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
We will not endeavour to penetrate the secrets of the organization
of the new being whose existence we thus trace, and who is superior
to the superhuman being in the natural hierarchy; because our means
of investigation fail us at this point. We have ventured to form
some conjecture respecting the body, the soul, and the life of the
superhuman being, because in that case, however adventurous our
excursion into unknown spheres, we had a point of comparison and
induction in the human species. But all induction respecting the
arch-human being who succeeds the superhuman, is wanting, for we could
only perceive the latter by means of conjectures and analogies which we
must not carry farther.
We will, therefore, abstain from pursuing this kind of investigation,
permitting the reader to exercise his own imagination upon the form
of the body, the number and perfection of the senses, and the extent
of the faculties of the happy creature who succeeds to the superhuman
being, and who dwells, like him, in the immensity of ethereal space.
We will only add that we do not think a second, a third, or a fourth
incarnation arrests the succession of the chain of sublime creations,
which float in the infinitude of the heavens, and which proceed from
a primitive human soul, which has grown in perfection and in moral
power. It surpasses our faculty to define, by the unassisted light of
our reason and our knowledge, the number of these beings who go on
succeeding one another in ever-increasing perfection. We can only say
that we believe the creatures, which compose this ladder of perfections
in succession, must be very numerous.
At every stage of his promotion in the hierarchy of nature the
celestial being beholds the growth of those wings which symbolize his
marvellous power to us. Each time his organs become more numerous, more
flexible, have greater scope. He acquires new and exquisite senses.
He acquires more and more power of extending his beneficent empire,
of exercising his faculty of loving his fellows and all nature, and,
above all, of comprehending and reading the designs of God. Deeper and
deeper affections engage his soul, for the tenderness and the happiness
engendered in its pure satisfaction, are granted to him to console him
for the sufferings of death, to which he is always condemned. It is
thus that the happiness of the elect is augmented. It is thus that the
beings who inhabit the boundless plains of the invisible world employ
each of their lives in preparing for the life which is to follow, in
securing by a wise exercise of their freedom, industrious culture
of their faculties, strict observance of morality, and continuous
beneficence, a more noble, more animated, and happier destiny in the
new spaces which await them, in the development of their sublime
destiny.[4]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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