Читать книгу The Day After Death (New Edition). Our Future Life According to Science - Figuier Louis - Страница 7

WHAT BECOMES OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING AFTER DEATH?—DEATHS, RESURRECTIONS, AND NEW INCARNATIONS IN THE ETHEREAL SPACES

IN the living nature which surrounds us, there is a continually ascending scale of gradual perfection, from the plant to man. Taking mosses and algæ, which represent the rudimentary condition of vegetable organization, as our point of departure, we pass on through the whole series of the perfecting processes of the vegetable kingdom, and we reach the inferior animals, zoophytes and mollusca. From thence we ascend to the superior animals by insensible degrees, and thus fully attain to man. Each step of this ladder is almost imperceptible, so finely arranged are the transitions and the shades; so that there is a really infinite chain of intermediate beings, at one end of which are the algæ, and at the other ourselves. And yet we think it possible that between us and God there should be no kind of intermediate being! that in this scale of continual progress, there should be an immense void between man and the Creator! We think it possible that all nature, from the lowest vegetable to mankind, should be arranged in successive and innumerable degrees, and that between man and God there should exist only a desert, an immeasurable hiatus. Evidently, this is impossible, and that such an error should ever have been countenanced by religion and philosophy is only to be explained by ignorance of natural phenomena. It is impossible to doubt that between man and God, as between the plant and the animal, the animal and man, there exist a great number of intermediate creations, which establish the transition of humanity into the divinity which governs it, in infinite power and majesty.

That these intermediate beings exist, we are certain. They are invisible to us, but, if we refused to admit the existence of everything which we cannot see, we should be very easily refuted. Let a naturalist take a drop of water from a pond, and, shewing it to an ignorant person, tell him, "this drop of water, in which you do not see anything, is filled with little animals, and with miniature plants, which live, are born and die, like the animals and plants, which inhabit our farms." The ignorant person would probably shrug up his shoulders, and consider the speaker crazy. But if he were induced to apply his eye to the magnifier of a microscope, in order to examine the contents of the drop of water, he must acknowledge that the truth had been told him; because, in this drop of water, in which he could at first see nothing, his eye, when assisted by science, would discern whole worlds.

A great number of living beings can therefore exist where we see nothing, and it is feasible to science to open the eyes of the multitude in this respect.

We desire to assume the position of the naturalist of whom we have spoken. Between man and God, the ignorant crowd and a blind philosophy perceive nothing; but, when we replace the eyes of the body by those of the spirit, that is to say, when we make use of reason, analogy, and education, these mysterious beings come to light.

We have already, in studying the superhuman being, described one of those intermediate creations between man and the divinity, and defined the existence of one of those landmarks placed by nature on the high-road of infinite space. But the ladder does not break off at its first step, and we are convinced that numerous living hierarchies intervene between the superhuman being and the radiant throne of the Almighty. We have said elsewhere, that, in our belief, superhuman beings are mortal. What becomes of them after their death? Let us now take up the thread of our deductions.

We believe that—the superhuman being having died at the end of a term whose duration we have no means of knowing—his soul, perfected by the exercise of the new faculties which it has received, and the new senses with which it has been endowed, enters into a new body, provided with senses still more numerous and more exquisite, and endowed with faculties of still greater power, and thus commences a fresh existence.

We call the being who succeeds to man angel, or superhuman; we may call his succession in the ethereal realm, arch-angel, or arch-human.

The actual moment of the passage from one life to another, must be, as it is in the case of man, a time of moral and physical pain. The supreme periods at which a metamorphosis takes place in a sensible being are crises full of anguish and torment.

We will not endeavour to penetrate the secrets of the organization of the new being whose existence we thus trace, and who is superior to the superhuman being in the natural hierarchy; because our means of investigation fail us at this point. We have ventured to form some conjecture respecting the body, the soul, and the life of the superhuman being, because in that case, however adventurous our excursion into unknown spheres, we had a point of comparison and induction in the human species. But all induction respecting the arch-human being who succeeds the superhuman, is wanting, for we could only perceive the latter by means of conjectures and analogies which we must not carry farther.

We will, therefore, abstain from pursuing this kind of investigation, permitting the reader to exercise his own imagination upon the form of the body, the number and perfection of the senses, and the extent of the faculties of the happy creature who succeeds to the superhuman being, and who dwells, like him, in the immensity of ethereal space. We will only add that we do not think a second, a third, or a fourth incarnation arrests the succession of the chain of sublime creations, which float in the infinitude of the heavens, and which proceed from a primitive human soul, which has grown in perfection and in moral power. It surpasses our faculty to define, by the unassisted light of our reason and our knowledge, the number of these beings who go on succeeding one another in ever-increasing perfection. We can only say that we believe the creatures, which compose this ladder of perfections in succession, must be very numerous.

At every stage of his promotion in the hierarchy of nature the celestial being beholds the growth of those wings which symbolize his marvellous power to us. Each time his organs become more numerous, more flexible, have greater scope. He acquires new and exquisite senses. He acquires more and more power of extending his beneficent empire, of exercising his faculty of loving his fellows and all nature, and, above all, of comprehending and reading the designs of God. Deeper and deeper affections engage his soul, for the tenderness and the happiness engendered in its pure satisfaction, are granted to him to console him for the sufferings of death, to which he is always condemned. It is thus that the happiness of the elect is augmented. It is thus that the beings who inhabit the boundless plains of the invisible world employ each of their lives in preparing for the life which is to follow, in securing by a wise exercise of their freedom, industrious culture of their faculties, strict observance of morality, and continuous beneficence, a more noble, more animated, and happier destiny in the new spaces which await them, in the development of their sublime destiny.4

Nevertheless, as everything comes to an end in this world, so must everything have an end in the surrounding spheres. After having traversed the successive stages and rested in the successive stations of their journey through the skies, the beings whom we are considering must finally reach a defined place. What is this place, the ultimate term of their immense cycle across the spaces? In our belief, it is the sun.