Part 18 (1/2)
In his _Oeuvres Posthumes_ (vol. I, p. 286) appears this remarkable pa.s.sage:
”Death ought to be looked upon only as one stage in our journey. We reach this stage with tired, worn-out horses, and we start again with horses that are fresh and able to take us farther on our road; all the same, we must pay what we owe for the portion of the journey that has been traversed, and until the account is settled, we are not allowed to continue our way.”
Goethe writes as follows to his friend Madame von Stein:
”Tell me what destiny has in store for us? Wherefore has it bound us so closely to each other? Ah! in bygone times, thou must have been my sister or my wife ... and there remains, from the whole of those past ages, only one memory, hovering like a doubt above my heart, a memory of that truth of old that is ever present in me.”
Ballanche, an orthodox Christian mystic, says:
”Each one of us is a reincarnating being, ignorant both of his present and of his former transformations.” (_Pal. Sociale_, book III., p.
154.)
”Man is brought to perfection only by becoming a more perfect order of things, and even then he does nothing more than bring back, as Plato said, a confused memory of the state that preceded his fall.” (_Essai sur les Inst.i.t. Sociales_, vol. ii., p. 170.)
”This life we spend on earth, shut in between an apparent birth and an equally apparent death, is, in reality, only a portion of our existence, one manifestation of man in time.” (_Orphee_, vol. iv., p.
424.)
”Our former lives belong to astronomical cycles lost in the mighty bosom of previous ages; not yet has it been given to us to know them.”
(_Orphee_, vol. iv., p. 432.)
Balzac's _Seraphita_ abounds with references to the idea of successive lives:
”All human beings spend their first life in the sphere of instincts, in which they endeavour to discover how useless are the treasures of earth.”
”.... How often we live in this first world....”
”Then we have other existences to wear out before we reach the path on which the light s.h.i.+nes. Death is one stage on this journey.”
Constant Savy[227] describes as follows the conditions of immortality and a succession of lives by means of reincarnation:
”In proportion as its soul is developed by successive lives, the body to which it is to be united will necessarily be superior to those it has worn out; otherwise there would be no harmony between these two elements of human existence; the means given to the soul would bear no relation to the development of its power. This body, gifted with more perfect and numerous senses, could not have an equal value for all....
”Besides, these natural inequalities are also advantageous for individual progress in another way; the errors resulting therefrom cause truths to be discovered; vices laid bare almost form a reason for the practice of virtue by all men, or at all events they protect one from vice by reason of the horror they inspire; the ignorance of some arouses the love of science in others; the very idleness which dishonours some men inspires others with a love for work.
”So that these inequalities, inevitable because they are necessary, are present in the successive lives we pa.s.s through. There is nothing in them contrary to universal harmony; rather, they are a means for effecting this harmony, and are the inevitable result of the difference in value that bodies possess. Besides, no man remains stationary; all advance at a more or less rapid rate of progress....
”When faith is born, it is an illumination. Since man's immortality is one progressive advance, and, to effect this, he prepares the life he enters by the life he is leaving; since, in short, there are necessarily two worlds, one material, the other intellectual, these two worlds, which make up the life to come, must be in harmonious relations.h.i.+p with our own.
”Man's work will, therefore, be a continuation of his past work....
”I would never believe that our intelligence, which begins to develop in this life, comes to a halt after such an imperfect growth, and is not exercised or perfected after death....
”... Nature always advances, always labours, because G.o.d is life and he is eternal, and life is the progressive movement in the direction of the supreme good, which is G.o.d himself. Could man alone in the whole of nature, man so imperfect and full of faults, stop in his onward course, either to be annihilated, or suddenly, without partic.i.p.ating in it, though he was created free, find that he was as perfect as he could possibly be? This is more than I can understand.
”No, when the time comes, man will not find that his life has been useless, a thing for mere contemplation; he will not find that he is improved without personal partic.i.p.ation therein, without effort and toil on his part; above all, he will not be reduced to a state of nothingness. He will again have a life of toil; he will partic.i.p.ate, to the extent G.o.d has permitted him, in the endless creations produced by divine omnipotence; he will again love, he will never cease to love; he will continue his eternal progress, because the distance between himself and G.o.d is infinite.”
Pierre Leroux says:
”If G.o.d, after creating the world and all creation, were then to abandon them, instead of guiding them from life to life, from one state of progress to another, to a goal of real happiness, he would be an unjust G.o.d. It is unnecessary for St. Paul to say; 'Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it. Why hast thou made me thus?'