THE DAY AFTER DEATH OR Our Future Life according to Science TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF LOUIS FIGUIER ILLUSTRATED BY TEN ASTRONOMICAL PLATES A NEW EDITION London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1904 Formerly published by Richard Bentley & Son. Reprinted 1904....

R R EADER, you must die. You may perhaps die to-morrow. What will become of you? What shall you be, on the day after your death? I do not now allude to your body; that is of no more importance than the clothes which it wears, or the shroud in which it will be buried. Like these garments, like that cerecloth, your body must be decomposed, and its elements distributed among Nature's great reservoirs of material, earth, air, and water. But your soul, whither shall it go? That which was free within

WHERE DOES THE SUPERHUMAN BEING DWELL? W W E have seen that of the three elements which compose the human aggregate , one only, the soul, resists destruction. After the dissolution of the body, after the extinction of the life, the soul, detached from the material bonds which chained it to the earth, goes away, to feel, to love, to conceive, to be free, in a new body, endowed with more powerful faculties than those allotted to humanity. It goes away to compose that which we call the superhuman b

DO ALL MEN, WITHOUT DISTINCTION, PASS, AFTER DEATH, INTO THE CONDITION OF THE SUPERHUMAN BEING?—RE-INCARNATION OF IMPENITENT SOULS.—RE-INCARNATION OF CHILDREN WHO HAVE DIED IN INFANCY. D D EATH is not a termination, it is a change. We do not die; we experience a metamorphosis. The fall of the curtain of death is not the catastrophe, it is only a deeply moving scene in the drama of human destiny. The agony is not the prelude to annihilation, it is only the obligatory suffering which, throughout a

THAT WHICH HAS TAKEN PLACE UPON THE EARTH WITH REGARD TO THE CREATION OF ORGANIZED BEINGS HAS PROBABLY ALSO TAKEN PLACE IN THE OTHER PLANETS.—THE SUCCESSIVE ORDER OF THE APPEARANCE OF LIVING BEINGS ON OUR GLOBE.—THIS SAME SUCCESSION HAS PROBABLY TAKEN PLACE IN EACH OF THE PLANETS.—PLANETARY MAN.—THE PLANETARY, LIKE THE TERRESTRIAL MAN, IS TRANSFORMED, AFTER DEATH, INTO A SUPERHUMAN BEING, AND PASSES INTO THE ETHER. W W E believe, with M. Camille Flammarion, that organized beings exist in all the

PROOFS OF THE PLURALITY OF HUMAN EXISTENCES, AND OF RE-INCARNATIONS.—APART FROM THIS DOCTRINE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EXPLAIN THE PRESENCE OF MAN UPON THE EARTH, THE SAD AND UNEQUAL CONDITIONS OF HUMAN LIFE, AND THE FATE OF CHILDREN WHO DIE IN INFANCY. T T HE doctrine of the plurality of existences, and of re-incarnations, which bind together, like so many links of the same chain, all living creatures, from the most minute animal, even to those blessed beings to whom it is given to behold God in His

FACULTIES PECULIAR TO CERTAIN CHILDREN, APTITUDES AND VOCATIONS AMONG MEN, ARE ADDITIONAL PROOFS OF RE-INCARNATIONS.—EXPLANATION OF PHRENOLOGY.—DESCARTES' INNATE IDEAS, AND DUGALD STEWART'S PRINCIPLE OF CAUSALITY CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED BY THE PLURALITY OF LIVES.—VAGUE RECOLLECTIONS OF OUR ANTERIOR EXISTENCES. I I F there are no re-incarnations, if our actual existence is, as modern philosophy and the ordinary creeds maintain it to be, a solitary fact, not to be repeated, it follows that the soul

A SUMMARY OF THE SYSTEM OF THE PLURALITY OF LIVES. W W E 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

SEQUEL TO OBJECTIONS.—IT IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE HOW THE RAYS OF THE SUN, BEING MATERIAL SUBSTANCES, CAN BE THE GERMS OF SOULS, WHICH ARE IMMATERIAL SUBSTANCES. O O UR system of nature may be met with the following final objection. It will be said, how can the rays of the sun, being material bodies, convey animated germs which are immaterial substances? These terms exclude each other. We find, in the Scriptures, a magnificent comparison, of which we shall avail ourselves in order to answer this obje

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