THE DAY AFTER DEATH

THE
DAY AFTER DEATH
OR
Our Future Life according to Science

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF
LOUIS FIGUIER

ILLUSTRATED BY TEN ASTRONOMICAL PLATES

A NEW EDITION

London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1904

Formerly published by Richard Bentley & Son.
Reprinted 1904.

CONTENTS.

THE DAY AFTER DEATH.

INTRODUCTION.

Where shall that sensible, existing soul, which must survive the tomb, go to? What will it become, what shall you be, my reader, the day after your death?

To the consideration of this question this book is devoted.

Almost all thinkers have declared that the problem of the future life defies solution. They have argued that the human mind is powerless to foresee so profound a mystery, and that therefore the only rational course is to abstain from the endeavour. This is the reasoning of the majority of mankind, partly from carelessness, or partly from conviction. Besides, when we venture to look at this tremendous question closely, we find ourselves immediately surrounded with such thick darkness that we lack courage to pursue the investigation. And thus we are led to turn away from all thought of the future life.

There are, nevertheless, circumstances which force us to reflect on this dark and difficult subject. When one finds oneself in danger of death, or when one has lost a dearly beloved object, there is no escape from meditation upon the future life. When we have dwelt long and earnestly upon the idea, we may be brought to acknowledge that the problem is not, as it has so long been believed, beyond the reach of the human mind.

During the greater portion of his life, the author of this book believed, in common with everybody else, that the problem of the future life is out of our reach, and that true wisdom consists in not troubling our minds about it. But, one dreadful day, a thunderbolt fell in his path. He lost the son in whom centred all the hope and ambition of his life. Then, in the bitterness of his grief he reflected deeply on the new life which must open for each of us, above the tomb. After long dwelling on this idea in solitary meditation, he asked of the exact sciences what positive information, on this question, they could furnish him with, and subsequently, he interrogated ignorant and simple people, peasants in their villages, and unlettered men in towns, an ever precious source of aid in re-ascending towards the true principles of nature, for it is not perverted by the progress of education, or by the routine of a commonplace philosophy.

Thus the author of this book succeeded in constructing for himself an entire system of ideas concerning the new life of man, which is to follow his terrestrial existence.

But his system is all contained in nature. Each organized being is attached to another which precedes, and another which follows it, in the chain of the living creation. The plant and the animal, the animal and the man, are linked, soldered to one another; the moral and physical order meet and mingle. It results from this, that any one who believes himself to have discovered the explanation of any one fact concerning this organization, is speedily led to extend this explanation to all living beings, to reconstruct, link by link, the great chain of nature. Thus it was with the author of this book. After having sought out the destination of man, when dismissed from his terrestrial life, he was led to apply his views to all other living beings, to animals, and then to plants. The power of logic forced him to study those beings, impossible to be seen by our organs of vision, by which he holds the planets, the suns, and all the innumerable stars dispersed over the vast extent of the heavens, to be inhabited. So that you will find in this book, not only an attempt at the solution of the problem of the future life by science, but also the statement of a complete theory of nature, of a true philosophy of the universe.

It may be that I am deceiving myself; it may be that I am taking the dreams of my imagination for serious views; I may lose myself in that dark region through which I am trying to grope my way; but at least I write with absolute sincerity, and that is my excuse for writing this book at all. I hope that others may be induced by my example to attempt similar efforts, to apply the exact sciences to the study of the great question of the destinies of man after this life. A series of works undertaken in this branch of learning, would be the greatest service which could be rendered to natural philosophy, and also to the progress of humanity.

After the terrible misfortunes of 1870 and 1871, there is not a family in France which has not had to mourn a kinsman or a friend. I found, not indeed consolation for my grief, but tranquillity for my mind, in the composition of this work; and I have therefore hoped that, in reading its pages, they who suffer and they who grieve might find some of the same hope and assurance which have lifted up my stricken heart.

Society is in our day the prey of a deadly disease, of a moral canker, which threatens it with destruction. This disease is materialism. Materialism, which was preached first in Germany, in the universities, and in books of philosophy, and the natural sciences, afterwards spread rapidly in France. With brief delay, it came down from the level of the savans to that of the educated classes, and thence it penetrated the ranks of the people; and the people have undertaken to teach us the practical consequences of materialism. Little by little they have flung off every bond, they have discarded all respect of persons and principles; they no longer value religion or its ministers; the social hierarchy, their country, or liberty. That this must lead to some terrible result it was easy to foresee. After a long period of political anarchy, a body of furious madmen carried death, terror, and fire through the capital of France.

It was not patriotism which fired the illustrious and sacred monuments of Paris, it was materialism. Nothing can be more evident than that, from the moment one is convinced that everything comes to an end in this world, that there is nothing to follow this life, we have nothing better to do, one and all of us, than to appeal to violence, to excite disturbance, and invoke anarchy everywhere, in order to find, amid such propitious disorder, the means of satisfying our brutal desires, our unruly ambition, and our sensual passions. Civilization, society, and morals, are like a string of beads, whose fastening is the belief in the immortality of the soul. Break the fastening, and the beads are scattered.

Materialism is the scourge of our day, the origin of all the evils of European society. Now, materialism is fiercely fought in this book, which might be entitled, "Spiritualism Demonstrated by Science." Because this is its aim, and its motive, my friends have induced me to publish it.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

Man may be defined as a perfected soul dwelling in a living body.

This definition permits us to specify what it is that constitutes death.

Death is the separation of the soul and the body. This separation is effected when the body has ceased to be animated by the life.

Plants and animals cannot live except under certain conditions: plants in the air or in the water, animals in the air, fish in the water; and if they are deprived of these conditions, they perish immediately. Again, there are existences which require special conditions for their support within the general ones.

Certain polypoid-worms can live only in carbonic acid, or azotic gas; the germs of cryptogams produced by damp can be developed only in aqueous infusions of vegetable matters; the fish which live in the sea, die in fresh, or only moderately salt, water.

Every living being has then its special habitat. The soul does not form an exception to this rule. The place, the habitat of the soul is a living body. The soul disappears from the body when this body ceases to live, just as a man forsakes a house when that house has been destroyed by fire.

Such is the doctrine of the triple alliance of the body, the soul, and the life, as formulated by the School of Montpellier, and such, as a consequence of this doctrine, is the mechanism of death.

It must be added that this triple alliance of the body, the soul, and the life, is not peculiar to man; it exists also in all animals. The animal has also a living body, and soul; but the soul in animals is much inferior to the soul in men, in the number and extent of its faculties. Having few wants, the animal has a very small number of faculties, which are all in a rudimentary condition. It is only in the very considerable development of the faculties of the soul that man differs from the superior animals, to which he bears a strong resemblance in his physiological functions, and his anatomical structure.

It must be remarked that the Montpellier School does not admit this view of the condition of animals. In another part of this work,[1] a fuller explanation of the distinctions which divide man from animal will be found.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

This was the process by which the entire carcasses of the mammoths, or extinct elephants, which belonged to the quaternity period, were preserved. In 1802 a perfectly preserved carcass of this gigantic pachyderm was found on the bank of the Lena, a river which runs into the Arctic Sea, after traversing a portion of the Asiatic continent in the vicinity of the North Pole. The frozen earth and the ice which covers the banks of the river into which the mammoth had plunged, had so effectually preserved it from putrefaction, that the flesh of the huge creature, dead for more than a hundred thousand years, made a feast for the fishermen of that desert place. In northern countries, if one would preserve the body of a man, it could be effectually done by simply keeping it constantly wrapped in ice.

When the body of a man, or of an animal, is exposed to the combined influences of air, of water, and of a moderately high temperature, it undergoes a series of chemical decompositions, whose final term is its transformation into carbonic acid gas, and some compounds, gaseous or solid, which represent the less advanced products of destruction. Gases of various kinds, carbonic acid, hydrosulphuric, and ammoniac, and the vapour of water, spread themselves through the atmosphere, or dissolve into the humidity of the soil. At a later stage these compounds, thus dissolved into the water which bathes the earth, are absorbed by the little roots of the plants which live on it, and aid in their nutrition and development. As for the gas, it begins by spreading through the air; and then falling to the earth again dissolved in the rainwater, it also equally supplies the needs of vegetable life. The ammoniac and carbonic acid in the water which penetrates the soil, is absorbed by the roots, introduced into the tubes of the plants, and supplies them with nourishment.

Thus, the matter which forms the bodies of men and animals is not destroyed; it only changes its form, and under its new conditions it aids in the composition of fresh organic substances.

In all this the human body does but obey the common laws of nature. That which it undergoes, every organized substance, vegetable or animal, exposed to the combined influences of air, water, and temperature, equally undergoes. A piece of cotton or woollen stuff, a grain of wheat, a fruit—they all ferment, and reduce themselves to new products, exactly as our bodies do. The cere cloth which enfolds a corpse is destroyed by precisely the same process which destroys the corpse.

But, if the material substance which forms man's body does but transform itself, journeying through the globe, passing from animals to plants and from plants to animals; it is quite otherwise with life. Life is a force. Like the other forces, heat, light, and electricity, it is born, and it transmits itself; it has a beginning and an end. Like light, heat, and electricity—the physical agents which make us comprehend life, and which have certainly the same essence and the same origin—life has its producing causes, and its causes of destruction. It cannot rekindle itself when it has been extinguished; it cannot re-commence its course when its fatal term has arrived. Life cannot perpetuate itself; it is a simple condition of bodies, a fugitive and precarious condition, subject to countless influences, accidents, and chances.

The life is therefore greatly inferior in importance to the soul, which is indestructible and immortal. The soul is the essential element in all nature. It has active and positive qualities in all respects where the two other elements, the body and the life, have only negative qualities. Whilst the body dissociates itself and disappears, while the life becomes annihilated, the soul can neither disappear nor become annihilated.

We have seen what becomes of a man's body after his death, and also of his life; let us now examine into the condition of his soul.

No philosopher, no learned man, none of those who know the immensity of the universe and the eternity of the ages, can admit that our existence on the earth is a definite thing,—that human life has no link with anything above or beyond itself. Man dies at thirty, or twenty years old; he may live only a few months, or a few minutes. The average length of life, according to Duvilard's tables, is twenty-eight years. At present it is thirty-three. One fourth of mankind die before their seventh year, and one half do not outlive their seventeenth. Those who survive this time enjoy a privilege which is denied to the rest of the human race.[2]

What is so short an interval, compared to the general duration of time, to the age of the earth and of the worlds? It is one minute in eternity. Our brief life is not, cannot be anything but an accident, a rapid and passing phenomenon, which hardly counts for anything in the history of nature.

On the other hand, the physical conditions of terrestrial life are detestable. Man is a martyr, exposed to every sort of suffering: owing partly to the defective organization of his body, incessantly menaced with danger from external causes, dreading the extremes of heat and cold; weak and ailing, coming into the world naked, and without any natural defence against the influence of climate. If, in one portion of Europe, and in America, the progress of civilization has secured comfort for the rich, what are the sufferings of the poor in those very same countries? Life is perpetual suffering to the greater number of the men who inhabit the insalubrious regions of Asia, Africa, and Oceania. And then, before there was any civilization at all, during the period of Primitive Man, a period so immense that it stretches back to a hundred thousand years before our epoch, what was the fate of humanity? It was a perpetual succession of suffering, danger, and pain.

The conditions of human existence are as evil from the moral as from the physical point of view. It is granted that here below happiness is impossible. The Holy Scriptures, when they tell us that the earth is a valley of tears, do but render an incontestable truth in a poetic form. Yes, man has no destiny here but suffering. He suffers in his affections, and in his unfulfilled desires, in the aspirations and impulses of his soul, continually thrust back, baffled, beaten down by insurmountable obstacles and resistance. Happiness is a forbidden condition. The few agreeable sensations which we experience, now and then, are expiated by the bitterest grief. We have affections, that we may lose and mourn their dearest objects; we have fathers, mothers, children, that we may see them die.

It is impossible that a state so abnormal can be a definitive condition. Order, harmony, equilibrium reign throughout the physical world, and it must be that the same are to be found again in the moral world. If, on looking around us, we are forced to acknowledge that suffering is the common and constant rule, that injustice and violence dominate, that force triumphs, that victims tremble and die under the iron hand of cruelty and oppression; then it must be that this is only a temporary order of things. It cannot be otherwise than a moment of transition, an intermediary period which Providence condemns us to pass through rapidly, on our way to a better state.

But, what is this new condition, what is this second existence which is to succeed to our terrestrial life? In other words, what becomes of the human soul after death has broken the bonds which held it to the body? This is what we have to investigate.

That being, superior to man in the scale of the living creatures which people the universe, has no name in any language. The angel acknowledged by the Christian religion, and honoured by an especial cultus, is the only approach we have to a realization of the idea. Thus Jean Reynaud calls the superior creature, who is, he believes, to succeed to man after his death, an angel. But we will put aside the word altogether, and call the perfected creature who, in our belief, comes after man in the ascending series of nature, the superhuman being.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

All students of nature know that life is spread over our globe in prodigious proportions. We cannot take a step, our eyes cannot glance around us, without everywhere encountering myriads of living beings. The earth is nothing but a vast reservoir of life. Examine a blade of grass in a field, and you will find it covered with insects, or inferior animals. But your eyes will not suffice for this examination; you must have recourse to the microscope. With the aid of the magnifying glass, you will discover that this blade of grass is the refuge of an active population, which are born, multiply, and die with prodigious rapidity on their almost imperceptible domain.

From this blade of grass you may draw inferences and conclusions respecting the vegetation of the entire globe.

The fresh waters which flow upon the surface of the earth are also the receptacle of a prodigious quantity of organic existence. Without mentioning the plants, and the animals which live in the waters of the rivers and streams, and are visible to the naked eye, if you take a drop of water from a pool, and place it under the microscope, you will see that it is filled with living beings, who, though so small that they escape our unassisted vision, are none the less active, and all hold their appointed place in the economy of nature. We know how thickly peopled with inhabitants is the great drop; but, without speaking of beings visible to all, the fishes, the crustacea, and the zoophytes, or of the marine plants, creatures, invisible except under microscopical examination, abound to such an extent in sea water, that one single drop of it, so examined, displays innumerable quantities of these microscopic animals and plants.

From this drop of water you may draw inferences and conclusions respecting the entire mass of waters which occupy the basins of the seas, and form three-fourths of the surface of our globe.

In order that some conception may be reached of the enormous numbers of the living beings contained in the seas now, and formerly, we may fitly recall in this place a fact well known to geologists. It is, that all building stone, all the calcareous earth of which chalk hills and banks are formed, are entirely composed of the pulverized and agglomerated remains of the shells of mollusca, visible or microscopic, which, in the most remote ages of the existence of the globe, peopled the basin of the seas. The whole of this formation is composed of the accumulation of shells. If life has been lavished with such profusion in the waters during the geological periods, it must be equally lavished now, in almost similar ways, because the actual conditions of nature do not differ from what they were in the primitive ages of the globe.

The air which surrounds us is, like the earth and the seas, a vast receptacle of living creatures. We see only a few animals cleaving the aërial space, but the savant, who looks beyond the simple appearance of things, discovers myriads of existences in the air.

The air seems to us very pure, very transparent, but only because it is not sufficiently illumined by light to enable us to perceive the particles, or foreign bodies, which are floating about in it. When we allow one ray of daylight to penetrate into a closed room, one thread of solar light, we can discern a luminous streak flung across the chamber, while the remaining portion is still in darkness. We all know that, thanks to the powerful light, and its contrast with the surrounding obscurity, the luminous streak is seen to be filled with light, slender floating bodies, rising, descending, fluttering with the motion of the air. That which is perceptible in the atmosphere of a brightly-lighted room is necessarily existent in the entire atmosphere surrounding our globe, so that the air is everywhere filled with these specks of dust.

Of what are these specks of dust formed? Almost entirely of living creatures, of the germs of microscopic plants (cryptogamia), or of the eggs of inferior animals (zoophytes). So-called spontaneous generation, so largely discussed of late in France and other countries, is merely due to these organic germs which fill the atmosphere, and which, falling into the water, or into the infusions of plants, give birth to forms of vegetation, which have been imputed to spontaneous generation; that is to say, to a creation without a germ, a generation without a cause, which is an error. Every living thing has parents, which are always discoverable by science and attention.

Those animals and plants which are called parasites furnish another example of the extraordinary profusion with which life is distributed over the earth. Animals and plants which live on other animals or on other plants, and which feed on the substance of their involuntary entertainers, are called parasites. Each of the mammals has its parasites, such as fleas, lice, &c., and man has the flea, the louse, and the bug. So each vegetable has its parasite. The oak gives shelter and food to lichens and various cryptogamia, and even on its roots we find particular kinds of cryptogamia, such as the truffle. Thus we see that life plants itself, grafts itself upon life.

But, more than this, these parasites in their turn have their smaller parasites, so minute as only to be microscopically discerned. Take a lichen off an oak and examine it with a magnifying glass, and also examine a flea, or a nit, and you will behold the curious spectacle of a parasite attached to another parasitical creature, and living upon its substance. From the great vegetable the alimentary substance passes to the visible parasite, and from that to the invisible. In this little space life is superposed and concentrated. Such a fact proves with what prodigious abundance life is spread over our globe.

Thus, then, we see that the surface of the globe, the fresh waters, and the salt seas, and, finally, the atmosphere, are inhabited by immense numbers of living beings. Life abounds on the earth, in the waters, and in the air. Our globe is like an immense vase, in which life is accumulated, pressed down, and running over.

But, the earth, the air, and the waters are not the only places at the command of nature. Above the atmosphere there extends another region, with which astronomers and physicists are acquainted, and which they call ether or planetary ether. The atmosphere which surrounds our globe, and is drawn with it in its course through space, as it is drawn with it in its rotation upon its own axis, is not very high. It does not extend beyond thirty or forty leagues, and it diminishes in substance in proportion to its elevation above the earth. At three or four leagues in height the air is so rarefied that it becomes impossible for men or animals to breathe it. In aërostatic ascents it is impossible to go beyond seven or eight kilometres, because at that height the air loses so much density, is so highly rarefied, that it no longer serves for purposes of respiration, nor counterbalances the effect of the interior pressure of the body on the exterior. After that height, the density of the air decreases more and more, until there is absolutely no air. At that point begins the fluid which astronomers and physicists call ether.

This ether is a true fluid, a gas, analogous to the air we breathe, but infinitely more rarefied and lighter than air. The existence of the planetary ether cannot be disputed, since astronomers take account of its resistance in calculating the speed of heavenly bodies, just as they take account of the resistance of the air in calculating the motions of bodies traversing our atmosphere.

Ether is, then, the fluid which succeeds to atmospheric air. It is spread, not only around the earth, but around the other planets. More than this, it exists throughout all space, it occupies the intervals between the planets. It is, in fact, in ether that the planets, which, with their satellites, compose our solar world, revolve. The comets, too, in their immense journeys through space pass through ether.

The uneducated mind is disposed to believe that above the air which surrounds the terrestrial globe, there is nothing more, that all is void. But no void exists anywhere in nature. Space is always occupied by something, whether it be by earth, by water, by atmospheric air, or, finally, by planetary ether.

It has just been said that life abounds upon the globe, swarms upon the earth, clusters in the air and in the waters. Is the ethereal fluid which succeeds to our atmosphere, and which fills space, equally inhabited by living beings? This is a question which no savant has ever yet asked himself. In our opinion, it would be very surprising that life, which we may say overflows in the waters and in the air, should be absolutely wanting in the fluid which is contiguous to the air. Everything, then, indicates that the ether is inhabited. But who are the beings who dwell in the planetary ether? We believe that they are those superhuman beings, whom we consider to be resuscitated men, endowed with every kind of moral perfection.

The chemical composition of planetary ether is not known. Astronomical phenomena have taught us its existence, but not its components. We believe it may safely be asserted that the ether does not contain oxygen. In fact, oxygen is the fundamental element of atmospheric air; and as, in proportion as they ascend into that air, the respiration of men and animals becomes more and more difficult, it is, in our opinion, presumable, that this difficulty is caused by the approach of a description of gas impossible to breathe; and which, therefore, excludes human life from the superior regions of the air. A man, rising in a balloon towards the ether, is like a fish half drawn out of the water, half exposed to the air. The fish is breathless and palpitating in a place which is fatal to him; thus it is with man, when he rises by degrees through our nether atmosphere, and draws near to the ether. It seems to us that we may, at once, conclude, from this, that there is no oxygen in planetary ether.

It seems not unlikely that the planetary ether may be composed of hydrogen gas, excessively rarefied, that is to say, of an extremely light gas, still further rarefied, and rendered infinitely more subtle by the absence of all pressure. We are induced to conclude that the ether in which the planets revolve is hydrogen, because, from observations made of late years during the solar total eclipses, it has been ascertained that the sun is surrounded by burning hydrogen gas.

In the language of every nation, the space which lies beyond our atmosphere is called by the same name, that of heaven. It is, then, in the universally recognized heaven that we place our superhuman beings. In this we are in accord with popular belief and prejudice, and we recognize this argument with satisfaction. These prejudices, these presentiments are frequently the outcome of the wisdom and the observation of an infinite number of generations of men. A tradition which has a uniform and universal existence, has all the weight of scientific testimony.

In accordance with this phrase, and the immemorial tradition, the most widely-spread modern religions, Christianity, Buddhism, and Mahometanism, assign heaven as the sojourn of the elect of God.

Thus, we find science, tradition, and religion at one on this point; and that it was a scientific truth which found utterance by the lips of the priest who said to the martyred king upon the scaffold: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven."