FOOTNOTES:
[2] Rambosson. "The Laws of Life." Paris, 1871. P. 121.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
WHERE DOES THE SUPERHUMAN BEING DWELL?
WE have seen that of the three elements which compose the human aggregate, one only, the soul, resists destruction. After the dissolution of the body, after the extinction of the life, the soul, detached from the material bonds which 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 eyes cannot glance around us, without everywhere encountering myriads of living beings. The earth is nothing but a vast reservoir of life. Examine a blade of grass in a field, and you will 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 magnifying glass, you will discover that this blade of grass is the refuge of an active population, which are born, multiply, and die with prodigious rapidity on their almost 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 plants, 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 water 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. We 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 examined, 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 calcareous earth of which chalk hills and banks are formed, are entirely composed of the pulverized 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 formation is composed of the accumulation 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 aërial 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 air. That which is perceptible in the atmosphere of a brightly-lighted room is necessarily existent in the entire atmosphere surrounding our globe, so that the air is everywhere filled with these specks of dust.
Of what are these specks of dust formed? Almost entirely 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 generation; 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 attention.
Those animals and plants which are called parasites furnish 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, are 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 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 inhabited by immense numbers of living beings. Life abounds on the earth, in the waters, and in the air. Our 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 planetary 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 aërostatic ascents it is impossible to go beyond seven or eight kilometres, because at that height the air loses so much density, is so highly rarefied, that it no longer serves for purposes of respiration, nor counterbalances the effect of the 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 planetary ether.
It has just been said that life abounds upon the globe, swarms upon the earth, clusters in the air and in the waters. Is the ethereal fluid which succeeds to our atmosphere, and which fills space, equally inhabited by living beings? 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 be absolutely wanting in the fluid which is contiguous to the air. Everything, 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 believe 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 proportion as they ascend into that air, the respiration of men and animals becomes more and more difficult, it is, in our opinion, presumable, that this difficulty 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.
It seems not unlikely that the planetary ether may be composed 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 presentiments 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 tradition, 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 scaffold: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven."
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
DO ALL MEN, WITHOUT DISTINCTION, PASS, AFTER DEATH, INTO THE CONDITION OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING?—RE-INCARNATION OF IMPENITENT SOULS.—RE-INCARNATION OF CHILDREN WHO HAVE DIED IN INFANCY.
DEATH 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 prelude to annihilation, it is only the obligatory suffering which, throughout all nature, accompanies every change. Every one knows that the insect world, the cold and motionless chrysalis, 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 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? 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 we 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 generations 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 kill one's neighbour, to take another's goods, to ill-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 felicity of the new life, which is reserved for us beyond the tomb? Our conscience, that exquisitely accurate sentiment which dwells within us, and which 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 dogmatic sense of imposing it on any one, but simply as a testimony to be registered.
It seems to us that the human 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 celestial aërostat, 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 evil 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-commence life a second time. Let us remark, at once, that he re-commences this life without preserving any recollection of his previous existence.
It will be objected to this, that to be 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 nothingness 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 irreparably, 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 existence, a sort of punishment. The remembrance of his first terrestrial life will return to each individual, when, by perfecting 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 which all religions and all philosophers have split. The explanation of the punishment of the wicked which we offer, is at least preferable 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 punishment for a sin of short duration, it is a merciful form of justice, which places beside the penalty the means of freedom from the sin. 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 deserving 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, uncultivated, 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 imperfect 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 recommence his existence with the same uncultivated and feeble soul which he possessed at the moment of his death.
These re-incarnations in a human body may be numerous. They must repeat themselves until the faculties of the soul 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.
WHAT ARE THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING?—THE PHYSICAL FORM, SENSES, DEGREE OF INTELLIGENCE, AND FACULTIES OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING.
NOTWITHSTANDING the daring of such an attempt, let us now endeavour to form some idea of the radiant creatures which float in the mysterious and sublime 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 Superhuman Being.—We might perhaps conceive a superhuman being without a body; we might imagine that the soul, purely spiritual, constitutes the blessed dweller in ethereal space. But it is not thus that we do conceive 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 terrestrial dwelling, incarnates itself in a body, as it did here below. But this body must be provided with qualities infinitely superior to those which belong to the human body. First, let us inquire what the form of this body may be. The painters of the Renaissance, 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 we 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 Raphael, represent the angel by the head of a child, with wings, give a far more profound expression 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 proportion, over the material part.
We shall not be expected to delineate the form of the dwellers in the realms of ether. We 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.
How is this body supported? Does it need food for its maintenance, like the bodies of men and of animals? We may reply with confidence that food—that tyrannous obligation of the human and the animal species—is spared to the inhabitants of the planetary ether. Their bodies must be supported 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 necessity 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 advantage. 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 breathing, contributes largely to our nutrition. The respiratory function 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 he lives, suffices for the support of the material body of the superhuman being, and that the necessity for eating and drinking has no place in his existence.
I do not know whether my reader forms an exact conception of the consequences which would 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 pressing obligation of procuring food which renders the lives of animals so miserable. Forced incessantly to seek their subsistence, animals are entirely given up to this grovelling occupation; 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 eating—that the mere respiration of air would supply the waste of his organs—what a revolution would be effected in human society. Hateful passions, wars, and rivalries would disappear 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, would be unknown in the home of these privileged creatures. Released from the toil of seeking their food, living and repairing their functions by the mere effect of respiration—an involuntary and unconscious act (as the circulation of the blood and absorption are unconscious acts in men and animals)—the inhabitants 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 cannot exercise our functions for a certain time without experiencing 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 subject to a thousand derangements, which we call diseases.
From the sense of fatigue, from the continual menace of illness by organic derangement, the dwellers in the ether are free. Rest 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 mechanism 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 exercised 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 simplicity of his body will be easily understood. The numerous and complicated organs and apparatus which exist in the bodies of men and animals, have for their object the exercise of the functions of nutrition and reproduction. These functions being suppressed in the creature whom we are considering, his body must be proportionably lightened. Everything is reduced to respiration, and the preservation and maintenance of the faculties of the soul; all is in harmony with those ends. We admire, with good reason, the wise mechanism 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 reproduction, 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 calculated 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 superhuman being, and divine the relations which might exist between 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 describing would give him the power of transporting himself in a very short space of time from one place to another, and of 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 dominant, 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 does 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 at 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? It arises from the fact that our forces, impaired by their exercise, 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 this physical reparation, as much in obedience to what he observes in all 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 conditions of human existence. Everything leads us to believe 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 revolving 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 belongs to the planets only, because they have a hemisphere now illumined, and then not illumined by the sun; but night is unknown to the remainder of the universe. 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, premising:
1. That the superhuman being must be endowed with the same senses which we possess, but that those senses are infinitely 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, like 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 blind, upon whom the famous surgeon Childesen operated. Having recovered 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 feels, and a mind which thinks. This philosophical idea has been greatly admired. Like the man-statue of Condillac, we are only, while here 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 reasoning 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 understand 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 equally. These birds, floating at an immense height, see their prey upon the earth, creatures much smaller than themselves, and descend upon them without deviating from the perpendicular line of their flight. The bat, accidentally deprived 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, will detect the tread of an enemy at the distance of a league. Among musicians, 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 kinds, all played at once, in an orchestra. Supposing that the senses of the superhuman being should have acquired the degree of extraordinary 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 accession 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 eye could penetrate the mysteries of that world in miniature well named the Infinitely Little, until then absolutely unknown; no one had 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 microscopic beings was until then unknown. The least enlightened, the most careless student of this day, regards with indifference things which Aristotle, Hippocrates, Pliny, Galienus, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon could not have contemplated, 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 splendour. 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 observation of spots on the sun, and the revolution of the nebulæ into collections of stars, were 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 ordinary distances, it can discern all microscopic objects, and at the same time all the celestial bodies invisible to the naked 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 proportions which our accumulated knowledge would assume, if our sight could enjoy those extraordinary powers of extension, if it could perform simultaneously the 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, beholding their molecules, estimating their relative volume, their arrangement, and the form and colour of their atoms. A glance 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 magnetism are exercised. Our eyes would suffice for the solution of those physical and mechanical problems before which the genius of such men as Newton, Malus, Ampère, and Gay-Lussac stands still.
We do not doubt that the superhuman being is endowed 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 the exaltation and perfecting of those senses which man possesses only in their rudiments, in the favoured dwellers in a superior 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 perfected senses can be 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 affection possessed by animals, apart from their carnal instincts, reduce themselves to those of maternity, 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 sentiments of affection entertained by man are numerous, and frequently 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. Let us go a step further, even to the supernatural being, the next link in the chain to ourselves, and we shall find the sentiment of affection entirely detached from the consideration 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 hand, 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 will find the son, and the mother 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? 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 every sensual restraint. Man, resuscitated to glory, will love his wife as he loves his children, his friends, and his brethren. His affections will never more be degraded by his senses. The happiness 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 will be exalted by the sublime sensations of this universal love, this wide sympathy with the whole creation. True charity, comprehending the entire universe, will burn in all hearts. The love of God will 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.
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 preservation 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 reproduction 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 individuals; 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. Reproduction 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 Natural History at Rouen, 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 proposition, takes his stand upon the fact that, in man, it is sometimes spirit which governs and subdues matter, and sometimes matter which dictates laws to spirit, with equal power and success on the side of each.[3]
Admitting, with the German philosopher, that this relation is true, we would say, that, while in man the proportion of the soul is fifty in one hundred, this proportion, in the superhuman being, is undoubtedly from eighty to eighty-five in one hundred. Of course we only employ this valuation to make our idea comprehensible, and give these figures only to prove that facts in the intellectual order may be submitted to weight, measure, and comparison, all which the world supposes 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 perfection, must also be singularly active and powerful. We 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 employed. 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 determine 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 discovering the nature of those new faculties, and content ourselves with examining the degree of perfection which may be attained 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 sureness in the superhuman being. La Bruyère has said that there is nothing more rare in this world than the spirit of discernment; which means that judgment and good sense are excessively rare. When we have lived for a while among men, we recognize how thoroughly well founded the saying is. We may safely assert, without being over-misanthropical, that among 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 Bruyère 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 deficient, cannot be wanting in the inhabitants of the other world; 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 knowledge, 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 life. We retain no recollection of the care which 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 saw 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. Memory, 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 weaknesses, 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 certainty, and scope which it lacks here below.
At the same time, our memory will be enriched by a number 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 will know the physical revolutions, the populations, and the legislation of these thousand countries. The superhuman being will know what exists in such planets and their satellites as come within his reach, or as he shall visit. Just as, in order to gain information, we visit America or Australia, so the superhuman being visits Mars or Venus, and furnishes his memory with millions of facts, which it retains and reproduces at will. What immense power must memory, always supplied and always ready at call, bestow on the mind and reason!
Languages are only the expression and the assembling of ideas. Condorcet has said that a science always reduces itself to a well-constructed language. The mathematical sciences employ a language which is perfect, because the science of mathematics is perfect. The language spoken in the planetary spaces must be perfect, because it expresses all the knowledge 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 universal.
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 increasing 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. Arduous questions, before which the mind of man humbly confesses its powerlessness, 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 problems, forbidden to us, are easily accessible to these mighty thinkers. He who is regarded by mankind as a genius of the first order, an Aristotle, a Keppler, a Newton, a Raphael, a Shakespeare, a Molière, a Mozart, a Lavoisier, a Laplace, a Cuvier, a Victor Hugo, would be 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 behold 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 witness the infinitely various spectacles furnished by the elemental 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 Wherefore! 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 designs 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.
We also think, that in the ethereal spaces time is an element which does not count. We believe this, because time does not exist for God, and all superhuman beings approach, by their perfections, the entirely spiritual nature, and consequently approach God. We are confirmed in 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 attainments—far otherwise precious than money—time does not count in the life of the superhuman being. He awaits, without impatience and without suffering, the arrival of the beings whom he has loved and left upon the earth at his peaceful abode; and when their re-union takes place, he and they enjoy 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 with 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 proceeds from the soul of a man which has domiciled itself afresh, in a new body, 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? Shall life be withdrawn from the body of the superhuman being, and shall the soul take flight thence?
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 waters of life. If the soul of the superhuman 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, whose duration we shall not attempt to fix, he dies; and the soul which 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.
