After the terrible misfortunes of 1870 and 1871, there is not a family in France which has not had to mourn a kinsman or a friend. I found, not indeed consolation for my grief, but tranquillity for my mind, in the composition of this work; and I have therefore hoped that, in reading its pages, they who suffer and they who grieve might find some of the same hope and assurance which have lifted up my stricken heart. Society is in our day the prey of a deadly disease, of a moral canker, which threatens it with destruction. This disease is materialism. Materialism, which was preached first in Germany, in the universities, and in books of philosophy, and the natural sciences, afterwards spread rapidly in France. With brief delay, it came down from the level of the _savans_ to that of the educated classes, and thence it penetrated the ranks of the people; and the people have undertaken to teach us the practical consequences of materialism. Little by little they have flung off every bond, they have discarded all respect of persons and principles; they no longer value religion or its ministers; the social hierarchy, their country, or liberty. That this must lead to some terrible result it was easy to foresee. After a long period of political anarchy, a body of furious madmen carried death, terror, and fire through the capital of France. It was not patriotism which fired the illustrious and sacred monuments of Paris, it was materialism. Nothing can be more evident than that, from the moment one is convinced that everything comes to an end in this world, that there is nothing to follow this life, we have nothing better to do, one and all of us, than to appeal to violence, to excite disturbance, and invoke anarchy everywhere, in order to find, amid such propitious disorder, the means of satisfying our brutal desires, our unruly ambition, and our sensual passions. Civilization, society, and morals, are like a string of beads, whose fastening is the belief in the immortality of the soul. Break the fastening, and the beads are scattered. Materialism is the scourge of our day, the origin of all the evils of European society. Now, materialism is fiercely fought in this book, which might be entitled, "Spiritualism Demonstrated by Science." Because this is its aim, and its motive, my friends have induced me to publish it. [Illustration] CHAPTER THE FIRST. MAN THE RESULT OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE OF THE BODY, THE SOUL, AND THE LIFE. WHAT CONSTITUTES DEATH. BARTHEZ, Lordat, and the Medical School of Montpellier have created the doctrine of the _human aggregate_, which, in our opinion, affords the only explanation of the true nature of man. This doctrine of which we shall avail ourselves, as a guide in the earlier portions of this work, may be defined as follows:-- There exists in man three elements:-- 1. The body, or the material substance. 2. The Life, or as Barthez calls it, the _Vital Force_.