But is this continuation of the person possible? After the dissolution of the body, can any thing of us remain?
In truth, the moral person, which acts well or ill, which awaits the reward or punishment of its good or bad actions, is united to a body,—it lives with the body, makes use of it, and, in a certain measure, depends on it, but is not it.[253] The body is composed of parts, may decrease or increase; is divisible, essentially divisible, and even infinitely divisible. But that something that has consciousness of itself, that says, I, me, that feels itself to be free and responsible, does it not also feel that there is in it no division, even no possible division, that it is a being one and simple? Is the me more or less me? Is there a half of me, a quarter of me? I cannot divide my person. It remains identical to itself under the diversity of the phenomena that manifest it. This identity, this indivisibility of the person, is its spirituality. Spirituality is, therefore, the very essence of the person. Belief in the spirituality of the soul is involved in the belief of this identity of the me, which no rational being has ever called in question. Accordingly, there is not the least hypothesis for affirming that the soul does not essentially differ from the body. Add that when we say the soul, we mean to say, and do say the person, which is not separated from the consciousness of the attributes that constitute it, thought and will. The being without consciousness is not a person. It is the person that is identical, one, simple. Its attributes, in developing it, do not divide it. Indivisible, it is indissoluble, and may be immortal. If, then, divine justice, in order to be exercised in regard to us, demands an immortal soul, it does not demand an impossible thing. The spirituality of the soul is the necessary foundation of immortality. The law of merit and demerit is the direct demonstration of this. The first proof is called the metaphysical proof, the second, the moral proof, which is the most celebrated, most popular, at once the most convincing and the most persuasive.
What powerful motives are added to these two proofs to fortify them in the heart! The following, for example, is a presumption of great value for any one that believes in the virtue of sentiment and instinct.
Every thing has its end. This principle is as absolute as that which refers every event to a cause.[254] Man has, therefore, an end. This end is revealed in all his thoughts, in all his ways, in all his sentiments, in all his life. Whatever he does, whatever he feels, whatever he thinks, he thinks upon the infinite, loves the infinite, tends to the infinite.[255] This need of the infinite is the mainspring of scientific curiosity, the principle of all discoveries. Love also stops and rests only there. On the route it may experience lively joys; but a secret bitterness that is mingled with them soon makes it feel their insufficiency and emptiness. Often, while ignorant of its true object, it asks whence comes that fatal disenchantment by which all its successes, all its pleasures are successively extinguished. If it knew how to read itself, it would recognize that if nothing here below satisfies it, it is because its object is more elevated, because the true bourne after which it aspires is infinite perfection. Finally, like thought and love, human activity is without limits. Who can say where it shall stop? Behold this earth almost known. Soon another world will be necessary for us. Man is journeying towards the infinite, which is always receding before him, which he always pursues. He conceives it, he feels it, he bears it, thus to speak, in himself,—how should his end be elsewhere? Hence that unconquerable instinct of immortality, that universal hope of another life to which all worships, all poesies, all traditions bear witness. We tend to the infinite with all our powers; death comes to interrupt the destiny that seeks its goal, and overtakes it unfinished. It is, therefore, likely that there is something after death, since at death nothing in us is terminated. Look at the flower that to-morrow will not be. To-day, at least, it is entirely developed: we can conceive nothing more beautiful of its kind; it has attained its perfection. My perfection, my moral perfection, that of which I have the clearest idea and the most invincible need, for which I feel that I am born,—in vain I call for it, in vain I labor for it; it escapes me, and leaves me only hope. Shall this hope be deceived? All beings attain their end; should man alone not attain his? Should the greatest of creatures be the most ill-treated? But a being that should remain incomplete and unfinished, that should not attain the end which all his instincts proclaim for him, would be a monster in the eternal order,—a problem much more difficult to solve than the difficulties that have been raised against the immortality of the soul. In our opinion, this tendency of all the desires and all the powers of the soul towards the infinite, elucidated by the principle of final causes, is a serious and important confirmation of the moral proof and the metaphysical proof of another life.
When we have collected all the arguments that authorize belief in another life, and when we have thus arrived at a satisfying demonstration, there remains an obstacle to be overcome. Imagination cannot contemplate without fright that unknown which is called death. The greatest philosopher in the world, says Pascal, on a plank wider than it is necessary in order to go without danger from one side of an abyss to the other, cannot think without trembling on the abyss that is beneath him. It is not reason, it is imagination that frightens him; it is also imagination that in great part causes that remnant of doubt, that trouble, that secret anxiety which the firmest faith cannot always succeed in overcoming in the presence of death. The religious man experiences this terror, but he knows whence it comes, and he surmounts it by attaching himself to the solid hopes furnished him by reason and the heart. Imagination is a child that must be educated, by putting it under the discipline and government of better faculties; it must be accustomed to go to intelligence for aid instead of troubling intelligence with its phantoms. Let us acknowledge that there is a terrible step to be taken when we meet death. Nature trembles when face to face with the unknown eternity. It is wise to present ourselves there with all our forces united,—reason and the heart lending each other mutual support, the imagination being subdued or charmed. Let us continually repeat that, in death as in life, the soul is sure to find God, and that with God all is just, all is good.[256]
We now know what God truly is. We have already seen two of his adorable attributes,—truth and beauty. The most august attribute is revealed to us,—holiness. God is the holy of holies, as the author of the moral law and the good, as the principle of liberty, justice, and charity, as the dispenser of penalty and reward. Such a God is not an abstract God, but an intelligent and free person, who has made us in his own image, from whom we hold the law itself that presides over our destiny, whose judgments we await. It is his love that inspires us in our acts of charity; it is his justice that governs our justice, that of our societies and our laws. If we do not continually remind ourselves that he is infinite, we degrade his nature; but he would be for us as if he were not, if his infinite essence had no forms that pertain to us, the proper forms of our reason and our soul.
By thinking upon such a being, man feels a sentiment that is par excellence the religious sentiment. All the beings with whom we are in relation awaken in us different sentiments, according to the qualities that we perceive in them; and should he who possesses all perfections excite in us no particular sentiment? When we think upon the infinite essence of God, when we are penetrated with his omnipotence, when we are reminded that the moral law expresses his will, that he attaches to the fulfilment and the violation of this law recompenses and penalties which he dispenses with an inflexible justice, we cannot guard ourselves against an emotion of respect and fear at the idea of such a grandeur. Then, if we come to consider that this all-powerful being has indeed wished to create us, us of whom he has no need, that in creating us he has loaded us with benefits, that he has given us this admirable universe for enjoying its ever-new beauties, society for ennobling our life in that of our fellow-men, reason for thinking, the heart for loving, liberty for acting; without disappearing, respect and fear are tinged with a sweeter sentiment, that of love. Love, when it is applied to feeble and limited beings, inspires us with a desire to do good to them; but in itself it proposes to itself no advantage from the person loved; we love a beautiful or good object, because it is beautiful or good, without at first regarding whether this love may be useful to its object and ourselves. For a still stronger reason, love, when it ascends to God, is a pure homage rendered to his perfections; it is the natural overflow of the soul towards a being infinitely lovable.
Respect and love compose adoration. True adoration does not exist without possessing both of these sentiments. If you consider only the all-powerful God, master of heaven and earth, author and avenger of justice, you crush man beneath the weight of the grandeur of God and his own feebleness, you condemn him to a continual trembling in the uncertainty of God's judgments, you make him hate the world, life, and himself, for every thing is full of misery. Towards this extreme, Port-Royal inclines. Read the Pensées de Pascal.[257] In his great humility, Pascal forgets two things,—the dignity of man and the love of God. On the other hand, if you see only the good God and the indulgent father, you incline to a chimerical mysticism. By substituting love for fear, little by little with fear, we run the risk of losing respect. God is no more a master, he is no more even a father; for the idea of a father still to a certain point involves that of a respectful fear; he is no more any thing but a friend, sometimes even a lover. True adoration does not separate love and respect; it is respect animated by love.
Adoration is a universal sentiment. It differs in degrees according to different natures; it takes the most different forms; it is often even ignorant of itself; sometimes it is revealed by an exclamation springing from the heart, in the midst of the great scenes of nature and life, sometimes it silently rises in the mute and penetrated soul; it may err in its expressions, even in its object; but at bottom it is always the same. It is a spontaneous, irresistible emotion of the soul; and when reason is applied to it, it is declared just and legitimate. What, in fact, is more just than to fear the judgments of him who is holiness itself, who knows our actions and our intentions, and will judge them according to the highest justice? What, too, is more just than to love perfect goodness and the source of all love? Adoration is at first a natural sentiment; reason makes it a duty.
Adoration confined to the sanctuary of the soul is what is called internal worship—the necessary principle of all public worships.