Chapter the Seventeenth A Summary of the System of the Plurality of Lives
W we propose now to collect, within a few summary propositions, the principal features of the system of nature which we have defined.
1. The sun is the primary agent of life and organization.
2. In the primitive time of our globe, life began to appear in aquatic and aërial plants, as well as in zoophytes. The same order reproduces itself at present, in the point of departure, and in the development of life and of souls. The solar rays, falling on the earth, and into the waters, produce the formation of plants and that of zoophytes. The rays of the sun by depositing in the waters and on the earth, animated germs, emanating from the spiritualized beings who inhabit the sun, bring about the birth of plants and zoophytes.
3. Plants and zoophytes are endowed with sensation. They enclose an animal germ, just as a seed encloses an embryo.
4. The animal germ contained in the plant and in the zoophyte, passes, at the death of each animal, into the body of the animal which comes next to it in the ascending scale of organic perfection. From the zoophyte the animated germ passes into the mollusc, from thence into the articulated animal, the fish, or the reptile. From the body of the reptile, it passes into that of the bird, and then into the mammifers.
In the inferior beings, for instance zoophytes, several animated germs may be united to form the soul of a single being of a superior order.
5. In passing through the entire series of animals, this rudimentary soul becomes perfected and acquires the beginnings of faculties. Conscience, will, and judgment succeed to sensation. When the soul has attained the body of a mammifer, it has acquired a certain number of faculties. In addition to feeling, it has the basis of reason, i.e., the principle of causation. From the body of a mammiferous animal belonging to the superior species, the soul passes into the body of a newly-born infant.
6. The child is born without memory, like the superior animal whence it has proceeded. At a year old it acquires this faculty, and gradually obtains others; imagination and thought develop themselves, reason grows strong, memory becomes firm and extensive.
7. If the child dies before the age of twelve months, his soul, still very imperfect, and devoid of active faculties, passes into the body of another newly-born child, and recommences a new existence.
8. When a man dies, his body remains upon the earth, his soul rises through the atmosphere to the ether which surrounds all the planets, and enters into the body of the angel, or superhuman being.
9. If, during its sojourn upon the earth, the soul has not undergone a sufficient amount of purification and ennobling, it recommences a second existence, passing into the body of a newly-born child, and losing the remembrance of its first life. Only when the soul has attained the suitable degree of perfection, and, after having been re-incarnate once, or many times, is empowered to leave our globe, to assume a new body in the bosom of the ethereal plains, and thus become a superhuman being, can it recover the recollection of its past existences.
10. That which occurs upon the Earth also takes place in the other planets of our solar system. In these planets vegetables, or beings analogous to vegetables are produced by the action of the sun. By means of his rays animated germs are carried into these globes, and plants and inferior animals are produced. Then these animated germs contained in the plants and inferior animals, passing successively through the whole series of animals, end by producing a being, superior, in intelligence and sensibility, to all the other living creatures. This superior being, the analogue of the human being, we call planetary man.
11. The planetary man, who inhabits Mercury, Mars, Venus, &c., being dead, his material form remains upon the planetary globe, and his soul, provided it has acquired the necessary degree of purity, passes into the surrounding ether, is incarnate in a new body, and produces a superhuman being.
12. Phalanxes of these superhuman beings float in the planetary ether. It witnesses the reunion of all the purified souls, which have come from our globe and from the other planets. The organic types of these beings is the same, whatever may be their planetary abode.
13. The superhuman being is provided with special attributes, he is endowed with mighty faculties which raise him to a height infinitely above terrestrial or planetary humanity. In this being, matter, in comparison with the spiritual principle, is reduced to a much smaller proportion than in man. His body is light and vaporous. He possesses senses which are unknown to us, and the senses which he possesses in common with us, are prodigiously intensified, subtilised, and perfected. He can transport himself, in a short space of time, to any distance, he can travel, without fatigue, from one point in space to another. His vision is of immeasurable extent. He has intuitive knowledge of many facts of nature which are hidden by an impenetrable veil from feeble human perception.
14. The superhuman being who comes from the earth can place himself in communication with men who are worthy of the privilege. He directs their conduct, watches over their actions, enlightens their understanding, inspires their hearts. When, in their turn, they too reach the celestial dwellings, he receives them on the threshold of their new abode, and initiates them into the life of blessedness beyond the tomb.
15. The superhuman being is mortal. When he has terminated the normal course of his existence in the ethereal spaces, he dies, and his spiritual principle enters into a new body, that of the archangel, or arch-human being, in whom the proportion of spiritual principle predominates still more strongly, in proportion to matter.
16. These re-incarnations, in the depths of the ethereal spaces, are reproduced more frequently than can be defined, and give us a series of creatures of ever-increasing activity and power of thought and action. At each promotion in the hierarchy of space these sublime beings find the energy of their moral and intellectual faculties, their power of feeling, and of loving, and their induction into the most profound mysteries of the Universe, undergoing augmentation.
17. When he has arrived at the highest degree of the celestial hierarchy, the spiritualized being is absolutely perfect; in strength and in intelligence. He is entirely freed from all material alloy, he has no longer a body, he is a pure spirit. In this condition he passes into the sun.
18. The sun, the king-star, is then the final and common sojourn of all the spiritualized beings who have come from the other planets, after having passed through the long series of existences which have rolled away in the plains of ether.
19. The spiritualized beings gathered together in the sun, send down upon the earth and upon the planets emanations from their essence, that is to say, animated germs. These animated germs are carried by the sunbeams, which distribute organization, feeling, and life over all the planets, at the same time that they preside at all the great physical and mechanical operations which take place on the earth, and on the other planets of our solar world.
20. The formation of the aërial and aquatic plants, and the birth of inferior animals or zoophytes, are, as we have said, the result of the action of the sun’s rays on our globe. Then commences the series of the transmigrations of souls through the bodies of various animals, which results in man, in the superhuman being, and in all the succession of celestial metempsychoses, whose ultimate term is the spiritualized being or the dweller in the sun.
Thus does the great chain of nature close and complete itself;—that uninterrupted chain of vital activity, which has neither beginning nor end, and which links all created beings into one family, the universal family of the worlds.
Nature is not a straight line, but a circle, and we cannot say where this wonderful circle begins or ends. The wisdom of the Egyptians, which represented the world as a serpent coiled around itself, was the symbol of a great truth which the science of our time has once more brought to light.