Metempsychosis“
Do you know the cause of the noises that reach us? said Mrs. Des Genêts. Is this some new scene of unleashed tigers that these gentlemen are preparing for us? - Relax, dear friend, everything is safe: our living and our dead. Hear the lovely melody of the nightingale singing in this willow tree! Perhaps it is the soul of one of our martyrs that hovers around us, in this loving form. The dead have these privileges; and I readily persuade myself that they often come back to those they loved. - Oh! if you were telling the truth! exclaimed Mrs. Des Genêts eagerly. - I sincerely believe it, said the young Duchess. It is so good to believe in reassuring things! Besides, my father, who is very enlightened, as you are aware, assured me that this belief had been spread long ago by great philosophers. Lesage himself believes in it too.” This passage is taken from a serial novel entitled: Le Cachot de la Tour des pins
[1], by Paulin Capmal, published by
La Liberté on November 4
th, 1867. Here, the idea is not borrowed from the Spiritist doctrine, that has always taught and proved that the human soul cannot be reborn in an animal body, that does not prevent certain critics, who have not read the first word of Spiritism, from repeating that it professes the metempsychosis; but it is still the thought of the individual soul surviving the body, returning in a tangible form to those whom it has loved. If the idea is not Spiritist, it is at least spiritualistic, and it would still be better to believe in metempsychosis than to believe in the void. This belief, at least, is not hopeless like materialism; it has nothing immoral, on the contrary; it has led all the peoples who have professed it to treat animals with gentleness and benevolence. This exclamation: It is so good to believe in reassuring things, is the great secret of the success of Spiritism.
[1] The dungeon of the pine trees tower (T.N.)
