{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_67625/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_67625","id":"gutenberg_67625","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67625","summary":null,"tags":["Belgian essays (French) -- Translations into English","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Death","Nobel Prizes in Literature"],"text":"Methuen\u2019s Shilling Novels\n\n 1 The Mighty Atom Marie Corelli\n 2 Jane Marie Corelli\n 3 Boy Marie Corelli\n 4 Spanish Gold G. A. Birmingham\n 5 The Search Party G. A. Birmingham\n 6 Teresa of Watling Street Arnold Bennett\n 9 The Unofficial Honeymoon Dolf Wyllarde\n 12 The Demon C. N. and A. M. Williamson\n 17 Joseph Frank Danby\n 18 Round the Red Lamp Sir A. Conan Doyle\n 20 Light Freights W. W. Jacobs\n 22 The Long Road John Oxenham\n 71 The Gates of Wrath Arnold Bennett\n 72 Short Cruises W. W. Jacobs\n 81 The Card Arnold Bennett\n 87 Lalage\u2019s Lovers G. A. Birmingham\n 92 White Fang Jack London\n 105 The Wallet of Kai Lung Ernest Bramah\n 108 The Adventures of Dr. Whitty G. A. Birmingham\n 113 Lavender and Old Lace Myrtle Reed\n 115 Old Rose and Silver Myrtle Reed\n 122 The Double Life of Mr. Alfred Burton E. Phillips Oppenheim\n 125 The Regent Arnold Bennett\n 127 Sally Dorothea Conyers\n 129 The Lodger Mrs. Belloc Lowndes\n 135 A Spinner in the Sun Myrtle Reed\n 137 The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu Sax Rohmer\n 139 The Golden Centipede Louise Gerard\n 140 The Love Pirate C. N. and A. M. Williamson\n 142 The Way of these Women E. Phillips Oppenheim\n 143 Sandy Married Dorothea Conyers\n 145 Chance Joseph Conrad\n 148 Flower of the Dusk Myrtle Reed\n 150 The Gentleman Adventurer H. C. Bailey\n 154 The Hyena of Kallu Louise Gerard\n 190 The Happy Hunting Ground Mrs. Alice Perrin\n 191 My Lady of Shadows John Oxenham\n 211 Max Carrados Ernest Bramah\n 212 Under Western Eyes Joseph Conrad\n 213 The Kloof Bride Ernest Glanville\n 215 Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo E. Phillips Oppenheim\n 216 The Wonder of Love E. M. Albanesi\n 217 A Weaver of Dreams Myrtle Reed\n 219 The Family Elinor Mordaunt\n 220 A Heritage of Peril A. W. Marchmont\n 221 The Kinsman Mrs. Sidgwick\n 222 Emmanuel Burden Hilaire Belloc\n 224 Broken Shackles John Oxenham\n 225 A Knight of Spain Marjorie Bowen\n 227 Byeways Robert Hichens\n 228 Gossamer G. A. Birmingham\n 229 My Friend the Chauffeur C. N. and A. M. Williamson\n 230 The Salving of a Derelict Maurice Drake\n 231 Cameos Marie Corelli\n 232 The Happy Valley B. M. Croker\n 233 Victory Joseph Conrad\n\nA Selection only.\n\n\nMethuen\u2019s Shilling Library\n\n 36 De Profundis Oscar Wilde\n 37 Lord Arthur Savile\u2019s Crime Oscar Wilde\n 38 Selected Poems Oscar Wilde\n 39 An Ideal Husband Oscar Wilde\n 40 Intentions Oscar Wilde\n 41 Lady Windermere\u2019s Fan Oscar Wilde\n 42 Charmides and other Poems Oscar Wilde\n 43 Harvest Home E. V. Lucas\n 44 A Little of Everything E. V. Lucas\n 45 Vailima Letters Robert Louis Stevenson\n 46 Hills and the Sea Hilaire Belloc\n 47 The Blue Bird Maurice Maeterlinck\n 50 Charles Dickens G. K. Chesterton\n 53 Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to\n his Son George Horace Lorimer\n 54 The Life of John Ruskin W. G. Collingwood\n 57 Sevastopol and other Stories Leo Tolstoy\n 58 The Lore of the Honey-Bee Tickner Edwardes\n 60 From Midshipman to Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood\n 62 John Boyes, King of the Wa-Kikuyu John Boyes\n 63 Oscar Wilde Arthur Ransome\n 64 The Vicar of Morwenstow S. Baring-Gould\n 65 Old Country Life S. Baring-Gould\n 76 Home Life in France M. Betham-Edwards\n 77 Selected Prose Oscar Wilde\n 78 The Best of Lamb E. V. Lucas\n 80 Selected Letters Robert Louis Stevenson\n 83 Reason and Belief Sir Oliver Lodge\n 85 The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde\n 91 Social Evils and their Remedy Leo Tolstoy\n 93 The Substance of Faith Sir Oliver Lodge\n 94 All Things Considered G. K. Chesterton\n 95 The Mirror of the Sea Joseph Conrad\n 96 A Picked Company Hilaire Belloc\n 116 The Survival of Man Sir Oliver Lodge\n 126 Science from an Easy Chair Sir Ray Lankester\n 141 Variety Lane E. V. Lucas\n 144 A Shilling for my Thoughts G. K. Chesterton\n 146 A Woman of No Importance Oscar Wilde\n 149 A Shepherd\u2019s Life W. H. Hudson\n 193 On Nothing Hilaire Belloc\n 200 Jane Austen and her Times G. E. Mitton\n 214 Select Essays Maurice Maeterlinck\n 223 Two Generations Leo Tolstoy\n 226 On Everything Hilaire Belloc\n 234 Records and Reminiscences Sir Francis Burnand\n\nA Selection only.\n\n\n\n\nGLEANINGS FROM MAETERLINCK\n\n\n\n\nBY THE SAME AUTHOR\n\n\n THE BLUE BIRD\n OUR ETERNITY\n DEATH\n MARY MAGDALENE\n THE UNKNOWN GUEST\n THE WRACK OF THE STORM\n THE TREASURE OF THE HUMBLE\n WISDOM AND DESTINY\n THE LIFE OF THE BEE\n THE BURIED TEMPLE\n THE DOUBLE GARDEN\n LIFE AND FLOWERS\n AGLAVAINE AND SELYSETTE\n MONNA VANNA\n JOYZELLE\n SISTER BEATRICE; AND ARIANE AND BARBE BLEUE\n MY DOG\n OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS\n HOURS OF GLADNESS\n\n\n\n\n GLEANINGS FROM\n MAETERLINCK\n\n TRANSLATED AND COMPILED BY\n ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS\n\n METHUEN & CO. LTD.\n 36 ESSEX STREET W.C.\n LONDON\n\n _First Published in 1917_\n\n _All rights reserved_\n\n _Copyright U.S.A. by Dodd, Mead & Co. Inc.\n 1913 to 1917._\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nIn the first act of _The Blue Bird_, the fairy B\u00e9rylune sends Mytyl\nand Tyltyl in search of happiness. Shepherded and protected by Light,\nthey explore the Past and the Future, the Palace of Night, the Kingdoms\nof the Dead and of the Unborn. At one moment they find themselves in\na graveyard; and Mytyl grows fearful at her first contact with the\ngreat mystery of Death. Yet the graveyard with its wooden crosses and\ngrass-covered mounds is moonlit and tranquil; and of a sudden, as the\nrevealing diamond is turned in Tyltyl\u2019s fingers, even the tombstones\nand \u2018all the grand investiture of death\u2019 disappear, to be replaced by\nluxuriant, swaying clusters of Madonna lilies.\n\n\u201cWhere are the dead?\u201d asks Mytyl, in amazement, searching in the grass\nfor traces of even one tombstone.\n\nHer brother also looks:\n\n\u201cThere are no dead,\u201d is his reply.\n\nAny one who was present on the first night of the play at the Haymarket\nTheatre, in 1909, will not easily forget the audience\u2019s little gasp of\ndelighted surprise. Yet the two lines of dialogue were more than a stage\neffect, more than an aspect of mysticism; almost they may be regarded\nas the essence of Maeterlinck\u2019s later work. Since the _Life of the\nBee_, since the earlier essays and such pure drama as _Monna Vanna_,\n_The Blind_ and _Pell\u00e9as and M\u00e9lisande_, his mind seems to have been\nbrooding more and more on the part which Death, the great twin mystery\nof the world, plays in the life of man and of the race. In _The Death of\nTintagiles_ there is a barred and studded door, through which, for all\nits studs and bars, there steals a miasma of dread. And, when the door\nopens, it is to release a spirit of annihilation which the concerted\nefforts of Tintagiles\u2019 sisters can neither restrain nor force back.\n\nIn _The Blue Bird_ we are shown that a man cannot die so long as\nhe dwells in the memory of those who loved him. In his latest work\nMaeterlinck gives to the dead an objective existence. In part each\ngeneration survives its own death and transmits to its successors the\nheritage of aspiration and achievement, of knowledge and passion, which\nit has received from its predecessors; in greater part the objective\nexistence is founded on new modes of communication, a new study of\npsychic relationship and a new belief in a subliminal state.\n\nI have collected in the present volume a selection of essays illustrating\nthe later stages of Maeterlinck\u2019s quest. Never in history have so\nmany women and men, stricken suddenly and without warning, sought so\nunanimously and painfully to penetrate the veil wherein the world\u2019s\noldest mystery is shrouded. The finality of death was a challenge flung\ndown and eagerly taken up by all whom the loss of son or brother had\ntaken unawares. To Maeterlinck the war has brought in great part the\nannihilation of a people, his own people; it has inspired him to a\nsplendour of indignation and pity; but, more gravely and urgently than\never before, it has demanded of him an answer to the question of the\nSadducees, who \u201csay there is no resurrection.\u201d\n\nReaders wishing to study the complete series of essays from which the\nsixteen in this volume are taken will find them in the three books\nentitled, _Our Eternity_, _The Unknown Guest_ and _The Wrack of the\nStorm_, all of which are issued by the present publishers.\n\n ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS\n\nCHELSEA, _9 April 1917_\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n PAGE\n\n INTRODUCTION vii\n\n I. OUR INJUSTICE TO DEATH 13\n\n II. ANNIHILATION 31\n\n III. COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE DEAD 37\n\n IV. OUR ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS 63\n\n V. THE TWO ASPECTS OF INFINITY 75\n\n VI. OUR FATE IN THOSE INFINITIES 89\n\n VII. CONCLUSIONS 105\n\n VIII. THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE 115\n\n IX. HEROISM 181\n\n X. ON RE-READING THUCYDIDES 193\n\n XI. THE DEAD DO NOT DIE 205\n\n XII. IN MEMORIAM 213\n\n XIII. THE LIFE OF THE DEAD 217\n\n XIV. THE WAR AND THE PROPHETS 225\n\n XV. THE WILL OF EARTH 237\n\n XVI. WHEN THE WAR IS OVER 247\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nOUR INJUSTICE TO DEATH\n\n\n1\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\nto me 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\n2\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 upon 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.\nAll the forces which might avail to face death we exhaust in averting\nour will from it. We deliver it into the groping hands of instinct and\nwe grant 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\nof ideas\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 arrive.\nWe do not begin to think of death until we have no longer the strength,\nI will 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 to\nspeak, retouched it in any way. Though we may no longer believe in the\ntortures of the damned, all the vital cells of the most sceptical among\nus are still steeped in the appalling mystery of the Hebrew Sheol, the\npagan Hades, or the Christian Hell. Though it may no longer be lighted\nby very definite flames, the gulf still opens at the end of life and, if\nless known, is all the more formidable. And therefore, when the impending\nhour strikes to which we dared not raise our eyes, everything fails us\nat the same time. Those two or three uncertain ideas whereon, without\nexamining them, we had meant to lean give way like rushes beneath the\nweight of the last minutes. In vain we seek a refuge among reflections\nwhich are illusive or are strange to us and which do not know the roads\nto our heart. No one awaits us on the last shore where all is unprepared,\nwhere naught remains afoot save terror.\n\n\n3\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 the\nlast agony would not prevail and from which the phantom-stricken eyes\nwould draw fresh comfort. Instead of the terrible prayer of the dying,\nwhich is the prayer of the depths, he would say his own prayer, that\nof the peaks of his existence, where would be gathered, like angels of\npeace, 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\n4\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\nthe horrors of matter and stripped of the terrors of the imagination.\nLet us first get rid of all that goes before and does not belong to it.\nThus we impute to it the tortures of the last illness; and that is not\njust. Illnesses have nothing in common with that which ends them. They\nform part 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 to\nthem.\n\n\n5\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 has\never felt.\n\nIt is doubly unjust to impute the torments of that second to death.\nWe shall see presently in what manner a man of to-day, if he would\nremain faithful to his ideas, should picture to himself the unknown\ninto which death flings us. Let us confine ourselves here to the last\nstruggle. As science progresses, it prolongs the agony which is the most\ndreadful moment and the sharpest peak of human pain and horror, for the\nwatchers, at least; for very often the consciousness of him whom death,\nin Bossuet\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 prolong\nto the uttermost even the cruellest pangs of the most hopeless agony.\nWho has not, at the bedside of a dying man, twenty times wished and not\nonce dared to throw himself at their feet and implore them to show mercy?\nThey are filled with so great a certainty and the duty which they obey\nleaves so little room for the least doubt that pity and reason, blinded\nby tears, curb their revolt and recoil before a law which all recognize\nand revere as the highest law of man\u2019s conscience.\n\n\n6\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 from\nthe incomparably more dreadful sufferings which the mysteries of the\nhereafter reserve for men; and of two evils, to avoid that which they\nknow to be imaginary, they choose the only real one. Besides, in thus\npostponing the end of a torture, which, as old Seneca says, is the best\npart of that torture, they are but yielding to the unanimous error which\nmakes its enclosing circle more iron-bound every day: the prolongation\nof the agony increasing the horror of death; and the horror of death\ndemanding the prolongation of the agony.\n\n\n7\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\nof death. 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 life,\nbut much rather, as the Romans called it, \u201can extended death,\u201d those\nhundred thousand useless torments will not have been in vain. A single\nhour snatched from death outweighs a whole existence of tortures.\n\nHere we have, face to face, two values that cannot be compared; and, if\nwe mean to weigh them in the same balance, we must heap the scale which\nwe see 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\n8\n\nSwollen by so many adventitious horrors, the horror of death becomes such\nthat, without reasoning, we accept the doctors\u2019 reasons. And yet there\nis one point on which they are beginning to yield and to agree. They are\nslowly consenting, when there is no hope left, if not to deaden, at least\nto dull the last agonies. Formerly, none of them would have dared to do\nso; and, even to-day, many of them hesitate and, like misers, measure\nout niggardly drops of the clemency and peace which they ought to lavish\nand which they grudge in their dread of weakening the last resistance,\nthat is to say, the most useless and painful quiverings of reluctant life\nrefusing to give place to on-coming 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 from every side at the approach of\ndeath, but not at its call; and, though they gather round it, they did\nnot come with it. Do you accuse sleep of the fatigue that oppresses you\nif you do not yield to it? All those strugglings, those waitings, those\ntossings, those tragic cursings are on the side of the slope to which\nwe cling and not on the other side. They are, indeed, accidental and\ntemporary and emanate only from our ignorance. All our knowledge merely\nhelps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing.\nA day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer\nhesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act\nwith certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour,\nknowing that it has reached its term, even as it withdraws silently every\nevening, knowing that its task is done. Once the doctor and the sick\nman have learnt what they have to learn, there will be no physical nor\nmetaphysical reason why the advent of death should not be as salutary as\nthat of sleep. Perhaps even, as there will be nothing else to take into\nconsideration, it will be possible to surround death with profounder\necstasies and fairer dreams. In any case and from this day, with death\nonce acquitted of that which goes before, it will be easier to look upon\nit without fear and to lighten that which comes after.\n\n\n9\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 that which is made to disappear? If we\ncannot think without horror of what befalls the beloved in the grave, is\nit death or we that placed him there? Because death carries the spirit\nto some place unknown, shall we reproach it with our bestowal of the\nbody which it leaves with us? Death descends into our midst to change\nthe place of a life or change its form: let us judge it by what it does\nand not by what we do before it comes and after it is gone. For it is\nalready far away when we begin the frightful work which we try hard to\nprolong to the very utmost, as though we were persuaded that it is our\nonly security against forgetfulness. I am well aware that, from any\nother than the human point of view, this proceeding is very innocent;\nand that, looked upon from a sufficient height, decomposing flesh is no\nmore repulsive than a fading flower or a crumbling stone. But, when all\nis said, it offends our senses, shocks our memory, daunts our courage,\nwhereas it would be so easy for us to avoid the foul ordeal. Purified\nby fire, the remembrance lives enthroned as a beautiful idea; and death\nis naught but an immortal birth cradled in flames. This has been well\nunderstood by the wisest and happiest nations in history. What happens\nin our graves poisons our thoughts together with our bodies. The figure\nof death, in the imagination of men, depends before all upon the form\nof burial; and the funeral rites govern not only the fate of those who\ndepart but also the happiness of those who stay, for they raise in the\nultimate background of life the great image upon which men\u2019s eyes linger\nin consolation or despair.\n\n\n10\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 them\nbrings us a proof before which an honest intelligence can bow. Nor would\nit suffice if that intelligence were able to bow; for man lawfully to\nbelieve and thus to limit his endless seeking, the proof would need to\nbe irresistible. The God offered to us by the best and strongest of them\nhas given us our reason to employ loyally and fully, that is to say, to\ntry to attain, before all and in all things, that which appears to be the\ntruth. Can He exact that we should accept, in spite of it, a belief whose\ndoubtfulness, from the human point of view, is not denied by its wisest\nand most ardent defenders? He only offers us a very uncertain story,\nwhich, even if scientifically substantiated, would be merely a beautiful\nlesson in morality and which is buttressed by prophecies and miracles\nno less doubtful. Must we here call to mind that Pascal, to defend that\ncreed which was already tottering at a time when it seemed at its zenith,\nvainly attempted a demonstration the mere aspect of which would be enough\nto destroy the last remnant of faith in a wavering mind? Better than any\nother, he knew the stock proofs of the theologians, for they had been\nthe sole study of the last years of his life. If but one of these proofs\ncould have resisted examination, his genius, one of the three or four\nmost profound and lucid geniuses ever known to mankind, must have given\nit an irresistible force. But he does not linger over these arguments,\nwhose weakness he feels too well; he pushes them scornfully aside, he\nglories and, in a manner, rejoices in their 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\na reason? 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, for\nwhich 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\nit is his business to prove. And, let us observe in passing, it is a\nfatal thing to replace one mystery by another and lesser mystery. In\nthe hierarchy of the unknown, mankind always ascends from the smaller\nto the greater. On the other hand, to descend from the greater to the\nsmaller is to relapse into the condition of primitive man, who carries\nhis barbarism 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 exist.\nWe are unable, by human arguments, to prove that He exists or that He\ndoes 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 one\nor 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 eternity\nof 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, etc.\nThat in itself will make you believe and will reduce you to the level of\nthe beasts.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018But 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 having\nblindly followed a faith that does not force itself irresistibly upon\nthe intelligence which He gave us; if He chastises us for not having\nmade, in the presence of the great enigma with which He confronts us,\na choice which is rejected by that best and most divine part which He\nhas implanted in us, we have nothing left to reply: we are the dupes of\na cruel and incomprehensible sport, we are the victims of a terrible\nsnare and an immense injustice; and, whatever the torments wherewith that\ninjustice may load us, they will be less intolerable than the eternal\npresence of its Author.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nANNIHILATION\n\n\n1\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 there;\nwe know only what is not there. It is the vaster by all that we have\nlearned to know nothing of. While waiting for a scientific certainty to\nbreak through its darkness\u2014for man has the right to hope for that which\nhe does not yet conceive\u2014the only point that interests us, because it is\nsituated in the little circle which our actual intelligence traces in the\nthickest blackness of the night, is to know whether the unknown for which\nwe 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\n2\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 no\nplace where anything ceases to be. The brightness of a star extinguished\nmillions of years ago still wanders in the ether where our eyes will\nperhaps behold it this very night, pursuing its endless road. It is the\nsame with all that we see, as with all that we do not see. To be able\nto do away with a thing, that is to say, to fling it into nothingness,\nnothingness would have to exist; and, if it exists, under whatever form,\nit is no longer nothingness. As soon as we try to analyse it, to define\nit, or to understand it, thoughts and expressions fail us, or create that\nwhich they are struggling to deny. It is as contrary to the nature of our\nreason and probably of all imaginable reason to conceive nothingness as\nto conceive limits to infinity. Nothingness, besides, is but a negative\ninfinity, a sort of infinity of darkness opposed to that which our\nintelligence strives to illumine, or rather it is but a child-name or\nnickname which our mind has bestowed upon that which it has not attempted\nto embrace, for we call nothingness all that escapes our senses or our\nreason and exists without our knowledge.\n\n\n3\n\nBut, it will perhaps be said, though the annihilation of every world\nand every 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 by\nwords. We can no more conceive death than we can conceive nothingness.\nWe use the word death to cover those fragments of nothingness which we\nbelieve that we understand; but, on closer examination, we are bound to\nrecognize that our idea of death is much too puerile to contain the least\ntruth. It reaches no higher than our own bodies and cannot measure the\ndestinies of the universe. We give the name of death to anything that has\na life a little different from ours. Even so do we act towards a world\nthat appears to us motionless and frozen, the moon, for instance, because\nwe are persuaded that any form of existence, animal or vegetable, is\nextinguished upon it for ever. But it is now some years since we learned\nthat the most inert matter, to outward seeming, is animated by movements\nso powerful and furious that all animal or vegetable life is no more than\nsleep and immobility by the side of the swirling eddies and immeasurable\nenergy locked 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 immobility,\nwould, after all, be but a form of life stable and silent at last. All\nthat dies falls into life; and all that is born is of the same age as\nthat which dies. If death carried us to nothingness, did birth then draw\nus out of that same nothingness? Why should the second be more impossible\nthan the first? The higher human thought rises and the wider it expands,\nthe less comprehensible do nothingness and death become. In any case\u2014and\nthis is what matters here\u2014if nothingness were possible, since it could\nnot be anything whatever, it could not be dreadful.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nCOMMUNICATIONS WITH THE DEAD\n\n\n1\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[2] in a state of ecstasy, or rather\n\u201ctrance,\u201d to employ the vocabulary of the new science. This condition\nis not one of hypnotic sleep, nor does it seem to be an hysterical\nmanifestation; it is often associated, as in the case of the medium\nMrs. Piper, with perfect health and complete intellectual and physical\nbalance. It is rather the more or less voluntary emergence of a second or\nsubliminal personality or consciousness of the medium; or, if we admit\nthe spiritualistic hypothesis, his occupation, his \u201cpsychic invasion,\u201d as\nMyers calls it, by forces from another world. In the \u201centranced\u201d subject,\nthe normal consciousness and personality are entirely done away with;\nand he replies \u201cautomatically,\u201d sometimes by word of mouth, more often\nin writing, to the questions put to him. It has happened that he speaks\nand writes simultaneously, his voice being occupied by one spirit and\nhis hand by another, who thus carry on two independent conversations.\nMore rarely, the voice and the two hands are \u201cpossessed\u201d at one and the\nsame time; and we receive three different communications. Obviously,\nmanifestations of this sort lend themselves, to frauds and impostures of\nall kinds; and the distrust aroused is at first invincible. But there\nare some that make their appearance encompassed with such guarantees of\ngood faith and sincerity, so often, so long and so rigorously checked by\nscientific men of unimpeachable character and authority and of originally\ninflexible scepticism, that it becomes difficult to maintain a suspicion\nat the finish.[3] Unfortunately, I am not able to enter here into the\ndetails of some of these purely scientific sittings, those for instance\nof Mrs. Piper, the famous medium with whom F. W. H. Myers, Richard\nHodgson, Professor Newbold, of the University of Pennsylvania, Sir Oliver\nLodge and William James worked during a number of years. On the other\nhand, it is precisely the accumulation and coincidences of these abnormal\ndetails which gradually produce and confirm the conviction that we are in\nthe presence 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_; and, above all, to the\ntwenty-five bulky volumes of the _Proceedings_ of the S.P.R., notably to\nthe report and comments of William James on the Piper-Hodgson sittings\nin Vol. XXIII. and to Vol. XIII., where Hodgson examines the facts and\narguments that may be adduced for or against the agency of the dead; and,\nlastly, to Myers\u2019 great work, _Human Personality and its Survival after\nBodily Death_.\n\n\n2\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 tenant,\nwhile graver and more illustrious personages would take possession of\nStainton Moses, a clergyman. Each of these spirits retains a sharply\ndefined character, which is consistent throughout and which, moreover,\nfor the most part bears no relation to that of the medium. Amongst these,\nPhinuit and Nelly are undoubtedly the most attractive, the most original,\nthe most living, the most active and, above all, the most talkative.\nThey centralize the communications after a fashion; they come and go\nofficiously; and, should any one of those present wish to be brought\ninto touch with the soul of a deceased relative or friend, they fly in\nsearch of it, find it amid the invisible throng, usher it in, announce\nits presence, speak in its name, transmit and, so to speak, translate\nthe questions and replies; for it seems that it is very difficult for the\ndead to communicate with the living and that they need special aptitudes\nand a concurrence of extraordinary circumstances. We will not yet examine\nwhat they have to reveal to us; but to see them thus fluttering to and\nfro amid the multitude of their discarnate brothers and sisters gives\nus a first impression of the next world which is none too reassuring;\nand we say to ourselves that the dead of to-day are strangely like those\nwhom Ulysses conjured up out of the Cimmerian darkness three thousand\nyears ago: pale and empty shades, bewildered, incoherent, puerile and\nterror-stricken, like unto dreams, more numerous than the leaves that\nfall in autumn and, like them, trembling in the unknown winds from the\nvast plains of the other world. They no longer even have enough life to\nbe unhappy; and they seem to drag out, we know not where, a precarious\nand idle existence, to wander aimlessly, to hover round us, slumbering,\nor chattering among one another of the minor matters of this world; and,\nwhen a gap is made in their darkness, to hasten from all sides, like\nflocks of famished birds, hungering for light and the sound of a human\nvoice. And, in spite of ourselves, we think of the _Odyssey_ and the\nsinister words of the shade of Achilles as it issued from Erebus:\n\n\u201cDo not, O illustrious Ulysses, speak to me of death; I would wish, being\non earth, to serve for hire with another man of no estate, who had not\nmuch livelihood, rather than rule over all the departed dead.\u201d\n\n\n3\n\nWhat have these latterday 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, above\nall, jealous to establish their identity, to prove that they still exist,\nthat they recognize us, that they know everything; and, to convince us\nof this, they enter into the most minute and forgotten details with\nextraordinary precision, perspicacity and prolixity. They are also\nextremely clever at unravelling the intricate family connections of the\nperson actually questioning them, of any of the sitters, or even of a\nstranger entering the room. They recall this one\u2019s little infirmities,\nthat one\u2019s maladies, the eccentricities or personal tendencies of a\nthird. They have cognizance of events taking place at a distance:\nthey see, 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\n4\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. Thompson\nand obliged the departed to speak by their mouths, are now themselves\namong the shades, on the other side of the curtain of darkness. They\nat least knew exactly what to do in order to reach us, what to reveal\nin order to allay the uneasy curiosity of men. Myers in particular,\nthe most ardent, the most convinced, the most impatient of the veil\nthat parted him from the eternal realities, formally promised those who\nwere continuing his work that he would make every imaginable effort out\nyonder, in the unknown, to come to their aid in a decisive fashion.\nHe kept his word. A month after his death, when Sir Oliver Lodge was\nquestioning Mrs. Thompson in her trance, Nelly, the medium\u2019s familiar\nspirit, suddenly declared that she had seen Myers, that he was not yet\nfully awake, but that he hoped to come, at nine o\u2019clock in the evening,\nand \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\nfew words he spoke; it was really he; he had not changed, Faithful to\nhis idiosyncracy when on earth, he at once insisted on the necessity\nfor taking notes. But he seemed dazed. They spoke to him of the Society\nfor Psychical Research, the sole interest of his life. He had lost all\nrecollection of it. Then memory gradually revived; and there followed\na quantity 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 rest,\nthat there was not a place in England where they did not ask for him:\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\nmediums: \u201cthey were translating like a schoolboy does his first lines\nof Virgil.\u201d[4] 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, they\nare most probably but reminiscences of a secondary personality of the\nmedium or unconscious suggestions of the questioner or the sitters.\n\n\n5\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\na hundred and twenty pages to it in Vol. XXIII. of the _Proceedings_.\nDr. Hodgson, in his lifetime, was secretary of the American branch of\nthe S.P.R., of which William James was vice-president. For many years,\nhe devoted himself to Mrs. Piper the medium, working with her twice a\nweek and thus accumulating an enormous mass of documents on the subject\nof posthumous 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\nfor the emotion experienced on thus finding yourself in the presence of\nan invisible but living being, who not only answers your questions, but\nanticipates your thoughts, understands before you have finished speaking,\ngrasps an allusion and caps it with another allusion, grave or smiling.\nThe life of the dead man, which, during a strange hour, had, so to speak,\nsurrounded and penetrated you, seems to be extinguished for the second\ntime. Stenography, which is devoid of all emotion, no doubt supplies the\nbest elements for arriving at a logical conclusion; but it is not certain\nthat here, as in many other cases where the unknown predominates, logic\nis 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 be\ndetermined by pure logic. Certain minute incidents, I thought, ought to\nmake for spirit-return or against it in a \u2018crucial\u2019 way. But watching my\nmind work as it goes over the data, convinces me that exact logic plays\nonly a preparatory part in shaping our conclusions here; and that the\ndecisive vote, if there be one, has to be cast by what I may call one\u2019s\ngeneral sense of dramatic probability, which sense ebbs and flows from\none hypothesis to another\u2014it does so in the present writer at least\u2014in\na rather illogical manner. If one sticks to the detail, one may draw an\nanti-spiritist conclusion; if one thinks more of what the whole mass may\nsignify, one may well incline to spiritist interpretations.\u201d[5]\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 dream-life,\neven equipped with \u2018telepathic\u2019 powers, accounts for all the results\nfound. But if asked whether the will to communicate be Hodgson\u2019s, or be\nsome mere spirit-counterfeit of Hodgson, I remain uncertain and await\nmore facts, facts which may not point clearly to a conclusion for fifty\nor a hundred years.\u201d[6]\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 deliberately\nthat the spirits \u201chave a finger in the pie.\u201d These hesitations on the\npart of a man who has revolutionized our psychological ideas and who\npossessed a brain as wonderfully organized and well-balanced as that\nof our own Taine, for instance, are very significant. As a doctor\nof medicine and a professor of philosophy, sceptical by nature and\nscrupulously faithful to experimental methods, he was thrice qualified to\nconduct investigations of this kind to a successful conclusion. It is not\na question of allowing ourselves, in our turn, to be unduly influenced\nby those hesitations; but, in any case, they show that the problem is\na serious one, the gravest, perhaps, if the facts were beyond dispute,\nwhich we have had to solve since the coming of Christ; and that we must\nnot expect to dismiss it with a shrug or a laugh.\n\n\n6\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\nthe most striking; it should rather be classed, were it not for the\nimportance of the sitters concerned, among the minor successes of\nthe Piper series. Hodgson, according to the invariable custom of the\nspirits, is, first of all, bent on making himself recognized; and the\ninevitable, 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 be replying are brought out in their most circumstantial,\ntheir most insignificant and also their most private details with\nastonishing eagerness, precision and vivacity. And observe that, for all\nthese details, which he discloses with such extraordinary facility, the\ndead man answering seeks by preference, one would say, the most hidden\nand forgotten treasures of the living listener\u2019s memory. He spares\nhim nothing; 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\nthe financial 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\nlifetime, 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 extreme\ndifficulty which he finds in conveying his thought through the alien\norganism 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 us\nabout the other life?\u201d\u2014the dead man becomes shifty and does nothing but\nseek 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 features\nof one of these sittings which may be regarded as typical. I will add,\nin order to give an idea of the farthest point which it is possible to\nattain, the following instance of an experiment made by Sir Oliver Lodge\nand related by him. He handed Mrs. Piper, in her \u201ctrance,\u201d a gold watch\nwhich had just been sent him by one of his uncles and which belonged\nto that uncle\u2019s twin brother, who had died twenty years before. When\nthe 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 were\nput 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 accurately 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\nin which the supposed limits of the most far-reaching telepathy are so\nmanifestly exceeded are fairly uncommon.\n\n\n7\n\nNow what are we to think of all this? Must we, with Myers, Newbold,\nHyslop, Hodgson and 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 theory and the spiritualistic\ntheory? I do not think so. I have no prejudices\u2014what were the use of\nhaving any, in these mysteries?\u2014no reluctance to admit the survival\nand the intervention of the dead; but it is wise and necessary, before\nleaving the terrestrial plane, to exhaust all the suppositions, all the\nexplanations there to be discovered. We have to make our choice between\ntwo manifestations of the unknown, two miracles, if you prefer, whereof\none is situated in the world which we inhabit and the other in a region\nwhich, rightly or wrongly, we believe to be separated from us by nameless\nspaces which no human being, alive or dead, has crossed to this day. It\nis natural, therefore, that we should stay in our own world, as long as\nit gives us a foothold, as long as we are not pitilessly expelled from\nit by a series of irresistible and irrefutable facts issuing from the\nadjoining abyss. The survival of a spirit is no more improbable than the\nprodigious faculties which we are obliged to attribute to the mediums\nif we deny them to the dead; but the existence of the medium, contrary\nto that of the spirit, is unquestionable; and therefore it is for the\nspirit, or for those who make use of its name, first to prove that it\nexists.\n\nDo the extraordinary phenomena of which we know\u2014transmission of\nthought from one subconscious mind to another, perception of events\nat a distance, 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 any series of communications or revelations\nsimilar to those of the great spiritualistic mediums, Mrs. Piper, Mrs.\nThompson and Stainton Moses, nor anything that can compare with them\nfor continuity or lucidity. But, though the quality of the phenomena\nwill not bear comparison, it cannot be denied that their inner nature is\nidentical. Our logical inference is that the real cause lies not in the\nsource of inspiration, but in the personal value, the sensitiveness, the\npower of the medium. For the rest, Mr. J. G. Piddington, who devoted an\nexceedingly detailed study to Mrs. Thompson, plainly perceived in her,\nwhen she was not \u201centranced\u201d and when there were no spirits whatever in\nquestion, manifestations inferior, it is true, but absolutely analogous\nto those involving the dead.[7] These mediums are pleased, in all good\nfaith and probably unconsciously, to give to their subliminal faculties,\nto their secondary personalities, or to accept, on their behalf, names\nwhich were borne by beings who have crossed to the farther side of the\nmystery: this is a matter of vocabulary or nomenclature which neither\nlessens nor increases the intrinsic significance of the facts. Well, in\nexamining these facts, however strange and really unparalleled some of\nthem may be, I never find one which proceeds frankly from this world\nor which comes indisputably from the other. They are, if you wish,\nphenomenal border incidents; but it cannot be said that the border has\nbeen violated. In the story of Sir Oliver Lodge\u2019s watch, for instance,\nwhich is one of the most characteristic and one which carries us farther\nthan most, we must attribute to the medium faculties that have ceased to\nbe human. She must have put herself in touch, whether by perception of\nevents at a distance, or by transmission of thought from one subconscious\nmind to another, or again by subliminal clairvoyance, with the two\nsurviving brothers of the deceased owner of the watch; and, in the\npast subconsciousness of those two brothers, distant from each other,\nshe had to rediscover a host of circumstances which they themselves had\nforgotten and which lay hidden beneath the heaped-up dust and darkness of\nsix-and-sixty years. It is certain that a phenomenon of this kind passes\nthe bounds of the imagination and that we should refuse to credit it if,\nfirst of all, the experiment had not been controlled and certified by a\nman of the standing of Sir Oliver Lodge, and if, moreover, it did not\nform one of a group of equally significant facts which clearly show that\nwe are not here concerned with an absolutely unique miracle or with an\nunhoped-for and unprecedented concourse of coincidences. It is simply\na matter of distant perception, subliminal clairvoyance and telepathy\nraised to the highest power; and these three manifestations of the\nunexplored depths of man are to-day recognized and classified by science,\nwhich is not saying that they are explained: that is another question.\nWhen, in connection with electricity, we use such terms as positive,\nnegative, induction, potential and resistance, we are also applying\nconventional words to facts and phenomena of whose inward essence we are\nutterly ignorant; and we must needs be content with these, pending any\nbetter. There is, I insist, between these extraordinary manifestations\nand those given to us by a medium who is not speaking in the name of the\ndead, but a difference of the greater and the lesser, a difference of\nextent or degree and in no wise a difference in kind.\n\n\n8\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.[8] In a course of excellent\nsittings with Mrs. Piper the medium, he communicated with various dead\nfriends who reminded him of a large number of common memories. The\nmedium, the spirits and he himself seemed in a wonderfully accommodating\nmood; and the revelations were plentiful, exact and easy. In this\nextremely favourable atmosphere, he was placed in communication with the\nsoul of one of his best friends, who had died a year before and whom\nhe simply calls \u201cA.\u201d This A, whom he had known more intimately than\nmost of the spirits with whom he had communicated previously, behaved\nquite differently 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 all\nthe communications of these discarnate minds are only suggestions from\nmy subconscious self, it is unintelligible that, after having obtained\nsatisfactory results from others whom I had known far less intimately\nthan A and with whom I had consequently far fewer recollections in\ncommon, I should get from him, in the same sittings, nothing but\nincoherencies. I am thus driven to believe that my subliminal self is\nnot the only thing in evidence, that it is in the presence of a real,\nliving personality, whose mental state is the same as it was at the\nhour of death, a personality which remains independent of my subliminal\nconsciousness and absolutely unaffected by it, which is deaf to its\nsuggestions and draws from its own resources the revelations which it\nmakes.\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\n9\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\nof manifesting themselves in the manner which they appear to have\nchosen. But why do they choose that manner? Why do they thus restrict\nthemselves? Why do they jealously hug the narrow strip of territory which\nmemory occupies on the confines of both worlds and from which none but\nindecisive or questionable evidence can reach us? Are there then no other\noutlets, no other horizons? Why do they tarry around us, stagnant in\ntheir little pasts, when, in their freedom from the flesh, they ought to\nbe able to wander at ease over the virgin stretches of space and time?\nDo they not yet know that the sign which will prove to us that they\nsurvive is to be found not with us, but with them, on the other side of\nthe grave? Why do they come back with empty hands and empty words? Is\nthat what one finds when one is steeped in infinity? Beyond our last hour\nis it all bare and shapeless and dim? If it be so, let them tell us;\nand the evidence of the darkness will at least possess a grandeur that\nis all too absent from these cross-examining methods. Of what use is it\nto die, if all life\u2019s trivialities continue? Is it really worth while\nto have passed through the terrifying gorges which open on the eternal\nfields, in order to remember that we had a great-uncle called Peter and\nthat our Cousin Paul was afflicted with varicose veins and a gastric\ncomplaint? At that rate, I should choose for those whom I love the august\nand frozen solitudes of the everlasting nothing. Though it be difficult\nfor them, as they complain, to make themselves understood through a\nstrange and sleep-bound organism, they tell us enough categorical details\nabout the past to show that they could disclose similar details, if not\nabout the future, which they perhaps do not yet know, at least about\nthe lesser mysteries which surround us on every side and which our\nbody alone prevents us from approaching. There are a thousand things,\nlarge or small, alike unknown to us, which we must perceive when feeble\neyes no longer arrest our vision. It is in those regions from which a\nshadow separates us and not in foolish tittle-tattle of the past that\nthey would at last find the clear and genuine proof which they seem to\nseek with such enthusiasm. Without demanding a great miracle, one would\nnevertheless think that we had the right to expect from a mind which\nnothing now enthrals some other discourse than that which it avoided when\nit was still subject to matter.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nOUR ULTIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS\n\n\n1\n\nSurvival with our present consciousness is nearly as impossible and\nincomprehensible as total annihilation. Moreover, even if it were\nadmissible, it could not be dreadful. This is certain that, when the body\ndisappears, all physical sufferings will disappear at the same time;\nfor we 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,\nthe spirit, 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\n2\n\nIt becomes 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 have\nnothing to dread; for, on close inspection, every fear, if any remained,\nshould deck itself with hopes. The body disintegrates and can no longer\nsuffer; the mind, separated from the source of pleasure and pain, is\nextinguished, scattered and lost in a boundless darkness; and what comes\nis the great peace so often prayed for, the sleep without measure,\nwithout dreams and without awakening.\n\nBut this is only a solution that fosters indolence. If we press those who\nspeak of survival without consciousness, we perceive that they mean only\ntheir present consciousness, for man conceives no other; and we have just\nseen that it is almost impossible for that manner of consciousness to\npersist 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\n3\n\nIt is evident that, in the depths of our thought limited on every\nside, we 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 self-concentrated in order to discover and feel\nits 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 idea\nof intelligence from the idea of consciousness. Any intelligence that\ndoes not seem capable of transforming itself into consciousness becomes\nfor us a mysterious phenomenon to which we give names more mysterious\nstill, lest we should have to admit that we understand nothing of it at\nall. Now, on this little earth of ours, which is but a dot in space, we\nsee expended in every scale of life, as for instance, in the wonderful\ncombinations and organisms of the insect world, a mass of intelligence\nso vast that our human intelligence cannot even dream of assessing it.\nEverything that exists\u2014and man first of all\u2014is incessantly drawing upon\nthat inexhaustible reserve. We are therefore irresistibly driven to\nask ourselves if that cosmic intelligence is not the emanation of an\ninfinite consciousness, or if it must not, sooner or later, elaborate\none. And this sets us tossing between two irreducible impossibilities.\nWhat is most probable is that here again we are judging everything from\nthe lowlands of our anthropomorphism. At the summit of our infinitesimal\nlife, we see only intelligence and consciousness, the extreme point of\nthought; and from this we infer that, at the summits of all lives, there\ncould be naught but intelligence and consciousness, whereas these perhaps\noccupy only an inferior place in the hierarchy of spiritual or other\npossibilities.\n\n\n4\n\nSurvival absolutely denuded of consciousness would, therefore, be\npossible only if we deny the existence of a cosmic consciousness.\nWhen once we admit this consciousness, under whatsoever form, we are\nbound to share in it; and, up to a certain point, the question is\nindistinguishable from that of the continuance of a more or less modified\nconsciousness. There is, for the moment, no hope of solving it; but we\nare free to grope in its darkness, which is not perhaps equally dense at\nall points.\n\nHere begins the open sea. Here begins the splendid 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 accompanied\nto the steps of the tomb with the same glad expectation that greets a\nbirth.\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, that they must suddenly leave the shelter of that gentle\ndarkness and abandon for ever that captive but peaceful existence, to be\nprecipitated into an absolutely different, unimaginable and boundless\nworld, how great would be their anxieties and their fears! And yet there\nis no reason why our own anxieties and fears should be more justified\nor less ridiculous. The character, the spirit, the intentions, the\nbenevolence or the indifference of the unknown to which we are subject do\nnot alter between our birth and our death. We remain always in the same\ninfinity, in the same universe. It is perfectly reasonable and legitimate\nto persuade ourselves that the tomb is no more dreadful than the cradle.\nIt would 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\nthat would not lead to the reassuring mystery of its end? Which of us\nwould wish to come into a world where we can learn so little, if he did\nnot know that he must enter it if he would leave it and learn more?\nThe best thing about life is that it prepares this hour for us, that\nit is the one 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 among\nthe greatest boons on earth; where, lastly, it is almost unimaginable\nthat a thought should not survive to mingle with the substance of the\nuniverse, that is to say, with infinity, which, if it be not a waste of\nindifference can be nothing but a sea of joy.\n\n\n5\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.\nThe ego implies limits. The ego cannot subsist except in so far as it\nis separated from that which surrounds it. The stronger the ego, the\nnarrower its limits and the clearer the separation. The more painful too;\nfor the mind, if it remain as we know it\u2014and we are not able to imagine\nit different\u2014will no sooner have seen its limits than it will wish to\noverstep them; and, the more separated it feels, the greater will be its\nlonging to unite with that which lies outside. There will therefore be\nan eternal struggle between its being and its aspirations. And really it\nwould have served no object to be born and die only to arrive at these\ninterminable contests. Have we not here yet one more proof that our ego,\nas we conceive it, could never subsist in the infinity where it must\nneeds go, since it cannot go elsewhere? It behoves us therefore to clear\naway conceptions that emanate only from our body, even as the mists that\nveil the daylight from our sight emanate only from the lowlands. Pascal\nhas said, once and for all:\n\n\u201cThe narrow limits of our being conceal infinity from our view.\u201d\n\n\n6\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 they\nare that the survival of an atom of themselves would suffice for a new\nentrance into an infinity from which their body no longer separates them.\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\nit will find in that boundless environment, just as the other ego, on\nthis earth, nourished itself and throve on all that it met there. Since\nwe have been able to acquire our present consciousness, why should it\nbe impossible for us to acquire another? For that ego which is so dear\nto us and which we believe ourselves to possess was not made in a day;\nit is not at present what it was at the hour of our birth. Much more\nchance than purpose has entered into it; and much more alien substance\nthan any inborn substance which it contained. It is but a long series\nof acquisitions and transformations, of which we do not become aware\nuntil the awakening of our memory; and its kernel, of which we do not\nknow the nature, is perhaps more immaterial and less concrete than a\nthought. If the new environment which we enter on leaving our mother\u2019s\nwomb transforms us to such a point that there is, so to speak, no\nconnection between the embryo that we were and the man that we have\nbecome, is it not right to think that the far newer, stranger, wider and\nricher environment which we enter on quitting life will transform us even\nmore? We 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.\nIt is very possible that our loftiest wishes of to-day will become\nthe law of our future development. It is very possible that our best\nthoughts will 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 our\ndestiny.\n\n\n7\n\nWe have said that the peculiar sorrow of the mind is the sorrow of\nnot knowing or not understanding, which includes the sorrow of being\npowerless; for he who knows the supreme causes, being no longer paralysed\nby matter, becomes one with them and acts with them; and he who\nunderstands ends by approving, or else the universe would be a mistake,\nwhich is not possible, an infinite mistake being inconceivable. I do not\nbelieve that another sorrow of the sheer mind can be imagined. The only\none sorrow which, at first thought, might seem admissible\u2014and which, in\nany case, could be but ephemeral\u2014would arise from the sight of the pain\nand misery remaining on the earth which we have left. But this sorrow,\nafter all, would be but one aspect and an insignificant phase of the\nsorrow of being powerless and of not understanding. As for the latter,\nthough it is not only beyond the domain of our intelligence, but even at\nan insuperable distance from our imagination, we may say that it would\nbe intolerable only if it were without hope. But, for that, the universe\nwould have to abandon any attempt to understand itself, or else admit\nwithin itself an object that remained for ever foreign to it. Either the\nmind will not perceive its limits and, consequently, will not suffer from\nthem, or else it will overstep them as it perceives them; for how could\nthe universe have parts eternally condemned to form no part of itself\nand of its knowledge? Hence we cannot understand that the torture of not\nunderstanding, supposing it to exist for a moment, should not end by\nabsorption in the state of infinity, which, if it be not happiness as we\ncomprehend it, could be naught but an indifference higher and purer than\njoy.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE TWO ASPECTS OF INFINITY\n\n\n1\n\nLet us turn our thoughts towards it. The problem goes beyond humanity and\nembraces all things. It is possible, I think, to view infinity under two\ndistinct aspects. Let us contemplate the first of them. We are plunged in\na universe that has no limits in space or time. It can neither go forward\nnor go back. It has no origin. It never began, nor will it ever end. The\nmyriads of years behind it are even as the myriads which it has yet to\nunroll. From all time it has been at the boundless centre of the days.\nIt could have no aim, for, if it had one, it would have attained it in\nthe infinity of the years that lie behind us; besides, that aim would\nlie outside itself and, if anything lay outside it, infinity would be\nbounded by that thing and would cease to be infinity. It is not making\nfor anywhere, for it would have arrived there; consequently, all that the\nworlds within its pale, all that we ourselves do can have no influence\nupon it. All that it will do it has done. All that it has not done\nremains undone because it can never do it. If it have no mind, it will\nnever have one. If it have one, that mind has been at its climax from all\ntime and will remain there, changeless and immovable. It is as young as\nit has ever been and as old as it will ever be. It has made in the past\nall the efforts and all the trials which it will make in the future; and,\nas all the possible combinations have been exhausted since what we cannot\neven call the beginning, it does not seem as if that which has not taken\nplace in the eternity that stretches before our birth can happen in the\neternity that will follow our death. If it have not become conscious,\nit will never become conscious; if it know not what it wishes, it will\ncontinue in ignorance, hopelessly, knowing all or knowing nothing and\nremaining as near 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 hope\nwould perish.\n\n\n2\n\nThe universe thus conceived would be, if not intelligible, at least\nadmissible by our reason; but in that universe float billions of\nworlds limited by space and time. They are born, they die and they are\nborn again. They form part of the whole; and we see, therefore, that\nparts of that which has neither beginning nor end themselves begin and\nend. We, in fact, know only those parts; and they are of a number so\ninfinite that in our eyes they fill all infinity. That which is going\nnowhere teems with that which appears to be going somewhere. That\nwhich has always known what it wants, or will never learn, seems to be\neternally experimenting with more or less ill-success. At what goal is\nit aiming, since it is already there? Everything that we discover in\nthat which could not possibly have an object looks as though it were\npursuing one with inconceivable ardour; and the mind that animates what\nwe see, in that which should know everything and possess itself, seems\nto know nothing and to seek itself without intermission. Thus all that\nis apparent to our senses in infinity gainsays that which our reason\nis compelled to ascribe to it. According as we fathom it, we come to\nunderstand how deep is our want of understanding; and, the more we strive\nto penetrate the two incomprehensible problems that stand face to face,\nthe more they contradict each other.\n\n\n3\n\nWhat will become of us amid all this confusion? Shall we leave the finite\nwherein we dwell to be swallowed up in this or the other infinite? In\nother words, shall we end by absorption in the infinite which our reason\nconceives, or shall we remain eternally in that which our eyes behold,\nthat is to say, in numberless changing and ephemeral worlds? Shall we\nnever leave those worlds which seem doomed to die and to be reborn\neternally, to enter at last into that which, from all eternity, can\nneither have been born nor have died and which exists without either\nfuture or past? Shall we one day escape, with all that surrounds us, from\nthis unhappy speculation, to find our way at last into peace, wisdom,\nchangeless and boundless consciousness, or into hopeless unconsciousness?\nShall we have the fate which our senses foretell, or that which our\nintelligence demands? Or are both senses and intelligence only illusions,\npuny implements, vain weapons of an hour, which were never intended to\nexamine or defy the universe? If there really be a contradiction, is it\nwise to accept it and to deem impossible that which we do not understand,\nseeing that we understand almost nothing? Is truth not at an immeasurable\ndistance from these inconsistencies which appear to us enormous and\nirreducible and which, doubtless, are of no more importance than the rain\nthat falls upon the sea?\n\n\n4\n\nBut, even to our poor understanding of to-day, the discrepancy between\nthe infinity conceived by our reason and that perceived by our senses\nis perhaps more apparent than real. When we say that, in a universe\nthat has existed since all eternity, every experiment, every possible\ncombination has been made; when we declare that there is no chance\nthat what has not taken place in the immeasurable past can take place\nin the immeasurable future, our imagination perhaps attributes to the\ninfinity of time a preponderance which it cannot possess. In truth,\nall that infinity contains must be as infinite as the time at its\ndisposal; and the chances, encounters and combinations that lie therein\nhave not been exhausted in the eternity that has gone before us any\nmore than they could be in the eternity that will come after us. The\ninfinity of time is no vaster than the infinity of the substance of the\nuniverse. Events, forces, chances, causes, effects, phenomena, fusions,\ncombinations, coincidences, harmonies, unions, possibilities, lives are\nrepresented in it by countless numbers that entirely fill a bottomless\nand vergeless abyss where they have been shaken together from what we\ncall the beginning of the world that had no beginning and where they\nwill be stirred up until the end of a world that will have no end.\nThere is, therefore, no climax, no changelessness, no immovability. It\nis probable that the universe is seeking and finding itself every day,\nthat it has not become entirely conscious and does not yet know what it\nwants. It is possible that its ideal is still veiled by the shadow of its\nimmensity; it is also possible that experiments and chances are following\none upon the other in unimaginable worlds, compared wherewith all those\nwhich we see on starry nights are no more than a pinch of gold-dust in\nthe ocean depths. Lastly, if either be true, it is also true that we\nourselves, or what remains of us\u2014it matters not\u2014will profit one day by\nthose experiments 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 astonishing\nif the consciousness of the universe, in the endeavour to form itself,\nhad not yet encountered the combination of necessary chances and if human\nthought were actually supporting one of those decisive chances. Here\nthere is a hope. Small as man and his brain may appear, they have exactly\nthe value of the most enormous forces that they are able to conceive,\nsince there is neither great nor small in the immensurable; and, if our\nbody equalled the dimensions of all the worlds which our eyes can see, it\nwould have exactly the same weight and the same importance, as compared\nwith the universe, that it has to-day. The mind alone perhaps occupies in\ninfinity a space which comparisons do not reduce to nothing.\n\n\n5\n\nFor the rest, if everything must be said, at the cost of constantly\nand shamelessly contradicting one\u2019s self in the dark, and to return to\nthe first 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 any\nprogress, because there could not be a goal. At most there may occur a\nfew ephemeral combinations which, to our poor eyes, will seem happier or\nmore beautiful than the 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 particular.\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 and\neven the idea of experiment with the supreme idea of infinity. Although\nnature has been incessantly and indefatigably repeating herself before\nour eyes for thousands of years, reproducing the same trees and the same\nanimals, we cannot contrive to understand why the universe indefinitely\nrecommences experiments that have been made billions of times. It is\ninevitable that, in the innumerable combinations that have been and are\nbeing made in termless time and boundless space, there have been and\nstill are millions of planets and consequently millions of human races\nexactly similar to our own, side by side with myriads of others more\nor less different from it. Let us not say to ourselves that it would\nrequire an unimaginable concourse of circumstances to reproduce a globe\nlike unto our earth in every respect. We must remember that we are in\nthe infinite and that this unimaginable concourse must necessarily take\nplace 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\nof infinitely 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 an\napple on the sea. I repeat, if we do not admit that thousands of worlds,\nsimilar in all points to our own, in spite of the billions of adverse\nchances, have always existed and still exist to-day, we are sapping\nthe foundations of the only possible conception of the universe or of\ninfinity.\n\n\n6\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\nby degrees 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 A 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 differs\nas widely from that on which our brain prides itself as electricity, for\ninstance, differs from the wind that blows. That is why it is fairly\nprobable that our mind, however powerful it become, will always grope in\nmystery. If it be certain that everything in us must also be in nature,\nbecause everything comes to us from her, if the mind and all the logic\nwhich it has placed at the culminating point of our being direct or\nseem to direct all the actions of our life, it by no means follows that\nthere is not in the universe a force greatly superior to thought, a\nforce having no imaginable relation to the mind, a force which animates\nand governs all things according to other laws and of which nothing is\nfound in us but almost imperceptible traces, even as almost imperceptible\ntraces of thought are all that can be found in plants 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\n7\n\n\u201cThese are but vain speculations,\u201d it will be said. \u201cWhat matters,\nafter all, 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 these 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 and\nalways will be valueless, I admit; but it nevertheless is and will remain\nthe most important idea of mankind. All our morality, all that is in the\nhighest degree noble and profound in our existence has always been based\non this idea devoid of real value. To-day, as yesterday, even though\nit be possible to recognize more clearly that it is too incomplete and\nrelative ever to have any actual value, it is necessary to carry it as\nhigh and as far as we can. It alone creates the only atmosphere wherein\nthe best part of ourselves can live. Yes, it is the unknowable into which\nwe shall not enter; but that is no reason for saying 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 my\nthoughts.\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 inconceivable,\nit is reasonable and salutary to make the best of it and therefore to\nimagine it as stupendously vast as we are able. The gravest reproach\nthat can be brought against the positive religions and notably against\nChristianity is that they have too often, if not in theory, at least in\npractice, encouraged such a narrowing of the mystery of the universe. By\nbroadening it, we broaden the space wherein our mind will move. It is for\nus what we make it: let us then form it of all that we can reach on the\nhorizon of ourselves. As for the mystery itself, we shall, of-course,\nnever reach it; but we have a much greater chance of approaching it by\nfacing it and going whither it draws us than by turning our backs upon it\nand returning to that place where we well know that it no longer is. Not\nby diminishing our thoughts shall we diminish the distance that separates\nus from the ultimate truths; but by enlarging them as much as possible we\nare sure of deceiving ourselves as little as possible. And the loftier\nour idea of the infinite, the more buoyant and the purer becomes the\nspiritual atmosphere wherein we live and the wider and deeper the horizon\nagainst which our thoughts and feelings stand out, the horizon which is\nall their life and which they inspire.\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 strive\nto grasp.... By continually seeking to know and being continually thrown\nback with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing, we may\nkeep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and\nour highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as the\nUnknowable.\u201d\n\n\n8\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, undeniable\nhere below, of our senses\u2014the infinity which seeks itself, which is still\nevolving and not yet established\u2014it behoves us above all to foresee in it\nour fate, which, for that matter, must, in either case, end by absorption\nin that very infinity.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nOUR FATE IN THOSE INFINITIES\n\n\n1\n\nThe first infinity, the ideal infinity, corresponds most nearly with\nthe requirements of our reason, which does not justify us in giving\nit the preference. It is impossible for us to foresee what we shall\nbecome in it, because it seems to exclude any becoming. It therefore but\nremains for us to address ourselves to the second, to that which we see\nand imagine 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\n2\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 consciousness,\nall notion of the ego, even if we should exist there as no more than a\nlittle nameless substance\u2014soul or matter, we cannot tell\u2014suspended in the\nequally nameless abyss that replaces time and space. It is not an idle\nquestion, for it concerns the history of the worlds or of the universe;\nand this history, far more than that of our petty existence, is our own\ngreat history, in which perhaps something of ourselves or something\nincomparably better and vaster will end by meeting us again some day.\n\n\n3\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\nnot yet gathered its wisdom. We have seen, it is true, that good and\nbad fortune exist only in so far as regards our body and that, when we\nhave lost 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 touch\nwith its wing? Finally, if there were nothing left of our body and our\nmind, there would still remain the matter and the spirit (or, at least,\nthe obviously single force to which we give that double name) which\ncomposed them and whose fate must be no more indifferent to us than our\nown fate; for, let us repeat, from our death onwards, the adventure of\nthe universe becomes our own adventure. Let us not, therefore, say to\nourselves:\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\n4\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 part\nthat we shall be enjoy a better fortune? Who can assure us that yonder\nthe 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?\nIt is idle to persuade ourselves, as Hindu wisdom would, that our\nsorrows are but illusions and appearances: it is none the less true that\nthey make us very really unhappy. Has the universe elsewhere a more\ncomplete consciousness, a more just and serene understanding than on\nthis earth and in the worlds which we discern? And, if it be true that\nit has somewhere attained that better understanding, why does the mind\nthat presides 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; and, as behind infinity there can be none that is\nnot infinity itself, it is impossible to imagine a malignant will in a\nwill that leaves no point around it which is not wholly covered. Or are\nthe experiments begun in the stars continued mechanically, by virtue of\nthe force acquired, without regard to their uselessness and their pitiful\nconsequences, according to the custom of nature, who knows nothing of\nour parsimony and squanders the suns in space as she does the seed on\nearth, knowing that nothing can be lost? Or, again, is the whole question\nof our peace and happiness, like that of the fate of the worlds, reduced\nto knowing whether or not the infinity of endeavours and combinations be\nequal to that of eternity? Or, lastly, to come to what is most likely, is\nit we who deceive ourselves, who know nothing, who see nothing and who\nconsider imperfect that which is perhaps faultless, we who are but an\ninfinitesimal fragment of the intelligence which we judge by the aid of\nthe little shreds of understanding which it has vouchsafed to lend us?\n\n\n5\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 shafts of light that shoot across\nit from every side, would be but a monstrous and unbearable ocean of\nflashes.\n\nAnd, if we do not see the light, at least we think we know a few of its\nrays or its reflections; but we are absolutely ignorant of that which is\nunquestionably the essential law of the universe, namely, gravitation.\nWhat is that force, the most powerful of all and the least visible,\nimperceptible to our senses, without form, without colour, without\ntemperature, without substance, without savour and without voice, but\nso awful that it suspends and moves in space all the worlds which we\nsee and all those which we shall never know? More rapid, more subtle,\nmore incorporeal than thought, it wields such sway over everything that\nexists, from the infinitely great to the infinitely small, that there is\nnot a grain of sand upon our earth nor a drop of blood in our veins but\nare penetrated, wrought upon and quickened by it until they act at every\nmoment upon the farthest planet of the last solar system that we struggle\nto imagine beyond the bounds of our imagination.\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\nas they would prevent us from understanding it if an intelligence of\na different order were to bethink itself of revealing or explaining\nit to us. The number and volume of those mysteries is as boundless as\nthe universe itself. If mankind were one day to draw near to those\nwhich to-day it deems the greatest and the most inaccessible, such\nas the origin and the aim of life, it would at once behold rising up\nbehind them, like eternal mountains, others quite as great and quite\nas unfathomable; and so on, without end. In relation to that which it\nwould have to know in order to hold the key to the riddle of this world,\nit would always find itself at the same point of central ignorance. It\nwould be just the same if we possessed an intelligence several million\ntimes greater and more penetrating than ours. All that its miraculously\nincreased power could discover would encounter limits no less impassable\nthan at present. All is boundless in that which has no bounds. We shall\nbe the eternal prisoners of the universe. It is therefore impossible for\nus to appreciate in any degree whatsoever, in the smallest conceivable\nrespect, the present state of the universe and to say, as long as we\nare men, whether it follows a straight line or describes an immense\ncircle, whether it is growing wiser or madder, whether it is advancing\ntowards the eternity which has no end or retracing its steps towards that\nwhich had no beginning. Our sole privilege within our tiny confines is\nto struggle towards that which appears to us the best, and to remain\nheroically persuaded that no part of what we do within those confines can\never be wholly lost.\n\n\n6\n\nBut let not all these insoluble questions drive us towards fear. From the\npoint of view of our future beyond the grave, it is in no way necessary\nthat we should have an answer to everything. Whether the universe have\nalready found its consciousness, whether it find it one day or seek it\neverlastingly, it could not exist for the purpose of being unhappy and\nof suffering, either in its entirety, or in any one of its parts; and it\nmatters little if the latter be invisible or incommensurable, considering\nthat the smallest is as great as the greatest in what has neither limit\nnor measure. To torture a point is the same thing as to torture the\nworlds; and, if it torture the worlds, it is its own substance that it\ntortures. Its very fate, wherein we have our part, protects us; for we\nare simply morsels of infinity. It is inseparable from us as we are\ninseparable from it. Its breath is our breath, its aim is our aim and we\nbear within us all its mysteries. We participate in it everywhere. There\nis naught in us that escapes it; there is naught in it but belongs to\nus. It extends us, fills us, traverses us on every side. In space and\ntime and in that which, beyond space and time, has as yet no name, we\nrepresent it and summarize it completely, with all its properties and all\nits future; and, if its immensity terrifies us, we are as terrifying as\nitself.\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\nastray; but it is impossible that sorrow should be one of its lasting\nand necessary 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 unhappiness,\nit is mad; and, if it appear to us mad, that means that our reason works\ncontrary to everything and to the only laws possible, seeing that they\nare eternal, or, to speak more humbly, that it judges what it wholly\nfails to understand.\n\n\n7\n\nEverything, therefore, must end, or perhaps already be, if not in a state\nof happiness, at least in a state exempt from all suffering, all anxiety,\nall lasting unhappiness; and what, after all, is our happiness upon this\nearth, if it be not the absence of sorrow, anxiety and unhappiness?\n\nBut it is childish to talk of happiness and unhappiness where infinity is\nin question. The idea which we entertain of happiness and unhappiness is\nsomething so special, so human, so fragile that it does not exceed our\nstature and falls to dust as soon as we take it out of its little sphere.\nIt proceeds entirely from a few contingencies of our nerves, which are\nmade to appreciate very slight happenings, but which could as easily have\nfelt everything the opposite way and taken pleasure in that which is now\npain.\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, while\nforces of which we are almost wholly ignorant, such as surface-tension,\ncapillarity or the Brownian movements, would preponderate. Walking on\na cabbage-leaf, for instance, after the dew had fallen, and seeing it\nstudded with huge crystal globes, he would infer that water was a solid\nbody which assumes spherical form and rises in the air. At no great\ndistance, he might come to a pond, when he would observe that this\nsame matter, instead of rising upwards, now seems to slope downwards\nin a vast curve from the brink. If he managed, with the aid of his\nfriends, to throw into the water one of those enormous steel bars which\nwe call needles, he would see that it made a sort of concave trough\non the surface and floated tranquilly. From these experiments and a\nthousand others which he might make, he would naturally deduce theories\ndiametrically opposed to those upon which our entire existence is based.\nIt would be the same if the changes were made in the direction of time,\nto take an hypothesis imagined by the philosopher William James:\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.\nThe motions 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 we\nget in a given time, and consequently to live a thousand times as long.\nWinters and summers will be to him like quarters of an hour. Mushrooms\nand the swifter growing plants will shoot into being so rapidly as to\nappear instantaneous creations; annual shrubs will rise and fall from the\nearth like restlessly boiling water-springs; the motions of animals will\nbe as invisible as are to us the movements of bullets and cannon-balls;\nthe sun will scour through the sky like a meteor, leaving a fiery trail\nbehind him, etc. That such imaginary cases (barring the superhuman\nlongevity) may be realized somewhere in the animal kingdom, it would be\nrash to deny.\u201d\n\n\n8\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 gloomy\nsolitudes; and we imagine that the worlds that revolve through space are\nas unhappy as ourselves because they freeze, or disaggregate, or clash\ntogether, or are consumed in unutterable flames. We infer from this\nthat the genius of the universe is an abominable tyrant, seized with a\nmonstrous madness, delighting only in the torture of itself and all that\nit contains. To millions of stars, each many thousand times larger than\nour sun, to nebul\u00e6 whose nature and dimensions no figure, no word in our\nlanguage is able to express, we attribute our momentary sensibility,\nthe little ephemeral play of our nerves; and we are convinced that life\nthere must be impossible or appalling, because we should feel too hot\nor too cold. It were much wiser to say to ourselves that it would need\nbut a trifle, a few papill\u00e6 more or less to our skin, the slightest\nmodification of our eyes and ears, to turn the temperature of space, its\nsilence and its darkness into a delicious springtime, an incomparable\nmusic, 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\nwhich our imagination sees there are life itself, the joy and one or\nother of those immense festivals of mind and matter in which death,\nthrusting aside at last our two enemies, time and space, will soon permit\nus to take part. Each world dissolving, extinguished, crumbling, burnt\nor colliding with another world and pulverized means the commencement of\na magnificent 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\nVII\n\nCONCLUSIONS\n\n\n1\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 theory 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 theory, strictly\ndefined, has very little likelihood and is not greatly to be desired,\nalthough, with the surrender of the body, the source of all our ills,\nit 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 theory 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\nno awakening. The theory 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\n2\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 eternity\npreceding our birth, all the experiments have not been made, that is\nto say that movement and evolution continue and will never and nowhere\nstop? In that case, we must at once accept the theory of a modified\nor progressive consciousness. The two aspects, after all, are equally\nunintelligible but defensible; and, although really irreconcilable, they\nagree on one point, namely, that unending pain and unredeemed misery are\nalike excluded from them both for ever.\n\n\n3\n\nThe theory 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 theory with satisfactory proofs; but it is\nnot 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 theories\nand gives a magnificent opening for the most plausible, varied and\nalluring dreams. Will our ego, our soul, our spirit, or whatever we call\nthat which will survive us in order to continue us as we are, will it\nfind again, on leaving the body, the innumerable lives which it must\nhave lived since the thousands of years that had no beginning? Will\nit continue to increase by assimilating all that it meets in infinity\nduring the thousands of years that will have no end? Will it linger for\na time around our earth, leading, in regions invisible to our eyes, an\never higher and happier existence, as the theosophists and spiritualists\ncontend? Will it move towards other planetary systems, will it emigrate\nto other worlds, whose existence is not even suspected by our senses?\nEverything seems permissible in this great dream, save that which might\narrest 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 moment\nof our death, we can no longer imagine that, at a given second, it stops,\nceases to expand and rise, attains its perfection and its fulness, to\nbecome no more than a sort of motionless wreck suspended in eternity and\na finished thing in the midst of that which will never finish. That would\nindeed be the only real death and the more fearful inasmuch as it would\nset a limit to an unparalleled life and intelligence, beside which those\nwhich we possess here below would not even weigh what a drop of water\nweighs when compared with the ocean, or a grain of sand when placed in\nthe scales with a mountain-chain. In a word, either we believe that our\nevolution will one day stop, implying thereby an incomprehensible end\nand a sort of inconceivable death; or we admit that it has no limit,\nwhereupon, being infinite, it assumes all the properties of infinity\nand must needs be lost in infinity and united with it. This, withal,\nis the latter end of theosophy, spiritualism and all the religions in\nwhich man, in his ultimate happiness, is absorbed by God. And this again\nis an incomprehensible end, but at least it is life. And then, taking\none incomprehensibility with another, after doing all that is humanly\npossible to understand one or the other riddle, let us by preference\nleap into the greatest and therefore the most probable, the one which\ncontains all the others and after which nothing more remains. If not, the\nquestions reappear at every stage and the answers are always conflicting.\nAnd questions and answers lead us to the same inevitable abyss. As we\nshall have to face it sooner or later, why not make for it straightway?\nAll that happens to us in the interval interests us beyond a doubt, but\ndoes not detain us, because it is not eternal.\n\n\n4\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 consciousness\nor this thing cannot be unhappy, because it is impossible that infinity\nshould exist for its own unhappiness, neither shall we be unhappy when\nwe are in it. Lastly, if the infinity into which we shall be projected\nhave no sort of consciousness nor anything that stands for it, the reason\nwill be that consciousness, or anything that might replace it, is not\nindispensable to eternal happiness.\n\n\n5\n\nThat, I think, is about as much as we may be permitted to declare,\nfor the moment, to the spirit anxiously facing the unfathomable space\nwherein death will shortly hurl it. It can still hope to find there\nthe fulfilment of its dreams; it will perhaps find less to dread than\nit had feared. If it prefer to remain expectant and to accept none of\nthe theories which I have expounded to the best of my power and without\nprejudice, it nevertheless seems difficult not to welcome, at least, this\ngreat assurance which we find at the bottom of every one of them, namely,\nthat infinity could not be malevolent, seeing that, if it eternally\ntortured the least among us, it would be torturing something which it\ncannot tear out of itself and that it would therefore be torturing its\nvery 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 have\naccustomed our eyes to pierce the terror of the last hour by looking it\nfull in the face. Many things, beyond a doubt, remain to be said which\nothers will say with greater force and brilliancy. But we need have no\nhope that any one will utter on this earth the word that shall put an end\nto our uncertainties. It is very probable, on the contrary, that no one\nin this world, nor perhaps in the next, will discover the great secret of\nthe universe. And, if we reflect upon this even for a moment, it is most\nfortunate that it should be so. We have not only to resign ourselves to\nliving in the incomprehensible, but to rejoice that we cannot go out of\nit. If there were no more insoluble questions nor impenetrable riddles,\ninfinity would not be infinite; and then we should have for ever to curse\nthe fate that placed us in a universe proportionate to our intelligence.\nAll that exists would be but a gateless prison, an irreparable evil and\nmistake. The unknown and the unknowable are necessary and will perhaps\nalways be necessary to our happiness. In any case, I would not wish\nmy worst enemy, were his understanding a thousandfold loftier and a\nthousandfold mightier than mine, to be condemned eternally to inhabit a\nworld of which he had surprised an essential secret and of which, as a\nman, he had begun to grasp the least tittle.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE\n\n\n1\n\nWhat is known as premonition or precognition leads us to mysterious\nregions, where stands, half-emerging from an intolerable darkness, the\ngravest problem that can thrill mankind, the knowledge of the future. The\nlatest, the best and the most complete study devoted to it is, I believe,\nthat published by M. Ernest Bozzano under the title _Des Ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes\npr\u00e9monitoires_. Availing himself of excellent earlier work, notably\nthat of Mrs. Sidgwick and Myers,[9] and adding the result of his own\nresearches, the author collects some thousand cases of precognition, of\nwhich he discusses one hundred and sixty, leaving the great majority of\nthe others on one side, not because they are negligible, but because he\ndoes not wish to exceed too flagrantly the normal limits of a monograph.\n\nHe begins by carefully eliminating all the episodes which, though\napparently premonitory, may be explained by self-suggestion (as in\nthe case, for instance, where some one smitten with a disease still\nlatent seems to foresee this disease and the death which will be its\nconclusion), by telepathy (when a sensitive is aware beforehand of the\narrival of a person or a letter), or lastly by clairvoyance (when a man\ndreams of the spot where he will find something which he has mislaid, or\nan uncommon plant, or an insect sought for in vain, or the unknown place\nwhich he will visit at some later date).\n\nIn all these cases, we have not, properly speaking, to do with a pure\nfuture, but rather with a present that is not yet known. Thus reduced\nand stripped of all foreign influences and intrusions, the number of\ninstances wherein there is a really clear and incontestable perception\nof a fragment of the future remains large enough, contrary to what\nis generally believed, to make it impossible for us to speak of\nextraordinary accidents or wonderful coincidences. There must be a limit\nto everything, even to distrust, even to the most extensive incredulity,\notherwise all historical research and a good deal of scientific research\nwould become decidedly impracticable. And this remark applies as much\nto the nature of the incidents related as to the actual authenticity\nof the narratives. We can contest or suspect any story whatever, any\nwritten proof, any evidence; but thenceforward we must abandon all\ncertainty or knowledge that is not acquired by means of mathematical\noperations or laboratory experiments, that is to say, three-fourths of\nthe human phenomena that chiefly interest us. Observe that the records\ncollected by the investigators of the S. P. R., like those discussed by\nM. Bozzano, are all told at first hand, and that those stories of which\nthe narrators were not the protagonists or the direct witnesses have\nbeen ruthlessly rejected. Furthermore, some of these narratives are\nnecessarily of the nature of medical observations; as for the others,\nif we attentively examine the character of those who have related them\nand the circumstances which corroborate them, we shall agree that it is\nmore just and more reasonable to believe in them than to look upon every\nman who has an extraordinary experience as being _a priori_ a liar, the\nvictim of an hallucination, or a wag.\n\n\n2\n\nThere could be no question of giving here even a brief analysis of\nthe most striking cases. It would require a hundred pages and would\nalter the whole nature of this essay, which, to keep within its proper\ndimensions, must take it for granted that most of the materials which\nit examines are familiar. I therefore refer the reader who may wish to\nform an opinion for himself to the easily-accessible sources which I have\nmentioned above. It will suffice to give an accurate idea of the gravity\nof the problem to any one who has not time or opportunity to consult\nthe original documents if I sum up in a few words some of these pioneer\nadventures, selected among those which seem least open to dispute; for\nit goes without saying that all have not the same value, otherwise the\nquestion would be settled. There are some which, while exceedingly\nstriking at first sight and offering every guarantee that could be\ndesired as to authenticity, nevertheless do not imply a real knowledge of\nthe future and can be interpreted in another manner. I give one, to serve\nas an instance; it is reported by Dr. Alphonse Teste in his _Manuel\npratique du magnetisme animal_.\n\nOn the 8th of May, Dr. Teste magnetizes Mme. Hortense \u2e3a in the presence\nof her husband. She is no sooner asleep than she announces that she has\nbeen pregnant for a fortnight, that she will not go her full time, that\n\u201cshe will take fright at something,\u201d that she will have a fall and that\nthe result will be a miscarriage. She adds that, on the 12th of May,\nafter having had a fright, she will have a fainting-fit which will last\nfor eight minutes; and she then describes, hour by hour, the course of\nher malady, which will end in three days\u2019 loss of reason, from which she\nwill recover.\n\nOn awaking, she retains no recollection of anything that has passed; it\nis kept from her; and Dr. Teste communicates his notes to Dr. Am\u00e9d\u00e9e\nLatour. On the 12th of May, he calls on M. and Mme. \u2e3a, finds them at\ntable and puts Mme. \u2e3a to sleep again, whereupon she repeats word for word\nwhat she told him four days before. They wake her up. The dangerous hour\nis drawing near. They take every imaginable precaution and even close the\nshutters. Mme. \u2e3a, made uneasy by these extraordinary measures which she\nis quite unable to understand, asks what they are going to do to her.\nHalf-past three o\u2019clock strikes. Mme. \u2e3a rises from the sofa on which they\nhave made her sit and wants to leave the room. The doctor and her husband\ntry to prevent her.\n\n\u201cBut what is the matter with you?\u201d she asks. \u201cI simply must go out.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, madame, you shall not: I speak in the interest of your health.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, then, doctor,\u201d she replies, with a smile, \u201cif it is in the\ninterest of my health, that is all the more reason why you should let me\ngo out.\u201d\n\nThe excuse is a plausible one and even irresistible; but the husband,\nwishing to carry the struggle against destiny to the last, declares that\nhe will accompany his wife. The doctor remains alone, feeling somewhat\nanxious, in spite of the rather farcical turn which the incident has\ntaken. Suddenly, a piercing shriek is heard and the noise of a body\nfalling. He runs out and finds Mme. \u2e3a wild with fright and apparently\ndying in her husband\u2019s arms. At the moment when, leaving him for an\ninstant, she opened the door of the place where she was going, a rat, the\nfirst seen there for twenty years, rushed at her and gave her so great a\nstart that she fell flat on her back. And all the rest of the prediction\nwas fulfilled to the letter, hour by hour and detail by detail.\n\n\n3\n\nTo make it quite clear in what spirit I am undertaking this study\nand to remove at the beginning any suspicion of blind or systematic\ncredulity, I am anxious, before going any further, to say that I fully\nrealize that cases of this kind by no means carry conviction. It is\nquite possible that everything happened in the subconscious imagination\nof the subject and that she herself created, by self-suggestion her\nillness, her fright, her fall and her miscarriage and adapted herself\nto most of the circumstances which she had foretold in her secondary\nstate. The appearance of the rat at the fatal moment is the only thing\nthat would suggest a precise and disquieting vision of an inevitable\nfuture event. Unfortunately, we are not told that the rat was perceived\nby other witnesses than the patient, so that there is nothing to prove\nthat it also was not imaginary. I have therefore quoted this inadequate\ninstance only because it represents fairly well the general aspect and\nthe indecisive value of many similar cases, and enables us to note once\nand for all the objections which can be raised and the precautions which\nwe should take before entering these suspicious and obscure regions.\n\nWe now come to an infinitely more significant and less questionable\ncase related by Dr. Joseph Maxwell, the learned and very scrupulous\nauthor of _Les Ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes psychiques_, a work which has been translated\ninto English under the title of _Metapsychical Phenomena_. It concerns\na vision which was described to him eight days before the event and\nwhich he told to many people before it was accomplished. A sensitive\nperceived in a crystal the following scene: a large steamer, flying a\nflag of three horizontal bars, black, white and red, and bearing the name\n_Leutschland_, was sailing in mid-ocean; the boat was suddenly enveloped\nin smoke; a great number of sailors, passengers and men in uniform rushed\nto the upper deck; and the boat went down.\n\nEight days afterwards, the newspapers announced the accident to the\n_Deutschland_, whose boiler had burst, obliging the steamboat to stand\nto.\n\nThe evidence of a man like Dr. Maxwell, especially when we have to do\nwith a so-to-speak personal incident, possesses an importance on which it\nis needless to insist. We have here, therefore, several days beforehand,\nthe very clear prevision of an event which, moreover, in no way concerns\nthe percipient: a curious detail, but one which is not uncommon in these\ncases. The mistake in reading _Leutschland_ for _Deutschland_, which\nwould have been quite natural in real life, adds a note of probability\nand authenticity to the phenomenon. As for the final act, the foundering\nof the vessel in the place of a simple heaving to, we must see in this,\nas Dr. J. W. Pickering and W. A. Sadgrove suggest, \u201cthe subconscious\ndramatization of a subliminal inference of the percipient.\u201d Such\ndramatizations, moreover, are instinctive and almost general in this\nclass of visions.\n\nIf this were an isolated case, it would certainly not be right to attach\ndecisive importance to it; \u201cbut,\u201d Dr. Maxwell observes, \u201cthe same\nsensitive has given me other curious instances; and these cases, compared\nwith others which I myself have observed or with those of which I have\nreceived first-hand accounts, render the hypothesis of coincidence very\nimprobable, though they do not absolutely exclude it.\u201d[10]\n\n\n4\n\nAnother and perhaps more convincing case, more strictly investigated\nand established, a case which clearly does not admit of explanation by\nthe theory of coincidence, worthy of all respect though this theory\nbe, is that related by M. Th\u00e9odore Flournoy, professor of science\nat the university of Geneva, in his remarkable work, _Esprits et\nm\u00e9diums_. Professor Flournoy is known to be one of the most learned\nand critical exponents of the new science of metapsychics. He even\ncarries his fondness for natural explanations and his repugnance to\nadmit the intervention of superhuman powers to a point whither it is\noften difficult to follow him. I will give the narrative as briefly as\npossible. It will be found in full on pp. 348 to 362 of his masterly book.\n\nIn August 1883, a certain Mme. Buscarlet, whom he knew personally,\nreturned to Geneva after spending three years with the Moratief family\nat Kazan as governess to two girls. She continued to correspond with the\nfamily and also with a Mme. Nitchinof, who kept a school at Kazan to\nwhich Mlles. Moratief, Mme. Buscarlet\u2019s former pupils, went after her\ndeparture.\n\nOn the night of the 9th of December (O.S.) of the same year, Mme.\nBuscarlet had a dream which she described the following morning in a\nletter to Mme. Moratief, dated 10 December. She wrote, to quote her own\nwords:\n\n\u201cYou and I were on a country-road when a carriage passed in front of us\nand a voice from inside called to us. When we came up to the carriage, we\nsaw Mlle. Olga Popoi lying across it, clothed in white, wearing a bonnet\ntrimmed with yellow ribbons. She said to you:\n\n\u201c\u2018I called you to tell you that Mme. Nitchinof will leave the school on\nthe 17th.\u2019\n\n\u201cThe carriage then drove on.\u201d\n\nA week later and three days before the letter reached Kazan, the event\nforeseen in the dream was fulfilled in a tragic fashion. Mme. Nitchinof\ndied on the 16th of an infectious disease; and on the 17th her body was\ncarried out of the school for fear of infection.\n\nIt is well to add that both Mme. Buscarlet\u2019s letter and the replies which\ncame from Russia were communicated to Professor Flournoy and bear the\npost-mark dates.\n\nSuch premonitory dreams are frequent; but it does not often happen that\ncircumstances and especially the existence of a document dated previous\nto their fulfilment give them such incontestable authenticity.\n\nWe may remark in passing the odd character of this premonition. The date\nis fixed precisely; but only a veiled and mysterious allusion (the woman\nlying across the carriage and cloaked in white) is made to the essential\npart of the prediction, the illness and death. Was there a coincidence, a\nvision of the future pure and simple, or a vision of the future suggested\nby telepathic influence? The theory of coincidence can be defended, if\nneed be, here as every elsewhere, but would be very extraordinary in this\ncase. As for telepathic influence, we should have to suppose that, on\nthe 9th of December, a week before her death, Mme. Nitchinof had in her\nsubconsciousness a presentiment of her end and that she transmitted this\npresentiment across some thousands of miles, from Kazan to Geneva, to\na person with whom she had never been intimate. It is very complex but\npossible, for telepathy often has these disconcerting ways. If this were\nso, the case would be one of latent illness or even of self-suggestion;\nand the preexistence of the future, without being entirely disproved,\nwould be less clearly established.\n\n\n5\n\nLet us pass to other examples. I quote from an excellent article on\nthe importance of precognitions, by Messrs. Pickering and Sadgrove,\nwhich appeared in the _Annales des sciences psychiques_ for 1 February\n1908, the summary of an experiment by Mrs. A. W. Verrall told in full\ndetail in Vol. XX. of the _Proceedings_. Mrs. Verrall is a celebrated\n\u201cautomatist\u201d; and her \u201ccross-correspondences\u201d occupy a whole volume of\nthe _Proceedings_. Her good faith, her sincerity, her fairness and her\nscientific precision are above suspicion; and she is one of the most\nactive and respected members of the Society for Psychical Research.\n\nOn the 11th of May 1901, at 11.10 P.M., Mrs. Verrall wrote as follows:\n\n\u201cDo not hurry ____ date this ____ hoc est quod volui\u2014tandem. \u03b4\u03b9\u03ba\u03b1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c3\u03cd\u03bd\u03b7\n\u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c7\u03b1\u03c1\u1f70 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bc\u03c6\u03c9\u03bd\u03b5\u1fd6 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd. A. W. V. \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f04\u03bb\u03bb\u1ff3 \u03c4\u03b9\u03bd\u1f76 \u1f34\u03c3\u03c9\u03c2. calx pedibus\ninhaerens difficultatem superavit. magnopere adiuvas persectando semper.\nNomen inscribere iam possum\u2014sic, en tibi!\u201d[11]\n\nAfter the writing comes a humorous drawing representing a bird walking.\n\nThat same night, as there were said to be \u201cuncanny happenings\u201d in some\nrooms near the London Law Courts, the watchers arranged to sit through\nthe night in the empty chambers. Precautions were taken to prevent\nintrusion and powdered chalk was spread on the floor of the two smaller\nrooms, \u201cto trace anybody or anything that might come or go.\u201d Mrs.\nVerrall knew nothing of the matter. The phenomena began at 12.43 A.M.\nand ended at 2.9 A.M. The watchers noticed marks on the powdered chalk.\nOn examination it was seen that the marks were \u201cclearly defined bird\u2019s\nfootprints in the middle of the floor, three in the left-hand room and\nfive in the right-hand room.\u201d The marks were identical and exactly 2\u00be\ninches in width; they might be compared to the footprints of a bird about\nthe size of a turkey. The footprints were observed at 2.30 A.M.; the\nunexplained phenomena had begun at 12.43 that same morning. The words\nabout \u201cchalk sticking to the feet\u201d are a singularly appropriate comment\non the events; but the remarkable point is that Mrs. Verrall wrote what\nwe have said one hour and thirty-three minutes before the events took\nplace.\n\nThe persons who watched in the two rooms were questioned by Mr. J. G.\nPiddington, a member of the council of the S. P. R., and declared that\nthey had not any expectation of what they discovered. I need hardly add\nthat Mrs. Verrall had never heard anything about the happenings in the\nhaunted house and that the watchers were completely ignorant of Mrs.\nVerrall\u2019s existence.\n\nHere then is a very curious prediction of an event, insignificant in\nitself, which is to happen, in a house unknown to the one who foretells\nit, to people whom she does not know either. The spiritualists, who score\nin this case, not without some reason, will have it that a spirit, in\norder to prove its existence and its intelligence, organized this little\nscene in which the future, the present and the past are all mixed up\ntogether. Are they right? Or is Mrs. Verrall\u2019s subconsciousness roaming\nlike this, at random, in the future? It is certain that the problem has\nseldom appeared under a more baffling aspect.\n\n\n6\n\nWe will now take another premonitory dream, strictly controlled by the\ncommittee of the S. P. R.[12] Early in September 1893, Annette, wife\nof Walter Jones, tobacconist, of Old Gravel Lane, East London, had her\nlittle boy ill. One night she dreamt that she saw a cart drive up and\nstop near where she was. It contained three coffins, \u201ctwo white and one\nblue. One white coffin was bigger than the other; and the blue was the\nbiggest of the three.\u201d The driver took out the bigger white coffin and\nleft it at the mother\u2019s feet, driving off with the others. Mrs. Jones\ntold her dream to her husband and to a neighbour, laying particular\nstress on the curious circumstance that one of the coffins was blue.\n\nOn the 10th of September, a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Jones was confined of\na boy, who died on the 29th of the same month. Their own little boy died\non the following Monday, the 2nd of October, being then sixteen months\nold. It was decided to bury the two children on the same day. On the\nmorning of the day chosen, the parish priest informed Mr. and Mrs. Jones\nthat another child had died in the neighbourhood and that its body would\nbe brought into church along with the two others. Mrs. Jones remarked to\nher husband:\n\n\u201cIf the coffin is blue, then my dream will come true. For the two other\ncoffins were white.\u201d\n\nThe third coffin was brought; it was blue. It remains to be observed\nthat the dimensions of the coffins corresponded exactly with the dream\npremonitions, the smallest being that of the child who died first, the\nnext that of the little Jones boy, who was sixteen months old, and the\nlargest, the blue one, that of a boy six years of age.\n\nLet us take, more or less at random, another case from the inexhaustible\n_Proceedings_.[13] The report is written by Mr. Alfred Cooper and\nattested by the Duchess of Hamilton, the Duke of Manchester and another\ngentleman to whom the duchess related the incident before the fulfilment\nof the prophetic vision:\n\n\u201cA fortnight before the death of the late Earl of L\u2e3a,\u201d says Mr. Cooper,\n\u201cin 1882, I called upon the Duke of Hamilton, in Hill Street, to see\nhim professionally. After I had finished seeing him, we went into the\ndrawing-room, where the duchess was, and the duke said to me:\n\n\u201c\u2018Oh, Cooper, how is the earl?\u2019\n\n\u201cThe duchess said, \u2018What earl?\u2019 and, on my answering, \u2018Lord L\u2e3a,\u2019 she\nreplied:\n\n\u201c\u2018That is very odd. I have had a most extraordinary vision. I went to\nbed, but, after being in bed a short time, I was not exactly asleep, but\nthought I saw a scene as if from a play before me. The actors in it were\nLord L\u2e3a, in a chair, as if in a fit, with a man standing over him with a\nred beard. He was by the side of a bath, over which bath a red lamp was\ndistinctly shown.\u2019\n\n\u201cI then said:\n\n\u201c\u2018I am attending Lord L\u2e3a at present; there is very little the matter with\nhim; he is not going to die; he will be all right very soon.\u2019\n\n\u201cWell, he got better for a week and was nearly well, but, at the end of\nsix or seven days after this, I was called to see him suddenly. He had\ninflammation of both lungs.\n\n\u201cI called in Sir William Jenner, but in six days he was a dead man. There\nwere two male nurses attending on him; one had been taken ill. But, when\nI saw the other, the dream of the duchess was exactly represented. He was\nstanding near a bath over the earl and, strange to say, his beard was\nred. There was the bath with the red lamp over it; and this brought the\nstory to my mind.\n\n\u201cThe vision seen by the duchess was told two weeks before the death of\nLord L\u2e3a. It is a most remarkable thing.\u201d\n\n\n7\n\nBut it is impossible to find space for the many instances related. As\nI have said, there are hundreds of them, making their tracks in every\ndirection across the plains of the future. Those which I have quoted\ngive a sufficient idea of the predominating tone and the general aspect\nof this sort of story. It is nevertheless right to add that many of\nthem are not at all tragic and that premonition opens its mysterious\nand capricious vistas of the future in connection with the most diverse\nand insignificant events. It cares but little for the human value of\nthe occurrence and puts the vision of a number in a lottery on the same\nplane as the most dramatic death. The roads by which it reaches us are\nalso unexpected and varied. Often, as in the examples quoted, it comes\nto us in a dream. Sometimes, it is an auditory or visual hallucination\nwhich seizes upon us while awake; sometimes, an indefinable but clear\nand irresistible presentiment, a shapeless but powerful obsession, an\nabsurd but imperative certainty which rises from the depths of our inner\ndarkness, where perhaps lies hidden the final answer to every riddle.\n\nOne might illustrate each of these manifestations with numerous examples.\nI will mention only a few, selected not among the most striking or the\nmost attractive, but among those which have been most strictly tested\nand investigated.[14] A young peasant from the neighbourhood of Ghent,\ntwo months before the drawing for the conscription, announces to all and\nsundry that he will draw number 90 from the urn. On entering the presence\nof the district-commissioner in charge, he asks if number 90 is still in.\nThe answer is yes.\n\n\u201cWell, then, I shall have it!\u201d\n\nAnd to the general amazement, he does draw number 90.\n\nQuestioned as to the manner in which he acquired this strange certainty,\nhe declares that, two months ago, just after he had gone to bed, he saw a\nhuge, indescribable form appear in a corner of his room with the number\n90 standing out plainly in the middle, in figures the size of a man\u2019s\nhand. He sat up in bed and shut and opened his eyes to persuade himself\nthat he was not dreaming. The apparition remained in the same place,\ndistinctly and undeniably.\n\nProfessor Georges Hulin, of the university of Ghent, and M. Jules van\nDooren, the district-commissioner, who report the incident, mention\nthree other similar and equally striking cases witnessed by M. van\nDooren during his term of office. I am the less inclined to doubt their\ndeclaration inasmuch as I am personally acquainted with them and know\nthat their statements, as regards the objective reality of the facts,\nare so to speak equivalent to a legal deposition. M. Bozzano mentions\nsome previsions which are quite as remarkable in connection with the\ngaming-tables at Monte Carlo.\n\nI repeat, I am aware that, in the case of these occurrences and those\nwhich resemble them, it is possible once again to invoke the theory of\ncoincidence. It will be contended that there are probably a thousand\npredictions of this kind which are never talked about, because they were\nnot fulfilled, whereas, if one of them is accomplished, which is bound by\nthe law of probabilities to happen some day or other, the astonishment\nis general and free rein is given to the imagination. This is true;\nnevertheless, it is well to enquire whether these predictions are as\nfrequent as is loosely stated. In the matter of those which concern\nthe conscription-drawings, for instance, I have had the opportunity of\ninterrogating more than one constant witness of these little dramas of\nfate; and all admitted that, on the whole, they are much rarer than one\nwould believe. Next, we must not forget that there can be no question\nhere of scientific proofs. We are in the midst of a slippery and nebulous\nregion, where we would not dare to risk a step if we were not allowing\nourselves to be guided by our feelings rather than by certainties which\nwe are not forbidden to hope for, but which are not yet in sight.\n\n\n8\n\nWe will abridge our subject still further, referring readers who wish to\nknow the details to the originals, lest we should never have done; or\nrather, instead of attempting an abridgment, which would still be too\nlong, so plentiful are the materials, we will content ourselves with\nenumerating a few instances, all taken from Bozzano\u2019s _Des Ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes\npr\u00e9monitoires_. We read there of a funeral procession seen on a high-road\nseveral days before it actually passed that way; or, again, of a young\nmechanic who, in the beginning of November, dreamt that he came home at\nhalf-past five in the afternoon and saw his sister\u2019s little girl run\nover by a tram-car while crossing the street in front of the house. He\ntold his dream, in great distress; and, on the 13th of the same month,\nin spite of all the precautions that had been taken, the child was run\nover by the tram-car and killed at the hour named. We find the ghost,\nthe phantom animal or the mysterious noise which, in certain families,\nis the traditional herald of a death or of an imminent catastrophe. We\nfind the celebrated vision which the painter Segantini had thirteen days\nbefore his decease, every detail of which remained in his mind and was\nrepresented in his last picture, _Death_. We find the Messina disaster\nclearly foreseen, twice over, by a little girl who perished under the\nruins of the ill-fated city; and we read of a dream which, three months\nbefore the French invasion of Russia, foretold to Countess Toutschkoff\nthat her husband would fall at Borodino, a village so little known at the\ntime that those interested in the dream looked in vain for its name on\nthe maps.\n\nUntil now we have spoken only of the spontaneous manifestations of the\nfuture. It would seem as though coming events, gathered in front of our\nlives, bear with crushing weight upon the uncertain and deceptive dike of\nthe present, which is no longer able to contain them. They ooze through,\nthey seek a crevice by which to reach us. But side by side with these\npassive, independent and intractable premonitions, which are but so many\nvagrant and furtive emanations of the unknown, are others which do yield\nto entreaty, allow themselves to be directed into channels, are more or\nless obedient to our orders and will sometimes reply to the questions\nwhich we put to them. They come from the same inaccessible reservoir, are\nno less mysterious, but yet appear a little more human than the others;\nand, without drugging ourselves with puerile or dangerous illusions,\nwe may be permitted to hope that, if we follow them and study them\nattentively, they will one day open to us the hidden paths joining that\nwhich is no more to that which is not yet.\n\nIt is true that here, where we must needs mix with the somewhat lawless\nworld of professional mystery-mongers, we have to increase our caution\nand walk with measured steps on very suspicious ground. But even in\nthis region of pitfalls we glean a certain number of facts that cannot\nreasonably be contested. It will be enough to recall, for instance,\nthe symbolic premonitions of the famous \u201cseeress of Prevorst,\u201d Frau\nHauffe, whose prophetic spirit was awakened by soap-bubbles, crystals\nand mirrors;[15] the clairvoyant who, eighteen years before the event,\nforetold the death of a girl by the hand of her rival in 1907, in a\nwritten prophecy which was presented to the court by the mother of\nthe murdered girl;[16] the gipsy who, also in writing, foretold all\nthe events in Miss Isabel Arundel\u2019s life, including the name of her\nhusband, Burton the famous explorer;[17] the sealed letter addressed\nto M. Morin, vice-president of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 du mesmerisme, describing\nthe most unexpected circumstances of a death that occurred a month\nlater;[18] the famous \u201cMarmontel prediction,\u201d obtained by Mrs. Verrall\u2019s\ncross-correspondences, which gives a vision, two months and a half\nbefore their accomplishment, of the most insignificant actions of a\ntraveller in an hotel bedroom;[19] and many others.\n\n\n9\n\nI will not review the various and very often grotesque methods\nof interrogating the future that are most frequently practised\nto-day: cards, palmistry, crystal-gazing, fortune-telling by means\nof coffee-grounds, tea-leaves, magnetic needles and white of egg,\ngraphology, astrology and the rest. These methods, as I have said before,\nare worth exactly what the medium who employs them is worth. They have no\nother object than to arouse the medium\u2019s subconsciousness and to bring\nit into relation with that of the person questioning him. As a matter of\nfact, all these purely empirical processes are but so many, often puerile\nforms of self-manifestation adopted by the undeniable gift which is known\nas intuition, clairvoyance or, in certain cases, psychometry. I have\nwritten at length, in my volume entitled _The Unknown Guest_, of this\nlast faculty and need not linger over it now. All that we have still to\ndo is to consider it for a moment in its relations with the foretelling\nof the future.\n\nA large number of investigations, notably those conducted by M. Duchatel\nand Dr. Osty, show that, in psychometry, the notion of time, as Dr.\nJoseph Maxwell observes, is very loose, that is to say, the past,\npresent and future nearly always overlap. Most of the clairvoyant or\npsychometric subjects, when they are honest, do not know, \u201cdo not feel,\u201d\nas M. Duchatel very ably remarks, \u201cwhat the future is. They do not\ndistinguish it from the other tenses; and consequently they succeed in\nbeing prophets, but unconscious prophets.\u201d In a word\u2014and this is a very\nimportant indication from the point of view of the probable coexistence\nof the three tenses\u2014it appears that they see that which is not yet with\nthe same clearness and on the same plane as that which is no more, but\nare incapable of separating the two visions and picking out the future\nwhich alone interests us. For a still stronger reason, it is impossible\nfor them to state dates with precision. Nevertheless, the fact remains\nthat, when we take the trouble to sift their evidence and have the\npatience to await the realization of certain events which are sometimes\nnot due for a long time to come, the future is fairly often perceived by\nsome of these strange soothsayers.\n\nThere are psychometers, however, and notably Mme. M\u2e3a, Dr. Osty\u2019s\nfavourite medium, who never confuse the future and the past. Mme. M\u2e3a\nplaces her visions in time according to the position which they occupy\nin space. Thus she sees the future in front of her, the past behind her\nand the present beside her. But, notwithstanding these distinctly-graded\nvisions, she also is incapable of naming her dates exactly; in fact, her\nmistakes in this respect are so general that Dr. Osty looks upon it as\na pure chronological coincidence when a prediction is realized at the\nmoment foretold.\n\nWe should also observe that, in psychometry, only those events can be\nperceived which relate directly to the individual communicating with the\npercipient, for it is not so much the percipient that sees into us as\nwe that read in our own subconsciousness, which is momentarily lighted\nby his presence. We must not therefore ask him for predictions of a\ngeneral character, whether, for instance, there will be a war in the\nspring, an epidemic in the summer or an earthquake in the autumn. The\nmoment the question concerns events, however important, with which we are\nnot intimately connected, he is bound to answer, as do all the genuine\nmediums, that he sees nothing.\n\nThe area of his vision being thus limited, does he really discover the\nfuture in it? After three years of numerous, cautious and systematic\nexperiments with some twenty mediums, Dr. Osty categorically declares\nthat he does:\n\n\u201cAll the incidents,\u201d he says, \u201cwhich filled these three years of my\nlife, whether wished for by me or not, or even absolutely contrary to\nthe ordinary routine of my life, had always been foretold to me, not all\nby each of the clairvoyant subjects, but all by one or other of them. As\nI have been practising these tests continually, it seems to me that the\nexperience of three years wholly devoted to this object should give some\nweight to my opinion on the subject of predictions.\u201d\n\nThis is incontestable; and the sincerity, scientific conscientiousness\nand high intellectual value of Dr. Osty\u2019s fine work inspire one with the\nutmost confidence. Unfortunately, he contents himself with quoting too\nsummarily a few facts and does not, as he ought, give us _in extenso_\nthe details of his experiments, controls and tests. I am well aware\nthat this would be a thankless and wearisome task, necessitating a large\nvolume which a mass of puerile incidents and inevitable repetitions would\nmake almost unreadable. Moreover, it could scarcely help taking the form\nof an intimate and indiscreet autobiography; and it is not easy to bring\none\u2019s self to make this sort of public confession. But it has to be done.\nIn a science which is only in its early stages, it is not enough to show\nthe object attained and to state one\u2019s conviction; it is necessary above\nall to describe every path that has been taken and, by an incessant and\ninfinite accumulation of investigated and attested facts, to enable every\none to draw his own conclusions. This has been the cumbrous and laborious\nmethod of the _Proceedings_ for over thirty years; and it is the only\nright one. Discussion is possible and fruitful only at that price. In\nall these extra-conscious matters, we have not yet reached the stage of\ndefinite deductions, we are still bringing up materials to the scene of\noperations.\n\nOnce more, I know that, in these cases, as I have seen for myself, the\nreally convincing facts are necessarily very rare; indeed, no elsewhere\ndo we meet with the same difficulty. If the medium tells you, for\ninstance, as Mme. M\u2e3a seems easily to do, how you will employ your day\nfrom the morning onwards, if she sees you in a certain house in a certain\nstreet meeting this or that person, it is impossible to say that, on the\none hand, she is not already reading your as yet unconscious plans or\nintentions, or that, on the other hand, by doing what she has foreseen,\nyou are not obeying a suggestion against which you could not fight\nexcept by violently doing the opposite to what it demands of you, which\nagain would be a case of inverted suggestion. None therefore would have\nany value save predictions of unlikely happenings, clearly defined and\noutside the sphere of the person interested. As Dr. Osty says:\n\n\u201cThe ideal prognostication would obviously be that of an event so rare,\nso sudden and unexpected, implying such a change in one\u2019s mode of life\nthat the theory of coincidence could not decently be put forward. But, as\neverybody is not, in the peaceful course of his existence, threatened by\nsuch an absolutely convincing event, the clairvoyant cannot always reveal\nto the person experimenting\u2014and reveal for a more or less approximate\ndate\u2014one of those incidents whose accomplishment would carry irresistible\nconviction.\u201d\n\nIn any case, the question of psychometric prognostications calls for\nfurther enquiry, though it is easy even at the present day to foresee the\nresults.\n\n\n10\n\nLet us now return to our spontaneous premonitions, in which the future\ncomes to seek us of its own accord and, so to speak, to challenge us at\nhome. I know from personal experience that when we embark upon these\ndisconcerting matters the first impression is scarcely favourable. We are\nvery much inclined to laugh, to treat as wearisome tales, as hysterical\nhallucinations, as ingenious or interested fictions most of the incidents\nthat give too violent a shock to the narrow and limited idea which we\nhave of our human life. To smile, to reject everything beforehand and to\npass by with averted head, as was done, remember, in the time of Galvani\nand in the early days of hypnotism, is much more easy and seems more\nrespectable and prudent than to stop, admit and examine. Nevertheless we\nmust not forget that it is to some who did not smile so lightly that we\nowe the best part of the marvels from whose heights we are preparing to\nsmile in our turn. For the rest, I grant that, thus presented, hastily\nand summarily, without the details that throw light upon them and the\nproofs that support them, the incidents in question do not show to\nadvantage and, inasmuch as they are isolated and sparingly chosen, lose\nall the weight and authority derived from the compact and imposing mass\nwhence they are arbitrarily detached. As I said above, nearly a thousand\ncases have been collected, representing probably not the tenth part of\nthose which a more active and general search might bring together. The\nnumber is evidently of importance and denotes the enormous pressure of\nthe mystery; but, if there were only half a dozen genuine cases\u2014and Dr.\nMaxwell\u2019s, Professor Flournoy\u2019s, Mrs. Verrall\u2019s, the Marmontel, Jones\nand Hamilton cases and some others are undoubtedly genuine\u2014they would be\nenough to show that, under the erroneous idea which we form of the past\nand the present, a new verity is living and moving, eager to come to\nlight.\n\nThe efforts of that verity, I need hardly say, display a very different\nsort of force after we have actually and attentively read those hundreds\nof extraordinary stories which, without appearing to do so, strike to\nthe very roots of history. We soon lose all inclination to doubt. We\npenetrate into another world and come to a stop all out of countenance.\nWe no longer know where we stand; before and after overlap and mingle.\nWe no longer distinguish the insidious and factitious but indispensable\nline which separates the years that have gone by from the years that\nare to come. We clutch at the hours and days of the past and present to\nreassure ourselves, to fasten on to some certainty, to convince ourselves\nthat we are still in our right place in this life where that which is\nnot yet seems as substantial, as real, as positive, as powerful as that\nwhich is no more. We discover with uneasiness that time, on which we\nbased our whole existence, itself no longer exists. It is no longer the\nswiftest of our gods, known to us only by its flight across all things;\nit alters its position no more than space, of which it is doubtless but\nthe incomprehensible reflex. It reigns in the centre of every event; and\nevery event is fixed in its centre; and all that comes and all that goes\npasses from end to end of our little life without moving by a hair\u2019s\nbreadth around its motionless pivot. It is entitled to but one of the\nthousand names which we have been wont to lavish upon its power, a power\nthat seemed to us manifold and innumerable: \u201cyesterday,\u201d \u201crecently,\u201d\n\u201cformerly,\u201d \u201cerewhile,\u201d \u201cafter,\u201d \u201cbefore,\u201d \u201cto-morrow,\u201d \u201csoon,\u201d \u201cnever,\u201d\n\u201clater\u201d fall like childish masks, whereas \u201cto-day\u201d and \u201calways\u201d\ncompletely cover with their united shadows the idea which we form in the\nend of a duration which has no subdivisions, no breaks and no stages, but\nis pulseless, motionless and boundless.\n\n\n11\n\nMany are the theories which men have imagined in their attempts to\nexplain the working of the strange phenomenon; and many others might be\nimagined.\n\nAs we have seen, self-suggestion and telepathy explain certain cases\nwhich concern events already in existence but still latent and perceived\nbefore the knowledge of them can reach us by the normal process of the\nsenses or the intelligence. But, even by extending these two theories\nto their uttermost point and positively abusing their accommodating\nelasticity, we do not succeed in illumining by their aid more than\na rather restricted portion of the vast undiscovered land. We must\ntherefore look for something else.\n\nThe first theory which suggests itself and which on the surface seems\nrather attractive is that of spiritualism, which may be extended until\nit is scarcely distinguishable from the theosophical theory and other\nreligious suppositions. It assumes the survival of spirits, the existence\nof discarnate or other superior and more mysterious entities which\nsurround us, interest themselves in our fate, guide our thoughts and\nour actions and, above all, know the future. It is, as we recognize\nwhen we speak of ghosts and haunted houses, a very acceptable theory;\nand any one to whom it appeals can adopt it without doing violence to\nhis intelligence. But we must confess that it seems less necessary and\nperhaps even less clearly proved in this region than in that. It starts\nby begging the question: without the intervention of discarnate beings,\nthe spiritualists tell us, it is impossible to explain the majority of\nthe premonitory phenomena; therefore we must admit the existence of\nthese discarnate beings. Let us grant it for the moment, for to beg\nthe question, which is merely an indefensible trick of the superficial\nlogic of our brain, does not necessarily condemn a theory and neither\ntakes away from nor adds to the reality of things. Besides, as we shall\ninsist later, the intervention or non-intervention of the spirits is\nnot the point at issue; and the crux of the mystery does not lie there.\nWhat must interest us is far less the paths or intermediaries by which\nprophetic warnings reach us than the actual existence of the future in\nthe present. It is true\u2014to do complete justice to neospiritualism\u2014that\nits position offers certain advantages from the point of view of the\nalmost inconceivable problem of the preexistence of the future. It can\nevade or divert some of the consequences of that problem. The spirits, it\ndeclares, do not necessarily see the future as a whole, as a total past\nor present, motionless and immovable, but they know infinitely better\nthan we do the numberless causes that determine any agent, so that,\nfinding themselves at the luminous source of those causes, they have no\ndifficulty in foreseeing their effects. They are, with respect to the\nincidents still in process of formation, in the position of an astronomer\nwho foretells, within a second, all the phases of an eclipse in which a\nsavage sees nothing but an unprecedented catastrophe which he attributes\nto the anger of his idols of straw or clay. It is indeed possible that\nthis acquaintance with a greater number of causes explains certain\npredictions; but there are plenty of others which presume a knowledge of\nso many causes, causes so remote and so profound, that this knowledge\nis hardly to be distinguished from a knowledge of the future pure and\nsimple. In any case, beyond certain limits, the preexistence of causes\nseems no clearer than that of effects. Nevertheless it must be admitted\nthat the spiritualists gain a slight advantage here.\n\nThey believe that they gain another when they say or might say that it\nis still possible that the spirits stimulate us to realize the events\nwhich they foretell without themselves clearly perceiving them in the\nfuture. After announcing, for instance, that on a certain day we shall\ngo to a certain place and do a certain thing, they urge us irresistibly\nto proceed to the spot named and there to perform the act prophesied.\nBut this theory, like those of self-suggestion and telepathy, would\nexplain only a few phenomena and would leave in obscurity all those\ncases, infinitely more numerous because they make up almost the whole of\nour future, in which either chance intervenes or some event in no way\ndependent upon our will or the spirit\u2019s, unless indeed we suppose that\nthe latter possesses an omniscience and an omnipotence which takes us\nback to the original mysteries of the problem.\n\nBesides, in the gloomy regions of precognition, it is almost always a\nmatter of anticipating a misfortune and very rarely, if ever, of meeting\nwith a pleasure or a joy. We should therefore have to admit that the\nspirits which drag me to the fatal place and compel me to do the act that\nwill have tragic consequences are deliberately hostile to me and find\ndiversion only in the spectacle of my suffering. What could those spirits\nbe, from what evil world would they arise and how should we explain why\nour brothers and friends of yesterday, after passing through the august\nand peace-bestowing gates of death, suddenly become transformed into\ncrafty and malevolent demons? Can the great spiritual kingdom, in which\nall passions born of the flesh should be stilled, be but a dismal abode\nof hatred, spite and envy? It will perhaps be said that they lead us\ninto misfortune in order to purify us; but this brings us to religious\ntheories which it is not our intention to examine.\n\n\n12\n\nThe only attempt at an explanation that can hold its own with\nspiritualism has recourse once again to the mysterious powers of our\nsubconsciousness. We must needs recognize that, if the future exists\nto-day, already such as it will be when it becomes for us the present and\nthe past, the intervention of discarnate minds or of any other spiritual\nentity adrift from another sphere is of little avail. We can picture\nan infinite spirit indifferently contemplating the past and future in\ntheir coexistence; we can imagine a whole hierarchy of intermediate\nintelligences taking a more or less extensive part in the contemplation\nand transmitting it to our subconsciousness. But all this is practically\nnothing more than inconsistent speculation and ingenious dreaming in the\ndark; in any case, it is adventitious, secondary and provisional. Let us\nkeep to the facts as we see them: an unknown faculty, buried deep in our\nbeing and generally inactive, perceives, on rare occasions, events that\nhave not yet taken place. We possess but one certainty on this subject,\nnamely, that the phenomenon actually occurs within ourselves; it is\ntherefore within ourselves that we must first study it, without burdening\nourselves with suppositions which remove it from its centre and simply\nshift the mystery. The incomprehensible mystery is the preexistence of\nthe future; once we admit this\u2014and it seems very difficult to deny\u2014there\nis no reason to attribute to imaginary intermediaries rather than to\nourselves the faculty of descrying certain fragments of that future. We\nsee, in regard to most of the mediumistic manifestations, that we possess\nwithin ourselves all the unusual forces with which the spiritualists\nendow discarnate spirits; and why should it be otherwise as concerns the\npowers of divination? The explanation taken from the subconsciousness\nis the most direct, the simplest, the nearest, whereas the other is\nendlessly circuitous, complicated and distant. Until the spirits testify\nto their existence in an unanswerable fashion, there is no advantage in\nseeking in the grave for the solution of a riddle that appears indeed to\nlie at the roots of our own life.\n\n\n13\n\nIt is true that this explanation does not explain much; but the\nothers are just as ineffectual and are open to the same objections.\nThese objections are many and various; and it is easier to raise them\nthan to reply to them. For instance, we can ask ourselves why the\nsubconsciousness or the spirits, seeing that they read the future and\nare able to announce an impending calamity, hardly ever give us the one\nuseful and definite indication that would allow us to avoid it. What can\nbe the childish or mysterious reason of this strange reticence? In many\ncases it is almost criminal; for instance, in a case related by Professor\nHyslop[20] we see the foreboding of the greatest misfortune than can\nbefall a mother germinating, growing, sending out shoots, developing,\nlike some gluttonous and deadly plant, to stop short on the verge of the\nlast warning, the one detail, insignificant in itself but indispensable,\nwhich would have saved the child. It is the case of a woman who begins\nby experiencing a vague but powerful impression that a grievous \u201cburden\u201d\nis going to fall upon her family. Next month, this premonitory feeling\nrepeats itself very frequently, becomes more intense and ends by\nconcentrating itself upon the poor woman\u2019s little daughter. Each time\nthat she is planning something for the child\u2019s future, she hears a voice\nsaying:\n\n\u201cShe\u2019ll never need it.\u201d\n\nA week before the catastrophe, a violent smell of fire fills the house.\nFrom that time the mother begins to be careful about matches, seeing\nthat they are in safe places and out of reach. She looks all over the\nhouse for them and feels a strong impulse to burn all matches of the kind\neasily lighted. About an hour before the fatal disaster, she reaches for\na box to destroy it; but she says to herself that her eldest boy is gone\nout, thinks that she may need the matches to light the gas-stove and\ndecides to destroy them as soon as he comes back. She takes the child\nup to its crib for its morning sleep and, as she is putting it into the\ncradle, she hears the usual mysterious voice whisper in her ear:\n\n\u201cTurn the mattress.\u201d\n\nBut, being in a great hurry, she simply says that she will turn the\nmattress after the child has taken its nap. She then goes downstairs to\nwork. After a while, she hears the child cry and, hurrying up to the\nroom, finds the crib and its bedding on fire and the child so badly burnt\nthat it dies in three hours.\n\n\n14\n\nBefore going further and theorizing about this case, let us once more\nstate the matter precisely. I know that the reader may straightway and\nquite legitimately deny the value of anecdotes of this kind. He will say\nthat we have to do with a neurotic who has drawn upon her imagination for\nall the elements that give a dramatic setting to the story and surround\nwith a halo of mystery a sad but commonplace domestic accident. This is\nquite possible; and it is perfectly allowable to dismiss the case. But it\nis none the less true that, by thus deliberately rejecting everything\nthat does not bear the stamp of mathematical or judicial certainty, we\nrisk losing, as we go along, most of the opportunities or clues which the\ngreat riddle of this world offers us in its moments of inattention or\ngraciousness. At the beginning of an enquiry we must know how to content\nourselves with little. For the incident in question to be convincing,\nprevious evidence in writing, more or less official statements, would\nbe required, whereas we have only the declarations of the husband, a\nneighbour and a sister. This is insufficient, I agree; but we must at\nthe same time confess that the circumstances are hardly favourable to\nobtaining the proofs which we demand. Those who receive warnings of this\nkind either believe in them or do not believe in them. If they believe\nin them, it is quite natural that they should not think first of all of\nthe scientific interest of their trouble, or of putting down in writing\nand thus authenticating its premonitory symptoms and gradual evolution.\nIf they do not believe in them, it is no less natural that they should\nnot proceed to speak or take notice of inanities of which they do not\nrecognize the value until after they have lost the opportunity of\nsupplying convincing proofs of them. Also, do not forget that the little\nstory in question is selected from among a hundred others, which in their\nturn are equally indecisive, but which, repeating the same facts and the\nsame tendencies with a strange persistency, end by weakening the most\ninveterate distrust.\n\n\n15\n\nHaving said this much, in order to conciliate or part company with\nthose who have no intention of leaving the _terra firma_ of science,\nlet us return to the case before us, which is all the more disquieting\ninasmuch as we may consider it a sort of prototype of the tragic and\nalmost diabolical reticence which we find in most premonitions. It is\nprobable that under the mattress there was a stray match which the child\ndiscovered and struck; this is the only possible explanation of the\ncatastrophe, for there was no fire burning on that floor of the house.\nIf the mother had turned the mattress, she would have seen the match;\nand, on the other hand, she would certainly have turned the mattress\nif she had been told that there was a match underneath it. Why did the\nvoice that urged her to perform the necessary action not add the one\nword that was capable of ensuring that action? The problem moreover is\nequally perturbing and perhaps equally insoluble whether it concern our\nown subconscious faculties, or spirits, or strange intelligences. Those\nwho give these warnings must know that they will be useless, because\nthey manifestly foresee the event as a whole; but they must also know\nthat one last word, which they do not pronounce, would be enough to\nprevent the misfortune that is already consummated in their prevision.\nThey know it so well that they bring this word to the very edge of the\nabyss, hold it suspended there, almost let it fall and recapture it\nsuddenly at the moment when its weight would have caused happiness and\nlife to rise once more to the surface of the mighty gulf. What then is\nthis mystery? Is it incapacity or hostility? If they are incapable, what\nis the unexpected and sovran force that interposes between them and us?\nAnd, if they are hostile, on what, on whom are they revenging themselves?\nWhat can be the secret of those inhuman games, of those uncanny and cruel\ndiversions on the most slippery and dangerous peaks of fate? Why warn,\nif they know that the warning will be in vain? Of whom are they making\nsport? Is there really an inflexible fatality by virtue of which that\nwhich has to be accomplished is accomplished from all eternity? But then\nwhy not respect silence, since all speech is useless? Or do they, in\nspite of all, perceive a gleam, a crevice in the inexorable wall? What\nhope do they find in it? Have they not seen more clearly than ourselves\nthat no deliverance can come through that crevice? One could understand\nthis fluttering and wavering, all these efforts of theirs, if they did\nnot know; but here it is proved that they know everything, since they\nforetell exactly that which they might prevent. If we press them with\nquestions, they answer that there is nothing to be done, that no human\npower could avert or thwart the issue. Are they mad, bored, irritable\nor accessory to a hideous pleasantry? Does our fate depend on the\nhappy solution of some petty enigma or childish conundrum, even as our\nsalvation, in most of the so-called revealed religions, is settled by a\nblind and stupid cast of the die? Is all the liberty that we are granted\nreduced to the reading of a more or less ingenious riddle? Can the great\nsoul of the universe be the soul of a great baby?\n\n\n16\n\nBut, rather than pursue this subject, let us be just and admit that\nthere is perhaps no way out of the maze and that our reproaches are as\nincomprehensible as the conduct of the spirits. Indeed, what would you\nhave them do in the circle in which our logic imprisons them? Either they\nforetell us a calamity which their predictions cannot avert, in which\ncase there is no use in foretelling it, or, if they announce it to us and\nat the same time give us the means to prevent it, they do not really see\nthe future and are foretelling nothing, since the calamity is not to take\nplace, with the result that their action seems equally absurd in both\ncases.\n\nIt is obvious: to whichever side we turn, we find nothing but the\nincomprehensible. On the one hand, the preestablished, unshakable,\nunalterable future which we have called destiny, fatality or what you\nwill, which suppresses man\u2019s entire independence and liberty of action\nand which is the most inconceivable and the dreariest of mysteries; on\nthe other, intelligences apparently superior to our own, since they know\nwhat we do not, which, while aware that their intervention is always\nuseless and very often cruel, nevertheless come harassing us with their\nsinister and ridiculous predictions. Must we resign ourselves once more\nto living with our eyes shut and our reason drowned in the boundless\nocean of darkness; and is there no outlet?\n\n\n17\n\nFor the moment we will not linger in the dark regions of fatality,\nwhich is the supreme mystery, the desolation of every effort and every\nthought of man. What is clearest amid this incomprehensibility is that\nthe spiritualistic theory, at first sight the most seductive, declares\nitself, on examination, the most difficult to justify. We will also\nonce more put aside the theosophical theory, or any other which assumes\na divine intention and which might, to a certain extent, explain the\nhesitations and anguish of the prophetic warnings, at the cost, however,\nof other puzzles, a thousand times as hard to solve, which nothing\nauthorizes us to substitute for the actual puzzle, formless and infinite,\npresented to our uninitiated vision.\n\nWhen all is said, it is perhaps only in the theory which attributes\nthose premonitions to our subconsciousness that we are able to find, if\nnot a justification, at least a sort of explanation of that formidable\nreticence. They accord fairly well with the strange, inconsistent,\nwhimsical and disconcerting character of the unknown entity within us\nthat seems to live on nothing but nondescript fare borrowed from worlds\nto which our intelligence as yet has no access. It lives under our\nreason, in a sort of invisible and perhaps eternal palace, like a casual,\nunknown guest, dropped from another planet, whose interests, ideas,\nhabits, passions have naught in common with ours. If it seems to have\nnotions on the hereafter that are infinitely wider and more precise than\nthose which we possess, it has only very vague notions on the practical\nneeds of our existence. It ignores us for years, absorbed no doubt with\nthe numberless relations which it maintains with all the mysteries of\nthe universe; and, when suddenly it remembers us, thinking apparently to\nplease us, it makes an enormous, miraculous, but at the same time clumsy\nand superfluous movement, which upsets all that we believed we knew,\nwithout teaching us anything. Is it making fun of us, is it jesting, is\nit amusing itself, is it facetious, teasing, arch, or simply sleepy,\nbewildered, inconsistent, absent-minded? In any case, it is rather\nremarkable that it evidently dislikes to make itself useful. It readily\nperforms the most glamorous feats of sleight-of-hand, provided that we\ncan derive no profit from them. It lifts tables, moves the heaviest\narticles, produces flowers and hair, sets strings vibrating, gives life\nto inanimate objects and passes through solid matter, conjures up ghosts,\nsubjugates time and space, creates light; but all, it seems, on one\ncondition, that its performances should be without rhyme or reason and\nkeep to the province of supernaturally vain and puerile recreations. The\ncase of the divining-rod is almost the only one in which it lends us any\nregular assistance, this being a sort of game, of no great importance,\nin which it appears to take pleasure. Sometimes, to say all that can be\nsaid, it consents to cure certain ailments, cleanses an ulcer, closes a\nwound, heals a lung, strengthens or unstiffens an arm or leg, or even\nsets bones, but always as it were by accident, without reason, method or\nobject, in a deceitful, illogical and preposterous fashion. One would\nset it down as a spoilt child that has been allowed to lay hands on the\nmost tremendous secrets of heaven and earth; it has no suspicion of\ntheir power, jumbles them all up together and turns them into paltry,\ninoffensive toys. It knows everything, perhaps, but is ignorant of the\nuses of its knowledge. It has its arms laden with treasures which it\nscatters in the wrong manner and at the wrong time, giving bread to\nthe thirsty and water to the hungry, overloading those who refuse and\nstripping the suppliant bare, pursuing those who flee from it and fleeing\nfrom those who pursue it. Lastly, even at its best moments, it behaves\nas though the fate of the being in whose depths it dwells interested\nit hardly at all, as though it had but an insignificant share in his\nmisfortunes, feeling assured, one might almost think, of an independent\nand endless existence.\n\nIt is not surprising therefore, when we know its habits, that its\ncommunications on the subject of the future should be as fantastic as\nthe other manifestations of its knowledge or its power. Let us add,\nto be quite fair, that, in those warnings which we would wish to see\nefficacious, it stumbles against the same difficulties as the spirits\nor other alien intelligences uselessly foretelling the event which they\ncannot prevent, or annihilating the event by the very fact of foretelling\nit.\n\n\n18\n\nAnd now, to end the question, is this unknown guest of ours alone\nresponsible? Does it explain itself badly or do we not understand it?\nWhen we look into the matter closely, there is, under those anomalous and\nconfused manifestations, in spite of efforts which we feel to be enormous\nand persevering, a sort of incapacity for self-expression and action\nwhich is bound to attract our attention. Is our conscious and individual\nlife separated by impenetrable worlds from our subconscious and probably\nuniversal life? Does our unknown guest speak an unknown language and do\nthe words which it speaks and which we think that we understand disclose\nits thought? Is every direct road pitilessly barred and is there nothing\nleft to it but narrow, closed paths, in which the best of what it had\nto reveal to us is lost? Is this the reason why it seeks those odd,\nchildish, roundabout ways of automatic writing, cross-correspondence,\nsymbolic premonition and all the rest? Yet, in the typical case which we\nhave quoted, it seems to speak quite easily and plainly when it says to\nthe mother:\n\n\u201cTurn the mattress.\u201d\n\nIf it can utter this sentence, why should it find it difficult or\nimpossible to add:\n\n\u201cYou will there find the matches that will set fire to the curtains.\u201d\n\nWhat forbids it to do so and closes its mouth at the decisive moment? We\nrelapse into the everlasting question: if it cannot complete the second\nsentence because it would be destroying in the womb the very event which\nit is foretelling, why does it utter the first?\n\n\n19\n\nBut it is well, in spite of everything, to seek an explanation of the\ninexplicable; it is by attacking it on every side, at all hazards,\nthat we cherish the hope of overcoming it; and we may therefore say to\nourselves that our subconsciousness, when it warns us of a calamity that\nis about to befall us, knowing all the future as it does, necessarily\nknows that the calamity is already accomplished. As our conscious and\nunconscious lives blend in it, it distresses itself and flutters around\nour overconfident ignorance. It tries to inform us, through nervousness,\nthrough pity, so as to mitigate the lightning cruelty of the blow. It\nspeaks all the words that can prepare us for its coming, define it\nand identify it; but it is unable to say those which would prevent it\nfrom coming, seeing that it has come, that it is already present and\nperhaps past, manifest, ineffaceable, on another plane than that on\nwhich we live, the only plane which we are capable of perceiving. It\nfinds itself, in a word, in the position of the man who, in the midst of\npeaceful, happy and unsuspecting folk, alone knows some bad news. He is\nneither able nor willing to announce it nor yet to hide it completely.\nHe hesitates, delays, makes more or less transparent allusions, but\nrefrains from saying the last word that would, so to speak, let loose the\ncatastrophe in the hearts of the people around him, for to those who do\nnot know of it the catastrophe is still as though it were not there. Our\nsubconsciousness, in that instance, would act towards the future as we\nact towards the past, the two conditions being identical, so much so that\nit often confuses them, as we can see more particularly in the celebrated\nMarmontel case, where it evidently blunders and reports as accomplished\nan incident that will not take place until several months later. It is\nof course impossible for us, at the stage which we have reached, to\nunderstand this confusion or this coexistence of the past, the present\nand the future; but that is no reason for denying it; on the contrary,\nwhat man understands least is probably that which most nearly approaches\nthe truth.\n\n\n20\n\nLastly, to complicate the question, it may be very justly objected that,\nthough premonitions in general are useless and appear systematically\nto withhold the only indispensable and decisive words, there are,\nnevertheless, some that often seem to save those who obey them. These,\nit is true, are rarer than the first, but still they include a certain\nnumber that are well-authenticated. It remains to be seen how far they\nimply a knowledge of the future.\n\nHere, for instance, is a traveller who, arriving at night in a small\nunknown town and walking along the ill-lighted dock in the direction\nof an hotel of which he roughly knows the position, at a given moment\nfeels an irresistible impulse to turn and go the other way. He instantly\nobeys, though his reason protests and \u201cberates him for a fool\u201d in taking\na roundabout way to his destination. The next day he discovers that, if\nhe had gone a few feet farther, he would certainly have slipped into the\nriver; and, as he was but a feeble swimmer, he would just as certainly,\nbeing alone and unaided in the extreme darkness, have been drowned.[21]\n\nBut is this a prevision of an event? No, for no event is to take place.\nThere is simply an abnormal perception of the proximity of some unknown\nwater and consequently of an imminent danger, an unexplained but fairly\nfrequent subliminal sensitiveness. In a word, the problem of the future\nis not raised in this case, nor in any of the numerous cases that\nresemble it.\n\nHere is another which evidently belongs to the same class, though at\nfirst sight it seems to postulate the preexistence of a fatal event and\na vision of the future corresponding exactly with a vision of the past.\nA traveller in South America is descending a river in a canoe; the party\nare just about to run close to a promontory when a sort of mysterious\nvoice, which he has already heard at different momentous times of his\nlife, imperiously orders him immediately to cross the river and gain the\nother shore as quickly as possible. This appears so absurd that he is\nobliged to threaten the Indians with death to force them to take this\ncourse. They have scarcely crossed more than half the river when the\npromontory falls at the very place where they meant to round it.[22]\n\nThe perception of imminent danger is here, I admit, even more abnormal\nthan in the previous example, but it comes under the same heading. It is\na phenomenon of subliminal hypersensitiveness observed more than once, a\nsort of premonition induced by subconscious perceptions, which has been\nchristened by the barbarous name of \u201ccryptaesthesia.\u201d But the interval\nbetween the moment when the peril is signalled and that at which it is\nconsummated is too short for those questions which relate to a knowledge\nor a preexistence of the future to arise in this instance.\n\nThe case is almost the same with the adventure of an American dentist,\nvery carefully investigated by Dr. Hodgson. The dentist was bending over\na bench on which was a little copper in which he was vulcanizing some\nrubber, when he heard a voice calling, in a quick and imperative manner,\nthese words:\n\n\u201cRun to the window, quick! Run to the window, quick!\u201d\n\nHe at once ran to the window and looked out to the street below, when\nsuddenly he heard a tremendous report and, looking round, saw that the\ncopper had exploded, destroying a great part of the workroom.[23]\n\nHere again, a subconscious cautiousness was probably aroused by certain\nindications imperceptible to our ordinary senses. It is even possible\nthat there exists between things and ourselves a sort of sympathy or\nsubliminal communion which makes us experience the trials and emotions of\nmatter that has reached the limits of its existence, unless, as is more\nlikely, there is merely a simple coincidence between the chance idea of\na possible explosion and its realization.\n\nA last and rather more complicated case is that of Jean Dupr\u00e9, the\nsculptor, who was driving alone with his wife along a mountain road,\nskirting a perpendicular cliff. Suddenly they both heard a voice that\nseemed to come from the mountain crying:\n\n\u2018Stop!\u2019\n\nThey turned round, and saw nobody and continued their road. But the cries\nwere repeated again and again, without anything to reveal the presence of\na human being amid the solitude. At last the sculptor alighted and saw\nthat the left wheel of the carriage, which was grazing the edge of the\nprecipice, had lost its linch-pin and was on the point of leaving the\naxle-tree, which would almost inevitably have hurled the carriage into\nthe abyss.\n\nNeed we, even here, relinquish the theory of subconscious perceptions?\nDo we know and can the author of the anecdote, whose good faith is not\nin question, tell us that certain unperceived circumstances, such as\nthe grating of the wheel or the swaying of the carriage, did not give\nhim the first alarm? After all, we know how easily stories of this\nkind involuntarily take a dramatic turn even at the actual moment and\nespecially afterwards.\n\n\n21\n\nThese examples\u2014and there are many more of a similar kind\u2014are enough, I\nthink, to illustrate this class of premonitions. The problem in these\ncases is simpler than when it relates to fruitless warnings; at least\nit is simpler so long as we do not bring into discussion the question\nof spirits, of unknown intelligences, or of an actual knowledge of the\nfuture; otherwise the same difficulty reappears and the warning, which\nthis time seems efficacious, is in reality just as vain. In fact, the\nmysterious entity which knows that the traveller will go to the water\u2019s\nedge, that the wheel will be on the point of leaving the axle, that\nthe copper will explode, or that the promontory will fall at a precise\nmoment, must at the same time know that the traveller will not take the\nlast fatal step, that the carriage will not be overturned, that the\ncopper will not hurt anybody and that the canoe will pull away from the\npromontory. It is inadmissible that, seeing one thing, it will not see\nthe other, since everything happens at the same point, in the course of\nthe same second. Can we say that, if it had not given warning, the little\nsaving movement would not have been executed? How can we imagine a future\nwhich, at one and the same time, has parts that are steadfast and others\nthat are not? If it is foreseen that the promontory will fall and that\nthe traveller will escape, thanks to the supernatural warning, it is\nnecessarily foreseen that the warning will be given; and, if so, what is\nthe point of this futile comedy? I see no reasonable explanation of it\nin the spiritist or spiritualistic theory, which postulates a complete\nknowledge of the future, at least at a settled point and moment. On the\nother hand, if we adhere to the theory of a subliminal consciousness,\nwe find there an explanation which is quite worthy of acceptation. This\nsubliminal consciousness, though, in the majority of cases, it has no\nclear and comprehensive vision of the immediate future, can nevertheless\npossess an intuition of imminent danger, thanks to indications that\nescape our ordinary perception. It can also have a partial, intermittent\nand so to speak flickering vision of the future event and, if doubtful,\ncan risk giving an incoherent warning, which, for that matter, will\nchange nothing in that which already is.\n\n\n22\n\nIn conclusion, let us state once more that fruitful premonitions\nnecessarily annihilate events in the bud and consequently work their own\ndestruction, so that any control becomes impossible. They would have an\nexistence only if they prophesied a general event which the subject would\nnot escape but for the warning. If they had said to any one intending to\ngo to Messina two or three months before the catastrophe, \u201cDon\u2019t go, for\nthe town will be destroyed before the month is out,\u201d we should have an\nexcellent example. But it is a remarkable thing that genuine premonitions\nof this kind are very rare and nearly always rather indefinite in regard\nto events of a general order. In M. Bozzano\u2019s excellent collection,\nwhich is a sort of compendium of premonitory phenomena, the only pretty\nclear cases are nos. clv. and clviii., both of which are taken from\nthe _Journal of the S.P.R._ In the first,[24] a mother sent a servant\nto bring home her little daughter, who had already left the house\nwith the intention of going through the \u201crailway garden,\u201d a strip of\nground between the sea-wall and the railway-embankment, in order to sit\non the great stones by the seaside and see the trains pass by. A few\nminutes after the little girl\u2019s departure, the mother had distinctly and\nrepeatedly heard a voice within her say:\n\n\u201cSend for her back, or something dreadful will happen to her.\u201d\n\nNow, soon after, a train ran off the line and the engine and tender fell,\nbreaking through the protecting wall and crashing down on the very stones\nwhere the child was accustomed to sit.\n\nIn the other case,[25] into which Professor W. F. Barrett made a special\nenquiry, Captain MacGowan was in Brooklyn with his two boys, then on\ntheir holidays. He promised the boys that he would take them to the\ntheatre and booked seats on the previous day; but on the day of the\nproposed visit he heard a voice within him constantly saying:\n\n\u201cDo not go to the theatre; take the boys back to school.\u201d\n\nHe hesitated, gave up his plan and resumed it again. But the words kept\nrepeating themselves and impressing themselves upon him; and, in the end,\nhe definitely decided not to go, much to the two boys\u2019 disgust. That\nnight, the theatre was destroyed by fire, with a loss of three hundred\nlives.\n\nWe may add to this the prevision of the Battle of Borodino, to which I\nhave already alluded. I will give the story in fuller detail, as told in\nthe journal of Stephen Grellet the Quaker.\n\nAbout three months before the French army entered Russia, the wife of\nGeneral Toutschkoff dreamt that she was at an inn in a town unknown to\nher and that her father came into her room, holding her only son by the\nhand, and said to her, in a pitiful tone:\n\n\u201cYour happiness is at an end. He\u201d\u2014meaning Countess Toutschkoff\u2019s\nhusband\u2014\u201chas fallen. He has fallen at Borodino.\u201d\n\nThe dream was repeated a second and a third time. Her anguish of mind was\nsuch that she woke her husband and asked him:\n\n\u201cWhere is Borodino?\u201d\n\nThey looked for the name on the map and did not find it.\n\nBefore the French armies reached Moscow, Count Toutschkoff was placed at\nthe head of the army of reserve; and one morning her father, holding her\nson by the hand, entered her room at the inn where she was staying. In\ngreat distress, as she had beheld him in her dream, he cried out:\n\n\u201cHe has fallen. He has fallen at Borodino.\u201d\n\nThen she saw herself in the very same room and through the windows beheld\nthe very same objects that she had seen in her dreams. Her husband\nwas one of the many who perished in the battle fought near the River\nBorodino, from which an obscure village takes its name.[26]\n\n\n23\n\nThis is evidently a very rare and perhaps solitary example of a\nlong-dated prediction of a great historic event which nobody could\nforesee. It stirs more deeply than any other the enormous problems of\nfatality, free-will and responsibility. But has it been attested with\nsufficient rigour for us to rely upon it? That I cannot say. In any case,\nit has not been sifted by the S.P.R. Next, from the special point of view\nthat interests us for the moment, we are unable to declare that this\npremonition had any chance of being of avail and preventing the general\nfrom going to Borodino. It is highly probable that he did not know where\nhe was going or where he was; besides, the irresistible machinery of\nwar held him fast and it was not his part to disengage his destiny. The\npremonition therefore could only have been given because it was certain\nnot to be obeyed.\n\nAs for the two previous cases, nos. clv. and clviii., we must here\nagain remark the usual strange reservations and observe how difficult\nit is to explain these premonitions save by attributing them to our\nsubconsciousness. The main, unavoidable event is not precisely stated;\nbut a subordinate consequence seems to be averted, as though to make us\nbelieve in some definite power of free-will. Nevertheless, the mysterious\nentity that foresaw the catastrophe must also have foreseen that nothing\nwould happen to the person whom it was warning; and this brings us back\nto the useless farce of which we spoke above. Whereas, with the theory of\na subconscious self, the latter may have\u2014as in the case of the traveller,\nthe promontory, the copper or the carriage\u2014not this time by inferences\nor indications that escape our perception, but by other unknown means, a\nvague presentiment of an impending peril, or, as I have already said, a\npartial, intermittent and unsettled vision of the future event, and, in\nits doubt, may utter its cry of alarm.\n\nWhereupon let us recognize that it is almost forbidden to human reason to\nstray in these regions; and that the part of a prophet is, next to that\nof a commentator of prophecies, one of the most difficult and thankless\nthat a man can attempt to sustain on the world\u2019s stage.\n\n\n24\n\nI am not sure if it is really necessary, before closing this chapter,\nto follow in the wake of many others and broach the problem of the\npreexistence of the future, which includes those of fatality, of\nfree-will, of time and of space, that is to say, all the points that\ntouch the essential sources of the great mystery of the universe. The\ntheologians and the metaphysicians have tackled these problems from every\nside without giving us the least hope of solving them. Among those which\nlife sets us, there is none to which our brain seems more definitely\nand strictly closed; and they remain, if not as unimaginable, at least\nas incomprehensible as on the day when they were first perceived. What\ncorresponds, outside us, with what we call time and space? We know\nnothing about it; and Kant, speaking in the name of the \u201capriorists,\u201d\nwho hold that the idea of time is innate in us, does not teach us much\nwhen he tells us that time, like space, is an _a priori_ form of our\nsensibility, that is to say, an intuition preceding experience, even as\nGuyau, among the \u201cempiricists,\u201d who consider that this idea is acquired\nonly by experience, does not enlighten us any more by declaring that\nthis same time is the abstract formula of the changes in the universe.\nWhether space, as Leibnitz maintains, be an order of coexistence and\ntime an order of sequences, whether it be by space that we succeed\nin representing time or whether time be an essential form of any\nrepresentation, whether time be the father of space or space the father\nof time, one thing is certain, which is that the efforts of the Kantian\nor neo-Kantian apriorists and of the pure empiricists and the idealistic\nempiricists all end in the same darkness; that all the philosophers\nwho have grappled with the formidable dual problem, among whom one may\nmention indiscriminately the names of the greatest thinkers of yesterday\nand to-day\u2014Herbert Spencer, Helmholtz, Renouvier, James Sully, Stumpf,\nJames Ward, William James, Stuart Mill, Ribot, Fouill\u00e9e, Guyau, Bain,\nLechalas, Balm\u00e8s, Dunan and endless others\u2014have been unable to tame it;\nand that, however much their theories may contradict one another, they\nare all equally defensible and alike struggle vainly in the darkness\nagainst shadows that are not of our world.\n\n\n25\n\nTo catch a glimpse of this strange problem of the preexistence of the\nfuture, as it shows itself to each of us, let us essay more humbly to\ntranslate it into tangible images, to place it as it were upon the stage.\nI am writing these lines sitting on a stone, in the shade of some tall\nbeeches that overlook a little Norman village. It is one of those lovely\nsummer days when the sweetness of life is almost visible in the azure\nvase of earth and sky. In the distance stretches the immense, fertile\nvalley of the Seine, with its green meadows planted with restful trees,\nbetween which the river flows like a long path of gladness leading to\nthe misty hills of the estuary. I am looking down on the village-square,\nwith its ring of young lime-trees. A procession leaves the church and,\namid prayers and chanting, they carry the statue of the Virgin around\nthe sacred pile. I am conscious of all the details of the ceremony: the\nsly old cur\u00e9 perfunctorily bearing a small reliquary; four choirmen\nopening their mouths to bawl forth vacantly the Latin words which convey\nnothing to them; two mischievous serving-boys in frayed cassocks; a score\nof little girls, young girls and old maids in white, all starched and\nflounced, followed by six or seven village notables in baggy frockcoats.\nThe pageant disappears behind the trees, comes into sight again at the\nbend of the road and hurries back into the church. The clock in the\nsteeple strikes five, as though to ring down the curtain and mark in\nthe infinite history of events which none will recollect the conclusion\nof a spectacle which never again, until the end of the world and of the\nuniverse of worlds, will be just what it was during those seconds when it\nbeguiled my wandering eyes.\n\nFor in vain will they repeat the procession next year and every year\nafter: never again will it be the same. Not only will several of the\nactors probably have disappeared, but all those who resume their old\nplaces in the ranks will have undergone the thousand little visible and\ninvisible changes wrought by the passing days and weeks. In a word, this\ninsignificant moment is unique, irrecoverable, inimitable, as are all\nthe moments in the existence of all things; and this little picture,\nenduring for a few seconds suspended in boundless duration, has lapsed\ninto eternity, where henceforth it will remain in its entirety to the end\nof time, so much so that, if a man could one day recapture in the past,\namong what some one has called the \u201castral negatives,\u201d the image of what\nit was, he would find it intact, unchanged, ineffaceable and undeniable.\n\n\n26\n\nIt is not difficult for us to conceive that one can thus go back and see\nagain the astral negative of an event that is no more; and retrospective\nclairvoyance appears to us a wonderful but not an impossible thing.\nIt astonishes but does not stagger our reason. But, when it becomes a\nquestion of discovering the same picture in the future, the boldest\nimagination flounders at the first step. How are we to admit that there\nexists somewhere a representation or reproduction of that which has not\nyet existed? Nevertheless, some of the incidents which we have just been\nconsidering seem to prove in an almost conclusive manner not only that\nsuch representations are possible, but that we may arrive at them more\nfrequently, not to say more conveniently, than at those of the past. Now,\nonce this representation preexists, as we are obliged to admit in the\ncase of a certain number of premonitions, the riddle remains the same\nwhether the preexistence be one of a few hours, a few years or several\ncenturies. It is therefore possible\u2014for, in these matters, we must go\nstraight to extremes or else leave them alone\u2014it is therefore possible\nthat a seer mightier than any of to-day, some god, demigod or demon, some\nunknown, universal or vagrant intelligence, saw that procession a million\nyears ago, at a time when nothing existed of that which composes and\nsurrounds it and when the very earth on which it moves had not yet risen\nfrom the ocean depths. And other seers, as mighty as the first, who from\nage to age contemplated the same spot and the same moment, would always\nhave perceived, through the vicissitudes and upheavals of seas, shores\nand forests, the same procession going round the same little church that\nstill lay slumbering in the oceanic ooze and made up of the same persons\nsprung from a race that was perhaps not yet represented on the earth.\n\n\n27\n\nIt is obviously difficult for us to understand that the future can thus\nprecede chaos, that the present is at the same time the future and the\npast, or that that which is not yet exists already at the same time\nat which it is no more. But, on the other hand, it is just as hard to\nconceive that the future does not preexist, that there is nothing before\nthe present and that everything is only present or past. It is very\nprobable that, to a more universal intelligence than ours, everything is\nbut an eternal present, an immense _punctum stans_, as the metaphysicians\nsay, in which all the events are on one plane; but it is no less probable\nthat we ourselves, so long as we are men, in order to understand anything\nof this eternal present, will always be obliged to divide it into\nthree parts. Thus caught between two mysteries equally baffling to our\nintelligence, whether we deny or admit the preexistence of the future, we\nare really only wrangling over words: in the one case, we give the name\nof \u201cpresent,\u201d from the point of view of a perfect intelligence, to that\nwhich to us is the future; in the other, we give the name of \u201cfuture\u201d\nto that which, from the point of view of a perfect intelligence, is the\npresent. But, after all, it is incontestable in both cases that, at least\nfrom our point of view, the future preexists, since preexistence is the\nonly name by which we can describe and the only form under which we can\nconceive that which we do not yet see in the present.\n\n\n28\n\nAttempts have been made to shed light on the riddle by transferring\nit to space. It is true that it there loses the greater part of its\nobscurity; but this apparently is because, in changing its environment,\nit has completely changed its nature and no longer bears any relation to\nwhat it was when it was placed in time. We are told, for instance, that\ninnumerable cities distributed over the surface of the earth are to us\nas if they were not, so long as we have not seen them, and only begin to\nexist on the day when we visit them. That is true; but space, outside\nall metaphysical speculations, has realities for us which time does not\npossess. Space, although very mysterious and incomprehensible once we\npass certain limits, is nevertheless not, like time, incomprehensible\nand illusory in all its parts. We are certainly quite able to conceive\nthat those towns which we have never seen and doubtless never will see\nindubitably exist, whereas we find it much more difficult to imagine that\nthe catastrophe which, fifty years hence, will annihilate one of them\nalready exists as really as the town itself. We are capable of picturing\na spot whence, with keener eyes than those which we boast to-day, we\nshould see in one glance all the cities of the earth and even those of\nother worlds, but it is much less easy for us to imagine a point in the\nages whence we should simultaneously discover the past, the present and\nthe future, because the past, the present and the future are three orders\nof duration which cannot find room at the same time in our intelligence\nand which inevitably devour one another. How can we picture to ourselves,\nfor instance, a point in eternity at which our little procession already\nexists, while it is not yet and although it is no more? Add to this the\nthought that it is necessary and inevitable, from the millenaries which\nhad no beginning, that, at a given moment, at a given place, the little\nprocession should leave the little church in a given manner and that no\nknown or imaginable will can change anything in it, in the future any\nmore than in the past; and we begin to understand that there is no hope\nof understanding.\n\n\n29\n\nWe find among the cases collected by M. Bozzano a singular premonition\nwherein the unknown factors of space and time are continued in a very\ncurious fashion. In August 1910, Cavaliere Giovanni de Figueroa, one of\nthe most famous fencing-masters at Palermo, dreamt that he was in the\ncountry, going along a road white with dust, which brought him to a broad\nploughed field. In the middle of the field stood a rustic building, with\na ground-floor used for store-rooms and cow-sheds and on the right a\nrough hut made of branches and a cart with some harness lying in it.\n\nA peasant wearing dark trousers, with a black felt hat on his head, came\nforward to meet him, asked him to follow him and took him round behind\nthe house. Through a low, narrow door they entered a little stable with a\nshort, winding stone staircase leading to a loft over the entrance to the\nhouse. A mule fastened to a swinging manger was blocking the bottom step;\nand the chevalier had to push it aside before climbing the staircase.\nOn reaching the loft, he noticed that from the ceiling were suspended\nstrings of melons, tomatoes, onions and Indian corn. In this room were\ntwo women and a little girl; and through a door leading to another room\nhe caught sight of an extremely high bed, unlike any that he had ever\nseen before.\n\nHere the dream broke off. It seemed to him so strange that he spoke of it\nto several of his friends, whom he mentions by name and who are ready to\nconfirm his statements.\n\nOn the 12th of October in the same year, in order to support a\nfellow-townsman in a duel, he accompanied the seconds, by motor-car, from\nNaples to Marano, a place which he had never visited nor even heard of.\nAs soon as they were some way in the country, he was curiously impressed\nby the white and dusty road. The car pulled up at the side of a field\nwhich he at once recognized. They alighted; and he remarked to one of the\nseconds:\n\n\u201cThis is not the first time that I have been here. There should be a\nhouse at the end of this path and on the right a hut and a cart with some\nharness in it.\u201d\n\nAs a matter of fact, everything was as he described it. An instant later,\nat the exact moment foreseen by the dream, the peasant in the dark\ntrousers and the black felt hat came up and asked him to follow him.\nBut, instead of walking behind him, the chevalier went in front, for\nhe already knew the way. He found the stable and, exactly at the place\nwhich it occupied two months before, near its swinging manger, the mule\nblocking the way to the staircase. The fencing-master went up the steps\nand once more saw the loft, with the ceiling hung with melons, onions and\ntomatoes, and, in a corner on the right, the two silent women and the\nchild, identical with the figures in his dream, while in the next room he\nrecognized the bed whose uncommon height had so much impressed him.\n\nIt really looks as if the facts themselves, the extramundane realities,\nthe eternal verities, or whatever we may be pleased to call them,\nhave tried to show us here that time and space are one and the same\nillusion, one and the same convention and have no existence outside our\nlittle day-spanned understanding; that \u201ceverywhere\u201d and \u201calways\u201d are\nexactly synonymous terms and reign alone as soon as we cross the narrow\nboundaries of the obscure consciousness in which we live. We are quite\nready to admit that Cavaliere de Figueroa may have had by clairvoyance\nan exact and detailed vision of places which he was not to visit until\nlater: this is a pretty frequent and almost classical phenomenon, which,\nas it affects the realities of space, does not astonish us beyond\nmeasure and, in any case, does not take us out of the world which our\nsenses perceive. The field, the house, the hut, the loft do not move;\nand it is no miracle that they should be found in the same place. But,\nsuddenly, quitting this domain where all is stationary, the phenomenon\nis transferred to time and, in those unknown places, at the foretold\nsecond, brings together all the moving actors of that little drama in\ntwo acts, of which the first was performed some two and a half months\nbefore, in the depths of some mysterious other life where it seemed to be\nmotionlessly and irrevocably awaiting its terrestrial realization. Any\nexplanation would but condense this vapour of petty mysteries into a few\ndrops in the ocean of mysteries.\n\nLet us note again, in passing, the strange freakishness of these\npremonitions. They accumulate the most precise and circumstantial details\nas long as the scene remains insignificant, but come to a sudden stop\nbefore the one tragic and interesting scene of the drama: the duel and\nits issue. We here once more recognize the inconsistent, impotent,\nironical or humorous habits of our unknown guest.\n\n\n30\n\nBut we will not prolong these somewhat vain speculations concerning\nspace and time. We are merely playing with words that represent very\nbadly ideas which we do not put into form at all. To sum up, while it\nis difficult for us to conceive that the future preexists, perhaps it\nis even more difficult for us to understand that it does not exist;\nmoreover, a certain number of facts tend to prove that it is as real and\ndefinite and has, both in time and in eternity, the same permanence and\nthe same vividness as the past. Now, from the moment that it preexists,\nit is not surprising that we should be able to know it; it is even\nastonishing, granted that it overhangs us on every side, that we should\nnot discover it oftener and more easily. It remains to be learnt what\nwould become of our life if everything were foreseen in it, if we saw\nit unfolding beforehand, in its entirety, with its events which would\nhave to be inevitable, because, if it were possible for us to avoid\nthem, they would not exist and we could not perceive them. Suppose\nthat, instead of being abnormal, uncertain, obscure, debatable and very\nunusual, prediction became, so to speak, scientific, habitual, clear and\ninfallible: in a short time, having nothing more to foretell, it would\ndie of inanition. If, for instance, it was prophesied to me that I must\ndie in the course of a journey in Italy, I should naturally abandon the\njourney; therefore it could not have been predicted to me; and thus all\nlife would soon be nothing but inaction, pause and abstention, a sort of\nvast desert where the embryos of still-born events would be gathered in\nheaps and where nothing would grow save perhaps one or two more or less\nfortunate enterprises and the little insignificant incidents which no one\nwould trouble to avoid. But these again are questions to which there is\nno solution; and we will not pursue them further.\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nHEROISM\n\n\n1\n\nOne of the consoling surprises of the war is the unlooked-for and, so\nto speak, universal heroism which it has revealed among all the nations\ntaking part in it.\n\nWe were rather inclined to believe that courage, physical and moral\nfortitude, self-denial, stoicism, the renunciation of every sort of\ncomfort, the faculty of self-sacrifice and the power of facing death\nbelonged only to the more primitive, the less happy, the less intelligent\nnations, to the nations least capable of reasoning, of appreciating\ndanger and of picturing in their imagination the dreadful abyss that\nseparates this life from the life unknown. We were even almost persuaded\nthat war would one day cease for lack of soldiers, that is to say,\nof men foolish enough or unhappy enough to risk the only absolute\nrealities\u2014health, physical comfort, an unimpaired body and, above all,\nlife, the greatest of earthly possessions\u2014for the sake of an ideal which,\nlike all ideals, is more or less invisible.\n\nAnd this argument seemed the more natural and convincing because,\nas existence grew gentler and men\u2019s nerves more sensitive, the means\nof destruction by war showed themselves more cruel, ruthless and\nirresistible. It seemed more and more probable that no man would ever\nagain endure the infernal horrors of a battlefield and that, after the\nfirst slaughter, the opposing armies, officers and men alike, all seized\nwith insuppressible panic, would turn their backs upon one another, in\nsimultaneous, supernatural affright, and flee from unearthly terrors\nexceeding the most monstrous anticipations of those who had let them\nloose.\n\n\n2\n\nTo our great astonishment the very opposite is now proclaimed.\n\nWe realize with amazement that until to-day we had but an incomplete and\ninaccurate idea of man\u2019s courage. We looked upon it as an exceptional\nvirtue and one which is the more admired as being also the rarer the\nfarther we go back in history.\n\nRemember, for instance, Homer\u2019s heroes, the ancestors of all the heroes\nof our day. Study them closely. These models of antiquity, the first\nprofessors, the first masters of bravery, are not really very brave.\nThey have a wholesome dread of being hit or wounded and an ingenuous\nand manifest fear of death. Their mighty conflicts are declamatory and\ndecorative but not so very bloody; they inflict more noise than pain\nupon their adversaries, they deliver many more words than blows. Their\ndefensive weapons\u2014and this is characteristic\u2014are greatly superior to\ntheir arms of offence; and death is an unusual, unforeseen and almost\nindecorous event which throws the ranks into disorder and most often\nputs a stop to the combat or provokes a headlong flight that seems quite\nnatural. As for the wounds, these are enumerated and described, sung and\ndeplored as so many remarkable phenomena. On the other hand, the most\ndiscreditable routs, the most shameful panics are frequent; and the old\npoet relates them without condemning them, as ordinary incidents to be\nascribed to the gods and inevitable in any warfare.\n\nThis kind of courage is that of all antiquity, more or less. We will\nnot linger over it, nor delay to consider the battles of the Middle\nAges or the Renascence, in which the fiercest hand-to-hand encounters\nof the mercenaries often left not more than half-a-dozen victims\non the field. Let us rather come straight to the great wars of the\nEmpire. Here the courage displayed begins to resemble our own, but with\nnotable differences. In the first place, those concerned were solely\nprofessionals. We see not a whole nation fighting, but a delegation, a\nmartial selection, which, it is true, becomes gradually more extensive,\nbut never, as in our time, embraces every man between eighteen and fifty\nyears of age capable of shouldering a weapon. Again\u2014and above all\u2014every\nwar was reduced to two or three pitched battles, that is to say, two\nor three culminating moments: immense efforts, but efforts of a few\nhours, or a day at most, towards which the combatants directed all the\nvigour and all the heroism accumulated during long weeks or months of\npreparation and waiting. Afterwards, whether the result was victory or\ndefeat, the fighting was over; relaxation, respite and rest followed; men\nwent back to their homes. Destiny must not be defied more than once; and\nthey knew that in the most terrible affray the chances of escaping death\nwere as twenty to one.\n\n\n3\n\nNowadays, everything is changed; and death itself is no longer what it\nwas. Formerly, you looked it in the face, you knew whence it came and\nwho sent it to you. It had a dreadful aspect, but one that remained\nhuman. Its ways were not unknown: its long spells of sleep, its brief\nawakenings, its bad days and dangerous hours. At present, to all these\nhorrors it adds the great, intolerable fear of mystery. It no longer\nhas any aspect, no longer has habits or spells of sleep and it is never\nstill. It is always ready, always on the watch, everywhere present,\nscattered, intangible and dense, stealthy and cowardly, diffuse,\nall-encompassing, innumerous, looming at every point of the horizon,\nrising from the waters and falling from the skies, indefatigable,\ninevitable, filling the whole of space and time for days, weeks and\nmonths without a minute\u2019s lull, without a second\u2019s intermission. Men\nlive, move and sleep in the meshes of its fatal web. They know that the\nleast step to the right or left, a head bowed or lifted, a body bent or\nupright, is seen by its eyes and draws its thunder.\n\nHitherto we had no example of this preponderance of the destructive\nforces. We should never have believed that man\u2019s nerves could resist so\ngreat a trial. The nerves of the bravest man are tempered to face death\nfor the space of a second, but not to live in the hourly expectation\nof death and nothing else. Heroism was once a sharp and rugged peak,\nreached for a moment but quitted forthwith, for mountain-peaks are not\ninhabitable. To-day it is a boundless plain, as uninhabitable as the\npeaks; but we are not permitted to descend from it. And so, at the very\nmoment when man appeared most exhausted and enervated by the comforts and\nvices of civilization, at the moment when he was happiest and therefore\nmost selfish, when, possessing the minimum of faith and vainly seeking\na new ideal, he seemed less capable of sacrificing himself for an idea\nof any kind, he finds himself suddenly confronted with an unprecedented\ndanger, which he is almost certain that the most heroic nations of\nhistory would not have faced nor even dreamed of facing, whereas he does\nnot even dream that it is possible to do aught but face it. And let it\nnot be said that we had no choice, that the danger and the struggle were\nthrust upon us, that we had to defend ourselves or die and that in such\ncases there are no cowards. It is not true: there was, there always has\nbeen, there still is a choice.\n\n\n4\n\nIt is not man\u2019s life that is at stake, but the idea which he forms of the\nhonour, the happiness and the duties of his life. To save his life he\nhad but to submit to the enemy; the invader would not have exterminated\nhim. You cannot exterminate a great people; it is not even possible to\nenslave it seriously or to inflict great sorrow upon it for long. He had\nnothing to be afraid of except disgrace. He did not so much as see the\ninfamous temptation appear above the horizon of his most instinctive\nfears; he does not even suspect that it is able to exist; and he will\nnever perceive it, whatever sacrifices may yet await him. We are not,\ntherefore, speaking of a heroism that would be but the last resource of\ndespair, the heroism of the animal driven to bay and fighting blindly\nto delay death\u2019s coming for a moment. No, it is heroism freely donned,\ndeliberately and unanimously hailed, heroism on behalf of an idea and\na sentiment, in other words, heroism in its clearest, purest and most\nvirginal form, a disinterested and wholehearted sacrifice for that which\nmen regard as their duty to themselves, to their kith and kin, to mankind\nand to the future. If life and personal safety were more precious than\nthe idea of honour, of patriotism and of fidelity to the tradition and\nthe race, there was, I repeat, and there is still a choice to be made;\nand never perhaps in any war was the choice easier, for never did men\nfeel more free, never indeed were they more free, to choose.\n\nBut this choice, as I have said, did not dare show its faintest shadow\non the lowest horizons of even the most ignoble consciences. Are you\nquite sure that in other times which we think better and more virtuous\nthan our own men would not have seen it, would not have spoken of it? Can\nyou find a nation, even among the greatest, which, after six months of a\nwar compared with which all other wars seem child\u2019s-play, of a war which\nthreatens and uses up all that nation\u2019s life and all its possessions, can\nyou find, I say, in history, not an instance\u2014for there is no instance\u2014but\nsome similar case which allows you to presume that the nation would not\nhave faltered, would not at least, were it but for a second, have looked\ndown and cast its eyes upon an inglorious peace?\n\n\n5\n\nNevertheless, they seemed much stronger than we are, all those who came\nbefore us. They were rude, austere, much closer to nature, poor and\noften unhappy. They had a simpler and a more rigid code of thought;\nthey had the habit of physical suffering, of hardship and of death.\nBut I do not believe that any one dares contend that these men would\nhave done what our soldiers are now doing, that they would have endured\nwhat is being endured all around us. Are we not entitled to conclude\nfrom this that civilization, contrary to what was feared, so far from\nenervating, depraving, weakening, lowering and dwarfing man, elevates\nhim, purifies him, strengthens him, ennobles him, makes him capable of\nacts of sacrifice, generosity and courage which he did not know before?\nThe fact is that civilization, even when it seems to entail corruption,\nbrings intelligence with it and that intelligence, in days of trial,\nstands for potential pride, nobility and heroism. That, as I said in the\nbeginning, is the unexpected and consoling revelation of this horrible\nwar: we can rely on man implicitly, place the greatest trust in him, nor\nfear lest, in laying aside his primitive brutality, he should lose his\nmanly qualities. The greater his progress in the conquest of nature and\nthe greater his apparent attachment to material welfare, the more does he\nbecome capable nevertheless, unconsciously, deep down in the best part of\nhim, of self-detachment and of self-sacrifice for the common safety and\nthe more does he understand that he is nothing when he compares himself\nwith the eternal life of his forbears and his children.\n\nIt was so great a trial that we dared not, before this war, have\ncontemplated it. The future of the human race was at stake; and the\nmagnificent response that comes to us from every side reassures us fully\nas to the issue of other struggles, more formidable still, which no doubt\nawait us when it will be a question no longer of fighting our fellow-men\nbut rather of facing the more powerful and cruel of the great mysterious\nenemies that nature holds in reserve against us. If it be true, as I\nbelieve, that humanity is worth just as much as the sum total of latent\nheroism which it contains, then we may declare that humanity was never\nstronger nor more exemplary than now and that it is at this moment\nreaching one of its highest points and capable of braving everything and\nhoping everything. And it is for this reason that, despite our present\nsadness, we are entitled to congratulate ourselves and to rejoice.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nON RE-READING THUCYDIDES\n\n\n1\n\nAt moments above all when history is in the making, in these times when\ngreat and as yet incomplete pages are being traced, pages by the side\nof which all that had already been written will pale, it is a good and\nsalutary thing to turn to the past in search of instruction, warning\nand encouragement. In this respect, the unwearying and implacable war\nwhich Athens kept up against Sparta for twenty-seven years, with the\nhegemony of Greece for a stake, presents more than one analogy with that\nwhich we ourselves are waging and teaches lessons that should make us\nreflect. The counsels which it gives us are all the more precious, all\nthe more striking or profound inasmuch as the war is narrated to us by\na man who remains, with Tacitus, despite the striving of the centuries,\nthe progress of life and all the opportunities of doing better, the\ngreatest historian that the earth has ever known. Thucydides is in fact\nthe supreme historian, at the same time swift and detailed, scrupulously\nsifting his evidence but giving free play to intuition, setting forth\nnone but incontestable facts, yet divining the most secret intentions and\nembracing at a glance all the present and future political consequences\nof the events which he relates. He is withal one of the most perfect\nwriters, one of the most admirable artists in the literature of mankind;\nand from this point of view, in an entirely different and almost\nantagonistic world, he has not an equal save Tacitus.\n\nBut Tacitus is before everything a wonderful tragic poet, a painter of\nfoul abysses, of fire and blood, who can lay bare the souls of monsters\nand their crimes, whereas Thucydides is above all a great political\nmoralist, a statesman endowed with extraordinary perspicacity, a painter\nof the open air and of a free state, who portrays the minds of those\nsane, ingenious, subtle, generous and marvellously intelligent men\nwho peopled ancient Greece. The one piles on the gloom with a lavish\nhand, gathers dark shadows which he pierces at each sentence with\nlightning-flashes, but remains sombre and oppressed on the very summits,\nwhereas the other condenses nothing but light, groups together judgments\nthat are so many radiant sheaves and remains luminous and breathes freely\nin the very depths. The first is passionate, violent, fierce, indignant,\nbitter, sincerely but pitilessly unjust and all made up of magnificent\nanimosities; the second is always even, always at the same high level,\nwhich is that which the noblest endeavour of human reason can attain. He\nhas no passion but a passion for the public weal, for justice, glory and\nintelligence. It is as though all his work were spread out in the blue\nsky; and even his famous picture of the plague of Athens seems covered\nwith sunshine.\n\n\n2\n\nBut there is no need to follow up this parallel, which is not my object.\nI will not dwell any longer\u2014though perhaps I may return to them one\nday\u2014upon the lessons which we might derive from that Peloponnesian War,\nin which the position of Athens towards Laced\u00e6mon provides more than one\npoint of comparison with that of France towards Germany. True, we do\nnot there see, as in our own case, civilized nations fighting a morally\nbarbarian people: it was a contest between Greeks and Greeks, displaying,\nhowever, in the same physical race two different and incompatible\nspirits. Athens stood for human life in its happiest development,\ngracious, cheerful and peaceful. She took no serious interest except in\nthe happiness, the imponderous riches, the innocent and perfect beauties,\nthe sweet leisures, the glories and the arts of peace. When she went to\nwar, it was as though in play, with the smile still on her face, looking\nupon it as a more violent pleasure than the rest, or as a duty joyfully\naccepted. She bound herself down to no discipline, she was never ready,\nshe improvised everything at the last moment, having, \u201cwith habits not\nof labour but of ease and courage not of art but of nature,\u201d as Pericles\nsaid, \u201cthe double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in\nanticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as\nthose who are never free from them.\u201d[27]\n\nFor Sparta, on the other hand, life was nothing but endless work, an\nincessant strain, having no other objective than war. She was gloomy,\naustere, strict, morose, almost ascetic, an enemy to everything that\nexcuses man\u2019s presence on this earth, a nation of spoilers, looters,\nincendiaries and devastators, a nest of wasps beside a swarm of bees,\na perpetual menace and danger to everything around her, as hard upon\nherself as upon others and boasting an ideal which may appear lofty if\nit be man\u2019s ideal to be unhappy and the contented slave of unrelenting\ndiscipline. On the other hand, she differed entirely from those whom we\nare now fighting in that she was generally honest, loyal and upright and\nshowed a certain respect for the gods and their temples, for treaties and\nfor international law. It is none the less true that, if she had from the\nbeginning reigned alone or without encountering a long resistance, Hellas\nwould never have been the Hellas that we know. She would have left in\nhistory but a precarious trace of useless warlike virtues and of minor\ncombats without glory; and mankind would not have possessed that centre\nof light towards which it turns to this day.\n\n\n3\n\nWhat was to be the issue of this war? Here begins the lesson which it\nwere well to study thoroughly. It would seem indeed as if, with the\nfirst encounters in that conflict, as in our own, the inexplicable will\nthat governs nations was favourable to the less civilized; and in fact\nLaced\u00e6mon gained the upper hand, at least temporarily and sufficiently\nto abuse her victory to such a degree that she soon lost its fruits.\nBut Athens held the evil will in check for seven-and-twenty years;\nfor twenty-seven summers and twenty-seven winters, to use Thucydides\u2019\nreckoning, she proved to us that it is possible, in defiance of\nprobability, to fight against what seems written in the book of heaven\nand hell. Nay more, at a time when Sparta, whose sole industry, whose\nsole training, whose only reason for existence and whose only ideal was\nwar, was hugging the thought of crushing in a few weeks, under the weight\nof her formidable hoplites, a frivolous, careless and ill-organized city,\nAthens, notwithstanding the treacherous blow which fate dealt her by\nsending a plague that carried off a third of her civil population and a\nquarter of her army, Athens for seventeen years definitely held victory\nin her grasp. During this period, she more than once had Laced\u00e6mon at\nher mercy and did not begin to descend the stony path of ruin and defeat\nuntil after the disastrous expedition to Sicily, in which, carried away\nby her rhetoricians and bitten with inconceivable folly, she hurled\nall her fleet, all her soldiers and all her wealth into a remote,\nunprofitable, unknown and desperate adventure. She resisted the decline\nof her fortunes for yet another ten years, heaping up her sins against\nwisdom and simple common sense and with her own hands drawing tighter\nthe knot that was to strangle her, as though to show us that destiny is\nfor the most part but our own madness and that what we call unavoidable\nfatality has its root only in mistakes that might easily be avoided.\n\n\n4\n\nTo point this moral was again not my real object. In these days when we\nhave so many sorrows to assuage and so many deaths to honour, I wished\nmerely to recall a page written over two thousand years ago, to the glory\nof the Athenian heroes who fell for their country in the first battles of\nthat war. According to the custom of the Greeks, the bones of the dead\nthat had been burnt on the battlefield were solemnly brought back to\nAthens at the end of the year; and the people chose the greatest speaker\nin the city to deliver the funeral oration. This honour fell to Pericles\nson of Xanthippus, the Pericles of the golden age of human beauty. After\npronouncing a well-merited and magnificent eulogium on the Athenian\nnation and institutions, he concluded with the following words:\n\n \u201cIndeed, if I have dwelt at some length upon the character\n of our country, it has been to show that our stake in the\n struggle is not the same as theirs who have no such blessing\n to lose and also that the panegyric of the men over whom I am\n now speaking might be by definite proofs established. That\n panegyric is now in a great measure complete; for the Athens\n that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and\n their like have made her, men whose fame, unlike that of most\n Hellenes, will be found to be only commensurate with their\n deserts. And, if a test of worth be wanted, it is to be found\n in their closing scene; and this not only in the cases in which\n it set the final seal upon their merit, but also in those\n in which it gave the first intimation of their having any.\n For there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his\n country\u2019s battles should be as a cloak to cover a man\u2019s other\n imperfections, since the good action has blotted out the bad\n and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as\n an individual. But none of these allowed either wealth with its\n prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty\n with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to\n shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their\n enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings\n and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they\n joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure of their\n vengeance and to let their wishes wait; and, while committing\n to hope the uncertainty of final success, in the business\n before them they thought fit to act boldly and trust in\n themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting rather than to live\n submitting, they fled only from dishonour, but met danger face\n to face and, after one brief moment, while at the summit of\n their fortune, escaped not from their fear but from their glory.\n\n \u201cSo died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors,\n must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the\n field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue.\n And, not contented with ideas derived only from words of\n the advantages which are bound up with the defence of your\n country, though these would furnish a valuable text to a\n speaker even before an audience so alive to them as the\n present, you must yourselves realize the power of Athens and\n feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her fills\n your hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall break upon\n you, you must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty and\n a keen feeling of honour in action that men were enabled to win\n all this and that no personal failure in an enterprise could\n make them consent to deprive their country of their valour,\n but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution\n that they could offer. For by this offering of their lives made\n in common by them all they each of them individually received\n that renown which never grows old and, for a sepulchre, not\n so much that in which their bones have been deposited, but\n that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be\n eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story\n shall call for its commemoration. For heroes have the whole\n earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where\n the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in\n every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it,\n except that of the heart. These take as your model and, judging\n happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of valour,\n never decline the dangers of war. For it is not the miserable\n that would most justly be unsparing of their lives: these\n have nothing to hope for; it is rather they to whom continued\n life may bring reverses as yet unknown and to whom a fall, if\n it came, would be most tremendous in its consequences. And\n surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation of cowardice must\n be immeasurably more grievous than the unfelt death which\n strikes him in the midst of his strength and patriotism!\n\n \u201cComfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer\n to the parents of the dead who may be here. Numberless are the\n chances to which, as they know, the life of man is subject;\n but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot a death\n so glorious as that which has caused your mourning and to\n whom life has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the\n happiness in which it has been passed. Still I know that this\n is a hard saying, especially when those are in question of\n whom you will be constantly reminded by seeing in the homes of\n others blessings of which once you also boasted; for grief is\n felt not so much for the want of what we have never known as\n for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed. Yet\n you who are still of an age to beget children must bear up in\n the hope of having others in their stead: not only will they\n help you to forget those whom you have lost, but they will be\n to the state at once a reinforcement and a security; for never\n can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen who does\n not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and\n apprehensions of a father. While those of you who have passed\n your prime must congratulate yourselves with the thought that\n the best part of your life was fortunate and that the brief\n span that remains will be cheered by the fame of the departed.\n For it is only the love of honour that never grows old; and\n honour it is, not gain, as some would have felt it, that\n rejoices the heart of age and helplessness....\n\n \u201cAnd, now that you have brought to a close your lamentations\n for your relatives, you may depart.\u201d\n\nThese words spoken twenty-three centuries ago ring in our hearts as\nthough they were uttered yesterday. They celebrate our dead better than\ncould any eloquence of ours, however poignant it might be. Let us bow\nbefore their paramount beauty and before the great people that could\napplaud and understand.\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nTHE DEAD DO NOT DIE\n\n\n1\n\nWhen we behold the terrible loss of so many young lives, when we see\nso many incarnations of physical and moral vigour, of intellect and of\nglorious promise pitilessly cut off in their first flower, we are on the\nverge of despair. Never before have the fairest energies and aspirations\nof men been flung recklessly and incessantly into an abyss whence comes\nno sound or answer. Never since it came into existence has humanity\nsquandered its treasure, its substance and its prospects so lavishly.\nFor more than twelve months, on every battlefield, where the bravest,\nthe truest, the most ardent and self-sacrificing are necessarily the\nfirst to die and where the less courageous, the less generous, the weak,\nthe ailing, in a word the less desirable, alone possess some chance of\nescaping the carnage, for over twelve months a sort of monstrous inverse\nselection has been in operation, one which seems to be deliberately\nseeking the downfall of the human race. And we wonder uneasily what the\nstate of the world will be after the great trial and what will be left of\nit and what will be the future of this stunted race, shorn of all the\nbest and noblest part of it.\n\nThe problem is certainly one of the darkest that has ever vexed the minds\nof men. It contains a material truth before which we remain defenceless;\nand, if we accept it as it stands, we can discover no remedy for the\nevil that threatens us. But material and tangible truths are never\nanything but a more or less salient angle of greater and deeper-lying\ntruths. And on the other hand mankind appears to be such a necessary and\nindestructible force of nature that it has always, hitherto, not only\nsurvived the most desperate ordeals, but succeeded in benefiting by them\nand emerging greater and stronger than before.\n\n\n2\n\nWe know that peace is better than war; it were madness to compare the\ntwo. We know that, if this cataclysm let loose by an act of unutterable\nfolly had not come upon the world, mankind would doubtless have reached\nere long a zenith of wonderful achievement whose manifestations it is\nimpossible to foreshadow. We know that, if a third or a fourth part of\nthe fabulous sums expended on extermination and destruction had been\ndevoted to works of peace, all the iniquities that poison the air we\nbreathe would have been triumphantly redressed and that the social\nquestion, the one great question, that matter of life and death which\njustice demands that posterity should face, would have found its definite\nsolution, once and for all, in a happiness which now perhaps even our\nsons and grandsons will not realize. We know that the disappearance\nof two or three million young existences, cut down when they were on\nthe point of bearing fruit, will leave in history a void that will not\nbe easily filled, even as we know that among those dead were mighty\nintellects, treasures of genius which will not come back again and which\ncontained inventions and discoveries that will now perhaps be lost to us\nfor centuries. We know that we shall never grasp the consequences of this\nthrusting back of progress and of this unprecedented devastation. But,\ngranting all this, it is a good thing to recover our balance and stand\nupon our feet. There is no irreparable loss. Everything is transformed,\nnothing perishes and that which seems to be hurled into destruction is\nnot destroyed at all. Our moral world, even as our physical world, is\na vast but hermetically-sealed sphere, whence naught can issue, whence\nnaught can fall to be dissolved in space. All that exists, all that comes\ninto being upon this earth remains there and bears fruit; and the most\nappalling wastage is but material or spiritual riches flung away for an\ninstant, to fall to the ground again in a new form. There is no escape or\nleakage, no filtering through cracks, no missing the mark, not even waste\nor neglect. All this heroism poured out on every side does not leave our\nplanet; and the reason why the courage of our fighters seems so general\nand yet so extraordinary is that all the might of the dead has passed\ninto those who survive. All those forces of wisdom, patience, honour and\nself-sacrifice which increase day by day and which we ourselves, who\nare far from the field of danger, feel rising within us without knowing\nwhence they come are nothing but the souls of the heroes gathered and\nabsorbed by our own souls.\n\n\n3\n\nIt is well at times to contemplate invisible things as though we saw them\nwith our eyes. This was the aim of all the great religions, when they\nbut represented under forms appropriate to the manners of their day the\nlatent deep, instinctive truths, the general and essential truths which\nare the guiding principles of mankind. All have felt and recognized that\nloftiest of all truths, the communion of the living and the dead, and\nhave given it various names designating the same mysterious verity: the\nChristians know it as revival of merit, the Buddhists as reincarnation,\nor transmigration of souls, and the Japanese as Shintoism, or\nancestor-worship. The last are more fully convinced than any other nation\nthat the dead do not cease to live and that they direct our actions, are\nexalted by our virtues and become gods.\n\nLafcadio Hearn, the writer who has most closely studied and understood\nthat wonderful ancestor-worship, says:\n\n\u201cOne of the surprises of our future will certainly be a return to beliefs\nand ideas long ago abandoned upon the mere assumption that they contained\nno truth\u2014beliefs still called barbarous, pagan, medi\u00e6val, by those who\ncondemn them out of traditional habit. Year after year the researches of\nscience afford us new proof that the savage, the barbarian, the idolater,\nthe monk, each and all have arrived, by different paths, as near to some\none point of eternal truth as any thinker of the nineteenth century. We\nare now learning, also, that the theories of the astrologers and of the\nalchemists were but partially, not totally, wrong. We have reason even to\nsuppose that no dream of the invisible world has ever been dreamed,\u2014that\nno hypothesis of the unseen has ever been imagined,\u2014which future science\nwill not prove to have contained some germ of reality.\u201d[28]\n\nThere are many things which might be added to these lines, notably\nall that the most recent of our sciences, metaphysics, is engaged\nin discovering with regard to the miraculous faculties of our\nsubconsciousness.\n\n\n4\n\nBut, to return more directly to what we were saying, was it not observed\nthat, after the great battles of the Napoleonic era, the birth-rate\nincreased in an extraordinary manner, as though the lives suddenly cut\nshort in their prime were not really dead and were eager to be back again\nin our midst and complete their career? If we could follow with our eyes\nall that is happening in the spiritual world that rises above us on every\nside, we should no doubt see that it is the same with the moral force\nthat seems to be lost on the field of slaughter. It knows where to go,\nit knows its goal, it does not hesitate. All that our wonderful dead\nrelinquish they bequeath to us; and, when they die for us, they leave us\ntheir lives not in any strained, metaphorical sense, but in a very real\nand direct way. Virtue goes out of every man who falls while performing\na deed of glory; and that virtue drops down upon us; and nothing of him\nis lost and nothing evaporates in the shock of a premature end. He gives\nus in one solitary and mighty stroke what he would have given us in a\nlong life of duty and love. Death does not injure life; it is powerless\nagainst it. Life\u2019s aggregate never changes. What death takes from those\nwho fall enters into those who are left standing. The number of lamps\ngrows less, but the flame rises higher. Death is in no wise the gainer\nso long as there are living men. The more it exercises its ravages, the\nmore it increases the intensity of that which it cannot touch; the more\nit pursues its phantom victories, the better does it prove to us that man\nwill end by conquering death.\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nIN MEMORIAM\n\n\nThose who die for their country should not be numbered with the dead. We\nmust call them by another name. They have nothing in common with those\nwho end in their beds a life that is worn out, a life almost always too\nlong and often useless. Death, which every elsewhere is but the object of\nfear and horror, bringing naught but nothingness and despair, this death,\non the field of battle, in the clash of glory, becomes more beautiful\nthan birth and exhales a grace greater than that of love. No life will\never give what their youth is offering us, that youth which gives in one\nmoment the days and the years that lay before it. There is no sacrifice\nto be compared with that which they have made; for which reason there is\nno glory that can soar so high as theirs, no gratitude that can surpass\nthe gratitude which we owe them. They have not only a right to the\nforemost place in our memories: they have a right to all our memories and\nto everything that we are, since we exist only through them.\n\nAnd now it is in us that their life, so suddenly cut short, must resume\nits course. Whatever be our faith and whatever the God whom it adores,\none thing is almost certain and, in spite of all appearances, is daily\nbecoming more certain: it is that death and life are commingled; the dead\nand the living alike are but moments, hardly dissimilar, of a single\nand infinite existence and members of one immortal family. They are not\nbeneath the earth, in the depths of their tombs; they lie deep in our\nhearts, where all that they once were will continue to live and to act;\nand they live in us even as we die in them. They see us, they understand\nus more nearly than when they were in our arms; let us then keep a watch\nupon ourselves, so that they witness no actions and hear no words but\nwords and actions that shall be worthy of them.\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nTHE LIFE OF THE DEAD\n\n\n1\n\nThe other day I went to see a woman whom I knew before the war\u2014she was\nhappy then\u2014and who had lost her only son in one of the battles in the\nArgonne. She was a widow, almost a poor woman; and, now that this son,\nher pride and her joy, was no more, she no longer had any reason for\nliving. I hesitated to knock at her door. Was I not about to witness one\nof those hopeless griefs at whose feet all words fall to the ground like\nshameful and insulting lies? Which of us to-day is not familiar with\nthese mournful interviews, this dismal duty?\n\nTo my great astonishment, she offered me her hand with a kindly smile.\nHer eyes, to which I hardly dared raise my own, were free of tears.\n\n\u201cYou have come to speak of him,\u201d she said, in a cheerful tone; and it was\nas though her voice had grown younger.\n\n\u201cAlas, yes! I had heard of your sorrow; and I have come....\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I too believed that my unhappiness was irreparable; but now I know\nthat he is not dead.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! He is not dead? Do you mean that the news...? But I thought that\nthe body....\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, his body is over there; and I have even a photograph of his grave.\nLet me show it to you. See, that cross on the left, the fourth cross:\nthat is where he is lying. One of his friends, who buried him, sent me\nthis card and gave me all the details. He suffered no pain. There was\nnot even a death-struggle. And he has told me so himself. He is quite\nastonished that death should be so easy, so slight a thing.... You do not\nunderstand? Yes, I see what it is: you are just as I used to be, as all\nthe others are. I do not explain the matter to the others; what would be\nthe use? They do not wish to understand. But you, you will understand. He\nis more alive than he ever was; he is free and happy. He does just as he\nlikes. He tells me that one cannot imagine what a release death is, what\na weight it removes from you, nor the joy which it brings. He comes to\nsee me when I call him. He loves especially to come in the evening; and\nwe chat as we used to. He has not altered; he is just as he was on the\nday when he went away, only younger, stronger, handsomer. We have never\nbeen happier, more united, nearer to one another. He divines my thoughts\nbefore I utter them. He knows everything; he sees everything; but he\ncannot tell me everything he knows. He maintains that I must be wanting\nto follow him and that I must wait for my hour. And, while I wait, we are\nliving in a happiness greater than that which was ours before the war, a\nhappiness which nothing can ever trouble again....\u201d\n\nThose about her pitied the poor woman; and, as she did not weep, as she\nwas gay and smiling, they believed her mad.\n\n\n2\n\nWas she as mad as they thought? At the present moment, the great\nquestions of the world beyond the grave are pressing upon us from every\nside. It is probable that, since the world began, there have never\nbeen so many dead as now. The empire of death was never so mighty, so\nterrible; it is for us to defend and enlarge the empire of life. In the\npresence of this mother, which are right and which are wrong, those who\nare convinced that their dead are for ever swept out of existence, or\nthose who are persuaded that their dead do not cease to live, who believe\nthat they see them and hear them? Do we know what it is that dies in\nour dead, or even if anything dies? Whatever our religious faith may\nbe, there is at any rate one place where they cannot die. That place is\nwithin ourselves; and, if this unhappy mother went beyond the truth, she\nwas yet nearer to it than those despairing ones who nourish the mournful\ncertainty that nothing survives of those whom they loved. She felt too\nkeenly what we do not feel keenly enough. She remembered too much; and we\ndo not know how to remember. Between the two errors there is room for a\ngreat truth; and, if we have to choose, hers is the error towards which\nwe should lean. Let us learn to acquire through reason that which a wise\nmadness bestowed on her. Let us learn from her to live with our dead and\nto live with them without sadness and without terror. They do not ask for\ntears, but for a happy and confident affection. Let us learn from her to\nresuscitate those whom we regret. She called to hers, while we repulse\nours; we are afraid of them and are surprised that they lose heart and\npale and fade away and leave us for ever. They need love as much as do\nthe living. They die, not at the moment when they sink into the grave,\nbut gradually as they sink into oblivion; and it is oblivion alone that\nmakes the separation irrevocable. We should not allow it to heap itself\nabove them. It would be enough to vouchsafe them each day a single one of\nthose thoughts which we bestow uncounted upon so many useless objects:\nthey would no longer think of leaving us; they would remain around us and\nwe should no longer understand what a tombstone is, for there is no tomb,\nhowever deep, whose stone may not be raised and whose dust dispersed by a\nthought.\n\nThere would be no difference between the living and the dead if we but\nknew how to remember. There would be no more dead. The best of what they\nwere dwells with us after fate has taken them from us; all their past is\nours; and it is wider than the present, more certain than the future.\nMaterial presence is not everything in this world; and we can dispense\nwith it without despairing. We do not mourn those who live in lands which\nwe shall never visit, because we know that it depends on us whether we\ngo to find them. Let it be the same with our dead. Instead of believing\nthat they have disappeared never to return, tell yourselves that they are\nin a country to which you yourself will assuredly go soon, a country not\nso very far away. And while waiting for the time when you will go there\nonce and for all, you may visit them in thought as easily as if they were\nstill in a region inhabited by the living. The memory of the dead is even\nmore alive than that of the living; it is as though they were assisting\nour memory, as though they, on their side, were making a mysterious\neffort to join hands with us on ours. One feels that they are far more\npowerful than the absent who continue to breathe as we do.\n\n\n3\n\nTry then to recall those whom you have lost, before it is too late,\nbefore they have gone too far; and you will see that they will come much\ncloser to your heart, that they will belong to you more truly, that they\nare as real as when they were in the flesh. In putting off this last,\nthey have but discarded the moments in which they loved us least or in\nwhich we did not love at all. Now they are pure; they are clothed only in\nthe fairest hours of life; they no longer possess faults, littlenesses,\noddities; they can no longer fall away, or deceive themselves, or give\nus pain. They care for nothing now but to smile upon us, to encompass us\nwith love, to bring us a happiness drawn without stint from a past which\nthey live again beside us.\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nTHE WAR AND THE PROPHETS\n\n\n1\n\nAt the end of an essay occurring in _The Unknown Guest_ and entitled,\n_The Knowledge of the Future_, in which I examined a certain number\nof phenomena relating to the anticipatory perception of events, such\nas presentiments, premonitions, precognitions, predictions, etc., I\nconcluded in nearly the following terms:\n\n \u201cTo sum up, if it is difficult for us to conceive that the\n future preexists, perhaps it is just as difficult for us to\n understand that it does not exist; moreover, many facts tend\n to prove that it is as real and definite and has, both in\n time and eternity, the same permanence and the same vividness\n as the past. Now, from the moment that it preexists, it is\n not surprising that we should be able to know it; it is even\n astonishing, granted that it overhangs us from every side, that\n we should not discover it oftener and more easily.\u201d\n\nAbove all is it astonishing and almost inconceivable that this universal\nwar, the most stupendous catastrophe that has overwhelmed humanity since\nthe origin of things, should not, while it was approaching, bearing in\nits womb innumerable woes which were about to affect almost every one of\nus, have thrown upon us more plainly, from the recesses of those days\nin which it was making ready, its menacing shadow. One would think that\nit ought to have overcast the whole horizon of the future, even as it\nwill overcast the whole horizon of the past. A secret of such weight,\nsuspended in time, ought surely to have weighed upon all our lives; and\npresentiments or revelations should have arisen on every hand. There was\nnone of these. We lived and moved without uneasiness beneath the disaster\nwhich, from year to year, from day to day, from hour to hour, was\ndescending upon the world; and we perceived it only when it touched our\nheads. True, it was more or less foreseen by our reason; but our reason\nhardly believed in it; and besides I am not for the moment speaking of\nthe inductions of the understanding, which are always uncertain and which\nare resigned beforehand to the capricious contradictions which they are\ndaily accustomed to receive from facts.\n\n\n2\n\nBut I repeat, beside or above these inductions of our everyday logic,\nin the less familiar domain of supernatural intuitions, of divination,\nprediction or prophecy properly so-called, we find that there was\npractically nothing to warn us of the vast peril. This does not mean that\nthere was any lack of predictions or prophecies collected after the\nevent; these number, it appears, no fewer than eighty-three; but none of\nthem, excepting those of L\u00e9on Sonrel and the Rector of Ars, which we will\nexamine in a moment, is worthy of serious discussion. I shall therefore\nmention, by way of a reminder, only the most widely known; and, first of\nall, the famous prophecy of Mayence or Strasburg, which is supposed to\nhave been discovered by a certain Jecker in an ancient convent founded\nnear Mayence by St. Hildegarde, of which the original text could not\nbe found and of which no one until lately had ever heard. Then there\nis another prophecy of Mayence or Fiensberg, published in the _Neue\nMetaphysische Rundschau_ of Berlin in February 1912, in which the end of\nthe German Empire is announced for the year 1913. Next, we have various\npredictions uttered by Mme. de Th\u00e8bes, by Dom Bosco, by Blessed Andrew\nBobola, by Korzenicki the Polish monk, by Tolstoy, by Brother Hermann\nand so on, which are even less interesting; and, lastly, the prophecy of\n\u201cBrother Johannes,\u201d published by M. Jos\u00e9phin Peladan in the _Figaro_ of\n16 September 1914, which contains no evidence of genuineness and must\ntherefore meanwhile be regarded merely as an ingenious literary conceit.\n\n\n3\n\nAll these, on examination, leave but a worthless residuum; but the\nprophecies of the Rector of Ars and L\u00e9on Sonrel are more curious and\nworthy of a moment\u2019s attention.\n\nFather Jean-Baptiste Vianney, Rector of Ars, was, as everybody knows, a\nvery saintly priest, who appears to have been endowed with extraordinary\nmediumistic faculties. The prophecy in question was made public in 1862,\nthree years after the miracle-worker\u2019s death, and was confirmed by a\nletter which Mgr. Perriet addressed to the Very Rev. Dom Gr\u00e9a on the\n24th of February 1908. Moreover it was printed, as far back as 1872, in\na collection entitled, _Voix proph\u00e9tiques, ou signes, apparitions et\npr\u00e9dictions modernes_. It therefore has an incontestable date. I pass\nover the part relating to the war of 1870, which does not offer the same\nsafeguards; but I give that which concerns the present war, quoting from\nthe 1872 text:\n\n\u201cThe enemies will not go altogether; they will return again and destroy\neverything upon their passage; we shall not resist them, but will allow\nthem to advance; and, after that, we shall cut off their provisions and\nmake them suffer great losses. They will retreat towards their country;\nwe shall follow them and there will be hardly any who return home. Then\nwe shall take back all that they took from us and much more.\u201d\n\nAs for the date of the event, it is stated definitely and rather\nstrikingly in these words:\n\n\u201cThey will want to canonize me, but there will not be time.\u201d\n\nNow the preliminaries to the canonization of the Rector of Ars were begun\nin July 1914, but abandoned because of the war.\n\n\n4\n\nI now come to the Sonrel prediction. I will summarize it as briefly as\npossible from the admirable article which M. de Vesme devoted to it in\nthe _Annales des Sciences Psychiques_.[29]\n\nOn the 3rd of June 1914\u2014observe the date\u2014Professor Charles Richet handed\nM. de Vesme, from Dr. Am\u00e9d\u00e9e Tardieu, a manuscript of which the following\nis the substance: on the 23rd or 24th of July 1869, Dr. Tardieu was\nstrolling in the gardens of the Luxembourg with his friend L\u00e9on Sonrel,\na former pupil of the Higher Normal School and teacher of natural\nphilosophy at the Paris Observatory, when the latter had a kind of vision\nin the course of which he predicted various precise and actual episodes\nof the war of 1870, such as the collection on behalf of the wounded\nat the moment of departure and the amount of the sum collected in the\nsoldiers\u2019 k\u00e9pis; incidents of the journey to the frontier; the battle of\nSedan, the rout of the French, the civil war, the siege of Paris, his own\ndeath, the birth of a posthumous child, the doctor\u2019s political career and\nso on: predictions all of which were verified, as is attested by numerous\nwitnesses who are worthy of the fullest credence. But I will pass over\nthis part of the story and consider only that portion which refers to the\npresent war:\n\n\u201cI have been waiting for two years,\u201d to quote the text of Dr. Tardieu\u2019s\nmanuscript of the 3rd of June, \u201cI have been waiting for two years for the\nsequel of the prediction which you are about to read. I omit everything\nthat concerns my friend L\u00e9on\u2019s family and my own private affairs. Yet\nthere is in my life at this moment a personal matter, which, as always\nhappens, agrees too closely with general occurrences for me to be able to\ndoubt what follows:\n\n\u201c\u2018O my God! My country is lost: France is dead!... What a disaster!...\nAh, see, she is saved! She extends to the Rhine! O France, O my beloved\ncountry, you are triumphant; you are the queen of nations!... Your genius\nshines forth over the world.... All the earth wonders at you....\u201d\n\nThese are the words contained in the document written at the Mont-Dore on\nthe 3rd and handed to M. de Vesme on the 13th of June 1914, at a moment\nwhen no one was thinking of the terrible war which to-day is ravaging\nhalf the world.\n\nWhen questioned, after the declaration of war, by M. de Vesme on the\nsubject of the prophetic phrase, \u201cI have been waiting for two years for\nthe sequel of the prediction which you are about to read,\u201d Dr. Tardieu\nreplied, on the 12th of August:\n\n\u201cI had been waiting for two years; and I will tell you why. My friend\nL\u00e9on did not name the year, but the more general events are described\nsimultaneously with the events of my own life. Now the events which\nconcern me privately and which were doubtful two years ago became\ncertain in April or May last. My friends know that since May last I have\nbeen announcing war as due before September, basing my prediction on\ncoincidences with events in my private life of which I do not speak.\u201d\n\n\n5\n\nThese, up to the present, are the only prophecies known to us that\ndeserve any particular attention. The prediction in both is timid and\nlaconic; but, in those regions where the least gleam of light assumes\nextraordinary importance, it is not to be neglected. I admit, for the\nrest, that there has so far been no time to carry out a serious enquiry\non this point, but I should be greatly surprised if any such enquiry\ngave positive results and if it did not allow us to state that the\ngigantic event, as a whole, as a general event, was neither foreseen\nnor divined. On the other hand, we shall probably learn, when the\nenquiry is completed, that hundreds of deaths, accidents, wounds and\ncases of individual ruin and misfortune included in the great disaster\nwere predicted by clairvoyants, by mediums, by dreams and by every\nother manner of premonition with a definiteness sufficient to eliminate\nany kind of doubt. I have said elsewhere what I think of individual\npredictions of this kind, which seem to be no more than the reading\nof the presentiments which we carry within us, presentiments which\nthemselves, in the majority of cases, are but the perception, by the as\nyet imperfectly known senses of our subconsciousness, of events in course\nof formation or in process of realization which escape the attention\nof our understanding. However, it would still remain to be explained\nhow a wholly accidental death or wound could be perceived by these\nsubliminal senses as an event in course of formation. In any case, it\nwould once more be confirmed, after this great test, that the knowledge\nof the future, so soon as it ceases to refer to a strictly personal fact\nand one, moreover, not at all remote, is always illusory, or rather\nimpossible.\n\nApart then from these strictly personal cases, which for the moment we\nwill agree to set aside, it appears more than ever certain that there is\nno communication between ourselves and the vast store of events which\nhave not yet occurred and which nevertheless seem already to exist at\nsome place, where they await the hour to advance upon us, or rather\nthe moment when we shall pass before them. As for the exceptional and\nprecarious infiltrations which belong not merely to the present that is\nstill unknown, veiled or disguised, but really to the future, apart from\nthe two which we have just examined, which are inconclusive, I, for my\npart, know of but four or five that appear to be rigorously verified;\nand these I have discussed in the essay which I have already mentioned.\nFor that matter, they have no bearing upon the present war. They are,\nwhen all is said, so exceptional that they do not prove much; at the\nmost, they seem to confirm the idea that a store exists filled with\nfuture events as real, as distinct and as immutable as those of the past;\nand they allow us to hope that there are paths leading thither which\nas yet we do not know, but which it will not be for ever impossible to\ndiscover.\n\n\n\n\nXV\n\nTHE WILL OF EARTH\n\n\n1\n\nTo-day\u2019s conflict is but a revival of that which has not ceased to\ndrench the west of Europe in blood since the historical birth of the\ncontinent. The two chief episodes in this conflict, as we all know,\nare the invasion of Roman Gaul, including the north of Italy, by the\nFranks and the successive conquests of England by the Anglo-Saxons and\nthe Normans. Without delaying to consider questions of race, which are\ncomplex, uncertain and always open to discussion, we may, regarding\nthe matter from another aspect, perceive in the persistency and the\nbitterness of this conflict the clash of two wills, of which one or the\nother succumbs for a moment, only to rise up again with increased energy\nand obstinacy. On the one hand is the will of earth or nature, which,\nin the human species as in all others, openly favours brute or physical\nforce; and on the other hand is the will of humanity, or at least of a\nportion of humanity, which seeks to establish the empire of other more\nsubtle and less animal forces. It is incontestable that hitherto the\nformer has always won the day. But it is equally incontestable that\nits victory has always been only apparent and of brief duration. It\nhas regularly suffered defeat in its very triumph. Gaul, invaded and\noverrun, presently absorbs her victor, even as England little by little\ntransforms her conquerors. On the morrow of victory, the instruments\nof the will of earth turn upon her and arm the hand of the vanquished.\nIt is probable that the same phenomenon would recur once more to-day,\nwere events to follow the course prescribed by destiny. Germany, after\ncrushing and enslaving the greater part of Europe, after driving her back\nand burdening her with innumerable woes, would end by turning against the\nwill which she represents; and that will, which until to-day had always\nfound in this race a docile tool and its favourite accomplices, would be\nforced to seek these elsewhere, a task less easy than of old.\n\n\n2\n\nBut now, to the amazement of all those who will one day consider them in\ncold blood, events are suddenly ascending the irresistible current and,\nfor the first time since we have been in a position to observe it, the\nadverse will is encountering an unexpected and insurmountable resistance.\nIf this resistance, as we can now no longer doubt, maintains itself\nvictoriously to the end, there will never perhaps have been such a sudden\nchange in the history of mankind; for man will have gained, over the will\nof earth or nature or fatality, a triumph infinitely more significant,\nmore heavily fraught with consequences and perhaps more decisive than\nall those which, in other provinces, appear to have crowned his efforts\nmore brilliantly.\n\nLet us not then be surprised that this resistance should be stupendous,\nor that it should be prolonged beyond anything that our experience of\nwars has taught us to expect. It was our prompt and easy defeat that\nwas written in the annals of destiny. We had against us all the forces\naccumulated since the birth of Europe. We have to set history revolving\nin the reverse direction. We are on the point of succeeding; and, if it\nbe true that intelligent beings watch us from the vantage-point of other\nworlds, they will assuredly witness the most curious spectacle that our\nplanet has offered them since they discovered it amid the dust of stars\nthat glitters in space around it. They must be telling themselves in\namazement that the ancient and fundamental laws of earth are suddenly\nbeing transgressed.\n\n\n3\n\nSuddenly? That is going too far. This transgression of a lower law,\nwhich was no longer of the stature of mankind, had been preparing for a\nvery long time; but it was within an ace of being hideously punished.\nIt succeeded only by the aid of a part of those who formerly swelled\nthe great wave which they are to-day resisting by our side, as though\nsomething in the history of the world or the plans of destiny had\naltered; or rather as though we ourselves had at last succeeded in\naltering that something and in modifying laws to which until this day we\nwere wholly subject.\n\nBut it must not be thought that the conflict will end with the victory.\nThe deep-seated forces of earth will not be at once disarmed; for a\nlong time to come the invisible war will be waged under the reign of\npeace. If we are not careful, victory may even be more disastrous to\nus than defeat. For defeat, indeed, like previous defeats, would have\nbeen merely a victory postponed. It would have absorbed, exhausted,\ndispersed the enemy, by scattering him about the world, whereas our\nvictory will bring upon us a twofold peril. It will leave the enemy\nin a state of savage isolation in which, thrown back upon himself,\ncramped, purified by misfortune and poverty, he will secretly reinforce\nhis formidable virtues, while we, for our part, no longer held in check\nby his unbearable but salutary menace, will give rein to failings and\nvices which sooner or later will place us at his mercy. Before thinking\nof peace, then, we must make sure of the future and render it powerless\nto injure us. We cannot take too many precautions, for we are setting\nourselves against the manifest desire of the power that bears us.\n\nThis is why our efforts are difficult and worthy of praise. We are\nsetting ourselves\u2014we cannot too often repeat it\u2014against the will of\nearth. Our enemies are urged forward by a force that drives us back.\nThey are marching with nature, whereas we are striving against the great\ncurrent that sweeps the globe. The earth has an idea, which is no longer\nours. She remains convinced that man is an animal in all things like\nother animals. She has not yet observed that he is withdrawing himself\nfrom the herd. She does not yet know that he has climbed her highest\nmountain-peaks. She has not yet heard tell of justice, pity, loyalty\nand honour; she does not realize what they are, or confounds them with\nweakness, clumsiness, fear and stupidity. She has stopped short at\nthe original certitudes which were indispensable to the beginnings of\nlife. She is lagging behind us; and the interval that divides us is\nrapidly increasing. She thinks less quickly; she has not yet had time\nto understand us. Moreover, she does not reckon as we do; and for her\nthe centuries are less than our years. She is slow because she is almost\neternal, while we are prompt because we have not many hours before us.\nIt may be that one day her thought will overtake ours; in the meantime,\nwe have to vindicate our advance and to prove to ourselves, as we are\nbeginning to do, that it is lawful to be in the right as against her,\nthat our advance is not fatal and that it is possible to maintain it.\n\n\n4\n\nFor it is becoming difficult to argue that earth or nature is always\nright and that those who do not blindly follow earth\u2019s impulses are\nnecessarily doomed to perish. We have learned to observe her more\nattentively and we have won the right to judge her. We have discovered\nthat, far from being infallible, she is continually making mistakes.\nShe gropes and hesitates. She does not know precisely what she wants.\nShe begins by making stupendous blunders. She first peoples the world\nwith uncouth and incoherent monsters, not one of which is capable of\nliving; these all disappear. Gradually she acquires, at the cost of\nthe life which she creates, an experience that is the cruel fruit of\nthe immeasurable suffering which she unfeelingly inflicts. At last she\ngrows wiser, curbs and amends herself, corrects herself, returns upon\nher footsteps, repairs her errors, expending her best energies and her\nhighest intelligence upon the correction. It is incontestable that she is\nimproving her methods, that she is more skilful, more prudent and less\nextravagant than at the outset. And yet the fact remains that, in every\ndepartment of life, in every organism, down to our own bodies, there is a\nsurvival of bad workmanship, of twofold functions, of oversights, changes\nof intention, absurdities, useless complications and meaningless waste.\nWe therefore have no reason to believe that our enemies are in the right\nbecause earth is with them. Earth does not possess the truth any more\nthan we do. She seeks it, as do we, and discovers it no more readily.\nShe seems to know no more than we whither she is going or whither she is\nbeing led by that which leads all things.\n\nWe must not listen to her without enquiry; and we need not distress\nourselves or despair because we are not of her opinion. We are not\ndealing with an infallible and unchangeable wisdom, to oppose which in\nour thoughts would be madness. We are actually proving to her that it is\nshe who is in fault; that man\u2019s reason for existence is loftier than that\nwhich she provisionally assigned to him; that he is already outstripping\nall that she foresaw; and that she does wrong to delay his advance.\nShe is, indeed, full of goodwill, is able on occasion to recognize\nher mistakes and to obviate their disastrous results and by no means\ntakes refuge in majestic and inflexible self-conceit. If we are able to\npersevere, we shall be able to convince her. Much time will be needed,\nfor, I repeat, she is slow, though in no wise obstinate. Much time will\nbe needed because a very long future is in question, a very great change\nand the most important victory that man has ever hoped to win.\n\n\n\n\nXVI\n\nWHEN THE WAR IS OVER\n\n\n1\n\nBefore closing this book, I wish to weigh for the last time in my\nconscience the words of hatred and malediction which the war has made me\nutter in spite of myself. We have to do with the strangest of enemies.\nHe has knowingly and deliberately, while in the full possession of his\nfaculties and without necessity or excuse, revived all the crimes which\nwe supposed to be for ever buried in the barbarous past. He has trampled\nunder foot all the precepts which man had so painfully won from the cruel\ndarkness of his beginnings; he has violated all the laws of justice,\nhumanity, loyalty and honour, from the highest, which are almost godlike,\nto the simplest, the most elementary, which still belong to the lower\nworlds. There is no longer any doubt on this point: it has been proved\nover and over again until we have attained a final certitude.\n\n\n2\n\nOn the other hand, it is no less certain that he has displayed virtues\nwhich it would be unworthy of us to deny; for we honour ourselves in\nrecognizing the valour of those whom we are fighting. He has gone to\nhis death in deep, compact, disciplined masses, with a blind, hopeless,\nobstinate heroism, of which no such lurid example had ever yet been\nknown and which has many times compelled our admiration and our pity.\nHe has known how to sacrifice himself, with unprecedented and perhaps\nunequalled abnegation, to an idea which we know to be false, inhuman and\neven somewhat mean, but which he believes to be just and lofty; and a\nsacrifice of this kind, whatever its object, is always the proof of a\nforce which survives those who devote themselves to making it and must\ncommand respect.\n\nI know very well that this heroism is not like the heroism which we love.\nFor us, heroism must before all be voluntary, free from any constraint,\nactive, ardent, eager and spontaneous; whereas with our enemies it has\nmingled with it a great deal of servility, passiveness, sadness, gloomy,\nignorant, massive submission and rather base fears. It is nevertheless\nthe fact that, in the moment of supreme peril, little remains of all\nthese distinctions, and that no force in the world can drive to its death\na people which does not bear within itself the strength to confront it.\nOur soldiers make no mistake upon this point. Question the men returning\nfrom the trenches: they detest the enemy, they abhor the aggressor, the\nunjust and arrogant aggressor, uncouth, too often cruel and treacherous;\nbut they do not hate the man: they do him justice; they pity him; and,\nafter the battle, in the defenceless wounded soldier or disarmed prisoner\nthey recognize, with astonishment, a brother in misfortune who, like\nthemselves, is submitting to duties and laws which, like themselves, he\ntoo believes lofty and necessary. Under the insufferable enemy they see\nan unhappy man who likewise is bearing the burden of life. They forget\nthe things that divide them to recall only those which unite them in a\ncommon destiny; and they teach us a great lesson. Better than ourselves,\nwho are far from danger, at the contact of profound and fearful verities\nand realities they are already beginning to discern something that we\ncannot yet perceive; and their obscure instinct is probably anticipating\nthe judgment of history and our own judgment, when we see more clearly.\nLet us learn from them to be just and to distinguish that which we\nare bound to despise and loathe from that which we may pity, love and\nrespect. Setting aside the unpardonable aggression and the inexpiable\nviolation of treaties, this war, despite its insanity, has come near\nto being a bloody but magnificent proof of greatness, heroism and the\nspirit of sacrifice. Humanity was ready to rise above itself, to surpass\nall that it had hitherto accomplished. It has surpassed it. Never before\nhad nations been seen capable, for months on end, perhaps for years, of\nrenouncing their repose, their security, their wealth, their comfort,\nall that they possessed and loved, down to their very life, in order\nto do what they believed to be their duty. Never before had nations\nbeen seen that were able as a whole to understand and admit that the\nhappiness of each of those who live in this time of trial is of no\nconsequence compared with the honour of those who live no more or the\nhappiness of those who are not yet alive. We stand on heights that had\nnot been attained before. And, if, on the enemies\u2019 side, this unexampled\nrenunciation had not been poisoned at its source; if the war which\nthey are waging against us had been as fine, as loyal, as generous, as\nchivalrous as that which we are waging against them, we may well believe\nthat it would have been the last and that it would have ended, not in\na battle, but, like the awakening from an evil dream, in a noble and\nfraternal amazement. They have made that impossible; and this, we may be\nsure, is the disappointment which the future will find it most difficult\nto forgive them.\n\n\n3\n\nWhat are we to do now? Must we hate the enemy to the end of time? The\nburden of hatred? is the heaviest that man can bear upon this earth; and\nwe should faint under the weight of it. On the other hand, we do not\nwish once more to be the dupes and victims of confidence and love. Here\nagain our soldiers, in their simplicity, which is so clear-seeing and\nso close to the truth, anticipate the future and teach us what to admit\nand what to avoid. We have seen that they do not hate the man; but they\ndo not trust him at all. They discover the human being in him only when\nhe is unarmed. They know, from bitter experience, that, so long as he\npossesses weapons, he cannot resist the frenzy of destruction, treachery\nand slaughter; and that he does not become kindly until he is rendered\npowerless.\n\nIs he thus by nature, or has he been perverted by those who lead him?\nHave the rulers dragged the whole nation after them, or has the whole\nnation driven its rulers on? Did the rulers make the nation like unto\nthemselves, or did the nation select and support them because they\nresembled itself? Did the evil come from above or below, or was it\neverywhere? Here we have the great obscure point of this terrible\nadventure. It is not easy to throw light upon it and still less easy to\nfind excuses for it. If our enemies prove that they were deceived and\ncorrupted by their masters, they prove, at the same time, that they are\nless intelligent, less firmly attached to justice, honour and humanity,\nless civilized, in a word, than those whom they claimed the right to\nenslave in the name of a superiority which they themselves have proved\nnot to exist; and, unless they can establish that their errors, perfidies\nand cruelties, which can no longer be denied, should be imputed only to\nthose masters, then they themselves must bear the pitiless weight. I do\nnot know how they will escape from this predicament, nor what the future\nwill decide, that future which is wiser than the past, even as, in the\nwords of an old Slav proverb, the dawn is wiser than the eve. In the\nmeanwhile, let us copy the prudence of our soldiers, who know what to\nbelieve far better than we do.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] Marie Len\u00e9ru, _Les Affranchis_, Act III., sc. iv.\n\n[2] Those who take up the study of these supernormal manifestations\nusually ask themselves:\n\n\u201cWhy mediums? Why make use of these often questionable and always\ninadequate intermediaries?\u201d\n\nThe reason is that, hitherto, no way has been discovered of doing without\nthem. If we admit the spiritualistic theory, the discarnate spirits\nwhich surround us on every side and which are separated from us by the\nimpenetrable and mysterious wall of death seek, in order to communicate\nwith us, the line of least resistance between the two worlds and find\nit in the medium, without our knowing why, even as we do not know why\nan electric current passes along copper wire and is stopped by glass or\nporcelain. If, on the other hand, we admit the telepathic hypothesis,\nwhich is the more probable, we observe that the thoughts, intentions\nor suggestions transmitted are, in the majority of cases, not conveyed\nfrom one subconscious intelligence to another. There is need of an\norganism that is, at the same time, a receiver and a transmitter; and\nthis organism is found in the medium. Why? Once more, we know absolutely\nnothing about it, even as we do not know why one body or combination of\nbodies is sensitive to concentric waves in wireless telegraphy, while\nanother is not affected by it. We are here groping, as indeed we grope\nalmost everywhere, in the obscure domain of undisputed but inexplicable\nfacts. Those who care to possess more precise notions on the theory of\nmediumism will do well to read the admirable address delivered by Sir\nWilliam Crookes, as president of the S.P.R., on the 29th of January 1897.\n\n[3] The questions of fraud and imposture are naturally the first that\nsuggest themselves when we begin to study these phenomena. But the\nslightest acquaintance with the life, habits and proceedings of the\nthree or four leading mediums is enough to remove even the faintest\nshadow of suspicion. Of all the explanations conceivable, that one which\nattributes everything to imposture and trickery is unquestionably the\nmost extraordinary and the least probable. Moreover, by reading Richard\nHodgson\u2019s report entitled, _Observations of certain Phenomena of Trance_\n(_Proceedings_, Vols. VIII. and XIII.) and also J. H. Hyslop\u2019s report\n(_Proceedings_, Vol. XVI.), we can observe the precautions taken, even\nto the extent of employing special detectives, to make certain that Mrs.\nPiper, for instance, was unable, normally and humanly speaking, to have\nany knowledge of the facts which she revealed. I repeat, from the moment\nthat one enters upon this study, all suspicions are dispelled without\nleaving a trace behind them; and we are soon convinced that the key to\nthe riddle must not be sought in imposture. All the manifestations of the\ndumb, mysterious and oppressed personality that lies concealed in every\none of us have to undergo the same ordeal in their turn; and those which\nrelate to the divining-rod, to name no others, are at this moment passing\nthrough the same crisis of incredulity. Less than fifty years ago, the\nmost of the hypnotic phenomena which are now scientifically classified\nwere likewise looked upon as fraudulent. It seems that man is loth to\nadmit that there lie within him many more things than he imagined.\n\n[4] In this and other \u201ccommunications,\u201d I have quoted the actual English\nwords employed, whenever I have been able to discover them.\u2014_Translator._\n\n[5] _Proceedings_, Vol. XXIII., p. 33.\n\n[6] _Ibid._ p. 120.\n\n[7] For a discussion of these cases, which would take us too far from our\nsubject, see Mr. J. G. Piddington\u2019s paper, _Phenomena in Mrs. Thompson\u2019s\nTrance_ (_Proceedings_, Vol. XVIII., pp. 180 _et seq._); also Professor\nA. C. Pigou\u2019s article in Vol. XXIII. (_Proceedings_, pp. 286 _et seq._).\n\n[8] _Proceedings_, Vol. XIII., pp. 349-350 and 375.\n\n[9] Proceedings, Vols. V. and XI.\n\n[10] Maxwell, _Metapsychical Phenomena_, p. 202.\n\n[11] Xenoglossy is well known not to be unusual in automatic writing;\nsometimes even the \u201cautomatist\u201d speaks or writes languages of which he\nis completely ignorant. The Latin and Greek passages are translated as\nfollows:\n\n\u201cThis is what I have wanted, at last. Justice and joy speak a word to the\nwise. A. W. V. and perhaps some one else. Chalk sticking to the feet has\ngot over the difficulty. You help greatly by always persevering. Now I\ncan write a name\u2014thus, here it is!\u201d\n\n[12] _Proceedings_, Vol. XI., p. 493.\n\n[13] _Proceedings_, Vol. XI., p. 505.\n\n[14] _Proceedings_, Vol. XI., p. 545.\n\n[15] A. J. C. KERNER, _Die Seherin von Prevorst_.\n\n[16] _Light_, 1907, p. 219. The crime was committed in Paris and made a\ngreat stir at the time.\n\n[17] LADY BURTON, _The Life of Captain Sir Richd. F. Burton. K.C.M.G._,\nVol. I., p. 253.\n\n[18] _Journal of the Society for Psychical Research_, Vol. IX., p. 15.\n\n[19] _Proceedings_, Vol. XX., p. 331.\n\n[20] _Proceedings_, Vol. XIV., p. 266.\n\n[21] _Proceedings_, Vol. XI., p. 422.\n\n[22] Flournoy, _Esprits et m\u00e9diums_, p. 316.\n\n[23] _Proceedings_, Vol. XI., p. 424.\n\n[24] _Journal_, Vol. VIII., p. 45.\n\n[25] _Journal_, Vol. I., p. 283.\n\n[26] _Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Stephen Grellet_, Vol. I., p.\n434.\n\n[27] This and the later passage from Pericles\u2019 funeral oration I\nhave quoted from the late Richard Crawley\u2019s admirable translation\nof Thucydides\u2019 _Peloponnesian War_ now published in the _Temple\nClassics_.\u2014A. T. de M.\n\n[28] _Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Life_, chapter xiv.: \u201cSome\nThoughts about Ancestor-Worship.\u201d\n\n[29] August, September and October 1915.\n\n\nEdinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty\n\n\n\n\nSEVEN CHARMING WORKS BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK\n\nTRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS\n\n\nTHE WRACK OF THE STORM\n\n _Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net._\n\n This volume contains all that M. Maeterlinck has written since\n the outbreak of the war; sixteen essays, and the three speeches\n delivered at Milan, Rome, and London respectively.\n\nTHE BLUE BIRD (A FAIRY PLAY IN SIX ACTS)\n\n The book is issued in three forms:\n\n A sumptuous Edition, containing 25 Illustrations in Colour by\n F. CAYLEY ROBINSON, A.R.W.S. _Gilt top. Crown 4to. 21s. net._\n\n An Edition in Cloth. _Deckle edges. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net._\n\n An Edition in Cloth. _Fcap. 8vo. 1s. net._\n\n (_Thirty-nine Editions of this book have been issued in all._)\n\nMARY MAGDALENE (A PLAY IN THREE ACTS)\n\n _Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Deckle edges. 3s. 6d. net._\n\n An Edition in Cloth, _Fcap. 8vo, 1s. net_, is also issued.\n\nDEATH\n\n _Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Deckle edges. 3s. 6d. net._\n\n A beautiful essay by this master of poetic prose.\n\nOUR ETERNITY\n\n With a Photogravure Frontispiece after G. F. WATTS\u2019 \u2018Hope.\u2019\n\n _Fcap. 8vo. Deckle edges. 5s._\n\nTHE UNKNOWN GUEST\n\n _Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net._\n\nPOEMS\n\nDONE INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY BERNARD MIALL.\n\n _Second Edition. Crown 8vo. Gilt top. 5s. net._\n\nMETHUEN & CO. LTD. LONDON\n\n * * * * *\n\nGIVE PREFERENCE TO BRITISH GOODS\n\nTHE _Empire Typewriter_\n\nMADE IN CANADA\n\n Lightweight Travelling Model \u00a313 2 6\n Weight 10\u00bd lbs. net.\n\n No. 1 Commercial \u00a313 2 6\n\n No. 2 Latest Improved \u00a317 10 0\n\nSubject to War Advances.\n\n_Best Service with Lowest Cost!_\n\nOVER 5,000 EMPIRES PURCHASED BY HIS MAJESTY\u2019S GOVERNMENT\n\n THE EMPIRE TYPEWRITER CO., LTD.\n 77 Queen Victoria Street, E.C. 4","title":"Gleanings from Maeterlinck","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":52671}