Death And Its Mystery

Ruggieri

CHAPTER I.THE GREATEST OF PROBLEMS – CAN IT ACTUALLY BE SOLVED?

To be or not to be.

SHAKESPEARE.

ALTHOUGH I am not yet entirely satisfied with it, I have decided to offer today, to the attention of thinking men, a work begun more than half a century ago. The method of scientific experiment, which is the only method of value in the search for truth, lays requirements upon us that we cannot and ought not to avoid. The grave problem considered in this treatise is the most complex of all problems and concerns the general construction of the universe as well as of the human being – that microcosm of the great whole. In the days of our youth we begin these endless researches because we are full of confidence and see a long life stretching out before us. But the longest life passes, with itslights and shadows, like a dream. If we may form one wish in the course of this existence, it is to have been in some way of service to the slow but none the less real progress of humanity, that fantastic race, credulous and skeptical, virtuous and criminal, indifferent and curious, good and wicked, as well as incoherent and ignorant as a whole – barely out of the chrysalis wrappings of its animal state.

When the first edition of my book La Pluralité des Mondes habites were published (1862-64), a certainnumber of readers seemed to expect the natural sequel: La Pluralité des existences de l'ame. If the first problem has been considered solved by my succeeding books (Astronomie populaire, La Planete Mars, Uranie, Stella, Reves etoiles, etc.), the second has remained as open question, 1 and the survival of the soul, either in space or on other worlds or through earthly reincarnations, still confronts us as the most formidable of problems.

A thinking atom, borne on a material atom across the boundless space of the Milky Way, man may well ask himself if he is as insignificant in soul as he is in body, if the law of progress can raise him in an indefinite ascent, and if there is a system of order in the moral world that is harmoniously associated with the order of the physical world.

Is not spirit superior to matter? What is our true nature? What is our future destiny? Are we merely ephemeral flames shining an instant to be forever extinguished? Shall we never see again those whom we have loved and who have gone before us into the Great Beyond? Are such separations eternal? Does everything in us die? If something remains, what becomes of this imponderable element – invisible, intangible, but conscious – which must constitute our lasting personality? Will it endure for long? Will it endure forever?

To be or not to be? Such is the great, the eternal question asked by all the philosophers, the thinkers, the seekers of all times and all creeds. Is death an end or a transformation? Do there exists proofs, evidences of survival of the human being after the destruction of the living organism? Until today the subject has remained outside the field of scientific observation. Is it possible to approach it by the principles of experimentation to which humanity owes all the progress that has been realized by science? Is the attempt logical? Are we not face to face with the mysteries of an invisible world that is different from that which lies before our senses and which cannot be penetrated by our methods of positive investigation? May we not essay, seek to find whether or not certain facts, if carefully and correctly observed, are susceptible of being scientifically analyzed and accepted as real by the severest criticism? We want no more fine words, no more metaphysics. Facts! Facts!

It is a question of our fate, our destiny, our personal future, our very existence.

It is not cold reason alone that demands an answer; it is not only the mind; it is our longings, our heart also.

Itis childish and may appear conceited to bring one's own self upon the scene, but it is sometimes difficult to refrain from doing so; and as I have undertaken these laborious researches primarily in order to answer the questions of sorrowing hearts it seems to me that the most logical preface to this book will be furnished by some of those innumerable confidential communications which have reached me during more than half a century, begging with anguish for the solution of the mystery.

Those who have neverlost by death some one deeply loved have never sounded the depths of despair, have never bruised themselves against the closed door of the tomb. We seek, and an impenetrable wall rises inexorably before the terror that confronts us. I have received hundreds of earnest appeals that I should have liked to answer. Should I make these confidences known? I have hesitated a long time. But there are so many of them, they reflect so faithfully the intense desire that exists to reach a solution, that it has now become a matter of general interest and my duty is clear. These expressions of feeling are the natural introduction to this work, for it is they that have decided me to write it. Nevertheless, I must apologize for reproducing these pages without alteration; for if they reveal the very souls of their sensitive authors, they also express themselves about me in terms of praise that it might well seem immodest on my part to publish. But this is only a personal detail, and consequently insignificant, especially asan astronomer, who realizes that he is an atom before the infinite and eternal universe, is inaccessible to and hermetically sealed against feelings of worldly vanity. Those who know me have considered me for many long years. My absolute indifference to all honors has abundantly proved this true. Whether I am considered great or insignificant, whether I am praised or criticized, I remain the distant spectator.

The following letter was written me by a distracted mother and has been reproduced literally. Itshows how well worth while it would be at least to attempt to relieve suffering humanity. It is more than the science of doctoring the body, it is the science of healing the soul that must be created.

To Our Great Flammarion

Reinosa, Spain, March 30,1907.

Monsieur:

I wish I might cling to your knees and kiss your feet while I beseech you to hear me and not reject my prayer. I cannot, I know not how to express myself. I wish I might arouse your pity, might interest you in my grief, but I should haveto see you, to tell you myself of my own unhappiness, to paint the horror of what is passing in my soul, and then you could not deny me an immense compassion. What I have had to suffer before I could bring myself to commit this act of daring and indiscretion that resembles madness! Whence came the idea of addressing myself to our illustrious Flammarion, of asking him to console an unknown person who has no other claim upon his kindness than that of a fellow-countrywoman? It is because I am suffering! I havejust lost a son, an only son. I am a widow and my only happiness consisted in this son and one daughter. Monsieur Flammarion, you would have had to know the beloved child I have just lost, to understand. I should have to tell you the story of the thirty-three years of his existence: then you would understand.

When at five years of age he was given up by all the celebrated physicians of Paris and Madrid, because of hip trouble, my poor husband and I sacrificed a brilliant position at Madrid and buried ourselves in a lonely country district in Spain in order to save this little boy who was the object of our devotion. For eight years he was ill and he was left lame! What he cost me in anxiety, care, sorrow, sleepless nights, anguish, and sacrifices it would be impossible to explain. But how dear and lovable he was! Brought up in a little carriage, petted and caressed, he was the most adorable child one could imagine. Oh, that childhood! How I wish I could get it back! At twelve years of age he no longer suffered from his leg, but he could not walk without crutches. What a grief this was to me, who had brought him into the world strong and well made! Later, at seventeen, he walked with only one crutch and a cane. At twenty, he was as handsome a lad as could be seen anywhere. If I dared, I would send you his photograph, so that you might see that my mother's love exaggerates nothing. Everyone felt his charm; he had that gift of pleasing which can be neither defined nor explained. Men, women, children, old and young were charmed by I know not what that radiated from his person. Wherever I went with him, I was congratulated on the beauty and goodness of my son. People envied him. Ah! That was because he was as beautiful as he was good! His soul was all nobility, grandeur, generosity. Intelligent and spiritual, even-tempered and sweet in his disposition as he was, life with him was a heavenly dream, a continual enchantment. You will realize what this meant, Monsieur, when I tell you that at twenty he developed cystitis, which was certainly a return of the first trouble in his leg, and that this cystitis was the beginning of a whole chain of suffering of which only hell could give you any idea. I cannot understand how God, our Creator, can permit the human body to be somartyrized. Above all, when this martyrdom is inflicted on a good and innocent being like my son. All the great specialists were consulted again, but alas! none of them was able to cure him. He spent thirteen years alternating between periods of better andworse, preserving, in the midst of the most atrocious suffering, his sweetness, his goodness and even his gaiety, so as not to sadden others.

For the past four years he has scarcely suffered at all, and last year he was so much better that he believed hewas cured. My poor husband had died in 1902. From that time my son had been the head of our little family: mother, sister, and himself. How happy we were!

Although we were obliged to work to supply our needs, life appeared very beautiful to us! My daughter had never wished to marry, so that she might devote herself to her brother, whom she adored. I was so happy in the love I saw that my children bore each other that I no longer feared death for myself, as I knew I should leave them together, not to be separated as long as they lived, living each for the other. And how shall I describe to you the tenderness of my son for his mother, of this mother for her son? Seek in heaven among the angels; seek above, among those worlds to which your gaze penetrates; seek among all the best and sweetest things that love can produce, and you will have only a feeble idea of the filial and the maternal love of these two. I dare not think of it. I dare not remember his eyes, his voice, when he looked at me and said, DarlingMother!

Last August it was proposed to him that he should visit a mine (he had acquired a taste for this kind of work and had been occupied with it for some time). He wished to take me with him. When we had reached a certain spot we were told that we should have to go on horseback to reach the mine. As I knew he had been forbidden to ride on horseback, because of his bladder, I refused; but my son assured me he felt certain he could make this trip without danger. We hesitated; we discussed it; I yielded.

Ah! Why can we never retrace our steps! This excursion so tired my son that he fell ill of gastric fever. He was in the hands of stupid and ignorant physicians who knew nothing of his condition and who let the months slip by while they said that nothingwas the matter! A tumor attacked the bladder, the walls could not endure the strain: the bladder burst!

The tortures of hell are nothing to the tortures suffered by my unhappy son! A celebrated surgeon was called in. he did not arrive until twenty-twohours after the accident. My child had made all his preparations for leaving this world. They operated, but all hope was gone. The poor boy survived the operation for thirteen days; the surgeon had given him only twenty-four hours more. But my son, who understood his mother's and sister's grief, resisted, fighting bravely in spite of everything. What days, Monsieur! They gave us the measure of his greatness of soul.

Thinking only of us, of the consequences of his death to two women who would remain alone and without support in a foreign country, who would always mourn an adored son and brother, he tried in all ways to soften the horror of this situation. What he said to us in those supreme moments were the words not of a young man of thirty-three but of a saint, an angel, a superhuman being! Oh, that face tortured by suffering! Those eyes that seemed to see something of another world! And his mouth, twisted by pain, still trying to smile, his hand pressed mine as he said: Good-bye, darling Mother, good-bye!I have loved you so dearly! Do not forget me! Oh! Almighty God, he said, you did not lay so much on your son, on your own son, who was God, and I, who am only a poor man, you give ten times more to bear. Oh! death! in pity, death! If you love me, ask God to send me to death!

For thirteen days and longer!

Oh, Flammarion! have pity on me! In the name of your mother, be merciful! I am mad with grief. It is thirty-two days since he died and I have not slept ten hours since. At night I sit up until four inthe morning, and when fatigue has conquered me I throw myself, entirely clothed, on my bed and shut my eyes, but a fixed idea continues during this painful sleep; I do not lose my memories for a single instant, and when I open my eyes I am obsessed by them all day long; what I suffer is so frightful, so atrocious that I ask myself if hell is not preferable to what I endure. Is it possible that it can be God who has created beings destined to experience such horrors!

You, an astronomer and a thinker, who weigh the suns and the worlds, you whose glance penetrates those mysterious regions among which our spirits loses itself, tell me, I beg you on my knees, tell me if our souls survive somewhere. If I can preserve the hope of seeing my son again, if he sees me. If there exists any way of communicating with him.

You who know so many things about the heavens, about spirits, about the marvels of the universe, I ask you in pity to tell me something that can leave my wounded, tortured heart a ray of hope, howeverfeeble! You cannot understand the excess of my grief. I wish that I might die of it. I hope to die, but - my daughter is here, who beseeches me to live, not to leave her alone in the world; and then I see myself forced to live and forced to suffer! What horror! When I think that in an instant I could put an end to my misery! If it were possible to weigh grief, to measure it as you measure the worlds, the weight would be heavy, the extent so great that you would be frightened to think that one human soul could reach such a degree of torture: there must be something infernal in my destiny! Neither red-hot irons nor pincers could cause such suffering! My son, my beloved child! I want him, I wish to see him! I desire no heaven without him. Oh! my adored Emanuel!flesh of my flesh! joy of my life! my happiness as a mother lost forever! Is there a God? is it he who permits these horrors on earth? Monsieur Flammarion, in pity, in the name of those you love and who love you, do not be insensible to the greatest humangrief that has ever torn an heart! you who know! We simple mortals can neither know nor understand. Tell me if souls survive somewhere, if they remember, if they still love those who remain on earth; if they see us, if we can call them near us.

Ah! If Icould see you and fall at your knees! Forgive this mad act. I no longer know whether I dream or wake! I feel only one thing, a grief so sharp that it seems like a red-hot iron, continually plunged into a gaping wound.

Forgive me, Monsieur Flammarion! Yoursuns and stars, so beautiful and so marvelous, do not feel or suffer. And I feel a grief greater than all the worlds that move in space! So small, so unimportant a thing, and yet to feel so intolerable a grief! What can it be? What is this mystery? A being so feeble and limited - and to suffer so!

Forgive me once more, Master, in the name of your mother! Forgive me and pity your unhappy countrywoman,

N. Boffard,At Reinosa, Province of Santander, Spain.

So runs this letter, full of anguish, which I reproduce literally, in order to show all the horror of such a situation. I repeat that I must apologize for the dithyrambic that concern me. Their only significance is in so clearly revealing this immense grief joined to the ardent hope of seeing these clouds dispersed.

One would have to possess a heart of stone to be untouched by these heart-rendering appeals of mother love, to remain deaf to the anguish of such despair, and not to feel an ardent desire to consecrate one's life to bringing some relief.

Priests receive appeals of this sort every day, because they are considered ministers of God, endowed with the power of penetrating the riddle of the supernatural and solving it. They answer such grief with the consolations of religion. The priest speaks in the name of Faith and Revelation; but faith cannot be imposed, it is not even as generally held as we imagine. I know priests, bishops, and cardinal who are without it, even while they teach it as a social necessity. There are a hundred different religionson earth, all of them perhaps useful, but unacceptable from the point of view of philosophy. Face to face with such events as I have just related, are their ministers able to convince us that a just and good God rules over humanity? The man of science is seated neither on the bench of the confessional nor in the bishop's chair, and he can tell only what he knows. He is honest, frank, independent, rational before everything. His duty is research and study. We are still seeking and we do not pretend to have found the answer, still less to have a revelation of the truth from heaven. That was the only answer I was able to give the unknown woman, even while I left her the hope of someday seeing her son again in the meantime of remaining in spiritual relationshipwith him. But I do not, like Auguste Comte, Saint-Simon, or Enfantin, imagine myself the high priest of a new religion. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the universal religion of the future will be founded upon science and especially upon astronomy, associated with the knowledge of physics.

Let us make our search humbly and all together. I must excuse myself again for having reproduced the expressions of praise in this letter, but to suppress them would be to suppress at the same time the expression of this distress, this confidence and this hope.

The loss of a son inspired the preceding letter; the loss of a daughter inspired the following.

Theil-sur-Vanne, November, 1899.

Master:

I have the honor of knowing you through your works well enough to be sure that you are kind and to hope that, although I am unknown to you, you will be willing to read with indulgence what I write and will pity my misfortune while according me your spiritual help, of which I have such great need.

On the nineteenth oflast September I had the unspeakable sorrow of losing a charming child sixteen and a half years old, of great intelligence and an exquisite delicacy of feeling, and oh! how beautiful! She seemed an incorporeal being, so ideally lovely were her chaste, graceful body and her angelic face. My sweet darling, with her large, magnificent eyes full of expression, framed with lashes as dark as her delicately arched eyebrows, her nose a little long but fine and straight, her mouth somewhat large but expressing muchgoodness, her face a soft oval, the color of a lovely lily. A dear little dimple in her chin gave beauty to her smile and lighted up a face that was usually rather serious.

A splendid mass of light auburn hair, naturally curly, delicately waved, graced her virginal forehead like a golden foam; her eyes were dear little shells which you divined, hidden in the mass of her fine hair, little nests for kisses, upon which I can no longer place my lips, hungry with tenderness. My dearly loved daughter is no more.My eyes can no longer rest in affection upon her charming, beautiful face; I can only weep for her. So many moral and physical perfections brutally, cruelly, stupidly, savagely blotted out! Pitiless death has taken everything from me. My Renee, my beloved- I have her no longer, and I go on living. Life! - what a prison!

And with her have vanished our good talks. They are ended now - all our wonderful conversations on the most abstruse questions of the life beyond, for although she was young, my daughterwas a thoughtful girl, a precious friend, my confidante and dearly loved companion. She was everything to me, this pure and lovely flower, cut down before her full and perfect blooming. Why? What a problem!

Since then, I have thought of suicide as a way of rejoining her, but (did this intuition come from her approaching end?) the evening before her death, while her arms were about me, she said coaxingly, Mamma must not commit suicide; she must wait, mustn't she? I was completely taken aback and I did notunderstand until the next day when, white as a lily, she gave me her last kiss and closed her eyes forever. Ah! that last kiss! she put all that remained of her life into it. What moments! What tortures! Supreme, never-to-be-forgotten hours! I still see her. I love my suffering. I see my dear little dead girl who had felt, who had guessed my despair: she wished me to remain to weep for her. My revolt against everybody and everything; I find myself murmuring against God Himself, who has taken from me what is a thousand times dearer than my life. from this time on I can live only in the memory of her - my daughter, my constant thought - she was my religion, I adored her. If it is possible, I should like to find some consolation in spiritism, to take refuge init with faith, hope, and love.

But I know so little about these matters.

My husband and I have tried to experiment with a table, alas! without results, although we did everything to insure success - placing on the table the photograph of our dear child,one of her curls, a page of her writing - and although we evoked her with all the strength of our will. But our tears, our calls, our longings were all useless. I wish to go on, to persevere, and it is toward this end, dear and illustrious Master, with your help, I cannot tell you what this never-failing source of consolation would mean to me. You would mingle in my thoughts with my daughter and God.

Reading your admirable works has made me think of placing my hope in you, feeling sure that you will be able to do as I ask and will be willing to receive kindly the prayer of a poor mother who lives only in the hope of finding once more the child who, as you believe, has vanished but is not dead. Extend your kindness to this sad and ignorant mother. You who have light, lighten her darkness, help her in her moral distress: it is the most beautiful gift of charity that can be given. My greatest desire to fathom these mysteries does not spring from vain curiosity; it is a real, a unique, a potent need from whichdeath alone can deliver me. I await your answer with confidence, but also with impatience, and should you think it wise, I will gladly go to Paris or wherever you advise me.

Be good enough to receive, Monsieur and illustrious scientist, my thanks in anticipation and the warmest greetings of your servant,

R. Primault.

I have reproduced this letter, like the former, 2 without modification, and without suppressing the words of praise addressed to me. As I have already said,the sensations of childish vanity are unknown to me and for more than half a century I have grown used to titles that no longer have any significance for me. The absolute conviction of an astronomer is that we are all atoms of the utmost insignificance. But these expressions of admiration from an author's readers, whoever he may be, explain the confidence and the faith expressed and should be respected.

Alas! scientific honesty obliges us to say only what we know. We have no right to deceive any one, evenfrom the best of motives and in order to offer him a transitory happiness. I could not give absolute certainty to that poor mother. That was twenty years ago. Since then I have never ceased to search along the same path. This book is written to set forth the elements of a solution.

I have allowed myself to produce literally the touching letter of my unknown correspondent because it expresses the grief of all mothers who have lost a child, of all those who have lost some one dearly loved and whom the very term Just God seems an insult to reality. We can easily understand the revolt of these souls. I possess other letters that are incomparably more severe with all the false consolations of religion, that have been sent me by Catholics, Protestants, Jews, spiritualists of all beliefs, free-thinkers, materialists, atheists, taking as a text the injustice which we see about us, in order to deny the existence of an intelligent Principle in the organization of the world.

Men often console themselves with skepticism, by submission to the inevitable, by convincing themselves of the indifference of nature to human efforts. Women will not do this, they will not resign themselves. They will not accept nothingness. They feel that there exists something unknown but real, they wish to know.

Hardly a week passes but I receive letters of this sort.

But what is the universal intelligence? We have a tendency to believe that God thinks as we do and that our sense of justice corresponds with His; that His thought is of the same nature as our own, although infinitely superior to it. It is perhaps something entirely different. The insect thinks dully when it forms the chrysalis and also when it bursts this envelop to spread the wings it has acquired; perhaps our thoughts is as far removed from the thought of God as that of the caterpillar is from our own. We are surrounded by mystery.

But our duty is to search.

During the infamous German war, which has cut down, in the flower of their youth, fifteen million young men who had the right to life, who had been brought up by their fathers and their mothers often at a price of enormous sacrifices, letters reached me by the hundred, denouncing the barbarity and injustice of human institutions, lamenting that the hatred of war, which agroup of humanity's friends have preached for so long, should not have been understood by rulers; revolting against God, Who permits such frightful destruction, and declaring that their lives had been shattered by the irreparable loss of those they loved.

More than ever the frightful problem of our destiny rises before us. Is it really insoluble? Cannot the veil be pushed aside, lifted, if only for a moment? Alas! The religions which have all sprung from this heartfelt need, this desire to understand, thisgrief at seeing before us the mute body of someone dearly loved, have not brought with them the proofs they promised. The finest theological discussions prove nothing. We do not want words but demonstrable facts. Death is the profoundest subject that hasever occupied the thoughts of men, the supreme problem of all times and all peoples. It is the inevitable end toward which we all tend; it is a part of the law of our existence, as important as birth. They are both natural transitions in the general evolution, and yet, for all that, death, which is just as natural as birth, seems to us to be against nature.

Hope in the continuation of life is innate in human nature. It belongs to all periods and all peoples. The development of science plays no part in thisuniversal belief, which rests on personal aspiration and which nevertheless is not based on positive foundations. That is a fact that it is valuable to state.

Sentiment is not a negligible quantity, equal to zero, its scientific coefficient.

The two letters already reproduced from a part of a series that I began to collect long ago and with which my readers are already familiar. The number of letters received, recorded, and included in this collection of documents, of observations, of investigations, ofquestions that have arisen since the inquiry began, in 1899 (see my work L'Inconnu et les problemes psychiques, p. 90), have reached the figure 4106, to which I ought to add about 500 that reached me before I began the inquiry.

I could quote her hundreds of others, very much like the two preceding. Here is one which may seem striking, in another respect, to more than one reader. It is a fervent prayer, which was sent to me at La Rochelle, the fifteenth of August, 1904. it is somewhat brutal, but I give it complete, as I gave the others.

My Elder Brother:

Both my eyes are suffering from cataract, but nevertheless I must write to you. I am a skeptic, a hardened scoffer, but I must believe in something. A frightful, irreparable catastrophe has just crushedthe lives of four people. My daughter, whose charm, simplicity and gaiety in 1902 had delighted all Rochefort, beginning with the mothers of those girls who were her rivals, has just gone to a madhouse in Niort, where she vegetates, waiting for the end. It was eighteen months' agony for her, the martyr, and for her poor mother, who took her to Paris, to Bordeaux, to Saujon, where ambitious specialists demonstrated the utter powerlessness of their pretended science, - an agony also for me, alone here, and for my son, victims of the same catastrophe. I am haunted by the thought of suicide. My brain beats out this refrain: Your daughter is mad! and I think of the general misery, of the immense fraud that life is for the great majority of human beings. We carry with us from our birth the defects of our ancestors. What can become of our personality, paralyzed, stuck fast in the carnal magma? This magma, by the play of its molecules, by the example of the parents' education,