The Fantastic Regiment, by Victor Dazur, is therefore a dream like Paris in America, by Mr. Laboulaye, but it is a dream that transports you to a completely imaginary world. Corporal François Pamphile returns to his barracks, after taking part in the festivities at a public celebration in Paris with a few comrades. Saturated with the noise, music, open air shows, illuminations, fireworks, with a full stomach and a clear conscience, having had no quarrel with anyone, having struck no civilian with his saber, he fell in a deep sleep. After some time that he cannot precise, it seems to him that his bed is removed, as if it were suspended in a basket from a balloon. He opens his eyes and sees himself in space; a moving panorama extends below him; he sees Paris disappear, then the countryside, then Earth. It seems to him like making one of the space journeys of our collaborator Flammarion, of which he declares to be an assiduous reader, and from whom he enthusiastically praises the beautiful spiritualist book entitled Plurality of the Inhabited Worlds. Suddenly he misses air; he suffocates; but he then enters another atmosphere; his breathing resumes; he sees another globe that his astronomical studies allow him to recognize as the planet Mars. He feels drawn to this planet whose globe is growing rapidly in his eyes. He trembles, thinking that he could be crushed thee, by falling according to the laws of gravity; he fears a terrible shock; but no! There he is stretched out on a thick lawn, by the feet of marvelous trees filled with not less marvelous birds. He thinks he is in a new world, having gone from the rank of corporal to the rank of first man. He calls an Eve. It is the song of King Dagobert that answers him. The astonishment of the good corporal redoubled when he saw that the singer was a tall fellow, wearing the uniform of a sergeant-major of the French line infantry. - Who are you? Asked the sergeant, looking as surprised as he does. - Major, answers François Pamphile, I am a corporal; I come from planet Earth that I involuntarily left last night; and I would like you to be so kind as to tell me the name of the planet where I fell. - This planet is Soraï-Kanor, of course! - Soraï-Kanor? … I assumed it was planet Mars. It seems that I was wrong. - You are not mistaken. It is only that our planet, that the earthlings call Mars, is called Soraï-Kanor by our astronomers. The corporal is surprised that the sergeant knows the name given by the inhabitants of Earth to his planet. But the sergeant tells him that he only left Earth after his earthly death, and that he was king of France there. To this unexpected response, the corporal takes his hat off, that is, takes off the cotton cap he has on his head. The king, sergeant-major, told him not to do him so much honor, since he was no more than a simple sub-officer. His name on Earth was Francis I; on Mars, he belongs to the Fantastic Regiment, a regiment made up of most of the rulers who have ruled the globe. The colonel is Alexander the Great; Lieutenant-Colonel Julius Caesar (who did not reign, strictly speaking), and Major Pericles (who reigned even less). The regiment has three battalions, and each battalion eight companies. The commander of the first battalion is Senusret and the adjutant-major Attila; the commander of the second battalion, Charlemagne, and the adjutant-major Charles V; the commander of the third battalion, Anibal; and Adjutant Mithridates. Each company is made up of the sovereigns of the same nation. The French company is the first of the second battalion and has for captain Louis XIV, proving, by the way, that favor dominates on Mars as on Earth; for Francis I, who is only a sergeant-major, was assuredly a greater captain than Louis XIV, and he also had seniority on his side. The cantinières[2] of the fantastic regiment are Semiramis, Cleopatra, Elisabeth, and Catherine II. Just as all the officers and soldiers of the regiment are former sovereigns or men who have exercised sovereignty, all the canteens and canteen servers are former sovereigns. The only musicians are former composers: Beethoven, Mozart, Gluck, Puccini, Haydn, Bellini. The regiment has only adopted the French uniform since the reign of Napoleon I, whose campaigns have excited Alexander the Great. Since then, the regiment has followed all the variations of our military costume, which is saying a lot. It is also since the reign of Napoleon I that the French language has been adopted as the regulatory language of the regiment. However, it was not under the Empire that the French language shone the most. Moreover, the winner of Austerlitz is not among the soldiers of the fantastic regiment. He is not on Mars; perhaps he is in a superior world, perhaps in an inferior world: Francis I ignores it. Other sovereigns have never figured in the fantastic regiment; others left it after several centuries of service; a few still, after several thousand centuries. The regiment never changes garrison, and never makes war. It is a kind of penitentiary regiment where the sovereigns, male and female, are placed only to atone for the crimes they have committed during their reigns. That is good, but the musicians Beethoven, Mozart, and the others, what crimes did they commit to be retained in this expiatory regiment? This is what the author neglects to tell us. The usual torture of soldiers and cantinières of the regiment is the torture of Tantalus. The warriors who enjoyed blood and carnage on Earth, have kept their bellicose instincts, constantly awaken by the sound of the bugle, overexcited by the exercises and combat simulations, without it ever being possible for them to be satisfied, for the divine power that allows war on Earth, forbids it on Mars. The luxurious suffer a similar torment. Everyone, men, and women, retain the beauty they enjoyed at the best time of their life, but they are subject to a physiological cause that condemns them to absolute chastity. Another punishment, that saddens them even more, is the torture of memories. An extraordinarily lucid memory reminds them of the acts of their earthly life. A continual occupation alone manages to distract them; but the discipline is rigorous; all the time they are condemned to the police precinct, to prison or to the room of memories. In the police room and in prison, they are still allowed some distractions, but in the memory room they are not allowed any. There they find themselves locked up amid all the instruments of punishment and torture employed in their reigns; all the sufferings and all the murders ordered by the kings are fresco painted on the walls. When Louis XI is locked up in the room of memories, he is put in an iron cage in use during his ruling and placed in front of the scaffold of Nemours, whose blood drips on the heads of his children. Philippe le Bel is lying on a stake from where he sees the torture of the Templars. Ferdinand the Catholic is tied to an easel, his head turned towards an auto-da-fé. Our corporal hears Nero complaining in these following terms to his comrade Caligula: - Three quarters of the time, I am punished with a detention or with the police room. If I complain against a punishment, it gets worse. When I'm not in the police room, I'm with the punishment squad, and when I'm not with the punishment squad, I'm cleaning the barracks. Finally, I am overwhelmed with annoyances of all kinds, not to mention my other sufferings. This has been going on for many centuries. When will it end? "But your fantastic regiment is hell, said the good Pamphile to Francis I. - No, he replies, because the penalties are not eternal. The Great Unknown, who is supreme justice, does not pronounce eternal condemnation, since finite faults, however great they may be, cannot merit infinite penalties. Our planet and certain others are not hells, but purgatories where men, in one or more successive existences, pay the moral debts that they have contracted in a previous existence. By chatting that way sometimes with the sergeant-major Francis I, sometimes with the simple infantryman Charles V, sometimes with his colleague Corporal Charles VII, Corporal Pamphile receives instructions and revelations that interests humanity at the highest degree. Finally, in an audience granted to him by Colonel Alexander the Great, in the circle of officers, the former conqueror presented him with a project for a universal international congress, assigning it to him to propose to Earth, to establish peace concord and brotherhood forever in our globe. - Colonel, exclaimed enthusiastically Pamphile, your project is so logical, it seems to me so indispensable and the idea so natural, that it seems to me that as soon as it is known on Earth, everyone over there will say: How is it that one did not think earlier of establishing a universal congress? “Despite the good corporal's hope, we doubt that the various governments of our planet will hasten to welcome Alexander's project; but the peace congress, that will be held in Berne next September, cannot fail to take it into consideration. We recommend it especially to the rapporteur responsible for studying what could be the constitution of the United States of Europe.E.D. of Biéville.” If Mr. Victor Dazur (this name is undoubtedly a pseudonym) was inspired by the
Plurality of the inhabited worlds by Mr. Flammarion, of which he declares to be an assiduous reader, he has also gleaned widely in the Spiritist books. Except for the framework he used, his philosophical theory of future penalties, of the plurality of existences, of the state of Spirits free from the body, of moral responsibility, etc., is obviously drawn from the doctrine of Spiritism, of which he reproduces not only the idea, but often even the form.
The following passages leave no doubt on this point:
“You are dreaming, my friend, I thought; you are dreaming! All these rulers from Earth who are starting a new existence on planet Mars, this genius with a diaphanous body and azure wings, all that smells like Spiritism… And yet, when you are awake, you do not believe in this invention. Then, addressing myself to Francis I, I said to him: - Major, a strange idea occurs to me; this idea makes me suppose that all that I see and all that I hear since I arrived here is only the effect of a dream. Tell me, please, your opinion. Do you think, like me, that I am dreaming? - Of course not! You are not dreaming, said Francis I, with an indignant air, as if I had made a very stupid question. No, you're not dreaming! If you were dreaming, a crowd of chimeras without tail or head would parade before your mind. The events that you would witness would have no reasonable relation to each other. But that's not all, Major. What still makes me believe that I am dreaming is that I have felt myself, and I did not find a body ... I still feel myself now, and I cannot find it. However, I feel alive, and I see myself with arms and legs. It goes without saying that these arms and legs being impalpable, these are just fantastic appearances. I could well explain these appearances, but for that it would be necessary for me, me who does not believe in Spiritism, to admit certain Spiritist theory, that true or false, in any case, is rather ingenious. This theory claims that the Spirit of a body is surrounded by a perispirit, that is, a semi-material envelope, that can take the form of this body and become visible in some cases. Once the perispirit is admitted, the same theory claims that an individual can sometimes be seen in two places at the same time, even very distant from each other, the sleeping body in one place, and the appearance of the body, that is, the perispirit, acting somewhere else. If this assertion were true, I would find myself putting into practice the theory I just spoke of. You could see my body sleeping in Paris right now while you see my perispirit as if it were my body. But I would not believe such an extraordinary thing unless it was proven. It would still be adopting Spiritism to admit this meeting of rulers assembled here as real, so they claim, to atone the misdeeds they have committed while on Earth. - If you want, said Francis I, do not believe what you have in front of you. Suppose for a moment that instead of being on this planet, you are in the ideal domain of reason, and tell me if you believe that men who do evil, regardless of their position in society, can be exempt from purgatory after their earthly death. - Major, I don't know what to answer. - But I do know what you think. You think purgatory exists anywhere, but only for the people at the highest levels of the social ladder. And what leads you to think so is that the faults of people in high places in the world are much more apparent than those of ordinary individuals. But you will immediately modify this idea by thinking that, for the Supreme Being, there are no hidden faults. Indeed, the Great Unknown constantly sees simple individuals on Earth who do relatively as much harm in their small sphere of action as certain tyrants marked by history have done in their States. The private individuals of whom I speak, instead of exercising their tyranny in a kingdom, they exercise it in their family and in their environment, making women, children, and subordinates suffer without mercy. These tyrants have only one concern, that is to enjoy life by escaping the law of the country they inhabit. Now, I ask you, do you believe that these evil people, who sometimes go by virtuous in the eyes of anyone who does not know their life, do you believe, I say, that these evil beings are immediately transported into a place of enjoyment? - No, I don't think so. - Don’t you agree that they contracted a certain moral debt by doing evil? - Yes, Major, I admit it. - Well then, you should not be surprised that certain planets are real purgatories where men, in one or more existences, pay the debts that they contracted in a previous existence.But, Major, don't the sufferings that every man experience during his life sufficiently pay for the harm he can do, from the age of reason until death?- That could only apply to a very small number of individuals; for often the evil that a man does reflects on a certain number of his fellows, that multiplies the sum of the personal evil by as much, and almost always makes the debt so great that this man cannot pay it during its short existence. Now, when we have not been able to pay our debts in one life, we must necessarily pay them in another; for in the matter of criminal debts, the Great Unknown has arranged things in such a way that bankruptcy is not possible. That being admitted, you will also admit that it is impossible that monsters like Nero, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Borgia and so many others, whose crimes cannot be enumerated, could have paid such debts by the few pains that they have suffered in their life. Now, it is one of two things: these men, at their death, have fallen into nothingness, or else they have started a new existence; if we admit that they fell into nothingness, we quite naturally admit that they must have gone into an enormous bankruptcy. You will agree that the idea of such bankruptcy disgusts one’s mind, while if we admit that they have each started a new existence, the mind is satisfied in thinking that these new lives can only be existences of atonement or, to put it better, of purification.[3]- Major, isn't that easier to admit the eternal disgrace for the monsters you speak of? - I agree that it is simpler, but not more logical. Logic, that must be the soul of justice, refuses to admit eternal disgrace, because finite faults cannot deserve infinite penalties.”There follows one of the most striking and logical dissertations that we have read against hell and the eternal punishments, on the justice of the proportionality of penalties, and about the doctrine of work, but its extent does not allow us to reproduce.
- Major, said Corporal Pamphile, I will point out to you that the negation of eternal hell, as well as the proportionality of penalties, is the very foundation of the doctrine of the Spirits; however, as I have already told you, I do not believe in Spiritism. - Then… believe in eternal hell if that makes you happy.” Among the rulers that Corporal Pamphile finds in Mars, there are some who lived during the time of the flood, the kings of Assyria, at the time of the Babel Tower, the Pharaohs at the time of the passage of the Red Sea by the Hebrews, etc., and each one gives explanations about those events that, for the most part, have the merit, if not of material proof, at least that of logic.
In short, the framework chosen by the author to express his ideas is good, even his very denial of Spiritism that ultimately leads to an indirect affirmation. We will say, like
Le Siècle, that in an apparently light form, all the questions are treated with a certain erudition there, with evident good faith, almost always with joy, often with wit, and sometimes with eloquence. We will add that, not knowing the author, if this issue falls in his hand, we want him to find here the expression of our sincere congratulations, because he has written an interesting and very useful book.
[1] A large volume, 1n-12, price 3.5 francs; by mail 4 francs. This book was published in Lyon and does not carry the name of any editor; it only says that it can be found in every bookstore in Paris. We got it at the
Librarie Internationale, Boulevard Montmartre, 15.
[2] A French name for women attached to military regiments as sutlers or canteen keepers (Wikipedia, T.N.)
[3] If the effect of the injustice or evil that a man does against another man stops at the individual, the need for reparation will be individual; but if, on the contrary, this evil affects a hundred individuals, its debt will be a hundredfold, for it will be one hundred reparations to accomplish. The more victims he has made, directly or indirectly, the more individuals there will be who will hold him accountable for his conduct. Thus, the responsibility and the number of reparations increases with the extent of the authority with which one is invested, so that one is responsible before individuals whom one has never known, but who have nonetheless suffered the consequences of our actions.
Conference on the soul, by Alexandre Chaseray[1] Modern works in which the principle of the plurality of existences is incidentally affirmed are innumerable; but the one we are speaking of seems to us one of those where it is treated in the most complete manner; the author also endeavors to demonstrate that the idea grows and is imposed more and more every day on enlightened minds. In the fragments that we report below, the notes are by the author.
“The transmigration of souls,” says Chaseray, “is both an ancient and a newer philosophical idea. Metempsychosis forms the basis of the religion of the Indians, a religion well before Judaism, and Pythagoras may have taken this belief from the Brahmans, if it is true that he had been in India; but it is more likely that he brought it back from Egypt, where he stayed for a long time. Civilization reigned on the banks of the Nile, several thousand years before the birth of Moses, and according to Herodotus, the Egyptian priests were the first to announce that the soul is immortal and that it passes successively into all species of animals, before entering a human body. The Greeks, on their part, never completely abandoned the idea of metempsychosis. Those of them who did not fully accept the doctrine of Pythagoras, vaguely believed with Plato that the immortal soul had existed somewhere, before manifesting itself in a human form, or believed in the river Lethe and the rebirth of man in humanity. Among the first Christians, many neophytes intended to retain what seemed good to them from their ancient dogmas; the Manicheans, for example, had retained the two principles of good and evil and the migration of souls; it is thus that the heresiarchs multiplied, and the Fathers and the Councils had so much to do to bring back the spirits to a uniform faith. Victorious, the Apostolic Church banished metempsychosis from its empire, then replaced by the dogma of the irrevocable judgment and the division of humans between the elected and the disgraced. Purgatory was introduced later, as a corrective for an overly inflexible decision. Just as I did not consider the spiritualism of St. Thomas much of a progress, of which we see no trace in the holy books, I also do not judge either happy or in conformity with the ancient doctrine of original sin, that establishes such a close solidarity between all generations of men, the dogmatic assertion that the existence of each of us is rootless in the past and ends in an eternal heaven or hell. This is, in my opinion, a philosophical heresy against which the modern mind reacts with force. “We are coming back to the transmigration of souls from all sides. But one generally conceives a broader metempsychosis these days than that which one attributed the belief to the ancients. Having the spirit of induction crossed the limits of Earth and recognized in the suns and the planets habitable worlds, it no longer limited the destinies of man to the terrestrial globe. Instead of seeing the soul ceaselessly traversing the circle of plants, animals, and the human species, or constantly being reborn in humanity, we could imagine it taking off towards the infinite worlds.[2] I have difficulty in the choice of quotations to show that faith has a series of existences, some preceding, others posterior to present life, and that it grows more and more every day, imposing on the enlightened spirits. Let's start with Jean Reynaud. This philosopher insists on the natural connection presented by the two ideas of pre-existence and future life. If we examine, he says, all men who have passed through Earth, since the era of enlightened religions began there, we will see that the vast majority have lived in the somewhat established consciousness of an existence prolonged by invisible ways, within as well as beyond the limits of this life. There is, in fact, a kind of symmetry so logical that it must have seduced the imaginations at first sight; the past balances the future there, and the present is only the pivot between what is no more and what is not yet. Platonism awakened this light previously stirred by Pythagoras and used it to enlighten the most beautiful souls that honored ancient times.[3] This assessment by Jean Reynaud is fully confirmed by the following note from Lagrange, the elegant translator of Lucretius’ poem: Of all philosophers that lived before Christianity, none supported the immortality of the soul without first establishing its preexistence; one of these dogmas was regarded as the natural consequence of the other. It was believed that the soul must always exist, because it had always existed; and people were convinced, on the contrary, that by granting that it had been engendered with the body, one was no longer entitled to deny that it should die with the body. - Our soul, says Plato, existed somewhere before being in this form of men; that is why I do not doubt that it is immortal. Old Druidism, continues the author of Terre et Ciel, speaks to my heart. This same soil that we inhabit today carried a people of heroes before us, all of whom were accustomed to seeing themselves as having experienced the universe for a long time before their current incarnation, thus basing the hope of their immortality on the conviction of their pre-existence. One of our best historians also gives great praise to the main teaching of the Druids; Henri Martin is of the opinion that our fathers, the Gaul, represented "the firmest, the clearest notion of immortality that ever existed" in the ancient world.[4] Eugene Sue, on his part, said of the Druidic faith: According to this sublime belief, the immortal man, spirit, and matter, coming from below, going above, transited through this Earth, remained there temporarily, as he had remained and was to remain in these other spheres that shine innumerable, amid the abysses of space.[5] Already in the seventeenth century, Cyrano de Bergerac said, like the Gallic priests: We die more than once; and, as we are only parts of this universe, we change shape to come back to life elsewhere; this is not bad, since it is a way to perfect one's being and to arrive at an infinite amount of knowledge.Several of our contemporaries, not appearing to be inspired by the Druids though, also announce that the destiny of the soul is to travel from world to world. We read, for example, in the Profession of Faith of the nineteenth century, by Eugène Pelletan: By the irresistible logic of the idea, I believe I can affirm that mortal life will have the infinite space as a place of pilgrimage… Man will therefore always go from sun to sun, always rising, as in Jacob's ladder, the hierarchy of existence; always passing, according to his merit and according to his progress, from man to angel, from angel to archangel. And in Religious Renovation, by Mr. Patrice Larroque, former rector at the Academy: One can conjecture that most of the other globes that move in space carry, like Earth, organized and animated beings, and that these globes will be the successive theaters of our future lives. Lamennais expresses the idea of rebirth in an equally precise although more restricted way: Possible progress, he says, for the individual in his present organic form, once accomplished, he returns this worn-out organism to the elementary mass, and he clothes another more perfect one.[6] Let us also point out the following excerpt from the speech given by Mr. Guéroult, of the National Opinion, at the tomb of Father Enfantin: No one was more religious than Enfantin; no one has lived, as much as he did, in the presence of eternal life, of which this life that escapes us at every moment is only one of the innumerable stages. One of our most famous novelists suggests that he believes in the passage of inferior beings into superior species, namely, animals into humanity. George Sand says: “Who will explain these affinities between man and certain secondary beings in creation. They are just as real as the antipathies and the insurmountable terrors that certain harmless animals inspire in us… It is perhaps that all kinds, each one specially assigned to each breed of animals, are found in man. The physiognomists have noted physical resemblances; who can deny the moral similarities? Aren’t foxes, wolves, lions, eagles, beetles, flies among us? Human rudeness is often low and fierce like the appetite of a swine…" George Sand is more explicit, regarding the migration of souls, in the following lines of the same book:[7] If we must not aspire to the beatitude of the pure spirits of the land of chimeras, if we must always, beyond this life, foresee work, duty, trials, and a limited organization in our faculties, before infinity, at least we are allowed by reason, commanded by the heart, to count on a series of progressive existences because of our good desires ... We can look at this Earth as a place of passage and count on a sweeter awakening in the cradle that awaits us elsewhere. From worlds to worlds, we can, by freeing ourselves from the animality that fights our spiritualism down here, make us fit to put on a purer body, more appropriate to the needs of the soul, less fought against and less hampered by illnesses of human life, as we experience here. Let us also quote a novelist, Balzac. The novelists of this order, as well as the first-class poets, tackle the highest questions, and know how to sow profound messages in their writings, in a pleasant and light form. Thus, in Les Misérables, Victor Hugo drops from his pen this vague question: "Where do we come from? Is it true that we didn't do anything until we were born?” It is only by thinking, and without taking the stand of supporting a philosophical thesis, that the author of the Human Comedy speaks of successive existences. So, I can only grasp this thought by browsing several of his novels.Here, for example, are a few lines from the Lily of the valley:Man is made up of matter and spirit; animality comes to end in him, and the angel begins in him. Hence the struggle that we all experience between a future destiny that we have a presentiment of and the memories of our external instincts, from which we are not entirely detached: a bodily love and a divine love. And I find in Seraphita, this mystical novel in which Balzac exposes, with such powerful interest and charm, the religious doctrine of the Swede Swedenborg: The acquired qualities that develop slowly in us are invisible bonds that bind each of our existences to another. Finally, in Les Comédiens, without knowing it, Madame Fontaine, the sibyl, asks Gazonal: - What flower do you like best?- The Rose.- What is your favorite color?- Blue.- Which animal do you prefer?- Horse. Why these questions? he asks in turn.- Man is attached to all forms by his previous states, she said sententiously; that is where his instincts come from, and his instincts dominate his destiny. " Michelet shows his sympathy for the same ideas, when he calls the dog a candidate for humanity, and when he says, speaking of birds:What are they? Sketched souls, souls still specialized in such functions of existence, candidates for the more general and more vastly harmonic life into which the human soul has arrived.[8] Pierre Leroux does not believe that man has passed through the inferior species of animals and plants. According to him, individuals are perpetuated within the species and man is reborn indefinitely in humanity. Solidarity between all members of the human family is then evident; the good that a man does to his fellows turns to his own advantage, since does not separate from them at death, soon coming back to mingle with them. By supporting the perpetuity of a being within the species, Pierre Leroux departs from the authors I have just cited and does not meet many supporters;[9] but he is nonetheless an ardent defender of the general idea and of the extreme importance that links present-day life to a series of existences. Having said that the child coming into the world is not, as Locke's school claimed, a clean slate; and that it is an insult to the Divinity to suppose that it draws new creatures from nothing, that it embellishes at random with its gifts or strikes at random with its anger, Pierre Leroux concludes with these words: Thus, out of necessity, we must admit either the indeterminate system of metempsychosis, or the determined system of rebirth in humanity that I support.[10] I am far from absolutely rejecting the system of rebirth in humanity; but humanity had a beginning, posterior even to that of most of the animal and vegetable species that cover our globe; humanity will have an end; and since the soul does not perish, the permanent being, the self, must sink its roots elsewhere than in humanity, and find its future development elsewhere than in humanity, a transitory form."The numerous quotations made by the author, that are far from being complete, prove how general the idea of the plurality of existences is, and that before long it will have passed into the state of acquired truth. On other points, he deviates completely from the Spiritist Doctrine; we are far from sharing his opinion on all the questions he deals with in his book, especially regarding the divinity to which he attributes a secondary role, and the intimate nature of the soul whose spirituality he contests. His system is a kind of pantheism that rubs shoulders with Spiritism and seems to be a middle term for some people who want neither atheism, nor nothingness, or dogmatic spiritualism. However incomplete it may be, it is nonetheless a remarkable advance in the materialist ideas from which it is much more distant than ours. Except for a few very controversial points, the work contains very deep and very correct views with which Spiritism can only be associated.
[1] Small volume, in-12, price 1.5 francs, by mail 1.75 francs; Germer-Baillière, Rue de l’Ecole-de-Médecine, 17.
[2] It was so natural to take advantage of the glorious issue opened to the soul by the astronomical discoveries, that I cannot believe that the metempsychosis of Pythagoras was really what the common people thought of it; for Pythagoras knew the true system of the world; the double movement of rotation and translation of Earth; the relative stillness of the sun; the importance of fixed stars, each of which is a sun and the center of a group of most likely inhabited planets; the march and return of comets: none of this was ignored by Pythagoras. This philosopher, instructed by the learned Egyptian priests who only revealed their secrets to a small number of initiates, believed it his duty, following their example, to keep this part of his science secret. One of his less scrupulous disciples disclosed it; but as evidence was lacking and truths were lost amidst errors and mystical reveries, the revelation went unnoticed. It is not enough to put forward a correct idea, it is necessary to know how to make it accepted; also, Copernicus and Galileo, the popularizers of the true cosmological system, are regarded as its inventors, although the first notion is lost in the mists of time.
[3] Earth and Sky.
[4] History of France, 4
th Edition.
[5] Feuilleton of the Press, October 19
th, 1854.
The old authors have not all ignored the beautiful side of the religion of the Druids, witness these verses from Lucain: Vobis auctoribus, umbræ. Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi. Pallida regna petunt: regit idem spiritus artus. Orb alio: longæ (canitis si cognita) vitæ. Mors media is.
“According to you, Druids, shadows do not descend into the silent abodes of Erebus, into the pale realms of the god of the abyss. The same Spirit animates a new body in another sphere. Death (if your hymns contain the truth) is the middle of a long life.”
[6] Of the first society and its laws, Book III.
[7] The story of my life.
[8] The bird.
[9] Goethe seemed to share this view when he exclaimed in one of his letters to the charming Madame de Stein: "Why has fate bound us so closely? Ah! in times gone by, you were my sister or my wife! You have known the least of my traits, you have watched the vibration of the purest of my fibers, you have been able to read me with a glance, me that a human eye hardly penetrates!” (German Review, December 1865). Victor Meunier is not far from also believing in the rebirth of man on Earth: "The fate of those who will come after us," he said, "does not find me indifferent, far from it!" Even more so since it has not been demonstrated to me that we will not succeed ourselves.” (Science and the Savants in 1865, 2
nd semester).
[10] Humanity.
