Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/858

840 "Oh, not here, not here," he said quickly. "Beyond the tomb. I may fail here, but I shall take it up again when I am dead. I am persuaded that it will be easy to carry out there this idea which has occupied me so seriously here. Do you suppose we are going to be idle there? Not at all. We are going to do what we loved to do here, and do it perfectly, as we have longed and dreamed to do it."

"Do you really believe that?"

"Believe it? Of course I believe it! Does one put into a book what he does not believe? I have put all that into Les Bonheurs d'Outre-Tombe. Does a man at my age talk of what he does not believe? At seventy-five one tells the truth.

"Why should I not believe it? Nature indicates a future life by all her transformations, common sense preaches it, common justice demands it, and if we live again we shall work. Do you suppose the good God is going to leave us with our aspirations unsatisfied? No. Victor Hugo is writing better romances than he ever wrote here, and De Musset better poetry." Then, glancing at the water colors on the walls, "My wife is going on with her pictures, and there I shall succeed with my theater. Why," he cried, with a passionate conviction which was almost awe-inspiring, "that belief is the consolation of my life!"

He based his theories of the future life on no religion. It is modern philosophy based on science and reason, which in his judgment promises a future life. But this promise is only to the upright, who in this world practice righteousness and cultivate their minds. They after death take on the attributes of superior beings—that is, become what M. Figuier calls "étres surhumains," or, in ecclesiastical parlance, angels.

On escaping from the body the new being becomes an inhabitant of the interplanetary spaces. Here all his faculties are quickened to an extraordinary degree, the secrets of Nature are clear to him, social problems are solved, all those whom he has loved on earth and who have died join him. The natural gifts which he has had no opportunity to cultivate on earth have full play there. Unfinished work is completed. He is in relation with the great and wise of all the ages. If he continues in this new sphere to do good and to cultivate his intellect—that is, if he works to raise his soul to perfection—he will be advanced to a superior realm of the sky, where the beings are of a still higher intellectual capacity and possess more numerous faculties.

As he loses more and more of the material element, he ascends higher in the scale of the elect. After passing two series of these celestial progressions and promotions, of which it is impossible to know either the number or the length, the soul arrives at a state of pure essence, and penetrates into the center of our solar