The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)Figuier, Louis
Religion
The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)
Figuier, Louis
Cosmology; Future life; Transmigration
To this it will be objected that there is destruction of identity where
memory does not exist, and that expiation, in order to be profitable
to the guilty soul, must co-exist with the remembrance of faults
committed in the previous existence, for the man is not punished who
does not know that he is punished. We may remark here that we do not
use the word "expiation" precisely as theologians employ it, but
rather as a new dwelling conferred on the soul, in order that it may
resume the interrupted course of its advance towards perfection. We
believe that the remembrance of our previous life, forbidden to us
during our terrestrial sojourn, will come back when we shall have
attained the happy realms of ether, in which we shall pass through
the existences which are to succeed our life on earth. Among the
number of the perfections and moral faculties forming the attributes
of the superhuman being, the memory of his anterior lives will be
included. Identity will be born again for him. Having suffered a
momentary collapse, his individuality will be restored to him, with his
conscience and his liberty.
Let us hearken awhile to Jean Reynaud, as he tells us in his fine book,
_Terre et Ciel_, the marvels of that memory which shall be restored to
man after his being shall have undergone a series of changes.
"The integral restitution of our recollections," says Jean Reynaud,
"seems to us one of the inherent principal conditions of our future
happiness. We cannot fully enjoy life, until we become, like Janus,
kings of time, until we know how to concentrate in us, not only
the sentiment of the present, but that of the future and the past.
Then, if perfect life be one day given to us, perfect memory must
also be given to us. And now, let us try to think of the infinite
treasures of a mind enriched by the recollections of an innumerable
series of existences, entirely different from each other, and
yet admirably linked together by a continual dependence. To this
marvellous garland of metempsychoses, encircling the universe,
let us add, if the perspective seem worthy of our ambition, a
clear perception of the particular influence of our life upon
the ulterior changes of each of the worlds which we shall have
successively inhabited; let us aggrandize our life in immortalizing
it, and wed our history grandly with the history of the heavens.
Let us confidently collect together every material of happiness,
since thus the all-powerful bounty of the Creator wills it, and
let us construct the existence which the future reserves for
virtuous souls; let us plunge into the past by our faith, while we
are waiting for more light, even as by our faith we plunge into
the future. Let us banish the idea of disorder from the earth, by
opening the gates of time beyond our birth, as we have banished
the idea of injustice by opening other gates beyond the tomb; let
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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