{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_50399/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_50399","id":"gutenberg_50399","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50399","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Death","Immortality","Nobel Prizes in Literature","Spiritualism"],"text":"OUR ETERNITY\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n[Illustration: _Hope._ _After the painting by G. F. WATTS._]\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n                              OUR ETERNITY\n\n\n                                   BY\n\n                          MAURICE MAETERLINCK\n\n\n\n\n                             TRANSLATED BY\n\n\n                      ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS\n\n\n\n\n                           METHUEN & CO. LTD.\n                          36 ESSEX STREET W.C.\n                                 LONDON\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I\n\n                         OUR INJUSTICE TO DEATH\n\n\n                                   1\n\nIt has been well said:\n\n\u201cDeath and death alone is what we must consult about life; and not some\nvague future or survival, where we shall not be. It is our own end; and\neverything happens in the interval between death and now. Do not talk to\nme of those imaginary prolongations which wield over us the childish\nspell of number; do not talk to me\u2014to me who am to die outright\u2014of\nsocieties and peoples! There is no reality, there is no true duration,\nsave that between the cradle and the grave. The rest is mere bombast,\nshow, delusion! They call me a master because of some magic in my speech\nand thoughts; but I am a frightened child in the presence of death!\u201d[1]\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 1:\n\n  Marie Len\u00e9ru, _Les Affranchis_, Act III., Sc. iv.\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   2\n\nThat is where we stand. For us, death is the one event that counts in\nour life and in our universe. It is the point whereat all that escapes\nour vigilance unites and conspires against our happiness. The more our\nthoughts struggle to turn away from it, the closer do they press around\nit. The more we dread it, the more dreadful it becomes, for it but\nthrives on our fears. He who seeks to forget it has his memory filled\nwith it; he who tries to shun it meets naught else. It clouds everything\nwith its shadow. But though we think of death incessantly, we do so\nunconsciously, without learning to know death. We compel our attention\nto turn its back upon it, instead of going to it with uplifted head. All\nthe forces which might avail to face death we exhaust in averting our\nwill from it. We deliver death into the groping hands of instinct and we\ngrant it not one hour of our intelligence. Is it surprising that the\nidea of death, which should be the most perfect and the most luminous of\nideas\u2014being the most persistent and the most inevitable\u2014remains the\nflimsiest and the only one that is a laggard? How should we know the one\npower which we never look in the face? How could it have profited by\ngleams kindled only to help us escape it? To fathom its abysses, we wait\nuntil the most enfeebled, the most disordered moments of our life\narrive. We do not think of death until we have no longer the strength, I\nwill not say, to think, but even to breathe. A man returning among us\nfrom another century would have difficulty in recognizing, in the depths\nof a present-day soul, the image of his gods, of his duty, of his love\nor of his universe; but the figure of death, when everything has changed\naround it and when even that which composes it and upon which it depends\nhas vanished, he would find almost untouched, rough-drawn as it was by\nour fathers, hundreds, nay, thousands of years ago. Our intelligence,\ngrown so bold and active, has not worked upon this figure, has not, so\nto speak, retouched it in any way. Though we may no longer believe in\nthe tortures of the damned, all the vital cells of the most sceptical\namong us are still steeped in the appalling mystery of the Hebrew Sheol,\nthe pagan Hades, or the Christian Hell. Though it may no longer be\nlighted by very definite flames, the gulf still opens at the end of life\nand, if less known, is all the more formidable. And, therefore, when the\nimpending hour strikes to which we dared not raise our eyes, everything\nfails us at the same time. Those two or three uncertain ideas whereon,\nwithout examining them, we had meant to lean give way like rushes\nbeneath the weight of the last minutes. In vain we seek a refuge among\nreflexions that are illusive or are strange to us and do not know the\nroads to our heart. No one awaits us on the last shore where all is\nunprepared, where naught remains afoot save terror.\n\n\n                                   3\n\nBossuet, the great poet of the tomb, says:\n\n\u201cIt is not worthy of a Christian\u201d\u2014and I would add, of a man\u2014\u201cto postpone\nhis struggle with death until the moment when it arrives to carry him\noff.\u201d\n\nIt were a salutary thing for each of us to work out his idea of death in\nthe light of his days and the strength of his intelligence and stand by\nit. He would say to death:\n\n\u201cI know not who you are, or I would be your master; but, in days when my\neyes saw clearer than to-day, I learnt what you were not: that is enough\nto prevent you from becoming mine.\u201d\n\nHe would thus bear, graven on his memory, a tried image against which\nthe last agony would not prevail and from which the phantom-stricken\neyes would draw fresh comfort. Instead of the terrible prayer of the\ndying, which is the prayer of the depths, he would say his own prayer,\nthat of the peaks of his existence, where would be gathered, like angels\nof peace, the most lucid, the most rarefied thoughts of his life. Is not\nthat the prayer of prayers? After all, what is a true and worthy prayer,\nif not the most ardent and disinterested effort to reach and grasp the\nunknown?\n\n\n                                   4\n\n\u201cThe doctors and the priests,\u201d said Napoleon, \u201chave long been making\ndeath grievous.\u201d\n\nAnd Bacon wrote:\n\n\u201c_Pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa._\u201d\n\nLet us, then, learn to look upon death as it is in itself, free from the\nhorrors of matter and stripped of the terrors of the imagination. Let us\nfirst get rid of all that goes before and does not belong to it. Thus,\nwe impute to it the tortures of the last illness; and that is not just.\nIllnesses have nothing in common with that which ends them. They form\npart of life and not of death. We readily forget the most cruel\nsufferings that restore us to health; and the first sun of convalescence\ndestroys the most unbearable memories of the chamber of pain. But let\ndeath come; and at once we overwhelm it with all the evil done before\nit. Not a tear but is remembered and used as a reproach, not a cry of\npain but becomes a cry of accusation. Death alone bears the weight of\nthe errors of nature or the ignorance of science that have uselessly\nprolonged torments in whose name we curse death because it puts a term\nto them.\n\n\n                                   5\n\nIn point of fact, whereas sicknesses belong to nature or to life, the\nagony, which seems peculiar to death, is wholly in the hands of men. Now\nwhat we most dread is the awful struggle at the end and especially the\nlast, terrible second of rupture which we shall perhaps see approaching\nduring long hours of helplessness and which suddenly hurls us, naked,\ndisarmed, abandoned by all and stripped of everything, into an unknown\nthat is the home of the only invincible terrors which the soul of man\nhas ever felt.\n\nIt is doubly unjust to impute the torments of that second to death. We\nshall see presently in what manner a man of to-day, if he would remain\nfaithful to his ideas, should picture to himself the unknown into which\ndeath flings us. Let us confine ourselves here to the last struggle. As\nscience progresses, it prolongs the agony which is the most dreadful\nmoment and the sharpest peak of human pain and horror, for the watchers,\nat least; for very often the consciousness of him whom death, in\nBossuet\u2019s phrase, has \u201cbrought to bay\u201d is already greatly dulled and\nperceives no more than the distant murmur of the sufferings which it\nseems to be enduring. All doctors consider it their first duty to\nprolong to the uttermost even the cruellest pangs of the most hopeless\nagony. Who has not, at the bedside of a dying man, twenty times wished\nand not once dared to throw himself at their feet and implore them to\nshow mercy? They are filled with so great a certainty and the duty which\nthey obey leaves so little room for the least doubt that pity and\nreason, blinded by tears, curb their revolt and recoil before a law\nwhich all recognize and revere as the highest law of man\u2019s conscience.\n\n\n                                   6\n\nOne day, this prejudice will strike us as barbarous. Its roots go down\nto the unacknowledged fears left in the heart by religions that have\nlong since died out in the intelligence of men. That is why the doctors\nact as though they were convinced that there is no known torture but is\npreferable to those awaiting us in the unknown. They seem persuaded that\nevery minute gained amid the most intolerable sufferings is snatched\nfrom the incomparably more dreadful sufferings which the mysteries of\nthe hereafter reserve for men; and, of two evils, to avoid that which\nthey know to be imaginary, they choose the only real one. Besides, in\nthus postponing the end of a torture, which, as old Seneca says, is the\nbest part of that torture, they are but yielding to the unanimous error\nwhich makes its enclosing circle more iron-bound every day: the\nprolongation of the agony increasing the horror of death; and the horror\nof death demanding the prolongation of the agony.\n\n\n                                   7\n\nThe doctors, on their side, say or might say that, in the present stage\nof science, two or three cases excepted, there is never a certainty of\ndeath. Not to support life to its last limits, even at the cost of\ninsupportable torments, might be murder. Doubtless there is not one\nchance in a hundred thousand that the patient escape. No matter. If that\nchance exist which, in the majority of cases, will give but a few days,\nor, at the utmost, a few months of a life that will not be the real\nlife, but much rather, as the Romans called it, \u201can extended death,\u201d\nthose hundred thousand useless torments will not have been in vain. A\nsingle hour snatched from death outweighs a whole existence of tortures.\n\nHere are, face to face, two values that cannot be compared; and, if we\nmean to weigh them in the same balance, we must heap the scale which we\nsee with all that remains to us, that is to say, with every imaginable\npain, for at the decisive hour this is the only weight which counts and\nwhich is heavy enough to raise by a hair\u2019s-breadth the other scale that\ndips into what we do not see and is loaded with the thick darkness of\nanother world.\n\n\n                                   8\n\nSwollen by so many adventitious horrors, the horror of death becomes\nsuch that, without reasoning, we accept the doctors\u2019 reasons. And yet\nthere is one point on which they are beginning to yield and to agree.\nThey are slowly consenting, when there is no hope left, if not to\ndeaden, at least to dull the last agonies. Formerly, none of them would\nhave dared to do so; and, even to-day, many of them hesitate and, like\nmisers, measure out miserly drops of the clemency and peace which they\nought to lavish and which they grudge in their dread of weakening the\nlast resistance, that is to say, the most useless and painful quiverings\nof reluctant life refusing to give place to oncoming rest.\n\nIt is not for me to decide whether their pity might show greater daring.\nIt is enough to state once more that all this has no concern with death.\nIt happens before it and beneath it. It is not the arrival of death, but\nthe departure of life that is appalling. It is not death, but life that\nwe must act upon. It is not death that attacks life; it is life that\nwrongfully resists death. Evils hasten up from every side at the\napproach of death, but not at its call; and, though they gather round\nit, they did not come with it. Do you accuse sleep of the fatigue that\noppresses you if you do not yield to it? All those strugglings, those\nwaitings, those tossings, those tragic cursings are on the side of the\nslope to which we cling and not on the other side. They are, for that\nmatter, accidental and temporary and emanate only from our ignorance.\nAll our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the\nanimals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon\nits error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come\nwhen it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will\ndepart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term, even\nas it withdraws silently every evening, knowing that its task is done.\nOnce the doctor and the sick man have learnt what they have to learn,\nthere will be no physical nor metaphysical reason why the advent of\ndeath should not be as salutary as that of sleep. Perhaps even, as there\nwill be nothing else to take into consideration, it will be possible to\nsurround death with profounder ecstasies and fairer dreams. In any case\nand from this day, with death once acquitted of that which goes before,\nit will be easier to look upon it without fear and to lighten that which\ncomes after.\n\n\n                                   9\n\nDeath, as we usually picture it, has two terrors looming behind it. The\nfirst has neither face nor form and permeates the whole region of our\nmind; the other is more definite, more explicit, but almost as powerful.\nThe latter strikes all our senses. Let us examine it first.\n\nEven as we impute to death all the evils that precede it, so do we add\nto the dread which it inspires all that happens beyond it, thus doing it\nthe same injustice at its going as at its coming. Is it death that digs\nour graves and orders us to keep there that which is made to disappear?\nIf we cannot think without horror of what befalls the beloved in the\ngrave, is it death or we that placed him there? Because death carries\nthe spirit to some place unknown, shall we reproach it with our bestowal\nof the body which it leaves with us? Death descends into our midst to\nchange the place of a life or change its form: let us judge it by what\nit does and not by what we do before it comes and after it is gone. For\nit is already far away when we begin the frightful work which we try\nhard to prolong to the very utmost, as though we were persuaded that it\nis our only security against forgetfulness. I am well aware that, from\nany other than the human point of view, this proceeding is very\ninnocent; and that, looked upon from a sufficient height, decomposing\nflesh is no more repulsive than a fading flower or a crumbling stone.\nBut, when all is said, it offends our senses, shocks our memory, daunts\nour courage, whereas it would be so easy for us to avoid the foul\nordeal. Purified by fire, the remembrance lives enthroned as a beautiful\nidea; and death is naught but an immortal birth cradled in flames. This\nhas been well understood by the wisest and happiest nations in history.\nWhat happens in our graves poisons our thoughts together with our\nbodies. The figure of death, in the imagination of men, depends before\nall upon the form of burial; and the funeral rites govern not only the\nfate of those who depart, but also the happiness of those who stay, for\nthey raise in the ultimate background of life the great image upon which\nmen\u2019s eyes linger in consolation or despair.\n\n\n                                   10\n\nThere is, therefore, but one terror particular to death: that of the\nunknown into which it hurls us. In facing it, let us lose no time in\nputting from our minds all that the positive religions have left there.\nLet us remember only that it is not for us to prove that they are not\nproved, but for them to establish that they are true. Now not one of\nthem brings us a proof before which an honest intelligence can bow. Nor\nwould it suffice if that intelligence were able to bow; for man lawfully\nto believe and thus to limit his endless seeking, the proof would need\nto be irresistible. The God offered to us by the best and strongest of\nthem has given us our reason to employ loyally and fully, that is to\nsay, to try to attain, before all and in all things, that which appears\nto be the truth. Can He exact that we should accept, in spite of it, a\nbelief whose doubtfulness, from the human point of view, is not denied\nby its wisest and most ardent defenders? He only offers us a very\nuncertain story, which, even if scientifically substantiated, would be\nmerely a beautiful lesson in morality and which is buttressed by\nprophecies and miracles no less doubtful. Must we here call to mind that\nPascal, to defend that creed which was already tottering at a time when\nit seemed at its zenith, vainly attempted a demonstration the mere\naspect of which would be enough to destroy the last remnant of faith in\na wavering mind? Better than any other, he knew the stock proofs of the\ntheologians, for they had been the sole study of the last years of his\nlife. If but one of these proofs could have resisted examination, his\ngenius, one of the three or four most profound and lucid geniuses ever\nknown to humanity, must have given it an irresistible force. But he does\nnot linger over these arguments, whose weakness he feels too well; he\npushes them scornfully aside, he glories and, in a manner, rejoices in\ntheir futility:\n\n\u201cWho then will blame Christians for not being able to give a reason for\ntheir faith, those who profess a religion for which they cannot give a\nreason? They declare, in presenting it to the world, that it is a\nfoolishness, _stultitiam_; and then you complain that they do not prove\nit! If they proved it, they would not be keeping their word; it is in\nbeing destitute of proofs that they are not destitute of sense.\u201d\n\nHis solitary argument, the one to which he clings desperately and\ndevotes all the power of his genius, is the very condition of man in the\nuniverse, that incomprehensible medley of greatness and wretchedness,\nfor which there is no accounting save by the mystery of the first fall:\n\n\u201cFor man is more incomprehensible without that mystery than the mystery\nitself is incomprehensible to man.\u201d\n\nHe is therefore reduced to establishing the truth of the Scriptures by\nan argument drawn from the very Scriptures in question; and\u2014what is more\nserious\u2014to explain a wide and great and indisputable mystery by another,\nsmall, narrow and crude mystery that rests only upon the legend which it\nis his business to prove. And, let us observe in passing, it is a fatal\nthing to replace one mystery by another and lesser mystery. In the\nhierarchy of the unknown, mankind always ascends from the smaller to the\ngreater. On the other hand, to descend from the greater to the smaller\nis to relapse into the condition of primitive man, who carries his\nbarbarism to the point of replacing the infinite by a fetish or an\namulet. The measure of man\u2019s greatness is the greatness of the mysteries\nwhich he cultivates or on which he dwells.\n\nTo return to Pascal, he feels that everything is crumbling around him;\nand so, in the collapse of human reason, he at last offers us the\nmonstrous wager that is the supreme avowal of the bankruptcy and despair\nof his faith. God, he says, meaning his God and the Christian religion\nwith all its precepts and all its consequences, exists or does not\nexist. We are unable, by human arguments, to prove that He exists or\nthat He does not exist.\n\n\u201cIf there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, because, having\nneither divisions nor bounds, He has no relation to us. We are therefore\nincapable of knowing either what He is or if He is.\u201d\n\nGod is or is not.\n\n\u201cBut to which side shall we lean? Reason can determine nothing about it.\nThere is an infinite gulf that separates us. A game is played at the\nuttermost part of this infinite distance, in which heads may turn up or\ntails. Which will you wager? There is no reason for betting on either\none or the other; you cannot reasonably defend either.\u201d\n\nThe correct course would be not to wager at all.\n\n\u201cYes, but you must wager: this is not a matter for your will; you are\nlaunched in it.\u201d\n\nNot to wager that God exists means wagering that He does not exist, for\nwhich He will punish you eternally. What then do you risk by wagering,\nat all hazards, that He exists? If He does not, you lose a few small\npleasures, a few wretched comforts of this life, because your little\nsacrifice will not have been rewarded; if He exists, you gain an\neternity of unspeakable happiness.\n\n\u201c\u2018It is true, but, in spite of all, I am so made that I cannot believe.\u2019\n\n\u201cNever mind, follow the way in which they began who believe and who at\nfirst did not believe either, taking holy water, having masses said,\netc. That in itself will make you believe and will reduce you to the\nlevel of the beasts.\u201d\n\n\u201c'But that is just what I am afraid of.\u2019\n\n\u201cWhy? What have you to lose?\u201d\n\nNearly three centuries of apologetics have not added one useful argument\nto that terrible and despairing page of Pascal. And this is all that\nhuman intelligence has found to compel our life. If the God who demands\nour faith will not have us decide by our reason, by what then must our\nchoice be made? By usage? By the accidents of race or birth, by some\n\u00e6sthetic or sentimental pitch-and-toss? Or has He set within us another\nhigher and surer faculty before which the understanding must yield? If\nso, where is it? What is its name? If this God punishes us for not\nhaving blindly followed a faith that does not force itself irresistibly\nupon the intelligence which He gave us; if He chastises us for not\nhaving made, in the presence of the great enigma with which He confronts\nus, a choice which is rejected by that best and most divine part which\nHe has implanted in us, we have nothing left to reply: we are the dupes\nof a cruel and incomprehensible sport, we are the victims of a terrible\nsnare and an immense injustice; and, whatever the torments wherewith\nthat injustice may load us, they will be less intolerable than the\neternal presence of its Author.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER II\n\n                              ANNIHILATION\n\n\n                                   1\n\nAnd now we stand before the abyss. It is void of all the dreams with\nwhich our fathers peopled it. They thought that they knew what was\nthere; we know only what is not there. It is the vaster by all that we\nhave learnt to know nothing of. While waiting for a scientific certainty\nto break through its darkness\u2014for man has the right to hope for that\nwhich he does not yet conceive\u2014the only point that interests us, because\nit is situated in the little circle which our actual intelligence traces\nin the thickest blackness of the night, is to know whether the unknown\nfor which we are bound will be dreadful or not.\n\nOutside the religions, there are four imaginable solutions and no more:\ntotal annihilation; survival with our consciousness of to-day; survival\nwithout any sort of consciousness; lastly, survival in the universal\nconsciousness, or with a consciousness different from that which we\npossess in this world.\n\n\n                                   2\n\nTotal annihilation is impossible. We are the prisoners of an infinity\nwithout outlet, wherein nothing perishes, wherein everything is\ndispersed, but nothing lost. Neither a body nor a thought can drop out\nof the universe, out of time and space. Not an atom of our flesh, not a\nquiver of our nerves will go where they will cease to be, for there is\nno place where anything ceases to be. The brightness of a star\nextinguished millions of years ago still wanders in the ether where our\neyes will perhaps behold it this very night, pursuing its endless road.\nIt is the same with all that we see, as with all that we do not see. To\nbe able to do away with a thing, that is to say, to fling it into\nnothingness, nothingness would have to exist; and, if it exists, under\nwhatever form, it is no longer nothingness. As soon as we try to analyze\nit, to define it, or to understand it, thoughts and expressions fail us,\nor create that which they are struggling to deny. It is as contrary to\nthe nature of our reason and probably of all imaginable reason to\nconceive nothingness as to conceive limits to infinity. Nothingness,\nbesides, is but a negative infinity, a sort of infinity of darkness\nopposed to that which our intelligence strives to illumine, or rather it\nis but a child-name or nickname which our mind has bestowed upon that\nwhich it has not attempted to embrace, for we call nothingness all that\nescapes our senses or our reason and exists without our knowledge.\n\n\n                                   3\n\nBut, it will perhaps be said, though the annihilation of every world and\nevery thing be impossible, it is not so certain that their death is\nimpossible; and, to us, what is the difference between nothingness and\neverlasting death? Here again we are led astray by our imagination and\nby words. We can no more conceive death than we can conceive\nnothingness. We use the word death to cover those fragments of\nnothingness which we believe that we understand; but, on closer\nexamination, we are bound to recognize that our idea of death is much\ntoo puerile for it to contain the least truth. It reaches no higher than\nour own bodies and cannot measure the destinies of the universe. We give\nthe name of death to anything that has a life a little different from\nours. Even so do we act towards a world that appears to us motionless\nand frozen, the moon, for instance, because we are persuaded that any\nform of existence, animal or vegetable, is extinguished upon it for\never. But it is now some years since we learnt that the most inert\nmatter, to outward seeming, is animated by movements so powerful and\nfurious that all animal or vegetable life is no more than sleep and\nimmobility by the side of the swirling eddies and immeasurable energy\nlocked up in a wayside stone.\n\n\u201cThere is no room for death!\u201d cried Emily Bront\u00eb.\n\nBut, even if, in the infinite series of the centuries, all matter should\nreally become inert and motionless, it would none the less persist under\none form or another; and persistence, though it were in total\nimmobility, would, after all, be but a form of life stable and silent at\nlast. All that dies falls into life; and all that is born is of the same\nage as that which dies. If death carried us to nothingness, did birth\nthen draw us out of that same nothingness? Why should the second be more\nimpossible than the first? The higher human thought rises and the wider\nit expands, the less comprehensible do nothingness and death become. In\nany case\u2014and this is what matters here\u2014if nothingness were possible,\nsince it could not be anything whatever, it could not be dreadful.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER III\n\n                          THE SURVIVAL OF OUR\n                             CONSCIOUSNESS\n\n\n                                   1\n\nNext comes survival with our consciousness of to-day. I have broached\nthis question in an essay on _Immortality_,[2] of which I will only\nreproduce a few essential passages, restricting myself to supporting\nthem with new considerations.\n\nWhat composes this sense of the ego which turns each of us into the\ncentre of the universe, the only point that matters in space and time?\nIs it formed of sensations of our body, or of thoughts independent of\nour body? Would our body be conscious of itself without our mind? And,\non the other hand, what would our mind be without our body? We know\nbodies without mind, but no mind without a body. It is almost certain\nthat an intelligence devoid of senses, devoid of organs to create and\nnourish it, exists; but it is impossible to imagine that ours could thus\nexist and yet remain similar to that which has derived all that inspires\nit from our sensibility.\n\nThis ego, as we conceive it when we reflect upon the consequences of its\ndestruction, this ego, therefore, is neither our mind nor our body,\nsince we recognize that both are waves that roll by and are incessantly\nrenewed. Is it an immovable point, which could not be form or substance,\nfor these are always in evolution, nor yet life, which is the cause or\neffect of form and substance? In truth, it is impossible for us either\nto apprehend or define it, or even to say where it dwells. When we try\nto go back to its last source, we find little more than a succession of\nmemories, a mass of ideas, confused, for that matter, and unsettled, all\nconnected with the same instinct, the instinct of living: a mass of\nhabits of our sensibility and of conscious or unconscious reactions\nagainst the surrounding phenomena. When all is said, the most steadfast\npoint of that nebula is our memory, which seems, on the other hand, to\nbe a somewhat external, a somewhat accessory faculty and, in any case,\none of the frailest faculties of our brain, one of those which disappear\nthe most promptly at the least disturbance of our health. As an English\npoet has very truly said, \u201cthat which cries aloud for eternity is the\nvery part of me that will perish.\u201d\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 2:\n\n  This essay forms part of the volume published under the title of _Life\n  and Flowers_.\u2014_Translator\u2019s Note._\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   2\n\nIt matters not: that uncertain, indiscernible, fleeting and precarious\nego is so much the centre of our being, interests us so exclusively,\nthat every reality disappears before this phantom. It is utterly\nindifferent to us that, throughout eternity, our body or its substance\nshould know every joy and every glory, undergo the most splendid and\ndelightful transformations, become flower, perfume, beauty, light, air,\nstar\u2014and it is certain that it does so become and that we must look for\nour dead not in our graveyards, but in space and light and life\u2014it is\nlikewise indifferent to us that our intelligence should expand until it\ntakes part in the life of the worlds, until it understands and governs\nit. We are persuaded that all this will not affect us, will give us no\npleasure, will not happen to ourselves, unless that memory of a few\nalmost always insignificant facts accompany us and witness those\nunimaginable joys.\n\n\u201cI care not,\u201d says this narrow ego, in its firm resolve to understand\nnothing, \u201cI care not if the loftiest, the freest, the fairest portions\nof my mind be eternally living and radiant in the supreme gladnesses:\nthey are no longer mine; I do not know them. Death has cut the network\nof nerves or memories that connected them with I know not what centres\nwherein lies the point which I feel to be my very self. They are thus\nset loose, floating in space and time; and their fate is as alien to me\nas that of the most distant stars. All that befalls has no existence for\nme unless I can recall it within that mysterious being which is I know\nnot where and precisely nowhere and which I turn like a mirror about\nthis world whose phenomena take shape only in so far as they are\nreflected in it.\u201d\n\n\n                                   3\n\nThus our longing for immortality destroys itself while expressing\nitself, since it is on one of the accessory and most transient parts of\nour whole life that we base all the interest of our after-life. It seems\nto us that, if our existence be not continued with the greater part of\nits drawbacks, of the pettiness and blemishes that characterize it,\nnothing will distinguish it from that of other beings; that it will\nbecome a drop of ignorance in the ocean of the unknown; and that,\nthenceforth, all that may come to pass will no longer concern us.\n\nWhat immortality can one promise to men who almost necessarily conceive\nit in this guise? What is the use of it? asks a puerile but profound\ninstinct. Any immortality that does not drag with it through eternity,\nlike the fetters of the convict that we were, the strange consciousness\nformed during a few years of movement, any immortality that does not\nbear that indelible mark of our identity is for us as though it were\nnot. Most of the religions have been well aware of this and have\nreckoned with that instinct which desires and at the same time destroys\nthe after-life. It is thus that the Catholic Church, going back to the\nmost primitive hopes, promises us not only the integral preservation of\nour earthly ego, but even the resurrection of our own flesh.\n\nThere lies the crux of the riddle. When we demand that this small\nconsciousness, that this sense of a special ego\u2014almost childish and, in\nany case, extraordinarily limited; probably an infirmity of our actual\nintelligence\u2014should accompany us into the infinity of time in order that\nwe may understand and enjoy it, are we not wishing to perceive an object\nwith the aid of an organ which is not intended for that purpose? Are we\nnot asking that our hand should discover the light or that our eye\nshould appreciate perfumes? Are we not, rather, acting like a sick man\nwho, in order to recognize himself, to be quite sure that he is himself,\nshould think it necessary to continue his sickness in health and in the\nunending sequence of his days? The comparison, indeed, is more accurate\nthan is the habit of comparisons. Picture a blind man who is also\nparalyzed and deaf. He has been in this condition from his birth and has\njust attained his thirtieth year. What can the hours have embroidered on\nthe imageless web of this poor life? The unhappy man must have gathered\nat the back of his memory, for lack of other recollections, a few\nhalting sensations of heat and cold, of weariness and rest, of more or\nless active physical sufferings, of hunger and thirst. It is probable\nthat all human joys, all our hopes and ideals, all our dreams of\nparadise will be reduced for him to the vague sense of well-being that\nfollows the alleviation of a pain. There you have the only possible\nequipment of that consciousness and that ego. The intellect, having\nnever been invoked from without, will sleep soundly, all-ignorant of\nitself. Nevertheless, the poor wretch will have his little life, to\nwhich he will cling as closely and eagerly as though he were the\nhappiest of men. He will dread death; and the idea of entering into\neternity without carrying with him the emotions and the memories of his\ndark and silent sick-bed will plunge him into the same despair into\nwhich we are plunged by the thought of abandoning a glorious life of\nlight and love for the icy darkness of the tomb.\n\n\n                                   4\n\nLet us now suppose that a miracle suddenly quicken his eyes and ears and\nreveal to him, through the open window by his bedside, the dawn rising\nover the plain, the song of the birds in the trees, the murmur of the\nwind among the leaves and of the water lapping its banks, the echoing of\nhuman voices among the morning hills. Let us suppose also that the same\nmiracle, completing its work, restore the use of his limbs. He rises,\nstretches his arms to that prodigy which as yet for him possesses\nneither reality nor name: the light! He opens the door, staggers out\namidst the effulgence; and his whole body is merged in the wonder of it\nall. He enters into an ineffable life, into a sky whereof no dream could\nhave given him a foretaste; and, by a freak which is readily admissible\nin this sort of cure, health, introducing him to this inconceivable and\nunintelligible existence, wipes out in him all memory of days past.\n\nWhat will be the state of this ego, of this central focus, the\nreceptacle of all our sensations, the spot in which converges all that\nbelongs in its own right to our life, the supreme point, the \u201cegotic\u201d\npoint of our being, if I may venture to coin a word? Memory being\nabolished, will that ego recover within itself a few traces of the man\nthat was? A new force, the intellect, awaking and suddenly displaying\nunprecedented activity, what relation will that intellect keep up with\nthe inert, dull germ whence it has sprung? Where, in his past, shall the\nman fix his moorings so that his identity may endure? And yet will there\nnot survive within him some sense or instinct, independent of his\nmemory, his intellect and I know not what other faculties, that will\nmake him recognize that it is indeed in him that the liberating miracle\nhas been wrought, that it is indeed his life and not his neighbour\u2019s,\ntransformed, irrecognizable, but substantially the same, that has issued\nfrom the silence and the darkness to prolong itself in harmony and\nlight? Can we picture the disorder, the wandering hither and thither of\nthat bewildered consciousness? Have we any idea in what manner the ego\nof yesterday will unite with the ego of to-day and how the \u201cegotic\u201d\npoint, the only point which we are anxious to preserve intact, will\nbehave in that delirium and that upheaval?\n\nLet us first endeavour to reply with sufficient precision to this\nquestion which comes within the province of our actual and visible life;\nfor, if we are unable to do this, how can we hope to solve the other\nproblem that stares every man in the face at the hour of death?\n\n\n                                   5\n\nThis sensitive point, in which the whole problem is summed up\u2014for it is\nthe only one in question; and, except in so far as it is concerned,\nimmortality is certain\u2014this mysterious point, to which, in the presence\nof death, we attach so high a value, we lose, strange to say, at any\nmoment in life without feeling the least anxiety. Not only is it\ndestroyed nightly in our sleep, but even in waking it is at the mercy of\na host of accidents. A wound, a shock, an illness, a little alcohol, a\nlittle opium, a little smoke are enough to affect it. Even when nothing\nimpairs it, it is not uniformly perceptible. An effort is often\nnecessary, a deliberate looking into ourselves, before we can recover it\nand become aware of some particular event. At the least distraction, a\njoy passes by us without touching us, without giving up the pleasure\nwhich it contains. One would say that the functions of that organ by\nwhich we taste and know life are intermittent and that the presence of\nour ego, except in pain, is but a rapid and perpetual sequence of\ndepartures and returns. What reassures us is that we think ourselves\ncertain to find it intact on awaking, after the wound, the shock or the\ndistraction, whereas we are persuaded, so fragile do we feel it to be,\nthat it is bound to disappear for ever in the awful impact between life\nand death.\n\n\n                                   6\n\nOne foremost truth, pending others which the future will no doubt\nreveal, is that, in these questions of life and death, our imagination\nhas remained very childish. Almost every elsewhere, it is ahead of\nreason; but here it still loiters over the games of infancy. It\nsurrounds itself with the barbaric dreams and longings wherewith it\ncradled the hopes and fears of cave-dwelling man. It asks for things\nthat are impossible because they are too small. It clamours for\nprivileges which, if obtained, were more to be dreaded than the most\nenormous disasters with which nihility threatens us. Can we think\nwithout shuddering of an eternity contained wholly within our paltry\npresent-day consciousness? And behold how, in all this, we obey the\nillogical whims of fancy, which men in the olden time called _la folle\ndu logis_. Which of us, if he were to go to sleep to-night in the\nscientific certainty of awaking in a hundred years exactly as he is\nto-day, with his body intact, even on condition that he lost all memory\nof his previous life\u2014would such memories not be useless?\u2014which of us\nwould not welcome that age-long sleep with the same confidence as the\nbrief, gentle slumbers of his every night? And yet between real death\nand this sleep there would be only the difference of that awakening\ndeferred for a century, an awakening as alien to the sleeper as the\nbirth of a posthumous child would be.\n\nOr else, to say very much what Schopenhauer said to one who was\nunwilling to admit an immortality into which he would not carry his\nconsciousness:\n\n\u201cSuppose that, to snatch you from some intolerable suffering, you were\npromised an awakening and a return to consciousness after a wholly\nunconscious sleep of three months?\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018I would accept it gladly.\u2019\n\n\u201cBut suppose that, at the end of the three months, they forgot you and\ndid not wake you until ten thousand years had passed, how much the wiser\nwould you be? And, sleep once begun, what difference does it make to you\nwhether it last for three months or for ever?\u201d\n\n\n                                   7\n\nLet us then consider that all that composes our consciousness comes\nfirst of all from our body. Our mind does but organize that which is\nsupplied by our senses; and even the images and the words\u2014which in\nreality are but images\u2014by the aid of which it strives to sever itself\nfrom those senses and deny their sway are borrowed from them. How could\nthat mind remain what it was, when it has nothing left of that which\nformed it? When our mind no longer has a body, what shall it carry with\nit into infinity whereby to recognize itself, seeing that it knows\nitself only by favour of that body? A few memories of their common life?\nWill those memories, which were already fading in this world, suffice to\nseparate it for ever from the rest of the universe, in boundless space\nand in unlimited time?\n\n\u201cBut,\u201d I shall be told, \u201cthere is more in us than our intelligence\ndiscovers. We have many things within us which our senses have not\nplaced there; we contain a greater being than the one we know.\u201d\n\nThat is probable, nay, certain: the share occupied by the inconscient,\nthat is to say, by that which represents the universe, is enormous and\npreponderant. But how shall the ego which we know and whose destiny\nalone concerns us recognize all those things and that greater being\nneither of which it has ever known? What will it do in the presence of\nthat stranger? If I be told that the stranger is myself, I will readily\nagree; but was that which upon earth felt and weighed my joys and\nsorrows and gave birth to the few memories and thoughts that remain to\nme, was that this impassive, unseen stranger who existed in me all\nunsuspected, even as I am probably about to live in him without his\nconcerning himself with a presence that will bring him but the sorry\nrecollection of a thing that has ceased to be? Now that he has taken my\nplace, while destroying, in order to acquire a larger consciousness, all\nthat formed my small consciousness here below, is it not another life\ncommencing, a life whose joys and sorrows will pass above my head, not\neven brushing with their new-born wings the being which I am conscious\nof to-day?\n\n\n                                   8\n\nLastly, how shall we explain that, in that consciousness which ought to\nsurvive us, the infinity that precedes our birth has left no trace? Had\nwe no consciousness in that infinity, or did we perchance lose it on\ncoming into the world and did the catastrophe that produces the whole\nterror of death take place at the moment of our birth? None can deny\nthat this infinity has the same rights over us as that which follows our\ndecease. We are as much the children of the first as of the second; and\nwe must of necessity have a part in both. If you maintain that you will\nalways exist, you are bound to admit that you have always existed; we\ncannot imagine the one without having to imagine the other. If nothing\nends, nothing begins, for any such beginning would be the end of\nsomething. Now, although I have existed since all time, I have no\nconsciousness whatever of my previous existence, whereas I shall have to\ncarry to the boundless horizon of the endless ages the tiny\nconsciousness acquired during the instant that elapses between my birth\nand my death. Can my true ego, then, which is about to become eternal,\ndate only from my short sojourn on this earth? And all the preceding\neternity, which is of exactly the same value as that which follows,\nsince it is the same, shall it not count? Will it be flung into\nnihility? Why is a strange privilege accorded to a few meaningless days\nspent on an unimportant planet? Is it because in that previous eternity\nwe had no consciousness? What do we know about it? It seems very\nunlikely. Why should the acquisition of consciousness be a phenomenon\nunrepeated in an eternity that had at its disposal innumerable billions\nof chances, among which\u2014unless we set a limit to the infinity of the\nages\u2014it is impossible to conceive that the thousands of coincidences\nwhich went to form my present consciousness did not occur over and over\nagain? The moment we turn our gaze upon the mysteries of that eternity\nwherein all that happens must already have happened, it seems much more\ncredible, on the contrary, that we have had consciousness upon\nconsciousness which our life of to-day hides from our view. If they have\nexisted and if, at our death, one consciousness must survive, the others\nmust survive as well, for there is no reason to bestow so\ndisproportionate a favour upon that consciousness which we have acquired\nhere below. And, if all of them survive and awaken at the same time,\nwhat will become of the petty consciousness of a few terrestrial\nmoments, when it is submerged in those eternal existences? Besides, even\nif it were to forget all its previous existences, what would become of\nit amid the perpetual buffeting, the endless wash of its posthumous\neternity? For it is but as a poor sand-drift of an island in the\nunrelenting jaws of two boundless oceans. It would hold its own there,\npuny and so precarious, only on condition that it acquired nothing more,\nthat it remained for ever closed, isolated and confined, impenetrable\nand insensible to all things, in the midst of the astounding mysteries,\nthe fabulous treasures and visions which it would have eternally to pass\nthrough without ever seeing or hearing anything; and that surely would\nbe the worst death and the worst destiny that could befall us. We are,\ntherefore, driven on all sides towards the theories of an universal\nconsciousness or of a modified consciousness, both of which we shall\nexamine presently.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER IV\n\n                      THE THEOSOPHICAL HYPOTHESIS\n\n\n                                   1\n\nBut, before broaching those questions, it were perhaps well to study two\ninteresting solutions of the problem of personal survival, solutions\nwhich, although not new, have at least been lately renewed. I refer to\nthe neotheosophical and neospiritualistic theories, which are, I think,\nthe only ones that can be seriously discussed. The first is almost as\nold as man himself; but a popular movement, of some magnitude in certain\ncountries, has rejuvenated the doctrine of reincarnation, or the\ntransmigration of souls, and brought it once more into prominence. It\ncannot be denied that of all the religious theories, reincarnation is\nthe most plausible and the least repellent to our reason. Nor must we\noverlook that it has on its side the authority of the most ancient and\nwidespread religions, those which have incontestably furnished humanity\nwith the greatest aggregate of wisdom and which we have not yet\nexhausted of their truths and mysteries. In reality, the whole of Asia,\nwhence we derive almost everything which we know, has always believed\nand still believes in the transmigration of souls.\n\nAs Mrs. Annie Besant, the remarkable apostle of the new theosophy, very\nrightly says:\n\n\u201cThere is no philosophical doctrine which has behind it so magnificent\nan intellectual ancestry as the doctrine of reincarnation; none for\nwhich there is such a weight of the opinion of the wisest of men; none,\nas Max M\u00fcller declared, on which the greatest philosophers of humanity\nhave been so thoroughly in accord.\u201d\n\nThis is all quite true. But it would need other proofs to win our\ndistrustful faith to-day. I have sought in vain for a single one in the\nleading works of our modern theosophists. They confine themselves to a\nmere reiteration of dogmatic statements, which are of the vaguest. Their\ngreat argument\u2014the chief and, when all is said, the only argument which\nthey adduce\u2014is but a sentimental argument. Their doctrine that the soul,\nin its successive existences, is purified and exalted with more or less\nrapidity according to its efforts and deserts is, they maintain, the\nonly one that satisfies the irresistible instinct of justice which we\nbear within us. They are right; and, from this point of view, their\nposthumous justice is immeasurably superior to that of the barbaric\nHeaven and the monstrous Hell of the Christians, where rewards and\npunishments are for ever meted out to virtues and vices which are for\nthe most part puerile, unavoidable or accidental. But this, I repeat, is\nonly a sentimental argument, which has but an infinitesimal value in the\nscale of evidence.\n\n\n                                   2\n\nWe may admit that certain of their theories are rather ingenious; and\nwhat they say of the part played by the \u201cshells,\u201d for instance, or the\n\u201celementals,\u201d in the spiritualistic phenomena, is worth about as much as\nour clumsy explanations of fluidic and supersensible bodies. Perhaps, or\neven no doubt, they are right when they insist that everything around us\nis full of living, sentient forms, of diverse and innumerous types, \u201cas\ndifferent from one another as a blade of grass and a tiger, or a tiger\nand a man,\u201d which are incessantly brushing against us and through which\nwe pass unawares. If all the religions have overpopulated the world with\ninvisible beings, we have perhaps depopulated it too completely; and it\nis extremely possible that we shall find one day that the mistake was\nnot on the side which one imagines. As Sir William Crookes so well puts\nit, in a remarkable passage:\n\n\u201cIt is not improbable that other sentient beings have organs of sense\nwhich do not respond to some or any of the rays to which our eyes are\nsensitive, but are able to appreciate other vibrations to which we are\nblind. Such beings would practically be living in a different world to\nour own. Imagine, for instance, what idea we should form of surrounding\nobjects were we endowed with eyes not sensitive to the ordinary rays of\nlight but sensitive to the vibrations concerned in electric and magnetic\nphenomena. Glass and crystal would be among the most opaque of bodies.\nMetals would be more or less transparent, and a telegraph wire through\nthe air would look like a long narrow hole drilled through an impervious\nsolid body. A dynamo in active work would resemble a conflagration,\nwhilst a permanent magnet would realise the dream of mediaeval mystics\nand become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or\nconsumption of fuel.\u201d\n\nAll this, with so many other things which they assert, would be, if not\nadmissible, at least worthy of attention, if those suppositions were\noffered for what they are, that is to say, very ancient hypotheses that\ngo back to the early ages of human theology and metaphysics; but, when\nthey are transformed into categorical and dogmatic assertions, they at\nonce become untenable. Their exponents promise us, on the other hand,\nthat, by exercising our minds, by refining our senses, by etherealizing\nour bodies, we shall be able to live with those whom we call dead and\nwith the higher beings that surround us. It all seems to lead to nothing\nvery much and rests on very frail bases, on very vague proofs derived\nfrom hypnotic sleep, presentiments, mediumism, phantasms and so forth.\nIt is rather surprising that those who call themselves \u201cclairvoyants,\u201d\nwho pretend to be in communication with this world of discarnate spirits\nand with other worlds still nearer to the divine, bring us no evidential\nproofs. We want something more than arbitrary theories about the\n\u201cimmortal triad,\u201d the \u201cthree worlds,\u201d the \u201castral body,\u201d the \u201cpermanent\natom,\u201d or the \u201cKarma-Loka.\u201d As their sensibility is keener, their\nperception subtler, their spiritual intuition more penetrating than\nours, why do they not choose as a field for investigation the phenomena\nof prenatal memory, for instance, to take one subject at random from a\nmultitude of others, phenomena which, although sporadic and open to\nquestion, are still admissible? We are only too eager to allow ourselves\nto be convinced, for all that adds anything to man\u2019s importance, range\nor duration must needs be gladly welcomed.[3]\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 3:\n\n   To learn the precise truth about the neotheosophical movement and its\n  first manifestations, the reader should study the striking report\n  drawn up, after an impartial, but strict enquiry, by Dr. Hodgson, who\n  was sent to India for this special purpose by the Society for\n  Psychical Research. In it he unveils, in a masterly fashion, the\n  obvious and often clumsy impositions of the famous Mme. Blavatsky and\n  the whole neotheosophical organization (_Proceedings_, Vol. III, pp.\n  201-400: _Hodgson\u2019s Report on Phenomena connected with Theosophy_).\n\n-----\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER V\n\n                         THE NEOSPIRITUALISTIC\n                        HYPOTHESIS: APPARITIONS\n\n\n                                   1\n\nOutside theosophy, investigations of a purely scientific nature have\nbeen made in the baffling regions of survival and reincarnation.\nNeospiritualism, or psychicism or experimental spiritualism, had its\norigin in America in 1870. In the following year, the first strictly\nscientific experiments were organized by Sir William Crookes, the man of\ngenius who opened up most of the roads at the end of which men were\nastounded to discover unknown properties and conditions of matter; and,\nas early as 1873 or 1874, he obtained, with the aid of the medium\nFlorence Cook, phenomena of materialization that have hardly been\nsurpassed. But the real inauguration of the new science dates from the\nfoundation of the Society of Psychical Research, familiarly known as the\nS.P.R. This society was formed in London, twenty-eight years ago, under\nthe auspices of the most distinguished men of science in England and\nhas, as we know, made a methodical and strict study of every case of\nsupernormal psychology and sensibility. This study or investigation,\noriginally conducted by Edmund Gurney, F. W. H. Myers and Frank Podmore\nand continued by their successors, is a masterpiece of scientific\npatience and conscientiousness. Not an incident is admitted that is not\nsupported by unimpeachable testimony, by definite written records and\nconvincing corroboration; in a word, it is hardly possible to contest\nthe essential veracity of the majority of them, unless we begin by\nmaking up our minds to deny any positive value to human evidence and by\nmaking any conviction, any certainty impossible that derives its source\ntherefrom.[4] Among those supernormal manifestations, telepathy,\ntelergy, previsions and so forth, we will take cognizance only of those\nwhich relate to life beyond the grave. They can be divided into two\ncategories: (1) real, objective and spontaneous apparitions, or direct\nmanifestations; (2) manifestations obtained by the agency of mediums,\nwhether induced apparitions, which we will put aside for the moment\nbecause of their frequently questionable character,[5] or communications\nwith the dead by word of mouth or automatic writing. We will stop for a\nmoment to consider those extraordinary communications. They have been\nstudied at length by such men as F. W. H. Myers, Richard Hodgson, Sir\nOliver Lodge and the philosopher William James, the father of the new\npragmatism; they profoundly impressed and almost convinced these men and\nthey therefore deserve to arrest our attention.\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 4:\n\n  How strict these investigations are is shown by the perpetual attacks\n  on the S.P.R. in the spiritualistic press, which constantly refers to\n  it as the Society \u201cfor the suppression of facts,\u201d \u201cfor the wholesale\n  imputation of imposture,\u201d \u201cfor the discouragement of the sensitive and\n  for the repudiation of every revelation of the kind which was said to\n  be pressing itself upon humanity from the regions of light and\n  knowledge.\u201d\n\nFootnote 5:\n\n  It would, however, be unjust to assert that all these apparitions are\n  open to question. For instance, it is impossible to deny the reality\n  of the celebrated Katie King, the double of Florence Cook, whose\n  actions and movements were rigorously investigated and controlled by a\n  man like Sir William Crookes for a period of three years. But, looked\n  upon as a proof of survival\u2014notwithstanding that Katie King professed\n  to be a dead person who had returned to earth to expiate certain\n  sins\u2014her manifestations are not so valuable as the communications\n  obtained since her time. In any case, they bring us no revelation\n  concerning existence beyond the grave; and Katie, who was so young, so\n  much alive, whose pulsations could be counted, whose heart was heard\n  beating, who was photographed, who distributed locks of her hair to\n  those present, who replied to every question put to her, Katie herself\n  never uttered a word on the subject of the secrets of the next world.\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   2\n\nAs concerns the manifestations of the first category, it is, of course,\nimpossible to give even a summary account of the most striking of them\nin these pages; and I refer the reader to the volumes of the\n_Proceedings_. It is enough to remember that numerous apparitions of\ndeceased persons have been investigated and studied by men of science\nlike Sir William Crookes, Alfred Russel Wallace, Robert Dale Owen,\nProfessor Aksakof, Paul Gibier and others. Gurney, who is one of the\nclassics of this new science, gives two hundred and thirty instances of\nthis sort; and, since then, the _Journal_ of the S.P.R. and the\nspiritualistic reviews have never ceased to record new ones. It appears\ntherefore to be as well established as a fact can be that a spiritual or\nnervous shape, an image, a belated reflexion of life is capable of\nsubsisting for some time, of releasing itself from the body, of\nsurviving it, of traversing enormous distances in the twinkling of an\neye, of manifesting itself to the living and, sometimes, of\ncommunicating with them.\n\nFor the rest, we have to recognize that these apparitions are very\nbrief. They only take place at the precise moment of death or follow\nvery shortly after. They do not seem to have the least consciousness of\na new or superterrestrial life differing from that of the body whence\nthey issue. On the contrary, their spiritual energy, at a time when it\nought to be absolutely pure, because it is rid of matter, seems greatly\ninferior to what it was when matter surrounded it. These more or less\nuneasy phantasms, often tormented with trivial cares, have never,\nalthough they come from another world, brought us one single revelation\nof topical interest concerning that world whose prodigious threshold\nthey have crossed. Soon, they fade away and disappear for ever. Are they\nthe first glimmers of a new existence or the final glimmers of the old?\nDo the dead thus use, for want of a better, the last link that binds\nthem and makes them perceptible to our senses? Do they afterwards go on\nliving around us, without again succeeding, in spite of their\nendeavours, in making themselves known or giving us an idea of their\npresence, because we have not the organ that is necessary to perceive\nthem, even as all our endeavours would not succeed in giving a man who\nwas blind from birth the least notion of light and colour? We do not\nknow at all; nor can we tell whether it be permissible to draw any\nconclusion from all these incontestable phenomena. They would really\nassume importance only if it were possible to verify or to induce\napparitions of beings whose death dated back a certain number of years.\nWe should then at last have the positive proof, which has always escaped\nus hitherto, that the spirit is independent of the body, that it is\ncause, not effect, that it can thrive, find sustenance and perform its\nfunctions without organs. The greatest question that humanity has ever\nset itself would thus be, if not solved, at least rid of some of its\nobscurity; and, forthwith, personal survival, while continuing to be\nwrapped in the mysteries of the beginning and the end, would become\ndefensible. But we have not yet reached that stage. Meanwhile, it is\ninteresting to observe that there really are ghosts, spectres and\nphantoms. Once again, science steps in to confirm a general belief of\nmankind and to teach us that a belief of this sort, however absurd it\nmay at first seem, still deserves careful examination.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER VI\n\n                      COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE DEAD\n\n\n                                   1\n\nThe spiritualists communicate or think that they communicate with the\ndead by means of what they call automatic speech and writing. These are\nobtained by the agency of a medium[6] in a state of ecstasy or rather of\n\u201ctrance,\u201d to employ the vocabulary of the new science. This condition is\nnot one of hypnotic sleep, nor does it seem to be an hysterical\nmanifestation; it is often associated, as in the case of the medium Mrs.\nPiper, with perfect health and complete intellectual and physical\nbalance. It is rather the more or less voluntary emergence of a second\nor subliminal personality or consciousness of the medium; or, if we\nadmit the spiritualistic hypothesis, his occupation, his \u201cpsychic\ninvasion,\u201d as Myers calls it, by forces from another world. In the\n\u201centranced\u201d subject, the normal consciousness and personality are\nentirely done away with; and he replies \u201cautomatically,\u201d sometimes by\nword of mouth, more often in writing, to the questions put to him. It\nhas happened that he speaks and writes simultaneously, his voice being\noccupied by one spirit and his hand by another, who thus carry on two\nindependent conversations. More rarely, the voice and the two hands are\n\u201cpossessed\u201d at one and the same time; and we receive three different\ncommunications. Obviously, manifestations of this sort lend themselves\nto frauds and impostures of every kind; and the distrust aroused is at\nfirst invincible. But there are some that make their appearance\nencompassed with such guarantees of good faith and sincerity, so often,\nso long and so rigorously checked by scientific men of unimpeachable\ncharacter and authority and of originally inflexible scepticism that it\nbecomes difficult to maintain a suspicion at the finish.[7]\nUnfortunately, I am not able to enter here into the details of some of\nthese purely scientific sittings, those for instance of Mrs. Piper, the\nfamous medium with whom F. W. H. Myers, Richard Hodgson, Professor\nNewbold, of the University of Pennsylvania, Sir Oliver Lodge and William\nJames worked during a number of years. On the other hand, it is\nprecisely the accumulation and coincidences of these abnormal details\nwhich gradually produce and confirm the conviction that we are in the\npresence of an entirely new, improbable, but genuine phenomenon, which\nis sometimes difficult of classification among exclusively terrestrial\nphenomena. I should have to devote to these \u201ccommunications\u201d a special\nstudy which would exceed the limits of this essay; and I will therefore\ncontent myself with referring those who care to know more of the subject\nto Sir Oliver Lodge\u2019s book, _The Survival of Man_, recently translated\ninto French under the title of _La Survivance humaine_; and, above all,\nto the twenty-five bulky volumes of the _Proceedings_ of the S.P.R.,\nnotably to the report and comments of William James on the Piper-Hodgson\nsittings in Vol. XXIII. and to Vol. XIII., where Hodgson examines the\nfacts and arguments that may be adduced for or against the agency of the\ndead; and, lastly, to Myers\u2019 great work, _Human Personality and its\nSurvival after Bodily Death_.\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 6:\n\n  Those who take up the study of these supernormal manifestations\n  usually ask themselves:\n\n  \u201cWhy mediums? Why make use of these often questionable and always\n  inadequate intermediaries?\u201d\n\n  The reason is that, hitherto, no way has been discovered of doing\n  without them. If we admit the spiritualistic theory, the discarnate\n  spirits which surround us on every side and which are separated from\n  us by the impenetrable and mysterious wall of death seek, in order to\n  communicate with us, the line of least resistance between the two\n  worlds and find it in the medium, without our knowing why, even as we\n  do not know why an electric current passes along copper wire and is\n  stopped by glass or porcelain. If, on the other hand, we admit the\n  telepathic hypothesis, which is the more probable, we observe that the\n  thoughts, intentions or suggestions transmitted are, in the majority\n  of cases, not conveyed from one subconscious intelligence to another.\n  There is need of an organism that is, at the same time, a receiver and\n  a transmitter; and this organism is found in the medium. Why? Once\n  more, we know absolutely nothing about it, even as we do not know why\n  one body or combination of bodies is sensitive to concentric waves in\n  wireless telegraphy, while another is not affected by it. We here\n  grope, as, for that matter, we grope almost everywhere, in the obscure\n  domain of undisputed, but inexplicable facts. Those who care to\n  possess more precise notions on the theory of mediumism will do well\n  to read the admirable address delivered by Sir William Crookes, as\n  president of the S.P.R., on the 29th of January 1897.\n\nFootnote 7:\n\n  These questions of fraud and imposture are naturally the first that\n  suggest themselves when we begin to study these phenomena. But the\n  slightest acquaintance with the life, habits and proceedings of the\n  three or four great mediums of whom we are going to speak is enough to\n  remove even the faintest shadow of suspicion. Of all the explanations\n  conceivable, that one which attributes everything to imposture and\n  trickery is unquestionably the most extraordinary and the least\n  probable. Moreover, by reading Richard Hodgson\u2019s report entitled,\n  _Observations of certain Phenomena of Trance_ (_Proceedings_, Vols.\n  VIII. and XIII.; and also J. H. Hyslop\u2019s report, Vol. XVI.), we can\n  observe the precautions taken, even to the extent of employing special\n  detectives, to make certain that Mrs. Piper, for instance, was unable,\n  normally and humanly speaking, to have any knowledge of the facts\n  which she revealed. I repeat, from the moment that one enters upon\n  this study, all suspicions are dispelled without leaving a trace\n  behind them; and we are soon convinced that the key to the riddle must\n  not be sought in imposture. All the manifestations of the dumb,\n  mysterious and oppressed personality that lies concealed in every one\n  of us have to undergo the same ordeal in their turn; and those which\n  relate to the divining-rod, to name no others, are at this moment\n  passing through the same crisis of incredulity. Less than fifty years\n  ago, the majority of the hypnotic phenomena which are now\n  scientifically classified were likewise looked upon as fraudulent. It\n  seems that man is loth to admit that there lie within him many more\n  things than he imagined.\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   2\n\nThe \u201centranced\u201d mediums are invaded or possessed by different familiar\nspirits to whom the new science gives the somewhat inappropriate and\nambiguous name of \u201ccontrols.\u201d Thus, Mrs. Piper is visited in succession\nby Phinuit, George Pelham, or \u201cG.P.,\u201d Imperator, Doctor and Rector. Mrs.\nThompson, another very celebrated medium, has Nelly for her usual\ntenant, while graver and more illustrious personages would take\npossession of Stainton Moses the clergyman. Each of these spirits\nretains a sharply defined character, which is consistent throughout and\nwhich, moreover, for the most part bears no relation to that of the\nmedium. Amongst these, Phinuit and Nelly are undoubtedly the most\nattractive, the most original, the most living, the most active and,\nabove all, the most talkative. They centralize the communications after\na fashion; they come and go officiously; and, should any one of those\npresent wish to be brought into touch with the soul of a deceased\nrelative or friend, they fly in search of it, find it amid the invisible\nthrong, usher it in, announce its presence, speak in its name, transmit\nand, so to speak, translate the questions and replies; for it seems that\nit is very difficult for the dead to communicate with the living and\nthat they need special aptitudes and a concurrence of extraordinary\ncircumstances. We will not yet examine what they have to reveal to us;\nbut to see them thus fluttering to and fro amid the multitude of their\ndiscarnate brothers and sisters gives us a first impression of the next\nworld which is none too reassuring; and we say to ourselves that the\ndead of to-day are strangely like those whom Ulysses conjured up out the\nCimmerian darkness three thousand years ago: pale and empty shades,\nbewildered, incoherent, puerile and terror-stricken, like unto dreams,\nmore numerous than the leaves that fall in autumn and, like them,\ntrembling in the unknown winds from the vast plains of the other world.\nThey no longer even have enough life to be unhappy and seem to drag out,\nwe know not where, a precarious and idle existence, to wander aimlessly,\nto hover round us, slumbering or chattering among one another of the\nminor matters of the world; and, when a gap is made in their darkness,\nto come up in haste from all sides, like flocks of famished birds,\nhungering for light and the sound of a human voice. And, in spite of\nourselves, we think of the _Odyssey_ and the sinister words of the shade\nof Achilles as it issued from Erebus:\n\n\u201cDo not, O illustrious Ulysses, speak to me of death; I would wish,\nbeing on earth, to serve for hire with another man of no estate, who had\nnot much livelihood, rather than rule over all the departed dead.\u201d\n\n\n                                   3\n\nWhat have these latter-day dead to tell us? To begin with, it is a\nremarkable thing that they appear to be much more interested in events\nhere below than in those of the world wherein they move. They seem,\nabove all, jealous to establish their identity, to prove that they still\nexist, that they recognize us, that they know everything; and, to\nconvince us of this, they enter into the most minute and forgotten\ndetails with extraordinary precision, perspicacity and prolixity. They\nare also extremely clever at unravelling the intricate family connexions\nof the person actually questioning them, of any of the sitters, or even\nof a stranger entering the room. They recall this one\u2019s little\ninfirmities, that one\u2019s maladies, the eccentricities or tendencies of a\nthird. They have cognizance of events taking place at a distance: they\nsee, for instance, and describe to their hearers in London an\ninsignificant episode in Canada. In a word, they say and do almost all\nthe disconcerting and inexplicable things that are sometimes obtained\nfrom a first-rate medium; perhaps they even go a little further; but\nthere comes from it all no breath, no glimmer of the hereafter, not even\nthe something vaguely promised and vaguely waited for.\n\nWe shall be told that the mediums are visited only by inferior spirits,\nincapable of tearing themselves from earthly cares and soaring towards\ngreater and loftier ideas. It is possible; and no doubt we are wrong to\nbelieve that a spirit stripped of its body can suddenly be transformed\nand reach, in a moment, the level of our imaginings; but could they not\nat least inform us where they are, what they feel and what they do?\n\n\n                                   4\n\nAnd now it seems that death itself has elected to answer these\nobjections. Frederic Myers, Richard Hodgson and William James, who so\noften, for long and ardent hours, questioned Mrs. Piper and Mrs.\nThompson and obliged the departed to speak by their mouths, are now\nthemselves among the shades, on the other side of the curtain of\ndarkness. They at least knew exactly what to do in order to reach us,\nwhat to reveal in order to allay men\u2019s uneasy curiosity. Myers in\nparticular, the most ardent, the most convinced, the most impatient of\nthe veil that parted him from the eternal realities, formally promised\nthose who were continuing his work that he would make every imaginable\neffort out yonder, in the unknown, to come to their aid in a decisive\nfashion. He kept his word. A month after his death, when Sir Oliver\nLodge was questioning Mrs. Thompson in her trance, Nelly, the medium\u2019s\nfamiliar spirit, suddenly declared that she had seen Myers, that he was\nnot yet fully awake, but that he hoped to come, at nine o\u2019clock in the\nevening, and \u201ccommunicate\u201d with his old friend of the Psychical Society.\n\nThe sitting was suspended and resumed at half past eight; and Myers\u2019\n\u201ccommunication\u201d was at last obtained. He was recognized by the first few\nwords he spoke; it was really he; he had not changed. Faithful to his\nidiosyncracy when on earth, he at once insisted on the necessity for\ntaking notes. But he seemed dazed. They spoke to him of the Society for\nPsychical Research, the sole interest of his life. He had lost all\nrecollection of it. Then memory gradually revived; and there followed a\nquantity of post-mortem gossip on the subject of the society\u2019s next\npresident, the obituary article in the _Times_, the letters that should\nbe published and so on. He complained that people would not let him\nrest, that there was not a place in England where they did not ask for\nhim:\n\n\u201cCall Myers! Bring Myers!\u201d\n\nHe ought to be given time to collect himself, to reflect. He also\ncomplained of the difficulty of conveying his ideas through the mediums:\n\u201cthey were translating like a schoolboy does his first lines of\nVirgil.\u201d[8] As for his present condition, \u201che groped his way as if\nthrough passages, before he knew he was dead. He thought he had lost his\nway in a strange town ... and, even when he saw people that he knew were\ndead, he thought they were only visions.\u201d\n\nThis, together with more chatter of a no less trivial nature, is about\nall that we obtained from Myers\u2019 \u201ccontrol\u201d or \u201cimpersonation,\u201d of which\nbetter things had been expected. The \u201ccommunication\u201d and many others\nwhich, it appears, recall in a striking fashion Myers\u2019 habits, character\nand ways of thinking and speaking, would possess some value if none of\nthose by whom or to whom they were made had been acquainted with him at\nthe time when he was still numbered among the living. As they stand,\nthey are most probably but reminiscences of a secondary personality of\nthe medium or unconscious suggestions of the questioner or the sitters.\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 8:\n\n  In this and other \u201ccommunications,\u201d I have quoted the actual English\n  words employed, whenever I have been able to discover\n  them.\u2014_Translator._\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   5\n\nA more important communication and a more perplexing, because of the\nnames connected with it, is that which is known as \u201cMrs. Piper\u2019s\nHodgson-Control.\u201d Professor William James devotes an account of over a\nhundred and twenty pages to it in Vol. XXIII. of the _Proceedings_. Dr.\nHodgson, in his lifetime, was secretary of the American branch of the\nS.P.R., of which William James was vice-president. For many years, he\ndevoted himself to the medium Mrs. Piper, working with her twice a week\nand thus accumulating an enormous mass of documents on the subject of\nposthumous manifestations, a mass whose wealth has not yet been\nexhausted. Like Myers, he had promised to come back after his death;\nand, in his jovial way, he had more than once declared to Mrs. Piper\nthat, when he came to visit her in his turn, as he had more experience\nthan the other spirits, the sittings would take a more decisive shape\nand that \u201che would make it hot for them.\u201d He did come back, a week after\nhis death, and manifested himself by automatic writing (which, with Mrs.\nPiper as medium, was the most usual method of communication) during\nseveral sittings at which William James was present. I should like to\ngive an idea of these manifestations. But, as the celebrated Harvard\nprofessor very truly observes, the shorthand report of a sitting of this\nkind at once alters its aspect from start to finish. We seek in vain for\nthe emotion experienced on thus finding one\u2019s self in the presence of an\ninvisible but living being, who not only answers your questions, but\nanticipates your thoughts, understands before you have finished\nspeaking, grasps an allusion and caps it with another allusion, grave or\nsmiling. The life of the dead man, which, during a strange hour, had, so\nto speak, surrounded and penetrated you, seems to be extinguished for\nthe second time. Stenography, which is devoid of all emotion, no doubt\nsupplies the best elements for arriving at a logical conclusion; but it\nis not certain that here, as in many other cases where the unknown\npredominates, logic is the only road that leads to the truth.\n\n\u201cWhen I first undertook,\u201d says William James, \u201cto collate this series of\nsittings and make the present report, I supposed that my verdict would\nbe determined by pure logic. Certain minute incidents, I thought, ought\nto make for spirit-return or against it in a \u2018crucial\u2019 way. But watching\nmy mind work as it goes over the data, convinces me that exact logic\nplays only a preparatory part in shaping our conclusions here; and that\nthe decisive vote, if there be one, has to be cast by what I may call\none\u2019s general sense of dramatic probability, which sense ebbs and flows\nfrom one hypothesis to another\u2014it does so in the present writer at\nleast\u2014in a rather illogical manner. If one sticks to the detail, one may\ndraw an anti-spiritist conclusion; if one thinks more of what the whole\nmass may signify, one may well incline to spiritist interpretations.\u201d[9]\n\nAnd, at the end of his article, he sums up in the following words:\n\n\u201c_I myself feel as if an external will to communicate were probably\nthere_, that is, I find myself doubting, in consequence of my whole\nacquaintance with that sphere of phenomena, that Mrs. Piper\u2019s\ndream-life, even equipped with \u2018telepathic\u2019 powers, accounts for all the\nresults found. But if asked whether the will to communicate be\nHodgson\u2019s, or be some mere spirit-counterfeit of Hodgson, I remain\nuncertain and await more facts, facts which may not point clearly to a\nconclusion for fifty or a hundred years.\u201d[10]\n\nAs we see, William James is inclined to waver; and at certain points in\nhis account he appears to waver still more and indeed to say\ndeliberately that the spirits \u201chave a finger in the pie.\u201d These\nhesitations on the part of a man who has revolutionized our\npsychological ideas and who possessed a brain as wonderfully organized\nand well-balanced as that of our own Taine, for instance, are very\nsignificant. As a doctor of medicine and a professor of philosophy,\nsceptical by nature and scrupulously faithful to experimental methods,\nhe was thrice qualified to conduct investigations of this kind to a\nsuccessful conclusion. It is not a question of allowing ourselves, in\nour turn, to be unduly influenced by those hesitations; but, in any\ncase, they show that the problem is a serious one, the gravest, perhaps,\nif the facts were beyond dispute, which we have had to solve since the\ncoming of Christ; and that we must not expect to dismiss it with a shrug\nor a laugh.\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 9:\n\n  _Proceedings_, Vol. XXIII, p. 33.\n\nFootnote 10:\n\n  _Ibid._ p. 120.\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   6\n\nI am obliged, for lack of space, to refer those who wish to form an\nopinion of their own on the \u201cPiper-Hodgson\u201d case to the text of the\n_Proceedings_. The case, at the same time, is far from being one of the\nmost striking; it should rather be classed, were it not for the\nimportance of the sitters concerned, among the minor successes of the\nPiper series. Hodgson, according to the invariable custom of the\nspirits, is, first of all, bent on making himself recognized; and the\ninevitable and tedious string of trifling reminiscences begins twenty\ntimes over again and fills page after page. As usual in such instances,\nthe recollections common to both the questioner and the spirit who is\nsupposed to reply are brought out in their most circumstantial, their\nmost insignificant and also their most private details with astonishing\neagerness, precision and vivacity. And observe that, for all these\ndetails, which he discloses with such extraordinary facility, the dead\nman speaking goes by preference, one would say, to the most hidden and\nforgotten treasures of the living listener\u2019s memory. He spares him\nnothing; he harps on everything with childish satisfaction and\napprehensive solicitude, not so much to persuade others as to prove to\nhimself that he still exists. And the obstinacy of this poor invisible\nbeing, in striving to manifest himself through the hitherto uncrannied\ndoors that separate us from our eternal destinies, is at once ridiculous\nand tragic:\n\n\u201cDo you remember, William, when we were in the country at So-and-so\u2019s,\nthat game we played with the children; do you remember my saying\nsuch-and-such a thing when I was in that room where there was\nsuch-and-such a chair or table?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, yes, Hodgson, I do remember now.\u201d\n\n\u201cA good test, that?\u201d\n\n\u201cFirst-rate, Hodgson!\u201d\n\nAnd so on, indefinitely. Sometimes, there is a more significant incident\nthat seems to surpass the mere transmission of subliminal thought. They\nare talking, for instance, of a frustrated marriage which was always\nsurrounded with great mystery, even to Hodgson\u2019s most intimate friends:\n\n\u201cDo you remember a lady-doctor in New York, a member of our society?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, but what about her?\u201d\n\n\u201cHer husband\u2019s name was Blair ... I think.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you mean Dr. Blair Thaw?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes. Ask Mrs. Thaw if I did not at a dinner-party mention something\nabout the lady. I may have done so.\u201d\n\nJames writes to Mrs. Thaw, who declares that, as a matter of fact,\nfifteen years before, Hodgson had said to her that he had just proposed\nto a girl and been refused. Mrs. Thaw and Dr. Newbold were the only\npeople in the world who knew the particulars.\n\nBut to come to the further sittings. Among other points discussed is the\nfinancial position of the American branch of the S.P.R., a position\nwhich, at the death of the secretary, or rather factotum, Hodgson, was\nanything but brilliant. And behold the somewhat strange spectacle of\ndifferent members of the society debating its affairs with their defunct\nsecretary. Shall they dissolve? Shall they amalgamate? Shall they send\nthe materials collected, most of which are Hodgson\u2019s, to England? They\nconsult the dead man; he replies, gives good advice, seems fully aware\nof all the complications, all the difficulties. One day, in Hodgson\u2019s\nlife-time, when the society was found to be short of funds, an anonymous\ndonor had sent the sum necessary to relieve it from embarrassment.\nHodgson alive did not know who the donor was; Hodgson dead picks him out\namong those present, addresses him by name and thanks him publicly. On\nanother occasion, Hodgson, like all the spirits, complains of the\nextreme difficulty which he finds in conveying his thought through the\nalien organism of the medium:\n\n\u201cI find now difficulties such as a blind man would experience in trying\nto find his hat,\u201d he says.\n\nBut, when, after so much idle chatter, William James at last puts the\nessential questions that burn our lips\u2014\u201cHodgson, what have you to tell\nus about the other life?\u201d\u2014the dead man becomes shifty and does nothing\nbut seek evasions:\n\n\u201cIt is not a vague fantasy but a reality,\u201d he replies.\n\n\u201cBut,\u201d Mrs. William James insists, \u201cdo you live as we do, as men do?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat does she say?\u201d asks the spirit, pretending not to understand.\n\n\u201cDo you live as men do?\u201d repeats William James.\n\n\u201cDo you wear clothing and live in houses?\u201d adds his wife.\n\n\u201cOh yes, houses, but not clothing. No, that is absurd. Just wait a\nmoment, I am going to get out.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou will come back again?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has got to go out and get his breath,\u201d remarks another spirit, named\nRector, suddenly intervening.\n\nIt has not been waste of time, perhaps, to reproduce the general\nfeatures of one of these sittings which may be regarded as typical. I\nwill add, in order to give an idea of the farthest point which it is\npossible to attain, the following instance of an experiment made by Sir\nOliver Lodge and related by him. He handed Mrs. Piper, in her \u201ctrance,\u201d\na gold watch which had just been sent him by one of his uncles and which\nbelonged to that uncle\u2019s twin brother, who had died twenty years before.\nWhen the watch was in her possession, Mrs. Piper, or rather Phinuit, one\nof her familiar spirits, began to relate a host of details concerning\nthe childhood of this twin brother, facts dating back for more than\nsixty-six years and of course unknown to Sir Oliver Lodge. Soon after,\nthe surviving uncle, who lived in another town, wrote and confirmed the\naccuracy of most of these details, which he had quite forgotten and of\nwhich he was only now reminded by the medium\u2019s revelations; while those\nwhich he could not recollect at all were subsequently declared to be in\naccordance with fact by a third uncle, an old sea-captain, who lived in\nCornwall and who had not the least notion why such strange questions\nwere put to him.\n\nI quote this instance not because it has any exceptional or decisive\nvalue, but simply, I repeat, by way of an example; for, like the case\nconnected with Mrs. Thaw, mentioned above, it marks pretty exactly the\nextreme points to which people have up to now, thanks to spirit agency,\npenetrated the mysteries of the unknown. It is well to add that cases in\nwhich the supposed limits of the most far-reaching telepathy are so\nmanifestly exceeded are fairly uncommon.\n\n\n                                   7\n\nNow what are we to think of all this? Must we, with Myers, Newbold,\nHyslop, Hodgson and so many others, who studied this problem at length,\nconclude in favour of the incontestable agency of forces and\nintelligences returning from the farther bank of the great river which\nit was deemed that none might cross? Must we acknowledge with them that\nthere are cases ever more numerous which make it impossible for us to\nhesitate any longer between the telepathic hypothesis and the\nspiritualistic hypothesis? I do not think so. I have no prejudices\u2014what\nwere the use of having any, in these mysteries?\u2014no reluctance to admit\nthe survival and the intervention of the dead; but it is wise and\nnecessary, before leaving the terrestrial plane, to exhaust all the\nsuppositions, all the explanations there to be discovered. We have to\nmake our choice between two manifestations of the unknown, two miracles,\nif you prefer, whereof one is situated in the world which we inhabit and\nthe other in a region which, rightly or wrongly, we believe to be\nseparated from us by nameless spaces which no human being, alive or\ndead, has crossed to this day. It is natural, therefore, that we should\nstay in our own world, as long as it gives us a foothold, as long as we\nare not pitilessly expelled from it by a series of irresistible and\nirrefutable facts issuing from the adjoining abyss. The survival of a\nspirit is no more improbable than the prodigious faculties which we are\nobliged to attribute to the mediums if we deny them to the dead; but the\nexistence of the medium, contrary to that of the spirit, is\nunquestionable; and therefore it is for the spirit, or for those who\nmake use of its name, first to prove that it exists.\n\nDo the extraordinary phenomena of which we have spoken\u2014transmission of\nthought from one subconscious mind to another, perception of events at a\ndistance, subliminal clairvoyance\u2014occur when the dead are not in\nevidence, when the experiments are being made exclusively between living\npersons? This cannot be honestly contested. Certainly no one has ever\nobtained among living people series of communications or revelations\nsimilar to those of the great spiritualistic mediums, Mrs. Piper, Mrs.\nThompson and Stainton Moses, nor anything that can be compared with\nthese so far as continuity or lucidity is concerned. But, though the\nquality of the phenomena will not bear comparison, it cannot be denied\nthat their inner nature is identical. It is logical to infer from this\nthat the real cause lies not in the source of inspiration, but in the\npersonal value, the sensitiveness, the power of the medium. For the\nrest, Mr. J. G. Piddington, who devoted an exceedingly detailed study to\nMrs. Thompson, plainly perceived in her, when she was not \u201centranced\u201d\nand when there were no spirits whatever in question, manifestations\ninferior, it is true, but absolutely analogous to those involving the\ndead.[11] These mediums are pleased, in all good faith and probably\nunconsciously, to give to their subliminal faculties, to their secondary\npersonalities, or to accept, on their behalf, names which were borne by\nbeings who have crossed to the farther side of the mystery: this is a\nmatter of vocabulary or nomenclature which neither lessens nor increases\nthe intrinsic significance of the facts. Well, in examining these facts,\nhowever strange and really unparalleled some of them may be, I never\nfind one which proceeds frankly from this world or which comes\nindisputably from the other. They are, if you wish, phenomenal border\nincidents; but it cannot be said that the border has been violated. In\nthe story of Sir Oliver Lodge\u2019s watch, for instance, which is one of the\nmost characteristic and one which carries us\n\nfarther than most, we must attribute to the medium faculties that have\nceased to be human. She must have put herself in touch, whether by\nperception of events at a distance, or by transmission of thought from\none subconscious mind to another, or again by subliminal clairvoyance,\nwith the two surviving brothers of the deceased owner of the watch; and,\nin the past subconsciousness of those two brothers, distant from each\nother, she had to rediscover a host of circumstances which they\nthemselves had forgotten and which lay hidden beneath the heaped-up dust\nand darkness of six-and-sixty years. It is certain that a phenomenon of\nthis kind passes the bounds of the imagination and that we should refuse\nto credit it if, first of all, the experiment had not been controlled\nand certified by a man of the standing of Sir Oliver Lodge and if,\nmoreover, it did not form one of a group of equally significant facts\nwhich clearly show that we are not here concerned with an absolutely\nunique miracle or with an unhoped-for and unprecedented concourse of\ncoincidences. It is simply a matter of distant perception, subliminal\nclairvoyance and telepathy raised to the highest power; and these three\nmanifestations of the unexplored depths of man are to-day recognized and\nclassified by science, which is not saying that they are explained: that\nis another question. When, in connexion with electricity, we use such\nterms as positive, negative, induction, potential and resistance, we are\nalso applying conventional words to facts and phenomena of whose inward\nessence we are utterly ignorant; and we must needs be content with\nthese, pending better. There is, I insist, between these extraordinary\nmanifestations and those given to us by a medium who is not speaking in\nthe name of the dead, but a difference of the greater and the lesser, a\ndifference of extent or degree and in no wise a difference in kind.\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 11:\n\n  For a discussion of these cases, which would take us too far from our\n  subject, see Mr. J. G. Piddington\u2019s paper, _Phenomena in Mrs.\n  Thompson\u2019s Trance_ (_Proceedings_, Vol. XVIII, pp. 180 _et seq._);\n  also Professor A. C. Pigou\u2019s article in Vol. XXIII (pp. 286 _et\n  seq._), which treats of \u201cCross Correspondence\u201d without the agency of\n  spirits.\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   8\n\nFor the proof to be more decisive, it would be necessary that no one,\nneither the medium nor the witnesses, should ever have known of the\nexistence of him whose past is revealed by the dead man, in other words,\nthat every living link should be eliminated. I do not believe that this\nhas actually occurred up to the present, nor even that it is possible;\nin any case, it would be very difficult to control such an experiment.\nBe this as it may, Dr. Hodgson, who devoted part of his life to the\nquest of specific phenomena wherein the boundaries of mediumistic power\nshould be plainly overstepped, believes that he found them in certain\ncases, of which\u2014as the others were of very much the same nature\u2014I will\nmerely mention one of the most striking.[12] In a course of excellent\nsittings with Mrs. Piper the medium, he communicated with various dead\nfriends\n\nwho reminded him of a large number of common memories. The medium, the\nspirits and he himself seemed in a wonderfully accommodating mood; and\nthe revelations were plentiful, exact and easy. In this extremely\nfavourable atmosphere, he was placed in communication with the soul of\none of his best friends, who had died a year before and whom he simply\ncalls \u201cA.\u201d This A, whom he had known more intimately than most of the\nspirits with whom he had communicated previously, behaved quite\ndifferently and, while establishing his identity beyond dispute,\nvouchsafed only incoherent replies. Now A \u201chad been troubled much, for\nyears before his death, by headaches and occasionally mental exhaustion,\nthough not amounting to positive mental disturbance.\u201d\n\nThe same phenomenon appears to recur whenever similar troubles have come\nbefore death, as in cases of suicide.\n\n\u201cIf the telepathic explanation is held to be the only one,\u201d says Dr.\nHodgson (I give the gist of his observations), \u201cif it is claimed that\nall the communications of these discarnate minds are only suggestions\nfrom my subconscious self, it is unintelligible that, after having\nobtained satisfactory results from others whom I had known far less\nintimately than A and with whom I had consequently far fewer\nrecollections in common, I should get from him, in the same sittings,\nnothing but incoherencies. I am thus driven to believe that my\nsubliminal self is not the only thing in evidence, that it is in the\npresence of a real, living personality, whose mental state is the same\nas it was at the hour of death, a personality which remains independent\nof my subliminal consciousness and absolutely unaffected by it, which is\ndeaf to its suggestions and draws from its own resources the revelations\nwhich it makes.\u201d\n\nThe argument is not without value, but its full force would be obtained\nonly if it were certain that none of those present knew of A\u2019s madness;\notherwise it can be contended that, the notion of madness having\npenetrated the subconscious intelligence of one of them, it worked upon\nit and gave to the replies induced a form in keeping with the state of\nmind presupposed in the dead man.\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 12:\n\n  _Proceedings_, Vol. XIII, pp. 349-350 and 375.\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   9\n\nOf a truth, by extending the possibilities of the medium to these\nextremes, we furnish ourselves with explanations which forestall nearly\neverything, bar every road and all but deny to the spirits any power of\nmanifesting themselves in the manner which they appear to have chosen.\nBut why do they choose that manner? Why do they thus restrict\nthemselves? Why do they jealously hug the narrow strip of territory\nwhich memory occupies on the confines of both worlds and from which none\nbut indecisive or questionable evidence can reach us? Are there then no\nother outlets, no other horizons? Why do they tarry around us, stagnant\nin their little pasts, when, in their freedom from the flesh, they ought\nto be able to wander at ease over the virgin stretches of space and\ntime? Do they not yet know that the sign which will prove to us that\nthey survive is to be found not with us, but with them, on the other\nside of the grave? Why do they come back with empty hands and empty\nwords? Is that what one finds when one is steeped in infinity? Beyond\nour last hour is it all bare and shapeless and dim? If it be so, let\nthem tell us; and the evidence of the darkness will at least possess a\ngrandeur that is all too absent from these cross-examining methods. Of\nwhat use is it to die, if all life\u2019s trivialities continue? Is it really\nworth while to have passed through the terrifying gorges which open on\nthe eternal fields, in order to remember that we had a great-uncle\ncalled Peter and that our Cousin Paul was afflicted with varicose veins\nand a gastric complaint? At that rate, I should choose for those whom I\nlove the august and frozen solitudes of the everlasting nothing. Though\nit be difficult for them, as they complain, to make themselves\nunderstood through a strange and sleep-bound organism, they tell us\nenough categorical details about the past to show that they could\ndisclose similar details, if not about the future, which they perhaps do\nnot yet know, at least about the lesser mysteries which surround us on\nevery side and which our body alone prevents us from approaching. There\nare a thousand things, large or small, alike unknown to us, which we\nmust perceive when feeble eyes no longer arrest our vision. It is in\nthose regions from which a shadow separates us and not in foolish\ntittle-tattle of the past that they would at last find the clear and\ngenuine proof which they seem to seek with such enthusiasm. Without\ndemanding a great miracle, one would nevertheless think that we had the\nright to expect from a mind which nothing now enthrals some other\ndiscourse than that which it avoided when it was still subject to\nmatter.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER VII\n\n                          CROSS CORRESPONDENCE\n\n\n                                   1\n\nThis is where things stood when, of late years, the mediums, the\nspiritualists, or, rather, it appears, the spirits themselves\u2014for one\ncannot tell exactly with whom we have to do\u2014perhaps dissatisfied at not\nbeing more definitely recognized and understood, invented, for a more\neffectual proof of their existence, what has been called \u201ccross\ncorrespondence.\u201d Here, the position is reversed: it is no longer a\nquestion of various and more or less numerous spirits revealing\nthemselves through the agency of one and the same medium, but of a\nsingle spirit manifesting itself almost simultaneously through several\nmediums often at great distances from one another and without any\npreliminary understanding among themselves. Each of these messages,\ntaken alone, is usually unintelligible and yields a meaning only when\nlaboriously combined with all the others.\n\nAs Sir Oliver Lodge says:\n\n\u201cThe object of this ingenious and complicated effort clearly is to prove\nthat there is some definite intelligence underlying the phenomena,\ndistinct from that of any of the automatists, by sending fragments of a\nmessage or literary reference which shall be unintelligible to each\nseparately\u2014so that no effective mutual telepathy is possible between\nthem\u2014thus eliminating or trying to eliminate what had long been\nrecognized by all members of the Society for Psychical Research as the\nmost troublesome and indestructible of the semi-normal hypotheses. And\nthe further object is evidently to prove as far as possible, by the\nsubstance and quality of the message, that it is characteristic of the\none particular personality who is ostensibly communicating, and of no\nother.\u201d[13]\n\nThe experiments are still in their early stages; and the most recent\nvolumes of the _Proceedings_ are devoted to them. Although the\naccumulated mass of evidence is already considerable, there is no\nconclusion to be drawn from it as yet; and, in any case, whatever the\nspiritualists may say, the suspicion of telepathy seems to me to be in\nno way removed. The experiments form a rather fantastic literary\nexercise, one much superior, intellectually, to the ordinary\nmanifestations of the mediums; but, up to the present, there is no\nreason for placing their mystery in the other world rather than in this.\nMen have tried to see in them a proof that somewhere, in time or space,\nor else beyond both, there is a sort of immense cosmic reserve of\nknowledge upon which the spirits go and draw freely. But, if the reserve\nexist, which is very possible, nothing tells us that it is not the\nliving rather than the dead who repair to it. It is very strange that\nthe dead, if they really have access to the immeasurable treasure,\nshould bring back nothing from it but a kind of ingenious child\u2019s\npuzzle, although it ought to contain myriads of lost or forgotten\nnotions and acquirements, heaped up during thousands and thousands of\nyears in abysses which our mind, weighed down by the body, can no longer\npenetrate, but which nothing seems to close against the investigations\nof freer and more subtle activities. They are evidently surrounded by\ninnumerable mysteries, by unsuspected and formidable truths that loom\nlarge on every side. The smallest astronomical or biological revelation,\nthe least secret of olden time, such as that of the temper of copper,\npossessed by the ancients, an arch\u00e6ological detail, a poem, a statue, a\nrecovered remedy, a shred of one of those unknown sciences which\nflourished in Egypt or Atlantis: any of these would form a much more\ndecisive argument than hundreds of more or less literary reminiscences.\nWhy do they speak to us so seldom of the future? And for what reason,\nwhen they do venture upon it, are they mistaken with such disheartening\nregularity? One would think, rather, that, in the sight of a being\ndelivered from the trammels of the body and of time, the years, whether\npast or future, ought all to lie outspread on one and the same\nplane.[14] We may, therefore, say that the ingenuity of the proof turns\nagainst it.\n\nAll things considered, as in the other attempts and notably those of the\nfamous medium Stainton Moses, there is the same characteristic inability\nto bring us the veriest particle of truth or knowledge of which no\nvestige could be found in a living brain or in a book written on this\nearth. And yet it is inconceivable that there should not somewhere exist\na knowledge that is not as ours and truths other than those which we\npossess here below.\n\nThe case of Stainton Moses, whose name we have just mentioned, is a very\nstriking one in this respect. This Stainton Moses was a dogmatic,\nhard-working clergyman, whose learning, Myers tells us, in the normal\nstate, did not exceed that of an ordinary schoolmaster. But he was no\nsooner \u201centranced\u201d before certain spirits of antiquity or of the middle\nages, who are hardly known save to profound scholars, among others St.\nHippolytus, Bishop of Ostia, Plotinus, Athenodorus, the tutor of\nAugustus, and, more particularly, Grocyn, the friend of Erasmus, took\npossession of his person and manifested themselves through his agency.\nNow Grocyn, for instance, furnished certain information about Erasmus\nwhich was at first thought to have been gathered in the other world, but\nwhich was subsequently discovered in forgotten, but nevertheless\naccessible books. On the other hand, Stainton Moses\u2019 integrity was never\nquestioned for an instant by those who knew him; and we may therefore\ntake his word for it when he declares that he had not read the books in\nquestion. Here again, the mystery, inexplicable though it be, seems\nreally to lie hidden in the midst of ourselves. It is unconscious\nreminiscence, if you will, suggestion at a distance, subliminal reading,\nbut, no more than in cross correspondence, is it indispensable to have\nrecourse to the dead and to drag them by main force into the riddle,\nwhich, seen from our side of the grave, is dark and impassioned enough\nas it is. Furthermore, we must not insist unduly on this cross\ncorrespondence. We must remember that the whole thing is in its earliest\nstages and that the dead appear to have no small difficulty in grasping\nthe requirements of the living.\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 13:\n\n  _The Survival of Man_, Chap. xxv, p. 325.\n\nFootnote 14:\n\n  In this connexion, however, we find two or three rather perturbing\n  facts, a remarkable one being, at a spiritualistic meeting held by the\n  late W. T. Stead, the prediction of the murder of King Alexander and\n  Queen Draga, described with the most circumstantial details. A\n  verbatim report of this prediction was drawn up and signed by some\n  thirty witnesses; and Stead went next day to beg the Servian minister\n  in London to warn the king of the danger that threatened him. The\n  event took place, as announced, a few months later. But \u201cprecognition\u201d\n  does not necessarily require the intervention of the dead; moreover,\n  every case of this kind, before being definitely accepted, would call\n  for prolonged investigation in every particular.\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   2\n\nIn regard to this subject, as to the others, the spiritualists are fond\nof saying:\n\n\u201cIf you refuse to admit the agency of spirits, the majority of these\nphenomena are absolutely inexplicable.\u201d\n\nAgreed; nor do we pretend to explain them, for hardly anything is to be\nexplained upon this earth. We are content simply to ascribe them to the\nincomprehensible power of the mediums, which is no more improbable than\nthe survival of the dead and has the advantage of not going outside the\nsphere which we occupy and of bearing relation to a large number of\nsimilar facts that occur among living people. Those singular faculties\nare baffling only because they are still sporadic and because but a very\nshort time has elapsed since they received scientific recognition.\nProperly speaking, they are no more marvellous than those which we use\ndaily without marvelling at them: our memory, for instance, our\nunderstanding, our imagination and so forth. They form part of the great\nmiracle that we are; and, having once admitted the miracle, we should be\nsurprised not so much at its extent as at its limits.\n\nNevertheless, to close this chapter, I am not at all of opinion that we\nmust definitely reject the spiritualistic theory: that would be both\nunjust and premature. Hitherto, everything remains in suspense. We may\nsay that things are still very little removed from the point marked by\nSir William Crookes, in 1874, in an article which he contributed to the\n_Quarterly Journal of Science_:\n\n\u201cThe difference between the advocates of Psychic Force and the\nSpiritualists consists in this\u2014that we contend that there is as yet\ninsufficient proof of any other directing agent than the Intelligence of\nthe Medium, and no proof whatever of the agency of Spirits of the Dead;\nwhile the Spiritualists hold it as a faith, not demanding further proof,\nthat Spirits of the Dead are the sole agents in the production of all\nthe phenomena. Thus the controversy resolves itself into a pure question\nof _fact_, only to be determined by a laborious and long-continued\nseries of experiments and an extensive collection of psychological\n_facts_, which should be the first duty of the Psychological Society,\nthe formation of which is now in progress.\u201d\n\nMeanwhile, it is saying a good deal that rigorous scientific\ninvestigations have not utterly shattered a theory which so radically\nconfounds the idea which we were wont to form of death. We shall see\npresently why, in considering our destinies beyond the grave, we need\nhave no reason to linger too long over these apparitions or these\nrevelations, even though they should really be incontestable and to the\npoint. They would seem, all told, to be but the incoherent and\nprecarious manifestations of a transitory state. They would at best\nprove, if we were bound to admit them, that a reflexion of ourselves, an\nafter-vibration of the nerves, a bundle of emotions, a spiritual\nsilhouette, a grotesque and forlorn image, or, more correctly, a sort of\ntruncated and uprooted memory can, after our death, linger and float in\na space where nothing remains to feed it, where it gradually becomes wan\nand lifeless, but where a special fluid, emanating from an exceptional\nmedium, succeeds, at moments, in galvanizing it. Perhaps it exists\nobjectively, perhaps it subsists and revives only in the recollection of\ncertain sympathies. It would, after all, be not unlikely that the memory\nwhich represents us during our life should continue to do so for a few\nweeks or even a few years after our decease. This would explain the\nevasive and deceptive character of those spirits which, possessing but a\nmnemonic existence, are naturally able to interest themselves only in\nmatters within their reach. Hence their irritating and maniacal energy\nin clinging to the slightest facts, their sleepy dulness, their\nincomprehensible indifference and ignorance and all the wretched\nabsurdities which we have noticed more than once.\n\nBut, I repeat, it is much simpler to attribute these absurdities to the\nspecial character and the as yet imperfectly-recognized difficulties of\ntelepathic communication. The unconscious suggestions of the most\nintelligent among those who take part in the experiment are impaired,\ndisjointed and stripped of their main virtues in passing through the\nobscure intermediary of the medium. It may be that they stray, make\ntheir way into certain forgotten corners which the intelligence no\nlonger visits and thence bring back more or less surprising discoveries;\nbut the intellectual quality of the aggregate will always be inferior to\nthat which a conscious mind would yield. Besides, once more, it is not\nyet time to draw conclusions. We must not lose sight of the fact that we\nhave to do with a science which was born but yesterday and which is\ngroping for its implements, its paths, its methods and its aim in a\ndarkness denser than the earth\u2019s. The boldest bridge that men have yet\nundertaken to throw across the river of death is not to be built in\nthirty years. Most sciences have centuries of thankless efforts and\nbarren uncertainties behind them; and there are, I imagine, few among\nthe younger of them that can show from the earliest hour, as this one\ndoes, promises of a harvest which may not be the harvest of their\nconscious sowing, but which already bids fair to yield much unknown and\nwondrous fruit.[15]\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 15:\n\n  To exhaust this question of survival and of communications with the\n  dead, I ought to speak of Dr. Hyslop\u2019s recent investigations, made\n  with the assistance of the mediums Smead and Chenoweth (communications\n  with William James). I ought also to mention Julia\u2019s famous \u201cbureau\u201d\n  and, above all, the extraordinary sittings of Mrs. Wriedt, the trumpet\n  medium, who not only obtains communications in which the dead speak\n  languages of which she herself is completely ignorant, but raises\n  apparitions said to be extremely disturbing. I ought, lastly, to\n  examine the facts set forth by Professor Porro, Dr. Venzano and M.\n  Rozanne and many other things besides, for spiritualistic\n  investigation and literature are already piling volume upon volume.\n  But it was not my intention nor my pretension to make a complete study\n  of scientific spiritualism. I wished merely to omit no essential point\n  and to give a general, but accurate idea of this posthumous atmosphere\n  which no really new and decisive fact has come to unsettle since the\n  manifestations of which we have spoken.\n\n-----\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER VIII\n\n                             REINCARNATION\n\n\n                                   1\n\nSo much for survival proper. But certain spiritualists go farther and\nattempt the scientific proof of palingenesis and the transmigration of\nsouls. I pass over their merely moral or scientific arguments, as well\nas those which they discover in the prenatal reminiscences of\nillustrious men and others. These reminiscences, though often\ndisturbing, are still too rare, too sporadic, so to speak; and the\nsupervision has not always been sufficiently close for us to be able to\nrely upon them with safety. Nor do I propose to pay attention to the\nproofs based upon the inborn aptitudes of genius or of certain infant\nprodigies, aptitudes which are difficult to explain, but which may\nnevertheless be attributed to unknown laws of heredity. I shall be\ncontent to recall briefly the results of some of Colonel de Rochas\u2019\nexperiments, which leave one at a loss for an explanation.\n\nFirst of all, it is only right to say that Colonel de Rochas is a savant\nwho seeks nothing but objective truth and does so with a scientific\nstrictness and integrity that have never been questioned. He puts\ncertain exceptional subjects into an hypnotic sleep and, by means of\ndownward passes, makes them trace back the whole course of their\nexistence. He thus takes them successively to their youth, their\nadolescence and down to the extreme limits of their childhood. At each\nof these hypnotic stages, the subject reassumes the consciousness, the\ncharacter and the state of mind which he possessed at the corresponding\nstage in his life. He goes over the same events, with their joys and\nsorrows. If he has been ill, he once more passes through his illness,\nhis convalescence and his recovery. If, for instance, the subject is a\nwoman who has been a mother, she again becomes pregnant and again\nsuffers the pains of child-birth. Carried back to an age when she was\nlearning to write, she writes like a child and her writing can be placed\nside by side with the copy-books which she filled at school.\n\nThis in itself is very extraordinary; but, as Colonel de Rochas says:\n\n\u201cUp to the present, we have walked on firm ground; we have been\nobserving a physiological phenomenon which is difficult of explanation,\nbut which numerous experiments and verifications allow us to look upon\nas certain.\u201d\n\nWe now enter a region where still more surprising enigmas await us. Let\nus, to come to details, take one of the simplest cases. The subject is a\ngirl of eighteen, called Jos\u00e9phine. She lives at Voiron, in the\ndepartment of the Is\u00e8re. By means of downward passes, she is brought\nback to the condition of a baby at its mother\u2019s breast. The passes\ncontinue and the wonder-tale runs its course. Jos\u00e9phine can no longer\nspeak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which seems to be\nfollowed by a silence more mysterious still. Jos\u00e9phine no longer answers\nexcept by signs; _she is not yet born_, \u201cshe is floating in darkness.\u201d\nThey persist; the sleep becomes heavier; and suddenly, from the depths\nof that sleep, rises the voice of another being, a voice unexpected and\nunknown, the voice of a churlish, distrustful and discontented old man.\nThey question him. At first, he refuses to answer, saying that \u201cof\ncourse he\u2019s there, as he\u2019s speaking;\u201d that \u201che sees nothing;\u201d and that\n\u201che\u2019s in the dark.\u201d They increase the number of passes and gradually\ngain his confidence. His name is Jean Claude Bourdon; he is an old man;\nhe has long been ailing and bed-ridden. He tells the story of his life.\nHe was born at Champvent, in the parish of Polliat, in 1812. He went to\nschool until he was eighteen and served his time in the army with the\n7th Artillery at Besan\u00e7on; and he describes his gay times there, while\nthe sleeping girl makes the gesture of twirling an imaginary moustache.\nWhen he goes back to his native place, he does not marry, but he has a\nmistress. He leads a solitary life (I omit all but the essential facts)\nand dies at the age of seventy, after a long illness.\n\nWe now hear the dead man speak; and his posthumous revelations are not\nsensational, which, however, is not an adequate reason for doubting\ntheir genuineness. He \u201cfeels himself growing out of his body;\u201d but he\nremains attached to it for a fairly long time. His fluidic body, which\nis at first diffused, takes a more concentrated form. He lives in\ndarkness, which he finds disagreeable; but he does not suffer. At last,\nthe night in which he is plunged is streaked with a few flashes of\nlight. The idea comes to him to reincarnate himself and he draws near to\nher who is to be his mother (that is to say, the mother of Jos\u00e9phine).\nHe encircles her until the child is born, whereupon he gradually enters\nthe child\u2019s body. Until about the seventh year, this body was surrounded\nby a sort of floating mist in which he used to see many things which he\nhas not seen since.\n\nThe next thing to be done is to go back beyond Jean Claude. A\nmesmerization lasting nearly three quarters of an hour, without\nlingering at any intermediate stage, brings the old man back to\nbabyhood. A fresh silence, a new limbo; and then, suddenly, another\nvoice and an unexpected individual. This time, it is an old woman who\nhas been very wicked; and so she is in great torment (she is dead, at\nthe actual instant; for, in this inverted world, lives go backwards and\nof course begin at the end). She is in deep darkness, surrounded by evil\nspirits. She speaks in a faint voice, but always gives definite replies\nto the questions put to her, instead of cavilling at every moment, as\nJean Claude did. Her name is Philom\u00e8ne Carteron.\n\n\u201cBy intensifying the sleep,\u201d adds Colonel de Rochas, whom I will now\nquote, \u201cI induce the manifestations of a living Philom\u00e8ne. She no longer\nsuffers, seems very calm and always answers very coldly and distinctly.\nShe knows that she is unpopular in the neighbourhood, but no one is a\npenny the worse and she will be even with them yet. She was born in\n1702; her maiden name was Philom\u00e8ne Charpigny; her grandfather on the\nmother\u2019s side was called Pierre Machon and lived at Ozan. In 1732, she\nmarried, at Chevroux, a man named Carteron, by whom she had two\nchildren, both of whom she lost.\n\n\u201cBefore her incarnation, Philom\u00e8ne had been a little girl, who died in\ninfancy. Previous to that, she was a man who had committed murder; and\nit was to expiate this crime that she endured much suffering in the\ndarkness, even after her life as a little girl, when she had had no time\nto do wrong. I did not think it necessary to carry the hypnosis further,\nbecause the subject appeared exhausted and her paroxysms were painful to\nwatch.\n\n\u201cBut, on the other hand, I noticed one thing which would tend to show\nthat the revelations of these mediums rest on an objective reality. At\nVoiron, one of the regular attendants at my demonstrations is a young\ngirl, Louise \u2014\u2014. She possesses a very sedate and thoughtful cast of\nmind, not at all open to hypnotic suggestion; and she has in a very high\ndegree the capacity (which is comparatively common in a lesser degree)\nof perceiving the magnetic effluvia of human beings and, consequently,\nthe fluidic body. When Jos\u00e9phine revives the memory of her past, a\nluminous aura is observed around her and is perceived by Louise. Now, to\nthe eyes of Louise, this aura becomes dark when Jos\u00e9phine is in the\nphase separating two existences. In every instance, there is a strong\nreaction in Jos\u00e9phine when I touch points where Louise tells me that she\nperceives the aura, whether it be dark or light.\u201d\n\n\n                                   2\n\nI thought it well to give the report of one of these experiments almost\n_in extenso_, because those who maintain the palingenesic theory find in\nthese the only appreciable argument which they possess. Colonel de\nRochas renewed them more than once with different subjects. Among these,\nI will mention only one, a girl called Marie Mayo, whose history is more\ncomplicated than Jos\u00e9phine\u2019s and whose successive reincarnations take us\nback to the seventeenth century and carry us suddenly to Versailles,\namong the historical personages moving around Louis XIV.\n\nLet us add that Colonel de Rochas is not the only mesmerizer who has\nobtained revelations of this kind, which may be henceforth classed among\nthe incontestable facts of hypnotism. I have mentioned his alone,\nbecause they offer the most substantial guarantees from every point of\nview.\n\nWhat do they prove? We must begin, as in all questions of this kind, by\nentertaining a certain distrust of the medium. It goes without saying\nthat all mediums, by the very nature of their faculties, are inclined to\nimposture, to trickery. I know that Colonel de Rochas, like Dr. Richet\nand like Professor Lombroso, was occasionally hoaxed. That is the\ninherent defect of the machinery which we must perforce employ; and\nexperiments of this sort will never possess the scientific value of\nthose made in a physical or chemical laboratory. But this is not an _a\npriori_ reason for denying them any sort of interest. As a question of\nfact, are imposture and trickery possible here? Obviously, even though\nthe experiments be conducted under the strictest supervision. However\ncomplicated it may be, the subject can have learnt his lesson and can\ncleverly avoid the traps laid for him. The best guarantee, when all is\nsaid, lies in his good faith and his moral sense, which the\nexperimenters alone are in a position to test and to know; and for that\nwe must trust to them. Besides, they neglect no precaution necessary to\nmake imposture extremely difficult. After taking the subject, by means\nof transverse passes, up the stream of his life, they make him come down\nthe same stream; and the same events pass in the reverse order. Repeated\ntests and counter-tests always yield identical results; and the medium\nnever hesitates or goes astray in the labyrinth of names, dates and\nincidents.[16]\n\nMoreover, it would be requisite for these mediums, who are generally\npeople of merely average intelligence, suddenly to become great poets in\norder thus to create, down to every detail, a series of characters,\ndiffering entirely one from the other, in which everything is in\nkeeping\u2014gestures, voice, temper, mind, thoughts, feeling\u2014and ever ready\nto reply, in harmony with their inmost nature, to the most unexpected\nquestions. It has been said that every man is a Shakspeare in his\ndreams; but have we not here to do with dreams which, in their\nuniformity, bear a singular resemblance to fact?\n\nI think, therefore, that we may be allowed, until we receive evidence to\nthe contrary, to leave fraud out of the question. Another objection that\nmight be raised, as was done with respect to the Myers phantoms, is the\ninsignificance of their revelations from beyond the grave. I would\nrather look on this as an argument in behalf of their good faith. Those\nwhose imagination is rich enough to create the wonderful persons whom we\nsee living in their sleep would doubtless find no great difficulty in\ninventing a few fantastic but plausible details on the subject of the\nnext world. Not one of them thinks of it. They are Christians and\ntherefore carry deep down in themselves the traditional terror of hell,\nthe fear of purgatory and the vision of a paradise full of angels and\npalms. They never allude to any of it. Although they are most often\nignorant of all the theories of reincarnation, they conform strictly to\nthe theosophical or neospiritualistic hypothesis and are unconsciously\nfaithful to it in their very indefiniteness: they speak vaguely of \u201cthe\ndark\u201d in which they find themselves. They tell nothing, because they\nknow nothing. It is impossible apparently for them to give any account\nof a state that is still illumined. In fact, it is very likely, if we\nadmit the hypothesis of reincarnation and of evolution after death, that\nnature, here as elsewhere, does not proceed by bounds. There is no\nspecial reason why she should take a prodigious and inconceivable leap\nbetween life and death.\n\nWe did not find the dramatic change which, at first thought, we are\nrather inclined to expect. The spirit is first of all confused at losing\nits body and every one of its familiar ways; it only recovers itself by\ndegrees. It resumes consciousness slowly. This consciousness is\nsubsequently purified, exalted and extended, gradually and indefinitely,\nuntil, reaching other spheres, the principle of life that animates it\nceases to reincarnate itself and loses all contact with us. This would\nexplain why we never have any but minor and elementary revelations.\n\nAll that concerns this first phase of the survival is fairly probable,\neven to those who do not admit the theory of reincarnation. For the\nrest, we shall see presently that the solutions which man\u2019s imagination\nfinds there merely change the question and are inadequate and\nprovisional.\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 16:\n\n  In order to hide nothing and to bring all the documents into court, we\n  may point out that Colonel de Rochas ascertained upon enquiry that the\n  subjects\u2019 revelations concerning their former existences were\n  inaccurate in several particulars:\n\n  \u201cTheir narratives were also full of anachronisms which disclosed the\n  presence of normal recollections among the suggestions that came from\n  an unknown source. Nevertheless, one perfectly indubitable fact\n  remains, which is that of the existence of certain visions recurring\n  with the same characteristics in the case of a considerable number of\n  persons unknown to one another.\u201d\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   3\n\nWe now come to the most serious objection, that of suggestion. Colonel\nde Rochas declares that he and all the other experimenters who have\ngiven themselves up to this study \u201chave not only avoided everything that\ncould put the subject on a definite tack, but have often tried in vain\nto lead him astray by different suggestions.\u201d I am convinced of it:\nthere can be no question of voluntary suggestion. But do we not know\nthat, in these regions, unconscious and involuntary suggestion is often\nmore powerful and effective than the other? In the hackneyed and rather\nchildish experiment of table-turning, for instance, which, after all, is\nonly a crude and elementary form of telepathy, the replies are nearly\nalways dictated by the unconscious suggestion of a participant or a mere\non-looker.[17] We should therefore first of all have to make sure that\nneither the hypnotizer nor the onlookers, nor yet the subject himself,\nhave ever heard of the reincarnated persons. It will be enough, I shall\nbe told, to employ for the counter-tests another operator and different\nonlookers who are ignorant of the previous revelations. Yes, but the\nsubject is not ignorant of them; and it is possible that the first\nsuggestion has been so profound that it will remain for ever stamped\nupon the unconsciousness and that it will reproduce the same\nincarnations indefinitely, in the same order.\n\nAll this does not mean that the phenomena of suggestion are not\nthemselves laden with mysteries; but that is another question. For the\nmoment, as we see, the problem is almost insoluble and control\nimpracticable. Meanwhile, since we have to choose between reincarnation\nand suggestion, it is right that we should confine ourselves, in the\nfirst instance, to the latter, in accordance with the principles which\nwe have observed in the case of automatic speech and writing. Between\ntwo unknowns, common sense and prudence decree that we should turn first\nto the one on whose frontiers lie certain facts more frequently\nrecorded, the one which shows a few familiar glimmers. Let us exhaust\nthe mystery of our life before forsaking it for the mystery of our\ndeath. Throughout this vast expanse of treacherous ground, it is\nimportant that, until fresh evidence arrives, we should keep to one\ninflexible rule, namely, that thought-transference exists as long as it\nis not absolutely and physically impossible for the subject or some\nperson in the room to have cognizance of the incident in question,\nwhether the cognizance be conscious or not, forgotten or actual. Even\nthis guarantee is not sufficient, for it is still possible, as we saw in\nthe case of Sir Oliver Lodge\u2019s watch, for some one taking no part in the\nsitting and even very far away from it to be placed in communication\nwith the medium by some unknown means and to influence the medium at a\ndistance and unwittingly. Lastly, to provide for every contingency,\nbefore letting death come upon the boards, it would be necessary to make\ncertain that atavistic memory does not play an unforeseen part. Cannot a\nman, for instance, carry hidden in the depths of his being the\nrecollection of events connected with the childhood of an ancestor whom\nhe has never seen and communicate it to the medium by unconscious\nsuggestion? It is not impossible. We carry in ourselves all the past,\nall the experience of our ancestors. If, by some magic, we could\nillumine the prodigious treasures of the subconscious memory, why should\nwe not there discover the events and facts that form the sources of that\nexperience? Before turning towards yonder unknown, we must utterly\nexhaust the possibilities of this terrestrial unknown. It is moreover\nremarkable but undeniable that, despite the strictness of a law which\nseems to shut out every other explanation, despite the almost unlimited\nand probably excessive scope allotted to the domain of suggestion, there\nnevertheless remain some facts which perhaps call for another\ninterpretation.\n\nBut let us return to reincarnation and recognize, in passing, that it is\nvery regrettable that the arguments of the theosophists and\nneospiritualists are not compelling, for there never was a more\nbeautiful, a juster, a purer, a more moral, fruitful and consoling, nor,\nto a certain point, a more probable creed than theirs. It alone, with\nits doctrine of successive expiations and purifications, accounts for\nall the physical and intellectual inequalities, all the social\niniquities, all the hideous injustices of fate. But the quality of a\ncreed is no evidence of its truth. Even though it is the religion of six\nhundred millions of mankind, the nearest to the mysterious origins, the\nonly one that is not odious and the least absurd of all, it will have to\ndo what the others have not done, to bring unimpeachable testimony; and\nwhat it has given us hitherto is but the first shadow of a proof begun.\n\n-----\n\nFootnote 17:\n\n  In this connexion may I be permitted to quote a personal experience?\n  One evening, at the Abbaye de Saint-Wandrille, where I am wont to\n  spend my summers, some newly-arrived guests were amusing themselves by\n  making a small table spin on its foot. I was quietly smoking in a\n  corner of the drawing-room, at some distance from the little table,\n  taking no interest in what was happening around it and thinking of\n  something quite different. After due entreaty, the table replied that\n  it held the spirit of a seventeenth-century monk, who was buried in\n  the east gallery of the cloisters, under a flagstone dated 1693. After\n  the departure of the monk, who suddenly, for no apparent reason,\n  refused to continue the interview, we thought that we would go, with a\n  lamp, and look for the grave. We ended by discovering, in the far\n  cloister on the eastern side, a tombstone in very bad condition,\n  broken, worn down, trodden into the ground and crumbling, on which, by\n  examining it very closely, we were able, with great difficulty, to\n  decipher the inscription, \u201cA.D. 1693.\u201d Now, at the moment of the\n  monk\u2019s reply, there was no one in the drawing-room except my guests\n  and myself. None of them knew the abbey; they had arrived that very\n  evening, a few minutes before dinner, after which, as it was quite\n  dark, they had put off their visit to the cloisters and the ruins\n  until the following day. Therefore, short of a belief in the \u201cshells\u201d\n  or the \u201celementals\u201d of the theosophists, the revelation could only\n  have come from me. Nevertheless, I believed myself to be absolutely\n  ignorant of the existence of that particular tombstone, one of the\n  least legible among a score of others, all belonging to the\n  seventeenth century, which pave this part of the cloisters.\n\n-----\n\n\n                                   4\n\nAnd even that would not put an end to the riddle. In principle,\nreincarnation, sooner or later, is inevitable, since nothing can be lost\nnor remain stationary. What has not been demonstrated in any way and\nwill perhaps remain indemonstrable is the reincarnation of the whole\nidentical individual, notwithstanding the abolition of memory. But what\nmatters to him that reincarnation, if he be unaware that he is still\nhimself? All the problems of the conscious survival of man start up\nanew; and we have to begin all over again. Even if scientifically\nestablished, the doctrine of reincarnation, just like that of a\nsurvival, would not set a term to our questions. It replies to neither\nthe first nor the last, those of the beginning and the end, the only\nones that are essential. It simply shifts them, pushes them a few\nhundreds, a few thousands of years back, in the hope perhaps of losing\nor forgetting them in silence and space. But they have come from the\ndepths of the most prodigious infinities and are not content with a\ntardy solution. I am most certainly interested in learning what is in\nstore for me, what will happen to me immediately after my death. You\ntell me:\n\n\u201cMan, in his successive incarnations, will make atonement by suffering,\nwill be purified, in order that he may ascend from sphere to sphere\nuntil he returns to the divine essence whence he sprang.\u201d\n\nI am willing to believe it, notwithstanding that all this still bears\nthe somewhat questionable stamp of our little earth and its old\nreligions; I am willing to believe it, but even then? What matters to me\nis not what will be for some time, but what will be for always; and your\ndivine principle appears to me not at all infinite nor definite. It even\nseems to me greatly inferior to that which I conceive without your help.\nNow, if it were based on thousands of facts, a religion that belittles\nthe God conceived by my loftiest thought could never dominate my\nconscience. Your infinity or your God, while even more unintelligible\nthan mine, is nevertheless smaller. If I be again immerged in Him, it\nmeans that I emerged from Him; if it be possible for me to have emerged\nfrom Him, then He is not infinite; and, if He be not infinite, what is\nHe? We must accept one thing or the other: either He purifies me because\nI am outside Him and He is not infinite; or, being infinite, if He\npurify me, then there was something impure in Him, because it is a part\nof Himself which He is purifying in me. Moreover, how can we admit that\nthis God who has existed for all time, who has the same infinity of\nmillenaries behind Him as in front of Him, should not yet have found\ntime to purify Himself and put a period to His trials? What He was not\nable to do in the eternity previous to the moment of my existence He\nwill not be able to do in the subsequent eternity, for the two are\nequal. And the same question presents itself where I am concerned. My\nprinciple of life, like His, exists from all eternity, for my emergence\nout of nothing would be more difficult of explanation than my existence\nwithout a beginning. I have necessarily had innumerable opportunities of\nincarnating myself; and I have probably done so, seeing that it is\nhardly likely that the idea only came to me yesterday. All the chances\nof reaching my goal have therefore been offered to me in the past; and\nall those which I shall find in the future will add nothing to the\nnumber, which was already infinite. There is not much to say in answer\nto these interrogations which spring up everywhence the moment our\nthought glances upon them. Meanwhile, I had rather know that I know\nnothing than feed myself on illusory and irreconcilable assertions. I\nhad rather keep to an infinity whose incomprehensibility has no bounds\nthan restrict myself to a God whose incomprehensibility is limited on\nevery side. Nothing compels you to speak of your God; but, if you take\nupon yourself to do so, it is necessary that your explanations should be\nsuperior to the silence which they break.\n\n\n                                   5\n\nIt is true that the scientific spiritualists do not venture as far as\nthis God; but then, tight-pressed between the two riddles of the\nbeginning and the end, they have almost nothing to tell us. They follow\nthe tracks of our dead for a few seconds, in a world where seconds no\nlonger count; and then they abandon them in the darkness. I do not\nreproach them, because we have here to do with things which, in all\nprobability, we shall not know in the day when we shall think that we\nknow everything. I do not ask that they shall reveal to me the secret of\nthe universe, for I do not believe, like a child, that this secret can\nbe expressed in three words or that it can enter my brain without\nbursting it. I am even persuaded that beings who might be millions of\ntimes more intelligent than the most intelligent among us would not yet\npossess it, for this secret must be as infinite, as unfathomable, as\ninexhaustible as the universe itself. The fact none the less remains\nthat this inability to go even a few years beyond the life after death\ndetracts greatly from the interest of their experiments and revelations;\nat best, it is but a short space gained; and it is not by this juggling\non the threshold that our fate is decided. I am ready to pass over what\nmay befall me in the short interval filled by those revelations, as I am\neven now passing over what befalls me in my life. My destiny does not\nlie there, nor my home. I do not doubt that the facts reported are\ngenuine and proved; but what is even much more certain is that the dead,\nif they survive, have not a great deal to teach us, whether because, at\nthe moment when they can speak to us, they have nothing yet to tell us,\nor because, at the moment when they might have something to reveal to\nus, they are no longer able to do so, but withdraw for ever and lose\nsight of us in the immensity which they are exploring.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER IX\n\n                     THE FATE OF OUR CONSCIOUSNESS\n\n\n                                   1\n\nLet us dispense with their uncertain aid and endeavour to make our way\nto the other side alone. To return then to the theories which we were\nexamining before these necessary digressions, it would seem that\nsurvival with our present consciousness is nearly as impossible and as\nincomprehensible as total annihilation. Moreover, even if it were\nadmissible, it could not be dreadful. It is certain that, when the body\ndisappears, all physical sufferings will disappear at the same time; for\nwe cannot imagine a spirit suffering in a body which it no longer\npossesses. With them will vanish simultaneously all that we call mental\nor moral sufferings, seeing that all of them, if we examine them well,\nspring from the ties and habits of our senses. Our spirit feels the\nreaction of the sufferings of our body, or of the bodies that surround\nit; it cannot suffer in itself or through itself. Slighted affection,\nshattered love, disappointments, failures, despair, betrayal, personal\nhumiliations, as well as the sorrows and the loss of those whom it\nloves, acquire their potent sting only by passing through the body which\nit animates. Outside its own pain, which is the pain of not knowing, the\nspirit, once delivered from its flesh, could suffer only in the\nrecollection of the flesh. It is possible that it still grieves over the\ntroubles of those whom it has left behind on earth. But to its eyes,\nsince it no longer reckons the days, these troubles will seem so brief\nthat it will not grasp their duration; and, knowing what they are and\nknowing whither they lead, it will not behold their severity.\n\nThe spirit is insensible to all that is not happiness. It is made only\nfor infinite joy, which is the joy of knowing and understanding. It can\ngrieve only at perceiving its own limits; but to perceive those limits,\nwhen there are no more bonds to space and time, is already to transcend\nthem.\n\n\n                                   2\n\nIt is now a question of knowing whether that spirit, sheltered from all\nsorrow, will remain itself, will perceive and recognize itself in the\nbosom of infinity; and up to what point it is important that it should\nrecognize itself. This brings us to the problems of survival without\nconsciousness, or survival with a consciousness different from that of\nto-day.\n\nSurvival without consciousness seems at first sight the more probable.\nFrom the point of view of the good or ill awaiting us on the other side\nof the grave, it amounts to annihilation. It is lawful, therefore, for\nthose who prefer the easiest solution and that most consistent with the\npresent state of human thought, to limit their anxiety to that. They\nhave nothing to dread; for, on close inspection, every fear, if any\nremained, should deck itself with hopes. The body disintegrates and can\nno longer suffer; the mind, separated from the source of pleasure and\npain, is extinguished, scattered and lost in a boundless darkness; and\nwhat comes is the great peace so often prayed for, the sleep without\nmeasure, without dreams and without awakening.\n\nBut this is only a solution that fosters indolence. If we press those\nwho speak of survival without consciousness, we perceive that they mean\nonly their present consciousness, for man conceives no other; and we\nhave just seen that it is almost impossible for that manner of\nconsciousness to persist in infinity.\n\nUnless, indeed, they would deny every sort of consciousness, even that\ncosmic consciousness into which their own will fall. But this were to\nsolve very quickly and very blindly, with a stroke of the sword in the\nnight, the greatest and most mysterious question that can arise in a\nman\u2019s brain.\n\n\n                                   3\n\nIt is evident that, in the depths of our thought limited on every side,\nwe shall never be able to form the least idea of an infinite\nconsciousness. There is even an essential antinomy between the words\nconsciousness and infinity. To speak of consciousness is to mean the\nmost definite thing conceivable in the finite; consciousness, properly\nspeaking, is the finite huddled into itself in order to discover and\nfeel its closest limits, to the end that it may enjoy them as closely as\npossible. On the other hand, it is impossible for us to separate the\nidea of intelligence from the idea of consciousness. Any intelligence\nthat does not seem capable of transforming itself into consciousness\nbecomes for us a mysterious phenomenon to which we give names more\nmysterious still, lest we should have to admit that we understand\nnothing of it at all. Now, on this little earth of ours, which is but a\ndot in space, we see expended in every scale of life (remember, for\ninstance, the wonderful combinations and organisms of the insect world)\na mass of intelligence so vast that our human intelligence cannot even\ndream of assessing it. Everything that exists\u2014and man first of all\u2014is\nincessantly drawing upon that inexhaustible reserve. We are therefore\nirresistibly driven to ask ourselves if that cosmic intelligence is not\nthe emanation of an infinite consciousness, or if it must not, sooner or\nlater, elaborate one. And this sets us tossing between two irreducible\nimpossibilities. What is most probable is that here again we are judging\neverything from the lowlands of our anthropomorphism. At the summit of\nour infinitesimal life, we see only intelligence and consciousness, the\nextreme point of thought; and from this we infer that, at the summits of\nall lives, there could be naught but intelligence and consciousness,\nwhereas these perhaps occupy only an inferior place in the hierarchy of\nspiritual or other possibilities.\n\n\n                                   4\n\nSurvival absolutely denuded of consciousness would, therefore, be\npossible only if we denied a cosmic consciousness. As soon as we admit\nthis consciousness, under whatsoever form, we are bound to share in it;\nand, up to a certain point, the question is indistinguishable from that\nof the continuance of a more or less modified consciousness. There is,\nfor the moment, no hope of solving it; but we are free to grope in its\ndarkness, which is not perhaps equally dense at all points.\n\nHere begins the open sea. Here begins the glorious adventure, the only\none abreast with human curiosity, the only one that soars as high as its\nhighest longing. Let us accustom ourselves to regard death as a form of\nlife which we do not yet understand; let us learn to look upon it with\nthe same eye that looks upon birth; and soon our mind will be\naccompanied to the steps of the tomb with the same glad expectation that\ngreets a birth.\n\nSuppose that a child in its mother\u2019s womb were endowed with a certain\nconsciousness; that unborn twins, for instance, could, in some obscure\nfashion, exchange their impressions and communicate their hopes and\nfears to each other. Having known naught but the warm maternal shades,\nthey would not feel straitened nor unhappy there. They would probably\nhave no other idea than to prolong as long as possible that life of\nabundance free from cares and of sleep free from alarms. But, if, even\nas we are aware that we must die, they too knew that they must be born,\nthat is to say, suddenly leave the shelter of that gentle darkness and\nabandon for ever that captive but peaceful existence, to be precipitated\ninto an absolutely different, unimaginable and boundless world, how\ngreat would be their anxieties and their fears! And yet there is no\nreason why our own anxieties and fears should be more justified and less\nridiculous. The character, the spirit, the intentions, the benevolence\nor the indifference of the unknown to which we are subject do not alter\nbetween our birth and our death. We remain always in the same infinity,\nin the same universe. It is perfectly reasonable and legitimate to\npersuade ourselves that the tomb is no more dreadful than the cradle. It\nwould even be legitimate and reasonable to accept the cradle only on\naccount of the tomb. If, before being born, we were permitted to choose\nbetween the great peace of non-existence and a life that should not be\ncompleted by the glorious hour of death, which of us, knowing what he\nought to know, would accept the disquieting problem of an existence that\nwould not lead to the reassuring mystery of its end? Which of us would\nwish to come into a world where we can learn so little, if he did not\nknow that he must enter it if he would leave it and learn more? The best\nthing about life is that it prepares this hour for us, that it is the\none and only road leading to the magic gateway and into that\nincomparable mystery where misfortunes and sufferings will no longer be\npossible, because we shall have lost the body that produced them; where\nthe worst that can befall us is the dreamless sleep which we number\namong the greatest boons on earth; where, lastly, it is almost\nunimaginable that a thought should not survive to mingle with the\nsubstance of the universe, that is to say, with infinity, which, if it\nbe not a waste of indifference, can be nothing but a sea of joy.\n\n\n                                   5\n\nBefore fathoming that sea, let us remark to those who aspire to maintain\ntheir ego that they are calling for the sufferings which they dread. The\nego implies limits. The ego cannot subsist except in so far as it is\nseparated from that which surrounds it. The stronger the ego, the\nnarrower its limits and the clearer the separation. The more painful\ntoo; for the mind, if it remain as we know it\u2014and we are not able to\nimagine it different\u2014will no sooner have seen its limits than it will\nwish to overstep them; and, the more separated it feels, the greater\nwill be its longing to unite with that which lies outside. There will\ntherefore be an eternal struggle between its being and its aspirations.\nAnd really it would have served no object to be born and die only to\narrive at these interminable contests. Have we not here yet one more\nproof that our ego, as we conceive it, could never subsist in the\ninfinity where it must needs go, since it cannot go elsewhere? It\nbehoves us therefore to clear away conceptions that emanate only from\nour body, even as the mists that veil the daylight from our sight\nemanate only from the lowlands. Pascal has said, once and for all:\n\n\u201cThe narrow limits of our being conceal infinity from our view.\u201d\n\n\n                                   6\n\nOn the other hand\u2014for we must keep nothing back, nor turn from the\nadverse darkness should it seem nearest to the truth, nor show any\nbias\u2014on the other hand, we can grant to those who yearn to remain as\nthey are that the survival of an atom of themselves would suffice for a\nnew entrance into an infinity from which their body no longer separates\nthem.\n\nIf it seems impossible that anything\u2014a movement, a vibration, a\nradiation\u2014should stop or disappear, why then should thought be lost?\nThere will, no doubt, subsist more than one idea powerful enough to\nallure the new ego, which will nourish itself and thrive on all that it\nwill find in that boundless environment, just as the other ego, on this\nearth, nourished itself and throve on all that it met there. Since we\nhave been able to acquire our present consciousness, why should it be\nimpossible for us to acquire another? For that ego which is so dear to\nus and which we believe ourselves to possess was not made in a day; it\nis not at present what it was at the hour of our birth. Much more chance\nthan purpose has entered into it; and much more foreign substance than\nany inborn substance which it contained. It is but a long series of\nacquisitions and transformations, of which we do not become aware until\nthe awakening of our memory; and its kernel, of which we do not know the\nnature, is perhaps more immaterial and less concrete than a thought. If\nthe new environment which we enter on leaving our mother\u2019s womb\ntransforms us to such a point that there is, so to speak, no connexion\nbetween the embryo that we were and the man that we have become, is it\nnot right to think that the far newer, stranger, wider and richer\nenvironment which we enter on quitting life will transform us even more?\nWe can see in what happens to us here a figure of what awaits us\nelsewhere and can readily admit that our spiritual being, liberated from\nits body, if it does not mingle at the first onset with the infinite,\nwill develop itself there gradually, will choose itself a substance and,\nno longer trammelled by space and time, will go on for ever growing. It\nis very possible that our loftiest wishes of to-day will become the law\nof our future development. It is very possible that our best thoughts\nwill welcome us on the farther shore and that the quality of our\nintellect will determine that of the infinite which crystallizes around\nit. Every hypothesis is permissible and every question, provided it be\naddressed to happiness; for unhappiness is no longer able to answer us.\nIt finds no place in the human imagination that methodically explores\nthe future. And, whatever be the force that survives us and presides\nover our existence in the other world, this existence, to presume the\nworst, could be no less great, no less happy than that of to-day. It\nwill have no other career than infinity; and infinity is nothing if it\nbe not felicity. In any case, it seems fairly certain that we spend in\nthis world the only narrow, grudging, obscure and sorrowful moment of\nour destiny.\n\n\n                                   7\n\nWe have said that the peculiar sorrow of the mind is the sorrow of not\nknowing or not understanding, which includes the sorrow of being\npowerless; for he who knows the supreme causes, being no longer\nparalyzed by matter, becomes one with them and acts with them; and he\nwho understands ends by approving, or else the universe would be a\nmistake, which is not possible, an infinite mistake being inconceivable.\nI do not believe that another sorrow of the sheer mind can be imagined.\nThe only one sorrow which, at first thought, might seem admissible\u2014and\nwhich, in any case, could be but ephemeral\u2014would arise from the sight of\nthe pain and misery remaining on the earth which we have left. But this\nsorrow, after all, would be but one aspect and an insignificant phase of\nthe sorrow of being powerless and of not understanding. As for the\nlatter, though it is not only beyond the domain of our intelligence, but\neven at an insuperable distance from our imagination, we may say that it\nwould be intolerable only if it were without hope. But, for that, the\nuniverse would have to abandon any attempt to understand itself, or else\nadmit within itself an object that remained for ever foreign to it.\nEither the mind will not perceive its limits and, consequently, will not\nsuffer from them, or else it will overstep them as it perceives them;\nfor how could the universe have parts eternally condemned to form no\npart of itself and of its knowledge? Hence we cannot understand that the\ntorture of not understanding, supposing it to exist for a moment, should\nnot end by absorption in the state of infinity, which, if it be not\nhappiness as we comprehend it, could be naught but an indifference\nhigher and purer than joy.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER X\n\n                      THE TWO ASPECTS OF INFINITY\n\n\n                                   1\n\nLet us turn our thoughts towards it. The problem goes beyond humanity\nand embraces all things. It is possible, I think, to view infinity under\ntwo distinct aspects. Let us contemplate the first of them. We are\nplunged in a universe that has no limits in space or time. It can\nneither go forward nor go back. It has no origin. It never began, nor\nwill it ever end. The myriads of years behind it are even as the myriads\nwhich it has yet to unroll. From all time it has been at the boundless\ncentre of the days. It could have no aim, for, if it had one, it would\nhave attained it in the infinity of the years that lie behind us;\nbesides, that aim would be outside itself and, if there were anything\noutside it, it would be bounded by that thing and would cease to be\ninfinity. It is not making for anywhere, for it would have arrived\nthere; consequently, all that the worlds within its pale, all that we\nourselves do can have no influence upon it. All that it will do it has\ndone. All that it has not done remains undone because it can never do\nit. If it have no mind, it will never have one. If it have one, that\nmind has been at its climax from all time and will remain there,\nchangeless and immovable. It is as young as it has ever been and as old\nas it will ever be. It has made in the past all the efforts and all the\ntrials which it will make in the future; and, as all the possible\ncombinations have been exhausted since what we cannot even call the\nbeginning, it does not seem as if that which has not taken place in the\neternity that stretches before our birth can happen in the eternity that\nwill follow our death. If it have not become conscious, it will never\nbecome conscious; if it know not what it wishes, it will continue in\nignorance, hopelessly, knowing all or knowing nothing and remaining as\nnear its end as its beginning.\n\nThis is the gloomiest thought to which man can attain. So far, I do not\nthink that its depths have been sufficiently sounded. If it were really\nirrefutable\u2014and some may contend that it is\u2014if it actually contained the\nlast word of the great riddle, it would be almost impossible to live in\nits shadow. Naught save the certainty that our conceptions of time and\nspace are illusive and absurd can lighten the abyss wherein our last\nhope would perish.\n\n\n                                   2\n\nThis universe thus conceived would be, if not intelligible, at least\nadmissible by our reason; but in that universe float billions of worlds\nlimited by space and time. They are born, they die and they are born\nagain. They form part of the whole; and we see, therefore, that parts of\nthat which has neither beginning nor end themselves begin and end. We,\nin fact, know only those parts; and they are of a number so infinite\nthat in our eyes they fill all infinity. That which is going nowhere\nteems with that which appears to be going somewhere. That which has\nalways known what it wants, or will never learn, seems to be eternally\nexperimenting with more or less ill-success. At what goal is it aiming,\nsince it is already there? Everything that we discover in that which\ncould not possibly have an object looks as though it were pursuing one\nwith inconceivable ardour; and the mind that animates what we see in\nthat which should know everything and possess itself seems to know\nnothing and to seek itself without intermission. Thus all that is\napparent to our senses in infinity gainsays that which our reason is\ncompelled to ascribe to it. According as we fathom it, we come to\nunderstand how deep is our want of understanding; and, the more we\nstrive to penetrate the two incomprehensible problems that stand face to\nface, the more they contradict each other.\n\n\n                                   3\n\nWhat will become of us amid all this confusion? Shall we leave the\nfinite wherein we dwell to be swallowed up in this or the other\ninfinite? In other words, shall we end by absorption in the infinite\nwhich our reason conceives, or shall we remain eternally in that which\nour eyes behold, that is to say, in numberless changing and ephemeral\nworlds? Shall we never leave those worlds which seem doomed to die and\nto be reborn eternally, to enter at last into that which, from all\neternity, can neither have been born nor have died and which exists\nwithout either future or past? Shall we one day escape, with all that\nsurrounds us, from this unhappy speculation, to find our way at last\ninto peace, wisdom, changeless and boundless consciousness, or into\nhopeless unconsciousness? Shall we have the fate which our senses\nforetell, or that which our intelligence demands? Or are both senses and\nintelligence only illusions, puny implements, vain weapons of an hour,\nwhich we never intended to examine or defy the universe? If there really\nbe a contradiction, is it wise to accept it and to deem impossible that\nwhich we do not understand, seeing that we understand almost nothing? Is\ntruth not at an immeasurable distance from these inconsistencies which\nappear to us enormous and irreducible and which, doubtless, are of no\nmore importance than the rain that falls upon the sea?\n\n\n                                   4\n\nBut, even to our poor understanding to-day, the discrepancy between the\ninfinity conceived by our reason and that perceived by our senses is\nperhaps more apparent than real. When we say that, in a universe that\nhas existed since all eternity, every experiment, every possible\ncombination has been made; when we declare that there is no chance that\nwhat has not taken place in the uncountable past can take place in the\nuncountable future, our imagination perhaps attributes to the infinity\nof time a preponderance which it cannot possess. In truth, all that\ninfinity contains must be as infinite as the time at its disposal; and\nthe chances, encounters and combinations that lie therein have not been\nexhausted in the eternity that has gone before us any more than they\ncould be in the eternity that will come after us. The infinity of time\nis no vaster than the infinity of the substance of the universe. Events,\nforces, chances, causes, effects, phenomena, fusions, combinations,\ncoincidences, harmonies, unions, possibilities, lives are represented in\nit by innumerous numbers that entirely fill a bottomless and vergeless\nabyss where they have been shaken together from what we call the\nbeginning of the world that had no beginning and where they will be\nstirred up until the end of a world that will have no end. There is,\ntherefore, no climax, no changelessness, no immovability. It is probable\nthat the universe is seeking and finding itself every day, that it has\nnot become entirely conscious and does not yet know what it wants. It is\npossible that its ideal is still veiled by the shadow of its immensity;\nit is also possible that experiments and chances are following one upon\nthe other in unimaginable worlds, compared wherewith all those which we\nsee on starry nights are no more than a pinch of gold-dust in the ocean\ndepths. Lastly, if either be true, it is also true that we ourselves, or\nwhat remains of us\u2014it matters not\u2014will profit one day by those\nexperiments and those chances. That which has not yet happened may\nsuddenly supervene; and the next state, with the supreme wisdom which\nwill recognize and be able to establish that state, is perhaps ready to\narise from the clash of circumstances. It would not be at all\nastonishing if the consciousness of the universe, in the endeavour to\nform itself, had not yet encountered the combination of necessary\nchances and if human thought were actually supporting one of those\ndecisive chances. Here there is a hope. Small as man and his brain may\nappear, they have exactly the value of the most enormous forces that\nthey are able to conceive, since there is neither great nor small in the\nimmeasurable; and, if our body equalled the dimensions of all the worlds\nwhich our eyes can see, it would have exactly the same weight and the\nsame importance as compared with the universe that it has to-day. The\nmind alone perhaps occupies in infinity a space which comparisons do not\nreduce to nothing.\n\n\n                                   5\n\nFor the rest, if everything must be said, at the cost of constantly and\nshamelessly contradicting one\u2019s self in the dark, and to return to the\nfirst supposition, the idea of possible progress, it is extremely\nprobable that this again is one of those childish disorders of our brain\nwhich prevent us from seeing the thing that is. It is quite as probable,\nas we have seen above, that there never was, that there never will be\nany progress, because there could not be a goal. At most there may occur\na few ephemeral combinations which, to our poor eyes, will seem happier\nor more beautiful than others. Even so we think gold more beautiful than\nthe mud in the street, or the flower in a splendid garden happier than\nthe stone at the bottom of a drain; but all this, obviously, is of no\nimportance, has no corresponding reality and proves nothing in\nparticular.\n\nThe more we reflect upon it, the more pronounced is the infirmity of our\nintelligence which cannot succeed in reconciling the idea of progress\nand even the idea of experiment with the supreme idea of infinity.\nAlthough nature has been incessantly and indefatigably repeating herself\nbefore our eyes for thousands of years, reproducing the same trees and\nthe same animals, we cannot contrive to understand why the universe\nindefinitely recommences experiments that have been made billions of\ntimes. It is inevitable that, in the innumerable combinations that have\nbeen and are being made in termless time and boundless space, there have\nbeen and still are millions of planets and consequently millions of\nhuman races exactly similar to our own, side by side with myriads of\nothers more or less different from it. Let us not say to ourselves that\nit would require an unimaginable concourse of circumstances to reproduce\na globe like to our earth in every respect. We must remember that we are\nin the infinite and that this unimaginable concourse must necessarily\ntake place in the innumerousness which we are unable to imagine. Though\nit need billions and billions of cases for two features to coincide,\nthose billions and billions will encumber infinity no more than would a\nsingle case. Place an infinite number of worlds in an infinite number of\ninfinitely diverse circumstances: there will always be an infinite\nnumber for which those circumstances will be alike; if not, we should be\nsetting bounds to our idea of the universe, which would forthwith become\nmore incomprehensible still. From the moment that we insist sufficiently\nupon that thought, we necessarily arrive at these conclusions. If they\nhave not struck us hitherto, it is because we never go to the farthest\npoint of our imagination. Now the farthest point of our imagination is\nbut the beginning of reality and gives us only a small, purely human\nuniverse, which, vast as it may seem, dances in the real universe like\nan apple on the sea. I repeat, if we do not admit that thousands of\nworlds, similar in all points to our own, in spite of the billions of\nadverse chances, have always existed and still exist to-day, we are\nsapping the foundations of the only possible conception of the universe\nor of infinity.\n\n\n                                   6\n\nNow how is it that those millions of exactly similar human races, which\nfrom all time suffer what we have suffered and are still suffering,\nprofit us nothing, that all their experiences and all their schools have\nhad no influence upon our first efforts and that everything has to be\ndone again and begun again incessantly?\n\nAs we see, the two theories balance each other. It is well to acquire by\ndegrees the habit of understanding nothing. There remains to us the\nfaculty of choosing the less gloomy of the two or persuading ourselves\nthat the mists of the other exist only in our brain. As that strange\nvisionary, William Blake, said:\n\n                    \u201cNor is it possible to thought\n                    \u00a0A greater than itself to know.\u201d\n\nLet us add that it is not possible for it to know anything other than\nitself. What we do not know would be enough to create the world afresh;\nand what we do know cannot add one moment to the life of a fly. Who can\ntell but that our chief mistake lies in believing that an intelligence,\nwere it an intelligence thousands of times as great as ours, directs the\nuniverse? It may be a force of quite another nature, a force that\ndiffers as widely from that on which our brain prides itself as\nelectricity, for instance, differs from the wind that blows. That is why\nit is fairly probable that our mind, however powerful it become, will\nalways grope in mystery. If it be certain that everything in us must\nalso be in nature, because everything comes to us from her, if the mind\nand all the logic which it has placed at the culminating point of our\nbeing direct or seem to direct all the actions of our life, it by no\nmeans follows that there is not in the universe a force greatly superior\nto thought, a force having no imaginable relation to the mind, a force\nwhich animates and governs all things according to other laws and of\nwhich nothing is found in us but almost imperceptible traces, even as\nalmost imperceptible traces of thought are all that can be found in\nplants and minerals.\n\nIn any case, there is nothing here to make us lose courage. It is\nnecessarily the human illusion of evil, ugliness, uselessness and\nimpossibility that is to blame. We must wait not for the universe to be\ntransformed, but for our intelligence to expand or to take part in the\nother force; and we must maintain our confidence in a world which knows\nnothing of our conceptions of purpose and progress, because it doubtless\nhas ideas whereof we have no idea, a world, moreover, which could\nscarcely wish itself harm.\n\n\n                                   7\n\n\u201cThese are but vain speculations,\u201d it will be said. \u201cWhat matters, after\nall, the idea which we form of those things which belong to the\nunknowable, seeing that the unknowable, were we a thousand times as\nintelligent as we are, is closed to us for ever and that the idea which\nwe form of it will never have any value?\u201d\n\nThat is true; but there are degrees in our ignorance of the unknowable;\nand each of those degrees marks a triumph of the intelligence. To\nestimate more and more completely the extent of what it does not know is\nall that man\u2019s knowledge can hope for. Our idea of the unknowable was\nand always will be valueless, I admit; but it nevertheless is and will\nremain the most important idea of mankind. All our morality, all that is\nin the highest degree noble and profound in our existence has always\nbeen based on this idea devoid of real value. To-day, as yesterday, even\nthough it be possible to recognize more clearly that it is too\nincomplete and relative ever to have any actual value, it is necessary\nto carry it as high and as far as we can. It alone creates the only\natmosphere wherein the best part of ourselves can live. Yes, it is the\nunknowable into which we shall not enter; but that is no reason for\nsaying to ourselves:\n\n\u201cI am closing all the doors and all the windows; henceforth, I shall\ninterest myself only in things which my everyday intelligence can\ncompass. Those things alone have the right to influence my actions and\nmy thoughts.\u201d\n\nWhere should we arrive at that rate? What things can my intelligence\ncompass? Is there a thing in this world that can be separated from the\ninconceivable? Since there is no means of eliminating that\ninconceivable, it is reasonable and salutary to make the best of it and\ntherefore to imagine it as stupendously vast as we are able. The gravest\nreproach that can be brought against the positive religions and notably\nagainst Christianity is that they have too often, if not in theory, at\nleast in practice, encouraged such a narrowing of the mystery of the\nuniverse. By broadening it, we broaden the space wherein our mind will\nmove. It is for us what we make it: let us then form it of all that we\ncan reach on the horizon of ourselves. As for the mystery itself, we\nshall, of course, never reach it; but we have a much greater chance of\napproaching it by facing it and going whither it draws us than by\nturning our backs upon it and returning to that place where we well know\nthat it no longer is. Not by diminishing our thoughts shall we diminish\nthe distance that separates us from the ultimate truths; but by\nenlarging them as much as possible we are sure of deceiving ourselves as\nlittle as possible. And the loftier our idea of the infinite, the more\nbuoyant and the purer becomes the spiritual atmosphere wherein we live\nand the wider and deeper the horizon against which our thoughts and\nfeelings stand out, the horizon which is all their life and which they\ninspire.\n\n\u201cPerpetually to construct ideas requiring the utmost stretch of our\nfaculties,\u201d wrote Herbert Spencer, \u201cand perpetually to find that such\nideas must be abandoned as futile imaginations, may realize to us more\nfully than any other course, the greatness of that which we vainly\nstrive to grasp.... By continually seeking to know and being continually\nthrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing,\nwe may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom\nand our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as\nthe Unknowable.\u201d\n\n\n                                   8\n\nWhatever the ultimate truth may be, whether we admit the abstract,\nabsolute and perfect infinity\u2014the changeless, immovable infinity which\nhas attained perfection and which knows everything, to which our reason\ntends\u2014or whether we prefer that offered to us by the evidence,\nundeniable here below, of our senses\u2014the infinity which seeks itself,\nwhich is still evolving and not yet established\u2014it behoves us above all\nto foresee in it our fate, which, for that matter, must, in either case,\nend by absorption in that very infinity.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER XI\n\n                      OUR FATE IN THOSE INFINITIES\n\n\n                                   1\n\nThe first infinity, the ideal infinity, corresponds most nearly with the\nrequirements of our reason, which is not a reason for giving it the\npreference. It is impossible for us to foresee what we shall become in\nit, because it seems to exclude any becoming. It therefore but remains\nfor us to address ourselves to the second, to that which we see and\nimagine in time and space. Furthermore, it is possible that it may\nprecede the other. However absolute our conception of the universe, we\nhave seen that we can always admit that what has not taken place in the\neternity before us will happen in the eternity after us and that there\nis nothing save an untold number of chances to prevent the universe from\nacquiring in the end that perfect consciousness which will establish it\nat its zenith.\n\n\n                                   2\n\nBehold us, then, in the infinity of those worlds, the stellar infinity,\nthe infinity of the heavens, which assuredly veils other things from our\neyes, but which cannot be a total illusion. It seems to us to be peopled\nonly with objects\u2014planets, suns, stars, nebul\u00e6, atoms, imponderous\nfluids\u2014which move, unite and separate, repel and attract one another,\nwhich shrink and expand, are for ever shifting and never arrive, which\nmeasure space in that which has no confines and number the hours in that\nwhich has no term. In a word, we are in an infinity that seems to have\nalmost the same character and the same habits as that power in the midst\nof which we breathe and which, upon our earth, we call nature or life.\n\nWhat will be our fate in that infinity? We are asking ourselves no idle\nquestion, even if we should unite with it after losing all\nconsciousness, all notion of the ego, even if we should exist there as\nno more than a little nameless substance\u2014soul or matter, we cannot\ntell\u2014suspended in the equally nameless abyss that replaces time and\nspace. It is not an idle question, for it concerns the history of the\nworlds or of the universe; and this history, far more than that of our\npetty existence, is our own great history, in which perhaps something of\nourselves or something incomparably better and vaster will end by\nmeeting us again some day.\n\n\n                                   3\n\nShall we be unhappy there? It is hardly reassuring when we consider the\nways of nature and remember that we form part of a universe that has not\nyet gathered its wisdom. We have seen, it is true, that good and bad\nfortune exist only in so far as regards our body and that, when we have\nlost the organ of suffering, we shall not meet any of the earthly\nsorrows again. But our anxiety does not end here; and will not our mind,\nlingering upon our erstwhile sorrows, drifting derelict from world to\nworld, unknown to itself in an unknowable that seeks itself hopelessly,\nwill not our mind know here the frightful torture of which we have\nalready spoken and which is doubtless the last that imagination can\ntouch with its wing? Finally, if there were nothing left of our body and\nour mind, there would still remain the matter and the spirit (or, at\nleast, the obviously single force to which we give that double name)\nwhich composed them and whose fate must be no more indifferent to us\nthan our own fate; for, let us repeat, from our death onwards, the\nadventure of the universe becomes our own adventure. Let us not,\ntherefore, say to ourselves:\n\n\u201cWhat can it matter? We shall not be there.\u201d\n\nWe shall be there always, because everything will be there.\n\n\n                                   4\n\nAnd will this everything wherein we shall be included, in a world ever\nseeking itself, continue a prey to new and perpetual and perhaps painful\nexperiences? Since the part that we were was unhappy, why should the\npart that we shall be enjoy a better fortune? Who can assure us that\nyonder unending combinations and endeavours will not be more sorrowful,\nmore stupid and more baneful than those which we are leaving; and how\nshall we explain that these have come about after so many millions of\nothers which ought to have opened the eyes of the genius of infinity? It\nis idle to persuade ourselves, as Hindu wisdom would, that our sorrows\nare but illusions and appearances: it is none the less true that they\nmake us very really unhappy. Has the universe elsewhere a more complete\nconsciousness, a more just and serene understanding than on this earth\nand in the worlds which we discern? And, if it be true that it has\nsomewhere attained that better understanding, why does the mind that\npresides over the destinies of our earth not profit by it? Is no\ncommunication possible between worlds which must have been born of the\nsame idea and which lie in its depths? What would be the mystery of that\nisolation? Are we to believe that the earth marks the farthest stage and\nthe most successful experiment? What, then, can the mind of the universe\nhave done and against what darkness must it have struggled, to have come\nonly to this? But, on the other hand, that darkness and those barriers\nwhich can have come only from itself, since they could have arisen no\nelsewhere, have they the power to stay its progress? Who then could have\nset those insoluble problems to infinity and from what more remote and\nprofound region than itself could they have issued? Some one, after all,\nmust know the answer to them; and, as behind infinity there can be none\nthat is not infinity itself, it is impossible to imagine a malignant\nwill in a will that leaves no point around it which is not wholly\ncovered. Or are the experiments begun in the stars continued\nmechanically, by virtue of the force acquired, without regard to their\nuselessness and their pitiful consequences, according to the custom of\nnature, who knows nothing of our parsimony and squanders the suns in\nspace as she does the seed on earth, knowing that nothing can be lost?\nOr, again, is the whole question of our peace and happiness, like that\nof the fate of the worlds, reduced to knowing whether or not the\ninfinity of endeavours and combinations be equal to that of eternity?\nOr, lastly, to come to what is most likely, is it we who deceive\nourselves, who know nothing, who see nothing and who consider imperfect\nthat which is perhaps faultless, we, who are but an infinitesimal\nfragment of the intelligence which we judge by the aid of the little\nshreds of understanding which it has vouchsafed to lend us?\n\n\n                                   5\n\nHow could we reply, how could our thoughts and glances penetrate the\ninfinite and the invisible, we who do not understand nor even see the\nthing by which we see and which is the source of all our thoughts? In\nfact, as has been very justly observed, man does not see light itself.\nHe sees only matter, or rather the small part of the great worlds which\nhe knows by the name of matter, touched by light. He does not perceive\nthe immense rays that cross the heavens save at the moment when they are\nstopped by an object akin to those with which his eye is familiar upon\nthis earth: were it otherwise, the whole space filled with innumerable\nsuns and boundless forces, instead of being an abyss of absolute\ndarkness, absorbing and extinguishing pencils of light that shoot across\nit from every side, would be but a monstrous and unbearable ocean of\nflashes. And, if we do not see the light, at least we think we know a\nfew of its rays or its reflexions; but we are absolutely ignorant of\nthat which is unquestionably the essential law of the universe, namely,\ngravitation. What is that force, the most powerful of all and the least\nvisible, imperceptible to our senses, without form, without colour,\nwithout temperature, without substance, without savour and without\nvoice, but so awful that it suspends and moves in space all the worlds\nwhich we see and all those which we shall never know? More rapid, more\nsubtle, more incorporeal than thought, it wields such sway over\neverything that exists, from the infinitely great to the infinitely\nsmall, that there is not a grain of sand upon our earth nor a drop of\nblood in our veins but are penetrated, wrought upon and quickened by it\nuntil they act at every moment upon the farthest planet of the last\nsolar system that we struggle to imagine beyond the bounds of our\nimagination.\n\nShakspeare\u2019s famous lines,\n\n          \u201cThere are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,\n           Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,\u201d\n\nhave long since become utterly inadequate. There are no longer more\nthings than our philosophy can dream of or imagine: there is none but\nthings which it cannot dream of, there is nothing but the unimaginable;\nand, if we do not even see the light, which is the one thing that we\nbelieved we saw, it may be said that there is nothing all around us but\nthe invisible.\n\nWe move in the illusion of seeing and knowing that which is strictly\nindispensable to our little lives. As for all the rest, which is\nwell-nigh everything, our organs not only debar us from reaching, seeing\nor feeling it, but even restrain us from suspecting what it is, just as\nthey would prevent us from understanding it, if an intelligence of a\ndifferent order were to bethink itself of revealing or explaining it to\nus. The number and volume of those mysteries is as boundless as the\nuniverse itself. If mankind were one day to draw near to those which\nto-day it deems the greatest and the most inaccessible, such as the\norigin and the aim of life, it would at once behold rising up behind\nthem, like eternal mountains, others quite as great and quite as\nunfathomable; and so on, without end. In relation to that which it would\nhave to know in order to hold the key to this world, it would always\nfind itself at the same point of central ignorance. It would be just the\nsame if we possessed an intelligence several million times greater and\nmore penetrating than ours. All that its miraculously increased power\ncould discover would encounter limits no less impassable than at\npresent. All is boundless in that which has no bounds. We shall be the\neternal prisoners of the universe. It is therefore impossible for us to\nappreciate in any degree whatsoever, in the smallest conceivable\nrespect, the present state of the universe and to say, as long as we are\nmen, whether it follows a straight line or describes an immense circle,\nwhether it is growing wiser or madder, whether it is advancing towards\nthe eternity which has no end or retracing its steps towards that which\nhad no beginning. Our sole privilege within our tiny confines is to\nstruggle towards that which appears to us the best and to remain\nheroically persuaded that no part of what we do within those confines\ncan ever be wholly lost.\n\n\n                                   6\n\nBut let not all these insoluble questions drive us towards fear. From\nthe point of view of our future beyond the grave, it is in no way\nnecessary that we should have an answer to everything. Whether the\nuniverse have already found its consciousness, whether it find it one\nday or seek it everlastingly, it could not exist for the purpose of\nbeing unhappy and of suffering, neither in its entirety, nor in any one\nof its parts; and it matters little if the latter be invisible or\nincommensurable, considering that the smallest is as great as the\ngreatest in what has neither limit nor measure. To torture a point is\nthe same thing as to torture the worlds; and, if it torture the worlds,\nit is its own substance that it tortures. Its very fate, wherein we have\nour part, protects us; for we are simply morsels of infinity. It is\ninseparable from us as we are inseparable from it. Its breath is our\nbreath, its aim is our aim and we bear within us all its mysteries. We\nparticipate in it everywhere. There is naught in us that escapes it;\nthere is naught in it but belongs to us. It extends us, fills us,\ntraverses us on every side. In space and time and in that which, beyond\nspace and time, has as yet no name, we represent it and summarize it\ncompletely, with all its properties and all its future; and, if its\nimmensity terrifies us, we are as terrifying as itself.\n\nIf, therefore, we had to suffer in it, our sufferings could be but\nephemeral; and nothing matters that is not eternal. It is possible,\nalthough somewhat incomprehensible, that parts should err and go astray;\nbut it is impossible that sorrow should be one of its lasting and\nnecessary laws; for it would have brought that law to bear against\nitself. In like manner, the universe is and must be its own law and its\nsole master: if not, the law or the master whom it must obey would be\nthe universe alone; and the centre of a word which we pronounce without\nbeing able to grasp its scope would be simply shifted. If it be unhappy,\nthat means that it wills its own unhappiness; if it will its\nunhappiness, it is mad; and, if it appear to us mad, that means that our\nreason works contrary to everything and to the only laws possible,\nseeing that they are eternal, or, to speak more humbly, that it judges\nwhat it wholly fails to understand.\n\n\n                                   7\n\nEverything, therefore, must end, or perhaps already be, if not in a\nstate of happiness, at least in a state exempt from all suffering, all\nanxiety, all lasting unhappiness; and what, after all, is our happiness\nupon this earth, if it be not the absence of sorrow, anxiety and\nunhappiness?\n\nBut it is childish to talk of happiness and unhappiness where infinity\nis in question. The idea which we entertain of happiness and unhappiness\nis something so special, so human, so fragile that it does not exceed\nour stature and falls to dust as soon as we take it out of its little\nsphere. It proceeds entirely from a few contingencies of our nerves,\nwhich are made to appreciate very slight happenings, but which could as\neasily have felt everything the opposite way and taken pleasure in that\nwhich is now pain.\n\nI do not know if my readers remember the striking passage in which Sir\nWilliam Crookes shows how well-nigh all that we consider as essential\nlaws of nature would be falsified in the eyes of a microscopic man,\nwhile forces of which we are almost wholly ignorant, such as\nsurface-tension, capillarity, the Brownian movements, would\npreponderate. Walking on a cabbage-leaf, for instance, after the dew had\nfallen, and seeing it studded with huge crystal globes, he would infer\nthat water was a solid body which assumes spherical form and rises in\nthe air. At no great distance, he might come to a pond, when he would\nobserve that this same matter, instead of rising upwards, now seems to\nslope downwards in a vast curve from the brink. If he managed, with the\naid of his friends, to throw into the water one of those enormous steel\nbars which we call needles, he would see that it made a sort of concave\ntrough on the surface and floated tranquilly. From these experiments and\na thousand others which he might make, he would naturally deduce\ntheories diametrically opposed to those upon which our entire existence\nis based. It would be the same if the changes were made in the direction\nof time, to take an hypothesis imagined by the philosopher William\nJames:\n\n\u201cSuppose we were able, within the length of a second, to note distinctly\nten thousand events instead of barely ten, as now; if our life were then\ndestined to hold the same number of impressions it might be a thousand\ntimes as short. We should live less than a month, and personally know\nnothing of the change of seasons. If born in winter, we should believe\nin summer as we now believe in the heats of the carboniferous era. The\nmotions of organic beings would be so slow to our senses as to be\ninferred, not seen. The sun would stand still in the sky, the moon be\nalmost free from change and so on. But now reverse the hypothesis, and\nsuppose a being to get only one thousandth part of the sensations that\nwe get in a given time, and consequently to live a thousand times as\nlong. Winters and summers will be to him like quarters of an hour.\nMushrooms and the swifter growing plants will shoot into being so\nrapidly as to appear instantaneous creations; annual shrubs will rise\nand fall from the earth like restlessly boiling water-springs; the\nmotions of animals will be as invisible as are to us the movements of\nbullets and cannon-balls; the sun will scour through the sky like a\nmeteor, leaving a fiery trail behind him, &c. That such imaginary cases\n(barring the super-human longevity) may be realized somewhere in the\nanimal kingdom, it would be rash to deny.\u201d\n\n\n                                   8\n\nWe believe that we see nothing hanging over us but catastrophes, deaths,\ntorments and disasters; we shiver at the mere thought of the great\ninterplanetary spaces, with their intense cold and their awful and\ngloomy solitudes; and we imagine that the worlds that revolve through\nspace are as unhappy as ourselves because they freeze, or disaggregate,\nor clash together, or are consumed in unutterable flames. We infer from\nthis that the genius of the universe is an abominable tyrant, seized\nwith a monstrous madness, delighting only in the torture of itself and\nall that it contains. To millions of stars, each many thousand times\nlarger than our sun, to nebul\u00e6 whose nature and dimensions no figure, no\nword in our language is able to express, we attribute our momentary\nsensibility, the little ephemeral play of our nerves; and we are\nconvinced that life there must be impossible or appalling, because we\nshould feel too hot or too cold. It were much wiser to say to ourselves\nthat it would need but a trifle, a few papill\u00e6 more or less to our skin,\nthe slightest modification of our eyes and ears, to turn the temperature\nof space, its silence and its darkness into a delicious spring-time, an\nincomparable music, a divine light.\n\n\u201cNothing is too wonderful to be true,\u201d said Faraday.\n\nIt were much more reasonable to persuade ourselves that the catastrophes\nour imagination sees there are life itself, the joy and one or other of\nthose immense festivals of mind and matter in which death, thrusting\naside at last our two enemies, time and space, will soon permit us to\ntake part. Each world dissolving, extinguished, crumbling, burnt or\ncolliding with another world and pulverized means the commencement of a\nmagnificent experiment, the dawn of a marvellous hope and perhaps an\nunexpected happiness drawn direct from the inexhaustible unknown. What\nthough they freeze or flame, collect or disperse, pursue or flee one\nanother: mind and matter, no longer united by the same pitiful hazard\nthat joined them in us, must rejoice at all that happens; for all is but\nbirth and rebirth, a departure into an unknown filled with wonderful\npromises and maybe an anticipation of some ineffable event.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XII\n\n                              CONCLUSIONS\n\n\n                                   1\n\nIn order to retain a livelier image of all this and a more exact memory,\nlet us give a last glance at the road which we have travelled. We have\nput aside, for reasons which we have stated, the religious solutions and\ntotal annihilation. Annihilation is physically impossible; the religious\nsolutions occupy a citadel without doors or windows into which human\nreason does not penetrate. Next comes the hypothesis of the survival of\nour ego, released from its body, but retaining a full and unimpaired\nconsciousness of its identity. We have seen that this hypothesis,\nstrictly defined, has very little likelihood and is not greatly to be\ndesired, although, with the surrender of the body, the source of all our\nills, it seems less to be feared than our actual existence. On the other\nhand, as soon as we try to extend or to exalt it, so that it may appear\nless barbarous or less crude, we come back to the hypothesis of a cosmic\nconsciousness or of a modified consciousness, which, together with that\nof survival without any sort of consciousness, closes the field to every\nsupposition and exhausts every forecast of the imagination.\n\nSurvival without any sort of consciousness would be tantamount for us to\nannihilation pure and simple and consequently would be no more dreadful\nthan the latter, that is to say, than a sleep with no dreams and with no\nawakening. The hypothesis is unquestionably more acceptable than that of\nannihilation; but it prejudges very rashly the questions of a cosmic\nconsciousness and of a modified consciousness.\n\n\n                                   2\n\nBefore replying to these, we must choose our universe, for we have the\nchoice. It is a matter of knowing how we propose to look at infinity. Is\nit the moveless, immovable infinity, from all eternity perfect and at\nits zenith, and the purposeless universe that our reason will conceive\nat the farthest point of our thoughts? Do we believe that, at our death,\nthe illusion of movement and progress which we see from the depths of\nthis life will suddenly fade away? If so, it is inevitable that, at our\nlast breath, we shall be absorbed in what, for lack of a better term, we\ncall the cosmic consciousness. Are we, on the other hand, persuaded that\ndeath will reveal to us that the illusion lies not in our senses, but in\nour reason and that, in a world incontestably alive, despite the\neternity preceding our birth, all the experiments have not been made,\nthat is to say that movement and evolution continue and will never and\nnowhere stop? In that case, we must at once accept the hypothesis of a\nmodified or progressive consciousness. The two aspects, after all, are\nequally unintelligible, but defensible; and, although really\nirreconcilable, they agree on one point, namely, that unending pain and\nunredeemed misery are alike excluded from them both for ever.\n\n\n                                   3\n\nThe hypothesis of a modified consciousness does not necessitate the loss\nof the tiny consciousness acquired in our body; but it makes it almost\nnegligible, flings, drowns and dissolves it in infinity. It is of course\nimpossible to support this hypothesis with satisfactory proofs; but it\nis not easy to shatter it like the others. Were it permissible to speak\nof likeness to truth in this connexion, when our only truth is that we\ndo not see the truth, it is the most likely of the interim hypotheses\nand gives a magnificent opening for the most plausible, the most varied\nand the most alluring dreams. Will our ego, our soul, our spirit, or\nwhatever we call that which will survive us in order to continue us as\nwe are, will it find again, on leaving the body, the innumerable lives\nwhich it must have lived since the thousands of years that had no\nbeginning? Will it continue to increase by assimilating all that it\nmeets in infinity during the thousands of years that will have no end?\nWill it linger for a time around our earth, leading, in regions\ninvisible to our eyes, an ever higher and happier existence, as the\ntheosophists and spiritualists contend? Will it move towards other\nplanetary systems, will it emigrate to other worlds whose existence is\nnot even suspected by our senses? Everything seems permissible in this\ngreat dream, save that which might arrest its flight.\n\nNevertheless, so soon as it ventures too far in the ultramondane spaces,\nit crashes into strange obstacles and breaks its wings against them. If\nwe admit that our ego does not remain eternally what it was at the\nmoment of our death, we can no longer imagine that, at a given second,\nit stops, ceases to expand and rise, attains its perfection and its\nfulness, to become no more than a sort of motionless wreck suspended in\neternity and a finished thing in the midst of that which will never\nfinish. That would indeed be the only real death and the more fearful\ninasmuch as it would set a limit to an unparalleled life and\nintelligence, beside which those which we possess here below would not\neven weigh what a drop of water weighs when compared with the ocean, or\na grain of sand when placed in the scales with a mountain-chain. In a\nword, either we believe that our evolution will one day stop, implying\nthereby an incomprehensible end and a sort of inconceivable death; or we\nadmit that it has no limit, whereupon, being infinite, it assumes all\nthe properties of infinity and must needs be lost in infinity and united\nwith it. This, withal, is the latter end of theosophy, spiritualism and\nall the religions in which man, in his ultimate happiness, is absorbed\nby God. And this again is an incomprehensible end, but at least it is\nlife. And then, taking one incomprehensibility with another, after doing\nall that is humanly possible to understand one or the other riddle, let\nus by preference leap into the greatest and therefore the most probable,\nthe one which contains all the others and after which nothing more\nremains. If not, the questions reappear at every stage and the answers\nare always conflicting. And questions and answers lead us to the same\ninevitable abyss. As we shall have to face it sooner or later, why not\nmake for it straightway? All that happens to us in the interval\ninterests us beyond a doubt, but does not detain us, because it is not\neternal.\n\n\n                                   4\n\nBehold us then before the mystery of the cosmic consciousness. Although\nwe are incapable of understanding the act of an infinity that would have\nto fold itself up in order to feel itself and consequently to define\nitself and separate itself from other things, this is not an adequate\nreason for declaring it impossible; for, if we were to reject all the\nrealities and impossibilities that we do not understand, there would be\nnothing left for us to live upon. If this consciousness exist under the\nform which we have conceived, it is evident that we shall be there and\ntake part in it. If there be a consciousness somewhere, or some thing\nthat takes the place of consciousness, we shall be in that consciousness\nor that thing, because we cannot be elsewhere. And, as this\nconsciousness or this thing cannot be unhappy, because it is impossible\nthat infinity should exist for its own unhappiness, neither shall we be\nunhappy when we are in it. Lastly, if the infinity into which we shall\nbe projected have no sort of consciousness nor anything that stands for\nit, the reason will be that consciousness or anything that might replace\nit is not indispensable to eternal happiness.\n\n\n                                   5\n\nThat, I think, is about as much as we may be permitted to declare, for\nthe moment, to the spirit anxiously facing the unfathomable space\nwherein death will shortly hurl it. It can still hope to find there the\nfulfilment of its dreams; it will perhaps find less to dread than it had\nfeared. If it prefer to remain expectant and to accept none of the\nhypotheses which I have expounded to the best of my power and without\nprejudice, it nevertheless seems difficult not to welcome, at least,\nthis great assurance which we find at the bottom of every one of them,\nnamely, that infinity could not be malevolent, seeing that, if it\neternally tortured the least among us, it would be torturing something\nwhich it cannot tear out of itself and that it would therefore be\ntorturing its very self.\n\nI have added nothing to what was already known. I have simply tried to\nseparate what may be true from that which is assuredly not true; for, if\nwe do not know where truth is, we nevertheless learn to know where it is\nnot. And, perhaps, in seeking for that undiscoverable truth, we shall\nhave accustomed our eyes to pierce the terror of the last hour by\nlooking it full in the face. Many things, beyond a doubt, remain to be\nsaid which others will say with greater force and brilliancy. But we\nneed have no hope that any one will utter on this earth the word that\nshall put an end to our uncertainties. It is very probable, on the\ncontrary, that no one in this world, nor perhaps in the next, will\ndiscover the great secret of the universe. And, if we reflect upon this\neven for a moment, it is most fortunate that it should be so. We have\nnot only to resign ourselves to living in the incomprehensible, but to\nrejoice that we cannot go out of it. If there were no more insoluble\nquestions nor impenetrable riddles, infinity would not be infinite; and\nthen we should have for ever to curse the fate that placed us in a\nuniverse proportionate to our intelligence. All that exists would be but\na gateless prison, an irreparable evil and mistake. The unknown and the\nunknowable are necessary and will perhaps always be necessary to our\nhappiness. In any case, I would not wish my worst enemy, were his\nunderstanding a thousandfold loftier and a thousandfold mightier than\nmine, to be condemned eternally to inhabit a world of which he had\nsurprised an essential secret and of which, as a man, he had begun to\ngrasp the least tittle.\n\n\n\n\n                                THE END\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n                              _Printed by_\n                        MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED\n                              _Edinburgh_\n\n                          Transcriber's Notes\n\nObviously typographical errors have been silently corrected. Nothing\nelse has been changed.","title":"Our Eternity","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":34203}