion of spiritual principle predominates still more 
 strongly, in proportion to matter.
 
 230 THE BAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 16. These re-incarnations, in the depths of the ethereal 
 spaces, are reproduced more frequently than can be defined, 
 and give us a series of creatures of ever-increasing activity 
 and power of thought and action. At each promotion in the 
 hierarchy of space these sublime beings find the energy of 
 their moral and intellectual faculties, their power of feeling, 
 and of loving, and their induction into the most profound 
 mysteries of the Universe, undergoing augmentation. 
 
 17. When he has arrived at the highest degree of the celes- 
 tial hierarchy, the spiritualized being is absolutely perfect ; in 
 strength and in intelHgence. He is entirely freed from aU 
 material alloy, he has no longer a body, he is a pure spirit. 
 In this condition he j)asses into the sun. 
 
 18. The sun, the king-star, is then the final and common 
 sojourn of aU the spiritualized beings who have come from the 
 other planets, after having passed through the long series of 
 existences which have roUed away in the plains of ether. 
 
 19. The spiritualized beings gathered together in the sun, 
 send down upon the earth and upon the planets emanations 
 from their essence, that is to say, animated germs. These 
 animated germs are carried by the sunbeams, which distribute 
 organization, feeling, and life over all the planets, at the same 
 time that they preside at all the great physical and mechanical 
 operations which take place on the earth, and on the other 
 planets of our solar world. 
 
 20. The formation of the aerial and aquatic plants, and the 
 birth of inferior animals or zoophytes, are, as we have said, 
 the result of the action of the sun's rays on our globe. Then 
 commences the series of the transmigrations of souls through
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 231 
 
 the bodies of various animals, wlaicli results in man, in the 
 superhuman being, and in all the succession of celestial 
 metempsychoses, whose ultimate term is the spiritualized 
 being or the dweUer in the sun. 
 
 Thus does the great chain of nature close and complete it- 
 self; — that uninterrupted chain of vital activity, which has 
 neither beginning nor end, and which links all created beings 
 into one family, the universal famUy of the worlds. 
 
 l!^ature is not a straight line, but a circle, and we cannot 
 say where this wonderful circle begins or ends. The wisdom 
 of the Egyptians, which represented the world as a serpent 
 coiled around itself, was the symbol of a great truth which 
 the science of our time has once more brought to light.
 
 CHAPTEE THE EIGHTEENTH. 
 
 REPLIES TO SOME OBJECTIONS. — FIRST : THE IMMORTALITY OP 
 THE SOUL, WHICH IS THE BASIS OF THIS SYSTEM, IS NOT DE- 
 MONSTRATED.— SECOND : WE HAVE NOT ANY RECOLLECTION 
 OF ANTERIOR EXISTENCES. — THIRD : THIS SYSTEM IS NO OTHER 
 THAN THE METEMPSYCHOSIS OF THE ANCIENTS. — FOURTH : THIS 
 SYSTEM IS CONFOUNDED WITH DARWINISM. 
 
 AVIXG brought into relief, by the preceding 
 summary, the entire doctrine of successive lives 
 and of re-incarnations, we must now meet some 
 objections which will have been provoked by 
 these propositions, and reply to them in a w'ay which has 
 the advantage of still more distinctly explaining our ideas on 
 several pctints. 
 
 First objection. It will be said : The existence of an im- 
 mortal soul in man forms the basis of all this reasoning. Now, 
 the fact of the existence of an immortal soul is not demon- 
 strated in the course of this work, and, besides, it could not 
 be demonstrated. 
 
 The following is our reply to this first objection. 
 
 We are composed of two elements, or of two substances ; 
 
 one which thinks — the soul, or the immaterial substance ; 
 
 the other, Avhich does not think — the body, or the material 
 
 substance. This truth is self-evident. Thought is a fact,
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 233 
 
 certain in itself; and it is another fact, equally certain, that 
 my arms, my nails or beard, do not think. Here, then, is 
 the proDf of the immortality of the soul, or thinking principle. 
 
 Matter does not perish ; observation and science prove that 
 material bodies are never annihilated, that they merely change 
 their condition, their form, and their place ; but are always to 
 be found somewhere intact as to their substance. Our bodies 
 decompose, and are dissolved, but the matter of which they 
 were formed is never destroyed, it is dispersed in the air, 
 the fire, and the water, in which it produces new material 
 combinations, but it is not destroyed for all that. JS'ow, if 
 matter does not perish, but only becomes transformed, all the 
 more certainly must the soul be indestructible and imperish- 
 able. Like matter, it must be transformed, without being 
 destroyed. 
 
 Descartes has saiil, / tliinh, therefore I am. This reasoning, 
 so much admired in the schools, has always appeared to us 
 rather weak. To give force to the syllogism, he should have 
 said, I think, therefore I am immortal. My soul is immortal, 
 because it exists, and it does exist since I think. Thus tlie 
 fact of the immortality of the spiritual principle which we 
 bear within us is self-evident, and we do not need any of the 
 demonstrations which abound in philosophical works, and 
 have been put forth from antiquity until our own time ; we 
 need no Treatises on the Soul to establish its existence. 
 
 The difficulty does not consist in proving that a spiritual 
 principle exists within us, that is to say, a principle which 
 resists death, because, in order to contest the existence of this 
 principle, it would be necessary to contest thought. The real
 
 234 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 prolDlem is to find out whether this spiritual and immortal 
 principle Avhich we bear within us, is to live again, after our 
 death, in ourselves or in others. The question is, whether 
 the immortal soul will be born again in the same individual, 
 physically transformed, in the same person, in the ego, or 
 whether it will pass into the possession of a being strange to 
 that person. 
 
 We may remark here that on this all the interest of the 
 question for us turns. It would be of very little importance 
 to us, in reality, whether the soul were immortal or not, if 
 the soul of each of us, being really indestructible and im- 
 mortal, should pass to another than ourselves, or if, reviving 
 in us, it did not possess the memory of our past existence, 
 The resurrection of the soul without the memory of the past 
 would be a real annihilation, this would be the nothingness 
 of the materialists. It must be, then, that the soul lives 
 again after our death, in ourselves, and that this soul, then, 
 has clear remembrance of all the actions which took place in 
 its previous existences. It behoves us, in short, to know, not 
 whether our souls are immortal — that fact is self-evident — but 
 whether they will belong to us in the other life, whether, after 
 our death, we shall have identity, individuality, personality. 
 It is to the study of this question that the present work is 
 devoted. We are endeavouring to prove that the soul of the 
 man remains always the same, in spite of its numerous pere- 
 grinations, notwithstanding the variety of form of the bodies 
 in which it is successively lodged, when it passes from the 
 animal to the man, from the man to the superhuman being, 
 and from the superhuman being, after other celestial transmi-
 
 THE DA T AFTER DEATH. 235 
 
 grations, to the spiritualized being who inhabits the sun. We 
 are endeavouring to establish that the soul, notwithstanding 
 all its journeys, in the midst of its incarnations and various 
 metamorphoses, remains always identical with itself, doing 
 nothing more in each metempsychosis, in each metamorphosis 
 of the exterior being, than perfect and purify itself, growing 
 in power and in intellectual grasp. We are endeavouring to 
 prove, that, notwithstanding the shadows of death, our indi- 
 viduality is never destroyed, and that we shall be born again 
 in the heavens, with the same moral personality which was 
 ours here below ; in other words, that the human person is 
 imperishable. It is for the reader to say whether we have 
 attained our object, whether we have established the truth of 
 this doctrine conformably with the laws of reasoning and the 
 facts of science. 
 
 If an absolute demonstration of the existence of an imma- 
 terial principle in iis be insisted upon, we must reply, that 
 philosophy, lilce geometry, has its axioms, that is to say, its 
 self-evident truths, whicli need not, or, if we choose to say so, 
 which cannot be mathematically demonstrated. The existence 
 of the soul is one of those axioms of philosophy. Diogenes 
 answered a rhetorician who denied movement by walking in 
 his presence. By expressing any thought, by saying "yes," 
 or " no," we may prove the existence of the immortal soul to 
 the sophists who would attempt to contest it. 
 
 We have just said that geometry has its axioms. Let us 
 remember that an entire school of geometricians amused them- 
 selves by disputing the axioms, under the pretext that it was 
 impossible to demonstrate them. We were present, in Decern-
 
 236 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 ber, 1866, at a curioiis sitting of the Institute, during "which 
 M. lionville, a celebrated mathematician, and professor at the 
 Sorbonne, explained this strange polemic with great skill. 
 
 In attempting to demonstrate the propositions of geometry, 
 certain axioms, i.e., self-evident truths, must be admitted in 
 the first place. Otherwise, the primary reasoning will have 
 no basis. But, among the numerous propositions of this kind 
 which present themselves to the mind, and which result from 
 the admission of one of their number, which is the most evident? 
 That depends on the nature of the mind of each of us, and 
 therefore it is that there is not, and that there never will be, 
 an argument on this question. 
 
 There is a school of geometry which pretends to demonstrate 
 everything. There is another, the true and good school, which, 
 recognizing that the human mind has limits, and that every- 
 thing is not accessible by our thoughts, lays down, under the 
 name of axioms, certain truths which do not require proof, or, 
 which is often the same thing, are incapable of proof. 
 
 Among the number of self-evident truths, or truths difficult 
 of demonstration, we find the question of parallel lines. What 
 are two parallels 1 Two lines which never meet each other. 
 Eut how can we prove this property of two lines by reasoning 1 
 That is not, exactly speaking, possible, since the notion of the 
 infinite is not admitted, or not understood by everybody, and 
 cannot, therefore, serve as the basis of an absolutely rigorous 
 argument. 
 
 It was for this reason that Euclid, the founder of geometry 
 in ancient times, laid down this truth as a simple axiom, 
 requiring (hence the postulates of Euclid, from the Latin verb
 
 THE DA Y AFTER LEA Til. 237 
 
 postulare, to demand), that the truth of this principle, which 
 he acknowledged himself unable to prove by logical demon- 
 stration, should be granted. 
 
 A hundred geometricians, since Euclid, who renounced the 
 attempt to demonstrate it, have tried to prove this theory of 
 parallels, but not one has succeeded. It was on the occasion 
 of a fresh attempt at demonstration by a mathematician in 
 the provinces, that M. Lionville spoke before the Academy, 
 to recall the principles almost unanimously professed by 
 geometricians on this subject. 
 
 The question is, in reality, thoroughly understood ; it is 
 treated on all works on geometry, and has been for a long time 
 a settled matter. But certain minds are tempted by the sub- 
 tlety of certain subjects, and the question of the postulatuiii 
 turns up periodically before the learned societies, as it does iu 
 the conversations between the teachers of mathematics. 
 
 M. Liouville reminded his audience that many demon- 
 strations of tliis celebrated proposition had been attempted, 
 but had not succeeded, because there are limits within which 
 human reason ceases to be accepted by all. M. Lionville 
 even proposed that the question of the postulatum should be 
 classed among those whose examination is interdicted by the 
 Academy, such as the quadrature of the circle, and the trisec- 
 tion of the angle. On this point M. LionviUe quoted an 
 anecdote relative to Lagrange. That great mathematician, 
 believing that he had found an absolute solution of the postu- 
 latum, went to the Academy to read his demonstration, but 
 on reflection, he changed his mind, and decided that it would 
 be better not to publish it. He put his manuscript in his 
 pocket, and it never came out.
 
 233 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 Several geometricians spoke on this occasion, and con- 
 firmed the views of M. Lionville ; and when the demon- 
 stration submitted by the professor was examined, it was 
 found to be false. We must therefore recognize and proclaim 
 chat, in geometry, the axioms cannot be demonstrated. 
 
 Many people endeavour to derive an argument from 
 that discussion against the certainty of geometry. Among 
 them is M. Bouillaud, a learned physician and member of 
 the Institute, who declared that he could not get over his 
 astonishment at hearing it said that there were several 
 geometries, and that even the bases of that science were 
 doubtful. Eeassure yourself, great and good physician, 
 geometry has nothing to lose and nothing to hide, and the 
 certainty of its methods is not imperilled in this question. 
 That which really was at stake was the methodical, classical 
 teaching of geometry. That which was discussed was the 
 best means of instilling the principles of science into the 
 mind. But, as to the truths of geometry, as to the facts 
 themselves, they are secure from all uncertainty, all these 
 disputes upon the truth whicli must be recognized as axioms, 
 or demonstrated as theorems, are only fancies of the rhetori- 
 cians, as vain as they are subtle, ISTo trace of them remains 
 when they are transported into the practice of facts and of 
 mathematical deductions. Ask the astronomers who calcu- 
 late the orbit of the stars, who fix the moment of an eclipse 
 Avith unerring precision, ask those Avho have calculated the 
 parallaxes, whether they trouble themselves by inquiring how 
 it may be demonstrated that the angles of a triangle are equal 
 to two light angles. All the scholastic subtleties are gotten 
 rid of in the course of practical work.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 239 
 
 If we may lay aside, without occupying ourselves with 
 them, the mathematicians who amuse themselves by dis- 
 puting the axioms of geometry, we may do the same with the 
 few sophists who desire to dispute the axioms of philosophy 
 and reason, and especially the principle of the existence of an 
 immortal soul in man. Let us leave them to their disputa- 
 tions, and go on our way. 
 
 Second objection : — We have no recollection of having 
 existed prior to our entrance into this world. 
 
 This is, we acknowledge the greatest and most serious 
 argument against our system. Eut we must hasten to add, 
 that if this difficulty did not exist, if the remembrance of a 
 life anterior to our present existence were always before us, 
 the doctrine of plurality of lives would need no reinforcement 
 from the proofs for which we appeal to argument, to the facts 
 of .observation, and to logical induction. It would be plain 
 beforeout eyes, it would be self-evident. All our merit, all 
 our task in this work, is to endeavour to procure admission of 
 the plurality of existences, though we have no remembrance of 
 our past lives. 
 
 "We have already treated this question incidentally, and we 
 will now summarize all that has been advanced in former chap- 
 ters to explain the absence of recollection of our past existences. 
 
 The soul in its first human incarnation, if it proceeds from 
 a superior animal, could not possess memory, because in 
 animals that faculty has a small range, and brief duration. 
 If a second or third human incarnation is in question, the 
 difficulty is serious, because it implies tliat tlie man who has 
 lived and who is born again, has forgotten his previous life.
 
 240 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 But, in the first place, this forgetfulness is not absolute. 
 "VVe have remarked before that in the human soul certain 
 results of impressions received prior to the terrestrial life 
 always linger. Natural aptitudes, special faculties, vocations, 
 are the traces of impressions formerly received, of knowledge 
 already acquired, and, being revealed from the cradle, cannot 
 be explained otherwise than by a life gone by. We have 
 lost the remembrance of the facts, but there remains the 
 moral consequence, the resultant, the philosophy, so to speak, 
 and thus the innate ideas indicated by Descartes, wliich 
 exist in the soul from its birth, and also the princi])le of 
 causality, which teaches us that every effect has a cause, are 
 explained. This principle can only be derived from facts, 
 because an abstraction can only be based upon concrete facts, 
 upon accomplished events, and this abstraction, or this meta- 
 physical idea, which we have from our birth, implies anterior 
 facts, which must belong to a past life. 
 
 "VVe have already said that when the soul gives free course 
 to reverie, it beholds mysterious and undefined spectacles, 
 which seem to belong to worlds which are not quite unknown 
 to us, but in no wise resembling this earth. In this vague 
 contemplation there is something like a confused remem- 
 brance of an anterior life. The love which we bear to 
 llowers, plants, and all vegetation, may be as we have akeady 
 pointed out, a grateful recollection of our first origin. 
 
 If, however, these considerations be not accepted as valid, 
 there is another, which, to our mind, perfectly explains the 
 absence of a remembrance of our former existences. It is 
 we believe, by a premeditated decree of nature, that the
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 241 
 
 memory of our past lives is denied to us while we are on the 
 earth. M. Andr^ Pezzani, the author of an excellent book 
 called " PkimliU des existences de Vdme," replies to the argu- 
 ment of oblivion, thus : 
 
 " Our terrestrial sojourn is only a new trial, as Dupont de 
 Nemours, that wonderful writer of the eighteenth century, 
 who outstripped all modern beliefs, has said. If this be so, 
 can we not perceive that the remembrance of past lives would 
 embarrass these trials by removing the greater j^art of their 
 difficulties, and, in proportion, of their merit, and destroying 
 their spontaneity 1 We live in a world in which free-will is 
 all powerful, the inviolable law of the advancement and the 
 progressive initiation of men. If past existences were known, 
 the soul would knoAV the meaning and the bearing of the trials 
 reserved for it here below; indolent and idle, it would harden 
 itself against the designs of Providence, and would be either 
 paralyzed by its despair of overcoming them, or, if better dis- 
 posed and more virile, it would accept and accomplish them 
 unfailingly. But neither one nor the other of these positions 
 is fitting. Our efforts must be free, voluntary, sheltered from 
 the influences of the past; the field of strife must be seemingly 
 untrodden, so that the athlete shall show and exercise his 
 virtue. Previously gained experience, the energies which ho 
 has acquired, help him in the new strife, but in a latent way 
 of which he is unconscious, for the imperfect soul undergoes 
 these re-incarnations, in order to develop its previously 
 manifested qualities, and to strip itself of those vices and 
 defects which oppose themselves to the law of its ascension. 
 "What would happen if all men remembered their previous 
 lives ? The order of the earth would be overturned, or at 
 least, it would not remain in its present condition. Lethe, like 
 free-will, is a law of the world as it is."* 
 
 * "ia Pluralite dcs existences de Vdme^'' Paris, p. 450. 
 
 16
 
 242 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TU. 
 
 To this it will be objected that there is destruction of iden- 
 tity where memory does not exist, and that expiation, in order 
 to be profitable to the guilty soul, must co-exist with the re- 
 membrance of faults committed in the previous existence, for 
 the man is not punished who does not know that he is 
 punished. We may remark here that we do not use the word 
 " expiation " precisely as theologians employ it, but rather 
 as a new dwelling conferred on the soul, in order that it may 
 resume the interrupted course of its advance towards perfec- 
 tion. We believe that the remembrance of our previous life, for- 
 bidden to us during our terrestrial sojourn, will come back 
 when we shall have attained the happy realms of ether, in 
 which we shall pass through the existences which are to 
 succeed our life on earth. Among the number of the per- 
 i factions and moral faculties forming the attributes of the 
 superhuman being, the memory of his anterior lives will be 
 included. Identity will be born again for him. Having 
 suffered a momentary collapse, his individuality wUl be re- 
 stored to him, with his conscience and his liberty. 
 
 Let us hearken awhUe to Jean Eeynaud, as he tells us in 
 his fine book, Terre et del, the marvels of that memory which 
 shall be restored to man after his being shall have undergone 
 a series of changes. 
 
 " The integral restitution of our recollections," says Jean 
 Eeynaud, " seems to us one of the inherent principal condi- 
 tions of our future happiness. We cannot fully enjoy life, 
 until we become, like Janus, kings of time, until we know 
 how to concentrate in us, not only the sentiment of the pre- 
 sent, but that of the future and the past. Then, if perfect 
 life be one day given to us, perfect memory must also be given
 
 THE DA Y A FTER DEA TH. 24o 
 
 to us. And now, let us try to think of the infinite treasures 
 of a mind enriched by the recollections of an innumerable 
 series of existences, entirely different from each other, and yet 
 admirably linked together by a continual dependence. To 
 this marvellous garland of metempsychoses, encircling the 
 universe, let us add, if the perspective seem worthy of our 
 ambition, a clear perception of the particular influence of oui 
 life upon the ulterior changes of each of the worlds which 
 we shall have successively inhabited ; let us aggrandize our 
 life in immortalizing it, and wed our history grandly with the 
 history of the heavens. Let us confidently collect together 
 every material of happiness, since thus the all-powerful 
 bounty of the Creator wills it, and let us construct the exis- 
 tence which the future reserves for virtuous souls ; let us 
 plunge into the past by our faith, while we are waiting for 
 more light, even as by our faith we plunge into the future. 
 Let us banish the idea of disorder from the earth, by opening 
 the gates of time beyond our birth, as we have banished the 
 idea of injustice by opening other gates beyond the tomb ; 
 let us stretch "duration in every direction, and, notwithstanding 
 the obscurity which rests upon our two horizons, let us 
 glorify the Creator in glorifying ourselves, who are God's 
 ministers on earth, let us remember, with pious pride, that we 
 are the younger brethren of the angels." 
 
 Under what condition does the soul regain the remembrance 
 of its entire past? Jean Eeynaud specifies two periods. 
 1, That which is fulfilled, as the Druids hold, in the world of 
 journeys and trials, of which the earth forms a part. 2. The 
 period during which the soul, set free from the miseries and 
 vicissitudes of the terrestrial life, pursues its destinies in the 
 ever widening and progressive circle of hapj)iness ; a period 
 which passes outside of the earth. In the first period there 
 
 16—2
 
 244 THE DA T AFTER DEATH. 
 
 is an eclipse of the memory at each passage into a new sphere; 
 in the second period, whatever may be the displacements and 
 transfigurations of the person, the memory is preserved full and 
 entire. This theory of Eeynaud's is admitted by M. Pezzani. 
 With the exception of that ecUim of the memmj at each 
 passage into a neio sphere, which seems to us incomprehensi- 
 ble and useless, we think, with Jean Eeynaud, that the com- 
 plete remembrance of our previous existences will return to 
 the soul when it shall inhabit the ethereal regions, the sojourn 
 of the superhuman being. In this manner only, in our 
 opinion, can the defect of man's memory, concerning his 
 previous existences, be explained. Thus, the argument from 
 that defect of memory does not remain without reply. Writers 
 who have preceded us, and have meditated on this question, 
 had already found the solution which we offer. This objection 
 is not, then, of a nature to throw doubt on the doctrine of 
 plurality of existences. Let us conclude, with M. Pezzani, 
 that it is by a design of nature, that man, during this life, 
 loses the remembrance of what he formerly was. If we re- 
 tained the recollection of our anterior existences, if we had 
 before our eyes, as if seen in a mirror, all that we had done 
 during our former lives, we should be much troubled by the 
 remembrance, which would harass the greater part of our 
 actions, and deprive us of our complete free will. 
 
 Why is an invincible dread of death common to all men 1 
 Death is not, in reality, very dreadful, since it is not a ter- 
 mination, but a simple change of condition. If man feels 
 terror of death to such an extent, we may be sure that nature 
 imposes that sentiment upon him, in the interests of the pre-
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 245 
 
 servation of his species. Thus, in our belief, the fear of death 
 and the absence of memory of our former lives are referable 
 to the same cause. The first is a salutary illusion imposed by 
 God upon the weakness of humanity ; the second is a means 
 of securing to man full liberty of action. 
 
 Another objection will be made to our doctrine. It will 
 be said : The re-incarnation of souls is not a new idea ; it is, 
 on the contrary, an idea as old as humanity itself. It is the 
 metempsychosis, which from the Indians passed to the 
 Egyptians, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, and which 
 was afterwards professed by the Druids. 
 
 The metempsychosis is, in fact, the most ancient of philo- 
 sophical conceptions ; it is the first theory imagined by men, 
 in order to explain the origin and the destiny of our race. 
 "We do not recognize an argument against our system of nature 
 in this remark, but rather indeed a confirmation of it. An 
 idea does not pass down from age to age, and find acceptance 
 during five or six centuries, by the picked men of successive 
 generations, unless it rests upon some serious foundation. We 
 are not called upon to defend ourselves because our opinions 
 harmonize with the philosophical ideas which date from the 
 most distant time in the history of the peoples. The first 
 observers, and the oriental philosophers in particular, who are 
 the most ancient thinkers of all whose writings we possess, 
 had not, like us, their minds warped, prejudiced, turned aside 
 by routine, or trammelled by the words of teachers. They 
 were placed very close to nature, and they beheld its realities, 
 without any preconceived ideas, derived from education in 
 particular schools. We cannot, therefore, but applaud our-
 
 246 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 selves when we find that the logical deduction of our ideas has 
 led us hack to the antique conception of Indian wisdom. 
 
 There is, however, a profound difference between our sys- 
 tem of the plurality of lives, and the oriental dogma of the 
 metempsychosis. The Indian j)hilosophers, the Egyptians, 
 and the Greeks, who inherited the maxims of Pythagoras, 
 admitted that the soul, on leaving a human body, enters into 
 that of an animal, to undergo punishment. "We entirely re- 
 ject this useless step backward. Our metempsychosis is up- 
 ward and onward, it never steps down, or back. 
 
 A brief sketch of the dogma of the animal metempsychosis, 
 such as it was professed by the different pliilosophical sects of 
 antiquity will not be out of place here. "We shall explain in 
 what particulars the oriental dogma differs from our system, 
 and show, at the same time, how popular the metempsychosis 
 was among the peoples of antiquity, in Europe as well as in 
 Asia. 
 
 The most ancient known book is that of the Vedas, which 
 contains the religious principles of the Indians or Hindoos. 
 In this code of the primary religions of Asia is found the 
 general dogma of the final absorption of souls in God. But, 
 before it reaches its final fusion with the great All, it is 
 necessary that the human soul should have traversed all the 
 active orders of life. The soul, therefore, performed a series 
 of transmigrations and journeys, in various places, in different 
 worlds, and passed through the bodies of several different 
 animals. Men who had not done good works went into tlie 
 moon or the sun ; or else they came back to the earth, and 
 assumed the bodies of certain animals, such as dogs, butter-
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 247 
 
 flies, adders, &c. There were also intermediary places be- 
 tween the earth and the sun, whither souls who had only- 
 been partly faulty, went to pass a period of expiation. We 
 find the following in the Vcdas : — 
 
 " K a man has done works which lead to the world of the 
 sun, his soul repairs to the world of the sun ; if he has done 
 works which load to the world of the Creator, his soul goes to 
 the world of the Creator." 
 
 The book of the Vedas says, very distinctly, that the 
 animal, as well as the man, has the right of passing to other 
 worlds, as a recompense for his good works. The oriental 
 wisdom felt none of that uncalled-for contempt for animals 
 which is characteristic of modern philosophy and religion. 
 
 " All animals, according to the deqree of knoAvledge and 
 intelligence which they have had in this world, go into other 
 worlds. The man whose object was the recompense of his 
 good -works, being' dead, goes into the world of the moon. 
 There he is at the service of the overseers of the half of the 
 moon in its crescent. They welcome him joyfully, but he is 
 not tranquil, he is not happy ; all his recompense is to have 
 attained for a while to the world of the moon. On the ex- 
 piration of this time, the servant of the overseers of the moon 
 descends again into hell ; and is born as a worm, a butter- 
 fly, lion, fish, dog, or under any other form (even under a 
 human form)."* 
 
 " At the last stages of his descent, if one asks, who are you 1 
 he replies : I come from the world of the moon, the wages of 
 the deeds done during my life merely for the sake of reward. 
 I am again invested with a body ; I have suffered in the womb 
 
 * *'Xa Hellgion des Hinduus selon les Vedas,''^ par Lanjuinais, 
 Paris, p. 286.
 
 248 TEE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 of my mother, and in leaving it ; I hope finally to acquire the 
 knowledge of Him who is all things, to enter into the right 
 way of worship and of meditation Avithout any consideration 
 of reward. 
 
 " In the world of the moon, one receives the reward of good 
 works which are done without renunciation of their fruits, of 
 their merits ; but this reward has only a fixed time, after 
 which one is born again in an inferior world, a wicked world, 
 a world which is the recompense of evil. 
 
 " By the renunciation of all pleasure, and of all reward 
 "by seeking God only, witli unshaken faith, we reach 
 the sun which has no end, the great world, whence we 
 return no more to a world which is the recompense of 
 evil."* 
 
 The Egyptians, having borrowed this doctrine from the 
 Hindoos, made it the basis of their religious worship. Hero- 
 dotus informs us,t that, according to the Egyptians, the 
 human soul, on issuing from a completely decomposed body, 
 enters into that of some animal. The soul takes three thou- 
 fjaud years to pass from this body through a series of others, 
 and at the conclusion of this interval, the same soul returns 
 to the human species, entering the form of a newly-born 
 infant. 
 
 The Egyptians employed excessive caution in the preserva- 
 tion of human bodies. They embalmed the corpses of their 
 relatives or of personages of importance to the state, and thus 
 prepared the mummies which are to be seen in all our 
 museums. The universal practice of embalming was not 
 
 • " La Religion des Hindous selon les Vedas," pp. 324, 325, 
 t " Histoires," Vol. II. ch. cxxiii. (translated by M. Larcher.
 
 THE DA Y A FTER DEA TIL 249 
 
 intended, as has been supposed, to keep the human body 
 ready to receive the soul, returning at the end of three thou- 
 sand years, to seek its primitive abode. It had another 
 object. It was supposed that the soul did not commence its 
 migrations after the death of the human body, while any por- 
 tion of the corpse remained entire. Hence the efforts made 
 by the Egyptians, to retard the moment of separation by the 
 preservation of the corpse as long as possible. Servius says : 
 
 "The Egyptians, renowned for their Avisdom, prolonged 
 the duration of corpses, that the existence of the soul, 
 attached to that of the body, might be preserved, and might 
 not pass away quickly to others. The Eomans, on the con- 
 trary, burn corpses, so that the soul, resuming its Liberty, 
 might immediately re-enter nature." 
 
 The most ancient and remarkable of the Greek philoso- 
 phers, Pythagoras, found out the doctrine of the metempsy- 
 chosis', in -his, travels in Egypt. He adopted it in his school, 
 and the whole of the Greek philosophy held, with Pytha- 
 goras, that the souls of the wicked pass into the bodies of 
 animals. Hence the abstinence from flesh meat, prescribed 
 by Pythagoras to his disciples, a precept which he also 
 derived from Egypt, where respect for animals was due to the 
 general persuasion that the bodies of beasts were tenanted by 
 human souls, and, consequently, that by ill-treating animals, 
 one ran the risk of injuring one's own ancestors. Empedocles, 
 the philosopher, adopted the Pythagorean system. He says, 
 in lines quoted by Clement of Alexandria : — 
 
 " I, too, have been a young maiden, 
 A tree, a bird, a mute tish in the seas."
 
 250 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 Plato, the most illustrious of the philosophers of Greece, 
 accords a large place to the views of Pythagoras, even amid 
 his most sublime conceptions of the soul, and of immortality. 
 He held that the human soul passes into the body of animals, 
 in expiation of its crimes. Plato said that on earth we re- 
 member Avliat we have done during our previous existences, 
 and that to learn is to remember one's self. 
 
 " Cowards," he says, " are changed into women, vain and 
 frivolous men into birds, the ignorant into wild beasts, lower 
 in kind and crawling upon the earth, in proportion as their 
 idleness has been more degrading ; stained and corrupt souls 
 animate fishes and aquatic reptiles." Again, he says : " Those 
 Avho have abandoned themselves to intemperance and gluttony 
 enter into the bodies of animals with like propensities. They 
 Avho have loved injustice, cruelty, and rapine assume the 
 bodies of wolves, hawks, and falcons. The destiny of souls 
 has relation to the lives which they have led." 
 
 Plato held that the soul took only one thousand years to 
 complete its journey through the bodies of animals ; but ho 
 believed that this journey repeated itself ten times over, which 
 gives a total of 10,000 years for the completion of the entire 
 circle of existences. Between each of these j)eriods the soul 
 made a brief sojourn in Hades, During this sojourn it drank 
 of the waters of the river Lethe, in order to lose the recollec- 
 tion of its previous existence, before re-commencing its new life. 
 
 Plato exalted the dogma of the auimal metemj)sychosis by 
 his grand views upon spiritual immortality and the liberty of 
 man, ideas which even at the present time are quoted with 
 admiration, but for whose recapitulation we have not space.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 251 
 
 The metempsychosis holds less rank in the Platonic doctrine 
 than in the Pythagorean and Egyptian systems. All its im- 
 portance was resumed among the philosophers of the Alexan- 
 drian school, Avho continued, in Egypt, the traditions of the 
 Platonic philosophy, and revived the days of tlie schools of 
 Athens on the soil of the Pharaohs. Plotinus, the commen- 
 tator of Plato, says, concerning the doctrine of the transmigra- 
 tion of souls : 
 
 " It is a dogma recognized from the utmost antiquity, that 
 if the soul commits errors, it is condemned to expiate them 
 by undergoing punishment in the Shades, and then it passes 
 into new bodies to begin its trials over again." 
 
 This passage proves that the ancients held the sojourn of 
 the soul in hell to be only temporary, and that it was always 
 followed by fresh trials, terrible and painful in proportion to 
 the errors which were to be repaired. 
 
 " When," says Plotinus, " we have gone astray in the 
 multiplicity of our corporal passions, we are punished, first by 
 the straying itself, and afterwards, when we resume a body, 
 by finding ourselves in worse conditions. The soul, on leaving 
 the body, becomes that power which it has most developed. 
 Let us, then, fly from base things here below, and raise our- 
 selves to the intelligent world, so that we may not fall into 
 the purely sensational life, by following images which aro 
 merely of the senses, or into the vegetative life, by indulging 
 in mere physical pleasure and gluttony ; let us raise ourselves 
 to the intelligent world, to intelligence, to God. 
 
 " Those who have exercised human feculties are born again 
 as men. Those who have used their senses only pass into the 
 bodies of brutes, and especially into the bodies of wild beasts, 
 if they have been accustomed to yield to violent impulses of
 
 252 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 
 
 anger ; so that the different bodies which they animate are 
 conformable to their various propensities. Those who have 
 done nothing but indulge their appetites pass into the bodies 
 of luxurious and gluttonous animals. Others, who, instead of 
 indulging concupiscence or anger, have degraded their senses 
 by sloth, are reduced to vegetate in the plants, because in 
 their previous existences they have exercised nothing but 
 vegetative power, and have only worked to become trees. 
 Those who have loved the enjoyment of music over much, 
 but have led lives otherwise pure, pass into the bodies of 
 melodious birds. Those who have governed tyrannically, but 
 have no other vice, become eagles. Those who have spoken 
 lightly of celestial things are changed into birds which fly to- 
 wards the higher regions of the air. He who has acquired civil 
 virtues becomes a man again, but if he does not possess these 
 virtues to a sufficient extent, he is transformed into a sociable 
 creature, such as the bee, or some other being of that species." 
 
 Every one knows that among our own ancestors, and the 
 Druids or high-priests of the Gauls, the metempsychosis was 
 held almost in the same sense as among the Egyptians and 
 the Greeks. It is, so to speak, a national faith to us, for it 
 has been held in honour, its dogmas have flourished, in the 
 same countries in which we now dwell. We have recalled 
 these facts, and collected these passages from ancient writers, 
 only in order to define the manner in which the Egyptians, 
 as well as the Greeks, and, in later times, the Gauls, under- 
 stood the metempsychosis. Our system differs from the 
 old oriental conception, which was embraced by the Egyp- 
 tians, the Greeks, and the Druids, in our denial that the 
 human soul can ever return to the body of an animal. We 
 beUeve that the human soul has already passed through this
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TIT. 253 
 
 probation, and that it never can be renewed. In nature, in 
 fact, the animal has a part inferior to that of man ; it is below 
 our species in its degree of intelligence, and it cannot have 
 either merit or demerit. Its faculties do not invest it with 
 the entire responsibility of its actions. It is but an interme- 
 diate link between the plant and man ; it has certain faculties, 
 but we cannot pretend that those faculties assimilate it to 
 moral man. 
 
 Thus, we reject this doctrine of the return of the human 
 soul to conditions through which it has already passed. lie- 
 trogression has no place in our system. The soul, in its pro- 
 gressive march, may pause for an instant, but it never turns 
 back. We admit that man is condemned to re-commence an 
 ill-fulfilled existence, but this new experience is made in a 
 human body, in a new covering of the same living type, and 
 not in the form of an inferior being. The oriental dogma of 
 the met'empsyphosis misapprehended the great law of progress, 
 which is, on the contrary, the foundation of our doctrine. 
 
 Fourth objection. It will be said to us : You maintain 
 that our souls have already existed in the bodies of animals ; 
 do you, then, share the belief of those naturalists who derive 
 man from the monkey 1 
 
 No, certainly not. The French and German naturalists, 
 who, applying Darwin's theory of the transformation of species 
 to man, have declared man to be derived from the monkey, 
 rely entirely on anatomical considerations. Vogt, Eruchner, 
 Huxley, and Broca compare the skeleton of the monkey Avith. 
 that of primitive man ; they study the form of the skull of 
 each respectively, they measure the width and the prominence
 
 254 THE DA 7 AFTER DEATH. 
 
 of the jaws, &c., &c. From the results, they draw the con- 
 clusion that man is anatomically derived from a species of 
 quadrumane. The soul is not taken into any consideration 
 by these men of science, who argue precisely as if nothing of 
 the thinking kind existed in the anatomical cavities which 
 they explore and measure. It is, on the contrary, by com- 
 paring the faculties of the human soul with the faculties of 
 animals that we arrive at our conclusion. The animal forms 
 signify nothing to us ; the spirit, in its various manifestations, 
 is our chief object. "Wliy, indeed, should we seek to derive 
 man from the monkey, rather than from any other mam- 
 miferous animal, rather than from the wolf, or the fox ? Is 
 there much difference between the skeleton of the monkey 
 and that of the wolf, the fox, or any other carnivorous beast ? 
 Put three or four of those skeletons together, and you will not 
 find it easy to distinguish one from the other, if, instead 
 of selecting a monkey of a superior species, you take an in- 
 ferior quadrumane, a striated monkey, a lemur, or a macao. 
 
 Interrogate the physiological functions of the monkey. You 
 will fiad them, and the organs which serve those functions, 
 perfectly similar in all animals, and those organs identical in 
 their structure. • Why, then, should you derive man from the 
 monkey, rather than from the wolf or the fox ? Is it be- 
 cause the monkeys in our menageries have a distant resem- 
 blance to man, in their occasional vertical attitude, and in 
 certain features which are caricatures of those of the human face? 
 How many of the species among the immense simial family of 
 the two hemisj)heres present this resemblance ? Hardly five or 
 six. All the others have the bestial snout in its fullest develop-
 
 THE DA 7 AFTER DEATH. 255 
 
 ment, and are very inferior in intelligence to most of the other 
 mammifers. If it be from the organic point of view that you 
 derive man from the monkey, because certain species of quad- 
 rumanes are caricatures of men in their physiognomy, why 
 may he not be derived as reasonably from the parrot, which 
 emits articulate sounds, the caricature of the human voice, or 
 even the nightingale, because that melodious songster of the 
 woods modulates his notes like our singers 1 
 
 The consideration of animal forms is of very little import- 
 ance in our estimation, when the matter in hand is to deter- 
 mine the place occupied by a living being in the scale of crea- 
 tion, for these forms are similar in type among all the supe- 
 rior animals, the body varying very slightly in structure in 
 all the great class of mammifers ; and also because the phy- 
 siological functions are discharged in a similar manner by aU. 
 The basis on which wc ground our researches is quite dif- 
 ferent, it is;the sj)iritual basis ; we ask the faculties of the 
 mind to supply our materials of comparison. 
 
 It must not be supposed, therefore, that we espouse the 
 doctrines of Darwia and those who agree with him, because 
 we hold that the soul has a previous dwelling in the bodies 
 of several animals, before it reaches the human body ; because 
 we admit that the spiritual principle begins in the germ of 
 plants, and that this germ grows and develops itself in pass- 
 ing through the bodies of a progressive series of animal spe- 
 cies, to issue at length in man, the end of its elaboration and 
 perfection. The Darwinists take into consideration only the 
 anatomical structure, and put aside the soul. We consider its 
 faculties only. We are guided, not by the materialistic idea
 
 256 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TH. 
 
 which directs and inspires these men of science, but on the 
 contrary, on a reasoned-out spiritualism. 
 
 Our system of nature may be criticised, or rejected. "VVe 
 offer it merely as a personal view, and would not impose it on 
 any reader. The merit of this philosophical and scientific 
 conception, if it has any, consists in the vast synthesis by 
 which it binds together all the living creatures which people 
 the solar world, from the minute plant in which the germ of 
 organization first appears, to the animal ; from the animal to 
 the man ; and from the man to the series of superhuman and 
 archhuman beings who inhabit the ethereal spheres; and 
 finally, from them to the radiant dwellers in the solar star. In 
 collecting together, on the one hand, all that modern chemis- 
 try has learned of the composition of plants, and the phy- 
 sical phenomena of their respiration, and on the other hand, 
 everything which is known of the physical and chemical pro- 
 perties of solar light, the idea struck us that the rays of the 
 sun form the vehicle by whose means the animated germs are 
 placed in the plants. While meditating upon what has been 
 written by the philosophers Charles Bonnet, Dupont de !Xe- 
 mours, and Jean Eeynaud, upon the physical condition of re- 
 suscitated human beings, and dwelling upon the destiny of 
 men beyond the formidable barrier of the tomb, in short, 
 while drinking at the most various springs of philosophical 
 and scientific knowledge, we have composed this attempt at a 
 new philosophy of the universe. 
 
 This system may be erroneous, and another, more logical 
 and more learned, may be substituted for it. But there will 
 remain, we may hope, the synthesis which we have established
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 257 
 
 from all the facts of the physical and moral order which we 
 have collected together, the links by which we attach all the 
 beings of creation one to another, which comprehends both 
 the moral and organic attributes of these beings; — a vast 
 ladder of nature, on whose steps we place everything that 
 has life ; the endless circle, in which we link all the rings of 
 the chain of living beings. The theoretic explanation of all 
 these facts, thus grouped, may not perhaps be accepted, but 
 we believe that they are correctly placed in juxtaposition, 
 and that any theory which pretends to explain the universe 
 must be established upon the basis of that grouping. If our 
 explanation be contested, we hope that our synthesis of facts 
 will remain. 
 
 Besides it is only thus, i.e., by creating a system, that 
 the sciences, exact as well as moral, are made to progress. 
 Chemistry was not, as some have pretended, created by 
 Lavoisier ; it was founded by Stahl, it was not the pneumatic 
 theory of Lavoisier, but really the system of phlogiston devised 
 by Stahl, which instituted chemistry in the last century. 
 Stahl, it is well known, had the immense merit of collecting 
 all the facts known up to his time, into a general theoretical 
 explanation of composing a summary of them, and of creat- 
 ing the system of phlogiston. This system was, undeniably, 
 incorrect, but the facts which had been collected towards its 
 construction had been perfectly well selected, and included 
 every useful element of information or research. Thus, when 
 ten years later than Stahl, came Lavoisier, he had only, so to 
 speak, to turn the system of his predecessor inside out, as one 
 turns a coat. For plilogiston Lavoisier substituted oxygen ; 
 
 17
 
 253 THE DAY AFTER LEA TB. 
 
 he preserved all the facts, and changed only the explanation. 
 Thus chemistry was founded. 
 
 A well constructed synthesis must necessarily precede 
 every theory of nature. Descartes, when Avorking out his 
 system of whirlwinds, formulated a conception which was 
 certainly very inexact ; but the facts upon which this theory 
 rested were so well selected, they responded so exactly to the 
 requirements of science, that when !N'ewton came, with his 
 sijstem of attraction, it only remained to apply the new hypo- 
 thesis to the facts collected by Descartes for his lohirlwinds, 
 and there was real astronomy, the true physics. "When Lin- 
 naeus created his system of hotany, he made an undeniably 
 artificial distribution of the vegetables, and Linnaeus himself 
 perfectly understood the defects of his system. But, owing 
 to this artificial method, he succeeded in grouping all the 
 plants into a methodical catalogue. If the principle of classi- 
 fication was bad, the service rendered to botany by this cata- 
 logue was immense. It Avas not, in fact, until after Linnaeus' 
 time that the immense mass of facts which he collected could 
 be put in order, and the study of the vegetable world made 
 to progress from those data. Botany dates from the publi- 
 cation of the systema naturce of the immortal botanist of 
 Upsal. 
 
 We do not pretend to put forward an irreproachable theory 
 of the universe in this work, but simply to collect together 
 and methodically group the facts upon Avhich such a theory 
 ought to rest, facts physical, metaphysical, and moral.
 
 CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH. 
 
 SEQUEL TO OBJECTIONS. — IT IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE HOW THE 
 RAYS OF THE SUN, BEING MATERIAL SUBSTANCES, CAN BE 
 THE GERMS OP SOULS, WHICH ARE IMMATERIAL SUBSTANCES. 
 
 ' TIE system of nature may be met with the follow- 
 ing final objection. It will be said, how caa 
 the rays of the sun, being material bodies, con- 
 vey animated germs which are immaterial sub- 
 stances ? These terms exclude each other. 
 
 We find, in the Scriptures, a magnificent comparison, of 
 which we shall avail ourselves in order to answer this objec- 
 tion, or rather, this question. 
 
 Saint Matthew speaks of a grain of mustard seed, that is 
 to say, of a tree germ, which, cast into the earth, produces a 
 lierbaceous plant, then a tree with majestic branches, and ho 
 is astonished to behold the imposing lord of the forests, 
 which, laden with flowers and fruit, towers aloft in majestic 
 beauty, and gives shelter under its shadow to the weary 
 bu'ds, springing from a humble little seed. Not only, says 
 the evangelist, is there no resemblance between the tree and 
 its original seed, but there does not exist in the tree a single 
 atom of the matter of which tliu seed was primarily com- 
 posed. 
 
 17—2
 
 260 THE DAY A FTER DEA TU. 
 
 To our mind, this grain of mustard-seed is an image of 
 the sun, which, falUng upon the earth, sows animated germs 
 in its bosom, which produce plants that afterwards give birth 
 to animals, and later still to man, and thus to the entire 
 series of creatures, invisible to us, which succeed him in the 
 domain of the heavens. 
 
 The little cold, colourless, scentless seed is nothing to look 
 at, nothing distinguishes it apparently from the neighbouring 
 dust. Nevertheless, it contains that mysterious leaven, that 
 sacred being, so to speak, which we call a germ. And what 
 wonderful things are to be born from that sacred being ! 
 In the obscurity of the cold, damp earth the germ transforms 
 itself, it becomes a new body without any resemblance to the 
 seed which contained it. It produces a plantlet, a subter- 
 ranean, but perfectly organized creature, possessing a root 
 which fastens itself into the soil, and a stalk which takes the 
 opposite direction. Between the two portions lies the seed, 
 split, gutted, having allowed the germ to escape, its part in 
 the matter ended. 
 
 The subterranean plantlet is a new being ; it has no longer 
 anything in common with the seed from Avhence it came. 
 The plantlet is dull and colourless, but it breathes, it has 
 channels, in which liquids and gases are circulating. 
 
 In a little while the plantlet comes up above the earth, it 
 greets the daylight, it appears to our eyes, and then it is a 
 very different being from the subterranean creature. The 
 new-born vegetable is no longer as it was Avhen in the bosom 
 of the earth, dull and grey ; it is green, it breathes like other 
 vegetables, producing oxygen under the influence of life.
 
 THE BAY A FTER DEA Til 26 1 
 
 whereas in the bosom of the earth it gave out carbonic acid. 
 Instead of the dull and sombre subterranean plantlet, you 
 have a green and tender shoot, provided with special organs. 
 Where is the grain of mustard seed 1 
 
 Presently our shoot grows, and becomes a young plant. It 
 is still weak and hidden under the grass, but nevertheless the 
 young plant has its complete individuality. It resembles 
 neither the shoot nor the plantlet, its subterranean ancestor. 
 
 The shoot grows, and becomes a twig, that is to say, the 
 adolescent of the vegetable kingdom, with the ardour and the 
 energy of the young among herbaceous creatures. 
 
 In this state the plant has already renewed its substance 
 several times, and nothing remains of the oiganic and mineral 
 elements which existed in the different beings that have 
 preceded it on the same little corner of the earth which have 
 witnessed the changing phases of its curious metamorphoses. 
 Wait a while,, and you Avill see the twig growing long and 
 large. Its respiration becomes active, its leaves spread out, 
 and vigorously exhale the carbonic acid gas of the air. The 
 exhalation of watery vapour over all the surface takes place, 
 and a young and vigorous tree is there, which day by day 
 grows more robust and more beautiful. 
 
 During this growth, during this transition from the shrub 
 to the young tree, with a separate and upright stem, a new 
 being has been formed. Organs which it had not have come 
 to it, and have made it a separate individual. It has flowers, 
 it has branches, it has new vessels for the circulation of 
 the sap, and the juices which were not previously elabo- 
 rated. The structure of the surface of its leaves has bceu
 
 262 THE BAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 clianged, so that absorption may be more successfully accom- 
 plished. 
 
 Where is the shoot, from which our vigorous young shrub 
 sprung % "What relation, Avhat resemblance is there between 
 these two beings % We can only discern differences. One 
 individual has succeeded to another individual. The veQ;e- 
 table has been renewed, not only in matter, which is changed, 
 but in the form of its organs. A series of new forms have 
 succeeded each other in the shrub, since it was a simple shoot, 
 just peeping above the soil. 
 
 It is still the history of change, when the young tree has 
 become adult, when, in the progress of years, its trunk has 
 grown hard, and become incrusted with layers of accumulated 
 bark, when its branches have multiplied, and flowering and 
 fruitage have modified all its internal and external parts. It 
 is then a grand cedar tree, whose majestic and imposing shade 
 covers a considerable extent of the soil; or a superb oak, 
 whose robust and gnarled branches spread far and wide ; or a 
 flexible chestmit, which flings about its polished and shining 
 arms. The organs of these luxuriant vegetables, the pride of 
 our forests, have no relation to those which belonged to them 
 in the first years of their life. Their flowery crowns in spring- 
 tide, the fruits which succeed to them, the seeds shut up in 
 the protecting shelter of those fruits, these are all peculiarities 
 of organization, belonging to these noble trees, without any 
 analogy in nature. 
 
 AVhere is the grain of mustard seed which formerly sucked 
 the juice of the earth in darkness % Everything is changed ; 
 the place of habitation, which is no longer the earth, but the
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 263 
 
 air; the form, and the physiological functioBS. Not only 
 has all this changed, but it has changed a great number of 
 times. JS'ot only does nothing remain of the matter of which 
 the tree was composed in the earlier stages of its life, but 
 nothing has been retained of the organic forms which were 
 proper to the infancy of the vegetable. 
 
 Nevertheless, great mystery of Nature, in the midst of 
 all these changes, notwithstanding this continual succession 
 of beings, which mutually replace each other, there is some- 
 thing which remains immovable, wMcli has never changed, 
 which has preserved a constant individuality, — it is the secret 
 force which produced all these changes, which presided over 
 all these organic mutations. In our belief, this force is the 
 animated germ whicli the young plant has received from the 
 seed, whence it has proceeded. In the midst of all the trans- 
 formations which the vegetable creature has undergone, in 
 spite of tile numerous phases through which it has passed, 
 and which have produced a series of different beings suc- 
 ceeding each other in its material substance, the spiritual 
 principle, cause and agent of all this long activity, has re- 
 mained the same. This animated germ Avhich now exists in 
 the adult vegetable is the same which was there during its 
 growth, the same which was there Avhen it Avas a slioot, the 
 same which slept in the seed which was thrown into the 
 bosom of the cold and humid earth. In that majestic tree 
 Avhich, coming forth from an imperceptibly minute seed, has 
 had a whole genealogy of successive beings, replacing each 
 other, differing in form and size, and has preserved, through- 
 out its incessant development, the sole and immutable principle
 
 264 TUE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 of its activity, we behold the faithful image of the persistent, 
 indestructible soul, in the midst of the beings or different 
 bodies which it has animated in succession. Issuing from a 
 germ, it has never ceased to grow, to develop, to become 
 amplified, still remaining itself. 
 
 The grain of mustard seed, or the seed of the tree, is 
 according to lis, the plant or inferior animal into which the 
 sun has thrown the animated germ. The subterranean 
 plantlet corresponds to the animal whose mission it is to 
 perfect the germ transmitted by the plant, and which de- 
 velops and amplifies this germ ; for example, to the fish or 
 the reptUe, perfecting the spiritual principle which they have 
 received from the zoophyte or the mollusc. The shoot which, 
 having burst out of the earth, grows in the shade of the 
 grass, and tries its air organs, corresponds to the animal some- 
 what more elevated in the organic scale, such as the bird, in 
 which the animating principle — derived from the reptile or the 
 fish — increases in intellectual power. The young vegetable, 
 arrived at the condition of the twig, which lives a com- 
 pletel}' aerial life, corresponds to the mammifer. The tree, 
 grown tall, and pushing out its young boughs, corresponds to 
 man, perfecting the soul which he has received from a mam- 
 mifer. Finally, the powerful and vigorous forest lord, over- 
 topping all the neighbouring trees in size and majesty, with 
 mighty girth of stem, and noble crest, with wide-spreading 
 branches and splendid flowers, this grand creature corresponds 
 to the superhuman being who lives in the bosom of the 
 ethereal fluid, and who is himself destined to be replaced by 
 a series of superior creatures, who shall climb from stage to
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 265 
 
 stage, from height to height, even to the radiant kingdom of 
 the sun, where those absolutely spiritual beings, whose essence 
 is entire and perfect immateriality are enthroned. 
 
 Thus, the animating principle remains immutable and 
 identical with itself, during all the transformations undergone 
 by the beings who are successively charged to receive this 
 precious deposit. From the vegetable, in which it had its 
 first domicile as a germ, and through the whole series of 
 living creatures, from the plant and the zoophyte to the man 
 and the superhuman being, the same spiritual principle 
 is preserved in its identity, perfecting and amplifying itself 
 without cessation. 
 
 Let us complete the comparison. When the forest tree has 
 ripened its fruits, the fruits burst open, the seeds escape from 
 it, and fall into the soil, or are dispersed by the caprice of the 
 winds. If the seeds fall into damp earth, they germinate, 
 and, according to the laws of nature, young vegetables are 
 produced, as we have previously explained. Multitudes of 
 similar vegetables are produced by a single oak, a single cedar, 
 a single chestnut tree. Just as the majestic adult tree lets 
 faU from its thousand branches upon the soil the countless 
 seeds which are to germinate there, so the spiritualized beings 
 who dwell in the sun shed their emanations, their animated 
 germs, upon all the planets. These germs, carried to the earth 
 by the sunbeams, and falling upon our globe, produce the 
 vegetables which afterwards give birth to the various animals, 
 by the effect of the successive transmigrations of the same soul 
 into the bodies of these creatures. 
 
 We can now reply to the objection Avliich we have placed
 
 266 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 at the iDeginniug of this chapter : " How can the solar rays, 
 being material substances, convey animated germs, which are 
 immaterial substances ? 
 
 When the physicists professed Newton's theory of the 
 nature of light, in the theory of emission, it was necessary to 
 regard light, and, consequently the solar rays, which produce 
 it, as material bodies. 
 
 But science has now rejected this theory, and replaced it 
 by the theory of undulation, founded by Malus, Fresnel, 
 Ampere, and all the constellation of great physicists and 
 mathematicians of the connnencement of this century. Facts, 
 collected on every side, prove that the solar rays are not 
 matter wliich transports itself from the sun to the earth, but 
 that light, like heat, results from a primitive disturbance pro- 
 duced by the sun upon the ether, which is spread over all 
 space. This disturbance communicates itself from molecule 
 to molecule, from the planetary ether down to us, and pro- 
 duces the phenomena of light and heat. We cannot here 
 develop at greater length, or explain more scientifically, the 
 theory of undulations, which Avill be found sufficiently de- 
 monstrated in works on physics. We merely desire to prove 
 that, according to the principles of modern science, the solar 
 rays are not material bodies, but that they result from a 
 simple vibration of the planetary ether. If, then, the rays of 
 the sun are not material substances, there can be no difficulty 
 in admitting that these rays (immaterial substance) are the 
 bearers of the animated germs, which are immaterial substance. 
 
 If we be driven to a closer definition of the problem, if we 
 be asked to explain with greater precision how these immaterial
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TIL 267 
 
 germs journey tlirougli space, we reply that we must guard 
 against the mania for insisting on everything being explained. 
 Absolute explanation is forbidden to the limit of our intelli- 
 gence. We are forced to confess our powerlessness whenever 
 we try to explain the phenomena of nature rigorously. What 
 is the true cause of the fall of bodies, of the gravitation of the 
 stars, of electricity, of heat 1 What is the cause of the circu- 
 lation of our blood, of the beating of our hearts 1 The deepest 
 obscurity veils the primary causes of these phenomena, which 
 Ave all behold every day ; and the more earnestly we desire 
 to penetrate the secret essence, the more the darkness deepens 
 in our minds. Since the time of JS'ewton, the physicists have 
 laid down a wise and excellent principle. They have agreed 
 to study the laws of physical phenomena with sedulous care, 
 to measure with exactness the effects of heat, weight, electricity, 
 or light, but, also, never to disquiet themselves by researches 
 into tlie causes of these phenomena. The more we learn, the 
 further we advance in the knowledge of the universe and its 
 laws, the more we become convinced that man knows abso- 
 lutely nothing about first causes, that he ought to esteem 
 himself happy in knowing the laws according to which the 
 effects of these first causes manifest themselves ; that is to say, 
 the physical and vital actions which are visible to us, but 
 that he ought, in the interests of his own peace of mind, to 
 lay down a rule that he would never seek to know the where- 
 fore of things. Pliny, speaking of first causes, said : "Latent 
 in majestate mundi," (" They are hidden in the majesty of tho 
 world.") The thought is as fine as the phrase is eloquent. 
 Let us, then, leave to nature her secrets, and, if we are led to
 
 £68 
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 believe that the sun sheds animated germs upon the earth 
 and the planets, let us not try to penetrate further into the 
 essence of this mysterious phenomenon. Let us not ask of 
 the earth why she turns, the stone why it falls, the tree why 
 it grows, our hearts why they beat — nor the rays of the 
 san why they produce life on earth, and immortality in the 
 heavens.
 
 CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH. 
 
 PRACTICAL RULES RESULTIXG FROM THE FACTS AND PRINCI- 
 PLES DEVELOPED IN THIS WORK. THE ENNOBLING OF THE 
 
 SOUL BY THE PRACTICE OF VIRTUE, BY SEEKING TO KNOW, 
 THROUGH SCIENCE, NATURE AND ITS LAWS. THE RENDER- 
 ING OP PUBLIC WORSHIP TO THE DIVINITY. — THE MEMORY 
 
 OF THE DEAD TO BE RETAINED, WE OUGHT NOT TO FEAR 
 
 DEATH. DEATH IS ONLY AN UNFELT TRANSITION FROM ONE 
 
 STATE TO ANOTHER, IT IS NOT A "TERMINATION, BUT A 
 
 METAMORPHOSIS. THE IMPRESSIONS OF THE DYING. THEY 
 
 WHdjJ THE GODS LOVE DIE YOUNG. — REUNION WITH THOSE 
 WHO HAVE GONE BEFORE. 
 
 E will conclude our work by laying down certain 
 practical rules which result from the facts and 
 the principles that have heen explained in its 
 course. 
 Since man can raise himself to the range of a superhuman 
 being only when his soul has acquired the necessary degree of 
 purification in this life, it is evidently his interest to apply 
 himself to the culture of his soul, to preserve it from every 
 stain, to keep it from falling. Be good, generous, and com- 
 passionate ; grateful for benefits, accessible to the sufl^ering, 
 the friend of the oppressed. Console those who suffer and
 
 270 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 who weep. Practise every form of cbarity. Endeavour to 
 raise your tliouglits above terrestrial things. Strive against 
 those material instincts, which are the stigmata of human 
 existence. Aspire to the good and the heautiful. Live in the 
 most elevated spheres, those Avhich are the least hound to 
 lower things. It is only thus that you can elevate and 
 ennoble your soul, and render it fit to enjoy the higher 
 existence which awaits it in the ethereal spheres. For, if 
 your soul be vicious and corrupt, if, during all your terrestrial 
 life, you have been sunk in material interests, exclusively given 
 up to purely physical occupations and enjoyments, Avhich make 
 you the fellow of the animals ; if your heart has been hard, 
 your conscience dumb, your instincts Ioav and evil, you will 
 be condemned to recommence a second existence on the earth. 
 Once, or many times again you wiU have to bear the burthen 
 of life on this disinherited globe, where phj'^sical suffering 
 and moral evil have taken up their abode, where happiness is 
 unknoAvn, and unhappiness is the universal law. 
 
 There is another motive for our careful cultivation of the 
 faculties of the soul, and for our constantly purifying our- 
 selves by the practice of good. IN'oble and generous persons, 
 elect souls, are, as we have said, the only ones capable of 
 communicating with the dead, with the beloved beings Avhom 
 they have lost. If, therefore, we be stained with moral evil, 
 we shall not receive any communication, any succour from 
 the beings who have left us, and whom we loved. This is a 
 powerful motive for our constant striving towards perfection. 
 
 One of the most effectual means of perfecting and ennobling 
 the soul, of raising it above terrestrial conditions, and bringing
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 271 
 
 it near the higher spheres, is .science. Study, labour to learn 
 of nature, to comprehend the plans and the phenomena which 
 surround you, to explain to yoiirselves the universe of which 
 you form a portion, and your soul will grow in strength and 
 wisdom. It is very sad to contemplate the shameful ignor- 
 ance in which almost all humanity is sunk. The population 
 of our globe numbers 1,300,000,000, and of all this multitude 
 hardly 10,000,000 can be said to have studied the sciences, 
 and really cultivated their minds. All the rest of mankind 
 are abandoned to an intellectual passiveness, which almost 
 reduces them to the level of the animals. The earth is but a 
 vast field of ignorance. As far as knowledge is concerned, 
 almost all men die as they were Ijorn, they have not added a 
 single idea, a single branch of knowledge to those Avhich their 
 parents — themselves ignorant — have inculcated in their youth. 
 ^Nevertheless, thanks to the labours of some few men of 
 nnconMnon mind and energy, the knowledge we possess at 
 the present time is immense, we have made great progress in 
 the study of nature and its laws. 
 
 We understand the mechanism and the regulation of the 
 universe, we have learned to reject the fallacious testimony 
 of our senses, we have discerned the courses of the different 
 stars, which look so much alike, Avhen they shine in the 
 firmament by night. We know that the sun is motionless in 
 the centre of our world, and that a company of planets, 
 among which the earth figures, revolve around him, in an orbit 
 whose mathematical curve has been precisely fixed. We 
 know the cause of the days and nights, as well as that of the 
 seasons ; we can predict almost to a second the return of the
 
 272 THE BAY A FTER DEA TH. 
 
 stars to a certain point of their orbit, their meetings, eclipses, 
 and occultations. The glolje which we inhabit has been sur- 
 veyed and explored with care which has hardly missed a 
 nook of it. "\Ve know the causes of the winds and of the 
 rains, we can point out the exact course of the sea-currents, 
 and foretell the hour and the height of the tides all over the 
 globe. We know why glaciers exist at the northern and 
 southern extremities of the earth, and why other glaciers 
 crown the great mountain heights. The movements of the 
 earth, which formerly produced chains of mountains, and 
 which at present occasion volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, 
 are quite comprehensible to us. The composition of all the 
 bodies which exist on the surface, or are hidden in the depths 
 of the earth, has been fixed with certainty. 
 
 "We know what air contains, and what water is composed 
 of. There is not a mineral, not a particle of earth to which 
 we cannot assign its composition. ]\Iore than that, we can 
 tell what is the composition of the soil of the planets, and of 
 their satellites, those stars which roll at incalculable distances 
 above our heads, and which we can reach only with our eyes. 
 Science has performed this miracle, the chemical analysis of 
 bodies which it cannot touch, and which it can only see across 
 millions of miles in space. 
 
 We have studied, classified, demonstrated all the living 
 beings, animals and plants which people the earth. There is 
 not an insect hidden in the grass of the fields which has not 
 been described, which has not had its just place in creation 
 assigned to it ; there is not a blade of grass which has not 
 been reproduced by the pencil of the naturalist.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 273 
 
 Beyond all this, science has penetrated far beyond the 
 reach of our vision. It has invented a marvellous instrument 
 which has unveiled an entire world to our astonished gaze, a 
 world whose existence we never should have suspected with- 
 out its aid. The Avorld thus revealed to us is that of infi- 
 nitely little things. We know that myriads of living creatures, 
 both animals and plants, exist in a drop of water ; that those 
 creatures, in all their prodigious littleness, have a complete 
 existence, and are as well organized as those of great size 
 which are analogous to them, and that the physiological 
 functions of all these imperceptible beings are fulfilled as per- 
 fectly as our own. 
 
 Just as we have penetrated into the life of infinite little- 
 ness, so we have pierced the depths of celestial space, and 
 scrutinized with our eyes the magnified image of the stars 
 Avhich revolve at an incalculable distance above us. The 
 telescope shows us the surface of the moon, the depths of its 
 ravines, and the rough serrated edges of its enormous moun- 
 tains, furrowed with deep circular crevasses. We can cast 
 our eyes over the lunar disc as if it were a distant landscape 
 of our own globe. We can even, thanks to the magnifying 
 powers of the telescope, form an idea of the aspect of the sur- 
 faces of those planets Avhich are almost lost in the infinite 
 distances of the heavens. 
 
 After this faint and incomplete sketch of that which 
 human science has been able to accomplish, it might be sup- 
 posed that every inhabitant of the earth is impatient to make 
 all this knowledge his own, that every one must desire to fill 
 his mind with its treasures. Alas ! the great majority of the 
 
 18
 
 2 74 THE BAY A FTER DEA TH. 
 
 liuman species is ignorant of even the elements of all this. 
 Take away the ten millions of individuals to whom we have 
 already alluded, and who, numerically, are hardly to be 
 counted in considering the population of the globe, all people 
 imagine that the earth is a flat surface which extends to the 
 limits of the horizon, and is covered with a blue cupola, called 
 lumen. If you assert that the earth revolves, they laugh, 
 and point to the motionless earth, and the sun which rises on 
 the right hand and sets on the left, a manifest proof that the 
 sun comes and goes. The poets will have it that the sun. 
 rises from his bed in the morning, and returns to it in the 
 evening. People believe that the stars which shine by night, 
 in the celestial vault, are simply ornaments, an agreeable 
 spectacle, made to please our eyes, and that the moon is a 
 beacon. Nobody inquires into the causes of the rain or fine 
 weather, of heat or cold, of the winds or the tides. Every 
 one shuts his eyes to natural phenomena, so as to avoid the 
 trouble of explaining them. J^ature is a shut book for the 
 majority of mankind, who live in the midst of the most 
 curious and various phenomena, but who occupy themselves 
 in eating and drinking, and trying to harm their fellows. 
 
 It is a sorrowful spectacle to behold humanity thus pre- 
 occupied by its more material necessities, and utterly without 
 interest in any mental exertion, and one grieves to think that 
 such is the condition of almost all the inhabitants of the 
 globe. How far is he superior to the great mass of his fel- 
 lows, who has cultivated his mind, enriched it with various 
 and useful ideas, and appropriated to himself at least one 
 branch of the varied tree of the exact sciences. What breadth
 
 TEE DAY AFTER DEATH. 275 
 
 and power must be acquired by a mind thus fortified ! Strive, 
 O my reader, to study and to learn. Initiate yourself into 
 the secrets of nature, try to understand all that surrounds 
 you, the universe and its infinite productions, admire the 
 power of God in learning the wonders of His works. Then 
 shall you not approach the tomb with your soul void as on the 
 day of your birth. At the supreme hour of death you will 
 be wise, instructed, and, finding yourself nearer to the sub- 
 lime essence of superhuman beings, you will be eager to folloAv 
 them into the ethereal spheres. 
 
 In order to elevate and perfect the soul, it is not sufficient 
 only to apply ourselves to the practice of moral virtues and 
 to learning ; we must also endeavour to understand God, the 
 Author of the universe. Therefore, let men enter into the 
 temples, and prostrate themselves before God according to the 
 forms and rites of worship in which they have been reared. 
 AU religions are good, and ought to be respected, because 
 they permit us to pay the homage of gratitude and heartfelt 
 submission to the Author of nature. 
 
 The Christian religion is good, because it is a religion. 
 The religion of Mahomet is good, because it is a religion. 
 For the same reason Buddhism and Judaism are good, and 
 the religion of tlie wild Indians who worship the sun in the 
 depths of their forests. 
 
 The fourth practical rule which we derive from the prin- 
 ciples and theories which we have laid down, is that the 
 remembrance and commemoration of the dead should be pre- 
 served. Let us not efface from our hearts the memory of 
 those whom death has snatched from us. To forget them is 
 
 18—2
 
 276 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 to cause them the most cruel anguish, and to deprive our- 
 selves of the aid and guidance which they can give us here 
 helow. 
 
 The ancients sedulously kept up the memory of the dead. 
 They did not put the idea of death away from them with 
 terror, like the modern people? ; on the contrary, they loved 
 to invoke it. Among the Greeks and Eomans the cemeteries 
 were places of meeting, used for festivals and promenades. 
 The Orientals of our days preserve this ancient tradition. 
 Their cemeteries are perfectly kept gardens, whither festive 
 crowds resort on festal occasions. They visit the relatives 
 and friends who are buried in the shrubberies and the 
 flower-beds, and revel in the pleasures of life amid the pretty 
 dwelling-places of the dead. 
 
 In Europe we know nothing of this wholesome philosophy. 
 But we may remark, that peasants, unlike dwellers in cities, 
 who are not brought into familiar daily contact with nature, 
 are far from shunning the idea of death, or avoiding the 
 cemeteries Avhere their relatives and friends rest. They recall 
 the remembrance of their dead, they speak to them, they 
 question them, they consult them, as though they were still 
 seated by the family fireside. 
 
 The custom of funeral repasts, which dates from the time 
 of primitive man, is still observed in several countries. On 
 returning from the cemetery the company seat themselves 
 before a well-spread table, in tlie house of the deceased, and 
 wish him a happy journey to the land of shadows. In our 
 cities, it is " the people" Avho hold it a duty to carry flowers to 
 the graves of their relatives. Among the higher classes of
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 277 
 
 society people hold themselves exempt, in general, from this 
 pious care, and they are wrong. Piety towards the dead, and 
 reverent commemoration of them, are prescribed by the laws 
 of nature. 
 
 Finally, we would impress upon the reader, as a conse- 
 quence and a practical rule resulting from all that has gone 
 before, that he ought not to fear death. Let him regard 
 with firm heart and tranquil eye that moment which all men 
 dread so much. We have said that death is not a conclusion, 
 but a change, we do not perish, we are transformed. The 
 grub which seems to die, enclosed within a cold shell, does 
 not die, but is born again, a brilliant butterfly, to flutter joy- 
 ously in the air. Thus it shall be with us. Though our 
 miserable frames remain on earth, and restore their elements 
 to the common reservoir of universal matter, our souls shall 
 not' perish. They shall be born again, brilliant creatures of 
 the celestial ether. They shall leave a world in which pain 
 and evil are the constant law, for a blessed domain where 
 every condition of happiness shall be realized. Why, then,, 
 should we dread death ? If we do not desire it, we ought at 
 least to await it with hope and tranquillity. Death must 
 unite us to those beings whom we have loved, whom we do 
 love, and whom we shall love for ever. What an immense 
 source of consolation during the remainder of our life ! What 
 a store of courage for the terrible moment of our own end ! 
 The beloved dead, who have never ceased to be present to 
 our memory, have done us the sad, supreme service of soften- 
 ing the anguish of death to us. The sadness of our last mo- 
 ments will be calmed by the thought that they are awaiting
 
 278 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 our coming, that they are ready to receive us on the threshold 
 of the other life, that they are gone hefore to lead us into the 
 new domain of existence beyond the tomb ! 
 
 The fear of death, which is so prevalent among men gene- 
 rally, loses its intensity when the last hour has come. Those 
 who are accustomed to witness death know that the last 
 agony is rarely severe. He who dies after a long and honour- 
 able existence knows at that solemn moment that he is going 
 to a new and better world. He is happy, and his words and 
 looks express happiness. The only thought which makes him 
 sorrowful is the grief which his loss must occasion to those 
 whom he loves and is about to leave. 
 
 The observations which follow have been made by persons 
 accustomed to observe the dying. But deaths occasioned by 
 maladies which destroy consciousness, or reason, or speech, 
 must not be included in these observations. In order to 
 judge of the thoughts which occupy the dying we must con- 
 sider those who preserve the integrity of their intellectual 
 faculties until their latest breath. They always die calmly. 
 •Consumptive patients, the wounded, those who die from an 
 affection of the stomach or of the intestinal tube, of those 
 slow fevers which consume the strength Avithout impairing 
 the intellectual faculties, these generally remain in the fuU 
 possession of their intelligence to the last, and die with gTeat 
 tranquillity, even satisfaction. In almost all these cases death 
 is preceded by a gradual decline of strength and sensation, so 
 that the individual has hardly any consciousness of the change 
 he is about to undergo, and looks forward to the moment of 
 death with perfect indifference.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 There is a period, wliich frequently lasts for several hours, 
 during which, life having completely left the body, it is 
 already a corpse Avhich is under the eyes of the spectators, 
 and yet that corpse still moves and speaks. But the soul 
 which survives in the hody, really dead, is not the soul of the 
 terrestrial man, but of the superhuman being. The dying 
 person has the consciousness, and perhaps even the prevision 
 of the ineffable happiness which awaits him in that new 
 world upon whose threshold he is standing, and he expresses 
 his happiness by his words and looks. In a sigh of supreme 
 joy he exhales his last breath. This extraordinary state, in 
 which the dying are partly on earth, and partly in the new 
 world to which they are destined, explains the touching elo- 
 quence, the sublime words which sometimes come from their 
 feeble lips. An uneducated poor man will express himself 
 upon .his death-bed with eloquence incomprehensible to those 
 who are listening to him. It also explains the prophecies, 
 justified by subsequent events, which have been uttered by 
 the dying. They have a knowledge of things of which, in 
 their ordinary condition as belonging to the human species, 
 they could not possibly have had any notion. Therefore, we 
 ought to treasure up their last words with pious care, and 
 scrupulously fulfil the wishes which they express. 
 
 In Moldavia, when a peasant has escaped death in a 
 severe illness, after having been on the brink of the grave, 
 his friends press around his bed to ask him what he had 
 seen in the other world, and what news he has for them from 
 their dead relatives. Then the poor invahd interprets his 
 visions for them as well as he can.
 
 280 THE LAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 A modern writer, who lias left some small books on spiri- 
 tualist philosophy, !^L Constant Savj', relates in his " Pensees 
 et Meditations," an extraordinary dream which he had when 
 he was, apparently, at the point of death. We transcribe this 
 curious and interesting document from M. Pezzani's work : — 
 
 " I felt very ill," writes Constant Savy, " I had no 
 strength, it seemed to me that my life was making efforts to 
 resist death, but in vain, and that it was about to escape. My 
 soul detached itself little by little from the matter spread all 
 over my frame ; I felt it retiring from all^ those parts with 
 Avhich it is so intimately united, and, as it were, concentrating 
 itself upon one single point, the heart, and a thousand obscure, 
 cloudy thoughts about my future life occupied me. Little by 
 little nature faded from before me, taking irregular and strange 
 forms, I almost lost the faculty of thinking, I only retained 
 that of feeling, and this feehng was all love, love of God and 
 of the beings whom I had most cherished in Him, but I 
 could not manifest this love ; my soul, withdrawn to one 
 single point in my body, had almost ceased to have any re- 
 lation with it, and could no longer command it. My soul 
 experienced some distractions still, caused by the pain of the 
 body, and the grief of those who surrounded me, but these 
 distractions were slight, like the pains and the perceptions 
 which caused them. My life was now attached to matter by 
 one only of the thousand links which had formerly bound it, 
 and I was about to expire. 
 
 " Suddenly, no doubt to mark the passage from this life to 
 the other, there came a thick darkness, to which succeeded a 
 brilliant light. Then, my God ! I saw Thy day, that day- 
 light I had so much desired ! I saw them, all assembled to- 
 gether, those beings whom I had so dearly loved, who had 
 inspired me during my life in this Avorld after they had left 
 ine, and who had seemed to me to dwell in my soul, or float
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 281 
 
 about me. They were all there, full of joy and happiness. 
 They were waiting for me, they welcomed me with deliglit. 
 It seemed to me that I completed their life and that they 
 completed mine ! But what a difference was there in the 
 happiness I now felt from the sensations of the world I left ! 
 I cannot describe them ! They were penetrating without 
 being impetuous ; they were mild, calm, full, unmixed, and 
 yet they admitted the hope of a yet greater happiness ! 
 
 " I did not see Thee, my God ! Who can see Thee 1 But 
 I loved Thee more than I had loved Thee in this world ! I 
 comprehended Thee better, felt Thee more strongly, the traces 
 of Thee which are everywhere, and on everything, appeared 
 more plain and bright to me, I experienced such admiration 
 and astonishment as I had never hitherto known, I saw more 
 distinctly a portion of the wonders of Thy creation. The 
 bowels of the earth hid no more secrets from me, I saw their 
 depths, I saw the insects and other creatures which dwell in 
 them, the mines known to men, and undiscovered by them, 
 the seei'ej^ ways and channels of the earth. I reckoned its 
 age in its bosom as one counts fe-hat of a tree in the heart of 
 its trunk ; I saw all the water-courses "which feed the seas ; 
 I saw the reflux of these waters, and it was like the motion 
 of the blood in a man's body ; from the heart to the ex- 
 tremities, from the extremities to the heart ; I saw the 
 depths of the volcanoes ; I understood the motions of the 
 earth and its relations with the stars, and, just as if the earth 
 had been turned round before my eyes that I might be made 
 to admire Thy greatness, my God ! I saw all countries with 
 their various inhabitants, and their different customs, I saw 
 every variety of my species, and a voice said to me : ' Like 
 thyself, all these men are the image of the Creator ; like thy- 
 self, they are ever journeying towards God, and conscious of 
 their progress !' The thickness of the forests, the depth of 
 the seas could not hide anything from my eyes ; I had power
 
 282 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TR. 
 
 to see everything, to admire all, and I was happy iu my hap- 
 piness, in the happiness of the dear objects of my tender love. 
 Our joys were in common. "We felt ourselves united by our 
 former affections which had now become much more deep, 
 and by the love of God : we drew happiness from one and 
 the same source ; we were but one, Ave each and all enjoyed 
 this happiness, which was far too great to be expressed. I 
 am silent now, that I may feel it more deeply."* 
 
 It is easy for us to verify to ourselves the fact that men 
 who are condemned by nature to a premature death, are en- 
 dowed with a great serenity of mind. This moral condition 
 is, in our opinion, an indication that they have the presenti- 
 ment or even the anticipated possession of the new life 
 which awaits them after death. Why are consumptive people 
 so gentle and sensitive? "We believe it is because, being 
 already half out of this world, tliey are partially endowed 
 with the moral attributes of superhuman beings. They are, 
 as it is Avell known, always confident in their destinies, they 
 make projects of happiness, and for the future, when their 
 last hour is striking, they feel hope and joy when the by- 
 standers are thinking of their burial. It is customary to ex- 
 plain this anomaly by saying that persons in consumption do 
 not understand the gravity of their illness, but we beheve 
 that they have, on the contrary, a confused notion of their 
 state, that nature reveals to them the approach of an ex- 
 istence of cloudless happiness, and that it is this secret con- 
 viction which gives them hope and confidence in the future. 
 The future which they foresee is not of tliis Avorld, but the 
 
 * Quoted by M. Pezzani, in. his " PliiraUle des Existences de 
 Vdme," pp. 2C1— 263.
 
 THE DAY A FTER DBA TIL 283 
 
 future of the heavens. This applies not to consumptive per- 
 sons only. Every man destined to die young seems to be 
 marked with that inner stamp of the soul which lends him 
 now a gentle and charming melancholy, anon vivacity or sen- 
 sibility which his parents admire, and which is too often only 
 an indication that he is not to remain with them. The 
 charming qualities of many young people are often only the 
 precursors of their death. 
 
 " When they have so much intellect, children have brief 
 lives," says Casimir Delavigne. " Whom the gods love, die 
 young," said the Greeks. 
 
 Let us, then, not fear death ; but await it, not as the end 
 of our existence, but as its transformation. Let us learn by 
 the purity of our life, by our virtues, by the culture of our 
 faculties, by our knowledge, by the exercise of the religion of 
 our ancestors, to prepare ourselves for the critical moment of 
 that natural revolution which shall usher us into a blessed 
 sojourn in the ethereal spheres on the day after deatli.
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 IN WHICH WE SEEK FOR GOD, AND IN OUR SEARCH, DESCRIBE 
 
 THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 I HE author now asks his reader's leave to relate a 
 conversation which took place between himself, 
 and a friend named Theophilus, to whom he had 
 confided the manuscript of "The Day After 
 Death," in order to obtain his opinion and impressions of the 
 work. He will allow the interlocutors to express themselves 
 in the ordinary form of dialogue. 
 
 T leophilus, (who comes into the Author's study, and lays 
 the manuscript upon the table). I have read your work, and 
 I wiU tell you presently my impressions of the details, but 
 I must in the first place point out the great deficiency of the 
 
 book. 
 
 The Author. What is wanting in it ] 
 
 Theophilus. God. 
 
 The Author. But 
 
 Theophilus. (Interrupts him.) You are going to remind 
 me that you frequently mention the sacred name, that Provi- 
 dence, the Author of nature, the Creator of the worlds, and 
 so on, are words you constantly employ. That is true, but it 
 is equally true that you restrict yourself to these vague ex-
 
 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIL 285 
 
 piessions, that you say nothing about the person of God, that 
 you assign to Pliiu no place in the world which you range 
 over in company with more or less spiritualized souls. Why 
 this reserve? Since you tell us that entirely spiritualized 
 souls inhabit the sun, why do you not tell us where your 
 system places God, the sovereign master of those souls ! 
 What is your motive for leaving aside a question of such 
 great importance ? 
 
 The Author. I have several. In the first place, I have 
 everybody's motive. The idea of God which must be formed 
 in order to place Him in harmony with the boundless im- 
 mensity of this universe which is His work, so far surpasses 
 the limit of the human intellect, it is so overwhelming to 
 our mind, that we stop, powerless and even frightened at our 
 boldness, when we venture to ask ourselves, ivhat is God ? 
 
 T/ieophilus. Nevertheless, I am surprised at your hesitation. 
 When* a system of the universe is to be constructed, one Joes 
 not pause in the task, and I can hardly believe that when 
 you venture, as you do, to place on the ladder-steps of your 
 theory all the elements of the solar Avorld — the planets and 
 their satellites, stars and asteroids, plants, men and animals, 
 creatures visible and invisible, bodies and soids, matter and 
 spirit — you have not assigned a place to the Creator. Have 
 you classified everything in this immense edifice of the worlds, 
 except its Sovereign Architect 1 
 
 The AutJior. I^o, my friend, you are not mistaken ; God 
 has His place in my system. 
 
 Theophilus. Why, then, have you not said so ! Why have 
 you kept silence on this point 1
 
 286 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 The Author. My book contains so many daring assertions, 
 I have already exposed myself so fully to the animosity of 
 both the learned and the ignorant, that I feared to furnish an 
 additional pretext to their diatribes. 
 
 TJieojMlus. That is not a reason. If you dread discussion 
 and fear detraction, why do you take up your pen at all? 
 You were at liberty to keep your ideas on the origin and the 
 destiny of man to yourself, but, when you decided on sub- 
 mitting them to the public, you became bound to explain all 
 your mind on the subject. If you believe in your system, 
 you must explain it without any reserve. 
 
 The Author. Your words are wise, and I ought therefore to 
 bow to them, and follow your imperative advice. Neverthe- 
 less I cannot make up my mind to do so, absolutel3^ I am 
 going to propose a middle course to you. In confidence, and 
 between ourselves, I will explain my ideas about God to you, 
 I will tell you in what part of the immense universe I place 
 this dazzling personality. If the idea seems to you absurd, 
 untenable, or even too hazardous, you will frankly teU me so, 
 and thus duly warned, I will keep my theory to myself; if 
 not 
 
 Theojphilus. (Interrupting him.) An excellent plan. There 
 can be no objection to that. Go on, I am listening. 
 
 (At this point, Theophilus seats himself, his elbow resting 
 on a book, and a cigar in his mouth, and composes himself 
 to listen, with an expression of grave attention, dashed with 
 suspicious severity, suitable to the arbitrator in a literary and 
 philosophical matter.) 
 
 The Author. You want to know, my dear Theophilus;
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 287 
 
 where I place God'? I place Him at the centre of the uni- 
 verse, or, I had better say, at the central focus, which must 
 exist somewhere, of all the stars which compose the universe, 
 and which, carried along by a common motion, circulate in 
 concert around this central focus. 
 
 Theophilus. Forgive me, but I do not seize your meaning 
 exactly. 
 
 The A'utlwr. You will understand it presently. Eemember, 
 to start from, that I place God at the common focus of the 
 actual motion of the entire universe. But, where is the 
 common focus 1 In order to know that, we must first of all 
 know the universe, and all the order of its movements. 
 
 Theophihis. All that is explained in the course of your 
 work. 
 
 The Author, l^o, my friend, you are mistaken. In my 
 work. I have spoken of the solar system only, and a very 
 incomplete and insufficient idea would be gained of the uni- 
 verse by contemplating that system alone. "We must not, as 
 is too often done, confound the uwld and the universe. The 
 world is our world, that is to say, the solar system, of which 
 we form a part ; the tmiverse is the agglomeration of all the 
 worlds or systems similar to our world, or solar system. In 
 the manuscript which you have just read, I have only been 
 able to expound one little corner, one insignificant fraction of 
 the universe. 
 
 Theophilus. You call the solar world a little corner. 
 The Author. Yes. Our whole solar system, the sun, with 
 its immense following of planets and asteroids, with the sa- 
 tellites of those planets, with the comets Avhich from time to
 
 288 THE DA Y AFTER BE A TIT. 
 
 time come sweeping on, to fall into the burning furnace of 
 the radiant star, all that, compared with the universe, is no 
 more than an ear of corn in a huge granary, than a grain of 
 sand upon the shore, than a drop of water in the ocean. The 
 terrible vastness of the universe is such that it is absolutely- 
 inaccessible to our measurement, and it is for us the image of 
 the infinite, or the infinite itself, i^ow, my friend, attend 
 to me. Most certainly God, as to His nature, is absolutely 
 inconceivable by our minds. His essence escapes us, and 
 always must escape us. We can only affirm that He is infi- 
 nite in his moral perfections, and in His intellectual power. 
 But if, on the one hand, God is The Infinite in the moral 
 order, and if, on the other hand, the universe is The Infinite 
 in the physical order ; if one is The Infinite in spirit, and the 
 other is The Infinite in extent, these two ideas, although in 
 themselves inaccessible to human intelligence, are nevertheless 
 of the same order, and may be regarded in contiguity. It is 
 then possible, without laying one's self open to the charge of 
 presumption or absurdity, to place the Infinite, which is 
 called God, in the Infinite which is called the Universe, in 
 other words, to locate the person of God at the common focus 
 of the worlds which compose the Universe. 
 
 Theophihis. Your reasoning is just. But you must prove, 
 or, if you prefer the phrase, you must teach me that the 
 universe is truly The Infinite by its extent. I could not admit 
 that assertion without very convincing evidence. 
 
 The Author. Very well. Lend me your best attention, 
 and excuse me if my demonstration resembles a lecture on 
 astronomy. I have said that our solar system is only a little
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 28D 
 
 corner of the universe. When you look at the vault of the 
 sky on a bright clear night, you see it thickly strewn with 
 stars, which, you will at once acknowledge, it would be im- 
 possible to count. Eut all that you see with the naked eye 
 is next to nothing. Take a good telescope, and direct it to 
 any part of the sky. There where a moment before you saw 
 nothing, you will now discern legions of stars, bright spots 
 will come out upon the darkness of space, like diamonds upon 
 the velvet lining of a casket, each of them a star, exactly like 
 those which we see at night in the sky. And now, let me 
 ask you, do you know what a star is ? 
 
 Theophilus. Yes, I know from your manuscript, and I had 
 already known, that the stars which we see by night, but 
 which the greater light of the sun hides from us in the day- 
 time, are self-luminous orbs, each the centre of attraction and 
 the lamp to the particular world it lights, and which revolves 
 around itj As a whole company of j)lanets, satellites, aste- 
 roids, and comets revolve round our sun, receiving heat, 
 motion, and light from that great central orb, so, the stars 
 dispersed throughout space, communicate motion and activity 
 to a vast aggregate of planets and satellites. These planets, 
 which revolve round the stars, constitute stellar worlds, 
 analogous to our solar world. We cannot see the planets, 
 which accompany these stars, by reason of their smallness, 
 and the prodigious distance between us and them, beyond the 
 reach of the most powerful telescopes ; we only see the suns 
 which govern them, i.e., the stars. But the existence of the 
 fixed stars, like our sun, implies the existence of planets re- 
 volving around them. 
 
 19
 
 290 THE DA 7 AFTER DEATH. 
 
 The Author. Perfectly correct. Thus, our solar world is 
 not unique, it is only one member of the family of stellar 
 ■worlds, which resemhle our world in the disposition and the 
 motions of the stars within them. The universe is composed 
 of the asrQ;lomeration of them all. You know all this, but 
 there is one fact which, as it is the result of recent discoveries, 
 you may not be aware of, it is, the great variety of disposi- 
 tion or of physical aspect presented by certain stars, in which 
 a kind of overturn of that which constitutes nature on our 
 globe has taken place. While they remain similar to our 
 world in the order of their movements, certain stars differ 
 widely in the forces which govern nature in them. 
 
 Theophilus. Pray explain your meaning. 
 
 The Author. Whde our solar system is governed by a single 
 central star, there are stellar systems which are governed by 
 two, three, and even four suns. It is evident that worlds 
 which have two or three centres of light and heat must present 
 physical and mechanical peculiarities of which we have no idea. 
 There are also other differences proper to many of the 
 stellar worlds. The light of our sun and of the greater number 
 of the stars is constant : it never undergoes either augmentation 
 or diminution. But this is not the case with many of those 
 distant suns which we call stars. We see their light alter- 
 nately fade and revive ; sometimes they shine brightly, then 
 become almost imperceptible, and anon brilliant again. Some 
 of them become altogether extinct. The decrease in. lustre of 
 several stars has been noted by different astronomers,* 
 
 Stars which have been observed in other times no longer 
 
 *Arago. '^ Asironvmie Populah'e" Vol. I., pp. 372 — 376.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEA TE. 291 
 
 exist.* Others have suddenly appeared, shone with excessive 
 lustre, and at the end of some years have been seen no more. 
 
 These successive augmentations and diminutions of lujninous 
 brilliance are not uncommon in the stars with which we are 
 acquainted. According to M. Flammarion,t star o of the 
 Whole varies very much in luminous intensity and the con- 
 stellation itself frequently disappears. Star ^ of the Sican 
 passes from the fifth to the tenth size under our eyes, the 
 thirtieth star of the Hydra, which is of the fourth size, almost 
 always disappears at intervals of 500 days. These variations 
 must, as M. Flammarion observes, produce strange results. 
 To-day, the radiant star is shedding floods of light and fire 
 upon the planets which it governs, and the soul of that planet 
 is warmed by its burning rays. A few months later, without 
 the least cloud in the sky, the shining of the sun becomes 
 fainter, and then, by degrees, the obscurity increases, until at 
 length the planet is plunged into thick darkness. "When the 
 diminution of the light of the sun is periodical, this universal 
 night lasts for a fixed time, at the end of which the light re- 
 turns, if not, the darkness is dispersed after varying periods. 
 The light grows, little by little, until at length the radiant star 
 reappears in all its primitive brightness. The fine days, the 
 glorious light returns, until the moment when the same fading 
 recommences and the darkness sets in once more. 
 
 Can we picture to ourselves the strange alterations which 
 nature undergoes in regions which are subjected to torrid heat 
 and glacial cold by turns ? I am convinced that the glacial 
 
 *Arago. " Astro7iomie Populaire," Vol. I., pp. 376—380. 
 t Flammarion. " Pluruliie des Mondes liobiies,'" page 195. 
 
 19—2
 
 292 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 period which geologists have defined in the history of our 
 globe, during which an extraordinary and sudden lowering of 
 the temperature caused the death of multitudes of living 
 beings, and covered Europe with glaciers from the mountains 
 — was caused by a momentary weakening of the intensity of 
 the sun's light. When it resumed its ordinary brightness, 
 the sun dispersed the ice which had covered the earth with a 
 death mantle.* 
 
 I have said that there are double stars, that is to say, worlds 
 illuminated by two suns, and sometimes even by three or four. 
 It is a strange fact that in almost every instance one of these 
 suns is white, like ours, but the second is coloured, blue, red, 
 or green. In the constellation Perseus for example, a double 
 star can be distinctly seen by the aid of a good telescope. The 
 star 73 is in fact accompanied by a second, which makes part 
 of the same solar system. Now, this second star is blue. In 
 the constellation Ophiochus there is a similar system of double 
 stars, one of which is red and the other blue. The same 
 peculiarity exists in the constellation of the Dragon. In a 
 double star of the constellation of the Eull, there is a red sun, 
 and a blue sun. There are double solar systems red and blue ; 
 such are the constellations Hermles and Cassiojjcela. Other 
 double solar systems are yellow and green, and sometimes 
 yellow and blue. In all the worlds which are illuminated by 
 these coloured suns, the effect of light must be very strange. 
 No painter could represent them, and indeed we, who know 
 only the white light of our own sun, cannot form any idea of 
 them. 
 
 • See the Author's work : " The Earth be/ore the Deluge,^' pp. 
 
 >02-440.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 293 
 
 Theophilus. These features of the stellar worlds are very 
 interesting, and I am glad to learn them. But are we not 
 straying from our subject 1 
 
 The Author. No. After having made you understand that 
 the solar system which we inhabit is only a member of an 
 immense family of other solar worlds, only a small fraction of 
 the universe, I wished to show you by the diversity of those 
 worlds, the facility with which nature varies the forces and 
 the physical conditions proper to the stellar worlds, and conse- 
 quently the living and inanimate types which make a portion 
 of these different stellar worlds. Now that you understand 
 the prodigious diversity of the solar worlds which compose 
 the universe, I will go on to our principal object. I have 
 not lost sight of my intention of proving to you that the 
 universe has no limits, that in its extent it is really the 
 Infinite. I am now approaching this great question. By 
 the consideration of the stars, I am going to bring out into 
 relief the immeasurable vastness of the universe. Let me 
 speak, first, of the appalling distances which separate the 
 stars from the earth, and the figures will show you that on 
 that side we fall into the Infinite, and then I will speak of 
 the numbers of the stars which people space : and on this 
 side also the abyss of the Infinite will yawn before us. First, 
 as to the distances which separate the stars from the earth, 
 from whence we may logically infer the distances which sepa- 
 rate these stars from one another. The distance between the 
 earth and the sun is 38,000,000 leagues, and this shall be 
 our unit, our standard of measurement, by which to estimate 
 the distance of the stars.
 
 294 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 I do not know, my dear Theopliilus, whether you have 
 formed an exact idea of this extent of 38,000,000 leagues, 
 which lie between us and the sun. In general, we can only 
 conceive prodigious distances such as astronomy deals with, 
 hy representing them by the interval of time which certain 
 movable bodies known to us would consume in traversing 
 them. Let us then have recourse to comparisons of this kind. 
 A cannon-ball weighing 12 kilogrammes, exploded by 6 
 kilogrammes of powder, proceeding at a uniform rate of 500 
 metres a second, would take 10 years to travel from the earth 
 to the sun. 
 
 Supposing sound to travel at the same rate as on the surface 
 of the air, and at a uniform rate, it would take 15 years to 
 accomplish this journey. If a railway were laid through 
 space between the earth and the sun, a train travelling at 
 express speed, 12i leagues an hour, would not arrive at its 
 destination until the end of 338 years. This imaginary train, 
 if dispatched from the earth in January, 1872, would arrive 
 at the sun in the year 2210. The light from the sun, which 
 travels 77,000 leagues in a second, takes 7 minutes 13 seconds 
 to reach the earth. 
 
 Theophilus. The distance between the earth and the sun is, 
 then, 38,000,000 miles — that is our unit of measurement for the 
 distances of the stars. INow let us hear about these distances. 
 
 The Author. I will deal first with those stars which are 
 nearest to us. One of these is a star in the constellation of 
 the Swan. This star is distant from the earth 551,000 times 
 our unit of measurement, that is to say, that we must 
 multiply 551,000 times the distance of the earth from the 
 aun to represent the distance of the star which we are con-
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 295 
 
 sidering, and yet it is one of the nearest to the earth. If we 
 wish to represent this distance by the time occupied in the 
 transit of light, supposing this light to travel, like that of our 
 sun, 77,000 leagues a second, it would take 9|- years to travel 
 from the star to us. 
 
 Now, if you wish to know the distance of other stars, and 
 remember that I only speak of the nearest, look at this table, 
 which I found in an astronomical treatise : 
 
 DISTANCE OF CERTAIN STARS FROM THE EARTH. 
 Names of the Stars. Dlstancesfrotiithe Earth. Time of transit of Iv flit. 
 a Of the Swan 551,000 times 9 years and a half. 
 
 « Of the Lyre 1,330,700 21 years. 
 
 a Of the Great Dog 1,375,000 22 years. 
 
 a Of the Great Bear 1,550,800 25 years. 
 
 Polar Star 3,678,000 50 years. 
 
 Thus, the star a of the Lyre is distant from us more than 
 1,350,000 times as far as the earth is from the sun, and its 
 light tak'gs 21 years to reach us. If, by any celestial catas- 
 trophe, star a of the Lyre were to disappear, to be annihilated, 
 we should still see it for 21 years, as its light takes that time 
 to reach us. 
 
 TheojjJiilus. It is then possible that our astronomers are 
 now observing stars which no longer exist, and are only 
 visible to us because the light which they omitted is still 
 travelling towards the earth. 
 
 The Author. Just so. But to continue. I have begun 
 with the stars which are nearest to the earth. There are the 
 stars of first and second magnitude. You know, I suppose, 
 the signification of those terms first, second, and third magni- 
 tude in astronomy 1
 
 296 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 Theophilus. Yes, I know that the word magnitude is only 
 applied to the luminous appearance of the star, and not to its 
 real bulk. A star of the first magnitude is one which forms 
 part of the group of the most luminous stars ; a star of the 
 second magnitude is one which comes next in point of 
 brilliancy. 
 
 The Author. You must bear in mind that the word magni- 
 tude signifies in astronomy the opposite of that which it ex- 
 presses. The more luminous a star appears to us, the nearer 
 it is to us ; the paler and less visible, the farther it is away. 
 The brilliance diminishes in proportion as the figure increases. 
 This is an introversion of terms, sufficiently exceptional to be 
 taken note of, and it ought to be remembered, for fear of 
 mistakes. Hitherto we have considered only stars of the 
 first and second magnitudes. Those of the third, fourth, 
 fifth, and sixth, lead us to the contemplation of such im- 
 mense distances, that the unit which we have adopted, enor- 
 mous as it is, is no longer of use. The instruments of celes- 
 tial observation which may be applied to the examination 
 and measurement of stars of the first and second magnitudes, 
 do not serve for stars of the third and following magnitudes, 
 and, because the small visible diameter of those stars make 
 them appear mere specks of light, measuring instruments are 
 equally inapplicable to them. In estimating the distances of 
 the stars after the third magnitude, a method of comparison, 
 based on the amplifying power of the telescopes successively 
 used, is employed. I cannot enter into details of this method, 
 which we owe to Sir William Herschel, but must content 
 myself with explaining its results, which are as follows in the
 
 THE DAT AFTER DEATH. 297 
 
 case of stars of the sixth magnitude. From certain stars of 
 that class, light would take 1042 years to reach us : from 
 others it would take 2700. After the sixth magnitude, the 
 stars can only be discerned by the aid of the telescope, and 
 their distances become perfectly stupefying in immensity. 
 Certain of these telescopic stars are so far from the earth, that 
 their light can only reach us in 5000, and even 10,000 years 
 after it leaves the luminous centre. From the stars of the 
 last category (fourteenth magnitude), light would take 100,000 
 years to reach the earth, supposing it to travel at the same rate 
 as the light of our sun, i.e., 77,000 leagues per second. 
 
 Theophilus. But, if we are to accept the results of the labours 
 of recent naturalists, man exists on the earth only within 
 100,000 years, and some of those stars may have been extinct 
 during all that time, so that the human race may have been 
 contemplating stars no longer in being for 100,000 years. To 
 what sti'ange consequences does such a science lead us ! 
 
 The Author. Yes, the luminous rays which these stars send 
 us from the deepest depths of space may perhaps be emana- 
 tions from solar systems no longer in existence. The present 
 shows VIS only the past. There may be stars so profoundh^ 
 lost in immensity, that their light has not yet had time to 
 reach us. They exist, but we cannot see them, not because 
 the telescope could not discover them, but because thousands 
 of centuries are required for the journey of their luminous rays 
 to our earth, and those thousands of centuries have not yet 
 elapsed; so that this grand spectacle is reserved, in that awfully 
 remote future, for our descendants. 
 
 And now, my friend, will you not acknowledge with me,
 
 298 THE DAY A FTER DEA TH. 
 
 that the universe, considered merely by the distances "which 
 separate us from the stars, and the stars from each other, is 
 truly the Infinite ? 
 
 Thcophilus. Yes, it is the Infinite which unfolds itself before 
 my eyes. Let me breathe a moment. 
 
 The Author. If we contemplate the number of the stars, we 
 shall also have the perspective of the InfiLaite. It is easy to 
 reckon those of the first magnitude, i.e, the nearest to us. 
 They are 20. Those of the second magnitude are 65 ; of the 
 third, 170. The number of the stars increases as their visi- 
 bility diminishes, in a very rapid proportion. The number of 
 stars of each class of visibilit}', in apparent magnitude, is three 
 times greater than that of the stars of the preceding class. 
 There are 500 stars of the fourth, 1500 of the fifth, 4500 of 
 the sixth magnitudes. The stars visible by the naked eye are 
 6000 in number. A practised eye can succeed in counting 
 the 6000 stars in the two hemispheres. 
 
 But the telescope enables us to push the numbering of the 
 suns much farther : it opens up to us the depths of the hea- 
 vens. Instead of the small number of stars which our eyes 
 can see, it shows us a myriad of others, so 
 thickly thronged together that they seem to 
 cover the sky with fine silver sand. Here, 
 for instance (fig. 6), is the aspect which one 
 corner of the constellation of Gemini pre- 
 ^ihe C^tteUatron of sents to the naked eye. And here is the 
 ^®'^'^" same portion of the sky seen by the tele- 
 
 scope. By the aid of this wonderful instrument stars of the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth magnitudes have been distinguished.
 
 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 299 
 
 The number of stars of the twelfth magnitude is 9,556,000, 
 which, joined to the number of the same stars proper to the 
 preceding categories, gives a total of more than 14,000,000. 
 
 Fig. 7. — A Corner of tbeCunstpllationof Gemini, seen tbiougb the telescope. 
 
 In the third magnitude, a total number of 42,000,000 of stars 
 is counted. Thus, reckoning those visible to the naked eye, 
 and by the telescope, we have 56,000,000 of suns, and we 
 stop at this number only because the telescope does not enable 
 us to see smaller stars than those of the fourteenth magnitude. 
 But, let the telescope be brought to greater perfection, and the 
 whole region of the sky will be seen to be covered with this
 
 300 TEE 1)A Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 silver sand, with this diamond dust, of which each grain is 
 a sun. And such wHl be the accumulation of these suns, in 
 the depths of space, that nothing will be seen on the field of 
 the telescope but a luminous network, formed by the agglome- 
 ration of the suns, which will appear to touch each other. 
 
 Theophilus. The Infinite is beginning again. Let me shut 
 my eyes. 
 
 The Author. Wait, I have not said all, I have only begun. 
 I am coming to the nebulae. Here, indeed, you may expect 
 to grow giddy. The telescope has dispersed all the theories 
 on which the difi'erent explanations of the nebulae were built, 
 and has shown us that they are collections of stars, which, in 
 consequence of their excessive number, and their closeness to 
 each other, appear to form a whole, a single vague and con- 
 tinuous brightness. But, when their dimensions and dis- 
 tances are amplified by the telescope, this diffused light trans- 
 forms itself into a brilliant point, analogous to that presented 
 by the sky, tapestried with smaU stars, in the same telescope. 
 These nebulae are groups of enormous numbers of stars, and 
 even their nearness to each other is only in appearance. They 
 are, in reality, separated by enormous distances, and it must 
 not be supposed that they are aU in the same plane ; they 
 belong, on the contrary, to very unequal depths in space, and 
 it is only an optical effect which gathers them together on the 
 field of the telescope in the same apparent plane. 
 
 The nebula of the Centaur is one of the most wonderful. 
 To the naked eye it is but a dimly-lighted point in the sky; 
 but, looked at through a good telescope, it takes the aspect 
 represented by figure 8.
 
 TEE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 301 
 
 On examination of this figure, it will be seen that a nebula 
 is not the result of a collection of stars simply spread out upon a 
 level in space, but of that of an assemblage of stars all placed 
 
 Ffg. 8.— The Nebula of the Centaur. 
 
 at unequal distances, and forming almost a sphere. In fact 
 the stars are crowded towards the centre, and are, on the con- 
 trary, more and more distant from one another as the outer 
 edge is approached. If a spherical assemblage of stars were 
 observed from a distance, it would present a similar aspect. 
 This leads us to believe that the nebula of the Centaur, hie 
 the greater number of agglomerations of this kind, is spherical. 
 Is it possible to reckon the stars which form a nebula 1 
 Only approximately. Arago estimates the number of stars 
 which form a nebula no larger than the tenth part of the
 
 302 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 apparent disc of the moon, at twenty thousand, at least. 
 Tliis result may give us an idea of the swarms of suns con- 
 tained in the nehulse, for these stellar masses are very nume- 
 rous in the sky. In the depths of the nehulee there are 
 luminous points whose nature is as yet unrevealed by the 
 telescope, which cannot be resolved into stars ; but analogy 
 leads us to believe that they are other and still more distant 
 nebulae, which, by reason of their apparent littleness, elude 
 the scope of our instruments. But the time will come, when, 
 thanks to the perfection which our telescopes shaU have 
 attained, this theory will be confirmed, and we shall thus see 
 deeper and farther into immensity. 
 
 Tlie stars which form the nebulas are sometimes grouped so 
 as to form regular shapes, spheres, or more or less lengthened 
 ellipses. Sometimes the sphere is hollow in the centre, and 
 so forms a ring. Nothing more varied, nothing more 
 stranore can be imagined than the forms of those nebulte 
 which have hitherto been examined, and which already 
 number more than a million, of which no two are precisely 
 alike. Certain nebulae seem to be double, or joined. Others 
 are lengthened out, like serpents, as in that of the Shield of 
 Sohieski, represented in figure 9. 
 
 Lord Eosse was the first to discover that curious disposition 
 of the nebulae called spiral. 
 
 Such a form is inexplicable, but it is certain that the suns 
 which compose the nebulae are often grouped, not around a 
 centre, not in shapeless heaps, but in regular curves, on a 
 system which seems to reveal the existence of some myste- 
 rious force acting upon those stars, which are distributed along 
 lines representing spirals of difierent diameter.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 303 
 
 In speaking of the stars, I have said that, there are coloured 
 stars or suns. I will add here that nebulae are observed 
 coloured red, green, and yellow, which is an additional proof 
 
 T\g. 9.— Tlie Shield of Sobieski. 
 
 that they are only agglomerations of stars. That immense 
 semi-luminous band which traverses the celestial vault, gird- 
 ing it with a silver belt, is not, as it was long supposed to be, 
 a diffused quantity of luminous matter. The telescopic ana- 
 lysis of the Milky "Way shows that it consists of a long series 
 of nebulae. The length of the Milky Way is from 700 to 
 800 times the distance from Sirius to the sun, a distance 
 which is 1,373,000 times that from the earth to the sun.* 
 
 Theophilus. Can any idea be formed of the number of stars 
 comprised in the INIilky Way ? 
 
 * Flammarion. ^^Fliiralile des Jfondcs JlabUes," page 203.
 
 304 
 
 THE LAY AFTER DEATH. 
 
 The Author. Her- 
 
 ex- 
 
 schel, having 
 amined the sky of the 
 southern hemisphere 
 from the Cape of Good 
 Hope, in applying his 
 observations to the 
 whole extent of the 
 ]Milky Way , estimated 
 the number of suns 
 comprised in that im- 
 mense nebulse at 18 
 millions. I have just 
 told you the length of 
 the Mnky Way. A 
 ray of Hght emitted 
 from a star at one of 
 its extremities, and 
 reaching the other, 
 would take 15,000 
 years to accomplish 
 the transit. So that, 
 when we are looking 
 through the telescope 
 at one of the suns of 
 this nehula, we re- 
 ceive the impression 
 of a ray of light 
 emitted from that star 
 
 I)g. 10.— The Milky Way.
 
 THE BA Y AFTER DEATH. 305 
 
 7000 or 8000 years ago, i.e., long before the dawn of the 
 historic ages.* The measurement of the Milky Way enables 
 us therefore to measure the extent of other nebulae, still 
 more distant from us. There are, as I have already said, 
 masses of diffused light in the midst of nebulse which tele- 
 scopic analysis has resolved into stars, which are probably 
 much more distant nebulse. The real distance of these 
 luminous masses can be fixed. If it were asked, to what dis- 
 tance the Milky Way should be removed in order to offer us 
 the aspect of an ordinary nebula, Arago would answer that 
 according to his researches, the Milky Way ought to be 
 removed to a distance equal to 334 times its length. Accord- 
 ing to this the Milky Way would be seen from the earth at 
 an angle of 10'^, and its light would take 5,010,000 years to 
 travel that distance. Thus, light would take more than five 
 millions of years to travel from one of the telescopic nebulae 
 to our' earth. Such are the intervals which exist in the 
 universe, and which our instruments can appreciate. It 
 seems to me that we are now on the borders of the Infinite. 
 Theophilus. We are indeed. 
 
 The Author. When we know that those terrible distances, 
 which appal the imagination, are only the results of obser- 
 vations made by our telescopes, and capable of any amount 
 of extension ; when we reflect that the innumerable worlds 
 thus revealed to us continue farther and farther, that ever new 
 agglomerations of suns, planetary earths and their satellites add 
 themselves to those which we can measure, without limit and 
 without end, that the imagination cannot err in following 
 * riammarion. " Pluralite des Mondes Habites," page 203. 
 
 20
 
 308 THE DA 7 AFTER DEATH. 
 
 them to the uttermost limits of its powers ; then, my dear 
 Theophilus, we comprehend that the universe is truly infinite. 
 And if you consider that these endless ranks of solar systems 
 have all their following of planets and satellites, filled with 
 living beings, plants, animals, men, and superhuman creatures, 
 that flaming comets traverse the orbit of each world at inter- 
 vals and plunge into the burning furnace of its sun ; that these 
 milliards of suns are endlessly various, and that all the com- 
 plicated motions of these different systems are accomplished 
 with perfect order, without any mutual disturbance, you will 
 find that the universe is not only the infinite in extent, but 
 also in order, harmony, equilibrium of motion, and laws ! 
 
 TkeojMlus. The mind loses itself in such thoughts ; for the 
 idea of the infinite is not made for our feeble intelligence. 
 Let us go no farther, or our reason will fail us. 
 
 The Author. Nevertheless, I must pursue my long ami- 
 ment to the end. I must add that in the midst of this 
 boundless space, above this immense cortege of stars, which 
 are the dwelling places of living creatures and sentient souls, 
 there exists the Supreme Author, the Sovereign Ordainer, 
 from Whom, as their sacred source, all that our eyes behold, 
 our souls feel, and our intelligence admires, is derived. He, 
 whom I bless with all the gratitude of my heart — God ! 
 
 Theophilus. Thus, then, you have reached the true object 
 of your discourse. This journey through space is undertaken 
 to prove that God, being infinite in moral perfections, may be 
 placed in that infinitude in extent, called the universe. It 
 only remains now to say in what precise spot you place the 
 sojourn of the Divinity, for I do not see how there can be a 
 centre to the Infinite, seeing it has neither beginning nor end.
 
 THE DAY AFTER DEATH. 807 
 
 The Author. I am about to explain myself on this point. 
 The absolute fixity of the sun and the stars was an astro- 
 nomical principle, which, in the time of Newton, appeared to 
 be indubitable. But science never stands still. Obserrations 
 made in the present century have proved that the fixity, the 
 immobility of the sun is only relative. The truth is that 
 the sun, and with him the entire system of planets, asteroids, 
 satellites, and comets, which he carries, in his train, change 
 their places, very slightly no doubt, but still appreciably. 
 Our sun appears to advance slowly, with all the planetary 
 family, towards that part of the sky in which the constella- 
 tion of Hercules is situated, at the rate of 62,000,000 of leagues 
 each year, or two leagues each second, describing an orbit 
 which comprehends millions of centuries. That which is the 
 case with our sun is equally the case with the other suns, that 
 is to say, the stars. This general motion of translation must 
 be domnion to all the stellar systems, and it is indubitable 
 that the countless millions of solar systems suspended in infinite 
 space, are moving more or less quickly towards an uuknoAvn 
 point in the sky. Now, there is nothing to forbid the sup- 
 position that all these circles or ellipses traced by myriads of 
 solar systems, have a common centre of attraction, towards 
 which our system and all the others gravitate. Thus, all 
 these celestial bodies, without exception, all this ant-hill of 
 worlds which we have enumerated, may be turning round one 
 point, one centre of attraction. "What forbids us to believe 
 that God dwells at this centre of attraction for all the worlds 
 which fiU infinite space] 
 
 ThcoiMlus. Kow I understand your thought, and I am 
 
 20-2
 
 308 THE DA Y AFTER DEATH. 
 
 struck by its grandeur. This God, placed at the mathe- 
 matical centre of the worlds which compose the universe, 
 this infinite intelligence, throned in the centre of the infinite 
 universe, and presiding over the movements of all the innu- 
 merable phalanxes of heavenly bodies which our imagination 
 can conceive, responds to the idea which we form of God, 
 if we venture to face the awful personality of His Omnipo- 
 tence. You have done well to develop this theory in your 
 work. It will be in harmony with the kind of religious 
 spirit which animates it, and which is, besides, the expres- 
 sion of the desires, and the aspirations of the men of our 
 time. 
 
 In the present day a deep and profound need of belief in 
 Providence makes itself felt. Men want to render homage to 
 God, in whom they feel there is truth, peace, and safety for 
 the present and in the future. But the established religions 
 leave many minds in cruel uncertainty. In " The Day after 
 Death " you have endeavoured to lay the foundations of the 
 religion of science and of nature. These principles respond, as 
 I believe, to the prevalent wishes of mankind. They satisfy 
 the mind and the heart, sentiment and reason ; they console 
 and strengthen ; in short, they consecrate the idea of God, 
 without laying aside either the universe or nature. 
 The Author. So be it ! 
 
 THE END, 
 
 HILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. 
 
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