The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)

THE DAY AFTER DEATH OR Our Future Life according to Science
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF LOUIS FIGUIER
ILLUSTRATED BY TEN ASTRONOMICAL PLATES
A NEW EDITION
London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1904
Formerly published by Richard Bentley & Son. Reprinted 1904.
THE DAY AFTER DEATH.
READER, you must die. You may perhaps die to-morrow. What will become of you? What shall you be, on the day after your death? 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 cerecloth, your body must be decomposed, and its elements distributed 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 suffered, 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 will 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 survive the tomb, go to? What will it become, what shall you be, my reader, the day after your death?
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 endeavour. 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 darkness that we lack courage to pursue the investigation. And thus we are led to turn away from all thought of the future life.