For some time now,
Le Siècle has published with the title of Tout Paris, a number of very interesting series written by different authors; there was Paris artist, Paris gastronome, Paris litigator, etc. In its April 24
th and 25
th, 1868 series, it published Paris somnambulist, by Mr. Eugène Bonnemère, the author of the
Novel of the future. It is an account at the same time scientific and true of the different varieties of somnambulism, in which it incidentally brings in Spiritism, with its own name, however with all the rhetorical precautions determined by the requirements of the newspaper, whose responsibility it did not want to take; this is what explains some reluctance. The lack of space does not allow us to quote as many statements as we would have liked, so that we will confine ourselves to the following passages:
“
The highest form of somnambulism is unquestionably Spiritism, that aspires to pass to the state of science. It has an already rich literature, and the books of Mr. Allan Kardec are notably authoritative on the subject.” “Spiritism is the correspondence of souls to one another. According to the followers of this belief, an invisible being communicates with another, called a medium, endowed with a particular organism that allows him to receive the thoughts of those who have once lived, and that write, either by a mechanical, unconscious impulse, written by hand, or by direct transmission to the intelligence of the mediums." “No, there is no such a thing as death. It is the moment of rest after the journey is over and the task finished; then, it is the awakening for a new work, more useful and greater than the one that has just been accomplished." “We leave, taking with us the memory of the knowledge acquired here; the world to which we will go gives us its own, and we will group them all in a bundle to form progress." "It is through the succession of generations that humanity advances, each time walking one more step towards the light, because they arrive animated by souls, always natively pure after they have returned to God, and remain imbued with the progress they have acquired." “As a result of conquests secured for good, the land we inhabit will deserve to climb the ladder of the worlds itself. A new cataclysm will come; certain plant essences, certain animal species, inferior or harmful, will disappear as others disappeared in the past, to make room for more perfect creations, and we in turn will become a world in which already tried beings will come to seek a greater development. It is up to us to hasten, by our efforts, the advent of this happier period. Our beloved dead come to help us in this difficult task." “As we can see, these beliefs, serious or not, do not lack a certain magnificence. Materialism and atheism, that human sentiment rejects with all its heart, are only an inevitable reaction against ideas, hardly admissible by reason, about God, nature, and the destinies of souls. Spiritism, by broadening the question, revives a faith that is ready to be extinguished in the hearts." Theater Cornelius – The rooster of Mycille This winter counted on a very successful performance, at the
Théâtre des Fantaisies-Parisiennes, of a charming operetta entitled:
The Elixir of Cornelius, in which reincarnation is the very crux of the plot. Here is the account given by the Siècle on its issue of February 11
th, 1868:
“This Cornelius is an alchemist who is particularly concerned with the transmigration of souls. Everything that is told on this subject he listens eagerly, as if it had happened. However, he has a daughter who did not wait for his permission to procure a suitor. No, but he refuses his consent. What to do then to get over his resistance? An idea: the lover tells him that his daughter, before being his daughter, a long time ago, was a gambler, runner of adventures and alleys. At the same time, he, the lover, was a charming young woman who was deceived by the adventurer of fortune. The roles are reversed, and he asks her to give him back his former honor. “Ah! you tell me so much!”, answers the convinced old doctor. And this is how one more marriage is accomplished before the public, that is so often responsible for replacing the mayor. The music is as cheerful as the subject that inspired it. Particularly noticed are the serenade, the verses of Cornelius, the burlesque duet, and the finale, written simply and easily.” As we see, the substance of the story here rests not only on the principle of reincarnation, but also on the change of sex.
The dramatic subjects are exhausted, and the authors are often very embarrassed to leave the cliched paths; the idea of reincarnation will provide them with a profusion of new situations for all genres; having the road open, it is likely that all theaters will soon have their reincarnation play.
The
French Theater had a play, at the end of May, in which the soul plays the main role; it is
The Rooster of Mycille, by Messrs. Trianon and Eugène Nyon, with the following main subject:
Mycille is a young shoemaker from Athens; across from his stall, a young magistrate, archon
[1] Eucrates, lives in a delightful marble house. The poor cobbler envies Eucrates, his wealth, his wife, the beautiful Chloe, his kitchen, his many slaves. The opulent archon, prematurely aged, crippled by gout, envies Mycille for his good looks, his health, the disinterested love shown to him by a pretty slave, Doris. Mycille has a rooster given to him by the young Doris, and that wakes the archon in the morning with its song.
The latter orders his slaves to beat the cobbler if he does not silence his rooster; the cobbler, in turn, wants to beat the rooster; but at that moment the animal is metamorphosed into a man: it is the philosopher Pythagoras whose soul had come to animate the body of the rooster, according to his doctrine of transmigration. He momentarily assumed his human form to enlighten Mycille on the foolishness of the envy that he carries to the position of Eucrates.
Unable to persuade him, he says: “I want to give you,” he said, “the means of enlightening you by your own experience. Pick up that feather you dropped from my rooster body; put it in the lock of the door of Eucrates; his door will immediately open; your soul will pass into the body of the archon, and conversely the soul of the archon will pass into your body. However, before doing anything, I urge you to think carefully. Then, Pythagoras disappears. Mycille thinks, but the thirst for gold wins, and prompted by various incidents, he makes up his mind, and the metamorphosis takes place. So, here we have the cobbler who has become the rich archon, but sick and gouty, and the archon who has become a cobbler. This transformation brings with it a host of comic complications, and consequently each one dissatisfied with their new position, they resume the one they had before.
The play, as we can see, is a new edition of the story of the cobbler and the financier, already exploited in so many forms. What characterizes it is that instead of the cobbler himself, body, and soul, who takes the place of the financier, it is the two souls that exchange their bodies. The idea is new, original, and the authors explored it with a lot of wit; but it is in no way borrowed from the Spiritist idea, as we had said; it is taken from a dialogue by Lucien:
The song and the rooster. We only mention it to point out the error of those who confuse the principle of reincarnation with the transmigration of souls or metempsychosis.
Cornelius' play, on the contrary, is entirely within the Spiritist idea, although the alleged reincarnation of the young man and the young girl is only an invention on their part to achieve their ends, while the latter stays away from it completely. First of all, Spiritism has never admitted the idea of the human soul retrograding into animality, because it would be the negation of the law of progress; second, the soul does not leave the body until death, and when, after a certain time spent in erraticity, it begins a new existence again, it is by passing through the ordinary phases of life: birth, childhood, etc., and not by the effect of an instantaneous metamorphosis or substitution, only seen in fairy tales, and are not the gospel of Spiritism, whatever the critics may say, who do not know much about it.
However, although the data is false in its application, it is nonetheless founded on the principle of the individuality and independence of the soul; it is the soul distinct from the body, and the possibility of living again in another envelope put into action, an idea with which it is always useful to familiarize public opinion. The impression that remains from it is not lost for the future, and it is more valuable than the plays that stages the shamelessness of passions.
[1] A chief magistrate in ancient Athens (T.N.)
Alexandre Dumas – Monte-Cristo
“
Listen, Valentin, have you ever felt for someone, one of those irresistible sympathies that when you see a person for the first time, you believe you have known him for a long time, and you wonder where and when you saw him? And unable to remember either the place or the time, you come to believe that it is in a world prior to ours, and that this sympathy is only a memory that awakens?” (Monte-Cristo, part 3, chapter XVIII, The Alfalfa Enclosure). “You have never dared to rise with a flick of your wing into the higher spheres that God has populated with invisible and exceptional beings. - And do you admit, sir, that these spheres exist; that exceptional and invisible beings mingle with us? - Why not? Do you see the air you breathe, and without which you could not live? - So, we do not see these beings that you speak of. - you see them when God allows them to materialize…” (Monte-Cristo, part 3, chapter IX, Ideology). And I, Monsieur (Villefort), I tell you that it is not so as you believe. Last night I slept a terrible sleep, because in a way I could see myself sleeping, as if my soul had already hovered above my body; my eyes, that I tried to open, closed unwillingly; and yet ... with my eyes closed, I saw, in the very place where you are, a white shape entering silently. (Monte-Cristo, part 4, chap. XIII, Madame Mairan). One hour before he died, he said to me: Father, no man's faith can be stronger than mine, for I saw and heard a soul separate from her body. (François Picaut, continuation of Monte-Cristo).” There is, in these thoughts, only one very small criticism to be made, it is the qualification of exceptional given to the invisible beings that surround us; there is nothing exceptional about these beings since they are the souls of men, and all men, without exception, must go through this state. Apart from that, wouldn't we say that these ideas were textually drawn from the Doctrine?
