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HEREAFTER 
 
 OR 
 
 THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 According to Scienck and Faith, 
 by 
 
 REV. J. LAXKNAIRK, D.D., 
 President of the Theological Seminary of Saint Di&. 
 
 Adapted from the French 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. J. M. LELEU. 
 
 
 ST. LOUIvS, MO. 1904. 
 Published by B. HERDER. 
 
 17 South Broadway. 
 
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 COPY S. 
 
 NIHIL OBSTAT. 
 
 Sti Iyiidovici, die 13. Augusti 1904. 
 
 F. G. Hoiavkck, 
 Censor Theologicus. 
 
 IMPRIMATUR. 
 Sti Ivudovici, die 14. Augusti 1904. 
 ►{< John J. Gi^knnon, 
 
 Abp. St. L,ouis. 
 
 Copyright, 1904, by Joseph Gummersbach. 
 
 Becktold Printing and Book Mfg. Co., St. I^ouis, Mo. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Introductory 5 
 
 Chapter I. 
 The Question. 
 Its Importance. — An Appeal to Reason 
 
 and to Faith 13 
 
 Chapter II. 
 The Hereafter in History. 
 Before Christ.— After Christ.— Critical Dis- 
 cussion on the Testimony of Nations ... 19 
 Chapter III. 
 Hereafter and the Human Soul. 
 The Simplicity of the Soul. — Its Spiritual- 
 ity —Its Immortality. — Activity of the Soul 
 
 separated from the Body 29 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 Hereafter and Justice. 
 What is Justice? — Insufficient Sanctions. — 
 Necessity of a Future Life. — Neo-Stoicism of 
 Kant. — False Conceptions of Justice ... 40 
 Chapter V. 
 Hereafter and the Divine Plan. 
 General View. — The Law of Providence. — 
 Aspirations of the Soul. — Metempsychosis. — 
 
 Pantheism and Immortality 51 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Hereafter and Punishment. 
 Necessary Conclusion of the Moral Order. 
 — Sanction of the Law. — Helf and the Good- 
 ness of God. — Conditional Immortality. — 
 
 The Reason of Hell 66 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 Hereafter and Reward. 
 
 The Philosophy and the End of Man. — 
 
 The Heaven of the Gospel.— The Light of 
 
 Glory. — The Happiness of Heaven .... 8? 
 
 Conclusion 103 
 
XNTEODUCTOEY 
 
 "He who fights, " says Huxley, "for 
 moral truth in this world of anguish and 
 sin is certainly stronger when he believes 
 that sooner or later a vision of peace and 
 happiness will take hold of his being. So 
 also the one who works on the top of a 
 mountain is more courageous when he sees 
 awaiting him on the other side of the rocks 
 and snows, his home and rest. If this fate 
 were founded on a solid basis, certainly all 
 mankind would cling to it just as obsti- 
 nately as the sailor, when in danger of 
 being drowned, clings to the buoy." 
 
 Notwithstanding these words of the 
 overpraised agnostic, we hold that this 
 future fate is founded on a solid basis and 
 that we must admit its reality, unless we 
 refuse to assent to all the crucial criterions 
 which are the ordinary test of certitude and 
 which are recognized by every philosopher. 
 
 There is a hereafter for the soul because, 
 under every clime, all peoples have believed 
 (5) 
 
6 HEREAFTER. 
 
 and do believe this dogma. Some so- 
 called free-thinkers vainly tried to prove 
 the falsehood of this universal belief. 
 Even Herbert Spencer, "the doctor of the 
 unknowable/ 7 has been obliged to confess 
 that: "Among the tribes who say that death 
 is annihilation we yet commonly find such 
 inconsequent beliefs as those of some 
 Africans visited by Schweinfurth, who 
 shunned certain caves from dread of the 
 evil spirits of fugitives who had died in 
 them." * Nowhere has total belief in 
 annihilation been found and all the ac 
 counts of historians, travelers and poets — 
 these three great reflectors of the nations 7 
 ideas — corroborate this assertion. It is 
 sufficient to refer to H. B Bancroft, in his 
 "History of the native races of the Pacific 
 States of America," Sir J. Barrow in his 
 "Travels into the interior of Southern 
 Africa," A. Bastian in his "Afrikanische 
 Eeisen," J. L. Burckhardt in his "Notes 
 on the Bedouins and Wahabys," H. Brit- 
 ton in his "Loloma," F. Boyle in his 
 
 1 Principles of Sociology, XIV, 99, 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 " Ad ventures among the Dyaks, 77 G. W. 
 Earl in his "Eastern Seas, 7 ' Sir G. Grew 
 in his "Polynesian Mythology 77 etc., etc. 
 
 There is a hereafter for the soul, because 
 our soul is simple and spiritual. Neither 
 the simple nor the spiritual can be dis- 
 aggregated since they are not an aggregate. 
 As Leibnitz says, "it is as impossible for 
 the soul to become divided as for the circle 
 to become a square: this is against the 
 essence of things. 77 He therefore con- 
 cludes that "the soul is naturally im- 
 mortal. 77 Such, too, is our conclusion. Of 
 course, we admit that the soul which can- 
 not be destroyed, may be annihilated by 
 God, but further we shall see that His 
 divine attribute of justice prevents Him 
 doing this. And by the way, we can say 
 with truth, that there is no example of any 
 thing having been annihilated. * 
 
 There is a hereafter for the soul, because 
 the human soul, unlike the animal 7 s soul, 
 
 1 Annihilation would be tantamount to the 
 acknowledging of a failure in the creating of the 
 subject at hand. Cfr. C. Mano, The Problem 
 of Life, 
 
8 HEREAFTER. 
 
 is life independent of the body, it is life 
 coming directly from God, life uniting all 
 the particles of the body. Why should the 
 soul perish when the body dies ? The soul 
 being the source and principle of life, its 
 death would be unexplainable. I have a 
 handful of sand in my hand : the sand flies 
 away, my hand remains. So with the soul. 
 When the body dies, the soul subsists. 
 
 There is a hereafter for the soul, because 
 justice claims this privilege: too often 
 wickedness is honored here below and 
 virtue is despised: unless we admit that 
 God is unjust, we must necessarily admit 
 for the soul a life beyond the grave, when 
 compensation shall be made. 
 
 "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost 
 thou not judge and revenge our blood on 
 them that dwell on the earth V 
 
 To this supreme interrogation, which we 
 read in the Apocalypse, an answer will be 
 given. 
 
 The hour shall strike when justice shall 
 begin, justice as unavoidable, sacred, 
 necessary as God Himself. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 God is Truth : truth radiantly has to be 
 manifested, confounding all sophists and 
 liars. 
 
 God is Love: love has to appear to 
 crush the ungrateful, 
 
 God is Justice: retributive justice has 
 to vanquish the impious. 
 
 To sum up with Emerson, let us say: 
 "Our dissatisfaction with any other solu- 
 tion is the blazing evidence of immortal- 
 ity." 
 
 But as the philosopher of Concord says 
 elsewhere: "We are much better believers 
 in immortality than we can give grounds 
 for. Its real evidence is too subtle or is 
 higher than we can write down in proposi- 
 tions." 
 
 Strong as are our arguments, sufficient 
 as they are to constitute a solid basis, our 
 light is not adequate, that is to say, we are 
 not adequately satisfied with its rays, as 
 we are, when we see that two and two are 
 four, or as when we prove, that the short- 
 est way to go from a point to an other is 
 by the straight line. 
 
10 HEREAFTER. 
 
 But what follows from this ? That the 
 proof is not sufficient, that the existence of 
 the eternal hereafter of the soul cannot be 
 proved philosophically, and conclusively, 
 and surely? By no means. It follows 
 only that we cannot prove it mathematic- 
 ally, geometrically, tangibly; and as here 
 below we perceive adequately only what is 
 proved to us in that way, it follows also, 
 as says Emerson, that "we cannot write it 
 down in propositions, " but our mind is 
 satisfied, although not fully. 
 
 It is the great error of the Positivists of 
 the present day to confound the fields of 
 thought, by mixing the spiritual and im- 
 material with the corporeal and the mater- 
 ial. They claim for a series of truths a 
 standard of demonstration of which they 
 are not capable, and the fault of this 
 method renders all positivistic search 
 fruitless. These philosophers cannot re- 
 quire in the arguments which prove the 
 immortality of the soul, however con- 
 clusive these arguments may be, the full 
 evidence and the absolute clearness of the 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 11 
 
 axioms of mathematics, because the field 
 of ideas is not the same — and this is so, 
 because God wants from us the merit of 
 faith. We are in the land of shadows, we 
 are not in the land of vision. And as 
 James Martineau says : < 'We do not believe 
 in immortality because we have proved it, 
 but we forever try to prove it because we 
 believe it. 77 
 
 J. M. Leleu. 
 
 Troy, N. Y., May 3d, 1904. 
 
Chapter I. 
 The Question. 
 
 Its Importance. — An Appeal to Reason anil to 
 Faith. 
 
 "Of all the things of which you are 
 ignorant, what do you desire to know 
 before all others ?" — "Whether I am im- 
 mortal or not." 
 
 Thus speaks mankind through the lips 
 of a genius. (St. Augustine. Soliloquia, 
 II.) For untold ages humanity was dis- 
 interested in the scientific questions upon 
 which our century has thrown its light. 
 But hardly is philosophical thought 
 aroused, when mankind developes a pas- 
 sionate craving for the mysteries of the 
 hereafter. 
 
 For man, indeed, there is not a problem 
 
 more tragical than this: "to be or not to 
 
 be," to return after an ephemeral existence 
 
 to nothingness whence we sprang, or to 
 
 (13) 
 
14 HEREAFTER. 
 
 pass from death to immortality. This is 
 why the present generation, fatigued by 
 scepticism, looks anxiously towards the 
 other side of life, and youth recovering 
 its elasticity from the vanities which 
 weakened it, gives serious study to the 
 superterrestrial ideal. 
 
 Some philosophers in the name of ex- 
 perientialisni proclaim that there is nothing 
 after death. "Science," says Littre, "has 
 not been able to establish any proof of life 
 after death." For them the soul and the 
 future life are chimeras, heavy words and 
 nothing else ; beyond the grave is the un- 
 knowable, the unnamed, nothingness. 
 
 Is this oracle of so-called experimental 
 science infallible? Christian philosophy, 
 in its turn, employing experience does not 
 find it hard to demonstrate with the most 
 simple facts and most positive data that, if 
 experimentialism be impartially consulted, 
 it testifies in favor of our immortality. 
 
 According to Brunetiere, "reason can- 
 not demonstrate the immortality of the 
 soul or the existence of God." Guizot, 
 
THE QUESTION. 15 
 
 too, with the whole school of traditionalists 
 pretends that "to try to establish the 
 existence of a future life is to weaken the 
 case : the hereafter is not an affair of 
 demonstration, it is a matter of feeling. 7 ' 
 
 We do not deny that purity of heart 
 gives more limpidity and clearness, and 
 that annihilation has always been, as 
 somebody has said, the horizon of evil 
 consciences. We must go to the true, 
 with all our soul and according to Bossuet, 
 reasoning which has a counter-stroke on 
 the conduct of life "must end in the soul 
 by a right will." 
 
 But neither science nor faith is a work of 
 feeling or "religious poetry." As the 
 basis of moral order there must be no blind 
 belief but scientific evidence — the only 
 kind capable of giving life and producing 
 conviction. The writer hopes to prove 
 that reason is not so weak but it can 
 demonstrate the immortality of the soul, 
 and he will offer proofs not in any party- 
 spirit, or from any vain sophistry, but 
 from the perennis philosophia of Leibnitz, 
 
16 HERE AFTER . 
 
 from principles of a triumphant and eter- 
 nal evidence, the negation of which would 
 destroy human thought. 
 
 If Berthelot is to be believed, "two 
 sources of knowledge do not exist, one 
 revealed arising from the abyss of the un- 
 knowable, the other extracted from obser- 
 vation and experimentation." 
 
 In other words human thought has no 
 other field than the senses. 
 
 Happily the great chemist refutes him- 
 self, for he immediately recognizes that he 
 is obliged to admit some realities, heat for 
 instance, although he is totally ignorant of 
 its intimate nature. 
 
 In spite of positivism it must, therefore, 
 be acknowledged that beyond tangible facts 
 there is a world of superior realities. Why 
 then do you refuse the right to reason to 
 put itself under the guidance of a safer 
 leader whose titles it will examine in ad- 
 vance according to the methods of science, 
 unless you admit that human thought 
 which is hardly able to encompass an 
 atom, is the measure of truth in its plen- 
 itude? 
 
THE QUESTION. 17 
 
 Faith is not the enemy of reason ; it is 
 its only authorized mistress and an auxili- 
 ary always useful and sometimes indis- 
 pensable. 
 
 Philosophy lights usque ad evidentiam 
 one side of the problem of human destiny; 
 but its torch leaves the other side in the 
 deepest darkness. We shall then call 
 revelation to add its divine rays to the 
 light of reason and to open to our eyes a 
 larger horizon towards the side of the here- 
 after. In this way we shall see**super- 
 natural data admirably adjusting them- 
 selves to the needs and tendencies of 
 human nature and we shall recognize from 
 the wonderful harmonies radiating, here 
 as elsewhere, from faith and reason, that 
 both are the daughters of the same God. 
 
 Such is the aim of this little work: to 
 throw upon the great question of the here- 
 after the light which emanates from the 
 threefold focus of experience, reason and 
 revelation ; and if the conclusion does not 
 impose itself with the inflexible rigor of 
 mathematics, we hope it will give at least 
 
18 HEREAFTER. 
 
 an evidence capable of taking away all 
 doubt and of becoming a counterpoise to 
 the swoons of the will. 
 
 For if in the face of the proofs of our 
 immortality the modern mind still retreats, 
 it is not because it lacks the light, but 
 because it fears the moral consequences 
 whose truth menaces it. Now a man who 
 thus avoids the truth, from fear of virtue, 
 is amenable to the saying of Eousseau: 
 "Put your soul in the state of always 
 desiring a future life and you will never be 
 in doubt about it." 
 
Chapter II. 
 The Hereafter in History. 
 
 Before Christ. — After Christ. — Critical Dis- 
 cussion on the Testimony of Nations. 
 
 " Everywhere there exists a belief in a 
 world different from that in which we live, 
 everywhere faith is expressed in a future 
 existence which awaits a part of our being 
 after the destruction of the body. ' ' 1 
 
 So speaks the unquestioned scientist M. 
 de Quatrefages, after having read the an- 
 nals of the nations. 
 
 The Egyptians taught that the soul is 
 immortal : after separation from the body 
 it appears before the supreme Judge, sur- 
 rounded by forty-two assistants ; the good 
 are received into the society of Osiris and 
 the wicked, to expiate their crimes, become 
 incarnated in the body of animals. 
 
 The Phoenicians believed in justice 
 
 1 Unite de Pe"sp£ce humaine, ch. I. 
 (19) 
 
20 HEREAFTER. 
 
 beyond the grave, to be executed by the 
 gods upon the Alonims or select souls. 
 
 The Magi who were among the Chalde- 
 ans the depositaries of wisdom, taught 
 metempsychosis: at every period in the 
 life of the world the soul begins a new ex- 
 istence freighted with the the responsibil- 
 ities of its preceeding life. 
 
 The doctrine of the Persians is contained 
 in the Zeud-Avesta and in the Boundehesh 
 which is the explanation of the former 
 book: the just departing from this life, are 
 welcomed by Ormuzd the good God, while 
 the guilty rejoin Ahriman the evil genius. 
 But the triumph of sin will be only transit- 
 ory: Ahriman will be vanquished and 
 destroyed, and the wicked, after a tem- 
 porary punishment, will share the hap- 
 piness of the just. 
 
 The Bast-Indian Nirvana is well known : 
 according to Brahmanism, the soul, after 
 divers re-incarnations proportionate to the 
 merit of the individual, plunges into ab- 
 solute Being and loses its personality in an 
 eternal sleep. 
 
THE HEREAFTER IN HISTORY. 21 
 
 Such, too, is almost the doctrine of the 
 King, the oldest books of Chinese liter- 
 ature. 
 
 Purer and higher was the belief of the 
 Gauls and the primitive Saxons; the druids 
 expressly taught the dogma of the future 
 life and the principal condition of meriting 
 happiness was to practise the virtue dear 
 to their forefathers, fortitude. 
 
 The Greeks and Eomans share the uni- 
 versal faith. Plato in his Laivs and Phedo 
 insists upon the doctrine of future regen- 
 eration and admits the eternity of hell: 
 "Those who die guilty of great crimes fall 
 into Tartarus and never depart thence." * 
 Unhappily the arguments he uses are 
 defective and his doctrine is spoiled by 
 errors such as the pre-existence of the 
 soul. 
 
 Aristotle is not clear on the subject. 
 Still he considers the soul as a "divine and 
 eternal principle" which comes not from 
 matter but from something extraneous to 
 itself. It is therefore spiritual. Aristotle 
 
 1 Phedo, 113, 114. — Gorgias, 526—528. 
 
22 HEKEAFTEK. 
 
 places the premises from which the exist- 
 ence of a future life is inferred. 1 
 
 According to some rationalists the 
 Hebrews were the only people who dis- 
 agreed with the universal belief in the 
 future life: this idea at first alien to the 
 Mosaic religion was later borrowed by the 
 chosen people from the savants of Babylon 
 and Alexandria. Quite recently Professor 
 Friedrich Delitzsch of " Babel and Bible' f 
 fame expressed this opinion before the 
 Kaiser and his court. 
 
 It is true that the doctrine of the future 
 life is not formulated as clearly in the Old 
 Testament as in the New. According to 
 Bossuet the reason is to be found in the 
 fact that popular worship of the dead 
 would have given place to superstitious 
 evocations of spirits and idolatry, when 
 one of the important missions of the 
 Hebrews was to keep intact the dogma of 
 the unity of God, against the gross tenden- 
 cies and the polytheism of the day. Besides 
 the existence of a future life, of punish- 
 
 1 The Soul — Metaph} T sics. 
 
THE HEREAFTER IN HISTORY. 23 
 
 ment and rewards eternal is literally ex- 
 pressed in many passages of the Old 
 Testament, for instance in the Book of Job. 
 
 Christian revelation put this dogma in 
 its full light. The immortality of the soul, 
 the final separation of the good and the 
 bad, the brevity of the present life, the 
 magnificence of heaven, the torments of 
 hell : all these truths are recalled on every 
 page of this divine book so fitly called the 
 "Gospel of Immortality." 
 
 Among the Fathers of the Church and 
 Catholic writers of any renown Origen in 
 his book of Principles is the only one who, 
 while admitting the future life, argues 
 against the eternity of punishment, but 
 several Councils settled forever the form- 
 ulary of the dogma, especially the second 
 of Constantinople, the fourth of Lateran, 
 the second of Lyons and the Council of 
 Florence. 
 
 So up to the eighteenth century the 
 Catholic doctrine was generally taught in 
 all its purity. This unanimity was scarce- 
 ly broken in the ninth century by the 
 
I 
 
 24 HEREAFTER. 
 
 doctrine of metempsychosis held by John 
 Scotus Erigena 1 or in the twelfth by the 
 pantheism of Averroes, or in the sixteenth 
 by the atheism produced by the Renais- 
 sance. 
 
 But reason separated from faith without 
 being chained in its lawful ascent avoids 
 dangers with difficulty and often goes from 
 one excess to another, from the most de- 
 grading sensualism to a proud pantheism. 
 
 We know the leaders of the sensualistic 
 school who according to the word of 
 Aristotle make the body and the brute 
 rule instead of man : once the spirituality 
 of the soul is denied there can be no more 
 question of immortality. To this group 
 are connected the greatest number of 
 modern materialists: so for Buehner the 
 final destiny of man consists in preparing 
 phosphates for nature and for the De Gon- 
 court brothers, life according to Paul 
 Bourget ' 'is nothing else than a series o* 
 epileptic fits between a double nihility. " 
 
 1 Born in Ireland, died about 875, condemned 
 by Rome in 1059, author of Dialogus de divisione 
 naturae. 
 
THE HEREAFTER IN HISTORY. 25 
 
 The pantheistic school admits a certain 
 immortality, but it is the immortality of 
 the general reason and not of the individual 
 soul. Kant is its precursor ; for him the 
 soul is only the idea of unity of thought 
 under the diversity of phenomena ; specul- 
 ative reason therefore cannot demonstrate 
 either the existence of the immortality of 
 the soul called by him the noumenon ; still 
 as this truth is necessary for the direction 
 of life, it must be admitted in the name of 
 practical reason. 
 
 For Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, only 
 one thing is immortal, namely, the idea 
 and that, not in passing individuals, but in 
 the species or ideal form which is common 
 to and survives all. 
 
 Eenan, Comte and Taine likewise con- 
 ceive eternal life as an ideal life to which 
 we rise with our thought and which will 
 consist in the remembrance remaining in 
 us after the disappearance of our person- 
 ality. 
 
 Let us still mention metempsychosis 
 which deceived so many during the last 
 
26 HEKEAFTEK. 
 
 century with its different epurations of 
 souls in an immortality earthly according 
 to some, sidereal according to others. 
 
 A still further manifestation of the 
 thought of mankind regarding its destiny 
 is found in the worship of the dead and in 
 the grand or humble monuments every- 
 where and at all times erected in honor of 
 the departed. Of course in customs as in 
 doctrines there are absurdities and extrav- 
 agances but there is also a foundation of 
 truth which is everywhere found to be the 
 same. Aside from some exceptions the 
 peculiar secret of which lies in the pas- 
 sions, humanity expects a life beyond the 
 grave. 
 
 Whence came the general belief ? Among 
 men there is an infinite variety of charac- 
 ters, aptitudes, customs and prejudices. 
 How then explain this universal faith in 
 the hereafter ? 
 
 It is not a product of sensible experience, 
 for every life seems to be destroyed in the 
 terrible duel between life and death. 
 
 It is not the result of science and study, 
 for it precedes all philosophical reflexion. 
 
THE HEREAFTER IN HISTORY. 27 
 
 It is not the work of a government or 
 any temporal power, for those whom the 
 ancients led to the punishment of a future 
 life were kings like Sisiphe, Tantalus, 
 Ixion. 
 
 It is not an invention of this or that 
 religious sect, for all religions are pen- 
 etrated by the thought of a hereafter. 
 
 It cannot be attributed to human pas- 
 sions, since it is their torment, nor to 
 ignorance, since it exists among the most 
 civilized people. 
 
 To this fact, therefore, there are only 
 two causes. 
 
 First it is certain that among all people 
 religion gave birth to philosophy. Man 
 was first a worshipper, then a philosopher, 
 and the primary source of the beliefs he 
 has professed was an initial revelation 
 evidently infallible or God Himself. 
 
 If we refuse to admit this fact, notwith- 
 standing the testimony of history, we are 
 obliged to see at least in this declaration o.f 
 universal faith the spontaneous craving 
 and irresistible instinct of human nature : 
 
28 HEREAFTER, 
 
 "Omni in re, 7 ' says Cicero, "Consensio 
 omnium gentium lex naturae putanda est." 
 For, among so many distinct traits one 
 thing is common to all men — their nature 
 with the essential laws which direct them. 
 Now none of these natural laws exists in 
 vain ; all answer a need and are conformed 
 to the reality: natura non mentitur. When, 
 for instance, the instinct of birds leads 
 them to remote climates or gives them a 
 mysterious foresight into the morrow, there 
 is reason for that instinct and it never 
 deceives them. 
 
 So it is with the laws which binds man- 
 kind and forces it invincibly to hope for an 
 immortal morrow after death. 
 
 Since the human race attests this, there 
 is a hereafter. 
 
 At such and such an hour in its history 
 mankind made the idea of the future life 
 conform to its errors and passions, but at 
 the bottom of the question affirmation is 
 unanimous and constant ; from all the days 
 of time and all the points of space there 
 arises a profession of faith in immortality. 
 
Chapter III. 
 
 Hereafter and the Human Soul. 
 
 Simplicity of the Sonl. — Its Spirituality. — Its 
 Immortality. — Activity of the Soul separ- 
 ated from the Body. 
 
 The positivism of to-day asserts that 
 "man can know nothing of the nature of 
 his soul." 
 
 To demonstrate movement the old phil- 
 osophers went walking ; let us try to pull 
 aside the curtain which hides from our 
 eyes the nature and destiny of our soul. 
 
 I shall begin by saying that the human 
 soul is not a body, nor is it divisible and 
 composed like a body; it is simple and 
 without parts and therefore absolutely 
 distinct from matter. 
 
 Two proofs among thousands establish 
 the truth. Consciousness unmistakably 
 affirms the identity of the cyw in the differ- 
 ent periods of life. It is / who was young 
 (29) 
 
30 HEREAFTER. 
 
 and have become old, who long ago did 
 acts, the responsibility of which I still 
 carry. Bemembrance, the ordinary wit- 
 ness of this identity, proclaims the un- 
 alterable persistency of the deep and sub- 
 stantial realty which says I at any time of 
 my life. The body, moreover, is continu- 
 ally renewed. It is not necessary to demon- 
 strate here the famous experience of Flour- 
 ens establishing that all parts of the body, 
 even the bones, transform themselves per- 
 petually. According to the materialist 
 Moleschott, "only thirty days/' and not 
 seven years as was commonly held, "are 
 necessary to give the body a new com- 
 position." 
 
 The conclusion is evident, the eyw is un- 
 changeable, while the body changes ; there 
 is, therefore, in us a force distinct from 
 matter "which lives in it and directs it," 
 and which after having erected the majestic 
 architecture of the body according to "the 
 directive idea." constantly renews all cor- 
 poral parts. 
 
 Again, there is nothing common between 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 31 
 
 the acts of the soul and the qualities of 
 space. Can you measure a half of an emo- 
 tion, a third of a thought, a fourth of an 
 idea ? Materialists tell us that the thought 
 is an agitation of molecules : but did you 
 ever see rectilinear notions, circular senti- 
 ments, round or square psychological 
 phenomena ? 
 
 No, the soul is not "the ensemble of the 
 functions of the brain and the spinal mar- 
 row.' 7 
 
 The last word on this subject has been 
 said by Gauthier: "that is a fossilized 
 science which is bold enough to tell us that 
 only matter exists and that only its laws 
 govern the world. " x 
 
 It follows from this that the soul, being 
 indivisible, cannot perish by decomposi- 
 tion: as it is without parts it cannot be 
 broken or corrupted. This is the reason 
 why St. Thomas concludes in his sober, 
 energetic language: "The first and essen- 
 tial property of the soul is to be, and this 
 being can be lost only by the separation 
 
 1 Revue ge*nerale des sciences; N. du 15 
 Avril 1897. 
 
32 HEREAFTER. 
 
 of the soul from itself — a thing that is 
 impossible. " * 
 
 But is this enough to assure us of the 
 immortality of the soul ? No, the soul of 
 animals is as simple as the human soul, 
 and nobody dares seriously attribute to it 
 a life beyond the body. 
 
 In truth every principle of activity is 
 simple and immaterial, yet we see all 
 energy modifying itself and then disappear- 
 ing. 
 
 Here is where the Cartesian principles 
 seem to us to be radically defective, and 
 this weakness appears to be recognized by 
 some of its exponents. One of them asked 
 recently: "Is it true that death is only a 
 dissolution of the parts ?" 
 
 Descartes and many of his followers 
 have confounded two things which are 
 very distinct : simplicity and spirituality. 
 
 Simplicity is only the negation of parts, 
 it is indivision, indivisibility; spirituality 
 is something higher. According to St. 
 Thomas it is "the power to exist indepen- 
 dently and even outside of matter. " 
 
 1 Sutnma Theologica. I. p., q. a, 16. 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 33 
 
 As long as you do not prove that the 
 human soul rejoices in the possession of 
 this second sublime property, you give 
 only an initial and insufficient proof of its 
 immortality. 
 
 If, indeed, the soul cannot be destroyed 
 by decomposition, is it not to be feared 
 that it follows the fate of the body to which 
 it is joined and that it disappears with it ? 
 
 In our demonstration we shall follow the 
 experimental method, taking for granted 
 certain exact facts which cannot be denied. 
 We do not see the soul in itself, but it 
 betrays and reveals itself through its 
 works. 
 
 Now what is the most common subject of 
 our thoughts and desires ? The true, the 
 good, the beautiful, the just, the absolute, 
 right, duty, law, virtue, ethics. Even in 
 material things it is the universal, the ab- 
 stract, the necessary that we perceive, for 
 instance, the notions of being, end, sub- 
 stance, causality, etc. 
 
 Are these things of three dimensions'? 
 Have they weight and volume, a half or 
 
34 HEREAFTER. 
 
 third of which may be taken off ? What 
 sense, sight or feeling apprehends this im- 
 material world? Is it not evident that 
 these noble realities, absolutely devoid of 
 all sensible qualities, as sound and color, 
 are entirely inaccessible to a corporal or- 
 gan ? The act, therefore, by which we per- 
 ceive and desire them is free of matter and 
 goes beyond it: it is transcendental and 
 spiritual. 
 
 But the ancients used to say operari 
 sequitur esse; the manner of acting is in 
 keeping with the manner of being, the act 
 is the faithful reflection of the principle 
 from which it comes : this is an applica- 
 tion of the principle of causality and 
 materialists themselves do not deny it. 
 "The positive theory,' 7 says Biichner, "is 
 forced to acknowledge that the effect must 
 correspond to the cause. " 1 
 
 It results from this, then, that the human 
 soul, passing beyond the sensible order, 
 enjoys a peculiar life which it holds from 
 its own nature. 
 
 1 Kraft und Stoff, p. 218. 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 35 
 
 The soul does not receive its life from 
 matter, its being does not arise from its 
 union with the body; why then should it 
 perish with it? U A being/' says Fenelon, 
 " which is not the cause of the existence of 
 another, cannot be the cause of its an- 
 nihilation." 2 
 
 Thus there appears the difference between 
 the soul of man and that of the animal: 
 this acting through and with the senses 
 only, does not survive the destruction of 
 the body. a How," asked Aristotle, "could 
 the power of walking exist without the 
 legs?" 3 
 
 The human soul, on the contrary, accord- 
 ing to the grand image of Dante, is not 
 drowned in matter; it emerges from its 
 top, as the swimmer from the water. It 
 becomes, writes St. Thomas, more capable 
 of apprehending the highest truth as it 
 becomes independent of corporeal things. 
 Even in a state of union with the body, 
 
 2 I^ettres sur la Metaphysique et la Religion, 
 Lettre II, ch. 2. 
 
 3 De Generatione, I,. II, ch. 3. 
 
36 HEREAFTER. 
 
 the soul sometimes seems to retire into 
 itself to enjoy truth in a better way. When 
 the senses become dull or weak, the intel- 
 lect of the scientist or the ascetic soars 
 into ecstasies and great souls radiate extra- 
 ordinary brilliancy through the ruins of the 
 body. 
 
 Beside nowadays the materialistic thesis 
 is abandoned by the majority of physiolog- 
 ists and physicians who formerly were its 
 principal supporters. They have thor- 
 oughly explored the surface of the brain 
 and found only sensitive and motor cen- 
 ters; there is no chamber there to locate 
 the intellect. If, therefore, the soul can- 
 not think without images, it is because the 
 brain is the indispensable condition of 
 thought: it is not the cause. 
 
 What conclusion springs from these 
 facts'? Either that observation and ex- 
 perience are powerless and sterile, and 
 then, what becomes of the pretentious 
 positive and scientific method ? Or, they 
 have the importance which is attributed to 
 them, and then we must acknowledge in 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 37 
 
 man a principle independent of matter, a 
 transcendental and spiritual reality. 
 
 When a naturalist has before him some 
 organs of an animal or plant, by the process 
 of deduction he arrives at a certain knowl- 
 edge of its functions and life and constit- 
 utes again the whole organism. 
 
 Now look at the operations of the soul : 
 they attest its simplicity and spirituality. 
 But the nature of the soul betrays even its 
 destiny. What the soul is shows us what 
 it will be ; independent of the transforma- 
 tions of matter, it holds its titles to immor- 
 tality, engraved in its immutable and 
 spiritual essence: its reason for being is 
 not in its union with the body, though 
 that union constitutes a natural entity: it 
 is higher. 
 
 The soul is immortal, not by favor or 
 privilege, but because, as Bossuet says, it 
 has in itself the principles of an unchange- 
 able consistency. 
 
 If, then, science with scales in hand 
 proves the perpetuity of the smallest atom 
 of matter, philosophy with the help of ex- 
 
38 HEKEAFTER. 
 
 perience and reason, demonstrates the 
 supremacy of the soul over matter and its 
 future destiny. 
 
 Is there need to add that the survival of 
 the soul will in no way be akin to idleness 
 or inertia ? 
 
 To be, even in the lowest degree, is to 
 act: every substance is endowed with 
 activity in keeping with its condition : non 
 est substantia otiosa. 
 
 The interruption of the soul's life would 
 be tantamount to its annihilation. The 
 senses undoubtedly will be reduced to im- 
 puissance: how indeed could the soul see 
 without eyes ? But the intellectual facul- 
 ties whose acts are thinking, willing, lov- 
 ing, will freely exercise their activity, 
 since they are spiritual ; the conditions of 
 this activity will scarcely be modified from 
 the outside. 
 
 The higher realities, as the true, the 
 beautiful, the good, which belong to the 
 supersensible world, will always be within 
 reach of the soul and will nourish and 
 realize its aspirations. If it is removed 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 39 
 
 from the influences of the sensible world 
 whence it borrowed its ideas, why should 
 they not come to it by another way, for in- 
 stance by the action of a superior, a divine 
 light, as we shall later explain ? 
 
 The soul will always be able to know 
 itself, to possess its acquired ideas or to 
 add to them, and even have intercourse 
 with other spirits and especially with God. 
 With Bossuet let us conclude: " After 
 death the life of our reason is safe." 
 
Chapter IV. 
 Hereafter and Justice. 
 
 What is Justice ? -— Insufficient Sanctions. — 
 Necessity of a Future Life. — The Neo- 
 Stoicism of Eant. — False Conceptions of 
 Justice. 
 
 Justice is a universal and absolute prin- 
 ciple : it is not subordinate either to cir- 
 cumstances or to local or historical contin- 
 gencies ; it is as unchangeable as a geomet- 
 rical axiom. As it is true everywhere and 
 always that a straight line is the shortest 
 distance between two points, so is it true 
 that good and evil are separate and distinct 
 in all climates and at all times. 
 
 Besides, if there exists a God personal, 
 intelligent and free, justice, as all perfec- 
 tions, is interwoven in His indefectible 
 essence. He is, indeed, supremely in- 
 dependent in Himself, but He must render 
 to every man according to his works. 
 Creator and Father of human beings en- 
 (40) 
 
HEREAFTER AND TTJSTICE. 41 
 
 dowed with liberty. He is the author of the 
 laws which direct their conscience ; indis- 
 pensable supporter of the moral order, He 
 must insure to it a sanction capable of 
 preventing and repressing human lapses. 
 In short, He must be at the same time 
 the eye which directs and the hand which 
 strikes. 
 
 Now, if justice is not an empty word, it 
 must receive somewhere a plenary and in- 
 fallible application. 
 
 In this world justice is already exer- 
 cised: legal chastisements, the natural 
 consequences of virtue and vice, the testi- 
 mony of men, the satisfaction of conscience 
 are sanctions not without value. But are 
 they sufficient ? No. 
 
 In the first place human justice is a real 
 image of God's justice, but one often dis- 
 figured. 
 
 Who does not know that justice in this 
 life is often the application only of defec- 
 tive laws shaped by human ignorance and 
 perversity. 
 
 Besides, it reaches only a very small part 
 
42 HEREAFTER. 
 
 of our activity; our interior life wholly 
 escapes it, and among exterior acts many 
 do not fall under its regard or power. It 
 is, moreover, as an old writer says, only a 
 "one-handed justice ;" it simply punishes, 
 while its rewards of virtue are as rare as 
 they are delusive. 
 
 And what shall we say if the sword of 
 justice comes into weak, corrupt hands, 
 and if it spares great criminals and strikes 
 the innocent ! 
 
 But, perhaps, exterior sanctions such as 
 wealth, honor, fame offer a surer homage 
 to virtue. This is not so: for if public 
 esteem generally favors a man of con- 
 science, material prosperity is very often 
 the salary of vice triumphant. 
 
 The judgments of the vox populi are 
 usually blind, passionate, capricious, while 
 its leaders are flatterers employing only 
 " words, words, words. " 
 
 As to glory, it may seduce some idols of 
 popular election, but for the multitude it is 
 a word absolutely empty, and if you make 
 glory consist in a posthumous noise which 
 
HEREAFTER AND JUSTICE. 43 
 
 does not reach those whom it would exalt, 
 then we must confess that it is a very 
 aleatory counterpoise to the hard sacrifices 
 imposed by virtue. 
 
 When, then, Eenan proposes as a reward 
 for virtue l 'the living in a collective thought 
 of mankind and in the general result of the 
 working-up of the species; when Littre 
 asserts that "the contemplation of the eter- 
 nal laws of the world" makes life worth 
 the living, they speak less as moralists 
 than as the virtuosos of dilettantism. 
 
 Others may say: "It is true that man- 
 kind does not receive any reward for 
 virtue, but cui bono? Eight-living carries 
 its own reward : virtue and happiness can 
 be put in equation since they are one and 
 the same thing." 
 
 Nonsense! AVhat is this interior peace 
 of conscience, this happiness resulting 
 from virtue ? It is less a reward than the 
 impartial voice of a witness and judge ; at 
 most, it is an anticipatory consolation 
 which helps us wait the hour of justice, 
 but it becomes a fallacy and lie, if that 
 hour never strikes. 
 
44 HEREAFTER. 
 
 Besides, how many pure and delicate 
 souls see that precious peace disappear 
 little by little in proportion to the growth 
 of the ideal with which they are smitten, 
 and to the realization of the inevitable im- 
 perfections which separate them from it ! 
 
 And is remorse the infallible punish- 
 ment of vice? Does it bear a true propor- 
 tion to the sacred exigencies of justice ? It, 
 indeed, punishes light crimes and the 
 guilty who are not yet familiarized with 
 evil, but its spur becomes blunt by the 
 habit of sin and ere long the i 'interior tor- 
 mentor" lulls the insensible and atrophied 
 conscience into a fatal yet real peace. 
 
 Is it necessary to give here any serious 
 consideration to the evolutionary morality 
 advocated by Huxley and Spencer which 
 seeks to popularize virtue by basing it on 
 the complete perfectibility of human per- 
 sonality? It is to be feared that this 
 result, excellent in itself, will seem to the 
 majority of men to be incommensurable 
 with the efforts that it supposes. Such an 
 ascent of the soul presumes an orientation, 
 
HEREAFTER AND JUSTICE. 45 
 
 an aim, a terminus. Towards what un- 
 known thing will this orientation occur if 
 only nothingness awaits us the last even- 
 ing of life ? And in the supposition that 
 one or the other of these sanctions or the 
 aggregate possesses the value which is 
 attributed to them, is not supreme injustice 
 still to be repaired ? 
 
 Is it not, indeed, the heroism of great- 
 ness and the glorious summit pf virtue to 
 give one's live for a great cause, for one's 
 country or faith ? On the other hand, is it 
 not the most abominable crime to with- 
 draw stoically from life by suicide and thus 
 betray the most essential duties towards 
 God, society and one's self? 
 
 But what is there among the sanctions 
 so far considered that can efficaciously in- 
 spire the martyr and successfully restrain 
 the apostate of duties ? 
 
 There is nothing. Another justice must 
 then exist, or justice is but an empty word 
 and a snare. 
 
 Ah! I understand the sorrowful appeal, 
 not to impassible nature but to divine 
 
46 HEREAFTER. 
 
 justice, which everywhere is made, by bar- 
 barous tribes as well as by civilized 
 nations, by the lips of Plato and Seneca, 
 as well as by the voice of St. Paul, and 
 which constitutes the most popular demon- 
 stration of the immortality of the soul. 
 
 "To merit,' 7 wrote Seneca, "is to wait." 
 "Merit and suffering, " saysCaro, "are the 
 things which make us immortal; that is 
 the eternal, indestructable argument of the 
 future life." Struck by this fact Fenelon 
 asserted that even if the soul were mater- 
 ial, it would be necessary to bestow im- 
 mortality upon it, in order to render to 
 every man according to his works. 
 
 The existence of this supreme sanction 
 has often been called into question, despite 
 its evident necessity. A member of the 
 school of ethical culture lately declared 
 that "the fear of punishment and the hope 
 of a reward are motives which alter the 
 morality of an act." 
 
 Let us admit it: to believe that the 
 human heart is solely accessible to motives 
 of interest is evident calumny, but to deny 
 
HEREAFTER AND JUSTICE 47 
 
 the influence of fear and hope, would also 
 be to oppose the reality of facts. 
 
 To demand this pretended disinterested- 
 ness would be to exact a task against 
 nature. 
 
 This theory moreover supposes that man 
 is absolutely autonomous , that he is in 
 himself the reason of being, his center, his 
 god. This is the autolatry conceived by 
 those writers who imagined "the religion 
 of the soul" — of a soul whose immortality 
 they call in question. 
 
 Is it not evident that man like other 
 beings, is subject to superior laws % He is 
 free but not absolutely independent. His 
 first duty toward the supreme Legislator is 
 to respect His laws, especially that one 
 which by an irresistible movement brings 
 the subject to happiness. And if this 
 primal duty identifies itself in man with 
 interest, it is because the same God is at 
 the same time the supreme arbiter of our 
 destiny and the sovereign good which will 
 be its crown. 
 
 To despise these rewards and pains is to 
 
y 48 HEREAFTER. 
 
 deny with surprising pride that essential 
 prerogative of the absolute Being by which 
 He is the principle and the end of every- 
 thing; the guardian of moral order, the 
 avenger of crime and the rewarder of 
 virtue. 
 
 False and boastful theory, indeed, which 
 has not even the merit of originality ! For 
 it is stoicism again revived and the visible 
 disguise of an error famous two centuries 
 ago, quietism. 
 
 If justice which rewards, shocks the dis- 
 interestedness of some free-thinkers, or so- 
 called seekers of truth, justice which pun- 
 ishes, alarms their conscience and disturbs 
 their soul with scruples. 
 
 " Vengeance," they say, "does not cure 
 evil : it multiplies it." This is true regard- 
 ing private vengeance; arbitrary, capricious 
 and passionate "it multiplies evil" and 
 becomes the source of deplorable excess. 
 God, therefore, forbids it and reserves 
 the exercise of it to Himself, either through 
 the agency of human justice or through 
 direct and personal intervention: ''Mihi 
 
HEREAFTER AND JUSTICE. 49 
 
 vindicta, revenge is mine: I will repay, 
 saith the Lord" (Bom. XII, 19). 
 
 It does not follow that God can be com- 
 pared to a fierce, vindictive tyrant gloat- 
 ing with gross satisfaction over the sight 
 of the sufferings of the guilty who fall into 
 His hands. 
 
 He is the supreme and incorruptible 
 Judge who executes the eternal laws of 
 justice; these laws require the re-establish- 
 ment of the general equilibrium disturbed 
 by sin. This re-establishment of the moral 
 order is accomplished by the pains which 
 are as a benevolent reaction against evil. 
 
 From this clear and simple conception 
 of justice one sees how false and danger- 
 ous is the pseudo -humanitarian theory, 
 according to which, justice ought to limit 
 itself to the right of correction only. 
 
 By this rule the most inveterate crim- 
 inals escape the arm of justice and the 
 more incorrigible they are, the more power- 
 less and disarmed society becomes; if 
 these diseased member of the social body 
 reject its offices, justice has only to depart, 
 as a physician politely discharged. 
 
50 HEREAFTER. 
 
 Tso, the amelioration of the guilty is not 
 the principal end of justice; that end is 
 the final triumph of good over evil : insuf- 
 ficiently assured in this life, it will be 
 evident to everyone in the next life. And 
 so, beyond the obscure and narrow horizon 
 of the imperfect justice of this world, both 
 reason and faith see the dawn of a lumin- 
 ous, open future where everything dis- 
 cordant here below will mingle in the final 
 harmony of the whole of creation. 
 
 The world where we live is only a 
 prelude and beginning : it is elsewhere that 
 we shall attain our end. As Eousseau says: 
 "All things do not terminate with life, —*» 
 they are regulated after death." 
 
Chapter V. 
 Hereafter and the Divine Plan. 
 
 General View. — Law of Providence. — Aspira- 
 tions of the Soul. — Metempsychosis. — Pan- 
 theism and Immortality. 
 
 All philosophy is ruled by the 
 idea of end. Finality is the dominant 
 law of the world; for according to the 
 profound remark of Aristotle nothing is 
 made in vain, and a thing without an end 
 is impossible, for it would be without 
 reason. Bossuet writes: "The relation 
 between order and reason is extreme. ?? 
 God the sovereign and perfect reason, 
 rules the world with an impeccable wis- 
 dom. As a clever artist, He adapts the 
 means to the end and organizes every 
 being in view of its determination. There 
 is a perfect proportion, I was going to say, 
 a perfect equation, between actions and 
 their principle, between functions and their 
 end, between the nature and destiny of all 
 (51) 
 
52 HEREAFTER. 
 
 beings. So true is this that if one term is 
 known, reason can with assurance discover 
 the other. Such is the order of the koct/xos, 
 the vague harmony of which Pythagoras 
 admired and which St. Thomas Aquinas 
 put in such bold relief. 
 
 In fact, just as the knowledge of the 
 properties of bodies discloses to the scien- 
 tist their nature and destiny, so the study 
 of the faculties and aspirations of man 
 must inform us of his future. Is it pos 
 sible that God has formed from the same 
 mould a being called to immortality and 
 another condemned to spend an ephemeral 
 existence without hope of survival in the 
 future ? 
 
 * * 
 
 By a privilege of its nature the soul sur- 
 vives the body. These are two substances 
 so unlike, that we ought to be more sur- 
 prised at their union than about their dif- 
 ferent destinies. 
 
 God, says St. Thomas, respects the 
 natural condition of every being. If man 
 is noble when he takes this oath : ' 'What 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 53 
 
 is said, is said, what is written, is writ- 
 ten," how can we understand that God 
 tells a lie and treacherously breaks the 
 word He gives? 
 
 But what are created beings and especi 
 ally the human soul! They are divine 
 ideas externalized, they are imperfect but 
 real expressions of the Word of God, or, 
 as Bacon says, vox Dei in rebus revelata. 
 
 If God, therefore, has given to the soul 
 a spiritual nature and an immortal consti- 
 tution, He will not abrogate this providen- 
 tial disposition. He is obliged not to 
 contradict Himself and the soul will sub- 
 sist, as St. Thomas says, "by the im- 
 mutability of the divine will." 
 
 And even if the soul by nature were not 
 immortal, one could not conclude that it 
 ought some day to terminate its existence. 
 For God created things to be, ut sint; God, 
 the Being by excellence and the principle 
 of all things, does not destroy anything 
 that He has made. His gifts, says Holy 
 Writ, are without repentance and He is not 
 the God of the dead but of the living. 
 
54 HEREAFTER. 
 
 This prolific and luminous principle of 
 St. Thomas is an intimation of genius; 
 Lavoisier demonstrated it experimentally 
 and formulated it thus : in the domain of 
 nature "nothing creates itself , nothing is 
 lost, everything becomes transformed. " * 
 
 Every part of nature undergoes an indef- 
 inite metamorphosis, nothing disappears. 
 When the human body, for instance, ceases 
 
 1 This principle of Lavoisier is just now re- 
 ceiving a new proof from the revelations of the 
 metal, radium ; and the atomic theory and prin- 
 ciple of the conservation of energy can now be 
 looked upon as certain. Sir William Ramsay, 
 professor of chemistry at University College, 
 Ivondon, has made the discovery that this mys- 
 terious element, radium, has the power of chang- 
 ing into another element, helium. He found that 
 besides its other manifestations, radium con- 
 stantly gives off an emanation which seems to 
 behave in all respects like a heavy gas. It can 
 be collected in flasks, measured, weighed, but in 
 about a month it entirely disappears. What 
 becomes of it ? By the aid of the spectroscope 
 Ramsay found that it changes into helium. Thus 
 it can be claimed one element has been detected 
 in the very process of transformation into an- 
 other. 
 
HEREAFTEK AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 55 
 
 to live, it does not become annihilated, as 
 is commonly believed ; under the action of 
 chemical forces, it undergoes the law of ex- 
 change : but not one atom is lost. 1 
 
 Thus does God, the author of this law of 
 the physical world, respect beings infinitely 
 small, and thus does He preserve their ex- 
 istence. They have, however, no end 
 proper to themselves and they exist only 
 for the whole, of which they are a part. 
 Will God then plunge into nothingness the 
 human soul which Kant calls "an end in 
 itself, 77 and which possesses more reality 
 than all the material world? Without 
 doubt the soul does not necessarily exist ; 
 God freely created it and He can freely 
 destroy it ; as it has not in itself the reason 
 of being, God would have only to suspend 
 His conservative action which is a pro- 
 longed creation, that it may cease to be. 
 Such annihilation, however, would require 
 nothing but an intervention of His almighty 
 power : to annihilate and to create, to make 
 from nothing and to reduce to nothing are 
 
 1 Cremation does uot militate against this 
 theory: the process, though quicker, is the same. 
 
56 HEREAFTER. 
 
 two equivalent acts pertaining to the only 
 power capable of passing over the immeas- 
 urable distance which separates being from 
 non- being. 
 
 And nothing in fact, says science, is 
 annihilated in nature : all its elements per- 
 sist and transform themselves; all the 
 cosmic forces pulverize matter without 
 destroying it: how, then, can they an- 
 nihilate the soul ? 
 
 Can I do that myself '? No, indeed ; I have 
 not given being to the soul and I cannot 
 take it away. Only God preserves it and 
 He alone can annihilate it. As, then, a 
 number must be odd or even, so, the 
 angelic doctor concludes, it is becoming 
 that the soul is immortal. 
 
 Let us now in the light of divine wisdom 
 examine no longer the immaterial essence 
 of the soul, but its moral nature and in- 
 timate aspirations. 
 
 Every created life, not having in itself the 
 source of its being, has need of being sup- 
 ported by the absorption of an extraneous 
 element. But the law of assimilation which 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 57 
 
 presides over nutrition, evidently demands 
 that the food be in keeping with the needs of 
 and accommodate itself to the nature of the 
 life it must renew. There must be and 
 there is, it is easy to see, a kind of homo- 
 geneousness between the living substance 
 and the nutritious principle which nour- 
 ishes it. 
 
 Now truth is the food of the soul, the 
 life of the intellect. It is the pabulum not 
 only of the science of the physical world 
 and material things, but also of principles 
 necessary, unchangeable and eternal, And, 
 although our mind is most limited, nothing, 
 strange to say, can appease its need of 
 knowing ; it is thirsty for absolute truth. 
 It travels through the kingdom of created 
 things without obtaining the satisfaction of 
 its natural craving ; even after having ex- 
 plored the immense ocean of truth which 
 the dying Newton contemplated, its curi- 
 osity does not yet attain a sufficiency, 
 because it carries with it an ideal whose 
 term reaches the infinite. 
 
 Desire is proportionate to knowledge 
 
58 HEREAFTER. 
 
 and goes the same way. Let us listen 
 within : our heart tries everything in vain 
 and its most imperious desires are unsatis- 
 fied. After our thought has made a grand 
 tour through finite things, our heart feels a 
 sensation of emptiness which nothing here 
 can fill: science, wealth, honors, beauty, 
 satisfactions of every kind fall into it as 
 into a bottomless abyss which grows 
 deeper and deeper. But there is something 
 more: an animal confined in the narrow 
 sphere of sensation has no desire which 
 passes the corner of the space it occupies, 
 and the moment of duration which measures 
 its life. Man, on the contrary, leaps over 
 time and space by thought, and naturally 
 desires to be always. There is in us an 
 irresistible aspiration after immortality, a 
 passionate instinct of survival, an illimit- 
 able ambition to live forever. 
 
 So, all our aspirations mount toward the 
 infinite. As bodies tend toward the center 
 of the earth, the soul gravitates toward the 
 absolute and therein searches the place of 
 its eternal rest. Thence it came and there 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 59 
 
 it will return. For the perfection of all 
 things, says St. Thomas, is to go back to 
 their principle : it is the flux and reflux of 
 creation. 
 
 A strange reason some, perhaps, will 
 say; you believe in a future life solely 
 because you desire it. — Yes, but there is 
 a great difference between an individual 
 and private desire, and a natural and spon- 
 taneous inclination of the human heart. 
 This desire is not our own work, nor is it 
 the fictitious product of our imagination ; 
 we did not give it to ourselves and it is not 
 in our power to remove it from us; it 
 springs from the very bottom of our being 
 and is identified with it. 
 
 Nor is this desire a personal fact result- 
 ing from fortuitous circumstances, but a 
 primitive, human, universal fact which 
 can be explained only by a general law of 
 nature. And this law, having God as its 
 author, cannot lead us into error. 
 
 What ! God does not deceive the instinct 
 of an insect, and would He make that in- 
 stinct lie which He has engraved on our 
 
60 HEKE AFTER. 
 
 soul with His own Hand! He has not 
 established any of the laws of nature in 
 vain, and would He violate the law which 
 He has placed on man as on His master- 
 piece! He makes everything "with num- 
 ber, weight and measure;" with infallible 
 wisdom He leads beings to their end ; to- 
 day He impells us by an irresistible move- 
 ment towards happiness, truth, life, the 
 ideal, and would He wait for us on the 
 morrow to plunge us into nothingness, 
 after having given to us a foretaste of those 
 things which escape us ! No, no, it is not 
 true unless we admit with Hegel that con- 
 tradiction is the law of being as well as of 
 thought. But "that which is capable of 
 God," says Bossuet, "must be immortal 
 
 with Him." 
 
 # * 
 
 After the materialism of the eighteenth 
 century, some thinkers, fatigued by doubt 
 and denial, sought peace and strength in a 
 vague and ambiguous spiritualism. They 
 allowed themselves to be seduced by an old 
 error which had originated in Egypt and 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 61 
 
 Chaldea and which Pythagoras and Origen 
 in their time made notorious. I refer to 
 metempsychosis whose adepts during the 
 last century include Fourier, the founder 
 of the phalansterian school, Jean Eeynaud, 
 the author of "Heaven and Earth/ 7 Pez- 
 zani, the author of "The Plurality of the 
 Existences of the Soul, 7t and, some have 
 recently added, the dreamers of spiritism- 
 According to them, when life reaches its 
 end and the organs are exhausted, the soul 
 goes into another body and begins a new 
 existence. If the soul were good during 
 the first trial it will be united to a more 
 perfect body and it will spend eternity in 
 an indefinite series of such trials. 
 
 The only noteworthy difference between 
 metempsychosis of ancient and modern 
 times is the rejection of the old hypothesis 
 that human souls enter the bodies of 
 animals. 
 
 This theory, its exponents assert, solves 
 most satisfactorily two very complex prob- 
 lems : the physical and moral inequalities 
 which we verify in this world, and the 
 
62 HEREAFTER. 
 
 punishment and reward of the next life. 
 Notwithstanding the serious pretense 
 and the fantastic out-look of this tour of 
 soul from star to star, metempsychosis is 
 an hypothesis without any solid founda- 
 tion. These successive re-incarnations are 
 in direct opposition to reason ; for, proba- 
 tion in its elementary and philosophical 
 meaning, is a preparation for a permanent 
 and unchangeable state ; how can you seri- 
 ously conceive a probation which has 
 neither conclusion nor end and a chimer- 
 ical journey towards a goal which does not 
 exist*? And, then, is it true or possible 
 that all unfortunate human beings are 
 guilty ? By no means, for they are not 
 conscious of crime committed in the pre- 
 ceeding life. Now a punishment which is 
 not connected with the remembrance of 
 deviation from rectitude, is cruelty and 
 nonsense; only the guilty must be pun- 
 ished, but they must perceive and feel their 
 guilt. Life for the unfortunate as for 
 others is not a chastisement, but a trial, a 
 little hard, perhaps, but one which will 
 receive its reward during eternity. 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 63 
 
 Is there need to show how dangerous 
 and immoral this theory is ? If the trials 
 which menace us, are not to have an end 
 every sanction is gone ; the creature is the 
 absolute master of its fate ; for it may in- 
 definitely postpone its repentance in such 
 a way that man is hopelessly delivered to 
 corruption, and the justice of God eternally 
 challenged and checked by the bold revolt 
 of the impenitent sinner ! 
 
 Biichner made this severe stricture on 
 the immature science of to-day: "Our 
 modern philosophers delight to heat over 
 old vegetables and call them by new names, 
 in order to serve them as the latest inven- 
 tions of the philosophical kitchen J' (Kraft 
 und Stoff, p. 41). Nothing is more just; 
 hence the revival of the old theory of the 
 Hindoo nirvana by the modern pantheistic 
 school. It proclaims the extinction of per- 
 sonality and its absorption into the uni- 
 versal soul which it calls God. Hegel and 
 Taine, Comte and Eenan agree in denying 
 the immortality of every human soul, in 
 
"64 HEREAFTER. 
 
 order to admit an eternal existence under 
 the title of a pure idea. What is immortal 
 for them is the idea of the dead individual 
 subsisting and surviving in mankind. In 
 a word it is the Hindoo nirvana, the repose 
 of final annihilation. A pleasant idea, for- 
 sooth, to suggest to us this deep, endless 
 sleep as a new life, this annihilation of the 
 heart and thought as a beatitude, and the 
 end of individuality as the immortality to 
 which we aspire. 
 
 Even if this identity of an inert and life- 
 less substance were safeguarded, of what 
 use would it be ? To take away from the 
 soul the consciousness of this identity is 
 to ruin entirely its activity: is not the 
 acknowledgement of this identity the first 
 degree of knowledge % 
 
 Justice demands and reason proclaims 
 the immortal personality of the soul, the 
 survival of the ego and individual consci- 
 ousness in reward or punishment. Man 
 must find himself the same beyond the 
 grave, without having the chain of his 
 identity broken by the exstinction of con- 
 
HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 65 
 
 sciousness and the silence of memory. The 
 harmony of the divine plan requires it ; an 
 immortal hereafter is necessary to our 
 soul. 
 
Chapter VI. 
 Hereafter and Punishment. 
 
 Necessary Conclusion of the Moral Order. — 
 Sanction ot the Law. — Hell and the Good- 
 ness of God. — Conditional Immortality. — 
 The Reason of Hell. 
 
 1 'They that have done good shall go into 
 life everlasting and they that have done 
 evil, into everlasting fire. "This is the Cath- 
 olic faith as expressed in the Creed of St. 
 Athanasius. 
 
 The dogma of eternal punishment, how- 
 ever, is not the exclusive property of the 
 Church ; it is at the bottom of every reli- 
 gion and it has been and is believed by the 
 whole world. Plato and Virgil, Voltaire 
 and Bousseau, as the Gospel itself, treat 
 this subject. 
 
 If this dogma were as absurd, as our 
 modern rationalists contend it is, how 
 could it have so easily obtained such uni- 
 versal credence? Have we not here an 
 (66) 
 
HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 67 
 
 evident proof of its perfect conformity with 
 the noblest instincts of human nature and 
 the exigencies of reason? When, therefore, 
 Jules Simon writes that < 'no principle of 
 reason leads to eternity of punishment or 
 allows us to admit such a doctrine"; when 
 Figuier boldly asserts that "hell is a 
 dogma which has had its day and is no 
 longer worthy of refutation," we suspect 
 that they gave very superficial study to the 
 question. 
 
 In the eyes of right reason, hell is not 
 an absurdity; nor is it an unintelligible 
 problem or an accessory and isolated truth. 
 It is substantially connected with Catholic 
 dogma and is the terrible and inevitable 
 consequence of the most elementary and 
 certain principles. 
 
 Can any sane mind doubt, for instance, 
 that being and non-being, good and bad, 
 true and false are things essentially distinct 
 and contradictory'? The one asserts what 
 the other denies; their opposition, con- 
 sequently, is absolute and radical, and it 
 is impossible that they should have the 
 same conclusion and bear the same fruit. 
 
68 HEREAFTER. 
 
 At any period of time, remote as the 
 mind can make it, the true cannot become 
 false, nor can the good become bad. Of 
 course if they were ever to meet or com- 
 mingle there would no longer be an ir- 
 reducible opposition between them, but 
 only a difference of tint. 
 
 Eternal hell is precisely the necessary 
 corollary and the final term of this distinc- 
 tion between good and evil, which prolongs 
 itself indefinitely. This principle which is 
 the key- stone of the moral order, appears 
 in striking evidence and unbending vigor 
 only when we approach it in connection 
 with the stupendous dogma of punishment. 
 
 Far from being "a crime, ?? or a "horrible 
 fable' ' hell, indeed, is the necessary con- 
 clusion of the moral order, and anyone 
 who wishes to analyze thoroughly the con- 
 tents of the first principles of thought will 
 perceive that it is the last word of reason 
 speaking of God and man and the relation 
 existing between them. 
 
 Let us listen to St. Thomas Aquinas on 
 this subject: "It is a principle commonly 
 
HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 69 
 
 admitted that the grievousness of wrong- 
 doing is estimated according to the dignity 
 of the person offended and the condition of 
 the offender. Sin, consequently, acquires 
 immeasurable grievousness from the in- 
 finite perfection which it insults, although 
 it comes from a being limited in its nature 
 and faculties. 
 
 By giving his heart to a perishable thing, 
 man takes away from God His essential 
 prerogative of being the Sovereign Lord, 
 the last end and supreme beatitude of 
 every human being. He changes his true 
 destiny and commits a crime of treason 
 against his Maker, which in strict justice 
 calls for infinite punishment. As a matter 
 of fact, sin, according to Catholic teaching, 
 has been and could be expiated only by the 
 infinite satisfaction of the God-Man. But 
 the sinner who persists in final impenitence 
 cuts himself off from this source of pardon. 
 He himself, therefore, must suffer the pen- 
 alty. But as he is a creature, he is unable 
 to endure punishment infinite in intensity, 
 so he must endure it infinite at least in 
 duration. 
 
70 HEEE AFTER. 
 
 There is another side to this philosophy 
 of eternal guilt : the violation of the moral 
 order, which religion calls sin, is not only 
 infinite in malice, it is also, at least vir- 
 tually, infinite in duration. When, in- 
 deed, man demands from a finite being a 
 fictitious happiness, he violently separates 
 himself from the Supreme Good. If God 
 does not grant him a delay, (and under 
 what title is He so obliged?) this state 
 of divorce is prolonged in the sinner and 
 must have the same duration as the soul 
 has, that is to say, an eternal duration. 
 For if death strikes him in guilt, it takes 
 him as he is and leaves him unchanged : 
 eternity which he reaches, is not a second 
 trial, but a state which remains immutable 
 and ever the same." (Contra Gentes, 1, 
 IV, c. 95.) 
 
 Again, is it not the intimate desire of 
 the sinner who abandons himself to pas- 
 sion, to cling to it now and always f To 
 his idol he vows an eternal worship, asks 
 of it his felicity forever and thus gives to 
 his choice an unlimited and endless com- 
 
HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 71 
 
 pass. "The impenitent sinner/' says 
 Bossuet, "is not simply in the act or habit 
 of sin ; he is in the state of sin which has 
 become humanized in him. He is man 
 made sin." 
 
 Undoubtedly shadows still remain about 
 this truth, but shadows are not contradic- 
 tions. What is there astonishing in this, 
 since the Infinite is the basis of all Chris- 
 tian dogmas ? "What we know of the acts 
 of God," says Leibnitz, "is almost nothing 
 and yet we wish to measure His wisdom 
 and goodness by our little knowledge. 
 What rashness! To say with St. Paul: 
 c altitudo sapientiael'is not to renounce 
 our reason." 
 
 We are asked how a momentary weak- 
 ness can deserve infinite punishment, and 
 it is asserted that the dogma of Hell, if it 
 is not a flagrant violation of divine justice, 
 manifests at least a cruelty that cannot be 
 reconciled with the goodness of God. 
 
 We have already said that if the punish- 
 ment is rigorously infinite, it is, neverthe- 
 less, just, since there is an exact propor- 
 
72 HEREAFTER. 
 
 tion between the sin and its punishment. 
 But properly speaking, the punishment is 
 not infinite even in duration, since it has 
 had a beginning and each day it stretches 
 further on. Hence the victims of Hell will 
 never spend infinite time in their prison of 
 fire, though the duration of their punish- 
 ment exceed all human calculation. The 
 infinite, moreover, transcends all measure 
 and admits no degree, while the pains of 
 Hell are as diverse as the sins of which 
 they are the chastisement. The Council of 
 Florence decreed: "Poenis tamen disparibus 
 puniendos." l 
 
 But why place in opposition the duration 
 of a sin and that of the chastisement and 
 say that * 'there is no temporal fault which 
 deserves eternal punishment." Must the 
 rigor of the penalty be measured, not ac- 
 cording to the enormity of the crime, but 
 according to its duration % If that were 
 so, a crime of a moment, like the firing of 
 a revolver, would deserve instantaneous 
 punishment. And yet when a man makes 
 
 1 In decreto Uuionis. 
 
HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 73 
 
 himself unworthy of pardon by the com- 
 mission of a serious crime, he is sentenced 
 to death, or to life-imprisonment, which 
 means, as far as this world is concerned, 
 perpetual punishment. 1 Are not the effects 
 of this chastisement irrevocable in such a 
 way that they would always continue, if 
 the guilty person were always to live? 
 Why, then, refuse to divine justice a right 
 which we allow to human justice? (St. 
 Thomas contra Gentes. Ill, 144. 
 
 1 If this (moral) code meets with the public 
 approval as a vindication of social order, how 
 shall we declare it unjust in the Supreme Judge 
 to cast out once for all, from the City of God and 
 the society of the Saints impious men who have 
 sinned against the majesty of the divine law? 
 It is usually malefactors that have defied the law 
 and that are punished for its violation, who con- 
 demn our criminal code as too severe ; and it is 
 only such as choose to be rebels against God that 
 insist upon calling Him a tyrant. Mathematical 
 truths are never controverted, because they do 
 not oppose our passions ; but moral and religious 
 truths are denied, because they often conflict 
 with our natural inclinations." 
 
 (Cardinal Gibbons.) 
 
74 HEEEAFTEE. 
 
 But the opponents of eternal punishment 
 make the most desperate appeals to divine 
 mercy. Vain endeavors! As if the good- 
 ness of God were the adversary of divine 
 justice! As Cardinal Gibbons says: "God 
 is, indeed, infinitely merciful, but His 
 mercy cannot absorb His other attributes; 
 it cannot run counter to His justice, His 
 sanctity and that moral order He has 
 established in the world. The higher 
 appreciation one has for benevolence, 
 truth, chastity and moral rectitude, the 
 greater is his antipathy to the opposite 
 vices. Now God whose love for virtue 
 knows no bounds, must by the very nature 
 of His Being, have an immeasurable aver- 
 sion for all iniquity and, therefore, He can 
 never be reconciled to the sinner, as long 
 as he voluntarily clings to his sin. God 
 exults not in the sufferings of His creatures, 
 but in the manifestation of His eternal 
 attributes." 
 
 To desire in God greater mercy than 
 justice would be to wish to deteriorate His 
 clemency in weakness and to break the 
 
HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 75 
 
 unity of the divine attributes which is 
 reflected in all His works. The Bedemp- 
 tion itself, as we know, is not only the 
 most striking manifestation 1 of divine 
 mercy, it is also synchronously an act of 
 supreme justice. 
 
 The goodness of God is essentially the 
 friend of good order; far from hindering 
 the action of justice, it supposes it in order 
 to oblige every creature, says St. Thomas, 
 to respect good order which is the good of 
 the universe. 
 
 Besides what reproach can we bring 
 against divine mercy 1 2 God does not 
 
 1 "He hath appeared for the destruction of 
 sin, by the sacrifice of Himself ' Heb. IX, 26; 
 "He gave himself for vis that he might redeem us 
 from all iniquity and might cleanse to himself a 
 people acceptable' ' Tit. II, 14. 
 
 2 Hear Holy Writ: "Say not: The mercy of 
 the Lord is great, he will have mercy on the 
 multitude of my sins. For mercy and wrath 
 quickly come from him and his wrath looketh 
 upon sinners." PJccl, V, 6. 7. "Mercy and wrath 
 are with him. He is mighty to forgive and to 
 pour out indignation : according to his mercy is, 
 so his correction judgeth a man according to his 
 works.' ' Eccli. XVI, 13. 
 
76 HEREAFTER. 
 
 neglect any means to lead man to his end, 
 and to each and everyone He can say in 
 the words of Holy Scripture: "What more 
 should I have done to thee, and have not 
 done?" 
 
 At this reproach do we not hear the 
 "anger of love rumblimg," as Joseph de 
 Maistre observes? Despised by impenitent 
 man, God withdraws, says Lacordaire, for, 
 "love repulsed no longer i)ardons: hell is 
 the realization of the law of love." x 
 
 The philosophical systems which reject 
 the eternity of punishment may be reduced 
 to two, 2 one of which professes optional 
 
 1 We may say that it is because God is infinit- 
 ely good, wise and just that He has allowed the 
 pit of hell to be dug in order thereby to excite 
 men to good and to bury therein such as up to 
 the very last hour of live have despised His love: 
 "Eternal justice and primal love made me," says 
 Dante speaking in the name of hell. 
 
 2 I mention as a memorandum only, the system 
 of Lucretius (De Natura rerum, III, 976) where 
 the poet, to do away with the fear of Hell, gives 
 a symbolical meaning to its torments. According 
 
HERE AFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 77 
 
 or conditional immortality, the other fut- 
 ure reconciliation of the wicked with God. 
 The former system is very old: Cicero 
 adopted it, some Christian writers, like 
 Arnobius, accepted it and it is now, as the 
 Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia of Eeligious 
 Knowledge (N. Y. 1891, p. 1972) says, 
 meeting great favor within the orthodox 
 communions of Protestantism. Richard 
 Whately, Locke, Hudson, Watts and 
 Isaac Taylor are its best-known English 
 defenders. 
 
 This system declares that the good will 
 live eternally and enjoy heaven as a 
 reward for their virtues : but the wicked 
 will be annihilated in punishment of their 
 sin ; thus immortality is for every human 
 being optional or conditional. St. Thomas 
 with his deep acumen has refuted this 
 doctrine. God, he says, could assuredly 
 annihilate the guilty, but it is more just 
 that He preserve and punish them. First, 
 
 to him those torments are only the allegory 
 which find punishment within themselves. Hinc 
 Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita. 
 
78 HEREAFTER. 
 
 because it is the will of man which revolts 
 against God, while his nature remains in 
 the order which is divinely secured. Pun- 
 ishment, therefore, ought to strike the 
 will. Now, if the guilty were annihilated, 
 punishment would fall on nature only and 
 the will would go free. There are, besides, 
 two elements in sin: the guilty repel the 
 Absolute Good and embrace what is perish- 
 able, and these two elements must be found 
 in the retribution. Now annihilation would 
 deprive the sinner of the Absolute Good 
 and would not punish the abuse he has 
 made of creatures: a fact that would be 
 contrary to justice. Then again the pains 
 must be diverse and proportionate to the 
 sins, if strict justice is to be realized; but 
 there would be no degrees in annihilation ; 
 such a penalty, therefore would be a viola- 
 tion of justice! And what would become 
 of the moral order if annihilation were its 
 only sanction ? When the fear of eternal 
 punishment is hardly strong enough to 
 restrain the impetuosity of human pas- 
 sions, of what value would the vague pro- 
 spect of annihilation be f 
 
HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 79 
 
 The evanescence of the guilty, moreover, 
 is in no way the reparation of the injustice 
 they committed, nor can it become the 
 safeguard of the moral order. In a word 
 if God were forced to annihilate the guilty^ 
 He would acknowledge Himself vanquished 
 and after having created the soul immor- 
 tal, He would be obliged to abrogate His 
 plan, because it was the pleasure of a 
 creature, sure of escaping eternal damna- 
 tion, to laugh Him to scorn, and, while 
 going into nothingness, to blaspheme 
 against Him. 
 
 Our opponents object in the name of 
 justice : < 'Life, ' ' they say, "is a gift of God ; 
 we did not ask for it, nor did we accept it : 
 why may we not resign it!" Because life 
 is not only a gift and benefit, it is also a 
 trial, and God has the strictest right to 
 impose it upon us without consultation. 
 How, indeed, could we have been consulted 
 when we had no being ? Eational as this 
 doctrine is, it seems inadmissible to some 
 adversaries of eternal retribution, so they 
 have revived the theory of restorationism 
 
80 HEKE AFTER. 
 
 held by Origen and his disciples, according 
 to which the punishment ot the impenitent 
 is limited and eventually all will be saved. 1 
 Universalists 2 profess such a belief. 
 Unitarians 3 teach almost the same thing. 
 
 1 Some theologians who claim the existence 
 of a temporary hell, deny the existence of pur- 
 gatory. What then ? As Perrone remarks (Prae- 
 lectiones Theologicae II, 727) "coeperunt negare 
 inferni aeternitatem, ut in ejus locum sumciat in- 
 fernum temporarium, seu quod idem est purgato- 
 rium ; et jam pugnant contra nos pro solo purga- 
 torio. Once and always mentita est iniquitas 
 sibi. 
 
 2 We believe that there is one God, whose 
 nature is love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ 
 by one Holy Spirit of grace who will finally 
 restore the whole family of mankind to holiness 
 and happiness. Profession of Faith, 1803, art. II, 
 by H. Iyyon, a study of the sects, p. 160. 
 
 3 "Unitarians oppose the common doctrine of 
 everlasting punishment as being hostile to the 
 sovereignty, wisdom, justice and mercy of the 
 divine Being and also of limiting the redeeming 
 power of Christ and his gospel. They believe 
 that the object of punishment being reformatory, 
 it will only continue until the sinner shall be 
 reformed. " Clarke, Man. of Unit, p. 62. 
 
HEREAFTFR AND PUNISHMENT. 81 
 
 Many Congregationalists x and some Epis- 
 copalians 2 doubt eternal punishment. 
 
 This utopia is opposed to reason as well 
 as to faith. In order that God may acquit 
 the impenitent guilty and that they may 
 come to Him, repentance is necessary, for 
 pardon granted without repentance would 
 be impunity and injustice. Now repent- 
 ance is impossible to the damned, because 
 their probation having once ended, they no 
 longer have either grace or free will. They 
 have, indeed, a certain sorrow for their 
 misdeeds, but it is a sorrow which has 
 nothing in common with repentance, it 
 comes from egotism. What they detest is 
 not evil but the punishment of evil and an 
 unavailing regret for its commission. This 
 hypothesis of a temporary hell, likewise 
 undermines the moral order, by taking 
 away every solid sanction. If, indeed, 
 good and evil terminate in exact coales- 
 cence, then between these two terms there 
 
 1 Cf. Progressive Orthodoxy by the editors 
 of the Andover Review. 
 
 1 Farrar, Eternal Hope ; Mercy and Judge- 
 ment. Cf. Row, Future Retribution. 
 
82 HEREAFTER. 
 
 is no such essential opposition as is usually 
 believed, and if the conclusions be the 
 same, the principles cannot be very differ- 
 ent. And what does a certain number of 
 years in hell amount to, if the happiness of 
 heaven will some day be attained ? Every- 
 thing which passes away and comes to an 
 end influences the heart of mankind very 
 little. We recall the case of a German 
 philosopher who was willing to sacrifice 
 two million years of his eternal felicity, for 
 the privilege of enjoying a certain kind of 
 pleasure: here is an anticipation of what 
 the moral order would become, if the 
 dreamers of sentimentalism had their way. 
 
 Let us leave those Utopias and believe in 
 what the Gospel calls the "great chasm" 1 
 which divine justice has fixed between 
 heaven and hell. 
 
 "Hell," if we understand its meaning, 
 "is sin." 2 This ex£>ression of Bossuet 
 helps us to catch a glimpse of the rational 
 
 1 Iyuke XVI, 26. 
 
 2 "Wickedness is sin and sin is damnation. " 
 Skakespeare. 
 
HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 83 
 
 propriety of the Catholic teaching on the 
 nature of the pains of hell. God, being 
 supremely and infallibly just, proportions 
 the pain to the sin, as the effect to the 
 cause. Now sin, like every material or 
 moral activity, has two terms ; the will 
 which commits it, repels God and sub- 
 stitutes for Him a perishable good. The 
 pain, therefore, must reflect this double 
 character, for it is, St. Augustine says, 
 "the order of the crime. " Hence the 
 necessity of a pain called by theologians 
 "the pain of sense, " the philosophic 
 reason of which is logically perceived : 
 Everything, indeed, even in hell must con- 
 cur to the harmony of the general order of 
 creation. Now this order has been de- 
 ranged by evil : the material creation which 
 should help man to reach his end, has been 
 violently disturbed from its natural destin- 
 ation. Good order requires that it avenge 
 itself, as it were, against its disturber and 
 unjust tyrant. Since it is impossible for 
 all the elements to do this, the providential 
 commission will be fulfilled for all by one, 
 
84 HEREAFTER. 
 
 namely fire, that mysterious power and 
 universal force which acts everywhere and 
 is concealed under the movements of 
 matter. 
 
 In regard to the nature of this fire of 
 Hell "which cannot be quenched, " philos- 
 ophers and believers may repeat the words 
 of St. Augustine: "What will this fire be? 
 I believe that nobody knows, unless the 
 Divine Spirit reveal it to hirn." Accord- 
 ing to some writers the fire is only a 
 metaphorical one, representing the horrible 
 torments of hell. But the Church has ex- 
 plicitly reproved this opinion, 1 and reason 
 which looks upon the fire of hell as a 
 logical consequence and a natural sequel of 
 sin, willingly consents to this censure. 
 
 This fire, the Gospel says, is eternal, it 
 will never be quenched ; as salt preserves 
 meat, so it will preserve the reprobate 
 delivered to vengeance. "As the grass of 
 
 1 According to a decision of the Sacred Pen- 
 itentiary, dated April 30, 1890, absolution should 
 be refused a penitent who, after being instructed, 
 persists in holding that the fire of hell is not real, 
 but figurative. 
 
HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 85 
 
 the field, though cut by the teeth of the 
 animals which feed on it, always revives, 
 so will the fire be with the damned." 
 
 In fine to complete this lugubrious de- 
 scription let us still mention the "thick 
 and deep darkness" (Ps. XL VIII, 20), the 
 ardent thirst (Luke XVI, 20), the ever- 
 flowing tears (Matt. XXII, 13), the worm 
 of remorse and despair, which never dies 
 (Mark IX, 43). 
 
 But these are only the least pains of 
 hell : the greatest, says Catholic theology, 
 is the pain of loss. 
 
 We have seen that the mind and heart 
 of man are naturally inclined towards the 
 Infinite. For a time they can be seduced 
 by the mirage of a perishable good. But 
 when probation is over, human nature is 
 adjusted to seek, to crave for God alone. 
 Disappointment and defeat are met at 
 every turn. At the very moment when the 
 lost soul should reach the term of its com- 
 plete evolution, God repels it. Suspended 
 between the supreme good which escapes 
 it, and the finite beings which death takes 
 
86 HEREAFTER. 
 
 from it, it is agitated into an eternal abyss, 
 as Pascal says, "quartered between two 
 worlds.'' And this contradiction between 
 the present state of man and his primal 
 destination, this reversal and breaking 
 down of all his nature destined for hap- 
 piness but now eternally frustrated, is for 
 him such an unspeakable torment that the 
 genius of St. Augustine cannot translate it 
 into human language: "To be separated 
 from God," he says, "is a torment as great 
 as the very greatness of God." . 
 
 Before this consideration, the question 
 proposed by some authors: "Are the 
 secondary torments of hell some day to be 
 mitigated'?" loses its importance: for, 
 according to the remark of St. John Chrys- 
 ostom, "what will the damned care for the 
 lesser torments since heaven is lost for- 
 ever." 
 
 Can we better conclude than by the 
 words of Leibnitz: "God who has revealed 
 everything necessary to make us fear the 
 greatest of calamities, has not revealed all 
 that it necessary to make us understand it." 
 
Chapter VII. 
 Hereafter and Reward. 
 
 Philosophy and the End of Man. — The Heaven 
 of the Gospel. — The Light of Glory. — The 
 Happiness of Heaven. 
 
 It may happen that the soul will not 
 have completely apostatized from virtue at 
 the end of probation, and yet it may not 
 be pure enough to enter upon the enjoy- 
 ment of the Sovereign Good. Hence the 
 necessity of Purgatory, a rational and con- 
 soling dogma the Catholic Church proposes 
 to our belief, which was already sketched 
 by the Egyptians and Persians and out- 
 lined in the works of Plato and Virgil. 
 
 But Purgatory is a place of transition 
 only. The soul after purgatorial purifica- 
 tion attains a permanent state where it 
 reposes in the full harmony of its perfec- 
 tions and in the enjoyment of the end of its 
 being. 
 
 (87) 
 
88 HEREAFTER. 
 
 What is this end and what is the sense 
 of human life ? 
 
 The rational creature can find its ultimate 
 perfection only in the principle of its 
 being; for no perfection exists for any 
 being whatever, except in union with its 
 principle. But man can go to God by 
 different routes and be united to Him in 
 different ways. 
 
 The only beatitude that reason can pro- 
 mise him is one proportionate to his nat- 
 ural faculties, that is to say, a clearer view 
 of God through created things, a prolonga- 
 tion of man's actual knowledge, which is 
 able to satisfy the aspirations of the soul. 
 Logically we can go no further. If there 
 is a higher, a transcendental state of bliss 
 in keeping with the faculties raised to the 
 supernatural order, reason by itself cannot 
 deny the possibility of the fact or demon- 
 strate its necessity. 
 
 When, then, rationalists in the name of 
 philosophy pretend to know that the end 
 of man is u to see God eternally as He is 
 and to love Him with the whole heart 
 
HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 89 
 
 throughout eternity," they arbitrarily en- 
 large the domain of reason and the exigen- 
 cies of human nature, and they confound 
 the natural order and its lawful develop- 
 ment with the supernatural order. 
 
 Philosophy leads its pupil as far as the 
 frontiers only of the natural order and 
 there commits him to a surer guide, who, 
 far from obliging him to abdicate his 
 reason, demands of him, on the contrary, 
 the most fruitful exercise of it, to enter a 
 more luminous path for the conquest of a 
 new world. 
 
 Paganism had a presentiment of divine 
 intervention in the solution of the problem 
 of our destiny. Socrates is in vague ex- 
 pectation of Him whom Holy Writ calls 
 expectatio gentium and the words of Plato 
 are too well known to insist upon them: 
 "We must choose the best human teach- 
 ing, go aboard it as on a raft, and thus with 
 some danger cross the river of life, unless 
 you can cross more surely on a stronger 
 craft, namely, on some divine teaching. " 
 
 The Master for whom the "divine Plato" 
 
90 HEEEAFTEE 
 
 longed, has come, and the world beyond 
 the grave upon which reason could throw 
 only a few feeble rays of light is now glori- 
 ously radiant with the light of the Cross. 
 That Master is Christ Jesus, the Son of 
 God: "Never did man speak like this 
 man." John VII, 46 
 
 Some truth runs through the humorous 
 simile of Luther : "The human mind is like 
 a drunken man on horseback ; if you raise 
 it on one side, it falls down the other." 
 
 Truth is generally found between the ex- 
 tremes, and in the question at hand it is 
 found between the reveries of idealism and 
 the lewdness of sensuality. 
 
 Mahomet promises to his followers a 
 sensual paradise well-padded and quilted 
 and provided with all possible enjoyments. 
 
 Plato went higher; for him the happiness 
 of heaven is the fruit of the activity of the 
 mind and the enjoyment of the Absolute 
 Good ; but as his absolute good is only an 
 ideal distinct from God, it is difficult to 
 imagine what the philosopher means. For 
 Renan, beatitude consists in the "worship 
 
HEKEAFTEK AND EEWAED. 91 
 
 of the ideal" since his god is "the category 
 of the ideal." 
 
 The Catholic definition of the beatitude 
 of heaven has been given by the Council of 
 Florence : intueri dare ipsum Deum trinum 
 et imam ut est. 
 
 What can be more simple and sublime ? 
 Our faculties are invincibly attracted to- 
 wards a mysterious and perfect term. 
 This ideal which they follow, recedes even 
 to 'the infinite which alone can satisfy 
 them. And as the infinite is only God, 
 beatitude consists in possessing Him as 
 He is. 
 
 In this world we have only remote man- 
 ifestations of God, divinitatis fulgurationes 
 as Leibnitz says ; He is concealed behind 
 a cloud from which He speaks in the enig- 
 matic language of faith, per speculum in 
 enigmate. In heaven, on the contrary, 
 without the need of space and without a 
 veil, face to face, facie ad faciem; we shall 
 penetrate the abyss of His being, the mys- 
 teries of His intimate life and the fruitful 
 harmony of His indissoluble unity in the 
 adorable Trinity of persons. 
 
92 HEREAFTER. 
 
 Here below truth comes subdivided by 
 our narrow conceptions and the highest 
 genius is hardly able to explore a corner 
 of the universe and say a few words on its 
 mysteries. There we shall contemplate 
 Truth which is the source of all truth and 
 contains the eternal reason of things ; we 
 shall embrace in a mighty synthesis the 
 ensemble of beings, from the infinitesimal 
 atom to the worlds which shine throughout 
 sidereal space — matter with all its 
 forces and laws, the mind with its great 
 manifestations, the designs and plans of 
 Providence over men and nations — the 
 finite and infinite in their indefinable rela- 
 tion and intercourse. 
 
 Here below the human heart has only 
 rare, incomplete and transient enjoyment; 
 to love is often to suffer. There all good 
 gathered and personified in the Absolute 
 will communicate itself to the soul and as 
 a torrent, sicut torrens ab austro, will pour 
 into it ; the abyss of the human heart will 
 be filled to the top; "I shall be satisfied 
 when the glory shall appear, " Ps. XVI, 
 
HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 93 
 
 15, "They shall be inebriated with the 
 plenty of thy house, and thou shalt make 
 them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure' ? 
 Ps. XXXV, 9. 
 
 If now created things have for us so 
 much seduction, what will the Creator be? 
 If the echoes are so harmonious, what will 
 the voice be ! If the reflection is so beauti- 
 ful, what will the center of light be? If 
 we fall on our knees before this transient 
 apparition of the infinite called the Sublime, 
 what will be our ecstasy before His radiant 
 manifestation in the first rays of the eter- 
 nal day ? 
 
 One day St. Augustine by a supreme 
 effort of his genius and a sudden leap of 
 his heart felt, as it were, the Infinite and 
 he received that "wound of love and 
 truth 7 7 which never closed. 
 
 What, then, will be the eternal ecstasies 
 of the mind and heart in the "city" where 
 God is the light contemplated without 
 shadow and the love embracing in an eter- 
 nal transport those predestined beings to 
 whom He gives Himself and from whose 
 
94 HEREAFTER. 
 
 eyes He wipes away all tears! (Apoc. 
 XXI, 4.) 
 
 At the prospect of this indefinible glory, 
 human speech should hold its lips and con- 
 fess that "eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard, neither hath it entered into the 
 heart of man, what things God hath pre- 
 pared for them that love him" I Cor. 
 II, 9. 
 
 Bui here a difficulty presents itself. 
 God "^ihabiteth light inaccessible" says 
 St. Paul (I. Tim. VI, 16). Between the 
 infinite and our faculties, great as you may 
 suppose their natural development to be, 
 there is an incommensurable dispropor- 
 tion. How will it be filled! St. Thomas 
 gives a luminous answer to that question : 
 "Xo being," he says, "is raised to a con- 
 dition which excels its nature, unless it be 
 prepared by a special disposition for this 
 condition." As the infinite is beyond the 
 grasp of the finite, the human intellect 
 must be raised to a superhuman state, to 
 embrace the infinite. This is the effect of 
 a superior quality which is a participation 
 
HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 95 
 
 of the very light of God and which theolog- 
 ians call "the light of glory." It is, as it 
 were, the sense of the divine; it may be 
 compared to an instrument which widens 
 the field and enlarges the scope of the eye, 
 or to a divine engraftment upon the wild 
 stock of human nature, in order to make 
 it produce acts superior to its natural con- 
 dition. 
 
 In seeing God, says St. John, we shall 
 become deiform. "When he shall appear, 
 we shall be like to him, because we shall 
 see him as he is." (I. John III, 2.) 
 
 Here is a mystery, but not an absurdity. 
 "If God," says Monsabre, "has made a 
 law of natural optics which proportions 
 the small point of our eye called the retina, 
 to vast spaces, I do not see what can pre- 
 vent Him from making a law of super- 
 natural optics which proportions our in- 
 tellect to embrace the infinite. ' 7 
 
 It must be said, however, that this im- 
 mediate seeing of God is not comx^rehen- 
 sive, i. e. it does not exhaust the infinite. 
 To comprehend, indeed, is to equal; only 
 
96 HEREAFTER. 
 
 the infinite can compenetrate the depth of 
 the infinite. Just as human language is 
 not able to define God, because He trans- 
 cends the frame of our definitions, so the 
 human intellect is not able to embrace 
 Him entirely because He is greater than 
 our thoughts. 
 
 It is clear that the enjoyment of the In- 
 finite by the human soul in no way resem- 
 bles immobility or a slumber approaching 
 annihilation. This fantastic conception of 
 the future life supposes that joy is the con- 
 sequence of inertia and that activity neces- 
 sarily produces fatigue and pain ; nothing 
 is more erroneous ; even in this life pleas- 
 ure is the consequence of a well-regulated 
 activity and many philosophers teach with 
 Pascal that true happiness is found in the 
 exercise of thought, whence the soul re- 
 ceives ineffable consolations. Aristotle 
 had already understood that God's enjoy- 
 ment comes from acting, our supreme 
 pleasure from thinking. Activity, in fact, 
 is essential to life and beatitude. Far from 
 being an arrest of life, activity is its 
 apogee. 
 
HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 97 
 
 Now if a series of vital operations is 
 necessary to enjoy the true and the good 
 as they appear imperfect in this world, 
 shall we not need to display a wonderful 
 activity to contemplate the true in its 
 source and fulness $ 
 
 The true God is not, indeed, an empty 
 formula, an abstract conception, a mental 
 product without being or reason ; He is an 
 active, personal, living Being, or rather 
 He is Pure Act by excellence, the very 
 Life which without pain or effort spon- 
 taneously communicates itself to the en- 
 raptured intellect. 
 
 The ancients could not fancy a happiness 
 at once perfect and eternal and they con- 
 ceived the future life as another edition 
 with the common accidents and pastimes 
 of the present one. Thus Plato considers 
 that each soul, accustomed to live among 
 changes, will finish by becoming fatigued 
 with the contemplation of truth and sooner 
 or later will commence a new existence in 
 this world. He could not dispossess him- 
 self of the idea that the conditions of the 
 
98 HEREAFTER. 
 
 present life and the future will be absolut- 
 ely different. 
 
 Progress, of course, is the law of every 
 being which has not yet reached the aim of 
 its existence. But the inhabitants of heaven 
 have reached their term, i. e. they have 
 attained final perfection; they cannot, 
 then, be subject any longer to the same 
 laws as we, unless man would be con- 
 demned to run always after an end which 
 does not exist and his aim would be to 
 have no aim. 
 
 Will variety, then, be lacking? No, for 
 God, in whom the Trinity of persons does 
 not alter the unity of His nature, is at the 
 same time the principle of the unity of 
 beings and of the variety which shines 
 forth in all creation. It is this "Beauty 
 ever ancient ever new' 7 which "never 
 ceases to teach the elect who will always 
 be eager to learn and to draw from their 
 measureless treasure." And so, St. Paul 
 says, they go from glory to glory, a clari- 
 tate in claritatem. Hence their joy which 
 no man can take from them and which is 
 
HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 99 
 
 expressed in the spontaneous cry of the 
 heart: forever and forever! "Eternity," 
 says Bossuet, "is in the essence of love." 
 How, indeed, even reason can ask, could 
 the elect enjoy their felicity, if they felt, 
 hanging over their head, a threat or danger 
 of a final catastrophe in which they would 
 founder forever *? 
 
 * 
 A question has been raised which has 
 peculiar interest for the human heart: 
 "Will the blessed recognize one another in 
 heaven?" Yes, reason and faith answer 
 together. In heaven as on earth man is 
 essentially a social being; since in the 
 future life he keeps his perfect identity and 
 the consciousness of this identity, he holds, 
 also, his legitimate affections of family and 
 friendship. The river of Oblivion (Aeffy) 
 at which the poets of old made their dead 
 drink, upon entering the kingdom of 
 shadows is a pagan dream. Heaven is, 
 according to Holy Writ, a kingdom and a 
 city, therefore a society; now is there a 
 society if the members do not know one 
 another % 
 
 .ofC. 
 
100 HEREAFTER. 
 
 Besides, St. Augustine asks, will the 
 elect be less loving because they have 
 become better! No, grace crowns nature 
 without injuring it : we can keep the hope 
 living in our hearts of meeting our friends 
 in eternity, after parting from them in 
 time. If those who have titles to that 
 love, make themselves unworthy of it, the 
 happiness of the elect will not be disturbed 
 by that fact. In heaven, says St. Thomas, 
 God is the measure of the affections, and if 
 in this world the beauty of a creature can 
 deaden the deepest love, will not all 
 regrets disappear in the unspeakable en- 
 joyment of the possession of the Infinite. 
 Faith, anticipating our desires, adds that 
 the body, for the perfection of this joy, 
 will be endowed with higher qualities in 
 keeping with its new condition, and will 
 participate in the felicity of the soul, after 
 having been associated in its trials. 
 
 This dogma of the resurrection of the 
 body is no more opposed to reason than 
 any other Christian dogma. Says St. 
 Thomas: u In the midst of the vivifying 
 
HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 101 
 
 whirlwind which incessantly carries away 
 the atoms of our body, the soul remains 
 and unifies the body and gives to it human 
 form : why later on will the soul not be 
 able to exercise again its formative in- 
 fluence V J So, the elect will find them- 
 selves whole and in perfect identity on the 
 threshold of eternity; their soul will always 
 exercise its sublime functions and their 
 body will shine with an incorruptible 
 beauty. 
 
 Faith and reason seem also to agree that 
 the blessed will not spend eternity in a 
 state of immobility. 
 
 Earth, an imperceptible atom in creation, 
 was for them the place of trial, but sidereal 
 space holding an infinity of other worlds 
 like our sun, will be the place of their 
 eternal triumph ; Si cut scintilla in arundineto 
 discurrent. There will be unfolded the 
 majestic economy of the divine plan, in 
 which all creation converges to man. This 
 is that incomparable destiny on which 
 Bossuet displays his magnificent style: 
 "Eternal felicity/' he says, "is a glory 
 
102 HEREAFTER. 
 
 more solid than that admired by men, a 
 grandeur more sure than that depending 
 on wealth, an immortality more certain 
 than that promised by history, a hope 
 better supported than that offered by this 
 world.' 7 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 A contemporary author writes : i 'Civili- 
 zation, society and ethics are as a pair of 
 beads whose chain is the immortality of 
 the soul ; take away the chain and every- 
 thing falls. " 
 
 And the chain having been removed, 
 the beads go astray. Can anything dur- 
 able, indeed, be founded on an indefinite 
 "perhaps" or u who knows" ? Thus the 
 three Kantian questions are asked today 
 more than ever : "Who am I? What must 
 I do? For what may I hope % ? ' And in 
 the midst of the philosophical disorder 
 and through the debris of the systems 
 which darken the horizon of the twentieth 
 century, the Christian ideal shines as the 
 rising of the day after the darkness of the 
 night. Sincere souls turn toward the 
 religious idea, toward that intellectual 
 light full of love, of which Dante sings : 
 
 "Luce intellectual piena d'amore 
 Amor di vero ben pien di letizia." 
 
 They go back to the two fundamental 
 
 truths which even the French revolution- 
 
 (103) 
 
104 HEREAFTER. 
 
 ists acclaimed through Robespierre: the 
 existence of God and the immortality of 
 the soul. 
 
 But men of learning do not content 
 themselves with looking at the Catholic 
 religion from the outside; timidly they 
 open the door, not yet to enter, but to ad- 
 mire the powerful architecture of our Cath- 
 olic dogmas. 
 
 Unanimous in seeing in these truly 
 Christian ideas the source of the purest, of 
 the beautiful, may they go so far as to 
 recognize our religion as the principle of 
 good and the necessary basis of private 
 and public morality. May this movement 
 to the faith of their ancestors grow stronger, 
 wider and more fruitful and may it bring 
 back those wandering minds to a sane phil- 
 osophy and the true religion. There they 
 will be taught how to travel through life 
 with the light of the Christian ideal and to 
 enter eternity with the cross of Christ in 
 their hand and His love in their heart. 
 
 The End. 
 

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