Chapter THE TENTH (1)

WHAT ARE THE RELATIONS WHICH SUBSIST BETWEEN US, AND SUPERHUMAN BEINGS?

HAVING drawn a picture of the transmigrations of souls which, having belonged to men, attain, according to our belief, to the sublime dwelling-place of the solar spaces, we will now return to the superhuman being, and endeavour to find out whether that being, who immediately succeeds to man, who is a resuscitated man, incarnate in a new body, and living in the plains of ether, can place himself in relation with the inhabitants of the earth, notwithstanding the immense space which divides them. We have already endeavoured (ch. iv.) to discern the attributes of the superhuman being. Considering the number and extent of the faculties with which we believe him to be endowed, we cannot hesitate to accord to this mighty creature the power of communicating with our earth, and of exerting a certain influence there.

But how and by what means can such a communication be established? What is the agency whose existence we must presuppose, in order that beings floating in the ethereal spaces can produce an impression here below? What transcendent system of electric telegraphy does the superhuman being employ? On this point we are absolutely ignorant, but the fact that communication does exist between these beings and our globe appears to us to be certain; a conviction which we base upon the following grounds.

First, let us address ourselves to the popular feeling. As we have already said, we are not afraid of invoking vulgar prejudices and opinions, because they are almost always the expression of some great moral truth. Observations repeated thousands of times, traditions transmitted from generation to generation, and which have resisted the control of time, without being either altered or destroyed, cannot deceive. Only, when the people amidst whom this tradition has been formulated and preserved, are unenlightened, they translate their observations into a coarse form.

Let us inquire into the origin of those ghosts in which many civilized people firmly believe! Take away the absurd white sheet, and the human form with which the simple superstition of the peasantry invest them, and you will find in ghosts the idea of communication between the souls of the dead and the living, you will find the thought which we are endeavouring to put before you in a scientific form.

This popular notion about ghosts has extended to persons who appear to be educated and enlightened, but who are, in reality, as ignorant in matters of philosophy as the simple peasants, and who are, in addition, addicted to mysticism, which obscures their reason. We allude to _spiritualists_.

The term _spiritualists_ is applied to the partisans of a new superstition which sprung up in America and Europe in 1855, as a result of the moral malady of _table-turning_. These good people imagine that they can, by their will, and according to their fancy, cause the souls of the dead, of great men, or of their own relatives and friends, to descend to the earth. They evoke the soul of Socrates or Confucius, as easily as that of a defunct relative, and they are so simple as to imagine that these souls come at their call to converse with them. A person who is called a _medium_ is the intermediary between the invoker and the soul invoked. The medium, under the influence of an unconscious and habitual hallucination, writes down on paper all the answers made by the spirit, or rather he writes down everything that comes into his own foolish head, imagining himself to be faithfully transmitting messages from the other world. The people who listen to him take these things, which are simply the thoughts of the ignorant medium, for revelations from beyond the tomb.

In spiritualism there exists only one true and rational idea; it is the possibility of man's placing himself in relation with the souls of the dead; but the coarse means resorted to by the partisans of this mystic doctrine, cause every enlightened and educated man to repudiate any fellowship with them. We merely mention spiritualism in this place as a vulgar and foolish phase of the popular belief in ghosts. It has higher pretensions, but science and reason alike forbid us to admit them.

The fact of communication between superhuman beings and the dwellers upon the earth being, it seems to us, proved, we shall now consider how those superhuman beings and men who live on the earth or on the other planets may be brought into relation with each other. It appears to us that this communication is chiefly in action during sleep, and through the medium of dreams. Sleep, that curious and ill-explained state, is the condition of our being during which a portion of our physiological functions, those which establish our connection with the external world, are abolished, while the soul preserves a part of its activity. In this condition, the body being seized by a kind of death, the soul, on the contrary, continues to act, to feel, and to manifest itself by the phenomena of dreams. Now, in the superhuman being, the spiritual portion, the soul, dominates immensely over the material portion. The superhuman being is, so to speak, all intelligence. Man, when he is in the condition of sleep and dreaming, approaches nearer to the superhuman being than when he is in a waking state; there is, then, more resemblance, more natural affinity between them. Consequently communications can be more easily established between these two beings who are drawn together by analogy of condition.

There is a saying, the result of repeated observation, which is logical and true. It is, _the night brings counsel_. Is not this as much as to say that it is during the night we receive the secret communications and the solitary advice of those beloved invisible beings who watch over us, and inspire us with their supreme wisdom? It is certain that when we have to make a decision, to unravel a thought, it often happens that we fall asleep in the midst of perplexity and uncertainty, and that the next day we awake, having taken our decision, unravelled our thought, which explains the phrase, _the night brings counsel_. Ancient times, and the middle ages, accorded an extraordinary importance to dreams. They were considered to be sent by God, as His warnings, hence the importance attached to their interpretation. "During sleep," says Tertullian, "the honours which await men are revealed to us; during sleep, remedies are indicated, thefts revealed, treasures discovered."[10]

_Visions_ played a great part among Christians in mediæval times. It was during sleep that saints, inspired persons, and devotees received communications of an extraordinary order. We are far from believing that it is during sleep and dreams only that we can feel the presence and the influence of superhuman beings. There are few persons who have not felt, while waking, an unaccountable influence of this kind. We feel a soft, gentle impression, a sort of vague, mysterious push, which excites a spontaneous resolution, a sudden inspiration, an unhoped-for suggestion.

We must observe that all men are not recipients of these mysterious impressions. The superhuman being cannot manifest himself except to those whom he loves, and who remember him; to those whom he wishes to protect against the dangers and difficulties of this terrestrial life. A father, or a mother, snatched away from filial love by death, comes to speak to the soul which remains and mourns here below. A son, torn in the dawn of life from the tenderness of his parents, comes to console them for his loss, to enlighten them with his advice, to furnish them, by the inspiration of his lofty wisdom, with the means of sustaining all the trials of this lower life. Two friends are united, despite the barrier of the tomb. Two lovers, whom death has sundered, are again brought together. An adored wife, taken by death from her husband, reveals herself to his heart. Then all those sentiments of mutual affection which subsisted between them spring up again; death, which has appeared to sever the ties between these souls, does no more than veil them from the eyes of strangers. Death is conquered; the phantom is laid low, and we may cry with the prophet in the Scripture, "Oh, Death! where is thy sting? Oh, Grave, where is thy victory?"

In order to receive these communications, a man must possess a pure and noble mind, and he must have preserved the cultus of those whom he has lost. A mother who has been indifferent to her child during his life, or has forgotten him after his death, cannot expect to receive secret manifestations from him for whom she has felt but little tenderness. The friend from whose heart the image of the friend removed by death has been effaced, must renounce such priceless manifestations. The man who is abandoned to low and vicious instincts and perverse inclinations, must not flatter himself, however faithfully he may have preserved the memory of the dead, that these messages shall come to him. A pure and noble creature only can communicate with these privileged beings.

There exists in our hearts a moral force which no philosophy has been able to explain, which no science has been able to analyze, which is called _conscience_. Conscience is a sacred light burning within us, which nothing can obstruct, obscure, or extinguish, and which has the power of giving us sure and certain enlightenment on every occasion in our lives. Conscience is infallible. Notwithstanding everything, in spite of our real or apparent interest, at all times, and in all places, speaking to the great and the small alike, to the powerful and to the weak, it always teaches to discern good from evil, the honest from the dishonest way. In our belief, conscience is the impression transmitted to us by a beloved being, snatched from us by death. It is a relative, a friend, who has left the earth, and who deigns to reveal himself to us, that he may guide us in our actions, trace out the path of safety for us, and labour for our good. Cowardly, perverse, base, and lying men exist, of whom we say that _they have no conscience_. They do not know how to distinguish good from evil; they are entirely wanting in moral sense. It is because they have never loved any one, and their souls, base and vile, are not worthy to be visited by any of those superior beings, who only manifest themselves to men who resemble them, or who have loved them. A man _without a conscience_ is, then, one who is rendered unworthy, by the vicious essence of his soul, of the lofty counsels and the protection of those who are no more.

Our readers will have perceived that this idea of a supreme and invisible protector of man, who guides his heart, and enlightens his reason, has already been formulated by the Christian religion, which has derived it from Holy Scripture. It is the _Guardian Angel_, a mysterious and poetic type, a seraphic creature, whom God has charged to watch over the Christian, to guard him against snares, and constantly to direct him to the ways of sanctity and virtue. We observe this argument without having sought it. In short, we register our ideas as they deduce themselves logically from each other, without any bias. And when we find ourselves led into agreement with a dogma of the Christian religion, we note that concord with pleasure.

We would ask those persons who have read these pages to question themselves, to summon up their recollections, to reflect upon what has passed around them, and we are convinced that they will discover many facts in harmony with what we advance. The moral phenomenon of the impressions made by the dead on the mind of the living who have loved them, and who keep up the cultus of their memory, is one of those truths which every one holds by intuition, and whose entire verity he acknowledges when he finds it curtly formulated and put forward. We will not give our readers second-hand information by invoking facts of this kind which they may know; we can only recall a few which came under our observation, briefly, as follows:

One of our friends, an Italian Count, B----, lost his mother nearly forty years ago. He has assured us that he has been in communication with her every day since, without intermission. He adds that he owes the wise ordering of his life, his labours, his career, and the good fortune which has always accompanied his enterprizes, to the constant influence and secret counsels of his mother.

Dr. V----, a professed materialist, one who, according to the popular phrase, _believes in nothing_, believes, nevertheless, in his mother. Like Count B----, he lost her early, and has never ceased to feel her presence. He told us that he is more frequently with his dead mother, than he used to be when she was living. This professed apostle of medical materialism has, without being aware of it, conversations with an emancipated soul.

A celebrated journalist, M. R----, lost a son, twenty years of age, a charming, gentle youth, a writer, and a poet. Every day M. R---- has an intimate conversation with this son. A quarter of an hour of solitary recollection admits him to direct communication with the beloved being snatched away from his love.

M. L----, a barrister, maintains constant relations with a sister who, when living, possessed, according to him, every human perfection, and who never fails to guide her brother in every difficulty of his life, great or small.

Another consideration suggests itself in support of the idea which occupies us at present. It has been remarked that artists, writers, and thinkers, after the loss of one beloved, have found their faculties, talents, and inspirations increased. We might surmise that the intellectual faculties of those whom they have loved have been added to their own. I know a financier who is remarkable for his business capacities. When he finds himself in a difficulty, he stops, without troubling himself to seek for its solution. He waits, knowing that the missing idea will come to him spontaneously, and, sometimes after days, sometimes after hours, the idea comes, just as he has expected. This happy and successful man has experienced one of the deepest sorrows the heart can know; he has lost an only son, aged eighteen years, and endowed with all the qualities of maturity, combined with the graces of youth. Our readers may draw the conclusion for themselves.

This last example may instruct us concerning a peculiarity of the superior manifestations which we are studying. We have just said that sometimes a certain time, some days for instance, are required for the production of the manifestations. The cause of this is that the superhuman being, to whom they are due, has much difficulty in putting himself in relation with the inhabitants of our globe. There are many beings on the earth whom he loves, and whom he would fain protect, and he cannot be in two different places at the same time. We may even suppose that the difficulties which human beings feel in putting themselves in relation with us, added to the spectacle of the sufferings and misfortunes which overwhelm their friends here below, are the causes of the only sorrows which trouble their existence, so marvellously happy in other respects. Absolute happiness exists nowhere in the world, and destiny has the power to let fall one drop of gall into the cup of happiness quaffed by the dwellers in ether, in their celestial abode.

Persons who receive communications from the dead have remarked that these communications sometimes cease quite suddenly. A celebrated actress, now retired from the stage, had manifest communications with a person whom she had lost by a tragical death. These communications abruptly ceased. The soul of the dead friend whom she mourned warned her that their intercourse was about to cease. The assigned reason serves to explain why such relation cannot be continuously maintained. The superhuman being who was in relations with the terrestrial person had already risen in rank in the celestial hierarchy, he had accomplished a new metamorphosis, and he could no longer correspond with the earth.

Among the French peasantry communication with the dead is a general habit. In the country death does not involve the lugubrious ideas which accompany it among the dwellers in cities. People love and cultivate the memory of those whom they have loved, they hold as most happy those whom the favour of Providence has early removed from the misfortunes, the failures, the bitterness of terrestrial life, they call on them, they confide in them, and the dead, grateful for this pious memory of them, respond to the simple prayers of these hearts. All the Orientals have that serene aspiration towards death which in Europe exists exclusively among country people. The Mussulmans love to invoke death, to spread the idea of death everywhere. Every one knows the melancholy proverb of the Arabs, "It is better to be seated than standing; it is better to be lying down than seated; it is better to be dead than living."

The preceding chapter terminated with a quotation from Charles Bonnet, the first of the naturalists who discerned the doctrine of the plurality of existences above the globe. We shall terminate this chapter with a quotation from another naturalist philosopher, a contemporary of Charles Bonnet, who defended that doctrine very cleverly. Dupont de Nemours, in his _Philosophie de l'Univers_, expresses himself thus, on the subject of the communications which may be established between us, and the superior beings, invisible inhabitants of other worlds, whom he calls _angels_, or _genii_.

"Why," said Dupont, "have we no evident knowledge of these beings,
the necessity, convenience, and analogy of whom strike our
reflective faculties which only can indicate them? of those beings
who must surpass us in perfections, in faculties, in power, as much
as we surpass the lower animals and the plants?--who must have a
hierarchy as various, as finely graduated as that which we admire
among the living and intelligent beings over which we dominate,
and which are subordinate to us?--several others of whom may be
our companions on earth, as we are of animals which, destitute
of sight, hearing, and the sense of smell, of hands and of feet,
do not know what we are even when we are doing them good, or
harm?--some of whom are perhaps travelling from globe to globe, or,
more excellent still, from one solar system to another, more easily
than we go from Brest to Madagascar?

"It is because we have neither such organs or such senses as would
be necessary to enable our intelligence to communicate with them.

"Thus do the worlds embrace the worlds, and thus are classified
intelligent beings all composed of matter which God has more or
less richly organized and vivified.

"Such is the probability, and, speaking to vigorous minds which do
not shrink from novel suggestions, I will dare to say that such is
the truth.

"Man is capable of calculating that it is frequently for his
own interest to be useful to other species; and, which is more
valuable, more moral, and more amiable, he is capable of rendering
them services for his own satisfaction, and without any other
motive than the pleasure which it affords him to do so.

"That which we do for our lower brethren, we, whose intelligence
is circumscribed, and whose goodness is very limited, the genii,
the angels,--permit me to employ terms in general use to designate
beings whom I only divine but do not know,--these beings who are so
much more worthy than we, ought to do, and doubtless do, the same
for us, with much more beneficence, frequency, and extent on all
occasions which concern them.

"We know perfectly well that these intelligences exist, and it is
of little importance to us whether they are, as some persons think,
formed of a sort of matter, composed of mixed material, or not.
Their quota of intelligence is very brilliant, very remarkable,
and evident; in strong contrast with the properties of inanimate
nature, which can be measured, weighed, calculated, and analyzed.

"In order to comprehend what is the action of superhuman
intelligences, who can only be known to us by induction, reason,
and comparison between what we ourselves are to even the most
intelligent animals, which are efficiently served by us, but have
not the smallest idea of us, we must pursue analogy farther. These
intelligences are above us, and out of the reach of our senses
only because they are endowed with a greater number of senses, and
with a more developed and more active life. These beings are more
worthy than we are, they have many more organs and faculties, they
must therefore, in employing their disposable faculties according
to their will, just as we employ ours according to our will, be
able to dispose, to work, to manœuvre all inanimate matter, and to
do all this among themselves, and also with respect to intelligent
beings who are their inferiors, with much more energy, rapidity,
enlightenment, and wisdom than we possess, we who nevertheless do
it for the beasts subordinate to us. It is, then, in harmony with
the laws and the ways of nature that the superior intelligences
should have power to render us, when it pleases them, most
important services of which we are quite ignorant.

"These unknown protectors who observe us, unperceived, have not our
imperfections, and must prize all that is good and beautiful in
itself more highly than we can.

"We cannot, therefore, hope to please intelligences of a superior
grade by actions which men themselves would condemn as odious.
We cannot flatter ourselves with a hope of deceiving them, as we
may deceive men, by exterior hypocrisy which only renders crime
more despicable. They can behold our most secret actions, they can
overhear our soliloquies, they can penetrate our unspoken thoughts.
We know not in how many ways they can read what is passing in our
hearts, we, whose coarseness, poverty, and unskilfulness limit our
means of knowing to touch, sight, hearing, and sometimes analysis
and conjecture.

"A celebrated Roman wished to have a house built, which should
be open to the sight of the citizens. This house exists, and we
inhabit it. Our neighbours are the chiefs and the magistrates of
the great republic, who are invested with right and power to punish
even our intentions, which are no mystery to them. And those who
most completely penetrate them in their smallest variations, in
their lightest inflections, are the most powerful and the most wise.

"Let us then try, in so far as it depends on us, to keep in accord
with those in comparison with whom we are so small, and, above all,
let us understand our littleness. If it be very important to us
to admit to our complete friendship, to our entire confidence, to
our constant society, none but men of the first rank of mind and
character--if the sweet competition of affection, zeal, goodness,
and capacity which is always going on between them and us,
contributes to our improvement every day, what shall we not gain by
giving them adjuncts, so to speak, higher and more perfect, who are
not subject, either to our ignoble interests, our passions, or our
errors, and before whom we cannot but blush. They do not vary, they
do not abandon us, they never go away, so soon as we are alone we
find them. They accompany us in travel, in exile, in prison, in a
dungeon; they are always floating above the peaceful and reflecting
brain.

"We can question them, and every time we do so, we may be sure that
they reply. Why should they not do so? Our absent friends render us
such service, but only those of their number who inspire us with
great respect. We can even experience something of the kind with
regard to an imaginary personage, if he presents himself to our
minds as uniting several good and heroic qualities. How often, in
difficult circumstances and in the midst of the strife of different
passages, I have asked myself,--In this case, what would Charles
Grandison have done? What would Quesnay have thought? What would
Turgot have approved of? What advice would Lavoisier have given me?
How shall I gain the approval of the angels? What line of action
will be most conformable to the order, the laws and the beneficent
views of the wise and majestic King of the universe? For the
homage, the aspirations of a soul eager to do good, and careful to
avoid debasement, may also be raised to God, in salutary and pious
invocation."[11]

FOOTNOTES:

[10] "Liber de animâ," ch. xlvi

[11] Pezzani: "_Pluralité des Existences de l'âme_," pp. 206-210.

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH.

WHAT IS AN ANIMAL?--THE SOULS OF ANIMALS.--MIGRATIONS OF SOULS THROUGH THE BODIES OF ANIMALS.

HITHERTO we have left animals out of our plan, although, owing to their immense number, and their influence upon the places which they inhabit, they play a highly important part in the world. It is now time to define the place in nature which our system assigns to them.

Have animals souls? Yes, in our belief, animals have souls; but among animals of all classes the soul is far from being endowed with an equal degree of activity. The activity of the soul is different in the crocodile and in the dog, in the eagle and in the grasshopper. In inferior animals, zoophytes and mollusca, the soul exists only in the condition of a germ. This germ develops itself, and becomes amplified according to the elevation of animals in the series of organic perfection. The sponge and the coral are zoophytes (animal plants). In these beings, the characteristics of animality, although they exist very positively, are obscure and hardly discernible. Voluntary motion, which is the distinctive characteristic formerly demanded for animals, is wanting in them; they are motionless, like the plants. Nevertheless, their nutrition is the same as that of animals, therefore they belong to the animal world. We cannot, however, grant to them a complete soul, but only the germ, the originating point of a soul. Among mollusca (such as marine and land shells, the oyster, the snail, &c.), the motions and the conduct of life are dictated by the will, and that suffices, in our belief, to reveal their possession of a soul, imperfect and very elementary, but certainly existent. Among articulated animals, the insects especially, will, sensibility, acts which denote reason, deliberation, and action resulting from deliberation, are numerous, and recurrent at every moment. They denote intelligence already active.

The smallness of the bodies of these animals is not an argument to be used against the fact of their intelligence. In nature nothing is great, and nothing is little; the monstrous whale and the invisible gnat are equal in the presence of its laws; both one and the other have received as their inheritance the degree of intelligence which is suitable to its need, and it is not by the scale of grandeur that we must measure the degrees of mind among living creatures. Every one is familiar with the prodigies of intelligence performed by associated bees, and by the ants, in their camps and hills. The habits of these two species of insects, which have been studied and expounded only in our age, fill us with wonder, almost with awe. But the bees and the ants do not constitute an exception among the insect class. It is very probable that in the entire class intelligence exists to the same degree as in bees and ants, for we do not see why two species of hymenopterous insects should exclusively possess this privilege, to the exclusion of other species of the same order, and all the other orders of the insect class. The fact is, that the bee has been studied profoundly, because that insect is an object of agricultural industry, and that, in consequence, it was for man's interest to understand its customs. This accounts for the successful surmounting of the difficulties attendant on the study of bees.

We may add, that the observer to whom our knowledge of bees is due, Pierre Huber, of Geneva, who published his fine works at the end of the last century, was blind, and that he was obliged to have recourse for all his observations to the eyes of an illiterate servant, François Burnens, which is a proof that this kind of study was not inordinately difficult.

The habits of other species of insects, still unknown to us, must, according to this, conceal marvels quite as great as those which the Hubers have revealed in the case of bees and ants.

Let us conclude that insects have souls, since intelligence is a faculty of the soul.

We may apply the same reasoning to fishes, reptiles, and birds. In these three classes of animals intelligence progresses towards perfection, the faculty of reason is manifest, and the degree of intelligence seems to march at a progressive rate from the fish to the reptile, and from the reptile to the bird.

In mammiferous animals we observe a degree of advance in intelligence upon the classes of animals we have just named. But, ought we to calculate the degree of intelligence of the different mammifers according to the order in which naturalists have classed these animals? Ought we to say that the strength of intelligence increases as we follow the zoological distribution of Cuvier, that is to say, that it rises from cetacea to carnivora, from carnivora to pachyderms, and from pachyderms to ruminants, &c.? No, evidently not.

It would be absurd to apportion the intellect of animals to the place which they occupy in zoological classification. We do not possess any certain method by which to form such an appreciation in detail. We remain within the terms of a very acceptable philosophical thesis in advancing our belief, in a general manner, that the intellectual faculties of animals augment from the mollusk to the mammifer, following almost exactly the progressive scale of zoological classification, but to enter into the peculiarities of these orders would be to expose ourselves to certain contradiction. In zoophytes the soul exists as a germ; this germ develops itself and grows in mollusca, and then in articulated creatures and fishes. The soul acquires certain faculties, more or less obscure and dim, when it enters the body of a reptile, and these faculties are manifestly augmented in the body of a bird. The soul is provided with far more perfected faculties when it reaches the body of a mammifer. Such is the general outline of our system.

Let us now follow this system out to the end. In the first pages of this book, we have advanced our theory that the soul of man, at the close of its terrestrial existence, passes into the planetary ether, where it is lodged in the body of a new being, superior to man in intelligence and morality. If this theory be correct, if this migration of the soul of man into the body of the superhuman being be real, analogy obliges us to establish the same relation between the animals, and then between the animals and man.

We firmly believe that a transmigration, a transmission of souls, or of the germs of souls, throughout the entire series of the classes of animals takes place. The germ of a conscious soul which existed in the zoophyte and the mollusk passes, on the death of those beings, into the body of an articulated animal. In this first stage of its journey, the animate germ strengthens and ameliorates itself. The nascent soul acquires some rudimentary faculties. When this rudiment of a conscious soul passes out of the body of an articulated animal into that of a fish or a reptile, it undergoes a new degree of elaboration, and its power increases. When, escaping from the body of the reptile or the fish, it is lodged in the form of the bird it receives other impressions, which become the origin of new perfections. The bird transmits the spiritual element, already much modified and aggrandized, to the mammifer, and then, the soul, having again gained power, and the number of its faculties being augmented, passes into the body of man.

It is probable that in the case of the inferior animals many animate germs are united to form the superior being. For instance, the principal animators of a certain number of little zoophytes, of those beings who live in the waters by millions, may, probably, on quitting the bodies of those beings, be united in one in order to form the soul of a single individual of a superior order.

It would be impossible to specify from what particular mammifer the soul must escape, in order to penetrate a human organism. It would be impossible to decide whether, before reaching man the soul has successively traversed the bodies of several mammifers, of more or less complicated organism; if it has passed through the body of a cetacian, then of a carnivorous creature, then of a quadrumane, the last term of the animal series. A pretension to detail would be a stumbling block to such a system as ours.

To maintain, for instance, that our soul is transmitted to us by the quadrumane, would be incorrect. The intelligence of the quadrumane is inferior to that of many animals more highly placed than he in the zoological scale. Apes, which compose only one family in the very numerous order of quadrumana, are animals of middling intelligence. They are malicious, cunning and gross, and possess only a few features of the human face, and even these belong to but few species. All the other quadrumanes are bestial in the highest degree.

It is not, therefore, in the quadrumana that we must look for the soul to be transmitted to man. But there are animals endowed with intelligence which is both powerful and noble, who would have a title to be accredited with such an honour. Those animals would vary according to the inhabited parts of the earth. In Asia, it may be that the wise, grave, and noble elephant is the depositary of the spiritual principle which is to pass into man. In Africa, the lion, the rhinoceros, the numerous ruminants which fill the forests may, perhaps, be the ancestors of the human race. In America, the horse, the wild ranger of the pampas, the dog, the faithful friend, the devoted companion of man, everywhere are, it may be, charged with the elaboration of the spiritual principle, which, transmitted to the child, is destined to develop itself, to increase in that child, and become the human soul. A writer in our time has called the dog a candidate for humanity. He little knew how true his definition is.

It will be urged, in objection, that man cannot have received the soul of an animal, because he has not the smallest remembrance of such a genealogy. To this we reply that the faculty of memory is wanting in the animal, or is so fugitive that we may consider it _nil_. The child can therefore receive from the animal only a soul unendowed with memory. And, in fact, the child itself is totally destitute of that faculty. At the moment of his birth he differs not at all from the animal as regards the faculties of his soul. It is not until twelve months have elapsed that the soul makes itself evident in him, and it is afterwards perfected by education. How, therefore, should the child remember an existence prior to his birth? Have we any memory of the time which we passed in our mother's womb?

Let us observe here that the progressive order which we have indicated for the migration of soul through the bodies of different animals, is precisely that which nature followed in the first creation of the organized beings which people our globe. It will be seen in ch. xiv., pp. 196-200, that plants zoophytes, mollusca, and articulated animals are the first living beings which appeared on our globe. After them came the fishes, and then the reptiles. After the reptiles birds, and at a later period mammifers appeared. Thus our system responds to the routine which nature has followed in the creation of plants and animals.

Such is the system which we have conceived as explanatory of the part assigned to animals on our globe. The basis of this system, as will be seen, is the intelligence accorded to animals. We entirely repel the generally held opinion, that beasts do not possess intelligence, and that it is replaced by an obscure faculty which is called instinct. But this theory gives no reason, it merely puts a word in the place of an explanation. By a simple phrase people imagine they resolve one of the great problems of nature. The timid and conventional philosophy of our time has hitherto accommodated itself to this method of eluding great difficulties, but the moment now appears to have come for a deeper study of the problems of nature, and for no longer remaining content with the substitution of words for things.

There was no hesitation in ancient times about according intelligence to animals. Aristotle and Plato expressed themselves quite clearly on this point: they admitted no doubt of the reasoning powers of beasts. The most celebrated modern philosophers, Leibnitz, Locke, and Montaigne; the most eminent naturalists, Charles Bonnet, Georges Leroy, Dupont de Nemours, Swammerdam, Réaumur, &c., granted intelligence to animals. Charles Bonnet understood the language of many animals, and Dupont de Nemours has given us a translation of the "_Chansons du Rossignol_" and the "_Dictionnaire de la Langue des Corbeaux_." It is, therefore, difficult to understand how a contrary thesis became prevalent in this age, how Descartes and Buffon, the declared adversaries of animal intelligence, have succeeded in turning the scale in favour of their ideas.

Descartes regarded animals purely as machines, as automata provided with mechanical apparatus. It would be difficult to surpass our great philosopher in absurdity when he treats of these animal machines.[12] _Equidem bonus dormitat Descartes._ The systematic errors of Buffon on the same subject are well known.

The partizans of Descartes and of Buffon have popularized the idea of instinct put in the place of intelligence, of the word replacing the thing. But, in simple truth, what difference is there between intelligence and instinct? None. These two words only represent two different degrees of the same faculty. Instinct is simply a weaker degree of intelligence. If we read the writings of naturalists of this country who have studied the question, Frederick Cuvier (brother to George Cuvier), and Flourens,[13] who has but commented upon Frederick Cuvier's book on the more profound work of a learned contemporary writer, M. Fée of Strasbourg,[14] we shall easily find that no fundamental distinction between intelligence and instinct can be established, and that the whole secret of our philosophers and naturalists consists in calling the intelligence of animals, which is weaker than ours, _instinct_.

It is, then, the pride of mankind which has attempted to place a barrier, which in reality has no existence, between us and the animal. The intelligence of the animal is less developed than that of the man, because his wants are fewer, his organs are less highly finished, and because the sphere of his activity is more limited, but that is all. And sometimes, even, we must not forget that the animal exceeds the man in intelligence. Look at the rude and brutal waggoner, beside his good and docile horse, which he mercilessly beats and abuses, while his faithful auxiliary fulfils his task with patient exactness, and say, is it not the master who is the brute, and the animal who is the intelligent being? In kindness--that sweet emanation of the soul--animals often excel men. Every one knows the horrid story of the man who carried his dog to a river to drown him, but who fell into the water himself, and was on the point of drowning. The faithful companion whom he had flung in to die was there; he swam to his master, and dragged him into safety. Then the dog's master, making his footing sure this time, seized the creature who had just rescued him, and drowned him.

According to our system, the human soul comes from an animal belonging to the superior orders. After having undergone, in the body of this animal, a suitable degree of perfecting and elaboration, it incarnates itself in the body of a newly-born child of the human race.

We said, in a former chapter, "Death is not a termination, but a change; we do not die, we experience a metamorphosis." We must add to this, "Birth is not a beginning, it is a consequence. To be born is not to begin, it is to continue a prior existence."

There is not, therefore, properly speaking, either birth or death for the human species; there is only a continuous succession of existences, extending from the visible world through space, and connecting each with those worlds which are hidden from our view.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] This question is specially considered in Descartes' "_Discours sur la Méthode._"

[13] "_De l'Instinct et de l'Intelligence des Animaux_," Paris, 1861.

[14] "_Etudes Philosophiques sur l'Instinct et l'Intelligence des Animaux_," Strasbourg, 1853.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.

WHAT IS THE PLANT?--THE PLANT IS SENSIBLE.--HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO DISTINGUISH PLANTS FROM ANIMALS.--THE GENERAL CHAIN OF LIVING BEINGS.

LINNÆUS has said, "The plant lives; the animal lives and feels; man lives, feels, and thinks." This aphorism represented the state of science in the times of Linnæus. But since the year 1778, that is to say, since the death of the great botanist, Upsal, natural science has progressed, botany and zoology have been enriched with innumerable facts and fundamental discoveries, so that the Linnæan formula no longer represents the present condition of the sciences of organization. We believe that the following proposition may be truthfully substituted: "The plant lives and feels; the animal and man live, feel, and think."

To accord sensibility to plants, is to transgress the classic laws of natural history, so that the considerations and facts which appear to us to justify this proposition ought to be most carefully stated.

1. The plant feels the sensations of pleasure and pain. Cold, for instance, impresses it painfully; it may be seen to contract itself, as if shivering, under the influence of a sudden or excessive fall of the temperature. An abnormal excess of temperature evidently causes it to suffer; when the heat is very great, leaves may be observed to hang down on the stems, curl up, and appear to wither; when the cool of the evening comes, the leaves rise up again, and the plant resumes its appearance of placid health. Drought also occasions manifest suffering to plants. Those who study nature with loving attention know that when, after a long period of drought, a plant is watered it exhibits signs of pleasure. On the other hand, a wounded plant, one from which a branch has been cut, appears to experience pain. A pathological liquid exudes from the wound, like the blood from a hurt animal; the plant is sick, and will die, if it do not receive the necessary succour. Thus persons who love plants will not cut flowers off their stems, they prefer to inhale their perfume, and contemplate their brilliant colours, on the stalk, without inflicting a painful mutilation upon the beautiful creatures which they admire.

The sensitive plant, if touched by the fingers, or even struck by a current of harsh air, folds up its leaves, and contracts itself. The botanist, Desfontaines, saw a sensitive plant, which he was bringing home in a carriage, contract its leaves while the vehicle was in motion, and expand them when it stopped, thus affording a proof that the movement distressed the plant. A drop of acid, or acrid liquid, placed on a leaf of a sensitive plant, will occasion a similar constriction. All vegetables present an analogous phenomenon. Their tissues contract when brought in contact with irritant substances. By rubbing the tips of a lettuce, the juice may be made to exude.

Vegetable sensibility exists by the same right as animal sensibility, since electricity kills plants as it kills animals, since narcotic poisons kill or stupefy plants as they kill and stupefy animals. One can narcotize a plant by watering it with opium dissolved in water, and MM. Gopport and Macaire have discovered that hydrocyanic acid kills plants as rapidly as animals.

2. Plants sleep at night. During the day they develop their vital activity, and when the night comes, or when they are in darkness, their leaves assume another position, that of repose; they fold themselves up. In the day-time, the upper surface of the leaf is turned to the sky, and the under surface towards the earth; this under surface, pierced with holes, or _stomata_, is the part through which absorption and exhalation take place, while the upper surface, in which there are no such openings, is only a sort of screen for the protection of the absorbing surface. It is therefore easy to understand that the horizontal attitude of the leaves is a position of vital activity, and that the refolding of those leaves during the night indicates a state of repose. It is precisely the same case with ourselves, when during the night we indulge our muscles, kept on the stretch during the day, with complete relaxation.

The _sleep of plants_, said to have been discovered by Linnæus, and which was certainly described for the first time in one of Upsal's _Thèses de Botanique_, and thoroughly elucidated by Linnæus, is not a phenomenon limited to certain families of plants. There are very few vegetables which, during the night, or in darkness, do not fold their leaves, and which do not present a different appearance by day and by night. The Sensitive is the classic plant selected for its exhibition of this phenomenon in all its intensity; but this small leguminous creature only presents us with an exaggeration of a fact which exists in a lesser degree among almost all vegetables with light leaves. We may quote the following passage from a former work on the subject of this phenomenon.

"The sleep of plants vaguely resembles that of animals. It is a
remarkable circumstance that the slumbering leaf appears to wish
to return to the epoch of its infancy. It folds itself almost as
it was when in the bud, before it burst out, as it was in the
lethargic sleep of winter, sheltered beneath its strong scales, or
wrapped up in its warm down. One would think that the plant was
trying every night to resume the position which it occupied in its
early time, just as the sleeping animal gathers himself together,
and folds his limbs as they were folded in his mother's womb."[15]

Is it possible to deny the possession of sensibility to creatures which give us alternate sign of repose and of activity, and who have the power of accommodating themselves to various external impressions? Fatigue cannot possibly be anything but the consequence of the experience of an impression.

3. Numerous physiological functions are fulfilled by plants as well as by animals; and when we consider the number and variety of these functions, it is difficult to understand how, if animals be, as the common consent of mankind declares them, possessed of sensibility, plants can be destitute of it. An ancient philosopher defined plants as _animals with roots_. We shall see, on examining the variety of functions performed by vegetables, whether this philosopher was not a far-seeing, wise man.

It would be difficult to name any function with which the animal is invested that the vegetable does not possess in a less degree. _Respiration_, for instance, is equally a property of plants and of animals. Among the latter, respiration consists in the absorption of the oxygen of the air and the emission of carbonic acid gas and watery vapour; among plants it consists in the emission of carbonic acid gas and watery vapour during the night, and during the day, under the influence of sunlight, of the emission of oxygen proceeding from the decomposition of carbonic acid. The function is evidently of the same nature in both the natural kingdoms.

_Exhalation_ is a function common to vegetables and to animals. By the stomata of leaves, as by the pores of the skin of animals, watery vapour and various gases, according to the vital phenomena which take place in the interior of the tissues, are constantly being disengaged.

_Absorption_ takes place in both kingdoms. If you pour water on the lower surface of a leaf, you will see that it will be absorbed with great rapidity. Sprinkle a bouquet of flowers with water, and the freshness of the withered blossoms will revive. Absorption is even more active in vegetable than in animal tissues.

The circulation of liquids in the interior of plants is accomplished by a complicated system of channels and vessels of every order and of every calibre, absorbent vessels, exhalant vessels.

Nothing is more varied than the disposition of these channels in the interior of plants, and their multiplicity indicates a circulatory function as complicated as that of animals.

It is then evident that vegetables have the same physiological functions as animals, but as yet we know those functions very imperfectly. It is very strange that while animal physiology is so far advanced in our day, vegetable physiology is almost in its infancy. We know very well how the digestion of food takes place in man and animals, we know how our blood circulates in a double system of vessels, called arteries and veins, and we know the central organ, the heart, through which the two liquids are carried by this double system. We see and we touch the organs of sensation and motion, that is to say, the nerves. More than this, we distinguish the nerves which produce sensation from those which rule motion. We know that the centre of nervous action in man and animals is double; that its seat is equally in the brain and in the spinal marrow.

Briefly, science has shed its brightest light on all the functions belonging to animal organization, while vegetable physiology remains in obscurity. Notwithstanding the labours of naturalists within the last two centuries, we cannot explain the life of plants with certainty. We cannot positively state how the sap, which is vegetable blood, circulates in their channels. We do not even know with precision whether a tree grows from the outside to the inside, or from the inside to the outside. All the physiological functions in the vegetable kingdom are hidden from us by a thick veil, and it is only by lifting a corner of it with great difficulty that we can catch a few gleams of light through the obscurity. Nevertheless, all unexplained though they be as yet, physiological functions do exist in plants. Considering these numerous functions, it appears entirely impossible that plants should not have received the gift of sensibility. It is difficult to believe, as Linnæus would have us believe, that they possess life, and nothing more.

We shall be told that vegetables have no nerves, and that in the absence of every organ of sensation, we cannot accord them the faculty of sensibility. But, we reply, that the imperfect state of vegetable anatomy and physiology forbids us to come to any conclusion touching the existence or the absence of nerves in plants. We are convinced that these organs exist, but that botanists do not know how to discern them, or have no means of distinguishing between them and other organs.

4. The manner of multiplication and reproduction among plants and animals is so analogous, that it seems impossible, when we consider this extraordinary resemblance in the most important functions, to refuse sensibility to plants, and accord it to animals.

Let us consider the various modes of reproduction proper to vegetables. Reproduction, or rather the fecundation which precedes it, is executed in certain vegetables, by means of an apparatus of the same typical form as that of the animal kingdom. It is composed of a male organ, the stamen, which contains the impregnating dust, pollen, and of a female organ, the ovary, supported by a stalk, the pistil. The pollen impregnates the ovula contained in the grains of pollen in the ovary, as the seed of the male impregnates the ovula contained in the egg of the animal. In both cases the fruit of the impregnation develops itself afterwards with the aid of warmth and time. The vegetable egg grows and ripens, just as the animal egg grows and ripens.