Whatever we may think of the plausibility of the doctrine or revelation, we cannot dispute that this morality and this justification of justice are the most ancient and at the same time the most beautiful and reassuring that the mind of man has imagined. But they are based upon a postulate which we are perhaps too much inclined to refuse blindly. It asks us in fact to admit that our existence does not end at the hour of our death and that the spirit, or the vital spark, which does not perish, seeks an asylum and reappears in other bodies. At first the postulate seems monstrous and unacceptable; but on closer examination its aspect becomes much less strange, less arbitrary and less unreasonable. It is, to begin with, certain that, if all things undergo transformation, nothing perishes or is annihilated in a universe which knows no nothingness and in which nothingness alone remains absolutely inconceivable. What we call nothingness could therefore be only another mode of existence, of persistence and of life; and, if we cannot admit that the body, which is only matter, is annihilated in its substance, it is no less difficult to admit that, if it were animated by a spirit—which it is hardly possible to dispute—this spirit should disappear without leaving a trace of any kind.
So the first point of the postulate and the most important is of necessity granted. There remains the second point, that of the successive reincarnations. Here, it is true, we have only hypotheses and probabilities. It is necessary that this spirit, this soul, this vital spark or principle, this idea, this immaterial substance—it matters little what name we give it—must go or reside somewhere, must do or become something. It may wander in the infinity of space and time, dissolve, lose itself and disappear, or at least mingle and become confused with what it encounters there, and finally become absorbed in that boundless spiritual or vital energy which appears to animate the universe. But, of all hypotheses, the least probable is not that which tells us that, on leaving a body which has become uninhabitable, instead of escaping and wandering through the illimitable vast that fills it with terror, it looks about it for a lodging resembling that which it has lately quitted. Obviously this is only an hypothesis; but in our complete and terrible ignorance it presents itself before any other. We have nothing to support it save the most ancient tradition of humanity, a tradition perhaps prehuman and in any case absolutely general; and experience tends to show that at the base of these traditions and these instances of universal assent there is nearly always a great truth and that they must be accorded a greater importance and a greater value than have hitherto been attributed to them.
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As regards evidence, or rather premonitory suggestions of evidence, we have scarcely anything beyond the experiments of Colonel de Rochas, who, by means of hypnotic passes, succeeded in making a few exceptional mediums retrace not only the whole course of their present lives, back to their earliest childhood, but also that of a certain number of previous existences. It cannot be denied that these extremely serious experiments, which were very scientifically conducted, are most bewildering; but the danger of unconscious suggestion or telepathy is not and doubtless will never be sufficiently remote to allow them to become really conclusive.
We find further, on pursuing the same train of ideas, certain cases of reincarnation, like that of one of Dr. Samson’s little daughters, as related in the Annales des sciences psychiques for July, 1913. This case, which is almost undisputed, is exceedingly curious; but, though it is not unique, those which resemble it are too rare to allow us to rely upon them.
There remains what are known as prenatal reminiscences. It happens fairly often that a man who finds himself in an unfamiliar country, in a city, a palace, a church, a house, or a garden, which he is visiting for the first time, is conscious of a strange and very definite impression that he “has seen it before.” It suddenly seems to him that this landscape, these vaulted ceilings, these rooms and the very furniture and pictures which he finds in them are quite well-known to him and that he recollects every nook and corner and every detail. Which of us but has, at least once in his life, vaguely experienced some such impression? But the recollections are often so definite that the person in whom they occur is able to act as a guide through the house or park which he has never explored and to describe beforehand what his party will find in this or that room or at the turn of this or that avenue. Is it really a recollection of previous existences, a telepathic phenomenon or an ancestral and hereditary memory? The same question suggests itself touching certain innate aptitudes or faculties, by virtue of which we see children of genius, musicians, painters, mathematicians or simple artisans, who know from the outset, without learning them, nearly all the secrets of their art or craft. Who will venture to decide?
This is about all that we can cite in favour of the doctrine of reincarnation. It is not enough to weigh down the scales. But all the other suppositions, theories or religions, excepting spiritualism, which for the rest is perfectly consistent with successive existences, have less solid foundations and are even, to be truthful, devoid of any. It would therefore be ungracious on their part to reproach the supposition which we are considering with the instability of the arguments whereon it is based.
Once again, how desirable it would be that all this were true! There would be no more moral uncertainties, no more uneasiness in respect of justice. And it is so beautiful, so complete, that it is perhaps real. It is difficult indeed to admit that such a dream is untrue from first to last, a dream which has been dreamed so long, since the beginning of the world, by so many thousands of millions of men and which, despite numerous and far-reaching distortions, has, when all is said, been the one dream of humanity. It is not possible to prove that it is based upon truth; but, unlike most of the religions derived from it, it is not possible either to demonstrate that it is imaginary and fabricated throughout; and, there being this doubt, why should not reason, which it never offends, be allowed to accept it and at heart to hope and act as though it were true, while waiting for science to confirm it completely, or to invalidate it, or to give us another hypothesis which it will perhaps never be able to elaborate?
What at first repels many of those who investigate it is the unduly assured and arbitrary insistence upon a thousand petty details, probably interpolated, as in all religions, by inferior minds, animated by a narrow and maladroit zeal. But these details, viewed from a certain elevation, do not in any way alter the great outlines, which remain immeasurable, admirable and unspoiled.