It is impossible that a state so abnormal can be a definitive condition. Order, harmony, equilibrium reign throughout 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.
But, what is this new condition, what is this second existence 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 creatures 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 Reynaud calls the superior creature, who is, he believes, to succeed to man after his death, an angel. But we will put aside the word altogether, and call the perfected creature who, in our belief, comes after man in the ascending series of nature, the superhuman being.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Rambosson. "The Laws of Life." Paris, 1871. P. 121.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
WHERE DOES THE SUPERHUMAN BEING DWELL?