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LIFE AND DESTINY
BY LEON DENIS

TRANSLATED BY

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

LIFE AND DESTINY

BY

LEON DENIS

AUTHOR OF "APr6s LA MO^T," "jEANNE d'ARC —

MEDIUM," "CHRISTIANISME ET SPIRITISME,"

"dans L'iNVISIBLE," "la GRANDE 6niGME,"

"POURQUOI LA VIE?," "l'aU-DElA ETLA

SURVIVANCE de l'^tre"

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"h^^A^U^^^

NEW xlJr YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

J^

L

K. I.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

INTRODUCTION BY THE TRANSLATOR

Early in May, while in Dijon, France, the books of
Leon Denis, the great spiritual philosopher, were
brought to my attention by his friend and pupil, Miss
Camille Chaise, a beautiful young refugee from
Rheims. Profoundly impressed by the literary and
religious importance of this volume, I asked Miss
Chaise to inquire if I could obtain the rights of trans-
lation. This inquiry led to my coming to Tours,
where Mr. Denis resides, and where I have pursued
the delightful work. Feeling it_to_be^a holy task, I
resolved to begin it on a holy day, May'2ist7~which
was the second anniversary of the birth of my hus-
band into spirit life. Beginning with three pages
daily, I gradually increased the number, and was able
to complete the task on September 21st. The transla-
tion was made of peculiar interest to me, through mes-
sages received from my husband, while in Dijon, by
the aid of a cultured lady in private life, Madame
Soyer, who had no personal acquaintance with Mr.
Denis or Miss Chaise. The messages urged me to
make the translation, assuring me that I would not
only benefit the world, but that I would be personally
benefited, as the book contained great truths of life
and death which would aid in my development. On
numerous occasions while in Tours, messages received
from the astral world referred to the translation with

vi INTRODUCTION BY THE TRANSLATOR

interest and approval. In giving this work of Leon
Denis to the EngHsh-speaking world, I feel I am be-
stowing an inestimable favour on every intelligent
mind capable of feeling love, sorrow, aspiration, or
yearning for a larger understanding of life.

The work of translation of these beautiful thoughts
has been an education to my mind, a solace to my
heart, and an uplift to my soul. When I made this
statement to the dear author, he replied: "But you,
long a student of spiritual research, and of theosoph-
ical lore, surely knew all these things before ?" I re-
plied, "Yes, I knew them. But I feel as if you had
entered a store-room of my mind, where were packed
priceless paintings and rare statues, and as if you had
taken them one by one, and hung them in a clear light
on memory's walls, and placed the sculptured treas-
ures on pedestals for the delight of my spiritual eyes;
you have, in truth, set my intellectual house in order."

It is rarely that a mind of such an analytically sci-
entific bent, as that of Leon Denis, is at the same time
so poetical. IThis, together with the writer's pro-
foundly reverential nature, makes his work of three-
fold value.'* He appeals to those who pursue psy-
chical research in a purely scientific manner; he ap-
peals to those who value noble and moving literature ;
and he appeals to every soul that loves and believes
in a God great enough to be the Supreme Creator of
this magnificent universe.

This book is the crowning work of Mr. Denis's
three score years and ten of life — the ripe fruit of
more than half a century of continual study and re-
search. It can be said of Mr. Denis (which cannot

INTRODUCTION BY THE TRANSLATOR vii

be said of all authors), that his personal life accords
with his beautiful philosophy. From a troubled and
painful youth, he has slowly climbed an ascending
path of difficulties, overcome obstacles and surmounted
sorrows, attained profound knowledge and a wide
education, and put into daily practice the lofty
principles he sets forth in this volume.

May it bring to every reader the uplift it has brought
to the translator.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
ToiTKS, France,
September, 1918.

A SCULPTOR

As the ambitious sculptor, tireless, lifts
Chisel and hammer to the block at hand,
Before my half -formed character I stand
And ply the shining tools of mental gifts.
I'll cut away a huge unsightly side
Of selfishness, and smooth to curves of grace
The angles of ill-temper.

And no trace
Shall my sure hammer leave of silly pride.
Chip after chip must fall from vain desires,
And the sharp corners of my discontent
Be rounded into symmetry, and lent
Great harmony by faith that never tires.
Unfinished still, I must toil on and on,
Till the pale critic, Death, shall say, " 'Tis done. "

Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction by the Translator v

Introduction iS

PART FIRST

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE
CHAPTER

I. The Evolution of Thought 27

II. The Problem of Life 53

III. Personality 61

IV. The Soul and Different States of Sleep 65
V. Telepathic Projections 75

VI. Manifestations After Death .... 84

VII. Vibratory States of the Soul's Memory . 90

VIII. Evolution and Finality op the Soul . . 95

IX. Death 107

X. Life in the Beyond 117

XI. The Higher Life 125

PART SECOND
successive lives, and the laws of reincarnation

XII. The Law of Reincarnation 133

XIII. Renovation of the Memory 153

XIV. Reincarnation and Infant Prodigies . . 17S
XV. Objections and Criticisms 184

XVI. Successive Lives — Historic Proofs . . . 194

xu CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XVII. Justice and Responsibility 205

XVIII. The Law of Destiny . ^ 215

PART THIRD

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL — THE WILL

XIX. The Will 229

XX. The Inner Soul 235

XXI. Liberty 251

XXII. Thought 259

XXIII. Discipline of Thought and Reform of

Character 266

XXIV. Love 27s

XXV. Sorrow 283

XXVI. Revelation of Sorrow 299

Profession of Faith 313

LIFE AND DESTINY

LIFE AND DESTINY

INTRODUCTION

In the evening of life, the thinker is struck with a
sorrowful impression of the futility of human exist-
ence. He perceives how the teachings dispensed by
institutions of learning in general — churches, schools,
universities — enable you to acquire many superfluous
things, Cwhile they teach you nothing of those mat-
ters which are of vast importance in the conduct of
terrestrial existence, and in the preparation for life
Beyond./ Those to whom is given the high mission
of enlightening and guiding the human soul, seem to
ignore its nature and its real destiny. In the midst
of universities a complete incertitude reigns upon the
solution of the most important problems ever pre-
sented to man in his passage through earth. This in-
certrtude exists in everything which touches upon the
problem of life, its aim, and its end.

We find the same impotence among the clergy. By
their affirmations, denuded of all proofs, they have
little success in communicating to the souls in their
charge a faith which responds to sane criticism or the
exigences of reason. The inquiring soul, in fact, en-
counters in the universities and in the churches but
15

16 LIFE AND DESTINY

obscurity and contradiction on everything which
touches the problems of its nature and its future. It
is to this condition of things that we must attribute in
great part the evils of our times — the incoherence of
ideas, the disorders of conscience, the moral and so-
cial anarchy.

The education dispensed to the generations is com-
plicated, but it does not light the path of life for them,
it does not gird them for the battle of existence.
Classic education teaches the cultivation and the orna-
mentation of the intellect; it does not teach how to
act, how to love, how to perform duty. Still less
does it instruct how to form a conception of the des-
tiny which develops profound energies in us, and
elevates our every aim toward a lofty goal.

Nevertheless, this conception of life is indispensable
to every being and to all society, for it is the sustain-
ing power and the supreme consolation in hours of
trouble, the source of virile virtues and high inspira-
tions. Carl du Prel tells the following fact:

"One of my friends, a professor in a university, had
the sorrow of losing his daughter, which awoke his
interest in the problem of immortality. He turned
to his colleagues, professors of philosophy, hoping to
find consolation. It was a bitter disappointment. He
asked for bread and received a stone ; he asked for af-
firmation, and received a 'perhaps.' " Francis Sarcy, an
accomplished professor in a large university, wrote,
"I am upon this earth. I know absolutely nothing re-
garding the how or why of my existence. I know
even less, how and where I will go when I leave earth.'*
A more frank avowal of ignorance on the all-impor-

INTRODUCTION IT

tant subject could not be uttered. After centuries of
laborious study, the philosophy of the schools is with-
out light, without warmth, without life.^ The minds
of our children are tossed between diverse and con-
tradictory systems: the positivism of August Comte,
the naturalism of Hegel, the materialism of Stuart
Mill, and many more — all uncertain, all without ideals,
yet precise.

From these arises the precocious tendency toward
destructive pessimism — malady of a decadent society,
a terrible menace for the future; to which is added the
scepticism of our young men, who believe in nothing
but wealth and honour and material success.

Raoul Pictet, the eminent professor, speaks of this
mental condition of the young, in the introduction of
his first work on psychic science. He speaks of the
disastrous effect produced by material theories, and
concludes thus : "These poor young men declare that
all which occurs in the world is the fatal and necessary
result of preceding conditions, and that human will
can in no way intervene. They believe themselves the
playthings of fate, tied hand and foot to a relentless
destiny. These young men cease to make any effort
to succeed at the first obstacle they encounter. They
have no faith in themselves — they become their own
living tombs wherein they bury their hopes, their ef-
forts, their desires." This applies, not only to a por-

*A propos of the examinations in the universities, Mr. Ducas
Doyen of the Faculty of Aix, wrote in the Journal of 3rd May
1912: "There seems to be between the minds of the pupils and
the things they study a sort of cloud — an opaqueness. It is
particularly in philosophy that one feels this unfortunate im-
pression."

18 LIFE AND DESTINY

tion of our young men, but to many men of our time
and generation in whom we recognise a moral lassitude
and weakness.

Frederick Myers, author of Human Personality,
has also said on this subject, "Pessimism is the moral
malady of the times; there is a lack of confidence in
the true value of life." The doctrines of Nietzsche,
of Schopenhauer, of Haeckel, have largely contrib-
uted toward developing this state of things. Their in-
fluence has been far-reaching. To them we may at-
tribute the scepticism and discouragement, in a great
measure, which emanates from the contemporanean
mind : the utter lack of all that makes the ardour of
life, its joyotlsness, its confidence in the future — those
virile qualities of the race.*

It is time to battle with vigour against these fune-
real doctrines, and to seek outside of the old official
beliefs new methods of instruction which respond to
the imperious needs of the present hour. We must
prepare souls for the necessities, for the combats of
actual life, and life further on. We must above all
teach human souls to understand and develop, in view
of the final end, the latent forces which sleep within.

Until now, thought has been confined in narrow
circles, religions, schools, and systems which exclude
and combat all ideas at variance with their own. We
must rise out of this rigid circle, and give our thoughts
a larger freedom; every system contains a part of the

^ These lines were written before the war. We must recog-
nise that, during the course of this gigantic strife, the young
Frenchmen have shown a heroism above all eulogism; but the
national education does not show in that, it is rather the result
of sleeping qualities which have wakened in the heart of the
race.

INTRODUCTION 19

truth, no one contains the entire truth. The universe
and life have aspects too varied, too numerous for
any one system of teaching to embrace wholly.

We must take the fragments of truth which each
contains and fit them together until they form a united
pattern; then add to them the aspects of truth which
we discover from day to day, through the majestic
harmony of our awakened thought. The decadence of
our epoch comes largely from the imprisoned and re-
stricted state of the human mind. We must stir it out
of its inertia and its creed-bound limits, and lift it
toward high altitudes without losing sight of the solid
base which affords it an enlarged and renewed science.
This science of the future we must work to establish.
It will procure the indispensable criterion, the means
of verification, and the control without which thought,
left to its freedom, risks the danger of losing its way.

We have said that trouble and incertitude are
everywhere found in our social conditions. Within
and without, there is a state of inquietude. Under
the brilliant surface of a refined civilisation is hidden
a deep malady. Irritation increases in social circles;
the conflict of interests and the battle for life becomes
every day more acute.

Humanity, weary of dogmas, and speculations
without proofs, is plunged in materialism or indiffer-
ence. From whence, then, comes this doctrine?
Toward what abyss are we being drawn? What new
ideal will come to give man the confidence in the fu-
ture and ardour for achievement? In the tragic hours
of history, when the situation seemed desperate, suc-
cour was at hand. The human soul cannot perish:

«0 LIFE AND DESTINY

in the moment \vhen our old faiths are hidden by a
veil, a new conception of life and destiny, based upon
science and facts, reappears. The Great Tradition is
revived under new forms, larger and more beautiful.
It reveals to all a future full of hope and promise.
Salute, then, the new reign of the idea, victorious over
matter, and work to prepare fair ways for its foot-
steps.

The task is great, and the education of mankind
must be entirely reconstructed. This education, we
have seen, neither the university nor the Church is
prepared to give, since neither possesses the necessary
synthesis to cast light upon the pathway of new gen-
erations. One doctrine alone can offer this synthesis
— that of scientific spiritual research.

Already it shows a horizon to the world, and prom-
ises to illuminate the future. And this philosophy,
this science, free, independent, liberated from all
official restrictions, from all compromising poHtics, is
adding every day new and precious discoveries to its
storehouse of knowledge. The phenomena of magne-
tism, of radio-activity, of telepathy, are but applica-
tions of the one principle, the manifestation of the One
Law, which, regulated at the same time, beings and
universes.

A few more years of patient labour, of conscientious
experimentation, of persistent research, and the New
Education will have its scientific formulae, its essential
base; this event will be the grandest fact since the
coming of Christianity. Education, we all know, is
the most powerful factor in progress. It contains the
germ of the entire future; but to be complete, educa-

INTRODUCTION 21

tion should inspire the mind of man to study life in
two alternating forms — the visible and the invisible:
"Life in its plenitude, in its evolution towards the
summit of nature and of thought."

The teachers of humanity have, then, an immediate
duty to fulfil : it is to put scientific spiritual research
at the base of education, and thus to remake the inte-
rior man and his moral health. The soul of man,
sleeping under a funereal rhetoric, must be awakened,
and its hidden powers developed into full conscious-
ness until they recognise their glorious destiny. Mod-
ern science analyses the exterior world ; its discoveries
in the objective universe are profound, and this is to
its honour and glory.

But it knows nothing of the universe invisible, and
the world interior. It is a limitless empire, which re-
mains to be conquered. To learn by what ties man is
attached to the Whole ; to descend into the mysteries
of Being, where light and shadow are mixed as in
Plato's cavern ; to search the labyrinths and bring forth
their secrets ; to separate the IVIE normal from the ME
divine, the conscious from the sub-conscious, there is
no study more important.

Because the schools and the academies have not
introduced this form of education into their pro-
grammes, they have in reality done nothing definite for
the education of humanity. But already there is surg-
ing a new and marvellous psychology, from which is
being evolved a new conception of Being, and a knowl-
edge of One Law supreme which explains all the
problems of evolution and of the future. An era is
finishing, a new era is dawning. We are like infants,

22 LIFE AND DESTINY

crying in the night; the human spirit is in travail.
Everywhere we see the apparent decomposition of
old ideas and principles, in science, in art, in philos-
ophy, and in religion.

But the attentive observer realises that out of all
this decay a new harvest will grow; science is scat-
tering seeds rich with promise. The coming centur}'
will be one of wonderful flowering. The forms and
conceptions of the past do not suffice us. However
respectable is the heritage, and in spite of the pious
sentiment with which we consider the teachings of
our parents, there is a growing consciousness that this
teaching does not suffice to dissipate the agonising
mystery of the "why" of life.

The state of the human mind to-day clamours for
a science, an art, a religion of light and of liberty to
guide it toward the radiant horizon where it feels it
is drawn by its own nature and by irresistible forces.
We speak often of progress; but what is progress?
Is it but a sonorous and empty word upon the lips of
orators, more frequently materialists than otherwise,
or has it a determined sense? Twenty civilisations
have passed over the earth, lighting the path of human-
ity. Their flames shone in the nights of the centuries,
and then became extinguished. And still man does not
discern behind the limited horizons of his thoughts the
Beyond without limit which is the goal of his destiny.
Powerless to dissipate the mystery which surrounds
him, he uses his forces in material labours, and neg-
lects the splendours of the spiritual task which would
bring him true grandeur. The faith of progress must
mean a faith in the future of all the race. Not until

INTRODUCTION 23

we possess that faith, and march with confidence
toward that ideal, can true progress come.

Progress does not mean the creation of material
things — of machines, and industrial growth. Nor
does it consist in finding new methods in art, litera-
ture, and eloquence. The high objective of progress
is to seize and attain the mother idea, which impreg-
nates all human life, the pure source from which flows
at once the truths, the principles, the sentiments which
inspire great works and noble actions. It is time we
comprehended this fact; civilisation cannot grow,
society cannot better itself, save tlirough the acquiring
of thoughts that are more and more elevated, and the
increase of light touching and renovating human
hearts. The power to realise the fullness of being can
alone lead the soul toward the mountain summits
where every human endeavour will find its regenera-
tion. Everything says to us — "The universe is reg-
ulated by the law of evolution; it is there we find the
word progress." In ourselves and our principles of
life, we are always subjected to this law. But only by
our own efforts do we learn that this same sovereign
law carries the soul and its works across infinite time
and space, toward a goal still more elevated. To make
our work useful, to co-operate with evolution in gen-
eral, and to reap its fruits, we must first learn to dis-
cern, to seize the reason, the cause, and the aim of this
evolution, to know where it leads, in order to partici-
pate in the plenitude of the forces and faculties which
sleep in us on this glorious path of ascension. Let us
press on, then, toward the future, through the life

24 LIFE AND DESTINY

always being renewed, and through paths of immen-
sity which open to us a regenerated spirituahty.

Faiths of the past, sciences, philosophies, religions,
illuminate yourselves with a new flame! Shake off
your shrouds and the ashes which cover you. Listen
to the revealing voices of the tomb; they will bring
you a renewal of thought, with secrets of the Beyond,
which man has need to know, that he live better,
better act, and better die.

PART FIRST
THE PROBLEM OF LIFE

CHAPTER I

THE EVOLUTION OF THOUGHT

We have said that one law regulates the evolution of
thought, as it regulates the physical evolution of
beings and worlds. The comprehension of the uni-
verse is developed with the progress of the human
mind. This general conception of the universe and
of life has been expressed in a thousand fashions,
under a thousand diverse forms in the past. It is
expressed in h-ger terms to-day, and will be ampli-
fied in the measure that humanity climbs the pathway
of ascension.

Science enlarges without cessation its field of ex-
ploration. Every day, by the aid of powerful instru-
ments of observation and analysation, science discovers
new aspects of matter, of force, and of life. But that
which those instruments record, the soul of man dis-
covered long ago, for the flight of thought precedes
always and surpasses the methods of positive science.
The instruments know nothing, and are nothing, with-
out the human will to direct them.

Science is uncertain and changeable; it continually
reconstructs itself. Its methods, its theories, its
calculations, arrived at with great trouble, crumble
before a more attentive observation, or a more pro-
found deduction, to give place to other theories which
27

28 LIFE AND DESTINY

are no more definite.^ The theory of the undividable
atom, for instance, which for ^two thousand years was
the base of chemistry and physical science, is now
quaHfied and considered mere romance by our most
eminent scientists. Many analogous mistakes have
demonstrated the weakness of the scientific mind in
the past. That mind will never attain to reality but by
lifting itself above the mirage of material facts toward
the realms of Cause and Law.

It is in this fashion that science has been able to
determine the immutable principles of logic and math-
ematics. But it is not the same in the other orders of
research. The scientist too often carries his preju-
dices, his personal tendencies, his habits of routine
into the domain of psychical research. This is particu-
larly true of France, where there are indeed few
scientists with the courage and the enlightenment
sufficient to enable them to follow a pathway already
traced by brilliant minds of other nations.

Despite these facts, the human spirit advances step
by step toward an understanding of itself and the
universe. Our ideas of force and matter are modified
each day, and human personality reveals itself under
unexpected aspects. In the face of so much phenom-
ena established by experimentation, in face of accu-
mulated testimonials from all quarters, no clear-seeing
intelligent mind can deny the proof of the survival of
the soul, or elude the moral consequences and respon-
sibility which follow that fact. That which we say

* Professor Richet says : "Science has ever been a series of
errors and approximations, constantly in a state of evolution,
constantly overturning themselves, and changing more quickly
than they form."

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 29

of science, can be equally said of the philosophies and
the religions which succeeded one another down the
centuries. They constitute so many steps or stations
pursued by humanity still in its infancy — steps leading
up toward spiritual planes, growing more vast and
elevated at each turn.

The diverse beliefs of humanity are but the gradual
development of the divine ideal reflected in the
thoughts with more and more purity and brightness
as the mind develops in refinement. The belief and
the understanding of a period of time represent the
measure of truth which men of that epoch can seize
and comprehend, until the development of their
faculties and their consciences enables them to perceive
a higher form and a more intense radiation of the
truth.

Seen from this point of view, even early fetichism
explains itself, despite its bloody rites. It is the first
babbling of the infantine soul, striving to spell the
divine language, and to give in forms appropriate to
its own mental state its vague, confused, rudimentary
conception of a superior world. Paganism represents
a more elevated conception, though exceedingly
anthropomorphic. The pagan gods are all men, with
the same passions and weaknesses ; but even here the
ideal of something higher is found. It brings a ray
of eternal beauty to fertilise the world.

Still higher is the Christian idea of sacrifice and
renunciation. Greek paganism was the religion of
radiant nature! Christianism is that of suffering
humanity, a religion of tombs and crypts and cata-

30 LIFE AND DESTINY

combs, born from the persecution and the sorrow it
has suffered, and keeping the imprint of its origin.

Christianity should be regarded as the greatest effort
attempted by the invisible world to communicate
ostensibly with our humanity. According to Fred.
Myers, it is the first authentic message from the
Beyond. The pagan religions were, to be sure, rich
with occult phenomena of all kinds and in facts of
divination. But the appearance of the materialised
Christ after death constitutes the most powerful
manifestation to which man has given testimony;
it was the signal of an entry of spirits upon the
world's stage. We are witnessing to-day a new ad-
vent of the invisible world into history. Isolated
manifestations from the Beyond now indicate a ten-
dency to become frequent and universal. A way is
being established between the two worlds which at
first was a mere bridle path, then a narrow road, but
which enlarges and widens and promises to become a
large, sure route. Christianity has for its point of
departure phenomena similar to that which in our day
constitute the proofs in the domain of psychical re-
search: facts revealed through the influence and
actions of a spiritual country of souls. Through these
facts, and only through them, do we behold a pathway
opening into infinity, and hope is born in anguished
hearts, and humanity is reconciled with death.

The religions have opposed a barrier against violent
passions and the barbarity of iron ages, and they have
engraved clearly on the conscience of man the idea of
morality.

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 31

The aesthetic part of religion has produced beautiful
works in all domains of art, and aided largely in the
revelation of art and beauty through the centuries.
Greek art created marvels; Christian art attained
sublimity in the Gothic cathedrals which lift them-
selves like bibles of stone under the heavens, with
their proud sculptured towers, their imposing naves,
which multiply the vibrations of the organ and the
sacred chants, their lofty arches, from which floods
of light ripple down on frescoes and statues, and then
rest there as if exhausted.

The fault of religion is not an aesthetic fault, it is
the fault of logic. Religion is shut by the churches
in walls of dogmas, and compelled to stand in rigid
forms. Movement is the law of life, and the Church
renders thought immobile, instead of inspiring it to
flight.

It is the nature of man to exhaust all forms of an
idea, and to carry it to extremes before allowing it to
take its normal course of evolution. Every religious
truth affirmed by an innovator is weakened and altered
by its followers, who are almost always incapable of
maintaining the height to which the master rose.
The doctrine becomes, therefore, abused and distorted,
and little by little creates counter-currents of scepti-
cism and negation. Faith is succeeded by incredulity ;
materialism gets in its work, and only when material-
ism has shown its utter powerlessness in creating social
order does the rebirth of idealism become possible.
From the dawn of Christianity there have been divers
currents of thought. Opposing ideas have crowded
against one another in the bed of the new-bom relig-

32 LIFE AND DESTINY

ion. Schisms and conflicts succeeded, in the midst
of which the thought of Christ has been veiled with
obscurity. True Christianity is the law of love and of
liberty. The churches have it one of fear and dog-
matism. From that has come the gradual weaning of
"thinkers" from the churches, and the weakening of
religious feeling in many lands. And the inevitable
result has been discord and discontent in the human
family. Out of this discontent has come a crisis; in
spite of all appearances of the death of faith, faith
is not dead, but is being transformed and renewed.
The doubt of to-day prepares the path for the convic-
tion of to-morrow. An intelligent faith will govern
the future and permeate all races. Humanity, still
young and divided by the necessities of territory,
climate, and distance, has nevertheless commenced to
think for itself. Above the antagonism of politics and
reHgions, groups of intellectual minds are formed;
men, pursued by the same problems, agonised by the
same cares, inspired by the same invisible world, labour
at a common work, and arrive at the same conclusions.
Little by little the elements of psychical research are
producing a universal faith all over the world.
Numberless testimonials indicate the trend of human
thought toward this glorious end. A higher spirit-
uality is already here; religion is now the scientific
efifort of humanity to communicate with the spirit
eternal and divine. Sir Oliver Lodge, the famous
scientist of the University of Birmingham, and Max-
well, Attorney-General in the Court of Appeals, Paris,
both have declared the coming of a new religion of
freedom and spirituality.

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 3^

In the measure that thought ripens, missionaries
of all orders awaken religious ideals in the breast of
humanity. We are now witnessing one of these re-
vivals, grander and more profound than any which
have preceded. This new religious movement has not
only men for interpreters, it has inspiring spirits, in-
visible helpers of space, who exercise their powers on
all the surface of the globe and in all domains of
thought at one time. Everywhere this new spirit-
uality appears, and naturally the question arises,
"What is this new power? Is it science or religion?"

O human minds ! do you imagine that thought must
sternly follow the ruts dug by the wheels of centuries?

Until now, all intellectual domains have been sep-
arated by walls and barriers — science on one side,
religion on the other. Philosophy and metaphysics
have been bristling with impenetrable thorns. In the
domain of the soul, as in the domain of the universe,
all is simple, vast, profound, but the system divined
by man rendered it complicated, restricted, and di-
vided. Religion has ripened in a sombre cavern o£
dogmas and mysteries : science has been imprisoned in
the lowest cellars of matter: that is neither true re-
ligion nor true science. We must lift ourselves above
these arbitrary classifications to comprehend and
reconcile the two with clear vision.

Do we not to-day, in even the elementary study of
science which relates to worlds in space, feel a senti-
ment of enthusiasm and admiration which is almost
religious? Read the great works of astronomers
and mathematicians of genius; they will say to you
that the universe is a prodigy of wisdom, harmony.

34 LIFE AND DESTINY

beauty, and that already in the penetration of superior
laws is realised the service of science, art, religion, and
the vision of God through His works. Lifted to this
height, study becomes contemplation, and thought is
changed to prayer. The serious study of spiritism
accentuates and develops this feeling and gives the
mind a clearer and more precise understanding. On
the experimental side it is only a science, but the aim
of this research is to plunge into invisible regions and
, to lift oneself to the eternal sciences, from whence
flows all life and force. This unites man with the
' Divine Power, and his study becomes a doctrine, a
religious philosophy. It is the most powerful tie
which can bind humanity together, and it is, too, the
voice of spirits delivered from the flesh calling to
spirits still imprisoned in the body, and between them
X establishing a veritable communion.

We must not regard it, however, as a religion in the
narrow acceptation of that word. The dogmas of es-
tablished creeds and the new doctrine do not agree; it
is open to all seekers; the spirit of free criticism and
■examination controls and presides at its investigations.

Dogmas, creeds, priests, and clergymen are never-
theless necessary to the world now, and will be for
some time to come. Many young and timid souls
in their journey through earth are unable to find their
way or understand their own needs without direction.

The new spirituality, based on research and its
proofs of life beyond the grave, addresses itself par-
ticularly to evolved souls who wish to find for them-
selves the solution of the grand problems, and to
formulate their own creed. It offers to them a concep-

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 35

tion, an interpretation of truth and universal law,
based on experience, upon reason, and upon the teach-
ings of heavenly spirits. Add to that the revelation
of duties and responsibilities, and you have a solid
foundation for your instinct of justice. Then add to
that the moral force, the satisfaction of the heart, the
joy of finding again the loved being that you believed
dead. To the proof of their survival is joined the
certitude of joining them, and to live with them lives
unencumbered, lives of ascending happiness and
progress.

So in this research, the most obscure problems
become radiant with light. The Beyond opens, the
divine side of things is revealed; by the force of its
teachings, sooner or later, the human soul mounts,
and from its high altitude it sees that all the different
theories, contradictory and hostile in appearance, are
but various aspects of one truth. The majestic laws
of the universe, for the enlightened souls are united
in one single law of intelligent conscientious force,
the source of thought and action ; and by that law all
the worlds and all beings are bound in one powerful
verity, associated in one harmony, led toward one goal.
The day will come when all the little systems of nar-
row thought will be melted into one vast synthesis,
embracing all the kingdoms of the mind. Sciences,
philosophies, religions, to-day divided, will be joined
together on this great light of life, the splendid radi-
ance of the spirit, in this reign of knowledge. In this
magnificent accord, science will furnish precision and
method in the order of facts : philosophy, the vigour of
logic and deduction : poetry, the radiation of its light

S6 LIFE AND DESTINY

and the magic of its colour. Religion will add t^e
qualities of sentiment and elevated aestheticism. So
will be realised the beauty and force in the verity of
thought. So will the human soul set toward the
highest summits while maintaining the relation of
equilibrium necessary to regulate the rhythmic march
of intellect and conscience in their ascension toward
the conquest of the good and true.

Psychical research affirms and demonstrates the
action of soul upon soul at all distances, without the
aid of physical organs, and this order of fact is not
made less positive by opposition and ridicule. The
phenomena of telepathy and suggestion, of the trans-
mission of thought observed and promoted everywhere
to-day by millions, confirm these revelations. The
experience of such eminent men as F. Colavida, and
E. Marta, of Colonel de Rochas, and my own experi-
ences, establish the fact that not only memory of the
smallest details of life, even to childhood's hours, are
remembered by the disembodied spirits, but those of
anterior lives are engraved in the hidden recesses of
the soul. An entire past, veiled in a waking state,
reappears and lives again in a trance condition. Colo-
nel de Rochas speaks of this in his book Successive
Lives, and this subject will be specially dealt with
farther on. Modern spiritual research cannot be con-
sidered as a purely metaphysical conception, as was the
doctrine of the early spirituality. It now presents
itself in quite another character and responds to the
demands of an educated generation and to the school
of rational criticism — a school rendered definite by the
exaggerations of an agonising and sickly mysticism.

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 37

To believe does not suffice for to-day — we want to
know! No philosophical or moral conception has a
chance of success if it does not lean on demonstration
at once logical, mathematical, and positive, and if
besides it is not crowned by the satisfying sanction of
our ideas of justice. Leibnitz has said, "If some one
would write mathematically of philosophy and moral-
ity, nothing could prevent its being done with exact-
ness. This," he adds, "has been rarely attempted, and
more rarely has succeeded."

We might here remark, that in Allan Kardic's Book
of Spirits, this has been done in a masterly manner.
That book is the result of immense labour, classifica-
tion, co-ordination, elimination, and gives only the
messages from the spirit world which the author was
able to prove authentic beyond question. All the
others were discarded.

This work of Allan Kardic is not ended ; it contin-
ues since his death. Already we possess a powerful
synthesis; the large lines were traced by Allan Kardic,
and have been developed by the interpreters of his
thought with the collaboration of the invisible world.

Each one brings a grain of sand to the common
edifice, and the foundations are strengthened every
day by scientific experimentation, while its towers
reach higher and higher. (^ For myself, I can say that
I have been favoured by teachings of spiritual guides,
and that they have never failed me or misled me,
during forty years. Their revelations have been of a
particularly didactic character in the course of the last
eight years. I have written fully of this in a former
work, In the Invisible. \

38 LIFE AND DESTINY

A rule scrupulously observed by Allan Kardic is
that of presenting all his conclusions and ideas in a
manner easily comprehended by any reader. That is
why we purpose to adopt here the terms and method
utilised by Allan Kardic, while adding to our own
work the developments of fifty years of research and
experimentation which have flowed by since the ap-
pearance of his works. Facts are nothing without
reason, which analyses them and discovers the under-
lying law. Phenomena are transitory; the certitude
that they give us is not enduring. History demon-
strates this. During centuries, men believed (and
many still believe) that the sun rises. To intellectual
minds it was given to discover the movement of the
earth, not grasped by the senses. What has become
of the greater part of old beliefs of science and chem-
istry? Our scientific men seem now only positive of
the Law of Gravitation. In consequence, the methods
I use in this work are observations of facts, their gen-
eralisation, and search for the law governing them;
and the rational deduction which, beyond the fugitive
and changing aspect of phenomena, perceives the per-
manent cause which produces it.

In the study of spiritual phenomena there are two
things to consider — a revelation from the spirit world,
and a human discovery, that is to say, one part from
invisible realms, essentially educative in itself, and the
other a personal and human confirmation which pur-
sues it with the laws of logic and reason.

Until now, we have had in this study only personal
systems and individual revelations. To-day there are

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 39

thousands of voices from the realm of the dead which
speak to earth. The invisible world enters into action,
and eminent spirits, agents from beyond, are recog-
nised by the beauty and power of their teachings. The
great geniuses of space, impelled by divine impulse,
have come to guide us to radiant summits. Is not this
a grander dispensation than ever was ours in the past?
The methods and the results are equally remarkable.

Personal revelation is always fallible. All the indi-
vidual theories, whether of Aristotle, of Thomas
Aquinas, of Kant, of Descartes, or of Spinoza, are
necessarily influenced by the opinions, tendencies, and
prejudices of the revealer, and by the times and con-
dition in which they are received. One might say the
same of all religious doctrines. The revelations of
impersonal spirits are free from the greater part of
these influences; no man, no church, no nation has
the power to stifle them. They defy all inquisitions,
and we have seen the most hostile minds brought to
a new viewpoint by the power of their manifestations,
and souls moved to the depths of their being by appeals
and exhortations from the dear dead who urged them'
to become instruments of spiritual propaganda.
Friends and relatives bring to doubting minds proofs
unquestionable and irrefutable of their identity, and in
this way spread the great truths of life without end
over the earth. There seems to be a majestic accord in
all the voices which are simultaneously lifted to make
a sceptical society listen to the good news of the sur-
vivance of the soul, and to the explanation of the prob-
lems of life and sorrow.

This revelation has penetrated into the heart of

40 LIFE AND DESTINY

family and society. The multiplication of the sources
of this revelation, and its diffusion, constitutes a per-
manent basis for this science, which renders sterile all
opposition and intrigues. Spiritual truth, if extin-
guished for a moment by falsification, is illumined
again soon at a hundred other points. In this im-
mense movement of spiritual revelation, souls are
obeying orders from on high; they act under a plan
traced in advance, and which unrolls and amplifies
with majesty. An invisible council presides in the
bosom of space; it is composed of great spirits of all
races and all religions, and souls of the spiritual eHte
who have lived on earth according to the law of love
and sacrifice. Their powerful influence unites earth
with heaven by rays of light on which mount the
prayers of the fervent and on which descends inspira-
tion for mortals.

Certain students of spiritual revelations are puzzled
by the contradictory nature of many communications.
There are, for instance, spirits who affirm the law of
successive lives, and others who deny it. This subject
will be more thoroughly examined in later chapters
of this volume.

Like all new doctrines, this modern spiritual revela-
tion has met with criticism and objections : its follow-
ers have been called hasty in their assertions, and ac-
cused of building hurriedly on a foundation of phe-
nomena, a frail and premature system of philosophy.

There are always the sceptics, and the indifferent,
and the laggards to attack every new movement. No
progress would be possible in the world if pioneers
awaited the co-operation of laggards. It is amusing

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 41

to hear such minds attempt to criticise men like Allan
Kardic, who gave years of laborious research to his
study before giving it to the world; or such brilliant
scientists as Frederick Myers, the eminent professor
of Cambridge, author of The Sun/ival of Huni-an
Personality; or Sir Oliver Lodge, the world-famous
scientist and Member of the Academy, who stands
bravely forth as the leader of this philosophy to-day.

In face of such appreciations, the recriminations of
lesser minds fall through their own weakness.

To what can we attribute an aversion to a belief
in communication with our dead ? It must be because
this belief and its teachings impose a moral responsi-
bility of thought and action which becomes very
troublesome to many minds incapable of grasping, and
indifferent to, an intellectual philosophy. In his Sitr-
vival of Human Personality Professor Frederick
Myers says, "For every conscientious seeker, psychical
research leads logically to vast syntheses of philosophy
and religion : the observations and experiences it
brings open the door to a revelation."

It is evident that the day when such relations are
established with the world of spirits by the force of
events, the problem of life and destiny will also be
established under new aspects. At no epoch of history
has man been able to flee from the great problems of
life, of death, of sorrow. Despite his incapability to
solve them, they have without cessation haunted him,
returning each time with more force as he attempted
to escape them, gliding into all the events of his life,
and knocking at the doors of his conscience. And
iwhen a new source of knowledge, of consolation, and

42 LIFE AND DESTINY

moral force with vast horizons of thought open to
the mind, how can he remain indifferent? and does it
not indeed appeal to all of us? is it not our future,
our to-morrow, which is in question? Why this tor-
ment, this anguish, which has besieged the human
heart across the centuries — this confused intuition of a
better world, longed for and desired — this anxiety,
that God and Justice should exist in a larger and more
satisfying measure? Is there not in this desire — in
this need — of the thought to probe the great mystery,
one of the most beautiful privileges of human exist-
ence? Is it not therein lies the dignity and reason of
being in this life? And each time that man has failed
to recognise this privilege and has renounced turning
his eyes Beyond, refused to direct his thought toward
a higher life, and has circumscribed his horizon to
earth, has he not seen the miseries of mortals aggra-
vated, the burdens grow heavier upon the shoulders of
the unfortunate, despair and suicide multiply, and
society descend toward anarchy and decadence ?

It is claimed by our opponents that the spiritual
philosophy is inconsistent, and that the communica-
tions come frequently from the mind of the mediums,
or from those present, and who have formed their
ideas upon this subject. But how can our critics ex-
plain the fact that in my own group, three mediums
through whom I have made investigations gave
descriptions of the worlds beyond, utterly at variance
with the teachings of the church in which they were
reared ! All their ideas and views, when not in trance
state, differed radically from their statements made

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 43

when under control. The main statements made by
mediums entirely unknown to one anotlier, and scat-
tered over the whole earth, are curiously consistent
regarding the realms attained by the soul after death.

It is true, however, that there are as many orders
of minds in the Beyond as there are here. There are
infinite degrees of beings climbing the ladder that
leads from earth to the higher heavens. The noble
and the vulgar are to be encountered there as here.
Yet sometimes the vulgar souls, in describing their
moral situation and their impressions of the Beyond,
furnish us with precious material for determining the
conditions which exist in that world.. The prudent
experimenter learns how to separate the gold from
the dross in studying psychical phenomena. Truth
does not always reach us nude, and the invisible helpers
leave to our reason and perseverance the work of
developing fully that which they give us in part.
Meanwhile the utmost precaution should be taken,
and continual control exercised. Fraud, conscious and
unconscious, is to be encountered in these realms of
research, and we must demand absolute proofs of
identity, and never depart from righteous methods in
our dealings with mediums and psychics.

When the authenticity of the communication is
assured, we should again analyse them, with severe
judgment applying the principle of scientific philos-
ophy, and accept only those which can be convinc-
ingly established as incontrovertible. Besides the pos-
sibility of fraud employed by mediums, there are
occult dangers to be encountered in this study. [ All
those who experiment in these realms know there are

44. LIFE AND DESTINY

two orders of spiritualism. One, practiced at hap-
hazard without method and without devotion of
thought, attracting from space hght and mocking
spirits which are numerous in the earth vicinity.
The other, serious and reverent, practiced with caution
and given respectful attention, which puts the student
en rapport with advanced spirits who are desirous of
comforting and enlightening those who call them with
a fervent heart. That is known as the "Communion
of Saints" by the religious.

Again we are asked, "How can the communications
which come from superior spirits be distinguished
from others?" To this question there is but one
answer. How can we distinguish between the good
and bad books of authors long deceased? How dis-
tinguish a noble, elevating language from that which
is banal and vulgar ? We have only one law by which
to measure the quality of thoughts, whether they come
from our world or the other. We can judge medium-
istic messages, above all, by their moral force and
effect. If they purify and uplift the character and
conscience, it is the surest criterion of their source;
in our communications with the Invisibles, there were
signs of recognition to distinguish the good from the
bad spirits.

Sensitive psychics recognise quickly the approach
of good spirits by the agreeable fragrance which pre-
cedes the approach ; while an odour difficult to endure
surrounds evil visitors from the unseen realms.

There are spirits which employ a certain musical
note to distinguish their arrival. (That eminent
author, Stainton M. Moses, mentions this in his book,

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 46

Annals of Psychic Science.) One of our mediums
announced the coming of her control as a "blue
spirit" ; brilliant radiations and harmonious vibrations
accompanied this spirit. That which persuades and
convinces us in our search for spiritual truths, more
than all else, are the conversations established between
friends and relatives who have preceded us into the
world of space. When incontestable proofs of their
identity assure us of their presence, when the old-time
intimacy and confidence is newly established between
us, the revelations obtained under these conditions take
on a most suggestive character. Before them the last
hesitations of scepticism vanish, to give place to
ecstatic emotions of the heart. Can we resist, when
the companions of our youth and our virility, who
one by one have departed, leaving us solitary and
desolate, return with a thousand proofs of their
identity; incidents meaningless to strangers, but mov-
ing to us? When they advise, counsel, and console
us, the coldest and most sceptical cannot resist their
influence. We have proof of this in the conversations
of Professor Hyslop, the American professor, with
his father, brother, and uncle. Then add to these the
pages written feverishly in half obscurity by mediums
incapable of comprehending their beauty or value, but
where splendour of style is allied to profundity of
ideas. And again add impassioned discourses, such
as we have heard in our study group, discourses pro-
nounced by the organs of a simple and modest me-
dium of honest character, who discussed the eternal
enigma of the world and the laws which regulate the
spiritual life. Those who had the privilege of attend-

46 LIFE AND DESTINY

ing these reunions know well what a penetrating influ-
ence they exerted upon all. In spite of the sceptical
tendency of our generation, there are accents and
forms of language and heights of eloquence which
cannot be resisted. The most prejudiced are obliged
to recognise the incontestable mark of moral superi-
ority. ( Before those spirits who descended for a
moment into our obscure world to glorify it with their
rays of genius, criticism hesitates and becomes silent.
During eight years we received, here in Tours, mes-
sages of this order. They touched on all the great
problems, all the important questions of moral philos-
ophy, and comprise several volumes of manuscripts.
It is the resume of this work, too long and too involved
to publish entirely, which I wish to present here.

Jerome de Prague, my friend, my guide of the
present and the past, the magnanimous spirit who
directed the first flights of my infantile intelligence in
the far-off ages, is the author. How many other
eminent spirits have thus spread their teachings over
the world, in the intimacy of various groups, almost
always anonymously, revealing themselves only by the
high value of their conceptions.

It has been given to me to lift some of the veils
which hide the true personalities. But I must guard
their secrets, for the choice spirits are particular in,
this respect, and wish to remain unknown; the cele-
brated names which one often finds attached to empty
and fleet communications are but a decoy. By all these
details I wish to demonstrate one thing — this work is
hot exclusively mine, but rather the reflection of a
higher thought which I seek to interpret. I have con-

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 4T

sidered it a duty to endow my earthly brothers with
these teachings, a worthy work of itself. Whatever
one may think of the revelation of spirits, I am not
ready to admit that because our universities teach im-
mense systems of metaphysics, built by human thought,
that we should regard as negligible, and reject the
principles divulged by the noble intelligences of space.
Though we love the human masters of reason and
knowledge, it is not an excuse for disdaining the super-
human masters, who represent a higher and more
serious knowledge. The spirit of man, limited by the
flesh, deprived of the fullness of his perceptions and
his resources, cannot attain by mortal powers alone a
full acquaintance with the invisible world and its
laws. The circle in which our life and thoughts
struggle is restricted, our point of view limited, the
insufficiency of the ideas we acquire render all general-
isation impossible, or improbable ; we must have guides
to penetrate the unknown domain and its laws. It is
by the collaboration of the eminent thinkers of the
two worlds — the two humanities — that the highest
truths are attained, or at least perceived, and the
noblest principles established. Better and surer than
our earthly masters, those of Space know how to
present to us the problem of life and the mystery of
the soul, and how to aid us to realise the grandeur of
our future. There is another question presented to us,
and a new objection made by the critics. In presence
of the infinite variety of communications received
from the Invisible Realms, and the liberty given each
mind to interpret them according to will, what, asks
the questioner, becomes of the verity of doctrine, this

48 LIFE AND DESTINY

powerful verity which has produced the force and the
grandeur, and assured the devotion of sacerdotal relig-
ions? We have said that spiritism is not a dogma —
it is not an orthodox sect. It is a living philosophy,
open to every mind, and which progresses in evolving.
It imposes nothing, it "proposes," and what it offers
leans upon facts of experience and moral proofs.

It excludes no other beliefs, but lifts itself above
them all, and embraces them in vaster formulae, higher
and more extended expressions of truth. Superior
intelligences open the way; they reveal eternal prin-
ciples which each one of us adopts and assimilates in
the measure of his comprehension, following the de-
gree of development attained by his faculties in his
succession of lives.

Generally the verity of doctrine is only obtained by
the price of blind and passive submission to an ensem-
ble of principles fixed in a rigid mould. It is the
petrification of thought, the divorce of religion from
science which does not know how to exist without
liberty and movement. This immobility, this fixed
rigidity of dogma, deprives religion of all the benefits
of evolution of thought; in considering itself as the
only source of truth, it arrives at proscribing all which
is outside of itself, and so ripens in a tomb, where it
would carry all with it, all the intellectual life and
genius of the human race. The greatest solicitude of
the spiritual world is to prevent the funereal conse-
quences of orthodoxy; its revelation is a free and
sincere exposition of doctrines which are not unchang-
ing, but which constitute new stations in the climb
toward infinite and eternal truth. Every one has the

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 49

right to analyse those principles, and they require no
anchor but that of the conscience and reason, yet in
adopting them one should conform his life and per-
form the duties which are the result. Those who fail
to do this cannot be considered serious. Allan Kardic
always tells us to be on guard against a dogmatic
and sectarian attitude. Constantly in his works he
warns us against the unfortunate methods which un-
dermine other religions. Psychical research is a neutral
territory where we meet one another and clasp hands
with all. No more dogmas ! no more mysteries ! Open
our hearts to all the whispers of the Spirit, draw from
all the sources of the past and present; let us say that
in every doctrine there are portions of truth, but that
no one contains it all! For truth in its plenitude is
vaster than the human spirit. It is only in the accord
of sincere hearts and disinterested minds we can
realise harmony of thought, and the conquest of the
greatest sum of truth possible for man to assimilate
on earth in this human history. A day will come when
all will comprehend; there is no antithesis between
science and religion, there is only misunderstanding.
The antithesis is between science and orthodoxy. In
bringing near to us the sacred doctrines of the Orient,
touching the verity of the world and the evolution of
life, the recent discoveries of science prove this fact.
That is why we affirm that in pursuing their parallel
march upon the grand route of the centuries, science
and faith will meet one day forcibly, for their aim is
identical, and they will finish by a reciprocal penetra-
tion. Science will analyse, religion will become the
synthesis. In them the world of facts and the world

60 LIFE AND DESTINY

of cause will unite. The true terms of intelligence,
human and divine, will become one. The veil of the
invisible will be torn away, the divine work will appear
to all eyes in its majestic splendour.

The allusions that we have made to ancient doc-
trines might suggest another criticism, viz. that the
teachings of spiritism are not entirely new. No,
certainly they are not! In every age of humanity rays
of light have flashed upon the pathway of thought,
and the requisite truths have appeared to sages and
seekers. Always men of genius, as well as psychics
and clairvoyants, have received revelations from
Beyond appropriate to the needs of human evolution.
It is scarcely probable that the first men could have
arrived of themselves, and through their own re-
sources only, to an idea of law and a form of early
civilisation.

Consciously, or otherwise, the communication be-
tween earth and space has always existed. So we
find easily in the doctrines of the past the greater
part of the principle brought into full light by the
teachings of spiritism. But these principles, under-
stood by a few, have never penetrated the soul of the
masses. Their revelations were spasmodic, in the
form of isolated communications, and were usually
regarded as miracles. But after twenty or thirty cen-
turies of silent gestation, the critical mind of man has
developed, and reason has grasped a concept of the
highest laws. Spiritual phenomena, with all the in-
struction belonging to them, reappear to guide a
hesitating society along the arduous way of prog-
ress.

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 51

It is always in the troubled hours of history that
the grandest conceptions form in the breast of human-
ity. For there the old doctrines, with their voices en-
feebled by age, and the philosophies, with their
abstract language, no longer suffice to console the
afflicted, to raise the courage of the crushed, and to
lead souls to the summits. Nevertheless, they contain
latent forces, and the light of their hearts can be re-
animated. We do not partake of the views of those
who, in this domain, seek to demolish rather than to
restore; this would be wrong. Wisdom consists in
gathering the portions of eternal life and the moral
truths they contain, while casting away the superficial
and useless which the ages and the passion of men have
added.

This work of discernment, of sorting, of renovation,
who can accomplish? Men are badly prepared for it.
In spite of the imperious waverings of the hour, in
spite of the moral decadence of our time, no voice of
authority is lifted, either in the sanctuary or the acad-
emy, to say the strong and grand words for which the
world waits. The impulsion could only come from on
high — it has come! All those who have studied the
past with attention, know there is a plan in the drama
of the centuries.

The divine thought manifests itself in different
fashions, and the revelation gradually unfolds in a
thousand manners, following the needs of society.
When the hour of a new dispensation arrives, the In-
visible World comes out of its silence; in all parts of
the earth flow communications from the departed,
bringing elements of a doctrine which give a founda-

62 LIFE AND DESTINY

tion for the religions and the philosophies of two
humanities.

The aim of psychical research is not to destroy, but
to verify — to renew, to complete. It separates in the
domain of faith that which is living and that which is
dead. It gathers and assembles, from the numerous
systems by which, until now, the conscience of human-
ity has been enclosed, the relative truths which they
contain, and unites them with the order of truth pro-
claimed by itself. In brief, this new spiritism attaches
to the human soul, still weak and uncertain, the power-
ful wings of wide space, and by this means elevates
it to the height where it can embrace the vast harmony
of laws and worlds, and at the same time obtain a
clear vision of its destiny.

And that destiny it finds incomparably superior to
anything which has been murmured to it by the
dogmas of the Middle Age and the theories of other
times. It is an immense future of evolution which
opens for it, and leads it from sphere to sphere, from
light to light, toward a goal always more beautiful,
always more fully illumined with rays of justice and
love.

CHAPTER II

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE

The first problem which presents itself to the thought
is of the thought itself, or of the thinking being.
For each of us that is the leading subject which dom-
inates all others, and its solution leads us to the very
source of life and of the universe. What is the nature
of our personality? Does it contain an element sus-
ceptible to survive death? To that question are at-
tached all the fears, all the hopes of humanity.

The problem of life and the problem of the soul
are one; it is the soul which furnishes man with his
principle of life and movement. Farther on in this
work will be given facts of observation and experience
to demonstrate this statement. The human soul is a
will power, free and sovereign. It dominates all the
attributes, all the functions, all the material elements
of the being, as the divine soul dominates and unites
all the parts of the universe to harmonise them. The
soul is immortal because nothing is, and nothing can
be, annihilated. No individuality can cease to be.
The dissolution of forms proves only one thing — that
the soul is separated from the organisation by which
it communicates with the earthly centre. But it has
not ceased to pursue its evolution under new condi-
tions, and in a form more perfect, without losing its
53

54> LIFE AND DESTINY

identity. Each time it abandons its terrestrial body,
it returns to space united to its spiritual body, from
which it is inseparable, in the form it has prepared
by its thoughts and works.
A This subtle body, this etheric double, exists always
in us. Although invisible, it nevertheless serves as a
mould for our material body. That does not play in
the destiny of life the most important role. The
physical body variec. Formed for the necessities of
earthly stations, it is temporary and perishable; it
disengages itself and dissolves at death. The etheric
body lives; pre-existent to its births, it survives the
decompositions of the tomb, and accompanies the soul
in its incarnations. It is the model, the original type,
the veritable human form upon which incorporates for
a time the molecules of flesh, and which remains in the
midst of all materialisations and changing currents.

Even during life, the subtle form can detach itself
from the carnal body under certain^ conditions, and
act, appear, and manifest at a distance,, as we will see
later on, in a manner which proves its independent
existence.

Proofs of the existence of the soul are of two kinds,
moral and experimental. Let us first look at the moral
proofs : according to the materialistic school, the soul
is but the result of cerebral functions — "The cells of the
brain," Haeckel says, "are veritable organs of the soul ;
they grow, decay and vanish with it. The material
germ contains the entire being, physical and moral."
^ To which in substance we reply — Matter cannot gen-
erate qualities it does not possess; atoms, whether

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 65

they are triangular, circular, or crooked, do not repre-
sent reason, genius, pure love, or sublime charity.
The brain is said to create the function, but is it com-
prehensible that a function can know and possess con-
sciousness and sensibility? How can we explain con-
sciousness and sensibility, otherwise than by the spirit?
Does it come from matter? It frequently combats it.
Does it come from the instinct of conservation? It
revolts against it, and commands us to sacrifice. The
material organism is not the principle of life and its
faculties; it is, on the contrary, a limitation. The
brain is but an instrument, with the aid of which the
mind registers its sensations. One can compare it to
a keyboard on which each key represents a special
order of sensations. When the instrument is in perfect
tune, each key, under the action of the will, responds
with its proper sound, and harmony reigns in the ideas
and the actions. But if these same keys are out of
tune, or if several are destroyed, the sound will be
false, the harmony incomplete. There will result a
discord in spite of the effort of the intelligent artist,
who cannot obtain from this defective instrument a
consecutive harmony.

So are explained the mental maladies of neurotics
and idiots, the temporary loss of memory and speech,
madness, etc. In all these cases the mind still exists,
but its manifestations are spoiled, or annihilated by
a lack of correlation in its organs. Without doubt,
the development of the brain usually denotes high
faculties. For a soul delicate and powerful a more
perfect instrument is required, which lends itself to
all the manifestations of a thousrht rich and elevated.

56 LIFE AND DESTINY

The dimensions and circumlocutions of tlie brain
are often in direct rapport with the degree of evolu-
tion of the mind. (Yet the rule is not absolute. The
brain of Gambetta, for instance, weighed less than
that of the average man.) We should not infer from
this that memory is but play of brain cells. These cells
are modified and renewed constantly, says science, in
the same degree in which the entire body renews itself
after periods of years. How, then, can we recall the
happenings of life ten, twenty, thirty years back?
How do old people remember with surprising facility
the smallest details of childhood ? How can the mem-
ory, the personality, the ME persist and maintain itself
in this continual destruction and reconstruction of
physical organs? Nothing reaches the soul, say the
materialists, save through the means of the senses;
and the suspension of those is the destruction of the
other. Let us remark, nevertheless, that in the condi-
tion of anaesthesia, the momentary suppression of
sensibility, the mind is not destroyed, but is, on the
contrary, often extremely active. Buisson has said:
"If there exists one thing which can demonstrate the
independence of the ME, it is assuredly the proof that
we furnish in the patients under ether, whose intellec-
tual faculties resist the agency of anaesthetics." Val-
peau, treating the same subject, said: "What a rich
mine for the psychologists are the facts which separate
spirit from matter, the soul from the body." We shall
see, also, in what fashion the soul can live, perceive,
and act in ordinary sleep and in somnambulism. The
soul, as Haeckel has said, represents only the sum of
compound elements. There should always be in man

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 67

a perfect correlation between the physical and mental.
The rapport should be direct and constant, and the
equilibrium perfect, between the faculties and the
moral qualities on one side, and the material constitu-
tion on the other. The best portion of the qualities
from the physical point of view should be possessed
by the most intelligent and worthy. We know that
this is not so, for often the rarest souls have inhabited
poor bodies. Health and strength do not of necessity
accompany brilliant and subtle minds. The phrase "A
healthy mind in a healthy body" is not an absolute
rule. The flesh yields to sorrow. The soul, on the
contrary, resists, and often exalts itself in suffering,
and triumphs over exterior agents. We have the ex-
amples of Antigone, of Jesus, of Socrates, of Jeanne
d'Arc, of the Christian martyrs, and many others
who embellish history and ennoble the human race.
They are there to remind us that the voices of duty and
sacrifice can be heard high above the instincts of
matter. The will of the hero knows how to dominate
the body in the decisive hour.

If man was wholly contained in the physical germ,
one would find in him only the qualities and the faults
of his ancestors in the same degree which they
possessed. On the contrary, one sees everywhere chil-
dren who differ from their parents, surpassing them,
or being inferior. Even twin brothers with a striking
physical resemblance, present, mentally and morally,
entirely opposite characters. The theories of atavism
and heredity are powerless to explain the cases of
celebrated infant prodigies like the musicians Mozart
and Paganini, the mathematicians Mondeaux and

58 LIFE AND DESTINY

Inaudi, the painter Van de Kerkhove, and many other
remarkable children whose genius cannot be traced
back to their ancestors. The material substance trans-
mitted by parents manifests itself by a physical resem-
blance in the children. But often this resemblance
persists only a brief period oi time; as soon as the
character is formed, as soon as the child becomes the
man, we see the features change, and at the same time
the hereditary tendencies give place to other elements
which constitute a different personality : a ME distinct
in its tastes, its qualities, its passions from all that can
be encountered in its ancestors. It is not, then, the
material organism which makes the personality, but
the interior man. In the measure that this develops
and is established by its actions, we see the heredity
of parents little by little fade, and often vanish utterly.
The idea of right — of what is good — engraved
deeply at the bottom of our consciences, is another
proof of our spiritual origin; if man was the mere
issue of dust, or a result of mechanical forces of the
world, we could not know good and evil, or feel re-
morse, or moral sorrow. Some one has said, "These
ideas come from our ancestors — from education —
from social influences." But from whom did our first
ancestors receive them? and why do they grow in us,
if they find no natural soil and nourishment within us?
If you have suffered at the sight of wrong, if you have
wept for yourself and others in hours of sorrow, of
revealing anguish, you have been able to perceive the
profound secrets of the soul and its mysterious tethers
to the Beyond ; and you have comprehended the bitter
chasm and the elevated aim of existence — of all exist-

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 69

ences. This aim is the education of beings by sorrow ;
it is the ascension of things finite to the Hfe infinite.
No! the thought and the conscience were never de-
rived from a chemical and mechanical universe. They
dominate it, on the contrary, direct it, and subdue it.
In truth, is it not thought which measures the worlds
and discovers the harmonies of the cosmos? We
belong only partly to the material world; that is why
we so resent its evils ; if we belonged wholly to it, we
would feel ourselves much more in our natural ele-
ment, and be spared a large portion of our sufferings.
The truth about human nature, of life and destiny,
of good and evil, of liberty and responsibility, will
never be discovered on the point of a scalpel. Material
science cannot judge the things of the spirit; the spirit
alone can judge and comprehend the spirit in the
measure of its own degree of evolution. It is by the
consciousness of superior souls, by their thoughts,
their works, their examples, by their sacrifices, that
great light is cast on humanity to guide it toward a
noble ideal. Man is at once spirit and matter — soul
and body. But spirit and matter are but words, ex-
pressing in an imperfect manner the two forms of
eternal life which sleep in the matter of the brute,
awaken in the matter organic, and grow and rise in
the spirit. Is there not, as certain philosophers admit,
but one only essence in things at once form and
thought, the form being a thought materialised, and
the thought the form of the mind ? That is possible :
human knowledge is restricted, and the flashlight of
genius is only one rapid ray in the infinite domain of
ideas and laws. That which always characterises the

60 LIFE AND DESTINY

absolute difference of soul from matter is its unity
with consciousness. Matter disperses and vanishes
under analysis. Physical atoms divide and subdivide
indefinitely. There is no unity in matter — such is the
latest declaration of our greatest scientists. The Spirit
alone, in the universe, represents the one element
simple, indivisible, indestructible, imperishable, im-
mortal.

CHAPTER III

PERSONALITY

The conscience, the ME, is the centre of the being,
the foundation of the personaHty. To be a person is
to have a conscience, a ME, which reflects, examines,
remembers. But can we analyse and describe the ME,
its mysterious windings, its latent forces, its fertile
germs, its secret activities? The philosophies of the
past have attempted it in vain. They have only
skimmed the surface of conscious being; its internal
and profound parts remained obscure and inaccessible
up to the hour when hypnotism and spiritual phenom-
ena projected therein some rays of light; and since then
we have been enabled to see that in us is reflected the
whole universe in its double immensity of space and
time. We say space, for the soul, in its full, free
manifestations, knows not distance. We say time,
because all the past sleeps in the soul, and the future
dwells there in an embryo state. The old schools ad-
mitted the verity and the continuity of the ME; the
permanence and identity of the human personality and
its survivance. Their studies were based upon the
sense which we to-day call introspection.

The new experimental psychology considers the
personality as an aggregation, a composite, a "colony."
The ME is regarded as a transient arrangement of
6i

62 LIFE AND DESTINY

cells without stability, which decompose eventually.
These ideas are based on intellectual observations of
alterations of personality, and the relation of maladies
of memory to lesions of the brain, etc.

How shall we conciliate these dissimilar theories
and observe both? Scientifically, in a most simple
fashion. By observation itself — vigorous, attentive.
Frederick Myers has given the subject the most mag-
nificent effort that has been attempted by the human
mind, in his book The Surznval of Human Personality.
He says in this work (which is recommended to all
readers of this volume), "After fourteen years of
careful research, at the end of a long series of reflec-
tions based upon numberless proofs, I have come to
the conclusion that the consciousness and the faculties
of earth life assert themselves newly, in all their
strength, after death."

There are certain cases when there appears in us a
being wholly different from our normal selves,
possessing not only knowledge and aptitude more
extensive than those of the ordinary personality, but
besides, an endowment of more varied and more
powerful perceptions. Often the observers of the phe-
nomena of second, personality believe they are in the
presence of another individual.

It is necessary for the student to make the distinc-
tion between these cases and the controls of spiritual
entities. The proofs furnished by careful students of
these different manifestations permit no confusion.
The cases of G. Pelham, of Robert Hyslop, and Four-
cade, furnished in the book In tJie Invisible, are among
these proofs. Dr. Binet, in his Alterations of the Per-

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 63

sonality, gives interesting cases of this dual personal-
ity, as does ]\Iyers, Dr. James, Dr. Merton Prince, Dr.
Bouru and Dr. Bruat, all men of scientific renown. All
the examples given by them demonstrate one thing.
Above the level of the normal consciousness, outside
of the ordinary personality, there exists in us planes
of consciousness — zones or layers, placed in such a
manner that under certain conditions one can prove
the alterations between these planes.

We see emerging to the surface, and manifesting
themselves for a given time, attributes and faculties
jvhich penetrate to a deeper consciousness: then they
disappear, to plunge again into shadow and inaction.
The ordinary superficial ME seems but a fragment of
the UE total.

In the one is registered a world of facts, informa-
tion, of memories reaching to a long past of the soul.
During the normal life all these reservoirs remain hid-
den, as if buried under a material envelope. They
reappear in the somnambulistic state. The call of the
will, the suggestion, mobilises them; they come into
action and produce the strange phenomena that the
physiologist observes, but has no power to explain.
All the cases of double personality, all the phenomena
of clairvoyance, telepathy, premonition, enter the
scene of the new senses and unknown faculties. All
the ensemble of innumerable facts, constantly increas-
ing, should be attributed to the intervention of the
hidden personality. The somnambulistic state, which
permits these manifestations, should not be regarded
as morbid, but rather a superior state, following the
experience of Myers' Evolution. It is true that organic

6* LIFE AND DESTINY

degeneracy and weakness sometimes serves to facili-
tate the somnambulistic state. In a general way, it
might be stated that all which reduces the physical
yigour assists in allowing the spirit to free itself. The
clear vision often found in the dying gives testimony
to this fact.

But those who are regarded lightly by the materi-
alistic psychologists as "degenerates" are often the
"progenitors" instead. The highly nervous being is
sometimes in a process of evolution toward a more
intense state in planetary life. Morbidness sometimes
is transformed into moral force. Myers speaks of the
inspiration of genius "as the emergence into the do-
main of consciousness of ideas formed quite independ-
ently of the will in the profound. regions of the being."
Consequently, it is a most grievous theory of material-
ists who say that the "official school" has arrived at
the conclusion that genius is a species of nervous dis-
order. There is in us a reservoir of subterranean
waters, which sparkle and leap to the surface at times
in a rapid bubbling current. The prophets, the mar-
tyrs of all religions, the inspired, the enthusiastic of
all schools, have known these secret and powerful im-
pulsions. They have procured for us the grandest
works which have revealed to man the existence of a
superior world.;

CHAPTER IV

THE SOUL AND DIFFERENT STATES OF SLEEP

The study of sleep furnishes us with ideas of im-
portance regarding nature and personality. We do
not generally give enough serious thought to the
mystery of sleep. An attentive examination of the
phenomena, the study of the soul and its etheric form
during the part of existence which we consecrate to
repose, leads us to a more extended comprehension
of the conditions of life Beyond. Sleep promises,
not only restorative properties, which science has never
sufficiently emphasised, but also a power of co-ordina-
tion and of centralisation upon the material organism.;
It can, as we will see, provoke a considerable extension
of psychic perceptions, and a greater intensity of
reasoning and of memory. What is sleep? It is
simply the release of the soul from the body. Some
one has said, "Sleep is brother to death." These words
express a profound truth :' sequestered in the flesh dur-
ing our waking hours, the soul recovers in sleep, tem-
porarily, its comparative freedom, and at the same
time, the use of its hidden powers. Death will be its
liberation — complete — definite.

In the measure that outside perceptions are veiled
when the eye is shut and the ear closed, other more
powerful faculties awake in the depths of being; we
65

66 LIFE AND DESTINY

see and hear by the aid of internal senses. Images,
forms, and far-away scenes unroll and succeed one
another. Conversations take place with the living and
the dead. These experiences, often confused and in-
coherent in natural sleep, become precise and orderly
in the sleep produced by trance or somnambulism.
Often the soul goes far away in sleep, and its observa-
tions and impressions are translated into dreams. In
this state an etheric cord unites it to the material
organism, and by this subtle thread the impressions
of the soul are transmitted to the brain. It is by the
same process that in the other forms of sleep the soul
controls, commands, and directs the earthly envelope.
The walking of somnambulists in the night through
perilous places with entire security, is an evident
demonstration.

It is the same force which is employed in healing
the body by suggestion. The soul is liberated and
given the power to employ its forces in repairing the
physical body. In the scientific reports of cases of
double personality, it has been shown that the second
personality, more complete and normal than the first,
came and substituted itself for healing purposes. Sug-
gestion is but an act of the will, which differs only
from ordinary thought by its concentration and its
intensity. In general, our thoughts are multiple and
floating, are born and pass, or clash and confound
themselves. In suggestion, the thought fixes itself
upon one only point. It gains in power what it loses
in extent. By its action it becomes more penetrating,
more incisive, and awakens in the subject on whom it
is centred faculties revered in the normal state. Sug-

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 67

gestion becomes then a lever which mobilises the vital
forces, and directs them toward the point where they
should operate. Rightly employed, the power of sug-
gestion constitutes an important factor in education,
and destroys pernicious habits and bad tendencies. It
produces concentration of thought — increased energy
and vitality. By fixing the attention on things essen-
tially useful, and enlarging the field of memory, it
manifests anew the internal senses and directs them
to right ends. Let us return to ordinary sleep. When
the soul is not fully released, the sensations and pre-
occupations of the day and the memories of the past
mix with the impressions of the night. In apparent
disorder, the perceptions registered by the brain
unroll in the incoherence of most dreams. But in the
measure that the soul frees and elevates itself, the psy-
chical senses become dominant, and the dreams acquire
lucidity and a remarkable clearness. They unfold, and
vast perspectives open on the spiritual world — veri-
table domains of the soul, and the land of its destiny.
In this state it can penetrate hidden things, and even
the thoughts and sentiments of other spirits. There
is in us a double life, by which we appertain at one
time to two worlds — two planes of existence. One is
en rapport with time and space, as we conceive them
in our planet, by our physical body and material life.
The other, by our deeper faculties of the soul, unites
us to worlds infinite. In the course of our terrestrial
existence, it is in sleep that these faculties can find
exercise, and the powers of the soul enter into vibra-
tion; then they resume contact with the universal
world, which is their country from which the flesh has

68 LIFE AND DESTINY

separated them. They invigorate themselves at the
breast of eternal energies, to begin on awakening the
penible and obscure task of daily life,
i During sleep the soul can, following the necessity
of the moment, apply itself in repairing the vital losses
caused by the day's labour, and in regenerating the
sleeping organism; infusing tlie forces of the cosmic
world. ) Then, when this restorative action is accom-
plished, it takes the course of the superior life, and
exercises its faculties of vision at a distance and pene-
trates hidden things.

In this independent activity it lives, in anticipation,
the free life of the spirit. For this life (the natural
continuation of the planetary existence which accom-
panies death) it must prepare itself, not only by terres-
trial works, but by its occupations in sleep. Thanks to
reflections from that lustre on high which lights our
dream paths and illumines the occult side of destiny,
we can foresee tlie conditions of life Beyond. If it
were possible to embrace in one glance of the eye the
whole of our existence, we would recognise that the
waking state is far from constituting the essential and
most important phase. ' The souls who watch over us
profit by our sleep to exercise their powers and develop
our sense of intuition.; They accomplish a work of
initiation for the hungry humans, eager to elevate
themselves — a work of which the dreams of the night
carry indicating traces. The dreams of flying, or of
moving rapidly above the earth, show that the etheric
body is making an effort at freedom in the superior
life. When we dream of mounting great heights with-
out fatigue, of crossing space without difficulty, or

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 69

floating over water freely, is it not a proof that our
etheric bodies are free? For such sensations and
images, completely reversing the laws of nature, could
not come to the mind if they were not the result of a
transformation in our method of existence. In real-
ity they are not dreams, but real actions accomplished
in another domain of sensation, and of which the
memory is left in the brain.

These memories and impressions demonstrate that
we possess two bodies; and^' the soul, the seat of the
conscience, is attached to its subtle envelope, while
the material body is plunged in sleep] There is al-
ways one difficulty : the farther the soul separates from
the body and penetrates in the etheric regions, the
weaker is the tie which unites them, and more vague is
the memory of the dream. The soul soars far into
immensity of space, and the brain cannot register its
sensations. The result is, that we cannot analyse our
most beautiful dreams. Often the last sensations of
our night travels remain on awakening. If, at this
moment, we take the precaution to fix them firmly in
memory, they remain engraven there. One night I
had the sensation of feeling vibrations in space — the
last with a sweet, penetrating melody — and the sou-
venir of the closing words of a chant which termi-
nated thus :

"There are Heavens innumerable."

Sometimes one feels, on awakening, vague impres-
sions of powerful experiences without precise memo-
ries. This sort of intuition, the result of perception

70 LIFE AND DESTINY

registered in the deep consciousness, but not in the
brain consciousness, persists with us for a certain time,
and influences our actions at other times. These im-
pressions are clearly translated in the dreams. Myers
says of this subject: ("The permanent result of a
dream is often such that it shows us clearly that the
dream is not the effect of confused experiences in wak-
ing life, but possesses an inexplicable power, like that
of suggestion or hypnotism, coming from the profound
depths of our existence, which waking life is inca-
pable of attaining." ) Two groups of this sort are eas-
ily recognised — notably the dream which has been the
point of departure of an obsessing idea, or acts of
madness. We can explain this phenomenon in two
ways : as a communication from the superior con-
sciousness, or as the intervention of a lofty intelli-
gence, which judges, disapproves, and condemns the
conduct of the dreamer, and leaves with him a salutary
sense of fear. The obsession might have been caused
by evil spirits, which were exorcised by means of the
dream. We should demand aid from the mysterious
properties of sleep, and ask that our memory may be
extended. Normal memory is restricted and precari-
ous. It embraces only the narrow circle of the pres-
ent, and the ensemble of daily events. The profound
memory embraces all the history of life since its or-
igin, its successive stations, its modes of existence,
planetar}^ and celestial. All the past souvenirs and
sensations, forgotten in the waking state, are engraved
in us; this past is awakened only during sleep — ordi-
nary, or provoked by suggestion. It is a rule known
to all experimenters, that the more profound is the

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 71

sleep when produced hypnotically, the greater is the
extension of memory. Myers deals fully with this
subject in his book.

He says: "Ordinary sleep is considered as occu-
pying an intermediary position between waking life
and profound hypnotic slumber. It appears probable,
that the memory which pertains to ordinary sleep is
attached on one side to actual daily life, and on the
other, to that which exists in the hypnotic state. The
fragments of memory in our nightly sleep are inter-
laced by the two chains." We will see this in treat-
ing the question of reincarnation. Myers has been
pushed much farther than he foresaw, and the conse-
quences are immense. Not only can we, by hypnotic
suggestion, reconstruct the smallest souvenirs of ac-
tual life which have disappeared from normal mem-
ory, but we can restore the broken chain of past lives.
At the same time that a vast and rich memory is awak-
ened, we see appear in sleep faculties superior to all
those which we enjoy awake. Problems vainly stud-
ied and abandoned as insoluble, are decided in dreams,
or in the somnambulistic state; aesthetic works of an
elevated order, poems, hymns, s}Tnphonies, have been
conceived and executed. Is this done by the superior
ME, or by the collaboration of spirits who come to
inspire our work? It is probable that the two factors
assist in phenomena of this order. Agassiz, Voltaire,
La Fontaine, Bach, Fordini, all composed important
works under these conditions.

We must not pass without mention another form
of dreams which until now has escaped explanation
by science. I refer to premonitory dreams — an en-

72 LIFE AND DESTINY

semble of images and visions bearing on future events
of which the exactitude is later verified. They seem
to indicate that the soul has power to penetrate the
future, or that the future has been revealed to it by-
superior intelligences.

There was the dream of the Duchess of Hamilton,
who saw, fifteen days in advance, the death of Count
L with the details of an intimate order which sur-
rounded the event. A similar fact was published in
The Progressive Thinker, of ist November, 1913.
A magistrate of Hauser, Mr. Reed, was killed in an
automobile. His ten-year-old son had twice in suc-
cession, in a dream, seen this catastrophe in all its de-
tails. Despite his supplications, and those of the wife
and mother. Air. Reed refused to abandon his project,
and found death under the identical circumstances per-
ceived by the child in his dreams.

In the Journal des Dehats, May, 1904, there is a
curious story guaranteed as true. A man disappeared
from his home, and a little dog, devoted to his mis-
tress, disappeared with the husband. One night she
dreamed the little dog came to her, barking furiously,
and after a few moments, scratched at the door to go
out. She followed the animal through various streets,
and finally saw him disappear into a restaurant. The
street, the house, the locality — were all clear in her
memory when she awoke. She spoke to three friends
of the matter, and decided to make a search for the
place. She found it, and there was her husband, and
with him the little dog. Innumerable other authentic
cases of this kind could be given.

The perceptions of the soul in sleep are of two or-

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 73

ders. First the vision of things at a distance — clair-
voyance, lucidity; then comes an ensemble of phe-
nomena known under the name of telepathy, of the
reception and transmission of thoughts and sensations
and impulses. In this category are cases of appari-
tions, known under the names of phantoms of the liv-
ing. Official psychology has recorded great numbers
of these cases. They form a continuous chain of
facts.

The great astronomer, M. Flammarion, in his book,
The Unknown and Psychic Problems, mentions a se-
ries of visions directed to a distance in sleep, resulting
in verifying inquests. In the Annals of Psychic Sci-
ence, September, 191 5, page 551, a detailed account of
a proven psychic dream is given, which revealed the
death of a man who had disappeared ten years pre-
viously, and the finding of his skeleton in the place in-
dicated. In the same periodical. Professor Newbold,
of the University of Pennsylvania, relates many ex-
amples which prove the activity of the soul in sleep,
and the knowledge it gains of worlds invisible. In
all these cases the body reposes, its organs sleep, but
the psychic being continues to be awake — to act. It
sees, hears, and communicates, without the aid of
words, with other beings like itself; that is to say,
other souls. In a certain manner this phenomenon is
found in each one of us. - In sleep, when our ordinary
means of communication with the exterior world are
suspended, new outlets open for us, and through them
our vision reaches out on intense rays of light. We
see revealed another form of life — the life psychic —
which proves to us that there exists for the human

74. LIFE AND DESTINY

being a mode of perception different from that of the
normal senses.

Besides the visions of natural sleep, there is that
of provoked clairvoyance. Doctor Maxwell plunged
a psychic, Mme. Aguelana, in magnetic slumber. Dr.
Maxwell suggested to her to go to one of his friends,
Mr. B and see what he was doing. "The me-
dium," says Dr. Maxwell, "to my great surprise, said
she saw Mr. B only partly dressed, walking bare-
footed on stones. It was then 10.30 p.m. I could
see no sense in the medium's statement, yet, when I
saw my friend the next day, I told him the tale, and
he was greatly astonished. He said, the previous eve-
ning, he had not felt well, and a friend had urged him
to try the Kneipp cure, and walk bare-footed out of
doors. So, partly dressed, he walked up and down
some stone steps outside his home." Verified cases
of clairvoyance are innumerable; and only those who
have made no careful investigations in this realm can
deny their reality as facts.

CHAPTER V

TELEPATHIC PROJECTIONS

We arrive now at an order of manifestations which
are produced at a distance, without the assistance of
physical organs, and during the waking state. These
are known under the general vague term of telepathy.
As we have already stated, these occurrences are not
an indication of a morbid or diseased personality, as
some observers have believed, but, on the contrary,
they are the coming to light of superior powers in the
human breast. We should regard them as the dawn-
ing of future qualities with which man will be en-
dowed. The examination of these facts leads to the
proof that the exterior ME, and the ME surviving
death, are identical, and represent two aspects of one
and the same existence.

Telepathy, or projection of the thought to a dis-
tance, and even of manifesting thought in pictures,
causes us to mount one more step on the ladder of
psychic life. Here we are in the presence of a power-
ful act of the will. The soul itself imparts its vibra-
tions— a proof that it is not a composite aggregation
of forces, but, on the contrary, the centre of life and
of will in us — a dynamic centre which commands the
organism and directs the functions. Telepathic com-
munications do not admit of limitations. The power
75

76 LIFE AND DESTINY

and independence of the soul reveals itself in a sover-
eign fashion, for here the body takes no part. It is
more of an obstacle than an aid. So it produces phe-
nomena after death, with even greater intensity, as
we will see by the following. Myers says: "Auto-
projection is the one definite act which man is capa-
ble of accomplishing equally as well before death as
after." Telepathic communication at a distance has
been established by experiences which have become
classic. M. Pierre Jenet, Professor of Sorbonne, and
Doctor Gibert of Havre, called mentally to Leonie, a
telepathic subject, to come to them — a distance of two
miles — and she came.

These experiences have been constantly multiplied.
The Daily Express of London, 17th July, 1903, re-
lates exchanges of thought which took place in the
office of the Review of Reviews, Strand, London.
Six people witnessed these experiments — among them
Doctor Wallace, 39 Harley Street, and W. Stead.
The messages were sent by Mr, Richardson of Lon-
don, and received by Mrs. Franck of Nottingham, at
a distance of no miles.

The Banner of Light, of 12th August, 1905, relates
that an American, Mrs. Burton Johnson of Des
Moines, sitting in her room at the Victoria Hotel, re-
ceived four times telepathic messages from Palo Alto,
California, a distance of 3,000 miles. These facts
were rigorously investigated, and verified beyond ques-
tion.

Visions of people who are living are frequent oc-
currences. My own mother, during the last days of
her life, saw me often near her in Tours, though I was

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 771

far away, travelling in the East. This phase of phe-
nomena is explained by the projection of the will of
the one manifesting toward the recipient. In the fol-
lowing cases we will see the psychic personality, the
soul, disengaging itself entirely from the body and
appearing as a phantom. Testimony of this kind is
abundant. The Society of Psychical Research in
London has records of nearly a thousand authentic
cases of apparitions of living persons. These cases
are attested to by.people of high moral, and mental in-
tegrity. They form several volumes, and bear the
names of men of science belonging to academies and
scientific societies. Among other names are those of
Gladstone and Balfour.

This order of phenomena is generally attributed to
a subjective character. But this opinion does not sub-
mit to careful examination. Certain apparitions have
been seen successively by several people in different
stories of a house. Others have impressed animals —
dogs and horses. In certain cases the phantoms opened
doors, deplaced objects, and left their traces in the
dust on the furniture. Voices have been heard, giv-
ing information on unknown facts, afterwards veri-
fied. An ensemble of such occurrences has been pub-
lished by Doctor Dariex and Professor Charles
Richet, in the Annals of Psychic Science, and by
Flammarion in his book, The Unknown. Three
prominent journals of London reported, on 17th May,
1905, a case of an apparition in Parliament. The
phantom of deputy Sir Carne Rasch, who was at that
moment ill at his home, was seen by three other depu-
ties. Sir Gilbert Parker says of the occurrence : *T

78 LIFE AND DESTINY

was to participate in the debate that day in Parlia-
ment, but they forgot to call my name. As I re-
sumed my place, my eyes fell on Sir Carne Rasch sit-
ting in his usual place. As I knew him to be ill, I
made a friendly gesture, and said, *I hope you are bet-
ter.' He made no response; that surprised me. He
was very pale; he was sitting tranquilly leaning on
one hand, his expression impassible and hard.

"I pondered a moment on what I ought to do, and
when I again turned toward Sir Carne, he had dis-
appeared. I went to look him up, thinking he was in
the vestibule; but he was not there, and no one had
seen him. It was undoubtedly the etheric double of
Sir Carne, which had been projected by his great de-
sire to be there and cast his vote for the Government."
Sir Arthur Hayter adds his testimony to that of Sir
Gilbert Parker. He says he not only saw Sir Came
Rasch, but drew the attention of Sir Campbell-Ban-
nerman to his presence in the Chamber.

The exteriorisation of the double can be produced
by magnetic force.

These experiences have occurred, and before the
proofs doubt is impossible. Consult history, and we
will find the past full of facts of this nature. The
phenomena of appearance of the living in religious
annals are frequent. The past is no less rich in testi-
mony of the spirits of the dead, and this abundance
of affirmations and their persistence across the cen-
turies, indicates that in the midst of superstitions and
errors there must be a portion of reality. In effect,
the manifestation and the communication at a dis-
tance between incarnated spirits, leads to the possible

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 79

communication of the incarnate and the discarnate.
To quote Myers again, "We can affect each other at
a distance," and if our spirits incarnated in our bodies
act thus, independently of the physical organism, we
have there a presumption in favour of the existence
of other spirits, independent of the body, and able to
afifect us in the same manner. "The inhabitants of
space" have furnished many proofs of this law of uni-
versal communion in the restrained and difficult meas-
ure which they are able to establish. The Society of
Psychical Research in London experimented with two
mediums, one in England and one in America. Pro-
fessor Hyslop of Columbia College took all necessary
precautions to prevent fraud. Four Latin words, un-
known to either medium, were transmitted from spirit
to spirit, across seas. This experiment was related
in full in the Daily Tribune of Chicago, 31st October,
1904, and in the Proceedings of the Psychical Re-
search Society.

When we study under their divers aspects the phe-
nomena of telepathy, we are led to recognise in it a
process of communication of incalculable import. At
first we saw therein a simple, almost mechanical trans-
mission of thoughts and images between two brains;
but the phenomena began to assume the most varied
and impressive forms. After thoughts came the pro-
jections at a distance of phantoms of the living —
those of the dying, and often, without any interrup-
tion in the continuity of the chain of facts, the appari-
tions of the dead.

In the greater number of these cases, the clairvoy-
ant who saw and described these apparitions had no

80 LIFE AND DESTINY

acquaintance with the personages appearing. We
have on record a series of continual manifestations
of this nature, which demonstrate the indestructibihty
of the soul.

Telepathy knows no bounds ; it mounts over all ob-
stacles, and binds the living on earth to the living in
space — the world visible to the worlds invisible — man
to God. It unites them closely, intimately. The
means of transmission that it reveals to us constitute
the foundation of social relations between spirits and
their usual mode of exchanging ideas and sensations.
The phenomenon called telepathy on earth is nothing
but the process of communication between all spirits
in the life superior, and prayer is one of its most power-
ful forms, one of its highest and purest applications.
Telepathy is the manifestation of a law universal and
eternal.
r All beings, all bodies, exchange vibrations ; the stars
I influence one another across shining immensities. In
the same manner, souls which are systems of thought
I and centres of force impress one another, and can
1 communicate at any distance.

"^ Sir William Crookes, in an address to the British
( Association on vibration, declared it was the natural
*^ law which regulated all psychic communications.
Telepathy seems even to extend to animals ; there are
facts existing which indicate such communication be-
tween men and animals. The attraction spreads from
star to star and from soul to soul. All are drawn
toward one common centre,, eternal and divine. A
double rapport is established. These aspirations
mount toward Him in the forms of appeals and

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 81

prayers, and descend in the forms of grace and inspira-
tion. The great poets, writers, artists — tlie wise and
the good, have known these impulsions, these sudden
inspirations, these rays of genius which illuminate the
brain like flashes from a superior world, and reflect
its grandeur and inebriating beauty. Visions of the
soul in an ecstatic flight, they open the inaccessible
world with its radiations and its glories.

All this demonstrates to us that the soul is capable
of being impressed by other means than through its
physical organs; of gathering information beyond the
reach of earthly things, and proceeding from a spir-
itual cause. Thanks to these rays of light, the soul
perceives in the universal vibration the past and the
future; it beholds the genesis of forms — forms of art
and thought, of beauty and holiness, from which flow
for ever new forms in a variety as inexhaustible as
the source from which they emanate. Considering
these things from the immediate point of view, let us
see their consequences in the earthly centre. Already,
by the fact of telepathy, the human evolution is ac-
centuated.

Man, conquering new psychic powers, will one day
be permitted to manifest his thoughts at any distance,
without a material intermediary. This progress con-
stitutes one of the most magnificent stages of human-
ity toward a free and more intense life. It should
be the prelude to the grandest moral revolution ever
produced on our globe.

By its effect, evil would be vanquished, or greatly
diminished. When man has no more secrets, when
others can read the thoughts in his mind, he will not

82 LIFE AND DESTINY

dare think evil, or consequently do evil. So ever the
human soul mounts, climbing the ladder of infinite
development.

The time v^ill come when more and more intelli-
gence will predominate, and disengaging itself from
the bodily chrysalis, reach out and affirm its empire
over matter, creating by its efforts new and more ex-
tended means of perception and manifestation. The
senses, in their turn refined, will see their circle of
action enlarge; the human brain will become a mys-
terious temple filled with harmonies and with per-
fumes, an admirable instrument for the service of a
spirit. At the same time, with the human personal-
ity, and soul, and organism, the earthly organism will
be transformed. In order that society evolve, the in-
dividual must evolve himself first. It is man who
makes humanity, and humanity by its constant ac-
tion transforms its dwelling. There is an absolute
equilibrium between the moral and the physical; the
thought and the will are the excellent utensils by the
aid of which we can transform everything in our-
selves and around us. Having but high and pure
thoughts, aspirations toward all that is great, noble,
and beautiful, little by little we will feel our being re-
generated, and with it, gradually, society, the globe,
humanity. In our ascension we will come to better
understand and pradtise this universal communion
which binds all beings. Unconscious in the lower
states of existence, this communion will become more
and more conscious in the measure that the life is ele-
vated and travels over the innumerable degrees of

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 83

evolution to arrive one day at that state of spirituality
where every soul, shining with the glory of acquired
powers, in an ecstasy of love sees and feels itself
united to all in work infinite and eternal.

CHAPTER VI

MANIFESTATIONS AFTER DEATH

In the preceding examination we have followed the
spirit of man through the different phases of extrica-
tion. Ordinary sleep, somnambulism, transmission of
thought, telepathy under all forms : we have seen its
sensitiveness and its means of perception increase, in
the measure that its ties to the body relaxed. We are
going to see it now in the state of absolute liberty —
that is to say, after death, manifesting itself at the
same time physically and intellectually to its earthly
friends. No chasm separates them in the different
psychic states. Whether these phenomena take place
during or after the material life, the cause is identical
in its laws and in its effects.

Let us eliminate the idea of the supernatural, which
has long been looked upon with suspicion by science.
The old adage, "Nature makes no breaks," verifies
itself once more. Death is not a break; it is a sepa-
ration and not a dissolution of the elements which com-
pose the earth man. It is the passing from the world
visible to the world invisible, whose limits are purely
arbitrary, and due simply to the imperfection of our-
selves. The life of each one of us in the Beyond is
the natural and logical prolongation of actual life, the
development of the invisible parts of our being. There
84

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 85

are links in the psychic domain as in the physical. We
have seen in the two orders of apparitions, whether
hving or deceased, that it is always the etheric form
— this vehicle of the soul, the reproduction or the pic-
ture of the physical body — which becomes perceptible
to the medium. ) Science, according to Curie, Lebau,
and Becquerel, familiarises itself day after day with
the subtle and invisible states of matter, with its fluids,
in a word, utilised by the spirits in their manifesta-
tions, and well understood by them.

Thanks to recent discoveries, science has entered
into contact with a world of elements, of forces, and
of powers unsuspected, and the possibilities of forms
of existence long unknown at last appear to him. The
scientists who have studied spiritual phenomena — Sir
W. Crookes, R. Wallace, R. Dale Owen, Sir Oliver
Lodge, Paul Gibier, Myers, Aksakof — have testified
to numerous apparitions of the dead. The spirit of
Katie King was materialised during three years in the
home of Sir W. Crookes, member of the Royal Acad-
emy of London, and was photographed on 2nd March,
1894, in the presence of a group of experimenters, as
he relates in his book Researches. Myers speaks of
231 cases of apparitions of the deceased. Among
them was one announcing an imminent death. A
commercial traveller had a vision one morning of a
sister dead nine years. When he related this to his
family it met with incredulity and scepticism; but in
describing the vision he mentioned a scratch on her
face. This detail caused the mother to faint. After
coming to consciousness, the mother related how she
had inadvertently made this scratch on her daughter's

86 LIFE AND DESTINY

face as she lay in her coffin, and had covered it with
powder, so that no person in the world knew of the
occurrence. The fact that it had been seen by the son
impressed upon the mother the veracity of the vision,
which she believed was a forerunner of her own death.
In fact, she died some weeks later.
/\ In a report made before the "International Con-

gress of Psychology" in Paris, 1900, Dr. Paul Gibier,
Director of the Pasteur Institute, spoke of the ma-
terialisation of phantoms obtained by him in his lab-
oratory in presence of regular assistants in his biolog-
ical work and of several ladies of his family. These
were given the special mission of watching the me-
dium, Mme. Salmon; of disrobing her before the
seance, in order to verify her garments, always black,
while the phantoms appeared in white. The medium
was also locked in a metallic cage, and Dr. Gibier
kept the key; yet under these conditions, in a half light,
numerous forms of various heights appeared, from
little children to those of tall stature. The formation
was gradual, and took place before the eyes of all the
assistants. Interrogated, they spoke, declaring them-
selves personalities who had lived on earth, whose mis-
sion it now was to demonstrate the existence of an-
other life.

In Paris, 23rd September, 1900, Doctor Bayal, Ex-
Governor of Dahomey, and Senator of Bouches-du-
Rhone, described the apparitions he had witnessed at
Aries. The phantom of Arcella, a young Roman girl
whose tomb is at Aries, was materialised in the pres-
ence of many people, among whom were the poet Mis-
tral, and a general of the division, a noted doctor, and

V

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 87

others. Professor Milesi, of the University of Rome,
testified in the Revue of Psychic Studies, nth Sep-
tember, 1904, to the materiaHsation of his sister three
years after her death. "She appeared with the ex-
quisite smile which was habitual to her," he said. In
an article in the Figaro, 9th October, 1905, Mr.
Charles Richet, of the Academy of Medicine of Paris,
Member of the Institute, wrote: "The occult world
exists; at risk of being regarded by my contempora-
ries as insane, I believe in phantoms." In my own
group of students that I long directed in Tours, the
mediums described apparitions of the dead whom they
had never seen or known so perfectly that they were
readily recognised by those present. In the works of
Aksakof, he relates the reproduction by a spirit of the
penmanship of the banker Livermore, which was iden-
tical with that in the possession of his wife. Often
spirits incorporate in the body of the sleeping medium,
and speak and write, furnishing proofs of their iden-
tity. The medium abandons momentarily her body
to their use. Voice, language, and gestures are those
of the spirit, not of the medium at those times. A
curious case is testified to by Abbe Grimond, director
of the Asylum for Deaf-Mutes at Vaucluse. By the
means of the organs of Mme. Gallas, medium, while
in trance, he received from the spirit of Focade, eight
years deceased, a message by the silent motion of the
lips. This was after a special method of speech for
the mute which this spirit had invented and communi-
cated to Abbe Grimond, and that this venerable ec-
clesiastic alone knew. Twelve witnesses who were
present have given their signatures to the truth of this

68 LIFE AND DESTINY

remarkable seance. Doctor Maxwell, Avocat-Gene-
ral, speaks in his book of a case of incorporation as
follows: "A curious personality is that of a doctor
who has been dead a hundred years ; his medical lan-
guage is archaic. He gives the ancient names to me-
dicinal plants. His diagnosis is generally exact, but
the description of internal symptoms which he per-
ceives are astonishing to a physician of the twentieth
century! I have studied my confrere from beyond'
the tomb for ten years, and he has not failed to pre-
sent a striking continuity of logic."

If we take into consideration the difficulties which
surround the communications by the aid of an organ-
ism, and particularly a brain which he has not him-
self fashioned and accustomed himself to by experi-
ence, if we consider that by reason of the difference
in planes of existence one cannot demand of discar-
nate man all the proofs we demand of a material man,
we must then recognise that the phenomenon of in-
corporation is one of those which co-operates the most
powerfully to demonstrate the spirituality of life and
its survivance.

It is not a question in these cases of a simple in-
fluence at a distance, it is an impulsion which the sub-
ject cannot resist, and which often takes possession of
the entire organism. These phenomena are analo-
gous to that of the second personality. There the
profound ME substitutes itself for the normal ME,
and directs the physical body, with the purpose of re-
generation. But here it is a strange spirit which plays
a role and substitutes itself in place of the personality
of the sleeping medium. The word "possession"

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 89

which we have just used, has often been employed in
an evil sense. One attributes to it facts which are de-
signed as diabolical. But as Myers has said, "The
devil is not a creature recognised in science. In these
phenomena we find ourselves in presence of spirits who
have been men like ourselves, animated by the same
motives which inspire us."

Thanks to these experiences, to these observations,
to these testimonials a million times repeated, we must
see the existence of the soul rising out of the domain
of hypothesis, or of simple metaphysical conception,
to become a living reality, a fact vigorously estab-
lished.

All the terror, all the superstitions suggested by the
idea of death to man, vanish. Our conceptioji of the
universal life and of divine work enlarges, and at the
same time our confidence in the future is fortified. We
see under the alternate forms of existence, carnal and
etheric, that the progress of life and the development
of the personality continues, and one law supreme pre-
sides over the evolution of souls through time and
space.

CHAPTER VII

VIBRATORY STATES OF THE SOUL's MEMORY

Life is an immense vibration which fills the universe
and of which the centre is in God. Each soul is a
detached spark from which this divine centre becomes
in its turn a centre of vibrations which vary and aug-
ment with amplitude and intensity, following the de-
gree of the elevation of life. This fact can be veri-
fied by experiment. (Doctors Baraduc and Joire have
constructed a registering apparatus which measures
the radiant force escaping from each human person,
and varying according to the psychic state of the sub-
ject.) Each soul has then its particular and different
vibration ; its proper movement, its rhythm, is the ex-
act representation of its dynamic power, of its intel-
lectual value, of its moral elevation. All the beauty,
all the grandeur of the living universe is summed up
in this law of harmonic vibrations. The souls that
vibrate in unison recognise each other, and call across
space with sympathy, friendship, and love. The
artists, the sensitives, the delicately harmonised beings
know this law and feel its effects. The superior soul
vibrates in unison with all the harmonies.

The psychic entity penetrates with its vibrations all
its etheric organism — that subtle form and image, the
exact reproduction of its radiant and harmonious per-
90

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 91

sonality. But incarnation comes, and these vibrations
are under veils of flesh. The interior centre cannot
project outward more than a feeble intermittent radia-
tion; nevertheless in sleep, in somnambulism, in
trance, as soon as a passage is opened to the soul
through the envelope of matter which chains and op-
presses, the vibratory current is established, and the
centre restored to activity. The spirit finds in these
interior states power and liberty. All that sleeps in
it awakens ; its numerous lives reconstruct themselves,
not only with treasures of thoughts and memories,
but also with all the sensations, joys, and sorrows en-
registered in the fluidic organism. In trance, the soul,
vibrating with memories of the past, affirms its ante-
rior existences and renews the mysterious chain of its
transmigrations.

The smallest details of our life are registered in
us and leave their ineffaceable traces; thoughts, de-
sires, passions, acts good or bad, all are there fixed, all
are there engraved. During the normal course of life,
then, memories accumulate in successive layers, and
the most recent efface in appearance the most ancient.
We seem to have forgotten a million details of our de-
parted existence; but in the experiences of hypnotism,
it is only necessary to evoke the past and to turn the
subject by will to an anterior epoch of his life in his
youth or childhood to bring back those memories in
crowds. \ The subject reviews his past with the asso-
ciations of ideas which pertained to that epoch;
(ideas often wholly unlike those he actually pro-
fesses) ; and with the tastes, habits, and language of
that time, he automatically reconstructs a series of

92 LIFE AND DESTINY

phenomena contemporaneous to that period. This
leads us to recognise that there is a close correlation
between the psychic individuality and the organic
state. Each mental state is associated with a state
physiological. The evocation of one in the memory
of a hypnotised subject leads to the reapparition of
the other.

This law is known in psychology under the name of
"psycho-physical parallelism." A notable instance of
this law is the case of Rose, a hypnotic subject of M.
Pierre Jenet, Professor of Psychology in Sorbonne.
He relates in his work on this subject, that when he
willed her to go back two years in her life while in
trance state, there were reproduced in her all the
symptoms of pregnancy, which was her condition at
that time. This phenomenon would be incompre-
hensible without the explanation that the etheric
double retains all the impressions of the past. It is
that which furnishes the soul the sum-total of its states
of consciousness; even after the destruction of the
train memory. Spirits demonstrate this by their com-
munications, for they have conserved in space the most
minute details of terrestrial life.

This automatic registration seems to be effected in
groups or zones within us — zones corresponding to
periods of our existence. If the will causes the awak-
ening to memory of an event pertaining to any past
period, all the facts belonging to this same period un-
roll in a methodical series. M. G. Delarene compares
these vibratory states to the layers in the section of a
tree, which permit us to calculate its age; this renders
|Comprehensible the variations of personality already

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 93

mentioned. Superficial observers explain these phe-
nomena by the disassociation of consciousness. Stud-
ied closely they represent, on the contrary, a unique
consciousness corresponding to many phases of one
existence. These aspects are repeated as soon as the
sleep is profound enough and the etheric double is re-
leased.

This release is facilitated by magnetic action. The
more profound the hypnotic state, the more fully can
the soul detach itself and recover full powers of vi-
bration. The active life of the spirit is resumed, while
the physical life is suspended. To lead the hypnotic
subject to a determined epoch in his past, longitudinal
passes, practised downward, should be made until pro-
found sleep results. One can obtain facsimile pen-
manship from such subjects, varying with the differ-
ent epochs of their lives.

We have ourselves assigned to a subject one pre-
cise date in his far past, and caused him to recall it,
with details afterwards verified. Such experiences
cast a bright light on the mystery of life. All the
varied aspects of memory, the existence of souvenirs
of normal life, and their revival in trance condition,
are explained by the different vibratory movements
which unite the soul and its psychic body to the ma-
terial brain.

With every change of state the vibrations, varj'ing
in intensity, become more rapid in the measure that
the soul is released from the body. Sensations felt
in a normal state register with a minimum of force
and durability, but memory conscious, memory im-
placable, conserves the imprint of all its faults, and be-

94 LIFE- AND DESTINY

comes its own judge, and sometimes its own execu-
tioner. But at the same time, the ME, broken into
fragments and distinct layers during the earth Hfe, re-
constructs itself into a magnificent unity. All the ex-
perience acquired in the course of centuries, all the
spiritual riches and fruits of evolution, often hidden
or buried and lessened by this experience, reappear in
their, brilliancy and freshness to serve as a foundation
of new acquisition. Nothing is lost! The deep lay-
ers of being, if they recount the faults and falls, pro-
claim also the slow, difficult efforts made in the course
of the ages to beautify the personality, in the unfold-
ing of the acquired faculties, qualities, and virtues

CHAPTER VIII

EVOLUTION AND FINALITY OF THE SOUL

The soul, we have said, comes from God; it is the
principle of intelligence and life in us. Mysterious
essence, it escapes analysis, like all things which come
from the Absolute. Created by love, created for love,
so tiny it can be restrained in a fragile form, so great
that with the flight of a thought, it embraces the In-
finite, the soul is a portion of the divine essence pro-
jected into the material world. From the hour of its
descent into matter, what has been the way it followed
to remount to the point of its actual course? It has
been obliged to pass through obscure paths, reclothe
forms, animate organisms it rejected at the end of each
existence as one does with a mantle which has become
useless.

All its bodies of flesh perished : the winds of des-
tiny scattered the dust. It pursued its ascending
march through the innumerable stations of its jour-
neys, and goes toward a goal grand and desirable, a
goal divine, which is perfection. The soul contains
in its natural state all the germs of its future develop-
ments. It is destined to know all, to acquire all, to
possess all! And how can it achieve this in one ex-
istence? Life is short and perfection is long! Can
the soul in one life develop its understanding — en-
95

96 LIFE AND DESTINY

lighten its reason — fortify its conscience — assimilate
all the elements of wisdom, holiness, and genius? No!
to achieve its ends it must, in time and space, have a
field v^rithout limits to travel; it is by transformations
without number, after millions of centuries, that the
coarse mineral changes to the pure diamond, shining
with a million fires. It is so with the human soul.
The aim of evolution, the reason of life and being, is
not earthly happiness, as many erroneously think, but
the perfecting of each one of us. And this perfec-
tion we must realise by work, by effort, and by alter-
nating joy and sorrow until we attain the celestial
state.

If there is on earth less joy than sorrow, it is be-
cause sorrow is the instrument par excellence of edu-
cation and progress. A stimulant for the being which
without it would be retarded in paths of sensuality.
Pain, physical and moral, forms our experience ; wis-
dom is the price of it. Little by little the soul is ele-
vated, and in the measure that it mounts, there ac-
cumulates in it an always-growing sum of knowledge
and virtue. The soul feels itself united more and
more to its own world, and communicates more inti-
mately with its planetary centre.

Eventually by powerful ties it unites itself with the
company of space, and then with the Eternal Being.
So the life of conscious being is a life of solidarity
and liberty. Free in the limit assigned to it by the
eternal laws, it becomes the architect of its own des-
tiny. Its advancement is its work. No fatality op-
presses it, knowing that only the consequences of its
own acts fall upon it. It can grow and develop but

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 97

in the collective life, with the assistance of, and to the
profit of all. The more it mounts, the more it feels
and suffers with all and for all.

In its need of its own upliftment it attracts to it all
the human beings who people the world where it has
lived, to help them attain the spiritual state. It seeks
to do for them what the older brothers, the great spir-
its, have done for it in guiding its progress. The law
of justice desires all souls to be emancipated in their
turn and freed from that lower life. Each soul which
arrives at full consciousness should work to prepare
for its brothers a social condition which eliminates all
save the inevitable evils. These necessary evils, op-
erating as a law of general education, will never be
completely suppressed in our world ; they represent one
of the conditions of terrestrial life. Matter is a use-
ful obstacle; it provokes the effort of developing the
will — it contributes to the ascension of beings by im-
posing on them the necessity to work. How learn joy
without pain? Without the shadow, how appreciate
the light ? How, without privation, enjoy acquisition ?
Behold why difficulties in all forms are found in us
and around us. It is a grand spectacle, this strife of
the spirit against matter, this strife for the conquest of
the globe, this strife against the elements, the floods,
life and death. Everywhere matter opposes itself to
the manifestation of thought. In the domain of art,
it is the indiscernible, the infinitely tiny particle which
hides itself from observation. In the social order,
there are obstacles without number, epidemics, catas-
trophes, conflagrations; and facing the powers which.

98 LIFE AND DESTINY

menace him on all sides, man stands a fragile being,
with no resource but his will.

By the aid of this unique resource, through all time
the fierce strife is pursued without truce, without
mercy; when one day, by human will, the formidable
power is vanquished. Man has willed, and matter is
.subdued. At his gesture, the enemy elements, water
and fire, are united and toil for him. It is the law of
•efifort — the law supreme by which spirit asserts itself
and triumphs and grows. It is the magnificent epoch
of history, this exterior strife which fills the world.
The interior strife is not less moving. With each re-
birth, the spirit must fashion a new envelope which
will serve its dwelling and express the conceptions of
its genius. Often the instrument resists, and the
thought falls back on itself, powerless to lift the bur-
den which smothers it. But accumulated efforts of
thought and desire through centuries will develop the
soul's high faculties.

There is in each of us a silent aspiration, an inti-
mate mysterious energy which carries us toward the
summits and pushes us toward the beautiful and the
good. It is the law of progress, of eternal evolution,
which guides humanity across the ages and spurs each
one of us on. For humanity in all ages is composed
of the same souls. They come from century to cen-
tury, to follow in new bodies their work of self-per-
fection, until they are ripened for better worlds. The
history of one soul does not greatly differ from that
of all humanity; the ladder only differs, the ladder of
relative proportions. Spirit moulds matter; it com-
municates its life and beauty. So evolution is par

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 9^

excellence the aesthetic law. The forms we have ac-
quired are the point of departure for more beautiful
forms. Yesterday prepares to-morrow. The past
gives birth to the future. The human work reiiects
the work divine which will blossom in more beautiful
and perfect form.

The law of progress does not apply only to man;
in every domain of nature, evolution has been recog-
nised by the thinkers'of all time. From the green cell,
the vague embryo floating upon the waters, through
innumerable changes, the chain of the species has un-
folded its lengths down to us. (The mono-cellular
beings are found to-day by millions in each human or-
ganism. It is not through one cell alone that the chain
of species has come, but rather by multitudes of these
cells grouped to form more perfect beings, and round
upon round converging toward unity. )

Upon this chain every link represents a form of ex-
istence which leads to a superior form, to an organism
better adapted to the growing needs and manifestations
of life. But on the ladder of evolution thought, con-
science, and liberty appear only after many degrees;
in the plant intelligence sleeps ; in the animal it dreams ;
in man alone it wakens, recognises itself, and becomes
conscious. From this hour progress fatal in some
ways in the inferior forms of nature can only be real-
ised but with the accord of human will with eternal
laws.

It is by this accord and this union of the human and
divine will that are builded the works which prepare
for the reign of God — that is to say, the reign of jus-

100 LIFE AND DESTINY

tice, wisdom, and g(X)dness which every reasoning and
conscientious being feels intuitively must come.

So the study of the laws of evolution, instead of
weakening the spirituality of man, gives it instead new
sanction ; it shows us how our bodies can obtain an
inferior form by the law of moral faculties of a dif-
ferent origin, and this origin we find in the invisible
universe, the sublime world of the spirit. The theory
of evolution ought to be completed by that of per-
cussion ; that is to say, by the action of invisible powers
who direct this slow and prodigious ascensional
march of life on our globe. The occult world inter-
venes at certain epochs in the physical development of
humanity, as it intervenes in the moral and intellectual
domain by psychic revelations.

When a race, having attained its apogee, is fol-
lowed by a new race, it is rational to believe that a
family of superior souls is incarnated among the van-
ishing race to help it mount to a higher estate and to
fashion a new type. It is the eternal hymen of heaven
and earth, the intimate penetration of matter and
spirit, the increasing overflow of the psychic life into
forms in the course of evolution.

The appearance of man on the ladder of beings ex-
plains itself as follows : man is the synthesis of all liv-
ing forms which have preceded him — the last link in
the long chain of inferior lines, which unroll through
time. But this is only the exterior aspect of the
problem of origins; the interior aspect is more ample
and imposing. Every birth is explained by the descent
into flesh of a soul from space, and the first appear-
ance of man on our planet must be attributed to the

THE PROBLEM OF-Xl-T'E' 101

intervention of invisible powers vi^hich generated life.
The psychic essence came to communicate the breath
of a new life to animal forms. It created for the mani-
festation of intelligence an organ unknown till then
— speech. Powerful element of all social life, the
word appeared, and at the same time, by its etheric
envelope, the incarnated soul retained the possibility
of entering into contact with the centre from which
it came.

The evolution of worlds and souls is regulated by
the divine will which penetrates and directs all na-
ture. But physical evolution is only a preparation for
psychic evolution, and the ascension of souls is pur-
sued by the chain binding the material worlds to the
Beyond.

That which dominates the lower regions of hfe is
the incessant combat, the perpetual warfare without
check waged by every being to conquer and obtain a
place for himself, almost always to the detriment of
others. This furious strife decimates and destroys the
inferior beings in its whirlpool. Our globe is an
arena of incessant battles; nature renews without
pause its army of combatants. In its prodigious fe-
cundity it creates new beings when again death presses
into their ranks. This strife, frightful at first sight,
is yet necessary to the development of the principles
of life. It will last until the higher day when a ray of
higher intelligence comes to illuminate the sleeping
consciousness. By this struggle the will is developed.
From pain is born understanding; material evolution
and the destruction of organisms is but a transitory
phase. It represents the primary epoch of life. The

102 LIFE AND DESTINY

imperishable realities are in the spirit; they only sur-
vive the conflict. All these ephemeral envelopes are
but the vestments given the permanent etheric form
for temporary use. It clothes itself in these costumes
to play the numerous acts of the drama of evolution
upon the grand stage of the universe. Emerging de-
gree by degree from the abyss of life to become spirit,
to gain its future, hour after hour to release itself a
little more day by day from the grasp of the passions,
to free itself from suggestions of egotism and idleness
and discouragement, and to aid all the human race
toward a more elevated estate — ^behold the role as-
signed to each soul, and, in order to fill this role, it has
all the succession of innumerable existences which are
evolved upon the magnificent ladder of the worlds.

All which comes from matter is unstable — all van-
ishes, all disintegrates. The mountains sink little by
little under the action of the elements; the great cities
fall in ruins ; the stars fade out and die ; the soul alone
soars imperishable through eternal duration. We are
limited and restrained by terrestrial bonds, but when
thought detaches itself from changing forms and em-
braces the extent of time, it sees the past and the fu-
ture unite and live in the present. The chant of glory,
the hymn of infinite life, fills all space. It rises from
the bosom of ruins and tombs, and upon the debris
of civilisations grow new flowers, and union is made
between the invisible and visible, between the human-
ity of earth and that which peoples space. Their
voices call and respond, and these murmurs, still vague
and confused for many, become for us the message.

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 103

the vibrant word which confirms the communion of
universal love.

Such is the complex character of the human being
— spirit, force, and matter, in which are contained all
the powers of the universe. All that is in us is in the
universe; all that is in the universe is in us. By his
etheric and his material bodies, man finds himself
united to all the worlds invisible and divine. We are
made of light and shadow. What is in us is in every
other being. Each soul is a projection from the eter-
nal centre. It is that which consecrates and assures
the fraternity of man. We have in us the instincts
of the beast, and we have, too, the chrysalis of the
angel — of the radiant and pure being that we can be-
come by moral aspirations of the heart and the con-
stant sacrifice of self. We touch depths of abysses
with our feet, and with our brows the high altitudes of
Heaven, the glorious empire of the spirit. When we
listen to what is passing in the depths of our being,
we hear the rumbling of hidden and tumultuous
waters, the ebb and flow of the stormy sea of person-
ality, with its waves of anger, egotism, and pride.

These are the voices of matter, the appeals of the
lower regions, which still influence our actions. But
this influence we can dominate by will; upon these
voices we can impose silence; and when the murmur
of the passions is quieted, then the powerful voice of
the Infinite Spirit is heard, the canticle of Life Eter-
nal, whose harmony fills immensity. The more the
mind is elevated and purified, the more accessible it
becomes to the vibrations and the voices from on high.
The divine mind which animates the universe acts

104 LIFE AND DESTINY

upon all minds. It seeks to penetrate, clarify, and
fertilise them. Too gross still, the greater number re-
main closed and dark. They cannot feel the influence
nor hear the appeal. Often the divine mind sur-
rounds them, envelops them, seeks to reach the depths
of their natures and to answer them spiritually. But
the human soul is free, and may resist this effort;
others feel its influence only in solemn moments of
their lives, during great trials, or in desolate hours
when they need help from on high. To live the higher
life, where these influences reach us, we must have
known sorrow, practised abnegation, renounced ma-
terial joys, and lighted in ourselves this flame, this in-
terior illumination which is never extinguished, and
of which the bright gleams in this world are but the
reflections from Beyond.

Multiple and sorrowful planetary existences pre-
pare us for this life. It is thus the mystery of the
"psyche" is unveiled to the human soul, shut for a
time in flesh, and mounting toward its origin through
millions of deaths and births. The task is rude, the
steps steep to climb, the frightful spiral seems to wind
without apparent end; but our forces are unlimited,
for we can renew them by the will and by universal
communion. And we are not alone upon this great
journey ! Not only do we sooner or later rejoin our
companions and our friends of past lives, those who
shared our joys and troubles, but other great celestial
spirits come to our side in diflficult places. Those who
have gone ahead of us on the sacred way, not losing
sight of our needs, reach out their helping hands to
aid us over the tormenting spots in our route. Slowly,

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 106

sadly we ripen for higher and higher tasks. We par-
ticipate more completely in the execution of a plan
whose majesty moves to admiration those who read
between the imposing lines. In the measure that as-
cension is accentuated, greater revelations are made
to us — new forms of activity given to us, new psychic
senses are born in us, and new sublimities appear to
us. The etheric universe opens more widely to our
flights and becomes a source of inexhaustible joy.

Then comes the hour when after its peregrinations
through those worlds, the soul in the regions of higher
life contemplates its ensemble of existences, its long
cortege of sufferings subdued. At last it compre-
hends! Those sufferings were the price of its hap-
piness ; those trials gave birth to its joys, and then its
role changes. The protege becomes the protector. It
envelops with its influence those who are still striving
with earth difficulties; it whispers to them and coun-
sels them by its own experience, and sustains them
through the rude paths they are treading. Does the
soul ever arrive at the end of its voyage? As it ad-
vances along the prepared way it sees ever opening
before it new fields of study and discovery. Like the
currents of a stream, the waves of a supreme knowl-
edge descend toward it in a tide of increasing power.
It penetrates the holy harmony of things, and under-
stands that no discordance, no contradiction exists in
the universe, that everywhere reigns order, wisdom,
and foresight, and its confidence, its enthusiasm aug-
ments. With a greater love for the Supreme Power,
it enjoys with intensity the felicity of well-being.

From that moment the soul is intimately associated

106 LIFE AND DESTINY

with divine work; it is ripe to fulfil the missions de-
volving on higher souls in this hierarchy of spirits,
who under various titles govern and animate the cos-
mos. For these souls are the agents of God in the
eternal work of creation. They are the marvellous
books upon which God has written His most beauti-
ful mysteries. They are like streams which bring to
the earth from space forces and radiations from the
Infinite Soul. God knows all these souls which He
has formed with His thought and His love. He
knows what great part each one will take for the real-
isation of His wishes. At first, He lets them slowly
pursue the sinuous path, mount the sombre defiles of
terrestrial lives, accumulate little by little in them-
selves the treasures of virtue and patience, and learn
what is to be acquired in the school of suffering.
When one da}'-, softened under the rains of adversity,
ripened by the rays of the divine sun, they come out of
the shadow of time, of obscurity, of lives innumerable,
and their faculties blossom in glorious sheaves, and
their works reveal the reflection of divine genius.

CHAPTER IX

DEATH

Death is but a change of state; the destruction of a
fragile form which no longer furnishes life with the
necessary conditions for its evolution. On the other
side of the tomb, another phase of existence opens.
'The spirit in form etheric, imponderable, prepares for
new incarnations. It finds in its mental state the
fruits of the finished existence. Everywhere is life;
all nature shows to us the perpetual renewing of
everything. Nowhere is death, as we understand the
word — nowhere is annihilation. The principle of life
never dies. The universe overflows with life physical
and psychic.^ Everywhere is the immense fortifica-
tion of beings, the elaboration of souls preparing for
their magnificent ascension through slow and obscure
paths of matter.

The life of man is like the sun of summer in polar
regions; it descends slowly. It drops, it weakens,
and seems to disappear for an instant on the hori-
zon. In appearance that is the end, but quickly it rises
to follow again its immense orbit in the skies.

Death is only a moment's eclipse in the revolution

of our existence. But this instant suffices to reveal

to us the grave and profound meaning of life. Death

also has its nobility, its grandeur. We should not

107

108 LIFE AND DESTINY

fear it, but rather seek to embellish it, and to prepare
for it by research and the conquest of moral beauty
— the beauty of the spirit, which moulds the body,
and ornaments it with an august reflection at the hour
of the supreme separation. The fashion in which we
know how to die is in itself an indication of what
will be our life in space. Something like a pure, cold
light surrounds some death-beds. Faces heretofore
insignificant seem aureoled with rays from Beyond.
An imposing silence surrounds those who have left
earth. The living witnesses of death feel great and
austere impressions, disengage themselves from the
banality of their habitual thoughts. Hate and all evil
passions cannot exist before the spectacle of death.
Before the body of an enemy animosity is vanquished,
and all desire for vengeance dies. Before a casket,
forgiveness seems easy and duty imperative.

All death is a rebirth; it is the manifestation of a
life which binds us to the Invisible. After a time of
trouble we find ourselves on the other side of the tomb,
in the fullness of our faculties and consciousness, near
to the beloved beings who shared our earthly existence.

The tomb held only vain dust ; we must elevate our
thoughts if we would find the trace of souls who were
dear to us. Do not appeal to the stones of cemeteries
for the secrets of life. Know that the bones and dust
which lie there are nothing; the souls which animated
them are gone. They will come again in more re-
fined and subtle forms. From the bosom of the In-
visible, where your prayers reach and move them, they
follow you with their loving eyes; they smile, and
they respond to your thoughts. Spiritual revelation

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 109

will teach you how to communicate with them, and to
unite yourself with them in the same love and in an
ineffable hope. They are often at your side — these
beloved beings you seek in the cemetery. They come
and watch over you — they who were the companions
of your joys and sorrows. Around you float a throng
of beings who disappeared in death, a throng which
calls to you, and tries to show the path for you to pur-
sue.

O death! O serene majesty! thou whom we regard
with terror, thou art for the thinker but an instant
of repose — the transition between two acts of des-
tiny, one ending — one beginning. When my poor
soul — wandering for centuries through many worlds
after strife, vicissitudes, and disappointments incon-
ceivable, after extinguished illusions and delayed hope
— at last goes to repose again in thy breast, with joy
it will salute the dawn of etheric life. With intoxica-
tion it will lift itself from earth's dust, and through
fathomless spaces seek those cherished ones who await
it yonder.

To the greater part of men, death remains the pro-
found mystery, the sombre problem they dare not look
in the face. For us, it is the blessed hour for releas-
ing the imprisoned soul and giving it free passage to
the eternal country. That country is the radiant im-
mensity studded with suns and spheres. Compared
with them, how poor and mean appears our little
earth ! The Infinite envelops us on all sides ; there is
no end to space or time for the soul freed from body
limitations.

As each existence has its period, and then vanishes

110 LIFE AND DESTINY

to give place to another life, so each sphere in the
universe must die to give place to other more perfect
worlds. A day will come when all human life will
be extinguished on the cold e.arth. The planet will
roll on in melancholy silence; imposing ruins will
stand where once stood Rome — Paris — Constantinople
— cadavers of great capitols, the last vestiges of an
extinguished race, gigantic books of stone with no eye
of flesh to read them. But humanity will only have
disappeared from earth in order to pursue upon spheres
better endowed other paths of ascension. The waves
of progress will have pushed all the terrestrial souls
toward planets better suited for life. It is probable
that prodigious civilisations will flourish then on
Saturn and Jupiter, and humanity reborn will there
flower in a glory incomparable.

A new field of action will be given humanity to love
and work toward perfection. In the midst of their
work, sad souvenirs of earth will perhaps come to
haunt their spirits ; but these souvenirs, with memories
of troubles overcome and sorrows endured, will be
only a stimulant to greater heights. The voice of wis-
dom will say to them : "What matters the shadow of
the past! Nothing perishes; all life reforms itself,
and mounts from sphere to sphere — from sun to sun,
up to God. Spirit is imperishable! Remember this
— there is no death." The teachings of the churches
and their ceremonials have contributed not a little to
the representation of death under lugubrious forms,
and to awakening a sentiment of terror in the minds
of mortals.

Materialistic doctrines have not reacted against this

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE IH

impression. At the hour of twihght, when night de-
scends upon the earth, a certain sadness touches us.
We drive it away, saying, "After darkness the hght
returns; the night is but the herald of dawn." When
the summer is followed by sad winter, we console our-
selves with the thought of future springs. Why, then,
this fear of death — this poignant anxiety regarding
the act which is not the end of life?

The spiritualist knows death ends nothing. It is
for him the entrance into a mode of life full of rich
impressions and sensations. Not only are we still in
possession of spiritual joys, but they are augmented
by new resources and more varied powers of enjoy-
ment. Death does not even deprive us of the things
of earth; we continue to see those we loved and left
behind us. From the bosom of space we follow the
progress of this planet; we see the changes which take
place, and we assist in new discoveries, in the devel-
opment of nations politically, socially, and religiously :
and until the hour of our return to flesh we participate,
etherically, to the measure of our power and our ad-
vancement, in the labours of those who toil for hu-
manity.

Instead of avoiding the idea of death, we should
look it in the face, and know what it is. Let us dis-
engage it from the shadows and chimeras with which
it has been enveloped, and ask of it in what manner
we should prepare ourselves for this necessary and
natural incident in the course of life. Necessary, we
said. In truth, what would happen if death were sup-
pressed? This globe would become too small to con-
tain the throngs of humanity. Age and decrepitude

112 LIFE AND DESTINY

would lend tlieir aid to make life insupportable. A
day would come, when, having exhausted all the
means of study — of travel and of useful co-opera-
tion, existence would assume for us a character of
overwhelming monotony.

Our progress demands that one day or another we
should be relieved from this earthly envelope which,
after having rendered its service, becomes unsuitable
for other plans of destiny. How can those who be-
lieve in the existence of a Supreme Po.wer think of
death as an evil?

The universe cannot fail. Its aim is beauty, its
means, justice and love. Let us fortify ourselves with
the thought of unlimited futures; confidence in the
survival of life will stimulate our efforts and render
them fertile. No work done with patience and a high
motive can fail of success on some to-morrow. Every
time death knocks at our door in its splendid austerity
it is an invitation to us to live better, to act better, and
to increase the worth of our lives by ceaseless ef-
forts.

Often the imagination of man peoples the Beyond
with frightful creations. Certain churches teach that
the conditions of our future life are determined ir-
revocably at death, and this affirmation troubles the
existence of many believers. The revelation of spir-
its puts an end to all these apprehensions, bringing
from beyond the tomb precise information. It dissi-
pates the cruel incertitude, the haunting fear of the
unknown. Death, it tells us, changes nothing in our
spiritual nature or our character — that which con-

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 113

stitutes the veritable ME. It simply sets us free in
the measure of our advancement. On that side as on
this, we have the possibility of choosing good or evil,
and the faculty to advance, progress, and reform.
Everywhere reign the same laws, the same harmo-
nies, the same divine powers. Nothing is irrevocable;
the love which calls us to this world attracts us later
to the other; and in all places friends and protectors
attend us. While here we weep over the departure
of those who are lost to us in seeming nothingness,
above us beings glorified welcome their arrival in the
light in the same manner that we welcome the arrival
of an infant whose soul comes to blossom newly on
earth. Our dead are the living in Heaven. Many
people fear the physical phases of death, but the spirits
tell us that the moment of death is almost always pain-
less. Death is but falling asleep. The knowledge
which we have been able to acquire of the conditions
of the future life exercises a great influence on our
last moments. It gives us more assurance, and en-
ables the soul to quickly disengage itself.

To prepare oneself usefully for the life Beyond,
it is not only necessary to be convinced of its reality,
but to comprehend its laws, and by their aid to see the
advantages and the consequences of efforts toward
moral ideals. Our psychical studies and relations es-
tablished during life with the invisible worlds, and
our aspirations toward a more elevated mode of ex-
istence, help to develop latent faculties; and when the
definite hour comes, the final detachment from the
body will be easily accomplished. The spirit will
quickly recognise its position; all that it sees will be

114 LIFE AND DESTINY

familiar, and it will adapt itself without effort or pain
to its new environment.
/" Often at the approach of the last hour the dying
I enter into possession of their psychic powers and per-
\ ceive the beings and the things of the invisible world.
There is an immense library of authentic facts open
to all who desire proofs of such occurrences. In the
annals of Scientific Psycliology of March, 1906, the
last hours of the Rev. Dwight L. Moody, the Evan-
gelist, are described by his son (page 485). The dy-
ing man said, "The earth is disappearing, the heavens
open before me ; do not call me back. If this is death,
it is beautiful. Dwight! Irene! I see the children !"
A few moments later he lost consciousness. In the
same periodical, page 50, Alfred Smedley gives the
story of the last moments of his wife, who cried out
joyfully, "Why, here are my sister, my mother, and
my father and my brother! and they are bringing
Betsey Heap. Oh, they have come to take me away."
Betsey Heap was a faithful servant of the family,
greatly devoted to them. A few moments afterward,
Mrs. Smedley died. These are but two of number-
less cases of a similar nature.' Mr. Stainton Moses,
pastor of an English church, and a celebrated psychic,
wrote of his study of the transition of a soul in the
pages of Light. For twelve days and nights he was
at the bedside of a dying friend, and was able to see
the changes in the colour of the aura, and, to use his
own words, "At the supreme moment, I saw the forms
of spirit guardians appear and approach the dying
man, and with no effort separate the soul from the
body."

i

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 115

The best means of securing a sweet and peaceful
death, is to live worthily, simply, soberly, and to
vitalise existence with high thoughts and noble actions.
There are good and bad conditions beyond the tomb,
as here. What our condition will be there depends
wholly upon the manner in which we have developed
our tendencies, opportunities, and desires. It is in
the present that we must prepare, act, and reform, and
not at the moment when our earth end approaches. It
is puerile to believe our future education depends upon
certain formalities well performed at the hour of de-
parture. It is our entire life here which responds to
the Beyond. One is closely united to the other; they
form a continuity of cause and effect which death does
not interrupt. It is well to dissipate the chimeras by
which certain brains are haunted, of regions reserved
for souls after death, where hideous creatures torment
them.

He who watched over our birth, and placed us in
this world in loving arms outstretched to receive us,
will reserve affection for us also at the hour of our
arrival in the Beyond. Rid yourself of visions infer-
nal and of vain terrors. ^ The future, like the present,
is activity. ^Work! it is the conquest of new regions.
Have confidence in the goodness of God, in His love
for His creatures, and go forward with a firm heart
toward the goal He has fixed for each life. Your
conscience will be your judge and your executioner
beyond the tomb. Released from the fetters of earth,
it acquires an acumen difficult for us to comprehend;
too often drowsy during life, it awakens at death and
lifts its voice. It evokes the memories of the past,

116 LIFE AND DESTINY

and stripped of all illusions, they appear in full light,
and every least fault becomes a cause of regret. Of
this Myers has said, ("There is no need of purification
by fire! the knowledge of himself is complete punish-
ment and the complete reward of man." N,

Harmony is everywhere; in the solemn march of
worlds, as in that of human destinies, each one is
classed according to his aptitude in the universal or-
der. To great souls are given high tasks and crea-
tions of genius — to the weaker, mediocre works and
mission inferior. With every effort of our lives we
go toward the role which is ours by right. Make
yourselves, then, great and powerful souls, rich with
virtue and science, capable of noble works, and cre-
ate for yourselves a high place in the eternal order.
By culture, by the conquest of energy, dignity, and
goodness, rise to the summit of the great spirits who
labour for the cause of the humanities, and later you
shall taste with them the joys reserved for the truly
meritorious. Then death, in place of being a trial,
will become in your eyes a benefit, and you can repeat
the celebrated words of Socrates, *Tf this is death, let
me die again and again."

CHAPTER X

LIFE IN THE BEYOND

We have said that the human being pertains to two
worlds. By his physical body, he is tied to the vis-
ible world ; by his etheric body, to the invisible. Sleep
is the temporary separation of the two bodies; Death,
the separation definite. In both cases the soul de-
taches itself from the physical body, and with it life
concentrates itself in the etheric body. Life beyond
the tomb is but the liberation and the persistence of
the invisible part of our beings.

This mystery was understood in ancient eras; but
for a long period of time, men have possessed only
hypothetical and vague notions regarding the future
hfe. Religions and philosophies transmit to us only
uncertain ideas on these problems; ideas absolutely
unprovable, and in most points in disaccord with mod-
ern ideas of evolution. [Science, meanwhile, has not
until recently studied and known man, save on his
earthly surface, his body. But that is to the entire
being only what the bark is to the tree. The etheric
man, of whom our physical brain has little conscious-
ness, has been wholly ignored until of late; and that
is why science has been powerless to solve the prob-
lem of survival after death, since it is the etheric man
only who survives. Science has comprehended noth-
117

118 LIFE AND DESTINY

ing of the manifestations which are produced in sleep
and in trance, when the freed soul soars into the higher
life. But it is solely by observation of these facts
that we can acquire in this life a positive knowledge of
the nature of the ME, and its conditions of life beyond
the tomb. Thus experimentation alone can solve the
question. It is necessary to study in the actual man
now what will give us light on the man to be. Mod-
ern philosophy, traditional religion, and physical sci-
ence have succeeded only by their insufficiency in driv-
ing human thought toward materialism, and material-
ism leads to anarchy.

It is only since the arrival of psychical research and
experimentation that the problem of "survivance" has
entered the domain of vigorous scientific observation.
The invisible world has been studied by the aid of
processes and methods conforming to those which
contemporaneous science adopts in other domains of
research. And already we can prove this. In place
of diving into a void to establish a solution of con-
tinuity between the two modes of life, terrestrial and
celestial, visible and invisible, as do the different re-
ligious doctrines, these spiritual studies have shown us
in the life Beyond the natural prolongation and the
continuity of what we possess here. Persistence of
consciousness, with all its attributes of memory, in-
telligence, and effective faculties, has been established
by the innumerable proofs of personal identity gath-
ered in the course of experiences and researches di-
rected by psychic societies all over the world. The
spirits of the dead have manifested themselves by the
thousand, not only with all their traits of character

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 119

and accumulation of memories which constituted their
moral personalities, but they have revealed their
physical features through the forms of the etheric
body which exists after death.

That etheric body is the mould of the physical;
that is why the human faces and forms can be shown
in materialisations. Information of the conditions of
life Beyond has been given by spirits themselves,
through the aid of communications at their disposal.
There are entire volumes of their communications re-
ceived under test conditions, which serve as a founda-
tion for a precise conception of the laws governing
the future life.

Aside from these facts, the experiences of the dual
personality of living beings furnishes us with impor-
tant knowledge of the existence of the soul in the
realms of the invisible. Birth is a death to the soul.
It is prisoned with its etheric body in the tomb of
flesh. What we call death is simply the return of the
soul to liberty, enriched by the acquisitions it has been
able to make during the course of its earth life. We
have seen that the different states of sleep are just so
many moments of return to life in space. The more
profound is the sleep the more the soul is emancipated,
and the higher its flight. The deepest sleep borders on
the first state of life invisible. In reality, the words
sleep and death are inappropriate; when we sleep on
earth, we awake in the spiritual life. The same phe-
nomenon is produced by death: it differs only in
duration.

Carl du Prel cites the two following significant ex-
amples: — A somnambulist spoke with regret of not

120 LIFE AND DESTINY

recalling her experiences when awake. "But," she
said, "I will see them all after death," She considered
her state of trance identical with death. Prevorst, the
medium, asked two spirits she saw why they had come
to her. "But it is you who have come to us," they
said. Numerous facts of a similar nature demon-
strate that our world is not separated from the spirit-
ual ; they are within each other, closely interlaced. Men
and spirits mingle; invisible witnesses share our joys
and troubles. The situation of the soul after death is
the direct consequence of the tendencies, be they
toward things material or intellectual. If sensual
tendencies dominate, the soul is forced to mobilise on
inferior planes, planes dense and gross.

If the mind has been occupied with pure and beau-
tiful thoughts, it will elevate the soul to spheres en
rapport with the nature of these thoughts. Sweden-
borg said, "Heaven is where man has placed his
heart." However, the classification is not immediate,
nor the transition sudden. The human eye cannot
quickly pass from obscurity to a brilliant light, and it
is the same with the soul at death ; we enter a transi-
tory state, a prelude to the life spiritual. It is more or
less troubled, according to the density or lightness of
the etheric body. Delivered from the material burden
which oppressed it, the soul finds itself enveloped by
thoughts and images, sensations and emotions gener-
ated during the course of earthly livies. It must make
itself familiar with its new situation and become con-
scious of its state before it can be carried toward the
cosmic centre for which it is prepared, according to
its degree of light or density. At first, for the greater

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 121

number, all is a subject of astonishment in the Beyond.
Its laws of weight are less rigid, walls are no longer
obstacles, and the soul can traverse and lift itself in
the air. Yet there are certain fetters which it cannot
define holding it. All this fills it with fear and hesita-
tion at first, but the helping friends from above watch
over and guide its first flights. The advanced spirits
free themselves and pass rapidly out of all earthly
influences and attain consciousness of themselves.
The veil of materiality is torn by the force of their
thoughts, and immense perspectives open before them.
They understand their situation almost immediately,
and adapt themselves to it. The spiritual body, the
organism of the soul, floats for some time in the at-
mosphere. Then, according to its power and subtlety,
it responds to higher attractions, and is drawn to
groups of spirits of the same order as itself — spirits
who surround it with solicitude and who initiate it
into the new order of existence. Inferior spirits retain
for a long period their impressions of material life.
They try to live on the physical plane and pursue their
usual occupations.

To materialists, the phenomenon of death is incom-
prehensible. Through faulty conceptions they con-
found the etheric body with the physical. Illusions of
earth life remain with them. By their tastes and im-
agination they are riveted to earth. Then slowly, by
the aid of good spirits, their consciousness is awakened
to the comprehension of this new state of life. But
their density and planetary attractions, and the cur-
rents in space, render high flights impossible at first.
Those who have relied upon orthodox promises of

122 LIFE AND DESTINY

immediate beatitudes, often meet with great surprise,
and find a long apprenticeship necessary before they
are initiated into the real laws of space. Instead of
angels, they encounter the spirits of men who have
preceded them by death, and their disappointment is
great in encountering facts and conditions of existence
wholly at variance with the education they have re-
ceived. But if their lives have been good, their noble
acts will have more influence on their destiny than
mistaken ideas of faith, and they will be happy. Those
who have refused to admit the possibility of a future
life are plunged in a dream until their error dissipates
itself.

After death, impressions are as varied as the value
of souls. Those who, during earth life, have known
and served the truth, gather immediately the benefits
of their actions. The following communications were
received from the spirit of Charles Fritz, editor of
Life Beyond the Tomb, at Charleroi. All those who
knew this man recognised his language. He described
his experience at the hour of death thus : "I felt the
bonds of earth little by little loosen, and my soul
disengage itself. I saw bands of spirits about me, and
with them I rose from earth. Spiritual light, full of
force, seemed born in me, for this light comes not from
others, but from ourselves. The more you work for
truth, love, and charity, the greater will be this light.
My first steps were trembling, but I prayed to God
for His assistance and forgiveness. I saw my past life
written in the ether, and knew I had not been infalli-
ble; but I had worked and suffered for the spreading
of spiritual light while on earth, and this light I found

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 123

again here. I must still work to develop myself
further and to see my past incarnations. I already see
a part of this past, but not all. I possess enough light
to go ahead, and already I am given the work of assist-
ing unhappy and confused spirits."

The law of grouping spirits in space is the law of
affinities. The direction of their thoughts leads them
naturally to their proper centre, for thought is the
essence of the world spiritual, and the etheric body the
form, the vestment. Those who love and comprehend
one another, assemble. Herbert Spencer, in a moment
of intuition, said, "Life is but an adaptation of exte-
rior conditions."

The spirits of those whose inclinations were all
material remain bound to earth, and mingle with the
men who partake of their tastes and appetites. Those
whose ideals were high, are quickly borne toward su-
perior beings, and unite themselves with societies in
space, participating in their works and enjoying the
harmonies of the infinite.

Thought creates. Will constructs. The source of all
joys and sorrows is in the mind. That is why we will
find in the Beyond the creatures of our dreams and the
realisation of our hopes. But the memory of the un-
finished task, together with the heart's affections, lead
most spirits back to visit earth again. Each soul finds
the place where its desires lead, and united to the
beings it loves, lives with them in a world of dreams.
In the ecstasy of their thoughts and the ardour of their
faith, the adepts of every religion create images which
they believe to be Paradise. But little by little they
discover that these images are only creations of their

124 LIFE AND DESTINY

thoughts, like vast panoramas painted on canvas, or
immense frescoes. They learn to detach themselves
from these pictures, and to attain to the high realities.

In our present form, and with our narrow limit of
faculties, we cannot comprehend the ravishing joys
of the superior spirits. Beauty is everywhere, with
varying aspects, following the degree of evolution and
refinement of being. The advanced spirit possesses
sources of sensations and perceptions infinitely more
extended and intense than those of earthly man. In
the clairvoyants, knowledge of the future co-exists in
the indefinable synthesis which constitutes "the central
mystery of life," as Myers calls it. Speaking of those
faculties, he says: "The spirit, without being limited
by time or space, has a partial knowledge of both. It
can set forth and find a living person and follow him
at will. It is capable of seeing in the present, things
which appear to us as situated in the past, and others
which are situated in the future. The spirit is con-
scious of the thoughts and emotions of his friends who
surround him."

If such is the power of the entranced spirit still in
earth life, we can understand how much more com-
plete must be the life and power of the spirit when it
is fully detached from the body by death. We can
comprehend how the memories of its past must become
an intense source of joy and sorrow. Alone, in pres-
ence of its past, the soul sees all its acts and their con-
sequences reappear, and it becomes its own judge.

CHAPTER XI

THE HIGHER LIFE

Every spirit desirous of progress and working for
universal good receives from higher spirits a par-
ticular mission appropriate to its own degree of ad-
vancement.

Some have for their task the meeting of souls com-
ing from earth, and of guiding and aiding them to rise
out of the dense conditions surrounding them. Others
are given the work of consoling and instructing the
suffering backward souls. Spirits of chemists, physi-
cians, naturalists, astronomers, pursue their researches,
study the worlds, their surfaces, and their hidden
depths, in a manner and with purposes which it is
scarcely possible for the human imagination to con-
ceive; others apply themselves to the arts, and beauty
in all forms. Less advanced spirits assist them in their
varied tasks as auxiliaries. A great number of spirits
consecrate themselves to the inhabitants of earth and
oriier planets, stimulating them in their researches, re-
viving their faiHng courage, and guiding the hesitat-
ing ones in the way of duty. Those who possess the
secrets of curatives occupy themselves specially with
the sick. In Myers' Human Personality, he relates the
case of the wife of a great doctor of European re-
nown, who was completely cured by the spirit of a
125

126 LIFE AND DESTINY

great physician, after being given up by her husband.
Many similar cases are on record.

Most beautiful of all the missions is that of the
spirits of light. They descend from celestial spaces
to bring to humanity the treasures of their science,
wisdom and love. I Their task is a constant sacrifice,
for contact with the material world is painful to them;
but they face the suffering in order to assist their
protegees in their trials, and to pour into their hearts
great and generous intuitions. ) It is only just to
attribute to them those illuminating rays which radiate
the thoughts, and that moral force which sustains us
in the difficulties of hfe. If we knew what these noble
spirits suffered in coming to us, we would more fully
respond to their solicitations and we would more ener-.
getically detach ourselves from all that is evil, and
unite ourselves to them in divine communion.
■'N In hours of torment, it is toward those spirits,

toward my guides beloved, that my thoughts and ap-
peals soar ; it is they who have always come with moral
support and supreme consolation. I have painfully
climbed the paths of life. My childhood was hard.
Early in life I learned manual labour, and a heavy
burden was placed on my shoulders by family duties.
Later, in my career of propagandist, my feet were
wounded by the stones of the way I trod, and I was
bitten by the serpents of hate and envy. Now the
twilight has come! shadows mount and encircle me;
I feel my strength decline, and my physical organs
weaken. But never has the aid of my invisible friends
failed me! never have I invoked their help in vain.
From my earliest childhood their influence has en-

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 127

veloped me. Often! have felt their soft touches on
my brow, like the brushing of angel wings. It is to
their inspiration that I owe my best pages and my
most vibrant accents. They have been with me in my
joys and sorrows, and when the tempest howled, I
knew they were near me. \ Without them, without their
assistance, long ago I would have stopped in my jour-
ney and given up my work. But their hands reached
out to sustain me, directing me in the difficult path.^

'^ Often in the gathering of evening or the silence of
night their voices speak to me, and soothe and comfort
me. They sound in my solitude like vague melodies ;
again they are like soft breezes which pass, bearing
murmured counsels and admonitions upon my weak-
nesses of character, with wise instructions for their
remedy.

^ Then I forget my human miseries in thinking of
the day I shall see these invisible friends, and rejoin
them in the light, if God judges me worthy, with all
those I have loved, who from the bosom of the Beyond
have helped me walk life's terrestrial paths, y It is
to you, O spirit instructors, protecting entities, that
my grateful thoughts mount with their tribute of ad-
miration and love, "i

The soul comes from God, and returns to Him after
making the immense circle of its destiny. However
low it may descend, sooner or later, by divine attrac-
tion, it returns to the Infinite, What does it seek?
Always a more perfect knowledge of the universe, a
more complete assimilation of its attributes — beauty,,
truth, love — and at the same time a gradual liber«

128 LIFE AND DESTINY

ation from material servitude and a growing collabo-
ration with eternal works.
A Each spirit in space has its vocation, and pursues
it with facilities unknown on earth. Each one finds
its place in this superb field of action in this vast,
universal laboratory. Everywhere subjects for study
and travel, with means of education and participation
in divine work, offer themselves to the industrious
soul. Heaven is not the cold void of the place of
inactive contemplation believed in by some. It is a
living universe, animated, luminous, filled with intelli-
gent beings on the way to continual evolution. The
higher these spiritual beings ascend, the more accen-
tuated are their tasks, the more important become their
missions. In time they take rank among the mes-
senger souls who go and carry to the limits of time
and space the will and force of the Infinite One; for
the most inferior spirit, as for the most eminent, the
domain of life is without limit. Whatever the height
to which we attain, there is ever a superior plane to
, reach.

For every soul, however low in the scale, a great
future is prepared. Each generous thought, every
loving impulse, every effort toward a better life, is a
vibration and an appeal from the higher world which
will eventually receive all souls. Each burst of enthu-
siasm, each act of abnegation, helps us up the ladder of
our destiny. In the measure that a soul detaches itself
from inferior spheres, it perceives the high manifesta-
tions of intelligence, justice and goodness : and its life
becomes more beautiful and divine. The confused
murmurs, the discordant noises of the human centres,

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 129

grow fainter, and finally are silent. At the same time,
the harmonious echoes of celestial societies become
perceptible. It is the clear call of happy regions where
reign eternal light, serenity, and peace, and from
whence come all things fresh and pure from the hands
of God, The profound difference which exists be-
tween terrestrial life and life in space resides in the
sentiment of deliverance and of absolute liberty en-
joyed by purified spirits.] The material cords are
broken, and the pure soul takes its flight to high
regions. In a life exempt from physical necessities,
it feels its faculties grow, and acquires a penetration
into the veiled splendours of the infinite realms.

The language of the spiritual world is the language
of pictures and symbols rapid as thought. That is
why our invisible guides use symbols by preference in
warning dreams of approaching danger. Ether, supple
and luminous, takes with extreme facility the forms
which they will to produce.

Spirits communicate with one another by processes
which make the greatest human eloquence seem* but
dull babbling. The intelligent pupils perceive and
realise without effort the most marvellous conceptions
of art and genius. But these conceptions cannot be
literally transmitted to man. Even in the most perfect
mediumistic manifestations, the spirits have to submit
to the physical laws of our world, and are but vague
reflections or weak echoes of celestial spheres — ^broken
notes of the eternal symphony which they would have
reach even to us. All is grand in the spiritual life; the
etheric body becomes more and more transparent and

180 LIFE AND DESTINY

diaphanous, and leaves a free passage for the radia-
tions of the soul.

With a greater aptitude to enjoy and understand the
infinite splendours, and a more extended memory
of the past, an increasing familiarisation with things
and beings in superior planes, so the soul in its pro-
gression attains the supreme altitudes. Arrived at
these heights, the spirit has conquered all passion, all
evil tendencies; it is free for ever from the material
yoke and the law of re-birth. It is the definite en-
trance into divine kingdoms from which it will no
more descend in the circle of generations, save volun-
tarily, and to accomplish sacred missions.

Upon these summits existence is a perpetual fete
of the intellect and the heart. It is the communion of
love between those who have pursued the same cycle
of reincarnations and trials. Add to it the constant
vision of eternal beauty, a profound penetration of
the holy mysteries and the universal laws, and you
will have a feeble idea of the joys reserved for those
who, by their efforts and their merits, have arrived at
the higher heavens.

PART SECOND

SUCCESSIVE LIVES, AND THE LAWS
OF REINCARNATION

CHAPTER XII

THE LAW OF REINCARNATION

After a time of sojourning in space, the soul is reborn
into human conditions, and carries with it the heritage,
good or bad, of its past. It is born an infant, and
reappears on the earthly scene to play a new act of the
drama of life; to acquit old debts and to conquer new
powers which will facilitate its ascension and accen-
tuate its forward march.

The law of rebirth explains and completes the prin-
ciple of immortality. , The evolution of being indicates
a plan and aim ; this aim, which is perfection, could not
be realised in a single life, no matter how long and
fruitful it might be. We must see in the plurality of
lives the necessary conditions of education and prog-
ress. It is by its own efforts, sufferings, and strife
that it redeems itself degree by degree, first on the
earth, and then on innumerable dwelling-places in the
starry heavens. Reincarnation, affirmed by the voices
from Beyond, is the only rational form under which
we can admit the reparation of faults and the gradual
evolution of being. Without it, there is no conception
possible of a great Being governing the universe ; nor
can we feel a satisfying moral sanction of existing con-
ditions.

If we declare that man lives actually for the first
133

134 LIFE AND DESTINY

and last time here, that one existence only is experi-
enced by us, we must then recognise the incoherence
and the partiahty shown in the distribution of good
and evil conditions — of talents and faculties — of na-
tive qualities and original vices. Why to some lives
constant good fortune and happiness, to others misery
and inevitable misfortune? To one beauty, health,
strength, to another weakness, deformity, and sick-
ness? Why intellect, genius, and imbecility? Why
so many admirable qualities, side by side with vice?
Why the diverse races — some so near to animality,
others favoured with powers which assure their su-
premacy? Why the blind, the idiots, the deformed
who fill our hospitals? Heredity does not explain all
that, nor can they all be considered as the result of
natural causes. It is the same with those endowed
with favours. Often the worthy seem crushed under
trials while the wicked prosper. Why are these chil-
dren born to suffer from the cradle, and why do some
finish the earth life in youth, and others live a century ?
From whence come the infant prodigies, musicians,
poets, painters, showing extraordinary talents for the
arts and sciences, while others labour all their lives
and remain mediocre? And how explain the inborn
sentiments of dignity, or of evil, strangely exhibiting
themselves in contrast with their environment ?

If individual life commences on earth, if nothing
anterior existed for us, we must seek vainly to explain
these frightful anomalies, these painful contrasts, and
to conciliate them with the idea of a wise, just, all-
seeing Power. All the religions and the philosophies
have run against this problem; no one has solved it

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 135

From their point of view, destiny rests incomprehen-
sible and the plan of the universe is obscured, evolution
is arrested, and suffering is inexplicable. i^Man, forced
to believe in a blind force and fatality, and in the
absence of all justice, is pushed toward pessimism and
atheism. On the contrary, all is explained by the doc-
trine of successive lives; the law of justice reveals
itself in the smallest details of life. The inequalities
which shock us result from the different situations
occupied by souls in their infinite degrees of evolution.
The destiny of a being is but the development through
the ages of a long series of cause and effect engendered
by his acts. Nothing is lost ; the effects good and bad
accumulate and germinate in us up to favourable mo-
ments of their opening, sometimes after a long lapse
of time, and many existences ; but they never disappear
until reparation has been made by the soul. Each one
brings its seed of the past from beyond the tomb to
the new-born soul. That seed, according to its nature
for our happiness or misery, will spread its fruits upon
the new life as well as upon those to come, if the one
life does not suffice to exhaust the evil of past exist-
ences. At the same time, our daily acts, sources of
new effects, come to add their causes to the old, to
alleviate or aggravate them. They form a chain of
good or evil altogether which composes the woof of
our destiny.

Moral sanction, so insufficient when we study life
from the point of view of one existence, finds itself
absolute and perfect in the succession of lives. There
is a complete correlation between our acts and our
destiny; we find in the events of our lives the rebound

136 LIFE AND DESTINY

of our former acts. Our activities under all forms are
creative of good or bad elements, from far and near,
which fall on us in tempests or joyous rays. Man
constructs his own future. Until now, in his ignorance
and incertitude, he has constructed it while blindly
groping his way, submitting to his fate without the
power to explain it. Soon with better light, penetrated
by superior laws, he will comprehend the beauty of
life which resides in courageous effort, and he will
give to his work a nobler and higher impulsion.

The infinite variety of tastes, faculties, and charac-
ters is easily explained. All souls are not of the same
age ; all have not climbed the same paths in evolution.
Some have already approached the apogee of earthly
progress, after an immense career. Others have barely
begun their cycle of evolution. These are the young
souls, emanating recently from the eternal centre —
the centre inexhaustible, from which gushes without
cessation jets of intelligence, to descend upon the
world of matter and animate its rudimentary form
with life. Newly come to earth in human frames,
these souls take rank among the savage races who
occupy retarded continents — the disinherited regions
of the globe. When they at length penetrate our civil-
isations, they are easily recognised by their awkward-
ness and inability, and often by their sanguinary tastes
and their ferocity. But these souls will in their turn
climb the ladder of infinite gradations through the
means of numberless incarnations.

Another problem is the liberty of action of the
spirit. There are those who are permitted to dally

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 137

along the paths of ascension, to lose sight of the goal,
and consequently lose precious hours in the pursuit of
wealth or pleasure. Others are permitted to hasten
along arduous paths and to attain rapidly the sum-
mits of thought, if they prefer the riches of the spirit
to material seductions. Of this number are the sages,
the geniuses, and the saints of all times and all lands;
the noble martyrs of great causes, and those who con-
secrate their lives to accumulating, in the silence of
cloisters, libraries and laboratories, the treasures of
science and human wisdom. All the currents of the
past mingle in each life. They contribute their ele-
ments toward making a soul great or mean, brilliant
or obscure, powerful or weak. Among the majority
of our contemporaries those currents unite to make
indifferent souls, balancing constantly between good
and bad, between truth and error, passion and duty.

So in the chain of earth lives is pursued and com-
pleted the grand work of education, the slow develop-
ment of individuality and moral personality. This
is why the soul should incarnate successively in divers
places, and in all varieties of social conditions, experi-
encing the tests of poverty and riches in learning to
obey, and then to command. It must know the obscure
ways, the ways of labour and of privations, in order to
renounce material vanities, and to detach itself from
frivolity through discipline of the spirit. It must have
lives of study and missions of duty and charity which
will enrich the heart and illumine the mind. There
must come lives of sacrifice for family, country, and
humanity. Necessary, too, are the cruel tests of the
furnace, wherein pride and egotism dissolve, and the

138 LIFE AND DESTINY

desolate halting places where we pay ransom for the
past and make reparation for faults, until the law of
justice is accomplished.

The spirit is refined and purified by this suffering.
It comes back to expiate its sins in the place where
it was culpable. It happens sometimes that these trials
make a Calvary of our existence, but a Calvary on
whose summit we approach the heavens.

There is, then, no fatality. It is man who by his
own will forges his chains; it is he who weaves,
thread by thread, the fabric of his destiny. The law
of justice is but the law of harmony; it determines
the consequences of acts which in our freedom we
commit. It does not punish or recompense, but simply
presides over the order and equilibrium of the moral
as well as of the physical world.

Destiny has no other rule but that of good accom-
plished. Everywhere reigns the great and powerful
law, which compels each being in the Universe to
occupy the situation proportionate to his merits. Our
happiness, in spite of often deceitful appearances, is
always in direct rapport with our capacity. This law
finds its complete application in the reincarnation of
the soul ; it is that which fixes the conditions of each
rebirth, and traces the large lines of our destinies.
That is why the wicked often seem happy while the
just suffer; the hour of reparation has sounded for
one, it is near for the other. To associate our acts
with the divine plan, to act in concert with nature,
in the sense of harmony and good for all, is to prepare
for our own felicity. To act on the contrary sense,
to ferment discord, and to work for oneself to the

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 139

detriment of others, is to prepare sorrow for ourselves
in the future. It is to place ourselves under the empire
of influences which will long chain us to worlds in-
ferior. Learn, then, the effects of the law of respon-
sibility. The consequences of our acts fall on us
across time as a stone thrown into the air falls to
earth; and only by conforming our actions to this law
can we bring order, justice, and solidarity into the
world, and ameliorate the condition of humanity.

Certain schools of spiritualism combat the principle
of successive lives, and teach that the evolution of the
soul only continues after death. Others, while admit-
ting reincarnation, believe it takes place only on higher
spheres : the return to earth does not appear necessary
to them.

To those of these opinions we would say that rein-
carnation on earth has an aim — the perfecting of the
human being. But being given the infinite variety of
conditions in the earth existence, whatever its dura-
tion or its results, it is impossible to admit that all
men could attain the same degree of perfection in one
life. The obligation to return permits them to acquire
the qualities requisite to penetrate the more advanced
worlds. The present is only explained by the past;
it required a series of rebirths on earth to reach the
point to which man has actually arrived, and it cannot
be admitted that this point of evolution is a definite
one, for on our sphere all inhabitants are not in a
state to be admitted into a more perfect society imme-
diately after death : the imperfection of their natures,
on the contrary, indicates the need of new work and
new trials to perfect their education and permit them

140 LIFE AND DESTINY

to climb one higher degree on the ladder of life.
Everywhere nature proceeds with wisdom, method,
and leisure. Civilisation was not born until long after
periods of barbarism; evolution, physical and mental,
is regulated by the same moral laws. We could never
be satisfied with one existence, and why seek on other
spheres the elements of a new progress when we find
them right about us? Has not our planet offered a
vast field of development for the spirit from savagery
to refined civihsation?

Contrasts and opposites are found under all their
forms. The good and the bad, wisdom and ignorance
are so many examples of education and so many
causes of emulation. It is no more extraordinary to
be reborn than to be born! The soul returns to the
flesh to there submit to the laws of necessity. The
needs and the strivings of material life are stimulants
which oblige the soul to work, to augment its energy,
and ripen its character. Such results could not be
obtained in space by young spirits with untrained wills.
For their advancement there must be the whip of
necessity and numerous incarnations in which the soul
learns concentration, self-reliance, and the strength in-
dispensable to its immense journey in space.

The aim of reincarnation is then in a way the
revelation of the soul to itself, or rather its compre-
hension of the value of developing its forces by knowl-
edge, conscience, and will. The inferior new soul
can only become conscious of itself but by the condi-
tion of being separated from other souls in a material
body. It so constitutes a distinct being whose indi-
viduality afiirms itself, and its progression is accen-

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 141

tuated in the measure that it triumphs over difficulties
and obstacles which earth life multiplies in its path.

Planetary existences put us en rapport with an
order of- things which constitutes the initial plan, the
base of our infinite evolution. But this order of things
and the series of lives attached to it, numerous as they
might be, represents but one fraction of sidereal exist-
ence, an instant in the illimitable duration of our
destinies.

The passage of souls from earth to other worlds is
effected under the empire of certain laws. The
peopled globes vary in their nature and density. The
etheric envelopes of souls could not adapt themselves
to the new centres save under special conditions of
purity. It is impossible for inferior spirits in their
erratic life to penetrate high worlds and describe their
beauty to mediums. The same difficulty occurs, still
greater even, when it comes to reincarnation in other
worlds. The high spheres are inaccessible to the
majority of earth spirits, still gross, and not sufficiently
evolved to permit them to be dwellers in those far
worlds. They would find themselves like the blind
man in the light, or the deaf at a concert. The attrac-
tion which chains their etheric bodies to this planet no
less unites their thoughts to inferior things. We must
first learn to break the bonds which rivet us to earth
before we take our flight to more advanced worlds.
To tear earth souls from their centre before their
special term in this centre expired, to send them to
superior spheres before they realise the necessity of
progress, would lack logic and reason. Nature does
not so proceed; her work unfolds majestically and

142 LIFE AND DESTINY

harmoniously in all its phases. Beings directed by
its laws in their ascension, do not quit their field of
action until they have acquired the virtues and the
powers necessary to give access to higher domains of
universal life.

The law of the return of the soul to flesh is the law
of attraction and affinity. When the spirit reincar-
nates it is attracted to a centre conforming to its
tendencies, character, and degree of evolution. Souls
incarnate by groups; they constitute spiritual families
whose members are united by tender and powerful
ties contracted during existences pursued in common.
At times these spirits are separated from one another
temporarily, and choose new localities to acquire new
faculties. This explains the analogies and the differ-
ences which characterise members of one family, chil-
dren and parents. It has been said that reincarnation
ruins the idea of family, and confuses the situation
occupied by parent and child, husband and wife, etc.
It is quite the contrary. In the hypothesis of one life,
spirits disperse after a brief existence, and frequently
become strangers. According to orthodox creeds,
souls after death are placed in two diverse situations
conforming to their merits, and the "select" are sepa-
rated for ever from the "reprobates." As a result the
ties of family are broken at death never to be united.
While by rebirths, spirits unite anew, and pursue in
common their peregrinations through the worlds, and
their union becomes in this way more complete. Our
spontaneous tenderness for certain people here is
easily explained; we have already known them, and

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 14a

are but reconstructing old affections. How many
lovers, how many husbands and wives are united by
innumerable existences pursued together ! Their love
is indestructible — for love is the force of all forces,
the supreme tie which nothing can break. The condi-
tions of reincarnation are such that reciprocal situa^
tions are rarely changed. The advanced spirit in the
liberty it has gained chooses the place where it will
be reborn, while the inferior spirit is pushed by a mys-
terious force which it obeys instinctively. But all are
protected, counselled, and sustained in the passage
through space and earthly existence, more painful and
difficult than death.
r The union of the soul to the body is effected through
the means of the etheric form, of which we have
spoken ; by its subtle nature it serves as a tie between
spirit and matter. The soul is attached to the germ
by this plastic mediator which binds it more and more
through the phases of progressive gestation and forms
the physical body. ) Fibre by fibre, molecule by mole-
cule, from conception to birth, the fusion operates
slowly. Under the increasing flow of material ele-
ments and the force furnished by ancestors, the vibra-
tory movements of the etheric body of the infant are
reduced, while the soul faculties, the memory, and
consciousness of other lives is an-nihilated. All the
impressions of its celestial life and its long past are
plunged in depths of unconsciousness. They will
emerge again only at the hour of trance or of death,
when the spirit regains the plenitude of its vibratory
movements and elucidates the sleeping world of its
memories. The role of the etheric double is large : it

144 LIFE AND DESTINY

explains from birth to death all vital phenomena.
Possessing in itself the ineffaceable traces of all states
of being since its origin, it communicates the impres-
sion and the essential traits to the material germ. The
key to embryonic phenomena is there during the period
of gestation; the etheric body impregnates itself with
the vital fluid, and materialises sufficiently to become
the regulator of the energy and the support of the
elements furnished by the progenitors.

It is the invisible armature which sustains the human
frame ; thanks to it, individuality and memory are con-
served in spite of the vicissitudes of the changing and
mobile part of being. And it assures, too, the memory
of the present existence, a chain of souvenirs from the
cradle to the tomb, furnishing us with intimate certi-
tude of identity.

The incorporation of the soul is not spontaneous,
but is gradually developed, and becomes complete but
at birth. At this moment matter completely enfolds
the spirit, which will vivify it in return by acquired
faculties. Long will be the period of its development,
during which the soul will apply itself to fashion a
new envelope, and to make it an instrument capable
of manifesting interior powers. But in this work the
"soul will be assisted by a spirit ordained as its guide,
which watches over it and inspires and directs it dur-
ing its long earthly pilgrimage.

-.' Each night during sleep, and often in the day during
childhood, the soul disengages itself from the body and
returns to space to gain new force, and returns to its
sleeping body to take up its painful existence. Before
resuming contact with matter and commencing a new

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 145

career, the spirit, we have said, must choose the place
where it will be reborn on earth. But this choice is
limited, circumscribed, and determined by multiple
causes. The former lives, its moral debts, its affec-
tions, its merits and demerits, the role it is fitted to
play — all these elements intervene in the fixing of the
life in preparation. They help to decide the race, the
place, the family. The earthly souls we have loved
attract us; the ties of the past are renewed in other
alliances and friendships. The same places even exer-
cise upon us their mysterious attraction, and it is rare
when destiny does not lead us several times to the
country where we have lived, loved, and suffered.
Hate, too, is a force which causes us to approach our
foes of the past in order to efface old enmities ; so we
find upon our route the greater part of those who made
our joy or torment. It is the same in the adoption of
a social class, of conditions of education, and privileges
of fortune, health, misery, or poverty. All the causes
so varied, so complex, come to combine themselves, to
assure to the new incarnation the satisfaction, advan-
tages, or trials belonging to its degree of evolution,
merits, and the debts it has contracted. One can com-
prehend after all this how difficult is the choice. If we
do not possess the discernment to adopt with wisdom
and foresight the most efficacious means for our evolu-
tion and the paying of our past, intelligent directors
inspire us, or themselves make the choice to our profit.
At the same time, the soul is free to accept or delay
the hour of reparation.

At the moment of attaching itself to the human
germ, while the soul still possesses all its lucidity, its

146 LIFE AND DESTINY

guide spreads before it the panorama of the existence
which awaits it; it shows the obstacles and the diffi-
culties with which the path is strewn, and makes it
comprehend their utility in developing its virtues and
destroying its vices. If the trial seems too great, if it
does not feel sufficiently armed to confront it, the
soul can retreat before the experience and find a
transitory life which will enable it to gain new moral
force and will. In the hour of supreme resolution,
before descending into flesh, the spirit perceives the
general trend of the life it is about to begin. It sees
in large lines the culminative facts, always modifiable,
nevertheless, by its personal actions and the use of
its free will, for the soul is the mistress of its acts.
But as soon as the cords are knotted to the body, and
the incorporation takes place, all is effaced, all van-
ishes. Existence begins to unroll with all its conse-
quences, already foreseen, accepted, and willed, but
without one intuition of the future existing in the
normal consciousness of the being incarnated. For-
getfulness is necessary during material life. Antici-
pated knowledge of coming misfortune, the prevision
of catastrophes which await us, would paralyse our
efforts and suspend our onward march.

As to the choice of sex, it is again the soul which
decides it in advance. It can be changed from one
incarnation to another by a modifying act of the
creative will. Certain teachers declare that alternative
sex is necessary to the acquirement of special virtues.
For instance, will, firmness, and courage for men;
tenderness, patience, and purity for women. Never-
theless, we believe according to the teachings of our

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 147

guides that this change of sex is needless and danger-
ous, even while possible. The higher spirits, we are
told, disapprove of it. It is easy to recognise about us
the persons who have adopted a different sex in the
previous life, they are always in some manner abnor-
mal. The viragoes with masculine tastes who show
the attributes of the other sex in various ways, are
evidently reincarnated men. They have nothing
aesthetic or alluring about them. It is the same with
effeminate men, who have all the characteristics of
the daughters of Eve, and seem lost creatures on
earth.

When the spirit has taken habitation in sex, it is
bad for it to attempt a change; many souls, created
in couples, are destined to evolve together, united
always in their joys and their sorrows. They are twin
souls, and their number is greater than is generally
believed. They realise the most perfect form of life
and sentiment, and give to other souls an example of
faithful, unalterable, and profound love. What would
become of their love and attachment if the change of
sex were a necessary law? We believe rather that
noble characters and high virtues multiply in the two
sexes at one time in the general ascension. There is
but one point, and one alone, which could make the
change of sex seem an act of justice, that is where
unkind treatment or grave injustice has been inflicted
by one sex upon another, and retribution could only
come by suffering in the same manner in another life
and another sex. But the penalty of retaliation does
not reign in an absolute manner in the worlds of
souls, as we shall see further on. There exist a

148 LIFE AND DESTINY

thousand forms under which reparation can accom-
plish the end and efface the causes of evil.

The all-powerful chain of cause and effect unwinds
in a thousand diverse links. The objection may be
made that it would be unrighteous to constrain half
of the spirits to evolve in a weaker sex, often oppressed
and humiliated sacrifices of a barbarous social organi-
sation. We reply that this state of things is disappear-
ing day by day, to give place to a more equitable order.
It is by the moral uplifting and education of women
that humanity itself will be uplifted. As to the sor-
rows of the past, they are not lost; the spirit which has
suffered from social iniquities obtains by the law of
equilibrium compensating results of the trials endured.
Our guides tell us that feminine spirits mount with
rapid flights toward perfection. The feminine role is
immense in the life of people. Sister, wife, or mother,
she is the great consoler and the sweet counsellor. She
prepares man's future. The society which degrades
woman degrades itself. It is the respected, honoured,
enlightened woman who makes the family strong and
unites a grand moral society.

Formidable are the attractions for some of the souls
seeking rebirth : for example, the families of the alco-
holics, the debauched, and the demented. How can
we conciliate the idea of justice with beings in such
environment! We have seen that the law of affinity
brings similar beings together: an entire culpable
past leads a delayed soul toward a group which pre-
sents analogies with its mental and etheric state — a
state created by its thoughts and actions. There is no
place in these problems for despotism or chance. It

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 149

is the soul's own prolonged evil use of its liberty, the
constant pursuit of selfish and unworthy aims, which
leads it to progenitors like itself. They furnish the
materials in harmony with its etheric organism, im-
pregnate it with the same gross tendencies appropriate
to the manifestation of the same appetites and desires.
A new existence opens a new path toward vice and
crime. It is the descent toward the abyss.

Master of its own destiny, the soul must submit to
the state of things which it has willed and prepared.
Each time, after having made for its conscience a dark
cave, the soul, to repair the evil, should transform it
into a temple of light. For faults accumulated will
but increase the suffering later: a circle of iron will
bind the soul, and whirled on the wheel of causes and
effects created by itself, it will comprehend the neces-
sity to react against its tendencies, and to conquer its
evil passions.

As soon as the first emotion of repentance touches
the soul, it feels born in it new forces and impulsions
which carry it toward a purer centre. It attracts
forms and elements more appropriate to its work of
renovation. Step by step, progress is accomplished,
and into a repentant soul rays of unknown aspirations
penetrate — of desires for useful action — of awakening
devotion.

The law of attraction which pushed it toward the
underworld now returns, and becomes the instrument
of its regeneration. However, the upliftment will not
come without pain, the ascension will not be made
without difficulty. The faults and errors of the past
will send on their obstructions to future lives. The

160 LIFE AND DESTINY

effort must be the more energetic and prolonged, for
the responsibilities will become heavier and the resist-
ance more extended with each life. Along the rude
ascent the past dominates ; the present and its burdens
will be heavy on the shoulders of the traveller. But
from on high helping hands will be stretched forth to
aid him to cross the more difficult passages of his
journey; for there is indeed joy in Heaven over the
sinner who repents. Our future is in our hands, and
our facilities for good increase in the same ratio with
our efforts to realise it. Every noble and pure life,
every superior mission is the result of an immense
past of strife and self -conquest — the crown of long,
patient labours, the accumulation of fruits of science
and charity, gathered one by one through the ages.
The fields of intelligence, painfully cultivated, gave
at first but meagre harvests : then, little by little, came
the more abundant and rich reapings. With each
return to space is established the balance of losses and
benefits. Progress is measured and established: the
soul examines and judges itself. It scrutinises
minutely its recent history, written by itself; it passes
in review the fruits of wisdom and experience that
its last life has procured to more profoundly assimilate
the substance. The life in space for the evolved soul
is the period of examination and interrogation of the
conscience — of a rigorous inventory of what is within
itself of ugliness or beauty. The life in space is the
life of equilibrium, where the forces are reconstructed,
the energies fortified, and the enthusiasm is animated
for future tasks. It is repose after effort, calm after

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 161

torment, peaceful and serene concentration after active
expansion and ardent conflict.

According to some theosophists the return of the
soul to flesh is effected usually each fifteen hundred
years. But our own testimony, gained from great
spirits, does not confirm this. Interrogated in great
number, and from various centres, they reply that
reincarnation is much more rapid than that. The
souls eager for progress dwell a brief time in space;
they demand a return to this world to acquire new
merits. We possess information regarding past lives
of certain persons, gathered from the lips of mediums
who knew nothing of these people, yet which was in
perfect accordance with facts and intuitions of the
interested parties. These statements indicated that
ten, twenty, thirty years only separated the terrestrial
lives of some individuals, but there was no precise
rule. The incarnations were separated widely or fol-
lowed closely, according to the state of the souls, their
desire for work and advancement, and the favourable
occasions offered them. In the case of premature death
reincarnation w^as often immediate.

We know that the etheric body often materialises
or refines, following the nature of the thought and
actions of the soul. The vicious by their tendency
attract to themselves impure fluids, which thicken their
envelope and reduce their radiations. At death they
cannot lift themselves above our regions, and remain
confined in our atmosphere and near human beings.
If they persist in evil thoughts, planetary attraction
becomes so powerful that it precipitates their reincar-

162 LIFE AND DESTINY

nation. The more gross and material a soul the more
the law of gravitation influences him. The inverse
phenomenon takes place with pure spirits, and they
vibrate with all the sensations of the Infinite, and find
in the ethereal regions centres appropriate to their
nature and their state of progression. Arrived at a
high degree, these spirits prolong more and more their
sojourn in space, and planetary lives become for them
the exception, soul freedom the rule, until they attain
to the perfection which frees them for ever from the
servitude of rebirth.

CHAPTER XIII

RENOVATION OF THE MEMORY

In the preceding pages we have given the logical
reasons which militate in favour of the doctrines of
successive lives. We consecrate this chapter and the
following to a refutation of the objections of those
who contradict the idea. We begin with a collection
of scientific proofs which every day increase. The
most common objection is this: If man has already
lived, why does he not remember his past existences?
We have already given a summary of the cause of
forgetfulness. It is the rebirth itself — the act of
reclothing a new organism, a material envelope, which
in its turn plays the part of an extinguisher. By the
divination of its vibratory state the spirit, each time
it takes possession of a new body, of a virgin brain
devoid of all images, finds itself incapable of express-
ing the memories accumulated in anterior lives. Its
antecedents, it is true, reveal themselves in its tasks,
its virtues, and its faults.

But all the detail of facts, the events which consti-
tuted its past, remain during earth life in the pro-
found depths of the consciousness. The spirit in its
waking state can only express the impressions regis-
tered by the material brain; memory is a chain, an as-
sociation of ideas, facts, and knowledge. As soon as

^ ^ 153

154 LIFE AND DESTINY

this association disappears, as soon as the thread of
memories is broken, the past seems to be effaced for
us. But that is only an appearance. Professor
Charles Richet said in an address, on 6th February,
1905, at the Academy of Medicine : "Memory is an
implacable faculty of our intelligence, for no one of
our perceptions is ever forgotten. As soon as a fact
has struck our sense, then in a manner irremediable
it is fixed in the memory. Little matters it that we
may guard the consciousness from this souvenir. It
exists, it is indelible." Let us add that it can be
reborn. The awakening of memory is but the effect
of vibration produced by the action of the will upon
the brain cells. To revive the memories anterior to
rebirth, we must put ourselves in harmony with the
vibrations of the state which was ours at the epoch
when those perceptions were established. The brain
which registered those perceptions no longer exists,
and we must seek them in the depth of consciousness.
They remain mute as long as the spirit is prisoned in
the flesh. It must go out of the body to recover the
plenitude of its vibrations and again seize the hidden
memories; then it perceives its past and can recon-
struct its smallest wants. That is what is done in the
phenomenon of somnambulism and trance.

There are in us profound mysteries which have been
slowly placed there through the ages, the sediments
of lives of strife, study, and travel. There are en-
graved all the incidents and the vicissitudes of the
obscure past. It is like an ocean of sleeping things,
where rock the waves of destiny: a powerful call of
the will revives them. The light of the spirit descends

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 155

into them at moments of clairvoyance, as at times
the radiation of a gUttering star penetrates the sombre
depths of the sea.

Let us here recall the essential points of the theory
of the ME, to which are attached all the problems of
memory and consciousness. The identity of the per-
sonality of ME is only maintained by memory and
consciousness. There exists in the intelligence a con-
tinuity, a succession of causes and effects which we
must reconstruct in their ensemble to possess the in-
tegral acquaintance of the ME. That is impossible
in material life, since the incorporation leads to a
temporary effacement of the states of consciousness
which formed their continuous ensemble. As the
physical life is submitted to alternatives of night and
day, so a phenomenon analogous is produced in the
life of the spirit. Our memory traverses alternately
periods of eclipse or brilliancy, shadow or light, in
the state celestial or terrestrial, and even on this last
plane during waking hours or different states of sleep.

As there are degrees of eclipse, there are also de-
grees of light. Many dreams leave no trace on wak-
ing, any more than do somnambulic impressions. All
the magnetisers know this. But as soon as the subject
is again placed in sleep, and finds the dynamic condi-
tions permitting the renewal of memories, they awake.
The subject recalls what he has said, done, seen, and
experienced in all epochs of his existence. We can
then easily comprehend the momentary forgetfulness
of past lives. The vibratory movement of the etheric
envelopes effected by the material matter in actual life

156 LIFE AND DESTINY

is much too weak for the degree of intensity and dura-
tion necessary to the renovation of memories. In
reality, the memory is but a mood of consciousness.
A recollection is often hidden in the subconsciousness :
we do not conserve the memories of our first years,
which are nevertheless engraved in us, like all the
states traversed in the course of our history. But a
mental effort is necessary to awaken the memories of
normal life — those most familiar to us — a thousand
things studied, learned, forgotten, because they
descend into the profound recesses of memory. To
recall these things requires first of all an effort of will.
Many spirits even in the life in space, because of dog-
matic prejudice, neglect all research, and remain
ignorant of the past which sleeps in them.

With them, as with us, suggestion is necessary. We
see the law of suggestion manifested everywhere under
all forms. We submit to it every moment of the day.
For instance, near us a song sounds, and a word, a
name, an image strikes us, a whole chain of recollec-
tions, thanks to the association of ideas. Memories
confused, almost forgotten, from the depths of con-
sciousness, arise and unfold. Dr. Pitre Doyen, of the
Faculty of Medicine at Bordeaux, in his book on
Hypnotism, cites a case where he demonstrates that all
the facts registered in us from infancy can be reborn.
His subject, a young girl of seventeen, had forgotten
the Gascon dialect, and from her fifth year spoke only
French. Put into hypnotic sleep and given the sugges-
tion of five years of age, she forgot her French and
spoke the Gascon dialect. She related all the minute
details of her infantile life, but she was unable to reply

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 157

to any questions asked in French. She forgot utterly
her Hfe from five to seventeen. Dr. Burat made sim-
ilar experiments with identical results. Jeanne, his
subject, related experiences at various periods of her
life with precision, forgetting all other periods. The
facts which these subjects related regarding their past
lives were investigated and found to be true in every
particular. Numberless cases of this nature are on
record, proving how all things are registered in the
depths of the mind. All studies of earthly man furnish
us with proof that there exist distinct states of con-
sciousness and personality. We have seen in the early
part of this book the co-existence in us of a mental
double, of which the two parts join and fuse at death.
This is attested by experimental hypnotism and by all
psychic evolution. The fact alone of this dual intel-
lectuality considered in its bearings to reincarnation
explains to us how part of the ME, with its immense
cortege of impressions and old memories, can remain
plunged in obscurity during actual life. Telepathy,
clairvoyance, and foreseeing the future are powers
belonging to this profound and hidden ME. Sugges-
tion, which is an appeal to the will, releases them from
their prison temporarily, and enables the soul to enter
into possession of its riches for the time being.
Frederick Myers in his Human Personality speaks of
the "subliminal faculty," which evokes the past. This
fact, he says, is frequently encountered in artists of
highly emotional temperaments.

There are many instances on record of people who'
in the moment of sudden accident recall every incident
of their past lives. Thomas Ribot mentions a number

158 LIFE AND DESTINY

of these cases in his book Maladies of Memory.
Admiral Beaufort, in the Journal of Medicine, relates
how in two moments of time, having fallen into the
sea, his transcendental consciousness recalled all his
earth life with prodigious clearness. In these cases
the subconscious unites with the normal consciousness
and reconstructs the entire memory. For an instant
the association of ideas and facts is reformed, the
chain of memories united. The same result can be
obtained by experimentation with a hypnotic subject.
When there is a superior will in control to stimulate
its efforts, the two wills combined acquire an intensity
of vibration which put in motion the hidden layers of
the subconscious.

Another essential point should receive our atten-
tion : it is the fact established by all psychological
science, that there exists a close correlation between
the mental and physical man. Every physical action
corresponds to a psychic act, and vice versa. All is
registered at once in the subconscious memory in such
a manner that one cannot be evoked without the other
awakening also. This concordance applies to the least
facts of our entire existence, and the present, and the
far removed past.

The understanding of all these phases of pheno-
mena, scarcely intelligible to materialists, is made easy
for those who know of the etheric envelope of the
soul. It is in that and not in the physical organism in
which are engraved all these impressions. The etheric
body is the instrument which with precision and
fidelity notes the least variations of the personality.

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 159

All our thoughts and acts have there their reproduc-
tions; their movements, their vibratory states leave
there their successive traces. Certain experimenters
have compared this mode of registration to a living
cinematograph, upon which is fixed successively our
acquisitions and our memories. It unrolls, either by
the suggestion of another will, by auto-suggestion, or
by a sudden accident, as we have related. The influ-
ence of thought on the body is revealed to us by
occurrences observable about us every moment. Fear
paralyses the movements; astonishment, shame, and
terror provoke pallor of colour; anguish affects the
heart action; grief causes tears to flow, and long con-
tinued produces lowering of vital forces. These are all
proofs of the powerful action of the mind on the
k/matenal envelope.

Hypnotism demonstrates in a still more decisive
manner this reflex action of the thoughts. The sug-
gestion of a burn can produce on a subject the effect of
a real burn. (Authentic instances of this nature are
given in chap. xx. of my book In_the^ Invisible.) If
the thoughts and will can exercise such an effect on
the material body, we can understand how the action
increases and produces more intense effects when
applied to the imponderable, etheric form. Less dense,
less compact than the material body, it obeys with
much more suppleness each volition of the thought.
It is by virtue of this law that spirits can appear in
their old forms clothed, as in the past, with all their
vanished attributes of personality. It is only necessary
for them to think strongly of a phase of their past
existence to show themselves to clairvoyants as they;

f

160 LIFE AND DESTINY

were at that epoch. The ability to materiaUse in this
manner is furnished by people of mediumistic power.
Colonel de Rochas, in his work L'Ethcrisation de
Scnsibilitc, relates how he succeeded in separating the
etheric body of a subject long enough to demonstrate
that it was the seat of feeling and memory. Psychol-
ogy and hypnotism combined permit us to study the
action of the soul released from its material form and
united to its etheric body. It furnishes us the means
to elucidate the most delicate problems of life.

Psychical research contains the key to all the pheno-
mena of life. It has come to renovate entirely modern
science, and cast a clear light on a great number of
questions which have been obscure until now. The
following authentic statement made by Pierre Jenet,
psychologist of Sorbonne, is of vast importance to
, students of the problems of being. \ It illustrates how
I the impressions registered in the etheric body are
I indelible, and form a close connection with the body.
Rose, the hypnotic subject of Dr. Jenet, was put into
sleep (or trance) and told that she was living in the
year 1886, in the month of April. Then suddenly Rose
began to sigh and complain of fatigue, and said she
could not walk; asked what was the matter, she said,
"Oh, it is my condition." "What condition?" was
asked. She responded with a gesture, and then the
doctor observed that her form had suddenly swollen
and was twitching with the movements of a woman
advanced in pregnancy. Without any knowledge of
the fact. Dr. Jenet had put Rose into a period of time
when she had been expecting to become a mother.
Another subject, Marie, blind in one eye since her

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 161

seventh year, and with no normal memory of ever
having seen with that eye, when put into trance sleep,,
and told she was six years old, seemed to see perfectly
with both eyes and related the entire circnmstances of
her accident. Memory restored automatically a state
of health which in her normal condition was absolutely
forgotten. The possibility of awakening in the con-
sciousness of a subject lost memories of childhood
bring us logically to memories of anterior lives. This
order of facts was first touched upon in the Spiritual-
istic Congress at Paris, 1900, by Spanish experiment-
ers. Fernandez Colavidie announced that he had
received from a medium in profound trance a complete
detailed account of his life back to birth. Then the
medium went still further back to his life in space,
and to four former incarnations, the furthest one
wholly savage. At each recital the features of the
medium changed expression.

In the same congress, Estava Marata, President of
the Union of Calalogne, declared he had, through his
wife who was a medium, received the history of his
past lives. These experiences have multiplied day by
day since then, and experimentation grows. But it is
necessary to use great prudence and caution, and to
be on guard against fraud and error, and against auto-
suggestion. One should not accept from mediums any
recitals which cannot be verified by an ensemble of
proofs, positive and scientific. It would be wise to
imitate on this point the example given by the London
Society of Psychical Research, and to adopt its precise
and rigorous methods. Even where such methods have
been neglected, we find some cases of very striking

162 LIFE AND DESTINY

phenomena, such as that of Helen Smith, a medium
studied by Professor Flournoy of the University of
Geneva.

Entranced, this medium reproduced scenes of
former Hves in India, in the twelfth century. She
used Sanscrit words of which she knew nothing in her
normal state; she gave facts concerning historic per-
sonages of that epoch which the Professor after much
research found confirmed in a book by Maries, a little-
known historian, and absolutely beyond the knowledge
of the medium. Other better-known historians had
not mentioned these facts. In trance, Helen Smith,
-without education and with no knowledge of the
Orient, spoke and sang with an Oriental charm and
languorous abandon which the most finished actress
after long study could hardly attain. Colonel de
Rochas, former Administrator of the Polytechnic
School, made a careful study of such cases. One of
his subjects was put in trance, and sent back to the
time of her infancy. Then suddenly a new voice and
personality appeared, and the subject gave a history
of her former life, even to the name she bore and the
country in which she lived. Colonel de Rochas, while
•dissatisfied with many of his investigations, ended his
description as follows : "It is certain that by magnetic
operations one can bring a hypnotic subject progress-
ively back to periods anterior to normal life, with the
intellectual and physiological characteristics of those
epochs. It is not memories which are awakened, but
successive states of personality which are evoked. It
is certain that in continuing these magnetic operations

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 163

beyond birth, the subject can be put into analogous
states corresponding to former incarnations."

In the Annals of Psychical Science, July 1905, other
remarkable experiments with a trance medium are
related fully. Mile. Marie Mayo was the daughter
of a French engineer : she had been reared at Bayreuth,
where she learned to read and write in the Arabic lan-
guage. Then she came to France to live with an aunt.
The enumeration of her statements during trance fill
fifty pages of the Annals, and were testified to by
eminent doctors and other men of note.

Mile. Mayo went back of her earth life, and re-
viewed three incarnations. She had been twice a man,
and had died by drowning in one incarnation : she went
through all the agony of this death while in trance,
until Colonel de Rochas wakened her. Then again, in
trance, she proceeded to more distant incarnations, and
said her name was Madeline de Saint Marc; that she
had married an attache to the Court of Louis XIV.,
that she knew Mile, de la Valliere, M. Scarron,
Moliere, and Racine, and that she had died at the age
of forty-five. During her waking hours this medium
had no knowledge of Mile, de la Valliere. During one
of her incarnations her name was "Line," and she de-
clared herself about to become a mother, and, greatly
to the amazement of Colonel de Rochas, her physical
body became enlarged, and she went through all the
spasms of childbirth. Later, she wept, saying her hus-
band had died. Mile. Mayo was on various occasions
put into trance state and asked to return to former
incarnations, and on each occasion the same conditions
and states were repeated without change. With each

164 LIFE AND DESTINY

existence which she described, her attitudes, language,
gestures and appearance changed. When she described
mascuHne incarnations, she spoke in a mascuHne voice.
Mile. Mayo was a simple young girl in her normal
state and incapable of dissimulation. She possessed no
knowledge of psychology or pathology, as was attested
by the physician of the family, one of the witnesses
of these extraordinary seances. It would require a
vast talent and art to simulate the dramatic scenes
which took place in the presence of these experimenters
who were watching for every evidence of error or
fraud ; such a role could not have been carried out by
a young person possessing no experience in life, and
with onl}^ a limited education. In our estimation,
these experiences, joined to many others of a similar
nature, are sufficient to establish at the base of the ME
a sort of crypt where is accumulated an immense res-
ervoir of memories.

The long past of the soul has left its ineffaceable
traces, which alone can tell us the secret of the origin
of evolution, the profound mystery of human na-
ture. In a group of researchers at Havre, June, 1907,
a psychic was asked to obtain from invisible spirits an
explanation of how these past incarnations were re-
vealed. The reply was : "When the mediumistic sub-
ject is not sufficiently freed from his body to read
for himself the history of his past, we proceed to
show him by successive pictures the reproduction of
his former lives. From on high we communicate the
instructions furnished to experimenters, asking them
to make allowance for the circumstances under which
they are received. You must not forget that here.

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 165

free from earth conventions, there is for us neither
time nor space; Hving outside of these Hmits we eas-
ily commit errors in anything connected with them.
We consider time and space small things, and prefer
to talk of acts good and bad and their consequences.
If some dates and names are not found in our archives,
you must not conclude that all is false. Difficulties
are great for us to give you the precise information
you demand ; but do not relax your search, for this is
the most beautiful of all studies. Light is spreading,
but it will be a long time before the masses compre-
hend toward what dawn they should look."

There are numerous facts which can be added al-
most indefinitely in these researches. Prince Adam
Wisznieski, 7 Rue du Defarcalese, Paris, related to
us the following: Prince Galetzin, the Marquis de

B , and Count de R were together at Hamburg

in the summer of 1862. One evening during a stroll
they found a poor woman lying on a bench. Finding
she was hungry and penniless, they took her to the
hotel and fed her. After she had satisfied a rav-
enous appetite, the Prince, who possessed magnetic
powers, desired to experiment with her. The woman,
who spoke a poor ungrammatical German dialect,
when in trance condition began to speak correctly in
French, and related how her present life was the re-
sult of crime committed in a former incarnation in the
eighteenth century. She lived in a chateau in Brit-
tany on the border of the sea. Having a lover, she
desired to be rid of her husband, and pushed him over
a precipice into the sea. She described the crime and
place minutely; and thanks to this description, Prince

166 LIFE AND DESTINY

Galetzin and the Marquis de B later went to

Brittany separately, and each made inquiries and in-
vestigation with identically the same results. After
careful questioning of many people, they found some
old peasants who had been told by their parents the
history of a young beautiful woman who had thrown
her husband into the sea. All the poor beggar woman
had related was exactly verified. The Prince went to
Hamburg and made inquiries of the Chief of Police
regarding the beggar, and was told that she was un-
educated, spoke only a dialect, and lived the life of a
common mendicant.

We have said that forgetfulness of past existences
is one of the consequences of incarnation. However,
this forgetfulness is not always absolute. With many
people the past returns under the form of impressions
without precise memories. These impressions often
influence our actions, and they do not come from edu-
cation, environment, or heredity. Among the num-
ber, we can class our own sudden antipathies and sym-
pathies, our rapid intimacies and our innate ideas.
We have only to look inward to study ourselves with
attention to find in our tastes, tendencies, and traits
of character numerous vestiges of the past, but un-
fortunately few of us give this personal examination
with method and attention.

There are always in every epoch of history a cer-
tain number of men who, thanks to exceptional dispo-
sitions and psychic organisations, conserve memories
of their past lives. For them the plurality of existence
is not a theory, it is a fact divinely perceived. The
testimony of these men assumes considerable impor-

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 167

tance, because they usually occupy in the history of
their time a high station, and almost all such men have
superior minds, and exercise a great influence on their
epochs. The rare faculty they enjoy is the result of
an immense evolution. The value of a testimony be-
ing in exact rapport with the intelligence and integrity
of the witness, we cannot pass in silence the affirma-
tions of these men, some of whom have worn the
crown of genius.

Pythagoras recalled at least three of his existences
and the names he bore in them. Empedocles de-
clared that he recalled having been successively a boy
and a girl. Lamartine in his Voyage in the Orient
speaks of his distinct reminiscences of a far past. He
says, "I had in Judea, no bible or chart at hand. There
was none to give me the antique name of the valleys
and mountains. Nevertheless, I at once recognised
the Valley and the Battlefield of Saul! When we
reached the convent, the Fathers confirmed with ex-
actitude my previsions. My companions could not
believe it, and it was the same at Sephora. I had de-
signed with the finger and named a hill whereon the
ruin of a chateau stood, as the probable birthplace of
the Virgin. The next day, at the foot of an arid
mountain, I recognised the tomb of the Maccabees.
With the exception of the Valley of Lebanon, I saw
scarcely any spot which was not for me like a mem-
ory. Have we then lived two lives, or a thousand?
Is not our memory but a tarnished image that the
breath of God revives?"

In the Literary Journal of November, 1864, a writer
on Joseph Mery said : "He had singular theories

168 LIFE AND DESTINY

which to him were convictions. He firmly beheved
he had Hved several times and recalled the small inci-
dents of anterior existences. He said Virgil and
Horace had been friends of his, and he had known
Augustus and Germanicus, and had fought in Gaul
and Germany. He was a general, and commanded
German troops. When they crossed the Rhine, he
recognised places in the mountains where his name was
then Minius, and he gives an incident to substantiate
his idea. One day Mery was visiting the Library of
the Vatican in Rome; he was met by two young men
in long brown robes, who spoke to him in pure Latin.
Mery was a Latin scholar, but he had never attempted
to converse in the language of Juvenal. But as he
listened to these young men, and admired their mag-
nificent idiom, a veil seemed to fall from his eyes, and
it seemed to him that it was thus he had conversed of
old with his friends. Irreproachable phrases fell
from his lips! Immediately he found elegant and
correct expressions. He spoke in Latin as he spoke
in French. This he could not have done without ap-
prenticeship. He must have journeyed through a cen-
tury of splendour to have acquired such language,
which could not have been attained in an hour. Victor
Hugo believed in a succession of lives ; he believed he
had been Juvenal in one incarnation. Amiel said,
Tt seems to me I have lived dozens or hundreds of
lives. I have been a mathematician, a musician, a
monk, a mother; I have been an animal, and a plant* "

To these reminiscences of illustrious men we must
add that of a number of children. Here the phe-

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 169

nomenon is easily explained. The adaptation of the
psychic sense to the material organs at birth takes place
slowly and gradually. It is complete at the seventh
year usually: later sometimes. Up to this period the
spirit of the child floats out of its envelope, and to a
certain extent, sees its life in space. In this way we
often gather from the lips of children allusions to an-
terior lives and descriptions of scenes and personages
having no rapport with their actual young lives.
These visions generally vanish at adult age, when the
soul of the child enters into full possession of earthly
organs. All the astral vibrations cease, the inner con-
sciousness becomes mute. All the attention which
these childish revelations merit is rarely accorded.
On the contrary, parents are inclined to regard these
childish utterances with inquietude, and to silence
them. Science in this way loses valuable material.
If the child, trying to translate in its confused language
the fugitive vibrations of its psychic brain, were en-
couraged and questioned, one could obtain interesting
indications of past lives. In the Orient this is done
frequently. In the Dcdly Mail of London, copied into
the Matin, 8th July, 1903, a case is related of a child
at Simla who remembered that he was assassinated in
1 8 14. His name was Mr. Tucker, and he was Su-
perintendent of the Council. The child recalled even
small incidents of that life and, taken to the place
where the assassination occurred, was terror-stricken.
In 1880 at Vera Cruz, a seven-year-old child pos-
sessed the power to heal. Several people were healed
by vegetable remedies prescribed by the child. When
asked how he knew these things, he said he was once

170 LIFE AND DESTINY

a great doctor, and his name was Jules Alpherese.
This surprising faculty developed in him at the age of
four. When alone with his parents he said : "Father,
you must not think I will stay long with you. I am
only here for a little while, then I must go away."
When asked where he would go, he replied, "Far away
where it is much better," He died a few years later.
These cases of children who recall past lives could
be enumerated indefinitely. The magazine Filosofia
della Science, published in Palermo, January, 191 1,
an interesting case, and the Annals of Psychical Sci-
ence of July, 191 3, have another.

Meantime, memory of the past lives does not seem
desirable for the majority of men : on the contrary, it
seems indispensable to their advancement that former
existences should be effaced from their memory mo-
mentarily. The persistence of such memories would
lead to the persistence of erroneous ideas and preju-
dices of caste, of former times and environments — in a
word, of all mental heritage which would be the more
difficult to modify and transform if still living in us.

Forgetfulness permits us to profit by the different
conditions we find in a new life, and aids us to con-
struct our personality on a better plan, while our fac-
ulties gain in depth and extent by our experiences.
Then, too, the recollection of a past soiled and sin-
ful, as must be the case with most of us, would be a
heavy burden to carry. The will must be well tem-
pered before we can see without giddiness a long se-
ries of faults and follies, and even crimes, unroll be-
fore us, with all their consequences. The memories

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 171

of past lives are only profitable to a spirit sufficiently
evolved, sufficiently master of itself, to bear the bur-
den without weakening, and sufficiently detached from
earthly things to contemplate with serenity the spec-
tacle of its history: to relieve the pains endured, the
injustice suffered, and the anguish of betrayal by those
it loved. It is a sorrowful privilege to know a van-
ished past of tears and blood : it is a cause of moral
torture and interior wounds. If our former lives have
been happy, the comparison with our often bitter pres-
ent conditions would be almost insupportable.

How many things would we not now efface from
our actual lives which are obstacles to our interior
peace and hindrances to our liberty! Why add to
these the perspective of centuries ? All that is impor-
tant to carry with us are the fruits of the past — that
is, the capacities acquired. They are the instruments
of labour; the means of action for the spirit. It is
all which constitutes character, this ensemble of vir-
tues and faults — of tastes and aspirations; all this
which flows from the subconsciousness to the normal
consciousness. The recollection of vanished lives
would present formidable inconveniences, not only to
individuals but to collective society. It would intro-
duce discord and ferment hate and hinder progress.
All the criminals of history, reincarnated for expia-
tion, would be unmasked! The terrors and iniquities
of past centuries would be newly spread before our
eyes. The accusing past would again cause profound,
keen suffering. Man has come back to earth to de-
velop his faculties and to conquer new merits, and he
should look ahead, not behind. The future opens be-

172 LIFE AND DESTINY

fore him full of promise, and the great law commands
him to advance resolutely; to render the journey eas-
ier, and to free him from all restraint, it casts a veil
upon his past. Let us thank the infinite powers which,
by lifting the crushing load of memories, has made
the ascension easier and the reparation less bitter.

Sometimes the objection is made that it is unjust
to punish a man for a forgotten error. One said to
me, "The justice which moves in secret, and does not
permit us to judge ourselves, should be considered an
iniquity." But is not all life a secret to us? The
grass which sprouts, the wind that blows, the life
which stirs, the stars that glisten in the night silently,
all, all are mysteries. If we can only believe iif the
things we understand, in what will we believe? If a
criminal condemned by human laws falls ill and loses
his memory, does it follow that all consequences of his
acts and all his responsibility vanish at the same time
with his memory? No power coufd wipe away his
past actions. All that we need to know here is the aim
of life, and that divine justice governs the world.
Each one is in the place he has made for himself, and
nothing happens that is not merited. The mind of
man vacillates on every wind of doubt and contradic-
tion; one day it finds all is good, and asks for more
life, and the next it curses existence and longs for an-
nihilation. Can eternal justice conform its plans to
our changing views ? To ask the question is to solve
it. Justice is eternal because unchangeable. Perfect
harmony exists between our liberty of action and the
results of our acts. Our temporary forgetfulness of
our faults does not change their effect. Ignorance of

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 173

the past is necessary in order that all the activities of
man go toward the present and the future, and that
he submits himself to the law and the conditions of
the environment in which he is born.

During sleep the soul thinks and acts. Sometimes it
mounts to the world of causes and reflects the impres-
sions of lives flown. As the stars shine only at night,
so our present is veiled with shadow, that the light of
the past may illumine the horizon of our consciousness.

Life in the flesh is the sleep of the soul. It is the
dream, sad or joyous, and while it lasts we forget the
preceding dreams; that is to say, past incarnations.
Nevertheless, it is always the same individuality which
persists under its two forms of existence. In its evo-
lution it traverses alternately periods of contraction
and dilation, shadow and light. The personality is
restrained or expanded in its two successive states, as
it loses and finds itself in the alternating periods. The
soul, arrived at its moral and intellectual apogee, fin-
ishes for ever with dreams. In each one of us there
is a mysterious book wherein all things are inscribed
in ineffaceable letters; sealed to our eyes during ter-
restrial life, it opens in space. The advanced spirit
reads these pages, and finds there instructions and im-
pressions which the material man cannot comprehend.
This book is what we call the etheric or astral form.
The more it is purified and refined, the more precise
are our memories. Our lives, one by one, emerge
from the shadows and defile before us to accuse or
glorify us. Then the spirit contemplates the formid-
able reality — it measures its degrees of elevation.

174 LIFE AND DESTINY

How sweet to the soul in that hour are good actions
accompHshed! How bitter the works of selfishness
and iniquity.

We must remember that, during incarnation, the
astral body is covered by the material like a thick man-
tle. It compresses and smothers its radiations. That
is the cause of its forgetfulness. Delivered from this
restriction, the spirit rises and finds the fullness of
its memory. The inferior spirit remembers little but
its last incarnation, that is all that is essential for him,
as it gives the sum of his progress, and by it he can
measure his situation. Those souls who were not
impregnated in this life with the idea of pre-existence
remain long ignorant of their former lives. They
have not interrogated the depths of their being: they
have not opened the book wherein all is engraved.
They retain the prejudices of earth, and these preju-
dices, in place of inciting them to search, turn them
from it. The superior spirits, by a sentiment of char-
ity, knowing the weakness of those souls, and know-
ing that the knowledge of their past is not yet neces-
sary to them, spare them the painful picture. But a
day comes when through suggestions from on high,
their wills awake, and they turn the leaves and read
the hidden pages of memory. There their past lives
appear like a distant mirage. For the purified soul,
memory is constant, and the awakened spirit has the
power to revive at will his past, to see the present,
with its consequences, and to penetrate into the mys-
terious future, whose depths are illuminated for a mo-
ment, and then are plunged again into the sombre-
ness of the unknown.

CHAPTER XIV

REINCARNATION AND INFANT PRODIGIES

We can consider certain precocious manifestations of
genius as proofs of pre-existence, in the sense that
they are revelations of work accomplished by souls in
anterior cycles. Phenomena of this kind 'could not
have occurred by hazard without attachments to the
past. History gives us accounts of prodigies of ten-
der age with faculties so superior to, and having no
correspondence with their ancestors, that the most
subtle explanations of materialists fail to find an im-
mediate cause. Michael Angelo, Salvator Rosa,
Mozart, Paganini, Pascal, Rembrandt, can all be
named in this class. Jacques Crichton, a Scottish lad
who was called "The Admirable Crichton," was one
of the world's greatest wonders in precocity. William
Hamilton, at the age of thirteen, knew twelve lan-
guages, and at eighteen he was called the greatest
mathematician of the age. M. Trombette, born of a
poor, uneducated family, learned Arabic by reading
one book, Ahcl-el-Kadar; while in primary school he
acquired French and German in two months. In sev-
eral weeks he acquired Persian, while on shipboard
in company with a Persian. At twelve, he learned
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew simultaneously. His
friends say he knew three hundred Oriental dialects.
175

176 LIFE AND DESTINY

The King of Greece made him Professor of Philoso-
phy at Boulogne.

At the International Congress of Psychology in
Paris, 1900, Professor Charles Richet presented a
Spanish child three and a half years old, named Pepito
Arriola, who improvised upon the piano rich and va-
ried airs. At the age of four and a half years he
played six compositions of his own at the Royal Pal-
ace of Madrid before the King and Queen. His har-
mony was remarkable and his expression marvellous.
The young artist has since become an incomparable
violinist. The law of rebirth alone can explain many
of these cases; their gifts are the results of immense
labours which have familiarised their spirits with the
arts and sciences. These manifestations of previous
genius, while appearing abnormal, are nevertheless but
the consequence of labour pursued through the cen-
turies. Professor Frederick Myers calls this inde-
structible capital of the being the subliminal con-
sciousness.

The conceptions of right, justice, and duty are
much keener in some people and races than in others:
they are not merely the result of education, of the
present, but of something deeper. Education only de-
velops the germs already there. There are also
strange anomalies of savage characters, which can
only be explained by anterior lives. We see children
exhibiting ferocious tendencies of cruelty to domestic
animals and of theft, wholly inexplicable by their en-
vironment or heredity. In an opposite manner, we
see children displaying devotion and self-sacrifice ex-
traordinary for their age. Angels of goodness and

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 177

virtue growing up in the midst of depravity, and
thieves and assassins in virtuous famiHes, can only be
.explained by the theory of former lives. Each one
brings with him at birth the fruits of evolution and
the tastes and tendencies he has acquired in all direc-
tions. The spirit is capable of diverse studies, but in
the limited course of terrestrial life, and through the
eflfect of material conditions, each soul is usually re-
stricted in its studies.

As soon as the will is directed toward one of the
domains of vast knowledge by the fact of its ac-
cumulated tendencies, its superiority in that direction
is displayed and returns more and more accentuated
with each life. It is so the child prodigies come, with
the genius and talents which are the results of continu-
ous progressive efforts toward a determined object.
Nevertheless, the soul being called to enter into all
kinds of knowledge and not restrict itself to any one,
successive states of education are necessary to its un-
limited development. We have behind us infinite
reminiscences and souvenirs; before us, another infin-
ity of promises and hopes. But in all this splendour
of life, the greater part of humanity sees only and
wishes only to see mean fragments of actual existence
— an existence which it believes without a yesterday
or a to-morrow. This is the cause of the weakness
of philosophical thought and moral action in our epoch.
The work already effected by each spirit can be eas-
ily calculated when measured by the rapidity with
which it assimilates the elements of any kind of sci-
ence whatever. By this explanation the difference in
individuals who have here enjoyed the same advan-

178 LIFE AND DESTINY

tages can be readily understood which would remain
incomprehensible otherwise. Two people equally in-
telligent, studying the same subject with the same mas-
ters, do not assimilate in the same manner. One
seizes the ideas at a glance, the other can penetrate
them only by slow, sustained labour. One has but to
penetrate the reservoir of his past, the other is meet-
ing these problems for the first time. One person ac-
cepts a great new truth on principle in politics or re-
ligion at once, because he has been prepared in former
lives to understand it. Another must be convinced
by force of arguments, because it is new to him.

Without this explanation of former lives, the di-
versity without limit in the matter of intelligence and
consciousness would remain an unsolvable problem.
Genius is not, we have said, explained by heredity or
conditions of environment. If heredity could explain
it, it would be more frequent. The majority of cele-
brated men have sprung from mediocre conditions.
Christ, Socrates, Joan of Arc, were bom of obscure
families. Illustrious scientists and philosophers have
risen from the most common antecedents. Bacon,
Copernicus, Galvani, Keppler, Hume, Kant, Locke,
Malebranche, Spinoza, Laplace, J. J. Rousseau, can
all be named in this class. No explanation of heredity
can give us the key to the genius of Shakespeare. The
facts are no less significant regarding the descendants
of men of genius. Their power of intellect departs
with them, and it is rarely found in their children.
The sons of a great poet or a great mathematician are
often incapable of the elementary work in those two
realms. There is a long list of illustrious men whose

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 179

sons were stupid or worthless — Pericles, Aristides,
Thucydides, Sophocles, Germanicus, Cicero, Ves-
pasian, Marcus Aurelius, not to mention the sons of
Charlemagne, Henry iv., etc.

There are, however, cases where talent seems
hereditary. That is when the psychic resemblance ex-
ists between parents and children, and can be traced
back to sympathies existing in former lives. Mozart
came from a musical family, yet its musical capacity
was not sufficient to explain how he could have a
knowledge of the laws of harmony at the age of four!
He alone of his family became celebrated, the other
Mozarts remaining obscure.

/ Evidently when the great intelligences can, in order
to manifest their faculties more freely, they reincar-
nate in an environment where their tastes will be un-
derstood and encouraged. That is often the case with
musicians, for whom special conditions of sensation
and perception are indispensable.^ But in most cases
genius appears in the bosom of a family, without
precedent or successor IffltHe ^cKain~of generations.
The great founders of religion and the great moralists
were of these — Lao-Tsze, Buddha, Zarathustra,
Christ, Mohammed, Plato, Dante, Newton, Giordano
Bruno. If the brilliant or sad exception created in a
family by the apparition of a man of genius or a crimi-
nal was a simple case of atavism, we would find in the
family genealogy some ancestor who serv^ed as a model
— a primitive type of the manifestation. But this is
rarely the case in either sense. The question may be
asked us how we conciliate these dissimilarities with
the law of attractions of similars, which seem to pre-

180 LIFE AND DESTINY

side as the coming together of souls. The penetration
into certain famiHes of superior or inferior beings who
came to give or receive education, to submit to or ex-
ercise a new influence, is easily explained. It results
from the chain of common destinies, which at certain
points rejoins and enlaces again, as a consequence of
affection or hate exchanged in the past : forces equally
attractive which reunite souls on successive planes in
the vast spiral of evolution.

We have said jn an earlier book, In the Invisible,
that genius owes much to inspiration, and that in-
spiration is a sort of mediumship. But we must add
that when this faculty is specially and clearly indicated,
the man of genius cannot be considered a mere instru-
ment, which is all that mediumship proper would make
him. Genius is above all an acquisition of the past,
the result of patient studies, of slow and painful initia-
tion ; these have developed in the being a profound sen-
sibility, which opens the door to high influences.

There is a pronounced difference between the in-
tellectual manifestations of child prodigies and me-
diumship in its generally accepted sense. One has a
character intermittent, abnormal. Mediumship can-
not at all times exercise its faculty, but must have spe-
cial conditions often difficult to obtain. But infant
prodigies are able to use their talents at any moment,
in a permanent manner, as we do who have acquired
control of our mental faculties. If we analyse these
cases with care we will recognise the fact that the
genius of young prodigies is personal. Its application
is regulated by their will, and their works, astonishing
as they appear, represent always something of their

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 181

age, and not that of a high foreign influence, as in the
case of mediumship controls.

There is always in their manner of working a hesi-
tation and wavering which would not occur if they
were the passive instruments of an occult, superior
will. That is why we say that Pepito, notably, indi-
cates a long past of preparation. We find certain in-
dividuals who combine the two causes, personal ac-
quisition and exterior inspiration. That does not
lessen the theory of reincarnation. We must always
have recourse to that to solve certain problems of in-
equality; we were not all launched at the same moment
in the turmoil of life. We have not all travelled the
same paths, but have come through infinite routes. By
this fact are explained our respective situations and
our different views of life. But the goal is the same
for all! under the whip of trials, under the lancet of
pain, all mount, all are eventually elevated.

The soul is not made for us, it makes itself through
the ages. Its faculties, its virtues, grow from century
to century. By incarnation each one comes to take
up the task of yesterday, interrupted by death, and to
perfect it. From this comes the shining superiority
of certain souls who have lived much — accomplished
much — laboured much. From this those extraordi-
nary beings who appear here and there in history and
project vivid rays of light on the route of humanity;
their superiority is only the result of accumulated ex-
perience.

Regarded in this light, the march of humanity is
clothed in grandeur. It slowly frees itself from the
obscurity of the ages, emerges from the shadows of.

182 LIFE AND DESTINY

ignorance and barbarity, and advances with meas-
ured steps in the midst of obstacles and tempests. It
cHmbs the steep path, and at every turn in the route
sees grander heights, and beholds the luminous sum-
mits whereon are throned wisdom, spirituality, and
love. And this collective march is also the individ-
ual march of each one of us. For this humanity is
ourselves; we are the same beings who, after a time
of repose in space, come back century after century
until we are ripe for a better society and happier world.
We are a part of the generation gone, and we will be
among those to come. In fact we compose but one
immense human family marching on to the realisation
of the divine plan — the place of its magnificent des-
tiny.

One who will give attention to it finds a long past
within himself. If the facts of history awaken in
us profound emotion, if we feel ourselves living the
lives of those personages of the past,. it is because that
history is our own. When we read the annals of cer-
tain epochs, and feel drawn toward some of the char-
acters with veritable passion, it is because our own
past is animated and brought to life again. Through
the woof woven by the centuries we have found that
our own anguish, our own aspirations and memories
momentarily veiled in us are awakened. If we inter-
rogate our subconscious minds, voices sometimes vague
and confused, sometimes clear and ringing, will an-
swer from the depths. These voices speak of great
epochs, of migrations of man, of furious hordes who
passed, carrying all before them, into night and death.
These voices speak to us, too, of humble lives effaced,

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 183

of silent tears, of forgotten sorrows, of heavy and
monotonous hours passed in work, in meditation, and
in prayer — of the silence of cloisters, and of the mis-
ery of existences poor and desolate. At certain hours
an entire confused and mysterious world awakes and
vibrates in us — a world whose echoes move and ener-
vate us. It is the voice of the past. It speaks in the
somnambulistic trance, and relates the vicissitudes of
the poor soul struggling through the world. It tells
us that the actual ME is made of numerous personali-
ties, which are combined in us like the tributaries of
a river : that our principle of life has animated many
forms — forms whose dust reposes in the debris of
empires, under the vestiges of dead civilisations.

All these existences have left in the profound depths
of us traces, memories, and impressions ineffaceable.
The man who studies and observes feels that he has
lived, and will live. He is his own heir, harvesting
in the present what he has sown in some past, and
sowing now for the future. It is thus the beauty
and the grandeur of this conception of successive lives
asserts itself, coming as it does to complete the law
of evolution seen by science. Exercised at one time
in all domains, it rewards each one according to his
works, and shows us above all, the majestic law of
progress which reigns in the universe, and leads life
ever toward more beautiful and better states.

CHAPTER XV

OBJECTIONS AND CRITICISMS

We have responded to many objections regarding the
forgetfulness of past incarnations, but it remains for
us to refute others of a character rehgious or philo-
sophical, which the churches offer to this doctrine.
They tell us, first of all, that the doctrine is insuffi-
cient from the moral viewpoint in opening to man such
vast perspectives in the future, and in leaving to him
the possibility of repairing his errors in the lives to
come. It is claimed that vice and indolence are en-
couraged, and that no stimulant is offered powerful
enough to produce good actions. For these reasons
the fear of eternal punishment after death is pre-
ferred by the Church.

The theory of eternal suffering was born in the
Church (as we have proven in a former work, Chris-
tianity and Spiritism) in order to frighten the wicked.
But the menace of Hell, the fear of eternal pain, effi-
cacious perhaps in the era of blind faith, does not hold
the modern mind. It is regarded indeed as an im-
piety toward God, which it represents as a cruel Being,
punishing His creatures needlessly, without hope of
relief. In its place the doctrine of reincarnation
shows the true law of our destinies, and with it the
realisation of the progress of justice in the universe.
184

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 185

In making known to us the anterior cause of our
troubles, it puts an end to the iniquitous conception
of original sin : that is to say, the burdening of hu-
manity entire with Adam's weakness. Its moral in-
fluence is more profound than that of the childish
fables of Hell and Paradise. It offers a bridle for
our passions by showing us the consequence of our
present acts on the future in sowing seeds of sorrow
or felicity. It stimulates our efforts toward good by
showing us that just in the degree we are culpable,
so will we be unhappy. It is true that this doctrine is
inflexible, but it at least proportions the punishment
to the fault, and speaks to us of reparation and hope
afterward. The orthodox creed instead imbues us
with the idea that confession and absolution efface sin
and prevent man from rectifying his conduct here and
preparing himself carefully for his future Beyond.
Another objection offered is, if we are convinced that
our evils are merited, that they are the consequence of
a just law, such a belief would have the result of ex-
tinguishing all compassion for others : we would feel
less inclined to console and sympathise with our sor-
rowing fellows. But modern spirituality teaches us
that men are all united by a common fate. The social
imperfections from which we all suffer more or less
are the result of collective errors of the past, so each
one of us carries his responsibility and his duty to work
for the amelioration of the whole social body.

In their turn, all souls occupy diverse situations,
and all must submit to the tests of poverty and riches,
of trouble and sorrow. Before all the miseries of the
world selfishness can stand and say, "After me the

186 LIFE AND DESTINY

Deluge." It may imagine it will escape the misfor-
tunes of earth and the convulsions of social orders by
death, but reincarnation changes the point of view.
It tells us we must come again and submit to these
evils which we now contemplate lightly, because they
have not yet afifected us. This social environment
which we have done nothing to ameliorate we shall
encounter again, and be caught in its maelstrom.

He who crushes others will be crushed in his turn.
He who sows discord and hate will suffer its effects.
If you would assure your future work, try now to im-
prove the conditions about you. He who does not
seek to better the collective social centres fails in the
law of solidarity. As for evil individuals encountered
on life's path, it is probable we are placed in their route
to enlighten and uplift them. It may be a part of our
development as well as theirs. It is a part of wrong
calculation when we neglect the least occasion to ren-
der a service to any soul on earth. "Hors la charite,
point de salut," Allan Kardic has said, and it holds
the precept par excellence of moral spiritism. Wher-
ever suffering exists, it should encounter sympathetic
hearts ready to succour and aid. Charity is the most
beautiful of virtues: it alone opens access to happy
worlds. Many people to whom life has been rude
and difficult are frightened at the prospect of its in-
finite renewal. This large and painful ascension
across time and worlds fills with terror those who in
their lassitude have counted upon immediate repose
and happiness after death.

The orthodox conception is certainly more alluring
for timid souls and lazy spirits, as it leaves less work

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 187

for them to do in order to gain salvation. The vision
of destiny through many future Hves is, on the con-
trary, formidable. It requires a vigorous spirit to
contemplate it and find the necessary stimulant to re-
place the comfort found in the habit of the confes-
sional. A happiness which must be gained by so much
effort alarms rather than attracts them. Many souls
are feeble for the most part, and unconscious of their
magnificent future. But the truth must be accepted
before all ; we are not here to consult our personal con-
veniences. The law, whether it pleases or not, is the
law ! It is for us to adapt ourselves to if, not for the
law to bend itself to our wishes. Death cannot trans-
form an inferior spirit into a superior one! we are in
the Beyond what we are here, intellectually and
morally. All spiritual manifestations demonstrate
this. Although we are told that only perfected souls
enter the highest celestial realms, on the other hand
we are told that we reserve our means of perfecting
ourselves here on earth. But could we do so vast a
work in one short life? If some have succeeded, how
vast is the crown of the ignorant and vicious who still
people this planet! Is it reasonable to believe that
their evolution stops with this life? Those who live
an existence of crime here — where will they find con-
ditions for reparation if not in reincarnation? With-
out that we must fall back on the idea of Hell, and
eternal Hell is as impossible as an eternal Paradise.
There is no act so worthy, or so frightful, that it mer-
its an eternal recompense or punishment.

We need only consider the works of nature since
the beginning of time to observe everywhere the slow

188 LIFE AND DESTINY

and tranquil evolution of beings and things, which
proclaims with all the voices of the universe, the won-
ders of eternal power. The human soul does not es-
cape from this sovereign rule. It is the crown of this
prodigious effort, the last link in the chain which has
unrolled since the beginning of life, and which en-
circles the whole globe. Is it not in man that the sa-
cred principle of perfection, the sum of all evolution
from inferior states, is to be found? This- principle
is the very essence of man, in truth, the divine seal
placed upon him. And being what he is, how can he
be outside the laws emanating from the source of all
intelligence? The principle of progress is written
everywhere in nature and history. Man cannot es-
cape from this law of progress : our existence is not
isolated, the drama of life is not composed of one act.
It must be followed by other acts, which explain the
incoherences and obscurities of the present. There
must be a chain of existences to illustrate the economy
which presides over the destinies of human beings.
Does it result, then, that we are condemned to power-
ful and incessant labour? No, at the issue of each
terrestrial life the soul harvests the fruit of acquired
experiences. It gathers its forces and its faculties for
an interior and subjective life, and proceeds to make
an inventory of its earthly work, to assimilate the
parts, and reject the sterile. That is the first occupa-
tion of the soul after death — the work of recapitula-
tion and analysis. This contemplative period between
active earth lives is necessary. Each being who lives
a normal life will benefit by it in his turn. The spirit
in its free state does not know much repose — activity

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 189

is its nature. Do we not see this in sleep? the ma-
terial organs only feel fatigue, and in the life of space
these obstacles are unknown. There the spirit can
consecrate itself, without fatigue or restraint, until
the very hour of the next incarnation, to the missions
which devolve upon it.

At each rebirth the soul reconstructs a sort of vir-
ginity. The forgetfulness of the past comes like a
healing lethe, benefiting and repairing and creating a
new being who recommences the vital ascension with
new ardour. Each life means progress — each prog-
ress augments the power of the soul, and brings closer
its estate of completion. This law shows us eternal
life in all its amplitude. We all have an ideal to real-
ise— supreme beauty and supreme happiness. We
climb toward this ideal more or less rapidly, follow-
ing the intensity of our desires. There is no predes-
tination : our will and our consciences are our arbiters.
Each human existence indicates the following one.
Their ensemble constitutes the fullness of destiny —
the communion with infinity.

We are often asked, how can a soul expiate faults
when, unconscious of the causes which oppress him,
he is ignorant of the result and the reason of his trials.

We have seen that all suffering is not expiation.
All nature suffers : all which lives — the plant, the ani-
mal, the man, are submitted to pain. Suffering is a
means of evolution, of education. But a distinction
must be established between actual unconsciousness
and the virtual consciousness of destiny in the rein-
carnated soul.

190 LIFE AND DESTINY

When a spirit has comprehended, in the intense
light of the Beyond, that a life of earthly trials was
absolutely necessary to efface the faults of preceding
existences, this same spirit, in a moment of full intelli-
gence and full liberty, spontaneously chose or accepted
future reincarnation with all its consequences, com-
prising forgetfulness of the past, which follows the
act of reincarnation. This initial view, clear and
total, of its destiny at the precise moment when the
spirit accepted rebirth, sufficed to establish the con-
sciousness, the responsibility, and the merit of this new
life. In veiled intuitions it guards all these, and the
least reminiscence, the least dream suffices to awaken
them to life. It is by this invisible tie, yet real and
powerful, that the present life attaches itself to the
anterior life of the same being, and constitutes the
moral verity and implacable logic of his destiny. If
we recall nothing of our past, it is usually because we
make no effort to awaken the sleeping memories. But
the order of things exists all the same — the magnetic
chain of destiny is never broken.

The mature man does not recall the details of his
first youth ; but does that prove that he was never an
infant? Does not the great artist who, in the eve-
ning of a day of labour, yields to fatigue and sleeps,
retain in his slumber the plan and vision of his work,
which he will take up and continue on awakening?

It is so with our destiny. It, too, is a constant la-
bour broken many times by seasons of sleep which are
in reality activities under different forms, illumined
by dreams of light and beauty. The life of man is a
logical and harmonious dream, where scenes and deco-

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 191

rations change with infinite variety, but never depart
for one instant from the verity of aim and the har-
mony of the ensemble. It is only on our return to the
world invisible that we comprehend the value of each
scene, and the incomparable harmony of all, in its
connection with universal unity. Follow then, with
faith and confidence, the line traced by an infallible
finger. Let us go to the end, as the rivers go to the
sea, fertilising the earth and reflecting the heavenSv

Two more obstacles present themselves, viz. : "If
the theory of reincarnation is true," says Jacques
Brieu, "moral progress ought to have been made from
the beginning of time, but it is quite otherwise. Men
to-day are as selfish, cruel, and ferocious as they were
two thousand years ago." This statement is exces-
sive. Even if it were exact it proves nothing against
reincarnation. As we know, the best men — those who
after a series of existences have attained a certain de-
gree of perfection — pursue their evolution in higher
worlds, and return to earth, but exceptionally, in the
position of masters and missionaries. But mean-
while, contingents of spirits from planes inferior add
each day to the population of the globe. It is not as-
tonishing, under these conditions, that the moral level
is not greatly elevated.

A second objection is, that the doctrine of reincarna-
tion leads to inevitable abuses and misstatements, and
the objector points to the claims of many theosophists
and spiritualists that they have been great personages
in the past, etc. But cannot this be said of other peo-
ple— men who pretend to be descendants of noble

192 LIFE AND DESTINY

families, for instance, without substantiating proof?
Personally, I know a dozen people who affirm they
were "J^^" oi Arc." There is no limit to persons of
this order. Yet possibly, among them, one finds a
veritable fact. To distinguish them one must analyse
their revelations vigorously. First find if their indi-
viduality presents striking traits like those of the per-
sonage mentioned, then demand of the psychic reveal-
ers proofs of identity touching their personalities and
details and facts: such as would make verification
possible. These abuses of the doctrine of reincarna-
tion do not reflect on the Law, but on the inferiority
of certain minds. They are fruits of ignorance and
faults of judgment, and will disappear in time, thanks
to education.

Again we encounter a difficulty. It is that which
results from the apparent contradiction of spirits re-
garding reincarnation. In Anglo-Saxon countries
this doctrine was not mentioned in messages of spir-
its for a long period of time, and other messages have
denied its truth. We have replied to this objection
partly in Chapter xxii. The negations on this sub-
ject emanate almost always from spirits not sufficiently
advanced to know and to read in themselves the fu-
ture which awaits them. We know that these souls
submit to reincarnation without foreseeing it, and
when the hour comes they are plunged in material life
as in a sleep produced by anaesthesia.

The prejudices of race and religion which have been
exercised for a considerable time upon these spirits in
earth life, persist still in the other life. While those

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 193

who are in any degree awakened are easily freed from
these prejudices by death ; the less advanced remain
long submerged. The Protestant education leaves no
place in the orthodox mind for the idea of successive
lives. According to its teachings, the soul at death
is judged and fixed definitely in Paradise or Hell.
With the Catholics there exists a middle place — Pur-
gatory, where the soul may expiate and purify itself
by definite means. This idea leads toward the re-
birth conception. The Catholic makes over the old
belief into a new creed, while the orthodox Protestant
finds himself under the necessity to make a clean sweep
and build up a doctrine absolutely different from those
suggested by his religion. So here we have the hos-
tilities against multiple lives in Anglo-Saxon coun-
tries, which persist even after death among a certain
category of spirits. But a reaction is being produced
little by little, and the faith in successive lives gains
day By day — more in the Protestant domain, in the
measure that the idea of Hell has become foreign to
them. England and America have many adherents.
The principal spiritualistic periodicals of these coun-
tries adopt the belief, or discuss it impartially. Mr.
Funk, of the firm of Funk and Wagnalls, publishers
of the Standard Dictionary , speaks, in The Widow's
Mite, an important work published in 1905, of rein-
carnation. The philosopher, Professor Taggar, says,
*Tt is the only reasonable view of immortality."
Archdeacon Colley, Rector of Stackton (Warwick-
shire), gave a conference on reincarnation, of a na-
ture which indicates that its ideals have reached even
to the bosom of the Church of England.

CHAPTER XVI

SUCCESSIVE LIVES — HISTORIC PROOFS

Our studies would be incomplete if we did not cast a
glance across the role which a belief in successive lives
has played in histpry. This belief dominates all his-
tory, and we find it in the greatest religions of the
Orient and in the most elevated philosophies. It has
guided civilisations on their march, and has been per-
petuated from age to age. In spite of persecutions
and temporary eclipses, it reappears and persists across
the centuries and in all countries. From India it
spread over the world, and long before the great
revelations of historic times, it was formulated in the
Vedas, and notably in the Bhagavad Gita. Brahman-
ism and Buddhism are inspired with it, and Eg}'^pt and
Greece adopted this same doctrine. Under symbols
more or less obscure, everywhere it appears. It was
known to the Roman world, and was the belief of
Pythagoras, of Socrates, of Plato, Apollo, and Em-
pedocles. Ovid, Virgil, and Cicero, in their imper-
ishable works, make frequent allusions to it. Virgil,
in the ^neid, speaks of the soul plunging into Lethe,
and losing memory of former lives. The school of
Alexandria gave it great eclat, by the works of Philon,
Plotinus, Ammonius, Saccas, etc. The sacred books
of the Hebrews, the Zahar and the Kabala, affirm pre-

194

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 195

existence, and under the name of resurrection, rein-
carnation. It was the behef of the Pharisees and Es-
senes. The old and the new Testaments, in the midst
of obscure and altered texts, contain numerous traces
of it — for example, in certain passages of Jeremiah;
and in Jesus' own words concerning John the Baptist,
Matthew, chapter xi., "And if ye will receive it, this
is Elias which was for to come." Also chapter xvii.,
"But I say unto you, that Elias is come already, and
they knew him not, but have done unto him whatso-
ever they listed. Likewise shall the Son of man suf-
fer of them. Then the disciples understood that he
spake unto them of John the Baptist." Primitive
Christianity possessed, then, the true idea of destiny.
But with the subtlety of Byzantine theology, the hid-
den sense disappeared little by litde, and the virtue of
secret rites of initiation vanished like a delicate per-
fume. Scholasticism smothered the first revelations
under the weight of syllogisms, or ruined it by spe-
cious arguments.

Nevertheless, the first fathers of the Church, and
above all, Origen and Clement of Alexandria, pro-
nounced in favour of the transmigration of souls.
Origen, in his work called Principles, speaks of the
pre-existence and survivance of souls in other bodies.
Saint Gregory of Nyssa said that it was a necessity
of nature for the immortal soul to be cured and puri-
fied, and if it is not done here and now it must be done
in future lives. But in place of this simple and clear
conception of destiny, an ensemble of dogmas was
given to the world by scholasticism, revolting to the
reason and separating man from God.

196 LIFE AND DESTINY

The doctrine of successive lives reappears again at
different epochs in the Christian world under the
forms of great heresies and secret schools. But it was
often drowned in blood and smothered under the ashes
of funeral pyres. In the Middle Ages it was almost
wholly eclipsed, and ceased to influence the Occidental
thought, to its great detriment. From this came the
errors and confusion of this sombre epoch, the cruel
persecution, the prison of the human spirit. A sort
of intellectual night fell upon Europe. However,
from afar came a ray of light, an inspiration from on
high, illuminating some intuitive souls, and this doc-
trine remained for the deep thinkers the only possible
explanation of the profound mystery of life.

Not only the troubadours in their poems and chants
made allusions to it, but powerful minds like Bona-
ventura and Dante Alighieri mentioned it in a formal
fashion. Ozanam, a Catholic writer, recognised the
plan of the Divine Comedy as following closely the
great lives of antique initiation based on the plurality
of lives. Cardinal Nfcholas de Cuza sustained in the
Vatican the theory of many lives and inhabited worlds
with the consent of Pope Eugene iv. Thomas Moore,
Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Giordano Bruno, Cam-
panello, affirmed or taught the grand truth, often to
their cost. Van Helmont, in De Revolutione Ani-
marum, gave in two hundred problems arguments in
favour of the reincarnation of souls. Are not these
superior intelligences comparable to the summits oi
the Alps which are the first to receive the fires of the
day, and which conserve them when the rest of the
earth is plunged in night ? Philosophy in the late cen-

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 197

turies is enriched with this doctrine. Cudworth and
Hume considered this theory of immortahty the most
rational. Lessing, Hegel, Herder, Schelling, Fichte
the younger, discussed it with elevation. Mezzini, in
his work Del Concilio a Dio, said : "We believe in an
indefinite series of reincarnations, each one of which
constitutes a progress on the preceding: we can re-
commence the state where we left off, not meriting to
pass to a superior one, but we cannot retrograde or
perish."

Returning to the origin of our race, we will see the
idea of successive lives spread over the earth by the
Gauls. It vibrates in the accents of the bards, it
rings in the grand voices of the forests, saying, "I
have stirred in a hundred worlds, I have moved in a
hundred circles." It is the national tradition, and it
inspired in our fathers disdain of death and heroism
in combats. Arbois of Jubainville, Professor of the
College of France, said, "In combats against the Ro-
mans, the Druids remained immobile as statues, re-
ceiving their wounds without fleeing or defending
themselves. They knew themselves immortal, and
counted on finding in another world a new and always
young body." The Druids were not only brave men,
but they were profoundly learned. Their cult was
that of nature, celebrated under sombre shades of
great trees or temples built on cliffs. In the Triads
they proclaimed the evolution of the soul climbing
from the abyss, and slowly mounting the long spiral of
existences, to attain, after many deaths and rebirths,
the circle of felicity. The Triads are the most mar-

198 LIFE AND DESTINY

vellous monuments which have been left to us con-
cerning the antiquity and the wisdom of the Druids.
They open up a perspective without Hmit to the as-
tonished student.

We recommend to our readers The Triads (19, 21,
and 36) published by Ed. WiUiams from original
Gaelic and translated by Edward Darydd. The Gauls
taught reincarnation on earth, as well as on other
spheres, as is demonstrated by A. de Jubainville in
his course of Celtic literature. Find Mac Cumall, the
celebrated Irish hero, is described as being killed at
the battle of D'Athbrea in 273 a.d., and being reborn
in 603, and later being king of Ireland. The author
relates that the belief in reincarnation went back to
ancient times in Ireland. Long before our era,
Eochaid Airem, supreme king of Ireland, espoused
Etain, daughter of Etar. Etain had several centuries
before been born in Celtic lands as Ailill, wife of
Mider, and she was deified after her death.

The Celtic doctrine, after being lost for centuries,
reappears in modern France, and has been recon-
structed and sustained by a Pleiades of brilliant writ-
ers: Charles Bonnet, Dupont de Nemours, Ballanche,
Jean Reynaud, Henri Martin, Pierre Laroux, Victor
Hugo, Flammarion, etc.

"To be born, to die, to be reborn, and progress with-
out cessation is the law," as Allan Kardic has said.
Thanks to him, and to the spiritual school of which
he was the founder, the faith in successive lives of
the souls spreads over the Occident, where it counts
millions of partisans. The testimony of spirits has
given it a definite sanction. With the exception of

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 199

some undeveloped souls for whom the past is still en-
veloped in shadows, all the messages received in our
century affirm the plurality of existences and the in-
definite progress of being. Earthly life, they say in
substance, is but a preparation for life eternal. Lim-
ited to one existence in its ephemeral duration, the
soul could not respond to so vast an object. Incar-
nations are the stations on the way of ascension —
the mysterious ladder which, from obscure regions,
by all forms and worlds, conducts us to the Kingdom
of Light.

Our existences unroll across the centuries. They
pass, succeed one another, and begin anew : and with
€ach one we leave a little of the evil which was in us.
Slowly we advance and penetrate further in the sa-
cred way, until we have acquired the merits which open
an access for us to the superior circles from which
shine eternally, beauty, wisdom, truth, and love.

The attentive study of the history of people does
not show us merely the universal character of this doc-
trine. It permits us also to follow the glorious chain
of causes and effects in the social order.

We see above all, that these effects are reborn of
themselves, and return to their own principle; that
they enclose individuals and nations in the network
of a marvellous law. From this point of view the
lessons of the past are compelling. The testimony
of the centuries is painted in a majestic character
which strikes the most indifferent mind, and demon-
strates the irresistible force of right. All the evil
accomplished, the blood spilled, the tears shed, fall

800 LIFE AND DESTINY

sooner or later fatally upon their authors, individually
or collectively. The same culpable acts, the same er-
rors, lead to the same unfortunate consequences.
While men persist in living hostile toward one an-
other, to oppress, to fight, works of blood and mourn-
ing follow, and humanity suffers to the very depths of
its being. There are expiations collective, as there
are reparations individual. Through time an immense
justice is exercised. It brings into bloom the elements
of decadence and destruction, and the germ of death
that the nations sow in their own breasts each time
they violate higher laws. If we glance over the his-
tory of the world we will see that the youth of hu-
manity, like that of the individual, has its periods of
trouble and of sorrowful experiences. Across its
pages unwinds a cortege of obligatory miseries. Pro-
found depression alternates with high ecstasies — tri-
umphs with defeat. Precarious civilisation marked
the first ages. The greatest empires crumpled one
after another in the maelstrom of passions. Egypt,
Nineveh, Babylon, the empires of Persia, are all fallen.
Rome and Byzantine, eaten by corruption, went down
under the force of barbarians.

After the Hundred Years' War and the execution
of Joan of Arc, England was afflicted by a terrible
civil war, the War of the Roses, which led it to the
brink of ruin. What happened to Spain — responsible
for so much suffering and slaughter — Spain with its
Inquisition and its Holy Office? Where to-day is its
vast empire upon which "the sun never set" ?

The empire of Napoleon passed like a meteor.
Napoleon and Bismarck, in disgrace, began on earth

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 201

to expiate their lack of respect for moral laws. As
for Germany, one can foresee even now what awaits
her in the future.^ History is our great teacher, and
we can read in its pages the action of a powerful law.
From the centre of the night of centuries we see shin-
ing the radiations of an eternal thought.

For the people as for the individual it is justice.
We can follow this march of justice for the populace
silently: often we see it manifesting itself through a
chain of facts. For the individual it is more difficult.
It is not always visible, as in the life of Napoleon. We
do not know how to follow its march when its action,
in place of being immediate, is exercised at long pe-
riods. It descends into flesh with the reincarnation
of the soul, and we lose the succession of causes and
effects. But we have seen in the phenomenon of
trance that as soon as we can lift the veil stretched over
the past, and read what is written engraved in the
depths of the human soul, then in the adversities
which strike it in its great sorrows, its dreams, its
poignant afflictions, we are constrained to recognise
the action of an anterior cause — of a moral cause,
and to bow before the majesty of the laws which pre-
side over the destiny of souls and the societies of
worlds.

The plan of history unrolls in formidable lines.
God sends to humanity His messiahs, His revealers.
both visible and invisible; His guides, His educators
of all kinds. But man, free in his thoughts, listens
to them or denies them — man is free! Social inco-
herencies are his work : and he adds his confused note
*This was written three years before the war.

202 LIFE AND DESTINY

to the universal concert. But this discordant note
does not always succeed in dominating the harmony
of the centuries. Geniuses sent from on high shine
like torches in the black night. Without returning
to remote antiquity, without speaking of Hermes,
Zoroaster, Krishna, since the dawn of Christian times
we have seen arise the numerous figures of the
prophets, giants who still dominate history. It was
they who prepared the way for Christianity, the mas-
ter religion, to be born later, with the evolution of
time and universal fraternity.

Then we see Christ, the Man of Sorrows, the Man
of Love, whose thoughts shine with imperishable
beauty, and we see the drama of Golgotha, the ruin of
Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews. We see
the flowering of Greek genius, the cradle of education,
the splendour of Rome which taught the world disci-
pline and social life. Then came the sombre ages of
ignorance, a thousand years of barbarism, and the
descent of the intellectual level into the night of
thought. Then Gutenberg, Christopher Columbus,
and Luther appeared, Gothic cathedrals arose : new
continents were revealed, religion began to be disci-
plined, and the art of printing spread its ideas over
the world. Following the Reformation came the
Renaissance — then the Revolution ! And so behold,
after so many vicissitudes, after strifes and anguish,
in spite of religious persecutions and civil tyrannies
and inquisitions, thought emancipated itself! The
problem of life, which with the conceptions of the
Church had become fanatic and blind, remained im-
penetrable— this problem began to be clarified anew.

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 203

Like a star over a foggy sea, the great law reap-
peared. The world saw the life of the spirit reborn.
Human existence was to be no more an abscure by-
way, but a broad route leading into the open future.

The laws of nations and history unite in an impos-
ing verity. One circular law presides over the evolu-
tion of beings and things: it regulates the march of
centuries and of humanities. Every destiny gravi-
tates in an immense circle, and every life describes
an orbit. All human ascension divides itself into cy-
cles and spirals which are enlarged in the manner
that they take their places in the universal scheme.

As nature renews itself without cessation in its
resurrection, from the metamorphosis of insects to the
birth and death of worlds, so collectively human beings
are born, develop, and die in successive forms. But
they die only to be reborn, and grow to perfection
in arts, sciences, cults, and doctrines. At the hours
of a great crisis or danger, messengers come to re-
establish the obscure verities and set humanity on its
right path. In spite of the flight of the greatest
souls to the higher spheres, earthly civilisations and
societies evolve. In spite of all the evil on our planet,
humanity in its ensemble is slowly mounting at each
rebirth. The individual plunges into the mass — the
soul takes a new mask, its old personalities are ef-
faced for a time. Nevertheless, across the centuries
great figures of the past can be recognised — Krishna
in Christ, Virgil in Lamartine, Caesar in Napoleon.
In a beggar with altered features, crouched at some
door in Rome, covered with ulcers and begging of

20J. LIFE AND DESTINY

passers-by, may not one recognise Messalina through
our spiritual vision? Doctor Thomas Pascal in The
Law of Destiny, says : "The study of the former lives
of certain men particularly afflicted, reveals strange
secrets. One who has been guilty of treason causing
a massacre, centuries later suffers a life-long malady
caused by an injury received when a child during a
mutiny. Another who took part in an inquisition,
returns with a body suffering from youth to age."
These cases are more numerous than we suppose, and
we must recognise in them the application of an in-
flexible law. All our acts, following their nature, are
translated into an increase or diminution of liberty.
The problems of the lives of individuals and society
are explained only by this law of rebirth. All the
mystery of being is there. By it our past is made
clear and our future is enlarged — our personality at-
tains an unexpected amplitude. We understand that
we did not arrive yesterday in the universe, but that
our point of origin dates back to the profound depths
of time.

We feel ourselves united to humanity by a thou-
sand ties woven by the centuries. Its history is ours,
and we have journeyed with it upon the ocean of the
ages, confronted the same perils, met the same re-
verses. Forgetfulness of those things is but tem-
porary, for one day a whole world of memories will
awaken in us. The past, the future — all history will
assume a new character in our eyes, an interest pro-
found. Divine laws will seem greater, more sublime,
and life itself will become beautiful and desirable in
spite of its trials and its evils.

CHAPTER XVII

JUSTICE AND RESPONSIBILITY

The Problem of Evil

The law of rebirth regulates life universal. By a
little attention we can read in all nature, as in a book,
the mystery of death and of the resurrection. The
seasons succeed one another with an imposing rhythm,
the day alternates with the night, repose follows wak-
ing hours. The spirit mounts to higher realms to de-
scend again and take up with more force the inter-
rupted task.

The transformations of the plant and the animal
are not less significant. The plant dies, to be reborn
with each return of sap — it fades but to reflower.
The chrysalis and the butterfly are examples of re-
production more or less faithful to the alternating
phases of immortality. Could man alone be placed
outside this law? When all things are united by
numberless and powerful bonds, can our lives be
thrown, without attachments to the universal system,
into the maelstrom of time and space — nothing be-
fore, nothing after? No! man like all else submits to
the eternal law. All that he has experienced under
other forms revives to evolve and perfect his spirit.
Already have we in this one life used numerous physi-
205

206 LIFE AND DESTINY

cal envelopes through the continual renewing of our
molecules. Is it not logical to suppose we will in-
habit others in the future?

After each life, the soul harvests and gathers into
its body of ether the fruits of vanished existences.
All its progress is reflected irr this subtle form from
which it is never separated — this body etheric, lucid,
triumphant, transparent. The marvellous instru-
ment— the harp which vibrates with every breath of
the infinite.

So the psychic being finds in each stage of his as-
cension that which he has made of himself. No
noble aspiration is sterile, no sacrifice is vain. We are
all associated in this immense work, from the most
obscure being to the most radiant genius. An end-
less chain unites the cosmos. It is an effusion of love
and light, and it binds all souls in a communion uni-
versal and eternal.

The soul must conquer one by one all the elements
and attributes of grandeur, power, and felicity. It
will encounter obstacles — resisting and ever hostile
nature, material adversity and rude lessons which
will provoke its efforts and ripen its experiences.
There must be strife to render triumph possible and
to create heroism. Without iniquity, and treason,
and oppression, would any man suffer and die for jus-
tice? Physical suffering and moral anguish refine the
spirit, and only the benefactions acquired by our-
selves, slowly and painfully, are appreciated. Were
the human soul created perfect, it would be unable to
appreciate its own perfection. Without means of

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 207

comparison, and with no goal for its activities, it
would be condemned to inertia. Life for the spirit
means to act, to grow, to conquer new merits and to
attain ever to a higher place in the luminous and in-
finite hierarchy. To obtain merit, it must first suf-
fer. To enjoy abundance we must have known priva-
tion, and to appreciate light we must walk in shadow.
To construct a ME, an individuality, through thou-
sands of lives, accomplished in hundreds of worlds,
and under the direction of our older brothers and our
friends in space, to climb the paths to Heaven, to
mount ever higher, to become one of the authors of
the divine drama, one of the agents of God in the
eternal work ; to work for the universe as the universe
works for us, behold the secret of destiny! So the
soul mounts from sphere to sphere, from circle to cir-
cle. United to the beings it has loved, it goes on its
pilgrimage, seeking divine perfection. Arriving at the
supreme region, it is freed from the law of rebirth.
Reincarnation is no more an obligation for it, but an
act of will, and a work of sacrifice when it has a mis-
sion to accomplish. Reaching the supreme height,
the spirit says : *T am free ! I have broken for ever
the fetters which chained me to material worlds; I
have acquired science, energy, love. But that which
I have acquired I want to share with my brothers, and
for that purpose I will go and live among them, and
I will offer them the best that is in me. I will take a
body of flesh, I will descend again among those who
suffer in ignorance, to console, enlighten and aid."
And then we have Lao-tsze, Buddha, Socrates, Christ.

208 LIFE AND DESTINY

We have all the great souls who have given their lives
for humanity.

In the course of this study we have demonstrated
the importance of the doctrine of reincarnation. We
have seen it as the essential base on which reposes the
new spiritualism: its doorway is immense. It ex-
plains the inequalities of human conditions, tastes,
faculties, and characters. It dissipates the mysteries
and contradictions of life. It solves the problems of
evil. Through it, order succeeds disorder, light comes
from the bosom of chaos — injustice disappears, ap-
parent iniquities of fate vanish, to give way to the ma-
jestic law of repercussion, of acts and consequences.
And this law of immanent justice which governs the
worlds, God has inscribed on the foundation of things
and in the human consciousness. The doctrine of re-
incarnation brings men more closely together than
any other belief in teaching them their common origin
and end, and in showing them the solidarity which
unites them in the past, present, and future. It tells
them there are no disinherited ones — no favourites,
but each being is the son of his own works, the mas-
ter of his own destiny.

Our sufferings, hidden or apparent, are the conse-
quences of the past; the austere school where we learn
high virtues and great duties. We go through all the
stations of an immense route. We experience all the
social conditions one by one, to acquire the qualities
of each environment. In this way we are bound to-
gether in a final harmony, all the infinite variety of

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 209

beings — varied because of the inequality of their ef-
forts and the necessities of their evolution.

The greatest of us has been small — the smallest
will be great, and each one in his turn knows joy and
pain. In this lies the fraternity of souls. We feel
our unity in our collective ascension. We learn to
aid, to sustain, to reach out the helping hand.

Across the cycles of time all will attain to perfec-
tion. The criminals of the past will become the sages
of the future, and an hour will come when our faults
will be effaced — our moral wounds healed. Frivo-
lous souls will become serious, obscure minds will be
illumined, all the forces of evil which vibrate in us
will be transformed into forces of good. From the
feeble, indifferent being whose mentality is shut to
all great thoughts, at the end of the ages will come
forth a powerful spirit which contains all knowledge,
all virtue, and realises the most sublime truths. This
will be the work of accumulated existences. A great
many indeed will be required to bring forth such a
change, but nothing is powerful and durable which has
not taken time to germinate' in the shadow and mount
toward Heaven. The tree, the forest, nature, the
plants say it to us in their profound language. No
seed is lost, no effort is wasted. The stem does not
give its leaf or fruit until its hour comes, and life
did not appear upon earth until after immense geo-
logical periods of time. Look at the diamond, whose
splendour ornaments the beauty of women, shining
with a million fires! How many were the changes
to which it was submitted before acquiring this in-
comparable purity. How long was its incubation in

210 LIFE AND DESTINY

the breast of obscure matter. It is here, in this work
of perfecting the soul, that the utiHty is shown of lives
of trial, of modest and humble lives, of the exist-
ence of labour and duty to vanquish ferocious pas-
sions, pride, and selfishness. From this point of view,
the roles of the humble and the menial tasks of life
reveal themselves to our eyes in grandeur, and we bet-
ter comprehend the necessity of returning' to earth to
ransom and purify the soul.

In resolving the problem of evil, the new spiritual-
ism shows again its superiority over other doctrines.
To the materialists, evil and sorrow are constant and
universal. Taine, Soury, Haeckel declare, "We see
evil spread and regenerate in humanity. Neverthe-
less, with progress evil becomes less frequent but more
painful, because our physical and moral sensibilities
are keener." So we must always suffer, and work
without hope, without consolation : for example, in
the case of a catastrophe (to their eyes irreparable)
as in the death of a beloved being. Consequently evil
always encroaches on good. Certain religious doc-
trines are no more consoling, for evil seems to pre-
dominate in the universe, and Satan appears more
powerful than God. Hell is continually peopled with
crowds, while only a select few reach Heaven.

With the new philosophy the question takes another
aspect. Evil is only a transitory state of being, on
the way of evolution toward good. Evil is the meas-
ure of inferiority of worlds and individuals, and
every ladder has its degrees. Our earth lives repre-
sent the inferior degrees of our eternal ascension,

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 211

everything around us demonstrating the inferiority of
the planet that we inhabit. Very much indined on
its axis, its astronomic situation is the cause of fre-
quent perturbations and brusque changes of tempera-
ture, tempests, earthquakes, torrid heats, rigorous
colds. Earthly humanity to subsist, is condemned to
arduous labour; millions of men bowed under their
tasks know neither rest nor well-being. There exist
close connections between the physical order of worlds
and the moral state of the societies which people them.
Imperfect worlds like the earth are reserved in general
for the lesser evolved souls.

Our sojourn in this environment is but temporary,
and subordinate to the exigencies of our psychic
education. Other and better worlds await us. Evil,
sorrow, suffering, are obligatory roles of earth life.
They are the whip — the spur urging us on, and so the
evils of life have only a relative and passing character.
They pertain to the infant soul in its struggling to live,
and they will diminish and vanish in the measure that
the soul mounts the ladder leading to power, virtue,
and wisdom.

So justice reveals itself in the universe. Each soul
submits to the consequences of his acts, but all repair
their faults, and rise sooner or later to evolve from
obscure and material worlds to divine light. All those
who love one another are united in their ascension, to
co-operate in great works, and to participate in uni-
versal communion. So there is no real absolute evil 'm\
the universe, but everywhere the realisation of law and
progression, of a superior ideal, everywhere the action
of a force, a power, a cause which, while leaving us

212 LIFE AND DESTINY

free, attracts and leads us toward a better state. About
us everywhere are great beings working to develop in
us, at the price of immense effort, sensibility, senti-
ment, will, and love.

Let us insist upon the idea of justice, for that is the
main point. It is the main point because it is an im-
perious necessity for all to know that justice is not a
vain word ; that there is a reward for all good deeds
and a compensation for all sorrows. No system can
satisfy our reason if we do not feel this law of justice
in its amplitude. The idea is engraved in us — it is
the law of the soul and the universe, and it is because
so many doctrines have ignored it, that they have
grown enfeebled, or become extinguished at the
present hour about us.

The doctrine of successive lives is resplendent with
the ideas of justice. It stands forth in high relief with
incomparable lustre. All our lives are rigorously en-
chained ; our acts, and their consequences, constitute a
succession of elements which are attached to one an-
other by the close relation of cause and effect. We are
constantly experiencing in all the events of our lives
these inevitable results of past actions. Our will, acting
as a generating cause, is producing effects good or bad
which will fall on us and form thewoof of ourdestinies.

Christianity renounces this world, and looks to the
next for happiness and justice, but justice is not rele-
gated to an unknown realm. It is here — in us and
about us that it exercises its empire. Man ought to
repair on the physical plane the evil he did here. He
redescends into the environment where he was cul-

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 213

pable, near to those he wronged, to submit to the con-
sequences of those acts. Thus justice, the moral law,
is revealed in all its harmony, and compels man to
comprehend that this life is but a link in the chain of
existences. All that he sows, he must later reap. It
is not possible with this belief to disdain our duties or
elude our responsibilities, for to-morrow becomes the
product of yesterday. Under the apparent confusion
of facts we discover the analogy which connects them.
Instead of being crushed by inflexible destiny and dom-
inated by fate, man dominates his destiny and creates
his own fate by his acts. Justice is not postponed to a
transcendental world, but is found in every human life,
in the domain of the things real and tangible.

This great light has revealed itself precisely at the
hour when the old beliefs are sinking under the weight
of time, when the gods of the past veil themselves, and
disappear. For a long time human thought had anx-
iously groped in the night, searching for a new moral
edifice which could shelter it, and so the doctrine of
rebirths came to offer it the necessary ideal, and, at
the same time, the indispensable corrective for violent
appetites, for measureless ambitions, and the thirst
for riches, place, and worldly honours, and for the
sensualism that menaces humanity. With the new
faith man learns to support, without bitterness or
revolt, his dolorous existence indispensable to his puri-
fication. He learns to submit to the natural and
transitory inequalities which are the result of the law
of evolution, and to disdain the false divisions spring-
ing from prejudices of castes, races, and religions.
These prejudices vanish utterly the day when one

S14 LIFE AND DESTINY

knows that each spirit in the path of ascension must
pass through various ways. Thanks to the idea of
successive lives in the same time with individual
responsibility, that of the collective appears distinctly
to us. There is with our contemporaries a tendency to
cast the burdens of the present on generations to come.
Believing they will no more come to earth, they leave
to their successors the care of solving the problems of
life, social and political. With the law of destinies
the aspect of the question changes. Not only must
we pay our own debts to the last penny, but, unless we
endeavour to change the evils of social conditions, we
must return again to earth to suffer from the same
imperfections. This society of which we have demand-
ed much, while giving little, will become anew our
society, a stepmother of selfish and ungrateful sons.
In the course of our earthly stations, we feel the weight
of injustices fall upon us that we at some time have
perpetrated.

When the grand doctrine of successive lives becomes
the foundation of human education and is shared
by all, when the proofs are shown to all eyes, then
the wisest and the most reflective, developing the intui-
tions of the past, will comprehend that they have lived
in all social centres, and they will feel more tolerance
and sympathy for their weaker brothers, and will en-
deavour to bestow upon them light, hope, and con-
solation. Then the benefit of the individual will be-
come the benefit of all. Each will feel he must co-
operate in the amelioration of this society in whose
breast he may be reborn, to progress with it and ad-
vance toward the future.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LAW OF DESTINY

In the proof of successive lives — the path of existence
cleared — the route surely and firmly traced, the soul
clearly sees its destiny, which is the ascension toward
the highest wisdom, toward the most effulgent light.
Equity governs the world — our happiness is in our
own hands. The universe cannot fail ; its goal is beauty,
its means justice and love. All chimerical fear, all
terror of the Beyond, vanishes. In place of doubting
the future, man tastes the joys of eternal certitudes,
with confidence in to-morrow, while his strength is
doubled and his efforts toward good are increased a
hundred-fold.

Yet one more question arises. By what secret
springs is the action of justice exercised in the chain
of our lives? Let us first say that the working of
human justice offers us nothing comparable to the
divine law of destiny. That is accomplished of itself,
without exterior intervention for individuals and for
societies.

It is a law of equilibrium, and establishes order in
the moral world, in the same manner that the law of
gravitation and weight assures order and equilibrium
in the physical world. Its mechanism is at once simple
and grand. All wrong-doing is paid for in sorrow.
215

216 LIFE AND DESTINY

All that man does in accord with the law of good pro-
cures peace and elevation, and each violation provokes
suffering. Suffering enters into the depths of the be-
ing and eliminates the germs of evil. It prolongs its
action, and returns again and again until all unworthy
qualities develop into good and vibrate in unison with
divine force. But in the pursuit of this great work,
the compensations are reserved for the soul. Joys,
affections, periods of repose and happiness, alternate
in the chaplet of lives with existences of strife, ran-
som, and reparation. So all is arranged with an art
and a science and a beauty infinite in the work of
Providence. During his course, man in his weakness
and ignorance often transgresses the law — hence his
trials, his infirmities, and material servitude. But as
soon as he is enlightened, as soon as he learns to put
his actions in harmony with universal law, he is less
and less exposed to adversity. Our acts and our
thoughts translate themselves into vibratory move-
ments, and their centre of emission, by the frequent
repetition of these acts and thoughts, is transformed
little by little into a powerful generator of good or evil.
The being thus clarifies itself by the nature of the
energies of which it is the centre. But while good
forces destroy themselves by their own efforts as they
return to their centre and are transformed into un-
happy consequences, the evil being is forced like all
others to evolve, and the vibrations of his acts and
thoughts return to him, oppressing him, and forcing
on him, soon or late, the necessity of reforming him-
self. This phenomenon explains itself scientifically

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 217

by the correlation of forces, the vibratory synchronism
which leads always from effect to cause.

This fact is demonstrated in times of epidemics and
contagious maladies. It is always the persons whose
vital condition harmonises with the morbid causes in
action who are affected, while those with strong wills
and devoid of fear are generally immune. So it is in
the mind order. Thoughts of hate and vengeance,
desire to injure, coming from outside cannot act on us
or influence us unless they encounter in us similar im-
pulses which vibrate in unison with them. If these are
not found, they return to the one projecting the evil
thoughts, to strike him in his turn, whether in the
present or the future, somewhere in the course of his
destiny.

The law of the repercussion of acts has been some-
thing mechanic and automatic in appearance. Never-
theless, when it becomes a question of great expiations,
of sorrowful reparations, great spirits intervene to
regulate and accelerate the march of souls in evolution.
Their hour is exercised particularly at the hour of
reincarnation, in order to guide souls in their choice
and to determine the best and most favourable condi-
tions for the healing of their moral maladies, and to
aid them to ransom anterior faults. We must not think
that every trial of humanity is the result of past sins.
All those who suffer are not forced to it as an expia-
tion of evil deeds. Many are simply spirits eager for
progress who have chosen painful lives of labour for
the moral benefit to be so obtained. It is, however, in
general the undeveloped soul ignorant of the law of

218 LIFE AND DESTINY

harmony which encounters the greatest suffering.
Gradually he must re-establish the law of equilibrium,
and must learn that he reaps exactly what he sows.

By continual actions each being refines or material-
ises his etheric envelope, the vehicle of the soul, the
instrument which is used for all manifestations, and
upon which is moulded the physical body at each birth.
We have already seen that our situation in the next
plane of existence results from repeated actions which
our thoughts and wills have exercised constantly on
the etheric double. Following their nature and object,
they transform it little by little into a subtle and radi-
ant organism open to the highest perceptions, to the
most delicate sensations of space, capable of vibrating
harmoniously with elevated spirits. In an inverse
sense, they make it an opaque gross form, chained to
the earth by its materiality, or even condemned to
lower regions. We can understand how continual
action of the thought and the will, exercised for cen-
turies of existence upon the etheric body, creates and
develops physical tastes as well as our intellectual and
moral qualities.

Our tastes for each kind of work, our ability, our
dexterity in all things, these are the result of immea-
surable mechanical actions accumulated and registered
by the subtle body, and the memory of them is en-
graved on the subconscious mind. At rebirth these
abilities are transmitted by a new education to the
external consciousness and material organs. Thus is
explained the remarkable and superior ability of many
natural musicians which surprises the world. It is the
same with the moral faculties and virtues, and all the

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 219

riches the soul acquires in long cycles of time. Genius
is an immense effort of the intellectual order, and
holiness has been conquered by secular strife against
the passions and inferior attractions.

Every time that we accomplish a good or generous
action, or do a work of charity and devotion, or make
a sacrifice, do we not feel a sense of exaltation? Some-
thing expands within us, and a flame is kindled which
revivifies the depths of our nature. This is not illu-
sionary; the spirit is radiated by every altruistic
thought, by every act of unselfish love. If these
thoughts and acts multiply and increase and accumu-
late, the man will find himself transformed at the end
of his earthly existence. The soul and its etheric en-
velope will have acquired an intense power of radia-
tion. If the thoughts are bad, the acts culpable, then
these wrong habits produce a contraction of the spir-
itual being, and charge it with gross and dark fluids.

Violence, cruelty, murder, and suicide produce
results which return birth after birth on the material
body in the form of nervous maladies, deformity, and
madness. Impure lives, drunkenness, debauchery, and
self-indulgence in luxury, produce in future lives weak-
ness and lack of vigour, health, and beauty. The
human being who to-day is abusing his vital forces
by wrong habits is preparing a miserable existence for
himself in a future incarnation.

Sometimes the reparation is effected by a long life
of suffering, which destroys in him the causes of the
evil; again it may be effected in a short, troubled life
with a tragic death. A mysterious attraction some-
times brings together a crowd of people to a given

220 LIFE AND DESTINY

point, that they may expiate in a collective death past
conditions, as in great catastrophes on sea or land.
Short lives are often the complement of preceding ex-
istences, where the individual, by his excesses or other
abuses, abridged his normal time on earth. But other
causes enter into the death of infants; that is some-
times given as an educating trial for the parents and
for the incarnating spirit. Sometimes it is simply
a false entrance on the stage of life from physical
causes, or the fault of adaptation to the etheric fluids.
In these cases the incarnation is repeated in the same
environment under more favourable conditions.

To assure the refining of the moral nature, there is
a discipline of the thoughts to establish, and a hygiene
of the soul to follow, as there is a physical hygiene to
observe for the maintenance of the health of the body.
We see that the constant action of the thought and
wifl on the etheric body produces absolutely just
results. Each receives the imperishable fruits of his
past and present. This fruit is not the effect of outside
causes, but of interior ones : a chain which produces
in us pain and joy, effort and success, fault and chas-
tisement. It is in the intimate secrecy of our thoughts
and in the full light of our actions that we must seek
the efficient cause of our present and future situations.

We are placed according to our merits, in the envi-
ronment created by our former thoughts and acts. If
we are unhappy, it is because we have not become en-
lightened enough to play a better role. But our condi-
tion will ameliorate as soon as we know how to awaken
in ourselves a disinterested love of justice and truth.

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 221

To perfect the being, to unceasingly embellish the
inner nature, to augment its value and construct the
edifice of the consciousness — such is the aim of evolu-
tion. Each one of us possesses that particular pri-
mordial genius spoken of by the Druids, a realisation
of special forms of divine thought. God has placed
in the depths of the soul germs of faculties powerful
and varied. The soul is called upon to develop above
all others one special form of genius, until it is brought
to its highest excellence. These multiple aspects of
intelligent wisdom and beauty are eternal. Music,
poetry, eloquence, invention, prevision of the future
and hidden things, the gifts of education, the power to
heal, are some of the innumerable forms. In project-
ing the human entity, the divine thought impregnates
that one of these forces assigned particularly to the
soul in the vast universal concert.

The mission of the being, his destiny, his actions in
the general evolution, grow more and more precise,
and from being latent and confused become accen-
tuated and clearly defined in the measure that he
climbs the immense spiral. The inspirations that he
receives from on high respond to those in his charac-
ter. According to his needs and his appeals will he
hear in his own depths the divine melody. It is so
God, by the infinite variety of contrasts, causes the
great harmony to vibrate in nature and in the breast of
humanity. If the soul abuses these gifts, or applies
them to evil purposes, if it entertains vanity or pride,
it must in expiation be reborn in an organism power-
less to manifest them. It will live an unknown genius,
humiliated among men, long enough for sorrow to lift

222 LIFE AND DESTINY

it above the excesses of its own personality, and to
permit it to take a sublime flight toward its ideal.

Oh, you who peruse these pages, elevate your
thoughts and your resolutions to the high tasks which
fair to you. The road to the Infinite opens before you,
sown with inextinguishable marvels. Wherever your
flight is directed, subjects for study will await you,
with inexhaustible sources of joy and beauty. Always
are there unsuspected horizons, succeeding horizons
known. All is beauty in the divine work, and in your
ascension it is reserved for you to enjoy innumerable
aspects smiling or terrible, from the delicate flower
to the flamboyant stars: and to wait at the unfolding
of worlds and humanities. At the same time, you will
feel your understanding of celestial things grow, and
there will awaken in you an ardent desire to perpetuate
God — to plunge in Him, in His light. His love. In
God our source — our essence — our life!

Human intelligence cannot describe the futures
presented, the ascension perceived. Our spirit, shut
in a perishable organism, cannot therein find the neces-
sary resources to express these splendours. The soul,
with its profound intuitions, has the sense of infinite
things in which it will participate, and to which it
aspires. It seeks in vain to express them in feeble
human words ; in vain to translate those eternal truths
in the poor language of earth. But the evolved con-
sciousness perceives the subtle radiations of the supe-
rior life. A day will come when the soul will dominate
time and space, and a century will be no more for it
than an instant, and with a flash of thought it will
crown the summits of Heaven. Its subtle organism,

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 223

refined by thousands of lives, will vibrate to every
breeze, to every voice, to all the appeals of immensity.
Its memory will plunge into vanished ages, and it will
revive at will all that it has lived, and call to it, or
join all the cherished souls who have partaken of its
joys and sorrows. For all affections of the past are
found in the life of space, and new ties are formed,
binding us closer and closer in a more powerful and
perfect communion.

Believe, love, hope! man my brother, and then act.
Apply yourself and put into your work the reflections,
the thoughts, and the aspirations of your heart —
the joys and certitudes of your immortal soul. Com-
municate your faith to the intelligent minds which
surround you, that they may be able to second your
efforts for the uplifting of the world and the opening
of a way for the evolution of the spirits. By and by
will come science, virile and renewed, no longer the
science of prejudices, routines, and worn-out methods,
but a science open to all kinds of research, to all inves-
tigations, the science of the Invisible and the Beyond.
It will come to fertilise understanding, to enlighten
intelligence and to fortify conscience. Faith in the
survival of the soul stands upon the rock of experience
and defies criticism.

An art purer and more idealistic, illumined by the
light that never dies, will come to vivify the spirit
of earth. It will be the same with religious beliefs
and systems. In the flight of thought, to lift truths
from their relative order to the order superior, they
will approach, join, and mingle, making of the multiple
faiths of the past, hostile or dead, a living faith which

»24. LIFE AND DESTINY

will unite humanity in adoration and prayer. Work
with all the power of your being to prepare this
evolution. Human activities must be used with more
intensity on this route of the spirit. After physical
humanity, m.ind humanity must be created — after the
body, the soul. That which has been conquered by
material energy has been lost in deeper knowledge and
revelation of inner senses. Man has triumphed over
the visible world ; now it remains for him to conquer
the interior world, and to know the secrets of his
splendid future.

Instead of arguing, actl Discussion is vain — criti-
cism sterile, but action is grand when it consists of
making yourself and others greater. Do not forget
that you work for yourself in working for others.
The universe, like your soul, renews itself, and is
perpetuated and embellished without cessation by work
and exchange. God is perfecting His work, enjoy it
as you rejoice in embellishing your own: your most
beautiful work is yourself. By constant efforts you
can make your intelligence and your consciousness an
admirable work which you will enjoy indefinitely.
From each fertile crucible of a life you should come
forth capable to perform new tasks and higher mis-
sions appropriate to your strength, and each one should
be a recompense and a joy.

So with your hands, day by day you fashion your
destiny. You will be reborn in such forms as your
desires construct, until your desires prepare for you
forms and organisms superior to those of earth. You
will be reborn in the environment you love, near to

THE LAWS OF REINCARNATION 225

the beings you have loved, and they will live with you
and for you, as you will live with and for them.

Then when your earthly evolution is finished, when
you have exalted your faculties and forces to a suffi-
cient degree of power, when you have emptied the
cup of suffering, bitterness, and felicity that the world
has offered you, and communed with all the aspects
of human genius, then you will mount with your dear
ones toward other more beautiful worlds — worlds of
peace and harmony.

Your lost earth envelope returning to dust, your
pure essence reaching the spiritual regions, your mem-
ory and your work still sustaining men in their strife
and trials, you can say with serene joy — "My life on
earth has not been sterile — my efforts have not been in

PART THIRD

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL
THE WILL

CHAPTER XIX

THE WILL

The study of life to which we have consecrated the
first part of this work has permitted us to perceive
the powerful reservoir of forces and energies hidden
within us. It has shown us that therein all our future,
in its limitless development, is contained in permanent
form. The causes of happiness are not found in de-
termined localities in space, but are in us — in the pro-
found mysteries of the soul.

It is this which confirms that grand doctrine of
Christ — "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you."
The same thought is explained in the Vedas in another
form : "You carry in yourself a sublime friend whom
you do not know." A Persian sage said, "You live
among stores filled with riches, and you die with
hunger at the door!"

All the great teachers are in accord on this subject.
It is in the life interior, in the expanding of our powers
and faculties and virtues, that the source of our felicity
lies. Look attentively into the depths of your being —
shut your mind to things external, and after having
habituated your psychic senses to the obscurity and
the silence, you will see the surging of unsuspected
lights, you will hear fortifying and consoling voices.
But there are few men who know how to read in
229

230 LIFE AND DESTINY

themselves, how to explore the retreats where sleep
inestimable treasures.

We waste our lives in banal things, on things
trifling. We walk the road of existence without
knowing ourselves and the psychic wealth whose value
would procure for us joys without number. There
are in each human soul two spheres of action and ex-
pression. One exterior to the other manifests the
personality — the ME with its passions, weaknesses,
and its insufficiency. As long as that regulates our
conduct, it is the inferior life, sown with trials and
troubles.

The other sphere interior, profound, immutable, is
at the same time the seat of consciousness, the source
of spiritual life, and the temple of God in us. It is
only when this centre of action dominates the other —
when its impulsions direct us, that our hidden powers
are revealed, and that the spirit affirms itself in all
its brilliant beauty. It is at these moments we hold
communion with "The Father who dwells in us," fol-
lowing the words of Christ — the Father who is the
source of all love, the principle of all great actions.

By one of these centres we perpetuate ourselves
in material worlds, where all is inferiority, incertitude,
and sorrow. By the other, we unite ourselves to celes-
tial worlds, where all is peace, serenity, and grandeur.
It is only by the growing manifestation of the divine
spirit in us that we can vanquish the selfish ME, and
associate ourselves freely with universal and everlast-
ing work, and create for ourselves a perfect and
happy life.

By what means can we put in movement those iote-

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 231

rior powers, and direct them toward a high ideal? By
the will. The persistent, tenacious use of this master
faculty enables us to control our natures, to dominate
material things, sickness and death.

It is by the will that we direct our thoughts toward
a precise goal. With most people thoughts float inces-
santly : their constant motion, their infinite variety,
allows small chance for the higher influences. One
must know how to concentrate, how to become in
accord with divine thought. Then is produced the
fertilising of the human soul by the divine spirit
which envelops it, and renders it capable of realising
its true tasks, and prepares it for the life in space,
by enabling it to perceive in this world a reflection of
its splendours. Superior spirits see and hear our
thoughts. Their own thoughts are penetrating har-
monies, while our own are often confused discords.
Let us then learn to use the will, and by it to unite
ourselves to all that is great, and to the universal
harmony whose vibrations surround space, wherein
worlds are rocked.

Will is the greatest of all powers — in its action it
is comparable to a magnet. The will to live, to develop
life in oneself, attracts new sources of vitality; it is
the secret of the law of evolution. The will acting on
the etheric body with intensity accentuates its vibra-
tions and prepares it for a higher degree of existence.

The principle of evolution is not in matter — it is
in will, whose action reaches to, and affects the invis-
ible order of things, as it affects the order visible and
material. The one is but the consequence of the other.

232 LIFE AND DESTINY

The highest principle, the motor of existence, is the
will. Divine will is the motive power of life universal.

What is important above all is to know that we
can realise all things in the psychic domain. No force
remains sterile when it is exercised constantly with
an aim conforming to right and justice. That is the
case with the will; it can act equally sleeping or wak-
ing, for the valiant soul which has fixed its aim pursues
it with tenacity in one as in the other phase of life,
and so determines a powerful current which silently
undermines obstacles.

The will is preservative as well as creative. Will,
confidence, optimism are sufficient in themselves often
to turn away evil, while discouragement and fear dis-
arm us and leave us without defence. The fact alone
that we look trouble in the face and affront it dimin-
ishes its effects. The will, it is power ! its prowess is
without limit.

The man conscious of himself feels his forces grow
with his efforts. He knows that all he desires that is
right and good must be inevitably accomplished in the
course of his existence when his thought accords with
divine law. And in this is verified the celestial words,
"Faith can move mountains." It is most consoling
to say, "I am a free intelligence. I made myself
through the ages — I built slowly my individuality and
my liberty, and now that I know the force and gran-
deur in myself, I lean upon them. I do not veil them
for one moment with doubt, and by them, with the aid
of God and my brothers in space, I will lift myself
above all difficulties — I will vanquish the evil in me —
I will detach myself from all that chains me to gross

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 233

things, that I may take my flight to happier worlds.
I see clearly the route which I am called to tread. It
leads on and on, without end. But a sure guide
conducts me along this infinite way. I have learned
to know myself, and I believe in God, and in this
immense road which opens before me I walk firmly
and zinll to grow greater, and to elevate myself with
the aid of my intelligence, the daughter of God, and to
attract to myself all the moral riches, and to partici-
pate in all the marvels of the cosmos. My will calls
to me — on — always on! Always more knowledge,
more divine life: and by it I will obtain the fullness
of existence and construct a better and more radiant
personality. I have for ever left behind me the
inferior and ignorant being unconscious of his value
and power. I assert the independence and dignity of
my consciousness, and reach my hand to all brothers,
saying, "Awaken from your slumber — tear off the
material veil which envelops you — learn to know
yourself and the powers in you, and learn to utilise
them." All the voices of nature and of space cry,
"Awake and march on! Hasten and conquer your
destiny!"

To you who believe yourselves spent by suffering
and disappointments, beings afflicted, hearts torn by
bitter trials and wounded by the sword of adversity,
I come and say : "There is no soul incapable of re-
birth, of new bloom. You have but to will, and there
will awaken in you unknown forces. Believe in your-
self— in your immortal destiny! Believe in God, the
sun of the sun — immense source of light, of which you
are a ray — a ray that can be illumined into a glorious

234 LIFE AND DESTINY

flame. Every man can be good and happy if he wills
it with energy and continuity. Divert your thoughts
without cessation toward this truth, that you can be-
come what you will to be, and zarill to be always better
and greater." It is the idea of eternal progress and
the means of realising it : it is the secret of mental
force, from which flow magnetic and psychic forces,
and when you have acquired this mastery of yourself,
you will no longer suffer from the evils of life, but
will have made of your ME inferior an individuality
high, stable, and powerful.

CHAPTER XX

THE INNER SOUL

Conscioitsness

Our preceding studies have demonstrated that the soul
is an emanation from the absolute. Our livel have
for their aim the increasing manifestations of what is
divine in us, and the growth of the empire it is called
upon to exercise over what is within and without, by
the aid of its latent energies. We can obtain this
result by divers methods — by science or by meditation,
by work or by moral force. The best procedure is to
utilise all those modes of application, each supplement-
ing the others. But the most efficacious method of all
is introspection, self-analysis. Add to this the break-
ing of material fetters, the union with God in spirit
and in truth, and the firm determination of self-im-
provement, and we will discover that all true religions,
all profound philosophies find their source in this same
formula. Outside of this, doctrines, cults, forms, and
practices are but exterior vestments which hide the
soul of religion from the eyes of the masses.

The soul is united to the great universal Soul of
which it is a vibration. This origin of the soul, this
participation in the divine nature, explains the irresist-
ible needs of the evolved spirit — an infinite need of
235

236 LIFE AND DESTINY

justice and light, and the need of sounding the depths
of all the mysteries, of slaking the thirst at an inex-
haustible living source whose existence it feels, but
which it has not been able to discover in the plan of
earth life. From this come our highest aspirations —
our desire to know, never satisfied — our love of the
beautiful and good. The sudden Hghts illumine from
time to time the shadows of existence and the presenti-
ment and prevision of the future — fugitive rays from
the abyss of time, which shine at times in certain in-
telligences.

Underneath the surface of the ME, the surface
agitated by desires, hopes, and fears, is the sanctuary
of the inner consciousness, calm, peaceful, and serene,
the principle of reason and wisdom of which most
men have no conception, save by blind impulses or
vague, half-perceived reflections. All the secret of
happiness and of perfection is in the identification and
fusion in us of the two psychic centres. The cause
of all our troubles and moral miseries is in their oppo-
sition. Professor William James in his Religious
Experiences, says : *'The conscious ME is one with a
greater AIE, from whence comes its deliverance. ( The
conscious ME reaches beyond the world of sensation
and reason into a world that can be called mystic or
supernatural. But this invisible world is not only
ideal — it produces effects in the sensible world. By
what right do the philosophers say that it is unreal?"

The consciousness is the centre of the personality
— the centre permanent and indestructible, which per-
sists and is maintained through all the transforma-
tions of the individual. It is not only the faculty of

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 237

perceiving but the sentiment of living, acting, think-
ing, and wishing. It is one and indivisible. The
plurality of its states prove nothing, as we have seen
in chapter iii. These states are successive — not simul-
taneous. The consciousness in its verity we know
presents several aspects. Physically it is confounded
with what science calls the sensorium : that is to say,
the faculty of concentrating the exterior sensations,
co-ordinating them — defining and seizing their causes,
and determining the effects. Little by little, through
evolution, these sensations multiply and refine, and the
intellectual consciousness awakes. From then onward
its development should have no limit, since it can
embrace all the manifestations of infinite life. Then
will the soul perceive itself, and will become at once
subject and object. In the multiplicity and variety of
its mental operations, it will always have consciousness
of what it thinks and wills.

The ME asserts itself and grows, and the personal-
ity is completed by the manifestation of the moral
or spiritual consciousness. The faculty of perceiving
effects in the obvious world is exercised in a more
elevated manner. It becomes possible to feel the
vibrations of a moral world, and to discover its causes
and laws. It is by these interior senses that the human
being perceives the facts and truths of a transcendental
order. The physical senses are deceitful — they dis-
tinguish only the appearance of things, and they would
be nothing without the sensorium, which grasps and
centralises the perceptions and transmits those to the
soul, which registers all, and disengages those which
are useful. But beneath this sensorium of surface is

238 LIFE AND DESTINY

another hidden one, which discovers and regulates the
things of the metaphysical world. It is this profound
unknown sense, unused by the majority of men, that
certain experimenters designate under the name of the
subliminal consciousness.

The greater part of the world's wonderful discover-
ies in the physical domain were ideas perceived first
through intuition. For long Newton had entertained
the thought of universal attraction, and then the fall
of an apple gave his physical senses the objective
demonstration. ( Just as there exists in us a physical
sensorium which puts us en rapport with material be-
ings and things, so certain men possess a spiritual
sense, by whose aid they penetrate the domain of in-
visible life. After death, as soon as the veil of flesh
falls, this sense becomes the only centre of our percep-
tions, and it is in the extension and the growth of this
spiritual sense that lies the law of our psychic evolu-
tion, the renovation of our being, and the secret of its
interior illumination.

By this law we detach ourselves from the relative
and illusionary, from all material contingencies, to
attach ourselves more and more to the immutable and
the absolute. So experimental science will always be
insufficient, in spite of the advantages it offers and the
conquests it realises, if it does not complete itself by
intuition and interior divination which enables us to
discover the essential truths. A marvel surpassing all
other exterior marvels is this marvel of ourselves.
It is this mirror hidden in man which reflects all the
universe.
' Those who are absorbed in the exclusive study of

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 239

phenomena, in the pursuit of changing forms and
exterior facts, often fail to Usten to the inner voices I
and to consult the faculties which develop in the 1
silence. That is why the things of the invisible, the *
impalpable and the divine, imperceptible to so many
scientific minds, are sometimes perceived by the igno-
rant. 'The most wonderful book is ourselves — the in-
finite is revealed therein. Happy is he who can read
it! All this domain remains closed to the positivist
who disdains the only key by which it can be opened. )
He tries to experiment by physical senses and material
instruments in that which escapes all objective meas-
ures. As a deaf man reasons about the rules of
melody — a blind man about optical laws — so this man,
with exterior senses, reasons about the worlds and
beings metaphysical.

Once let the interior senses awaken in him and
shine, then compared to the light which inundates
him, earthly science, so great to his eyes before, will
shrink into insignificance. After this light came to
Professor William James of Harvard, the eminent A
psychologist, he said : "All human experience in its
vital reality pushes me irresistibly to go outside of j
the narrow limits wherein science pretends to shut us. |
The real world is richer and more complex than that
of science."

Many men of science have come to the realisation
that the initial cause of sensation is not in the body, ^
but in the soul. The physical senses are but gross '
manifestations of inner hidden senses. Professor
Lombroso, of the University of Turin, wrote in The
Arena, June 1907: "Until 1890 I was the most opin-

240 LIFE AND DESTINY

ionated adversary of spiritualism ! Then, as a physi-
cian, I came in contact with the most curious phenom-
enon which had ever been presented to my attention.
I was called to attend a young daughter of a high
officer of my native town. This girl was suddenly
attacked by violent spasms, whose symptoms no science
of pathology or physiology could explain. She lost
for months all use of her eyes, but instead saw by her
ears : with bandaged eyes she read printed lines placed
against her ears! When a magnifying glass was
placed between her ears and the sun, she complained
that they were trying to burn her eyes and blind her !
So strange were the conditions surrounding this case,
that the idea came to me that perhaps spiritualism
would aid me to approach the facts." Gerard Harry,
the biographer of marvellous Helen Keller, said that
the intensity of her perceptions conferred upon her the
ability of reading thoughts.- The case of Helen Keller
proves that behind her atrophied organs of sight and
hearing there exists a consciousness long familiarised
with ideas of interior worlds. It is a demonstration
of anterior lives of the soul with all its perfect senses,
and surviving all corporeal disintegration.

To develop and refine the perception in a general
manner, we must first awaken the inner senses — the
spiritual. Mediumship demonstrates to us that there
are human beings more fully endowed with inner vis-
ion and hearing than are certain disembodied entities
whose evolution has been limited. ; The purer and
more disinterested are our thoughts and acts, the more
our spiritual life predominates over the physical, the
greater will be our inner development.

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 241

The veil which hides the etheric world grows thin-
ner and more transparent, and behind it the soul per-
ceives a marvellous ensemble of harmonies and
beauties. At the same time, it becomes more capable
of receiving and transmitting the revelations and the
inspirations from superior beings, for development
of the interior senses coincides generally with in-
creased powers of the mind, and to a more generous
attraction of etheric radiations.

Every plane of the universe, every circle of life,
corresponds to a number of vibrations which become
more subtle and rapid, in the measure that they ap-
proach the perfect life. The beings endowed with but
feeble powers of radiation cannot perceive the forms
of life superior to them. But each soul is capable of
obtaining, by will and education of the inner senses,
a power of vibration which will permit him to act upon
higher planes of consciousness. We find proofs of
the intensity of mental emanations in certain cases
of people dying, or in great danger, who telepathically,
at a great distance, impress the fact on several minds
at one time. In the Aniials of Psychic Science, for
October 1906, such a case is recorded. In truth, each
one of us could, if we would, communicate at any
hour with worlds invisible. We are spirits, and we.,
command matter and disengage ourselves from its
bonds, and live in the freer sphere of the supercon-
sciousness. For that one thing is necessary, viz. to
come mtb the spiritual life with a perfect concentra-
tion of all our inner forces. Then will we find our-
selves face to face with an order of things which
neither instinct nor experience nor reason can seize.

242 LIFE AND DESTINY

The soul in its expansion can break down the walls of
flesh which imprison it, and communicate by its new
senses with superior and divine worlds. That is what
the saints and the great mystics of all time and all
religions have done.

William James says : "The most important result of
research into trance conditions is the breaking down
of barriers between the individual and the absolute.
By this we establish our identity with the Infinite. It
is the eternal and triumphant experience of mysticism
that one finds in all climates and all religions. All
proclaim with the same accents and imposing unanim-
ity the oneness of man with God. These mystic states
of trance reveal depths of truth unsounded by reason.
They prove that the physical senses are but one mode
of consciousness. These mystic states are like windows
opening on a wide extended world!"

Spiritualism in a certain measure demonstrates the
justice of these words. Mediumship, under varied
forms, is the result of a psychic force which permits
the soul senses to enter in for a moment, and substitute
themselves in place of the physical senses, and to per-
ceive what is imperceptible to others. The spirit desir-
ing to communicate recognises at sight the organism
which in the medium will serve its purposes as an
intermediary, and acts accordingly. Sometimes it is
the word, or again penmanship by mechanic action of
the hand, or the brain when it is a question of medium-
istic intuition. In temporary incorporations it is en-
tire and full possession and adaptation of the spiritual

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 243

senses of the possessor to the physical senses of the
subject.

The most common faculty is clairvoyance, that is
to say, perception with closed eyes of what is passing
afar, whether in time or space — in the past or future.
It is the penetration of the spirit of the clairvoyant
into etheric centres where are registered facts accom-
pHshed or elaborated, plans of things to be. Often
the clairvoyant acts unconsciously, without preparation.
In such a case it is the result of a natural evolution,
but it can be produced, as spiritual vision can be.
Colonel de Rochas in his Successive Lives tells what
Mireille, his trance subject, said of the effect of mag-
netism upon her.

"When I am awake," she said, "my soul is chained
to my body, and I am like a person who is shut in a
tower, and sees the exterior world only through five
windows, each with a different coloured glass. When
you magnetise me, you deliver me from my chains,
and my soul, which aspires to elevate itself, mounts
a stairway of the tower, a stairway without windows,
and I see only you who are guiding me, until the mo-
ment when I arrive on the upper platform. There, my
sight is extended in all directions, with a most acute
sense which puts me en rapport with objects I could
not see through the windows of the tower."

Clairaudience can be acquired : the hearing of inte-
rior voices, which makes it possible to communicate
with spirits. Another manifestation of the inner senses
is the reading of registered events, photographed in a
certain manner on some antique or modern object.
For instance, a fragment of armour, a corner of a

244 LIFE AND DESTINY

sarcophagus, a stone from a ruin, evokes in the mind
of the seer a succession of pictures attached to the time
and place to which the object belonged. This is called
psychometry.

Many people have, without knowing it, the ability
to communicate by the inner senses with their friends
in space. Such are found among the very religious,
the idealists who have keenly suffered, and by a long
series of trials have become more subtly attuned -to
spiritual vibrations. Often human souls in distress
have appealed to me, soliciting counsel and advice from
the spirit worlds, which I could not procure for them.
To all such I recommend the following method :

Lean on yourself, in the solitude of the silence.
Elevate your thoughts toward God. Call upon your
spirit protector, the tutelary guide that Providence
attaches to each of us on the voyage of life. Interro-
gate this guide regarding the things which preoccupy
you : if they are worthy of his attention and free from
all low or petty interests, then listen attentively in
yourself. Listen and wait, and in a short time you
will hear in the depths of your consciousness the faint
echo of a distant voice, or rather you will feel the
vibrations of a mysterious thought which will dissipate
your doubts, drive away your anguish, and console
and comfort your heart. This is indeed one form of
mediumship, and not the least beautiful. All souls can
obtain and participate in this communion with the
living and the dead. It will one day be known and
used by all humanity.

We can indeed by this process correspond with the
divine plan. In difficult circumstances of my life,

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 245

when I hesitated before the task which had been con-
fided to me to spread abroad the consoHng truths of
spiritualism, making an appeal to the Supreme Entity,
I always heard sounding in me the earnest solemn
voice which dictated my duty. Clear and distinct, yet
this voice seemed to come from a far distance. Its
tender accents touched me even to tears.

Intuition is often but one form employed by the
inhabitants of the invisible worlds to transmit their
instructions. Sometimes they are the revelations of
the subconscious mind to the normal consciousness.
In the first case, we should regard them as inspira-
tion. Through mediumship the spirit impresses its
ideas on the mind of the transmitter, who furnishes
the language, according to the degree of his mental
development. Each medium gives the imprint of his
own personality to the inspiration received from above.
The more intellectual and cultured the medium, the
more faithfully are transmitted the high and pure com-
munications. The wide sheet of water cannot flow
through a narrow canal — so an inspiring spirit cannot
succeed in transmitting through the organs of a me-
dium conceptions for which no suitable channel is pre-
pared. By a great mental effort, under the excitation
of an exterior force, the medium might express con-
ceptions above her normal knowledge, but in the lan-
guage used would be found habitual phrases and
favourite terms, elevated and amplified at the same
time by the spiritual standard.

We see then what difficulties and obstacles the human
organism opposes to faithful transmission of spiritual

246 LIFE AND DESTINY

conceptions, and how long training is necessary to
render the mind adaptable to the uses of a disem-
bodied intelligence. (Not only to such use, but the
same may be said of those who seek to delve within
the profound depths of their own reincarnated souls
for high conceptions, like men of genius, poets, and
composers.) Often the medium is conscious in the
beginning of her trance state. But as soon as the
action of the spirit is accentuated, she finds herself
under the influence of a force which acts independently
of her will : a sort of weight oppresses her — her eyes
are veiled, and she passes under an invisible dominion.
Then the medium is but an instrument of reception and
transmission. As a machine obeys an electric current
which moves it, the medium obeys the current of
thought which envelops her.

In the exercise of intuitive mediumship in a waking
state, many are discouraged with the difficulty of
distinguishing their own ideas from those which are
suggested. It is nevertheless easy, we believe, to rec-
ognise the difference. The spiritually inspired ideas
emanate suddenly from an interior source and jet
forth spontaneously, while our own ideas are always
at our disposition, and occupy our intellect in a per-
manent manner. Not only do the inspired ideas surge
up as by enchantment, but they rapidly follow one
another, and are often expressed in an almost feverish
manner. Almost all authors, poets, and orators are
mediums at certain moments. They have the intuition
of occult assistance in their work. Thomas Paine
said : "There is no one who, being occupied with the
progress of the human mind, has not observed that

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 247

there are two distinct classes of ideas : those produced
in ourselves by reflection, and those which are precipi-
tated into our minds. I make a rule of welcoming with
politeness these unexpected visitors, and of determin-
ing with all possible care if they are worthy of atten-
tion. I declare that it is to these stranger guests I
owe all the knowledge I possess." Emerson said :
"Thoughts penetrate themselves into my intellect like
a ray of light shining into the darkness. The truth
comes to me, not alone by reason, but by intuition."

Walter Scott explained to his astonished friends the
rapidity with which he wrote the Bard of Avon, as fol-
lows: "My fingers worked independently of my
thought, and it was the same when I wrote Woodstock.
I had not the least idea that the story would develop
into a catastrophe in the third volume! Often when I
take my pen, it moves so fast, I am tempted to let it go
alone, to see if it will not write without my assistance."
Jean Jacques Rousseau recounts experiences of similar
sources of inspiration. The most extraordinary case
of mediumistic inspiration of modern times is that of
Andrew Jackson Davies. At the age of fifteen he be-
came celebrated in America for his ability to diagnose
sickness and prescribe remedies. He had at the age of
fourteen been magnetised by a Mr. Livingstone of
Poughkeepsie, who discovered the boy's astonishing
powers, and retired from business to associate with
him. A poor boy, able only to read, write, and com-
pute in simple numbers, he announced at the age of
eighteen that he was going to be the instrument of a
new and astonishing spiritual power, and he com-
menced by a series of conferences, which produced

248 LIFE AND DESTINY

considerable effect upon the scientific and religious
world of tliat day. Eminent men attended his confer-
ences, and his work, Divine Revelations of Nature,
was of so marvellous a nature, emanating from a
person of no education or experience, that it astounded
all classes of society. Other voluminous works fol-
lowed, and this young man, in the course of years,
dictated day by day, extraordinary and well-conceived
books treating of all the great questions of the day:
among them, "Science, and nature in all its ramifica-
tions," "Man in his numberless modes of existence,"
"God in His depths of love, wisdom and power." His
Mss. were often submitted to high intelligences, who
declared them most profound, and acknowledged the
impossibility of his having written them in his normal
state. The result of the life of this phenomenal person
was the revelation that the mind of man could com-
municate spiritually with spirits of the higher worlds,
and acquire knowledge from those spheres.

We have incidentally spoken of the method to fol-
low to develop the psychic senses. It consists in isolat-
ing oneself during certain hours of the day or night,
suspending the exterior senses, and putting away the
sights and sounds of outside life. This it is possible
to do, even in the most humble conditions, and in the
heart of the most common occupations. We must,
so to say, turn in upon ourselves, and in the calm
and tranquillity of our thoughts make a mental effort
to see and read the great mysterious book within. At
these moments, drive away every thought which is
light, trivial, and changing. Material preoccupations

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 249

create horizontal currents of vibrations which are
obstacles to the etheric radiations, and restrict our
perceptions. On the contrary, meditation and con-
templation and the constant effort toward the good and
beautiful form ascensional currents which establish a
rapport with the higher planes, and facilitate the pene-
tration in us of divine effluvia. By this exercise, re-
peated and prolonged, the inner being becomes little
by little illuminated, fertilised, and regenerated. This
work of development is long and difficult, and neces-
sitates more than one existence. It is never too soon
to begin. The good results will not fail to manifest
themselves. All that you lose in sensations of a lower
order you will gain in super-earthly perceptions, in
mental and moral equilibrium, and in the joys of the
spirit. Your inner senses will acquire an extraordinary
acuteness and delicacy. You will one day attain the .\
power of communicating with the higher spheres. The
reHgions have sought to attain these powers by com-
munion and prayer. But the prayers in use by many
churches are an ensemble of formulae learned and
repeated mechanically, and powerless to give the soul
the lofty flight necessary to establish the rapport with
superior realms. There must be an interior appeal, a
rigorous concentration and profound impulse, to attain
results. That is why we have always advocated the
improvised prayer — the cry of the soul which in its
love and faith flings all the forces accumulated within
it toward the object of its desire.

In place of inviting the spirits celestial by means of
invocation to descend to us, we learn in this manner
to free our souls and mount toward them. Meanwhile

260 LIFE AND DESTINY

certain precautions are necessary. The invisible world
is peopled with entities of all kinds, and he who pene-
trates there ought to possess sufficient perfection, and
to be inspired by sentiment high enough, to put him
above all the suggestions of evil. Above all, he should
conduct his researches under sure and safe guides. It
is by moral progress that one obtains the necessary
force to dominate the earth-bound spirits that often
seek to surround us. The full possession of ourselves,
and a tranquil and profound knowledge of the eternal
laws, will preserve us from dangers and delusions, and
at the same time will procure for us the means of con-
trolling the forces in action on the occult plane.

CHAPTER XXI

LIBERTY

Liberty is the necessary condition for the human soul,
which without it cannot build its destiny. It is in vain
that the philosophers and theologians have argued this
question from all points of view. They have obscured
it by their theories and sophisms, condemning human-
ity to servitude in place of conducting it to the light,
yet the idea is simple and clear. The Druids formu-
lated it in the early dawn of history, and expressed it
in these terms in the Triads: "There are three primi-
tive deities, viz. God, Light, and Liberty." At first
sight the liberty of man seems to be restrained in the
midst of a circle of fatalities which surround it — phys-
ical necessities, social conditions and interests or in-
stincts : but on considering the question more closely,
we see that this liberty is always sufficient to permit the
soul to break through the circle and escape the oppos-
ing forces. Liberty and responsibility are correlative
in man's being, and augment with his elevation. It is
the responsibility of the man which makes his dignity
and his morality : without it he would be but a blind
machine — a plaything of Fate ! Responsibility is estab-
lished by the testimony of the conscience which
approves or blames our actions.
251

252 LIFE AND DESTINY

The sensation of remorse is a more demonstrative
proof than all the arguments of philosophers. For
each spirit, however slightly evolved, the law of duty-
shines like a lighthouse tlirough the fogs of passions
and self-interest. Every day we see men in the most
humble situations accepting the hardest trials rather
than lower themselves, or commit unworthy actions.
So if human liberty is restrained, it is at least on the
way to perpetual development, for prayer means
nothing but the extension of free will in the individual
and in collective society. The strife between matter
and spirit is precisely for this -end — to liberate the
spirit and to yoke the blind forces. Intelligence and
will reach the place where they predominate over
what we call fatality. Free will is then a flowering
of the personality and consciousness. To be free, we
must zvill to be free, and make the effort to become so
in freeing ourselves from the servitude of ignorance
and base passions, and substituting the empire of reason
for that of sensation. That can only be obtained by
education, and development of the higher faculties:
physical liberation by the limitation of the appetites,
intellectual liberation by the conquest of truth, and
moral liberation by the search for virtue. It is the
work of centuries, but at every degree of ascension,
in the midst of the good and evil things of life, besides
the ensemble of causes and effects, there is always a
place for the free will of man to exercise itself.

How shall we conciliate free will with divine pre-
science? Before this anticipated knowledge that God
has of all things, can one affirm human liberty ? Seem-

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 253

ingly complex in appearance, this question which has
caused floods of ink to flow, is nevertheless simple in
solution, but man does not love simple things; he pre-
fers the obscure and complicated, and will accept truth
only after having exhausted all forms of error.

God, whose infinite science embraces all things,
knows the nature of each man, and the tendencies and
impulses which he will be liable to exhibit. We our-
selves, knowing the character of a person, can easily
foresee whether under certain circumstances he will
decide to act for self-interest or for duty. Resolutions
are not born from nothing, but come from a series of
anterior causes and effects. God knows each soul in
its most hidden recesses, and can with certitude deduct
from His knowledge of this soul the determination it
will, in its freedom, take. This prevision of our acts
does not give them birth. If God did not foresee them,
they would nevertheless have their free course. It is
herein that human liberty and free will are reconciled
and combined, when we consider the problem in the
light of reason. The circle in which is exercised the
will of man is besides too restrained to interfere with
divine action whose effects move in their immensity,
without limit. The feeble insect lost in a comer of the
garden does not trouble the harmony of the ensemble,
or fetter the work of the divine gardener, by displac-
ing a few grains of sand.

The question of free will has a large importance and
grave consequences for the social order by its effect on
education, morality, justice, and legislation. It has
determined two opposing currents of opinion — the

254 LIFE AND DESTINY

negators of free will, and those who admit it with
restrictions. The argument of the fataHsts is, "Man is
under the control of his natural impulses, which dom-
inate him, and oblige him to wish and decide in one
direction more than another, therefore he is not free."
The opposite school brings out the theory of inde-
terminate causes. Charles Renouvier has been its
most brilliant representative, and his ideas have been
confirmed by Wundt, Fouillee, and Boutroux in philo-
sophical works, yet, in spite of the theologians, until
now the question has remained practically insoluble.
It could not be otherwise, since each one of the systems
argued from the inexact idea that human beings had
but one life to live. The subject assumes a wholly
different aspect if we enlarge the circle and consider
the problem in the light of the doctrine of rebirths. We
then see how each being gains his free will in the course
of the evolutions he must accomplish. Supplied with
instinct at first, which gradually gives place to reason,
our liberty is very limited in our first stations, and
during all the period of our early education. As soon
as the mind gains an idea of law our free will expands.
Always at each step in our ascension, and in hours of
important resolutions, it will be assisted, guided, and
counselled by the great intelligences, the wiser and
more enlightened spirits. Free will, the liberty of the
soul, is exercised, above all, at the hour of reincarna-
tion. In choosing the family and the environment, it
knows in advance what trials await it, but it compre-
hends equally the necessity for these trials, to develop
its qualities, eliminate its defects, and disintegrate its
prejudices and vices. These trials may be the effect

,THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 255

of a bad past, which it must repair, and it accepts
them with resignation and confidence, for it knows
that its great brothers in space will not abandon it in
difficult hours. The future appears to it then, not in
detail, but with all its salient points, or in the measure
that this future is the result of anterior actions. These
faults represent the part of "fatality" or "predestina-
tion" that certain men claim to see in all lives. They
are simply the reflection of distant causes. In reality,
nothing is fatal, and whatever the troubles and respon-
sibilities we encounter, we can always modify our fate
by works of devotion, of goodness and charity, and
sacrifices to duty.

The problem of free will is of great importance from
the judicial point of view. It is difficult to be exactly
just in all the individual cases which come before a
tribunal for preservation of social order. This can
only be done by establishing the degree of evolution of
the. culprits. But human justice, little versed in these
matters, rests blind and imperfect in its arrests and
decisions. Often the wicked and culpable is in reality
but a young ignorant spirit in whom reason has not
had time to ripen. Duclos said : "Crime is often the
result of false judgment." That is why there should
be established penalties of a nature to compel the
oflfender to enter into himself for instruction, light,
and reform. Society should correct without passion
or hate, else it renders itself culpable. Each soul is
equivalent to its point of departure. They differ by
their infinite degrees of advancement : the one young,
the other old — diversely developed according to their
age. It would be unjust to demand of an infantile

256 LIFE AND DESTINY

mind merits equal to those one expects from a mature
mind which has learned much. A great difference
exists in their responsibilities.

A human being is not really ripe for liberty until
the universal exterior laws become interior and a part
of his consciousness, by the fact of his evolution. The
day when he is penetrated with the law, and makes it
the rule of his actions, he attains the moral point where
man possesses, dominates, and governs himself. From
that hour he no longer needs social restraints or
authority to direct him. It is the same with collective
humanity. People are not truly free and worthy of
liberty until they have learned to obey this law, eternal
and universal, which emanates neither from the power
of a caste or the will of crowds, but from a higher
power. Without the moral discipline which each indi-
vidual should impose on himself, public liberty is but
a mirage. It gives the appearance, but not the man-
ners of a free people. Society remains exposed by its
violence, its passions and its appetites, to all the com-
plications and all the disorders of earth life.

All which lifts us toward the light, lifts us toward
liberty, that flowers freely and beautifully in the
higher life. The delayed and unconscious soul is kept
down under the weight of material fatalities, while
just in the measure it gains freedom, it lifts itself
above these trials and comes closely to the divine.

In general terms it may be said that each man
arrives at the state of reason and responsibility accord-
ing to the degree of his advancement. I leave aside
the case of one who under the empire of a physical or
moral cause, malady or obsession, has lost the use of

THE rOWERS OF THE SOUL 257

his faculties. We know that in the strife between the
two, the strongest souls triumph always. Socrates said
that he had felt germinate in him, and had overcome,
most perverse impulses. In this philosopher were two
currents, one flowing toward evil — one toward good.
It was the latter which carried him on its breast.

There are, too, secret causes working upon us.
Often intuition combats reason, and in an unforeseen
manner, sudden profound impulses determine our
actions. This is not a negation of free will. It is the
action of the soul in its wisdom, intervening in the
course of our destiny. Or it may, again, be the influ-
ence of our invisible guides, or the intervention of an
intelligence who looks from afar, and seeks to snatch
us away from inferior contingencies and lift us to
higher altitudes. But in each case it is ever our own
will which accepts or rejects, and makes the final de-
cision. To sum up — man is the artisan of his own
liberation. He attains a state of complete liberty only
by int^ior culture and the use of his hidden powers.
Obstacles accumulating on his route are in the end but
means of compelling him to put in action all his latent
powers, until he conquers every material difficulty.
We are all united, and the liberty of each one leads
toward the liberty of others, and in freeing himself
from ignorance and passion each man helps to free
those of his own kind. Everything which contributes
toward dissipating night and letting in the light of
intelligence, renders humanity freer and more con-
scious of its duties and powers. Then let us elevate
ourselves to consciousness of our role and aim, and we
will be free. In place of being passive creatures, bent

258 LIFE AND DESTINY

under the yoke of matter, a prey to inertia and incerti-
tude, let us free our souls from the chains of fatality
and display to the world the superiority of our acquired
qualities.

CHAPTER XXII

THOUGHT

Thought is creative. Just as eternal thought is pro-
jected ceaselessly in space, and creates beings and
worlds, so the thought of the writer, orator, poet, and
artist sends forth continual floods of ideas, works, and
conceptions, which will influence and impress for good
or bad, immense human crowds.

The mission of the workers in the domain of thought
is at once great, formidable, and sacred. It is great
and sacred because thought dissipates the shadows on
the path, solves the enigmas of life, and traces the route
of humanity. It is the flame which warms souls and
illumines the deserts of existence : formidable also,
because its efforts are powerful for descent as well as
for ascension. Sooner or later, every product of the
mind returns to its author with all its consequences,
bringing in its train either suffering and a diminution
of liberty, or inner satisfaction and elevation of the
being. The present life is but a mere episode in our
long history, a fragment of a long chain winding
through immensity. Constantly falling on us, in fogs
or sunshine, are the results of our works.

The human soul pursues its way, surrounded with
an atmosphere radiant or sombre, and peopled with
259

260 LIFE AND DESTINY

creations of its thoughts. There in the Hfe of space
lies its glory or its shame.

To give thought all its force and its amplitude,
nothing is more efficacious than the study of great
problems. To express freely we must first feel power-
fully— to enjoy the high and profound sensations,
we must go to the source from which flows all life,
harmony, and beauty. All that is noble and elevat-
ing in the domain of intellect emanates from the one
eternal source of living thought. The higher is the
flight of the mind toward this great cause, the more
radiant will be the light it sees, the more intoxicating
the joys it feels, the more powerful the forces it will
acquire. After each flight the thought redescends
vivified, clarified, to the earthly fields to resume the
tasks through which it will find greater growth, for
it is labour which makes the beauty and splendour of
an accomplished work. Lift up your eyes, O thinker
— O poet! send up your appeal of aspiration and
prayer! Before the changing reflections of the sea,
at the sight of white mountain summits, or the in-
finite stars, have you not felt hours of intoxicating
ecstasy? When the soul was plunged in a divine
dream, and when inspiration came like a messenger
from Heaven, have you not heard in the depths of
your soul the vibration of murmurs from invisible
worlds preparing your thought for supreme intui-
tions? In each poet, artist, or writer lies the germs
of the mediumistic power, unsuspected and unde-
veloped, waiting to blossom. By them th6 worker
becomes through his thought en rapport with the in-

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL ^61

exhaustible source from which he receives his part
of the revelation. This revelation, appropriate to the
order of his talent, he has for his mission — to express
to the world through his works radiations of divine
truths. It will be in the frequent and conscious com-
munion with the world of spirits that the geniuses of
the future will obtain the elements for their work.
From now, the penetration into the secrets of this
double life is going to offer man assistance and light
which the failing religions are no longer able to pro-
cure for him. In all domains this spiritual idea is
going to fertilise thought and work. Science will
owe it the discovery of incalculable forces and the
conquest of an occult universe. It will owe to it a
complete renovation of its theories and its methods.
Philosophy will gain from it a more extended and
more exact knowledge of human personality. The re-
ligions of the future will find in spiritual research the
proofs of the survival of the soul and the rules of
life in the Beyond, at the same time with the principle
of close union toward the common Father,

Art under all forms will discover in it inexhaustible
sources of inspiration and emotion. The man of the
people, in his hours of lassitude, will find moral
courage in it, and he will comprehend that the soul
can grow by humble labour as well as by loftier
tasks, and that no duty is negligible — that envy is
sister to hate — and that often one is less happy in
luxury than in mediocrity. In it the sceptic will find
faith, the discouraged hope and virile resolutions; all
those who suffer, the profound idea that a law of
justice presides over all things: that there is not in

262 LIFE AND DESTINY

any domain effect without a cause, no victory with-
out combat — no triumph without hard efforts, and
that above all reigns perfect and majestic law, and
that no soul is abandoned by God, of whom it is a
part.

Thus will operate slowly the renovation of human-
ity, still so young, so ignorant of itself, but whose
desire will carry it, little by little, toward the com-
prehension of its tasks and its aims at the same time
that its field of exploration and its perspective enlarge.
With each step gained, seeing and desiring more,
feeling the centre within itself vivified and enlivened,
it will see also the shadows disappearing — the sombre
enigmas of the world resolving — and the way bright-
ened by powerful rays of light. With the shadows
will vanish, little by little, narrow prejudices, vain
terrors, and apparent contradictions of the universe.
Harmony will reign and man will feel his heart and
his thoughts enlarged. He will advance anew toward
the end of his work, yet his work has no end — for
each time humanity lifts itself toward a new ideal
which it believes to be the supreme ideal, it has in
truth attained only to the system corresponding to
its own degree of evolution. But each time, also,
from every effort made toward higher ideals will
flow new forces and new pleasures, and it will find
in the joy of life and progression, which is the law
of being, a more intimate communion with the uni-
verse, and a more complete possession of goodness
and beauty.

O writers, artists, poets, you whose numbers in-
crease daily, whose productions multiply like a rising

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 263

tide, often beautiful in form, but weak at the founda-
tion— superficial and material, what talents you ex-
pend on mediocre results ! what vast efforts are wasted
on evil passions, on inferior and unworthy interests!
While vast and magnificent horizons surround you,
while the marvellous book of the universe and the soul
lies open before you, while genius invites you to noble
tasks which will fertilise the advancement of human-
ity, you rest contented with puerile and sterile studies,
with work which blunts the conscience, and wherein
the spirit swoons and languishes in the exaggerated
cult of impure instincts.

Who among you will give the world the epic of the
soul striving for the conquest of its destiny in the
immense cycle of the ages — its sorrows and its joys,
its descent into the abysses of life, its rising on wings
of aspiration into the light — its immolations and holo-
causts which are ransoms for past acts — its redeeming
missions and its growing participation in divinity?
Which one of you will give to earth the powerful har-
monies of the universe — the gigantic harp vibrating
under the thought of God — the song of worlds, the
eternal rhythm which rocks the cradle of the stars and
the humanities ! Or the slow elaboration, the power-
ful gestation of the conscience through inferior stages
— the laborious construction of an individuality, a
moral being? Who will tell of the conquests of life
— life always growing greater, more serene, more il-
lumined by rays from on high? The march from
summit to summit, the pursuit of happiness — of power
and pure love? Who will sing the work of man —
immortal toiler, lifting through his doubts, anguish,

264. LIFE AND DESTINY

and tears, the sublime and harmonious edifice of his
thinking consciousness and personaUty — always on-
ward— always upward — always higher? Who will
teach us these things? The inner voices, and the
voices from Beyond! Learn to open and turn the
leaves and read the book hidden in you — the book
of being. It will tell you what you have been, and
what you zmll be : it will teach you the greatest of
mysteries — the creation of the self, by constant effort
and sovereign action, which, in the silence of your
thoughts, awakens your genius, and stirs you to paint
beautiful pictures, sculpture ideal forms, compose har-
monious symphonies, and write glorious poems. All
is there in you — around you : all is speaking, all is
vibrating — the visible and the invisible : all is chant-
ing the glory of life, the intoxication of thought, of
creation, of association with the work universal :
splendour of seas and starry heavens, majesty of white
rnountain peaks, perfume of flowers, lustre of rays,
mysterious voices of the forests, melodies of earth
and space, the voices of the Invisible which speak in
the silence of the evening: the voice of conscience,
that echo of the voice divine — all are teaching and
revealing to him who knows how to listen, compre-
hend, think, and act. Then above all, the supreme
vision, the vision without forms, the incarnated
thought, the final harmony of the essence of the law
which unites all things, from our inner souls to the
farthest star in its resplendent unity.

And the chain of life, winding into infinity — a
ladder of spiritual power which carries to God the
appeals of man by prayer, and brings to man the

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 265

response of God by inspiration! And now one more
question. Why, in the midst of the immense labour
and abundant intellectual production which character-
ises our epoch, do we find so few notable works and
great conceptions? Because we have ceased to see
divine things with the -eyes of the soul, because we
have ceased to believe and love! Let us then return
to the celestial and eternal source; it is the only remedy
for our anaemic morality. Let us turn our thoughts
to things solemn and profound. May science illu-
minate and complete by the intuitions of conscious-
ness the higher faculties of the mind. Modern spirit-
ualism will lend its aid.

CHAPTER XXIII

DISCIPLINE OF THOUGHT AND REFORM OF CHARACTER

We have said that thought is creative. It not only
acts about us, influencing others for good or ill, but
above all, it acts in us. It generates our words and
our actions, and by them constructs each day the
glorious or miserable edifice of our life present and
to be. We fashion our soul and its envelope by our
thoughts. They produce forms and images which
are printed on the subtle material of which our etheric
body is composed. So little by little our life is peo-
pled with forms frivolous or austere, gracious or ter-
rible, gross or sublime; and the soul shines with
beauty, or grows ugly and repulsive. There is no
subject more important than the study of thought,
its powers and its action. It is the initial cause of
our elevation or our abasement. It prepares all the
discoveries of science, all the marvels of art, but also
all the misery and.shamefulness of humanity.

Following its given impulse, it founds or destroys
institutions, empires, and characters. Man is only
great, save through his thoughts, for by them his works
shine and are perpetuated through the centuries.
Psychical research, better than all anterior doctrines,
permits us to seize and comprehend all the force of
the projection of thought. We see it acting in spiritual
266

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 267

phenomena, which it facilitates or fetters. Its role in
experimental seances is always a considerable one.
Telepathy has demonstrated to us that minds can
influence one another at a distance. This is the
means which is employed by the humanities in space,
to communicate among themselves across sidereal im-
mensities. In all fields of social activities, in all the
domains of worlds visible or invisible, the action of
thought is sovereign. It is no less so in ourselves,
and upon ourselves, rebuilding and modifying con-
stantly our inner nature. The vibrations of our
thoughts and words, reiterated in a uniform manner,
drive from us the elements which cannot vibrate in
harmony, and attract the elements which accentuate
the tendencies of the being. Often unconsciously a
work is elaborated — a thousand mysterious workmen
labour in the shadows. In the depths of the soul
an entire destiny is outlined, and the hidden diamond
is polished or marred. If we meditate upon elevated
subjects, on duty — sacrifice — wisdom — love — our be-
ing is impregnated, little by little, with the quality of
our thoughts. That is why ardent, improvised prayer
— the uprising of the soul to infinite powers — has so
much virtue. In this solemn dialogue with the being
and its cause, an influx from on high possesses us, and
new senses are awakened. The comprehension and
compensations of life augment in us, and we feel bet-
ter than we can express the gravity and grandeur of
the most humble existences. Prayer — the communion
by thought with the spiritual universe, is the reach-
ing of the soul toward beauty and the eternal verities :
it is, for an instant, entrance into spheres of real life

268 LIFE AND DESTINY

— life superior which has no Hmit. If, on the con-
trary, our thoughts are inspired by evil desires, by
passion, jealousy, and hate, the images which they
create accumulate in our etheric bodies gross and dark
fluids. So we can at will make in ourselves light or
shadow. All the communications from the Beyond
tell us this. We are what we think, if we think with
force and persistence and will. But almost always
our thoughts pass constantly from one subject to an-
other, rarely do we think for ourselves, but instead
reflect the thousand incoherent thoughts of the en-
vironment where we dwell.

Few men know how to think : how to drink from
profound sources — from the great reservoir of inspira-
tion which each one carries within himself — even the
most ignorant. They make for themselves an en^
velope peopled with ephemeral forms. Their minds
are like a building open to every passer-by. Rays of
light are mingled with shadows in perpetual chaos.
It is the incessant combat between duty and passion,
where passion usually wins. Before all other things,
to learn how to control our thoughts is most impor-
tant; how to discipline and turn them in one direction
toward a noble and dignified goal.

The control of thought leads to the control of
actions; for if one is good the other will be equally
so, and harmony will regulate our lives. If our acts
are good and our thoughts are bad, and we carry in
ourselves a false centre, sooner or later the influence
of our evil thoughts will fall fatally upon us. Some-
times we see a striking contradiction between the
thoughts, writings, and actions of certain men, and

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 269

we are led to doubt the good faith and sincerity of
their utterances. But often the acts of these men
are but the bHnd impulsion of thoughts and forces
accumulated in past lives. Their high aspirations pre-
sented in their thoughts and words will be realised
in future actions. Without the theory of successive
lives, such contradictions of character are inexplicable.

It is good to live in contact by thought with writers
of genius, the veritably great authors of all times and
all countries; to read and meditate on their works,
to impregnate the being with the substance of their
souls. The radiations of their thoughts will awaken
in us similar efforts and lead to modifications of our
character through the impressions received. It is well
to choose our reading with care, then to let our
thoughts ripen it until we can assimilate the quintes-
sence. In general we read too much — too hastily— and
medkate noTat a^l ! It is better to read less and reflect
more on what we read. It is a sure method of fortify-
ing our intelligence to gather the fruits of wisdom and
beauty which we find in good books : in that as in
all things, the beautiful attracts and generates the
beautiful, even as goodness attracts happiness, and evil
suffering. In silent, reflective study lies development
of the thoughts. The greatest works are elaborated
in the silence. In meditation the mind is concentrated :
it turns toward the grave and serious side of things:
the light spiritual world inundates it.

About the thinker, invisible great spirits come, eager
to inspire him. It is in the half-light of tranquil hours,
or in the discreet shade of his study lamp, that they

270 LIFE AND DESTINY

can best enter into communication with him : every-
where and always an occult life mingles with ours.

Avoid noisy discussions, vain words, frivolous read-
mgj^read daily papers sparingly. Passing lightly as
they do from one subject to another, they render the
mind unstable. We live in a period of anaemic intel-
lectuality which is caused by the rarity of serious
study and the insufficient educative system : let us
attach ourselves to substantial works — to works which
can enlighten us on the profound laws of life and
facilitate our evolution. Little by little we will find
growing in us a greater intelligence and consciousness,
and our etheric body will shine with reflections of high
and pure thoughts. Because of the thousand exterior
objects which occupy it without cessation, the mind
rarely probes its own depths. Its surface, like that of
the sea, is often agitated, but beneath are regions that
the storms do not reach.

There lie those hidden powers which await our call
to appear. The appeal is made rarely, and man re-
mains ignorant of the treasures which repose in him.
It requires the shock of trouble and sorrow to make
him understand the fragility of exterior things and
to guide him toward the search of himself — toward
the discovery of his spiritual wealth. That is why
great souls become more noble and beautiful as their
sorrows become keener: with each new blow, they
have the consciousness of approaching a little nearer
to truth and perfection, and this thought is like a
bitter tonic. A new star has arisen in the heaven of
.their destiny — a star whose trembling rays penetrate

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 271

to the inner sanctuary of their being, illuminating
every hidden corner.

In minds of high intelligence and culture sorrow
sows rich seeds, and every grief is a blade from which
springs a harvest of virtue and beauty. At certain
hours of our lives — the death of a mother — the crush-
ing of an ardent hope — the loss of a loved one — each
time that one of the ties which bind us to this world
is broken, a mysterious voice cries from the depths
of our souls — a solemn voice which speaks to us of a
thousand laws more august and venerable than those
of earth, and an ideal world dawns on us. But the
voices of earth stifle this voice, and the human mind
falls again almost always into its doubts and its hesi-
tations, on the vulgar plane of earth existence.

There is no progress possible without attentive
self -analysis. We must watch over our impulsive
actions in order to know in what manner to improve
^rselves. First we must regulate the physical life
and reduce the material needs to the necessities, in
order to secure health of the body, that indispensable
instrument of our earthly role. Then comes the disci-
pline of the emotions and impulses, their domination
and utilisation as agents for the perfection of charac-
ter. We must learn the art of forgetfulness of self —
of the sacrifice of the lesser ME, and the elimination
of all selfishness. He only is truly happy in this life
who has learned self-forgetfulness. It is not enough
to believe and know — we must live our faith and
knowledge; we must penetrate our daily life with the
high principles we have adopted. We must habituate
ourselves to communicate by thought, will, and heart

J872 LIFE AND DESTINY

with the eminent spirits who have revealed themselves
to us — with the elite souls who have served as guides
for humanity. We must live with them in a daily-
intimacy, inspire ourselves by their views, and feel
their influence by that perception which develops our
rapport with worlds invisible.

Among these great souls it is good to choose one
who seems the most worthy of our admiration, and in
all difficult circumstances, where we oscillate between
two decisions, to ask ourselves what this great soul
would have done under similar circumstances. We
can construct, little by little, upon this model, an ideal
which will be reflected in all our actions. The most
humble man can make himself a sublime character in
this way. The work is slow and difficult, but centuries
are given us for it. We must often concentrate our
thoughts, and bring them back to the ideal. We must
meditate upon it each day at a chosen hour, preferably
the morning, when all is peaceful about us. "The hour
divine," when nature, rested and refreshed, awakens in
the rays of the dawn. In those matinal hours the soul,
by prayer and meditation, lifts itself more easily to the
great heights from which we can see and comprehend
that all life is united to something grand and eternal,
and that we inhabit a world where invisible powers
live and work with us. In the simplest life, in the
most modest task, in the most effaced existence, there
is always a profound side — an ideal store-room con-
taining sources of possible beauty. Each soul can,
by its thoughts, create a spiritual atmosphere as
beautiful, as resplendent as that of any enchanted
realm ; and in the meanest dwelling, the most miserable

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 273

lodging, there are windows opening toward God and
infinity.

In our social relations we must constantly recall this :
all men are travellers on the march, occupying divers
places on the ladder of evolution which we are all
climbing. Therefore we must demand and expect
nothing which does not pertain to their degree of ad-
vancement. To each fellow traveller we owe toler-
ance, good-will and even pardon, for those who seek
to injure or wound us are merely delayed souls, in-
sufficiently developed. God asks of no man aught that
he has not acquired by slow, painful labour. We have
not the right to ask more. Have we not been like these
unawakened souls in former lives? If each one of us
could read in his past what he had been, and what he
had done, he would be more indulgent toward the
faults of humanity. Let us be severe for ourselves
and tolerant toward others — instruct, enlighten, and
guide them gently. That is what the law of solidarity
commands.

So we must bear all things with patience and seren-
ity: whatever are the acts of others toward us, we
must hold no animosity, no resentment, but use the
painful experience for our moral education. No mis-
fortune could come to us if by our anterior lives we
had not paved the way to adversity. This is what we
must often say to ourselves, and in this way we arrive
at the acceptance of all trials without bitterness, con-
sidering them a reparation for the past. They prove
a means of self-possession, and produce that absolute
confidence in the future which gives force, quietude.

274- LIFE AND DESTINY

and inner satisfaction, enabling us to keep serene in
the midst of the hardest vicissitudes.

When age comes, illusions and vain hopes fall like
dead leaves; but the eternal truths shine with greater
brilliancy, like stars in winter skies over the leafless
trees in our gardens.

It matters little then if it has enriched our souls
with one virtue, and with a little moral beauty. The
lives of obscurity and torment are sometimes the most
fertile; while those which are brilliant with successes
chain us to formidable responsibilities. Happiness is
not in exterior things, but in ourselves. The wise man
creates in himself an assured refuge, a sacred place,
a profound retreat, where the discords of the outer
world cannot enter. Each soul carries in itself its
lights or its shadows, its Paradise or its Hell, but let
us remember that nothing is irreparable : the situation
of the most inferior spirit is but one point, almost im-
perceptible, in the immensity of his destiny.

CHAPTER XXIV

LOVE

Love, as generally understood on earth, is a sentiment
or impulsion between two beings who desire a closer
union. But in reality, love is clothed in infinite forms,
from the most vulgar to the most sublime. Principle
of life universal, it procures for the soul in its highest
and purest manifestation that intensity of radiation
which warms and vivifies all and everything about
it; and by its power the soul feels itself closely united
to Divinity, the ardent centre of all life and
love.

God is love : it was through love He created beings
to associate them with His joys and His works. Love
is a sacrifice. God poured out His own life to give it
to souls. At the same time with the vital effusion,
they received the effective principle, destined to grow
and blossom in them through duty and sacrifice to
others. So are they ennobled and glorified as they ap-
proach the Supreme Centre. Love is an inexhaustible
force — it constantly renews itself, and at the same time
enriches those who give and those who receive. It is
by love, the sun of souls, through which God acts in
the world. By it He attracts to Himself all the poor
beings delayed by human passions and made captive
275 •

276 LIFE AND DESTINY

by matter! and He lifts them, and leads them up the
spiral of infinite ascension toward the splendours of
light and liberty. It has disciplined and fashioned the
human soul, and helped to turn the entire race from
sensualism and bestiality.

Christ is not the only example of radiant souls on
earth. There are others who seem to send forth a
regenerating exhalation — an atmosphere of peace and
protection, as if endowed by a special Providence. All
those who live under their moral influence feel a
repose of spirit and a serenity which is a foretaste of
celestial quietude. In a circle of seekers after spiritual
truths, directed and inspired by spirits from high
realms, this sensation becomes keener. We have often
felt ourselves in the presence of these great entities in
the work of our group in Tours.

These impressions become more and more alive, in
the measure that one becomes separated from inferior
planes, where selfish impulses reign, and climbs the
stairs of the glorious spiritual hierarchy, and begins
to approach the Divine Centre. Then comes the ex-
perience which completes the intuitions that each soul
is a system of force, and a generator of love whose
power of action grows with its elevation. So is ex-
plained and affirmed the universal fraternity. Some
day, when the true idea of life disengages itself from
the doubts and incertitudes which obsess human
thought, we will comprehend this grand brotherhood
of souls.

We will feel that all are enveloped by the divine
magnetism, by the breath of love which fills space.
Apart from this powerful tie, souls also constitute

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 277

separate groups of families, which are formed during
centuries by the community of joys, sorrows, and
trials. The real family is that of space, and the one of
earth is but an image — a feeble reflection, as are all
the things of earth, compared to those of heaven. The
true family is composed of spirits who together have
climbed the rude paths of destiny, and who have
learned how to understand, and how to love. Who can
describe the intimate and tender sentiments which
unite these beings — the ineffable joy born of the
fusion of their minds and consciousness, the fluidic
union of souls under the smile of God? These spiritual
groups are the hallowed centre where selfishness van-
ishes, where hearts dilate, and where the souls that
have suffered and are delivered by death come to
rejoin their beloved ones.

Who can paint the ecstasy of purified souls, arriving
at the summits of light, filled with divine love ! And
the celestial lovers, bound together in the bosom of the
families of space, assembled to consecrate by solemn
rites the symbolic and indestructible union! That is
the veritable hymen of twin souls which God binds
together by a golden thread for eternity. They will
follow each other henceforth in their pilgrimages
through the worlds; they will march hand in hand,
smiling at misfortune, and finding in their mutual ten-
derness the force to endure all the bitterness of fate.
Sometimes, separated by rebirths, they still conserve
the secret intuition that their isolation is but passing.
After the trials of separation, they foresee the intoxica-
tion of a reunion at the doorway of the immensities.
Among those who walk here sad and solitary, bowed

S78 LIFE AND DESTINY

under the burdens of life, there are those who keep,
deep in their hearts, the vague memory of their spirit-
ual family. Those souls suffer cruelly with homesick-
ness for space and celestial love, and nothing in all the
joys of earth can console them. Their thoughts go
often in the waking hours, but more frequently in
sleep, to join the beloved beings who await them in
the Beyond. The profound sentiments of expected
compensations give them moral force in their struggle
and aspirations toward a better world. Hope sows
with austere flowers the desert paths they tread.

All the powers of the soul are confined in three
words — to will — to know — and to love. To will, that
is to converge all the activity, all the energy toward
the aim to be attained, and to develop will-power and
direct it. To knozu, because without profound study
— without the acquaintance of things and laws, the
thought and the will can lose themselves in the midst
of forces they seek to conquer, and the elements they
aspire to command.

But above all it is important to love, for without
love, will and science will be incomplete and often
sterile. Love illuminates them — fertilises them, and
increases their resources a hundredfold. It is not here
a question of love which contemplates without action,
but of that which employs itself in spreading truth and
goodness in the world. Life on earth is a conflict
between good and evil forces. The duty of every virile
soul is to take part in the combat, and with all its
powers alert, to aid those who struggle in obscurity.
The noblest use one can make of his faculties is to

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 279

work toward the enlarging and developing of the sense
of beauty and being in this human society, which has
its ugly features, but which is rich with magnificent
promises. These promises will be transformed into
living realities the day when humanity learns to com-
municate, by thought and heart, with the centre of
love which is the splendour of God. Love, then, with
all the power of your heart ! Love to the point of sac-
rifice, as Jeanne d'Arc loved France! as Christ loved
humanity ! and all those about you will feel your in-
fluence, and be born to new life.

O man, look about you, and seek to heal wounds
— to cure evils — to console affliction. Work to build
the high city of peace and harmony which will be the
city of Love — the city of God. Enlighten, uplift, and
purify, and what matters it if some one laughs at you
— if ingratitude and meanness rise in your path!
Those who love do not fall back before such things.
Even if they gather but thistles and thorns, they pur-
sue their work, because duty is there. They know
growth lies in abnegation, and sacrifice has its joys.
Accomplished with love it transforms tears into
smiles. To him who truly loves, the most banal things
possess an interest — everything is illuminated, and a
thousand new sensations awake in him.

Knowledge requires long and painful efforts to
reach the altitudes of thought. Love and sacrifice
gain them at a bound, with one stroke of the wings !
Love refines the intelligence and enlarges the heart,
and it is by the amount of love accumulated in us that
we can measure the distance we have travelled on the
road to God.

280 LIFE AND DESTINY

To all the interrogations of man, to his hesitations,
fears, and blasphemies, a voice powerful and mysteri-
ous responds : "Learn to-k)vel Love is the aim and
end and summit of all!" Frorn this summit unfolds
without cessation a network of love, wbven of gold-
and light. To love is the secret of happiness ; with one
word love solves all problems and dissipates all obscur-
ities. Love will save the world. Its natural warmth
will melt the ice of doubt, of selfishness, of hate. It
will reach the hardest heart — the hearts of the most
refractory. Love is always an effort toward beauty.
The sexual love of man and woman loses all vulgar
characteristics when it is aureoled with the poetic ideal,
and mingles with the material, aesthetic sentiment a
higher emotion. This depends largely on the woman.
She who truly loves, feels and sees things unknown to
man ; she possesses in her heart an inexhaustible reser-
voir of love, a sort of intuition of love eternal. Woman
is ever, on one side, sister of mystery, and the part of
her being which touches the infinite seems broader
than ours. When man responds with her to the call
of the Invisible — when their love is exempt from mere
bestial desires, then they become one in spirit and one
in body; in the embraces of these two beings a light
like a flame passes and penetrates — a reflection of the
highest felicities.

Yet the joys of earthly love are fugitive and mingled
with bitterness. They are never without disappoint-
ments and shocks. God only is love in its fullness.
He is the foundation of thought and light, from which
emanates, and to which returns eternally, the warm
effluvia of the stars, the passionate tenderness of all

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 281

the hearts of women — of mothers and wives, and the
virile affection of the hearts of men. God generates
and calls forth love, for it is beauty infinite, and the
characteristic of beauty is to create love.

Who, on a summer day, with the sun illuminating
the immense blue cupola above, with woods, fields,
mountains, and seas offering up mute adoration to the
Creator, who has not felt these radiations of love
filling the universe? One must have refused to open
his heart to these subtle influences if he ignores or
denies them. Too many earthly souls, it is true, re-
main hermetically sealed to divine things. Or if they
feel the harmonies and beauties, they hide the secret in
themselves. They are ashamed to confess their con-
sciousness of these great influences. Open the win-
dows of your prison, O man, to the glory of life eter-
nal, and that prison will be filled with light and mel-
ody! Your soul will be flooded with felicities and
ecstasies indescribable. It will understand that it is
surrounded by an ocean of love and divine force in
whose waves it may bathe and be regenerated at will,

A consciousness will come of the sovereign power
of the universe \vhich envelops and sustains us, and
that by invoking it, and addressing to it an ardent
appeal, the soul will be penetrated by its presence and
love. These things are difficult to express; they are
only understood by those who have tasted them. Nev-
ertheless, all can arrive at this knowledge, and can
possess it by awakening the divine in themselves.
There is no man so wicked, who in the hour of suffer-
ing does not become dimly conscious of higher things,
who does not feel a little of the divine love filtering

282 LIFE AND DESTINY

through him. It is only necessary to feel these impres-
sions once never to forget them, and when the evening
of life comes with disenchantments, when the twilight
shadows fall about us, then these powerful sensations
awaken in us the memory of all the joys we have felt;
and the souvenir of hours when we have truly loved,
like a delicious dew descends upon our souls, dried by
the arid winds of trials and sorrows.

CHAPTER XXV

SORROW

All living things suffer on earth — animals and men.
Nevertheless, love is the law of the universe, and by
love God formed beings. A formidable contradiction
in appearance, an agonising problem which has trou-
bled many thinkers and carried them to doubt and pes-
simism.

The animal is subjected to an ardent battle for life.
Among the herbs of the prairie, under the leaves in
the woods, in the air, in the bosom of the waters,
everywhere unknown dramas are enacted. In our
cities, inoffensive beasts are continually sacrificed to
human needs, or delivered to laboratories for the tor-
ture of vivisection. As for humanity, its history is
one long martyrdom. Through time, and over the
centuries, rises the sad miserere of human suffering.
The plaint of the unhappy mounts with the regularity
of an ocean wave, and with a heart-breaking intensity.
Sorrow follows in the path of each of us and watches
all our detours, and before the sphinx who fixes upon
him her strange look, man asks the eternal question,
"Why is sorrow?" Is it a punishment — an expiation?
is it a reparation for the past — a ransom for faults
committed ? At the foundation, sorrow is only a law
of education and equilibrium. Without doubt the
283

284 LIFE AND DESTINY

faults of the past fall upon us with all their burdens,
and determine the conditions of our destiny. Suffer-
ing is often only the counterstroke of violations of
eternal order : but shared by all, it should be considered
as an agent of development — a condition of progress.
All beings must submit to it in their turn ; its action is
beneficial to those who understand it, but only those
can understand it who have felt its powerful effects.
It is, above all, to those I address these pages — those
who suffer, who have suffered, or are worthy to suffer.

Sorrow and pleasure are the two extreme forms of
sensation. To suppress one or the other, we must
suppress sensibility; they are inseparable in principle,
and both are necessary to the education of the being,
who in his evolution must drain all the illimitable
forms of pleasure and of sorrow.

Physical pain produces sensations : moral suffering,
sentiments. But as we have seen in chapter xxi., sen-
sation and sentiment become one in the inner senso-
rium. Pleasure and sorrow reside, then, less in exterior
things than within us. Epictetus said : "Things are
only what we figure them to be." Genius is not only
the result of long labour, it is also the crown of suffer-
ing. Homer, Dante, Tass, Milton, and all great men
suffered. Sorrow caused vibrations in their souls, and
it inspired the nobility of sentiment and the intensity
of emotion which they expressed in accents of immor-
tal genius. The soul never sings better than when in
sorrow. When pain touches the depths of being, it
brings forth eloquent and powerful appeals which
move the world.

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 285

It is the same with heroes and all great characters.
Their elevation is measured by the amount of suffering
endured. Before sorrow and death, the soul of the
hero and martyr reveals itself in touching beauty, or in
tragic grandeur, and is aureoled by an inextinguishable
light. Suppress sorrow, and you suppress at tlie same
time that which is most worthy of the admiration of
the world, that is to say, the courage which supports
it. Is not the memory of those who have died for
truth and justice the noblest teaching we can offer to
humanity? Is there anything more august than their
tombs ? The centuries seem to render such souls more
and more imposing. They are like sources of force
and beauty, where the generations come to refresh
themselves. Through time and space their light, like
the rays of the stars, reaches to earth. Their death
brings forth life, and their memory, like a subtle
aroma, reaches into the far future.

These souls have taught us that it is by duty and
by suffering borne worthily, that we blaze the trail to
heaven. The history of the world is but the story of
the coronation of the soul by sorrow. Without it,
virtue could not be complete, or glory imperishable.

We must suffer, to grow and to conquer; acts of
sacrifice increase spiritual radiations. There is a lu-
minous train which follows spirits of heroes and mar-
tyrs in space. Those who have not suffered cannot
comprehend these things, for they see only the surface
of life ; their feelings have not been amplified, and their
thoughts embrace only narrow horizons. So, by the
will, we can vanquish sorrow, or at least turn it to our
profit, and make it an instrument of elevation. The

286 LIFE AND DESTINY

idea that we make for ourselves of joy and pain varies
infinitely with the evolution of the individual. The
good, wise, and pure soul cannot find happiness in the
same manner as the vulgarian. As we mount, the
aspect of things changes, and the child, growing, dis-
dains the toys which once captivated him. So the
growing soul seeks nobler satisfactions and pleasures
more profound. The soul which looks from the heights
and sees the glorious aim of life finds more felicity
and serene peace in a beautiful thought, a good work,
an act of virtue, and even a purifying sorrow, than
in all material wealth and earthly glories, with their
false intoxications. It is difficult to make man under-
stand that suffering is good. Each one would remake
and embellish his life to his own taste, pluck from it all
annoyances and troubles, not thinking that there is
no good without ill, no ascension without toil and
effort.

The general tendency of man is to shut himself in
the narrow circle of individualism, of self, and in that
way he dwarfs and limits all that is great in himself
— all that is meant to dilate and grow and soar: the
thought, the consciousness — in a word, the soul. To
break this circle and give freedom to the imprisoned
virtues, sorrow is necessary. Misfortunes and trials
stir in us the sources of an unknown life — a more pro-
found life. Sadness and suffering cause us to see,
hear, and feel a thousand delicate and powerful things
that the happy or the vulgar man never perceives. The
material world begins to seem obscure — another is
vaguely designed but grows more and more distinct.

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 287

in the measure that our attention is detached from in-
ferior things and plunged into the inimitable.

Misfortune and anguish are needed to give the soul
its richness, its moral beauty, and to awaken its sleep-
ing senses. The sorrowful life is an alembic from
which are distilled souls for better worlds. The form,
like the soul, is embellished by suffering. There is a
charm, at once tender and serious, in the faces which
have been often bathed in tears. They take on an
austere beauty — a sort of majesty — impressive, yet
seductive.

Michael Angelo adopted, as the rule of his life, the
following principles : "Enter into yourself, and do as
the sculptor does with the work he seeks to make
beautiful. Chisel off that which is superfluous, make
clear that which is obscure, let in the light from every-
where, and never cease chiselling your own statue."
A sublime maxim, and which contains the principle
of inner perfection. The soul is our work — a work
which surpasses in grandeur all the partial manifesta-
tions of art.

Often the difficulties of execution are in accord with
the splendour of the aim; and before this painful task
of interior reform, of incessant combat with the pas-
sions and material conditions, how often is the artisan
discouraged! how often he drops his chisel in despair!
It is then God sends him an aid — sorrow ! Sorrow
goes into the depths of the consciousness where the
toiler himself could not penetrate, and remodels the
contours, and eliminates or destroys that which is
useless or bad. And from the cold marble without
form or beauty, from the ugly or coarse statue that

288 LIFE AND DESTINY

our hands have hardly outlined, sorrow brings forth in
time the chcf-d'a-nzre incomparable, the harmonic
form of the divine Psyche.

Sorrow does not, then, strike only the culpable. In
our world, honest men suffer as much as the wicked.
The virtuous soul, being more evolved, is more sensi-
tive. Besides this, it loves deeply, and so seeks sorrow,
knowing the price. There are souls who come to earth
for no other purpose than to give an example of gran-
deur of suffering. They are missionaries, and their
mission is no less grand than that of the great re-
vealers. We meet them in all times, and they occupy
all planes of life — on high summits, splendid with the
light of history, and they are found among the humble
and hidden in the common masses. We admire Christ,
Socrates, Antigone, but how many obscure victims of
duty and love fall every day, upon whom descend
silence and forgetfulness. Yet their example is not
lost : it illuminates the life of some one who was a
witness to it. To be full and fruitful, it is not indis-
pensable that a life should be sown with acts of great
sacrifice, or crowned by a tragic death in the eyes of
the world. There are many sad, colourless, effaced
lives which are a continual effort, a constant strife
against misfortune and suffering. If we knew the
hidden wounds in these hearts — the cruel disappoint-
ments concealed from the world, they would be as
interesting in our sight as the most celebrated mar-
tyrs.

By this incessant combat with destiny they become
heroic souls. Their triumphs are unknown, but all

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 289

the treasures of energy, of generous impulses, of
patience and love which they have accumulated day
by day, constitute a capital of moral force and beauty
which makes them equal to the noblest figures of his-
tory in the world beyond.

In the heavenly workshop where souls are forged,
genius and glory are not sufficient to render them
truly beautiful. To give them the last sublime touch,
sorrow is always necessary. Certain obscure exist-
ences become as holy and sacred as those of the cele-
brated martyrs, because of their continued sufferings.
It was not because by some one great moment, or some
circumstance of a tragic death, that they were lifted
above themselves, to the admiration of the centuries,
but because their whole lives were a constant immola-
tion; and this long defile of sorrowful hours which
prepared them for ultimate ascension forced the ad-
miration of the spirits themselves; and these touching
spectacles inspire the great spirits with a willingness
to be born again, and to suffer and die again for all
they love, and by a new sacrifice to reach still greater
heights of glory.

Physical suffering is often an effort of nature which
seeks to save us from excess. Without it we would
abuse our organs to the point of untimely destruction.
When a serious malady attacks us, it often becomes
a benefit by causing us to realise and to detest the
vices which have caused it. Sometimes we must suffer
to understand the laws of health. To weak souls,
sickness comes to teach patience, wisdom, and self-
control. To strong souls it offers ideal compensations^

290 LIFE AND DESTINY

in leaving the mind free for flights of aspiration, to
the point of forgetting physical suffering. Suffering
is no less efficacious for society collective than for the
individual. Through it were formed the first human
groups. Through the menace of wild beasts, of hunger
and floods, men were constrained to band themselves
together, and through their common lives, their com-
mon sufferings, through their intelligence and labour,
came forth civilisation, the arts, sciences, and indus-
tries. Again, we can say that physical suffering results
often from the disproportion between our corporeal
weakness and the colossal forces which surround us.
We can only assimilate for ourselves an infinitesimal
portion of these forces, but they act upon us constantly,
striving to enlarge the sphere of our activity and the
power of our sensations. The action on the physical
organs reflects on the etheric form, and renders it more
impressionable.

Suffering, by its chemical action, has a useful result,
but this result varies infinitely according to the state of
individual development. In refining our material body,
it gives greater force to the interior, more facility for
detaching itself from earthly things. Others, more
evolved, are affected morally. Sorrow is like a wing
lent by the Over Soul to the flesh, to enable it to soar
to the heights.

The first movement of unhappy man is that of revolt
under the blows of fate. But later, when the soul has
climbed to heights where it contemplates the way it
has trod, the moving defile of its existences, it is with
tender joy that it recalls the trials and tribulations

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 291

which enabled it to attain to an understanding of
truth.

If, in the hours of trial, we knew how to watch the
mysterious action of sorrow in ourselves, we would
better comprehend its sublime work of education and
perfectionment. Sorrow always strikes our most sen-
sitive point — the hand which directs the chisel is that
of an incomparable artist. It never wearies until all
the angles of our characters are rounded and polished.
To that end it returns to its work as often as is neces-
sary. Under the repeated strokes of the hammer, con-
ceit, egotism, apathy, indifference, anger and cruelty,
all must fall one by one.

For each one of us sorrow has its different methods,
varied as the individual, but for all it acts efficiently,
in a manner to develop delicacy, feeling, and sym-
pathy, and to give birth to qualities which slept in the
depths of the being, or to some new nobility never
before acquired. And the more the soul responds and
grows under sorrow, tfie more spiritualising become
the effects of sorrow.

The wicked require innumerable trials, as a tree
must bear many flowers before yielding fruit. But
the more the nature is perfected, the more admirable
become the fruits. To gross souls come violent physi-
cal suffering; to the selfish and mercenary, loss of for-
tune; to the pessimist, torment of mind; for delicate
souls, hidden sorrows and heart wounds ; and to great
thinkers, subtle and profound griefs which send forth
sublime cries from the source of genius.

Astonishing as it may seem at first, sorrow is but a
means of infinite power to attract us to it, and at the

292 LIFE AND DESTINY

same time to bring us more rapidly to spiritual happi-
ness, which alone is durable. So it is, then, God's love
which sends sorrow to us. He corrects us as a mother
corrects her child, to teach it to do better. He works
without cessation to purify and embellish our souls,
which cannot be completely happy, save as they are
perfected. For that purpose is the earthly apprentice-
ship. God has placed beside rare and fugitive joys,
frequent and prolonged sorrows, in order that we may
realise that our world is only a passage-way, not a
goal. Joys and sufferings — pleasures and sorrows —
God has spread these things in our existence, as a great
artist unites on his canvas the lights and shadows to
produce his chef-d'cruure.

Suffering is a rudimentary method of animal evolu-
tion. Through it they acquire the first dawning of
consciousness. It is the same with human beings in
successive incarnations. If, from its earthly stations,
the soul were exempt from suffering, it would remain
inert — passive, and ignorant of profound moral truths.
Our aim is onward ! our destiny is to march toward the
goal without stopping by the way. The joys of this
world immobilise us, they retard us; then sorrow
comes and pushes us forward. As soon as there opens
for us a source of pleasure, for instance in our youth,
love and marriage — and we lose ourselves in the en-
chantment of these blessings, almost always soon
afterward an unforeseen circumstance arises, and the
blade of sorrow is felt.

In the measure that we advance in life, joys dimin-
ish and sorrows increase. The body becomes heavier
— the weight of years more burdensome. With most

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 293

lives, existence commences in happiness and ends in
sadness. With age, the Hght grows dim, dreams
vanish — sympathies and consolations lessen. Graves
thicken about us ; then come the long hours of inaction
and suffering. They oblige us to enter into ourselves,
and to review our lives. This is a necessary trial for
the soul, in order that before it quits the body it may
acquire a clear-seeing judgment of the events of its
terrestrial careers. So when we curse the hours of
age, which are in appearance desolate and sterile, we
ignore one of the greatest benefits which nature has
offered us. We forget that sorrowful old age is the
crucible wherein the soul completes its purification.

At this moment of existence the forces which during
the years of virility we dispense in every direction in
our exuberance, concentrate and converge toward the
profound depths of being, awakening the conscious-
ness and procuring wisdom for the man of maturity.
Little by little harmony is established between our
thoughts and the exterior radiations, and the inner
melody chords with the melody divine. There is then,
in resigned old age, more of grandeur and serene
beauty than in the eclat of youth or the power of ma-
turity. Under the action of time, all that is profound
and everlasting in us frees itself, and the brows of
certain aged men and women are aureoled with light
from the Beyond.

To all who ask "Why is sorrow?" I respond : "Why
do we polish the gem — sculpture the marble — hammer
the iron — melt the glass ?" It is in order to build and
ornament the magnificent temple full of rays, of vibra-
tions, of hymns, of perfumes, where all the arts com-

294 LIFE AND DESTINY

bine to express the divine; to prepare the apotheosis of
conscious thought — to celebrate the Hberation of the
spirit. And behold the result obtained! all that is
elementary in us departs. Material unformed, or
ruined and broken, is by sorrow used to construct a
splendid altar in the heart of man, of moral beauty and
eternal truth. In the gross block of marble is hidden
the ideal statue, and when man has not the energy, the
knowledge, or the will to bring it forth, then comes
sorrow. It takes the hammer and the chisel, and little
by little, with strokes violent or persistent, the living
statue is designed with supple contours and gleaming
beauty. Under the broken quartz the glowing emerald
shines !

Yes, in order that the form comes forth in all its
pure and delicate lines, that spirit triumphs over the
substance, that the thoughts keep to sublime heights,
that the poet finds his immortal accents, the musician
his perfect chords, our hearts must feel the lancet of
fate. We must know mourning and tears, ingratitude
and treason, the deception of friends, and the anguish
of disillusionment. We must see cherished forms
descend into the tomb — youth depart, and old age
come, with its bitter sorrows. Man must suffer, as
the fruit of the vine is pressed that its exquisite liquid
may be extracted.

It is in our own consciousness that lies the reward
of good and evil. It registers minutely all our acts,
and sooner or later becomes a severe judge of the
culpable ones who, by the law of evolution, finally yield
to its voice and submit to its control. The spirit in
space suffers remorse for its far distant wrong acts,

p

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 295

as well as for the more recent ones. That is why it
often asks to be reincarnated, that it may make repara-
tion for evils committed, and gain freedom from
obsessing memories.

On different planes suffering changes its aspect.
With us it becomes at once physical and moral, and
constitutes a mode of reparation. The sad pages of
our early history, where we were ignorant souls, we
have been able to efface in later incarnations. By suf-
fering we have learned humility, at the same time with
indulgence and compassion for all those about us who
succumb to low instincts, as we once did.

It is not, then, by vengeance that the law strikes
us, but because it is good and profitable to suffer,
since suffering liberates us, while it executes the verdict
of the conscience. We hear much of the law of retali-
ation, but reparation does not always present itself in
the form of the act committed. Social conditions and
historic evolution oppose that. With the torments of
the Middle Ages many scourges have disappeared.
Nevertheless, the sum of human suffering under
various forms remains proportionally the same. In
vain progress is realised, civilisation extended —
hygiene and well-being developed; new maladies
appear which man is powerless to cure. We must
recognise in this that superior law of equilibrium of
which we have spoken.

Suffering will be necessary as long as man does not
think and act in harmony with eternal law. It will
cease as soon as the accord is established. All our evils
come from what we do in opposition to the currents of
divine life. If we enter into this current, pain will

296 LIFE AND DESTINY

disappear with tlie causes which gave it birth. For a
long time to come, earthly humanity, ignorant of these
superior laws, unconscious of duty, will have need of
sorrow to stimulate it on its way and to transform its
primitive and gross instincts into pure and generous
sentiments. For a long time man must pass through
the bitter initiative before arriving at knowledge of
himself and his goal. At present he thinks only of
using his faculties to combat physical suffering — to
augment riches and well-being on the material plane,
and to render earthly conditions of life agreeable. But
this is all in vain. Suffering changes its aspect as the
conditions of earth change, but it is no less suffering,
and while selfishness and personal interests govern
■earthly society — while the human thoughts turn away
from profound subjects, just so long the flowers of
the soul will not bloom. All the social and economic
doctrines of the world will be powerless to reform it,
or to alleviate the woes of humanity, because their
foundation is too narrow, and they place on one brief
earth life the reason of being, the end and aim of this
existence, and of all our efforts.

To extinguish the evil in society we must elevate
the human soul to the consciousness of its role, make
it understand that its fate depends upon itself, and
that its felicity will be always proportional to the
extent of its triumphs over itself and its devotion to
others. Then will the social question be resolved by
the substitution of altruism for narrow and exclusive
personalism. Men will feel themselves to be brothers,
and equal by divine law, which gives to each the good
and bad experiences necessary to his evolution, as the

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 297

means of hastening his ascension. Only when that day
comes will sorrow diminish its empire. Fruit of igno-
rance and selfishness, and of all the animal passions
which still agitate the human soul, it will vanish with
the causes which produced it, thanks to a higher educa-
tion, and the realisation in us of moral justice and love.
Moral evil is in the dissonance of the soul with
divine harmony. In the degree that it mounts to a
clearer view, toward a larger truth, toward a more per-
fect wisdom, the causes of suffering attenuate, at the
same time that vain ambitions and material desires
vanish. And step by step, from life to life, the soul
penetrates into the great light and the great peace,
where evil is unknown, and where good only reigns.

Often I have heard people whose lives have been
sorrowful, say : "I do not wish to be reborn on earth."
When one has been shaken by the violent storms of
life, it is natural to long for repose. I understand how
such a soul shrinks from the thought of recommencing
this battle of life; where it has received wounds which
are still bleeding ! But law is inexorable, and to
mount up in the hierarchy of worlds, it is necessary to
leave here all the baggage of appetites and passions
which attach us to earth. Souls that carry those desires
beyond the grave are delayed, and tied to lower
regions. Often those who believe themselves worthy
of attaining high altitudes find themselves riveted to
this planet by their tastes. They have not understood
love in its divine essence, nor sacrifice for humanity,
wherein one Hves not for self, but for all. To render
themselves ripe for the higher worlds, they must re-

298 LIFE AND DESTINY

descend into the crucible — into the furnace where the
hardness of the heart melts like wax. And when the
dross of the soul has been rejected, and the divine
essence extracted, then God calls them to a higher life
and a more beautiful task.

Above all, it is necessary to measure at their just
value the cares and the sorrows of this life. For us
these things are very cruel ; but they dwarf and vanish
when the spirit, elevated above the details of existence,
embraces in a large outlook the perspective of its des-
tiny. It alone knows how to weigh and measure
events, and how to sound the depths of the two oceans
of time and space — the immensity of Eternity.

CHAPTER XXVI

REVELATION OF SORROW

It is in the face of suffering that we feel the necessity
of a robust faith, which at the same time rests on
reason and on facts, and which explains the enigma of
life and the problem of sorrow. What consolation
can materialism and atheism offer a man attacked by
an incurable malady? what can they say to one about
to die? what language can they use to the father or
mother kneeling by the cradle of a dead child? to all
those who see the forms of cherished beings descend-
ing into the earth ? There and then is shown the pov-
erty and insufficiency of those doctrines of nothing.
Sorrow is not only the criterion of life — the judge
which weighs the character and measures the true
grandeur of the man; it is also the infallible process of
recognising the value of philosophical theories and
religious doctrines. The best will evidently be that
which comforts us, that which says : "Why, tears are
the human lot!" and at the same time furnishes the
means of dry'ing them. By sorrow we must surely
discover the place from whence shines the brightest,
purest ray of truth, which does not become extin-
guished.

For those whose lives are limited by narrow hori-
zons of materialism, the problem of sorrow is insol-
299

300 LIFE AND DESTINY

ubie. If the universe is but a field open to the
capricious, blind forces of nature, then sorrow has no
sense — no utility, and can find no consolations. Is it
not really strange, how impotent have been so many
of the sages and philosophers and thinkers, for thou-
sands of years, to explain sorrow, or give us consola-
tion, or aid us to accept it ! Sorrow is so inevitable !
yet few have comprehended it — fewer have explained
it. About us every day, how poor, banal, and childish
are the words of sympathy and the efforts at consola-
tion offered to those who are stricken by sorrow. How
cold are the words which fall from human lips ! what
absence of light and warmth in thoughts and hearts!
what weakness — what voids — in the processes em-
ployed by those who seek to give comfort!

All this results mainly from the obscurity which
rests upon the problem of sorrow, and the false doc-
trines of certain philosophies. They burden and
shadow the soul in difficult hours, in place of giving
it the means to face its destiny with a firm resolution.

And the religions ? you ask. Yes, certainly, without
doubt, the religions have given spiritual sustenance to
souls in distress. Nevertheless, the consolations they
offer repose upon a conception too narrow for the aim
of life and the laws of destiny. The Christian religions
comprise the grand role of suffering, but they have
exaggerated it, and denatured its sense. Paganism
expressed joy, and their gods were crowned with
flowers at their fetes. The Stoics, however, and
certain secret schools considered sorrow as an indis-
pensable element in the order of the world. Christian-
ity deified it in the person of Jesus. Before the Cross

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 301

of Calvary humanity found its own cross less heavy.
The memory of the great sacrifice has aided man to
suffer and die. But in pushing things to an extreme,
Christianity has given life, death, religion, and God
lugubrious and often terrifying aspects. It is neces-
sary to readjust the religions, or they will lose their
empire. Materialism threatens to take possession of
their lost territory, for lack of a doctrine adapted to
the necessities of the time and the needs of evolving
humanity.

That is why we say to all the preachers of all relig-
ions: "Enlarge the compass of your teachings— give
man an idea of a more extended destiny — a clearer
view of the life Beyond — a higher ideal of the goal to
be attained. Make him comprehend that his work con-
sists in reconstructing himself with the aid of sorrow
to a higher consciousness of his moral personality
through an infinity of time and space." If, at the
present moment, your influence as a teacher is weak-
ened, it is not because of a lack of morale in those you
teach — it is because of the insufficiency of your con-
ception of life, which does not show clearly that justice
rules: and consequently does not show God. Your
theologies have enclosed thought in a narrow circle
which stifles it. They have given it too constrained a
foundation, and on this foundation the edifice trembles
and threatens to fall. Stop discussions of texts ; come
up out of the crypts where you have shut your soul —
go forward and act! A new doctrine is rising — grow-
ing— extending — which will aid thought to accom-
plish its work of transformation. The new Spiritual-
ism contains all the resources necessary to console the

302 LIl^E AND DESTINY

afflicted, enrich philosophy, regenerate rehgion, and
to attract at one time the affection of the most humble
disciple and the respect of the greatest genius. It
satisfies the noblest flights of intellect and the aspira-
tions of the heart. It explains human weakness — the
torment of the inferior soul, a prey to passions — and it
shows it the means of elevating itself to the fullness of
knowledge. It offers the world a remedy against
sorrow.

In the explanation which it gives, and the consola-
tions it extends to the unfortunate, are found the most
evident and touching proofs of its truthful character
and unshaken solidity. Better than all other philos-
ophies and religions, it reveals to us the great role of
suffering and teaches us to accept it. In making of it
an educative and reparative process, it shows us how
divine love and justice enter into our trials and sor-
rows. In place of the despair which negative doctrines
give us, in place of lost reprobates, it shows us in
the unfortunate an apprentice and neophyte whom
sorrow will initiate — a candidate for perfection and
happiness.

In giving life an infinite goal, modern Spiritualism
offers us a reason for living and suffering which makes
life an object worthy of the soul and of God. In the
apparent disaster and confusion of things, it shows us
order which slowly outlines the future ; and above all,
it reveals to us an immense and divine harmony. And
behold the consequences of this teaching! Sorrow
loses its frightful character, and is no longer an enemy
— a formidable monster; it is an aid — an auxiliary,
and its role is providential. It purifies the soul in its

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 303

flame, and it re-clothes it with unbeHevable beauty.
Man, at first astonished — alarmed at its aspect, learns
to know, appreciate, and familiarise himself with sor-
row, and ends with almost loving it! Certain heroic
souls, in place of fleeing from it, go forward and
plunge themselves freely in its regenerating waves.
Sorrow is but a corrective for our errors, a stimulant
on our march. So the sovereign laws show forth, just
and good. They afflict no one with useless or unmer-
ited pain. The study of the moral universe fills us
with admiration for the power which, by means of
sorrow, transforms little by little the forces of evil into
good, and brings forth virtue from vice, and love
from selfishness. Then, assured of the result of his
efforts, man accepts with courage his inevitable trials.
Age may come — life roll under the rapid wheel of the
years, but his faith enables him to pass through the
troubled periods and the sad hours of existence. In the
measure that it declines and is shadowed by evening
mists, the great light from Beyond grows clearer, and
the sentiment of justice, goodness, and love which
presides over the destinies of all beings, becomes for
him a mighty force in hours of lassitude, and renders
easier the preparation for departure.

For the materialist, and even for many believers in
immortality, the death of beloved beings opens be-
tween them and us an abyss which nothing fills: an
abyss of darkness, lighted by no rays — by no hope.
Many are so crushed with despair, they do not even
pray for their dead. Others are filled with dread of

S04i LIFE AND DESTINY

the Judgment Day, which may separate them for ever
from their loved ones.

But the new doctrine brings a certitude which noth-
ing can shake. Death, hke sorrow, has no terrors for
them, for every tomb is a door of dehverance, an issue
opening toward free space. Every friend who dis-
appears goes to prepare a future dwelHng — to mark
out a route for us to follow later. Separation is only
an appearance : we know that these souls have not left
us for ever. An intimate communion can be estab-
lished between them and us. If their absolute man-
ifestations encounter obstacles, we can correspond by
thought: you know the telepathic law. It is not by
cries and tears, not even by the call of love, that the
messages go and come : the admirable solidarity of the
souls for whom we pray, and who pray for us, the
exchange of vibrating thoughts, and regenerating
appeals which traverse space, penetrating agonised
hearts with radiations of hope — these never miss their
aim. You think you suffer alone ; but no ! near to you,
about you, there are beings who vibrate with your
sorrow, and participate in your grief. Do not make
it too intense — spare them useless suffering. To
human grief and pain God has given for company
celestial sympathy. This sympathy often comes in the
form of a beloved being, who in the days of trial
descends, full of solicitude, and gathering all our sor-
rows, makes them into a crown of light in space.

Howmay lovers, husbands, parents, separated by
death, yet live with their dear ones in close intimacy?
In the hour of affliction the spirits of a father, a
mother, or other dear souls in space, lean down and

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 805

caress us in affliction. They envelop our hearts with
tender radiations of love. How can we let ourselves
fall into despair in the presence of such witnesses,
knowing that they read our thoughts — see our cares,
and that they are waiting to receive us in the doorway
of immensity.

Quitting the earth, we will find them, and with them
a vast number of spirits we have forgotten : a crowd
of those who shared our past lives and composed our
spiritual family. All our companions of the great
eternal journey group together to receive us; not as
pale shadows — vague phantoms animated with faint
life, but in the fullness of their accumulated faculties.
Active beings, interested in the things of earth, par-
ticipating in the universal work, co-operating in our
efforts, in our labours, in our progress. The ties of
the past are renewed with fresh force. Love, friend-
ship— real relationship in multiple existence now ce-
mented newly, are augmented, and given supreme
power, which unites them again to those known and
loved on earth. The sadness of temporary separa-
tions, the apparent disappearance of souls caused by
death, all melt in effusions of happiness and in the
ineffable joy of reunion. Have no faith, then, in the
sombre doctrines which speak to you of brazen laws
of condemnation, or of hells and heavens which sep-
arate you from those you love for ever. There is no
abyss love cannot bridge. God, who is all love, would
not extinguish the most beautiful and noble sentiments
in the human heart. Love is immortal, as is the soul.
In the hour of suffering and anguish rouse yourself,
and with an ardent appeal attract to you those beings

306 LIFE AND DESTINY

who were once human like you, and who are now celes-
tial spirits, and unknown forces will penetrate you, and
will aid you to bear your miseries and sorrows. Man
— sad voyager who painfully climbs the sorrowful
mountain of existence, search everywhere upon your
route for invisible beings, powerful and good, who are
travelling beside you. In the difficult passage their
mighty vibrations will sustain your trembling steps.
Open your soul to them — put your thoughts in accord
with their thoughts, and soon you will feel the joy of
their presence. An atmosphere of peace and benedic-
tion will envelop you, and sweet consolation will de-
scend upon you.

In the midst of trials, the truths which we have just
related, do not enable us always to dispense with emo-
tion or tears. That would be contrary to nature, but
these truths teach us at least not to murmur, not to be
crushed under the blows of sorrow. They drive away
impotent ideas of revolt — of despair — of suicide,
which often haunt the brains of materialists. If we
continue to weep, it is without bitterness and without
blasphemy.

Even when a young soul, carried away by mad pas-
sion, leaves earth by the door of suicide, the immense
sorrow of a mother can find hope in the new spiritual
philosophy. By unremitting prayer, by ardent
thoughts, there remains the hope of helping the unfor-
tunate soul which floats in space, between earth and
heaven, awaiting its natural hour of liberation. There
is nothing irreparable — no evil without an end: all
evolution takes its course upward, when the culpable

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 307

one has paid his just debts. In all things this doctrine
offers us a point of view from which the soul takes its
flight toward a brighter future, and consoles itself in
the present by that perspective. The faith in our des-
tiny projects an illuminating light before us, our ideas
of duty enlarge our sphere of action, and teach us to
work for others. We feel that there is in the universe
a force — a power — a wisdom incomparable; but also
that we ourselves make part of the force, and this
power from which we have issued. We comprehend
that the source of all things is in God's love. God
wishes good for us, and pursues it for us through ways
sometimes clear, sometimes mysterious, but constantly
appropriate to our needs. If we are separated from
those we love, it is to make us find more vivid joys in
the reunion. If He permits us to suffer disappoint-
ments, sorrows, sickness, reverses, it is in order to
oblige us to detach our regard from earth, and to ele-
vate them to Him — to seek higher joys than those we
can find in this world. The universe is justice and
love, and in the spiral of infinite ascension the divine
alchemist changes our sufferings into waves of light
and sheaves of felicity.

Sometimes a soul struck by great sorrow sees a great
light shine as from an unknown source, more brilliant
than the disaster is great. With one leap sorrow lifts
it to heights which would have required twenty years
of study and effort for it to attain. I cannot resist
from citing two examples among many others known
to me. Two men of my acquaintance, fathers of two
lovely girls, their sole joy in life, were suddenly be-
reaved by death. One was an officer in the East. His

808 LIFE AND DESTINY

oldest daughter possessed all the gifts of intellect and
beauty; of a serious character, she disdained the
pleasures of youth, and shared the work of her father,
a military writer of talent. In a brief time the young
girl was attacked by a fatal malady and died. In her
papers was found a notebook with this heading — "To
my father, when I am no longer here." Although in
seeming perfect health when she traced the pages, she
had the presentiment of approaching death, and ad-
dressed consoling words to her father. Thanks to a
book which he found in his daughter's desk, we became
friends. Little by little, proceeding with method and
persistence, he became a clairvoyant medium, and to-
day he has not only the favour of being initiated into
the mysteries of survivance, but also that of often see-
ing his daughter near him, and receiving testimonials
of her love. The young girl's spirit also communicates
with her fiance and with one of her cousins, a subaltern
in the regiment commanded by her father. The letters
of the General also declare that his daughter's spirit
was seen by two domestic animals. (An incident
which has been described in detail, with all its attend-
ant proofs, in another book.)

The second case is that of Mr. Debrus of Valence,
whose only child, Rose, bom after several years of
marriage, was tenderly loved. All the hopes of the
father and mother were bound up in this child : but at
the age of twelve she died of meningitis. The despair
of th€ parents was so extreme that the idea of suicide
haunted the father. But having some friends who
were spiritually awakened, he made researches, and to
his joy he developed mediumistic powers, and to-day

THE POWERS OF THE SOUI. 309

he communicates, without an intermediary, freely and
surely with his child. Often she appears in the family
circle, producing a luminous light of great intensity.
Neither of these men knew anything of the life Be-
yond, and both lived in culpable indifference toward
the problems of life and destiny.

But now all is clear to their eyes. After having
suffered, they have been consoled, and they console
others in their turn ; working to spread the truth about
them, inspiring all they approach with the dignity of
their view and the firmness of their convictions. Their
children appear to them, transfigured and radiant, and
they have come to understand why God separated
them, and how He will bring about their common life
in peaceful space. This has been the work of sorrow !

For the materialist there is no explanation of the
world's enigma or the problem of sorrow. All this
magnificent evolution and life, all the forms of beauty,
slowly developed through the course of centuries, is
in their eyes but the caprice of blind chance, and ends
in nothing ! At the end of time all will be as if human-
ity had never existed. All man's efforts to elevate
himself to a higher state — all his sufferings and all his
miseries, will vanish like a shadow ; all will have been
useless and vain. But in place of this sterile and de-
pressing theory, we who have the certitude of a future
life and a spiritual world, see in the universe an im-
mense laboratory where the human soul is cleansed
and refined, through alternative celestial and earthly
lives. This life has but one aim — the education of the
intelligences associated with the bodies. Matter is an

310 LIFE AND DESTINY

instrument of progress: what we call evil or sorrow,
is but a means of elevation.

Permit me to make an avowal. Every time that the
Angel of Sorrow has touched me with his wing, I have
felt new and unknown powers awaken in me. I have
heard interior voices chanting the eternal canticle of
life and light. And now, after having participated in
all the evils of life's route, I bless suffering! It has
fashioned my soul! it has procured for me a surer
judgment and a more certain appreciation of the high
eternal truths. My life has been more than once
shaken by misfortune, as an oak tree by the tempest;
but there has never been a test which has not taught
me to know myself better, and to gain in self-control.
And now comes age! The end of my work ap-
proaches! After fifty years of work, meditation, and
experience, it is sweet to me to affirm to all those who
suffer — to all the afflicted ones of earth — that there is
in the universe an infallible justice. Nothing is lost,
there is no pain without compensation, no labour with-
out profit : we all march through vicissitudes and tears
toward a glorious goal fixed by God, and we have at
our side a sure guide, an invisible counsellor to sustain
and console us. Man! Brother! learn how to suffer!
for sorrow is holy. It is the noblest agent of perfec-
tion. Penetrating and fertile, it is indispensable to the
life of each one who does not wish to remain petrified
with egotism and indifference.

It is a veritable philosophy that God sends suffering
to the souls He loves. Learn how to suffer. I do not
say seek sorrow! but when it comes, and stands in-
evitable in your path, receive it like a friend. Learn

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL 311

to appreciate its austere beauty, to seize its secret
knowledge: study its hidden works, and in place of
revolting against it, or resting inert and stunned under
its action, associate your will with the aim fixed by
sorrow, and seek to draw from it all the profit it can
offer to a spirit or a heart. Force yourself to be an
example for others, and by your acceptation of it, your
courage, and your confidence in the future, render it
more acceptable to other eyes. In a word, make sor-
row beautiful! Harmony and beauty are universal
laws, and in this ensemble sorrow has its aesthetic role.
It would be puerile to cry out against this necessary
element of beauty in the world.

Elevate yourself by higher views and hopes: see in
it the supreme remedy for all the woes of earth. You
who bend under the burdens of your trials, you who
walk in the silence, no matter what comes, do not
despair. Remember that nothing comes in vain, or
without cause. Almost all our sorrows come from
ourselves in the past, and they open the paths to heaven
for us. Suffering is an initiation. It reveals the seri-
ous inspiring side of Hfe. Life is not a frivolous com-
edy, but often a poignant tragedy. It is the struggle
for the conquest of spiritual life, and in this struggle
we must employ all that is great within us — patience —
firmness — heroism — resignation. Those old allegories
of Prometheus and the Argonauts, and the sacred mys-
teries of the Orient, had no other meaning. A pro-
found instinct makes us admire those whose existence
is a perpetual combat with sorrow, a constant effort to
climb the abrupt heights which lead to virgin summits
and unviolated treasures. We do not admire only the

Sn LIFE AND DESTINY

heroism which brings forth the enthusiasm of crowds,
but also that which strives in obscurity against priva-
tions, maladies, and miseries, all that detaches souls
from material ties and transitory things.

They strengthen the character for the combat of
life — develop force and resistance — take from the soul
all that weakens it — elevate the ideal to the pinnacle
of force and grandeur. This is what education should
adopt for the essential objective.

Let us open our souls to the breath of space, ai-d Hft
ourselves to the limitless future. This future belongs
to us! our task is to conquer it. O living soul of
France ! evoke the great memories, the high thoughts,
the subhme inspirations of your genius! from the
social fermentation will come forth another life, purer
and more beautiful. Under the influx of new ideas
France will find again her faith and her confidence.
She will arise greater and stronger to accomplish her
work in the world. For her genius is not dead! it
sleeps, but to-morrow it will awaken!

PROFESSION OF FAITH

The first principle is the idea of being — I AM ! This
affirmation is indisputable : one cannot doubt his own
existence. But this idea alone does not suffice; it must
be completed by the idea of action and progress. /
am! and I imll he! always more and better. Life in
me is conscious. The soul is the only living unity —
the only monad, indivisible and indestructible in mat-
ter, for it exists but in ourselves. The soul remains
invariable in its unity, through thousands and thou-
sands of forms — bodies of flesh which it constructs
and animates for the needs of its eternal evolution. It
is always changing; by the qualities acquired, and the
progress realised, growing more and more conscious
and free in the infinite spiral of its planetary and celes-
tial existences.

Nevertheless, the soul belongs only half to itself.
The other half belongs to the universe of which it is
a part : that is why the soul cannot know itself entirely,
save in studying the universe. The pursuit of this
double knowledge is the reason and the object of its
313

Gli LIFE AND DESTINY

life — of all its lives, death being but the renewing of
the vital forces necessary to a new step forward.

in

The study of the universe demonstrates, in the first,
place, that the action of a superior Sovereign Intelli-
gence governs the world. The essential character of
this action is duration, by the mere fact that it per-
petuates itself. It knows no limits, and is absolute.
Hence — Eternity.

IV

Eternity, living and acting, implies life eternal and
infinite — God the first cause — the generating principle
— source of all life. We say eternal and infinite, for
"unlimited in duration" leads mathematically to un-
limited in extent of time.

Infinite action is linked to the necessity of duration.
When there is a link of union, a relation, there is a
law — the law of the conservation order and harmony.
From order flows good — from harmony beauty. The
most lofty goal of the universe is beauty in all its
aspects — material, intellectual, and moral. Justice and
love are its means. Beauty in its essence is insep-
arable from good; and the two, by their close union,
constitute absolute truth — supreme intelligence — per-
fection !

PROFESSION OF FAITH 315

VI

The aim of the soul, in its evolution, is to attain and
realise in itself and about itself, through time and the
ascending stations of the universe, by the blossoming
of the powers whose germs it contains, this eternal
conception of beauty and goodness expressed by the
idea of God — of Perfection.

VII

From this far-reaching law of ascension flow the
explanations of all the problems of life. The evolu-
tion of the soul, which first receives by atavic trans-
mission all the ancestral qualities : then develops them,
by its own action, to add new qualities; the relative
liberty of relative life in Absolute Life: the slow
formation of human consciousness through the cen-
turies, and its growth through the infinity of the fu-
ture : the unity of the essence, and the eternal solidarity
of souls in their march toward the conquest of high
summits.

THE END

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