CHAPTER XXII

DR. J. M. PEEBLES ON THE NATURE AND PREEXISTENCE OF THE SOUL

Non Mi Ricordo. “I do not remember.” Granted—but that does not disprove an eternal past existence. You do not remember your past fœtal life, nor your nine months placenta life; nor do you remember your baby life, nor your early childhood life. But this counts for nothing against your existence during all these periods. You nevertheless have access to an ample amount of evidence that your existence traversed all these stages—evidence that your personality was prior to your conscious memory of it. Because this inmost spirit cannot project itself through its clumsy, clayish environment into the external with sufficient vividness to remember the past and express it, is no evidence that the individualized spirit did not exist. Non-existence is unthinkable. And yet thinking is as natural as breathing. Only circles are endless. All beginnings in time and space necessarily have their endings. A creature which has its beginning in time is incapable of perpetuating itself or being perpetuated through eternity. A line projected from a point in space has a further limit which no logic can carry to infinitude. Whether or not “God geometrizes,” that cannot be morally and physiologically false which is mathematically true. Though on different planes of thought morals and mathematics harmonize. The universe is not a dual-verse of infinite inharmonies.

I may here remark that two fundamental assumptions lie at the threshold of man's introduction into this world. The first is, that his subjective existence antedates his objective appearance. That as an ego he is coexistent with the universe, and participates in that universal and eternal life which is perpetually manifest in the kosmos.

The second assumption, is that man as to his essential form or personality is derivative; that his earliest introduction into the world and the universe is when he is born of a physical mother; that his conscious entity is dependent upon and dates its beginning with the visible appearance of the physical organism. According to this assumption the material atoms and forces which have transiently converged in the human organism, with no promise of anything more than a limited persistence, were once conglomerated with the cosmic mass as a portion of its undifferentiated substance. And this derivative hypothesis further assumes that the purpose of this single birth is to specialize a portion of the organizable pabulum of the general kosmos into human shape, that it may manifest the attributes of self-consciousness. The personality is coexistent with this body organism, commenced its existence with it, and must have its share in its vicissitudes and final destruction. Is it surprising that such a materialistic philosophy should yield its abundant crop of atheists?

With the wisest of the Greek philosophers, diversity, individuality, was as fundamental as unity; but with our modern scientists, individuality is purely derivative. The Darwinian school of writers assume that our world and solar system, together with the kingdoms of life, nay, even the genius of Homer, Raphael and Shakespeare were once latent in a fiery cloud. All specific forms, say they, came by development, they arose by insensible modifications wrought in an originally homogeneous substance. That also was the philosophy of certain ancient Hindoos. That was the philosophy of Spinoza. That, too, is the philosophy of Herbert Spencer and of Darwin's disciples. Darwin's qualification to the effect that God originally, and, I may add, miraculously, created a few germs, as a basis from which to evolve future distinctions and organic formations, does not redeem his theory from that pantheistic conception which is its very root and essence. And what is more, it is the pantheism of materialism.

Spinoza and the pantheistic philosophers of India taught in harmony with the logical implications of their philosophy. They were materialists. Inasmuch as types, or essential forms, with them, were not coexistent with substance, but effects, or derivative results, consequent upon the differentiation and integration of substance; so these beginnings necessitated endings. Forms were ephemeral. Their destiny was to suffer resolution into the primitive substance.

Future immortality implies a preëxistent, or past immortality. And the attempt to reconcile man's future immortality with Darwinism is much like Hugh Miller's effort to reconcile geology and Genesis. It seems clear to me, that if a protoplastic formation originated, evolved and built up essential man, involving the personal identity, it may, and necessarily must, by the law of involution, return again to protoplasm.

It was precisely upon this point that Agassiz took issue with Darwin. The former held with Plato that ideas and ultimate forms were coexistent with substance. He taught that they had a spiritual basis, antedating their material embodiments. It is not sufficient to say that man existed in essence before he became a personal identity. If that identity was produced, if it be a result, an effect, consequent upon molecular action, or material change, then no "key-stone" in the arch-way of organization will insure that identity from final resolution into that "fiery cloud" in which Tyndal informs us the genius of Raphael and Shakespeare were once latent.

Individuals favoring the Darwinian school of materialism and believing derivative personality ask for facts in proof of preëxistence, by which they doubtless mean facts addressed to the perceptive intellect. But I submit that facts of the sensuous order are quite incompetent to prove or disprove truths which address themselves to the highest reason. To me the facts of consciousness and intuition are more authoritative and imperial than those appealing to the fallible senses.

Scholars, thinkers and metaphysicians of all schools recognize three orders of evidence which may be competent to influence the judgment.

1. Evidence addressed to the senses.

2. Evidence addressed to the conscious understanding.

3. Evidence addressed to the higher reason in the form of axioms and intuitions.

The demand for facts of external observation in proof of those higher truths of relation and of consciousness which can only be apprehended by the higher reason, will not be gratified, at least, in the present condition of humanity. The problem of preëxistence is included in the provinces of mental science, metaphysics and religion, rather than in that of the physical sciences. Science may afford important aid by revealing the laws of movement; but its sphere being limited to the order and sequence of phenomena, it can never reveal the nature of things in themselves. I have no expectation that the problem of man’s first estate will ever have any clear light thrown upon it by recourse to such data as material science will be able to furnish, for it involves an ultimate ground that lies beyond the pale of experimental research. A strong presumptive evidence in favor of the truth of a proposition is to be found in the extent of its diffusion and in the degree of its persistence. This is an axiomatic truth with Herbert Spencer.' Now the belief in the soul's preëxistence—the belief in God and the immortality of man have survived the rise and fall of empires, thrones and races. Nor has modern enlightenment succeeded in driving them into the dreamy haunts of superstition, but it has welcomed, extended and fortified these beliefs. They may be accepted, therefore, as foreshadowing, or rather, as the synonyms of ultimate verities.

I believe the Soul to be an eternal entity, or unit from eternity. The Soul is immortal and has its state of being within God. The Soul is absolute. Nothing can be taken from it or added to it. Its manifestations in time proceed from sources that are within. The Soul in its quality is like unto God. It is a Ray which proceeds from God as a central sun. Its being is in God, yet it is not God. The essential nature of God cannot be communicated through the medium of human speech, for it is only known within the Soul. Knowledge proceeds from the known to the unknown. Revelation proceeds from the unknown to the known. The consciousness of the universe is God; the consciousness of man is the soul. The soul is the only preëxisting entity except God, having its being in eternity and its existence in time.

Existing in time the soul is subject to limitations, but God is the Absolute Being transcending all limitations. The soul is a complete circle, having neither beginning nor ending. God is the sphere in which the circle is repeated to infinity. But while the soul abides in the Infinite it is never lost therein. There are no new souls added to the universe; none taken therefrom. The soul in its primal nature does not exist in time or space, but in eternity. Only its movements or manifestations fall within the province of time and space.

It will hence be seen that the soul in its first estate is a purely subjective being in the human form. In this primal state it embodies all the attributes and qualities which we can conceive of as embraced in the kosmos. It "is in little all the sphere." It is Plato's "One and Many"—a unity in which is embraced a multitude. All numbers, forms and series inhere in this microcosmic entity. Love and Wisdom are the substance and form of its existence. Love is its substance and the subjective ground of its being. Wisdom is its form of existence and quality of limitation that distinguishes it from all other human entities. Viewed in one aspect the infinite multitude of souls in the universe form one complex and unitary body, each sharing the same divine qualities with his fellow, which is the ground of their sociality. But viewed in another aspect, souls present an infinite diversity, no two being alike, no two predestined to perform identical offices. Thus all souls cohere in one social solidarity by virtue of the principle of Love which inheres alike in each. And then again each soul is a Form per se, distinguished from all other souls by virtue of its principle of Wisdom or quality of limitation. Hence each soul is endowed with a specialty of genius which qualifies it for a particular function and form of service, as a unit in an affiliated series of the Societary Man. But before the soul can become equipped to consciously serve in its predestined place in the universe, it must perfect for itself a Body Form through which it can fully express its subjective wealth of faculty. This Body Form will be the final summing-up of the Soul’s pilgrimages in matter. But this branch of the subject I will leave for discussion in my second paper of this series.

“ A keel grated on the sand,
Then a step was on the shore —
Life awoke and heard it,
A hand was laid upon her,
And a great shudder passed through her.
She looked up, and saw over her
The strange, wide eyes of Love,
And Life knew for whom
She had been waiting,
And Love drew Life up to him,
And of that meeting was born
A thing rare and beautiful —
Joy, First Joy was it called.”

—OLIVE SCHREINER.

Identity has a deeper ground than the material shape which we associate with the human body. It is far deeper than the trend given to character through the laws of heredity, having its basis in the self-conscious ego. True, the body to some extent is a mirror or reflection of the real identity, but is neither its cause nor ground of permanence. The body is an aggregation of ever fluctuating molecules. Its entire structure is changed at least once in seven years, and the brain, nerves and glands are changed several times within that period. I repeat, our identity is in the soul and not in the organic structure. It is in the realm of mind and not in the realm of matter. Hence our identity is not a residuum—a something left over when the material body is cast aside. It is not a ghost or shadow which the organism has bequeathed to the man, but a persistent form having only a temporary residence in the body which body is the real shadow or ephemeral appearance.

Individuality in its primal meaning is monadic existence. The Latin Individuus is the opposite of Dividuus. It embraces that which cannot be further dissected. It signifies the being a one. We are here brought back to what I said above regarding the nature of the soul, namely: That by virtue of its wisdom-principle the soul is a form per se, and distinguished from all other souls by its quality of limitation. Individuality is single—the unit distinguished from all other units and from the total aggregate of units. Therefore each individual soul, in its primal estate is endowed with a specialty of genius which qualifies it for a particular place and function in the universe.

Personality in its common and outward acceptation is usually associated with appearance and outward character; but with such writers as Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, Frohschammer, Elisha Mulford, Lotze, etc., Personality has a far deeper meaning. The Latins used Persona to signify personating, counterfeiting, or wearing a mask. But Personality in the sense in which Emerson employs it, signifies true being, both concrete and spiritual. It alone is original being. It is not limited. Personality is that universal element that pervades every human soul and which is at once its continent and ground of being. Distinction from others and limitations by them results from Individuality, not Personality.

Elisha Mulford says: “There is in personality the highest that is within the knowledge of man. It is the steepest, loftiest summit towards which we move in our attainment.”

Emerson says: “The personal within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related. . . . The personal is not an organ, not a function, not a faculty, it is the background of our being—an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.”

We are here again brought back to what was said above, that all souls cohere in one social solidarity by virtue of the principle of Love which inheres alike in each. Personality therefore pertains to the substance of the soul and individuality to its form.

The magi of Persia, the priests of Egypt, the Brahmans of India, and Buddhists of the East, each and all held to some form of the general doctrine. Jesus recognized his own preëxistence when he spoke of the “glory he had with the Father before the world was.” Again he said: “Before Abraham was I am.”

Ammonius Saccas, founder of that school of eclectic philosophy known as New Platonism, and among whose disciples were Longinus, and Origen, was a believer of pre-existence.

Plotinus, an eminent Greek philosopher, an adept in the doctrines of the Oriental sages, and a teacher of philosophy at Rome from 645 A. D., until his death, was an advocate of preëxistence.

Proclus, a student of Olympiodorus at Alexandria, and of Plutarchus at Athens, and for a time at the head of the New Platonic schools, believed in preëxistence.

Apollonius of Tyanna, a Pythagorean philosopher of the first century, venerated for his wisdom by his contemporaries, and whose thrillingly interesting life was written by Flavius Philostratus, was a believer in and teacher of pre-existence.

Many of the most enlightened minds of all countries have taught that man's conscious self-hood is as much a matter of the past as it is to be of the future. Pythagoras, the founder of the Italic school of Greek philosophy, professed to have a distinct remembrance of a previous life or lives.

Plato believed that all the knowledge of laws and principles we seem to acquire in this world is simply a recovery or reminiscence of knowledge which the soul possessed in a previous state of existence. Readers of Plato will remember the reference to "Meno," where Plato introduces Socrates as making an experiment, by way of putting a series of questions to a slave of Meno, eliciting from the uneducated youth a geometrical truth. This done, Socrates triumphantly observed to Meno, "I have not taught the youth anything; but simply interrogating him, he recalled the knowledge he had in a previous existence." Plato further taught that all ideas, types and ultimate forms both precede and succeed their material embodiments.

"Our soul," says Plato, "is a particle of the Divine Breath, and therefore we are related to God. Our soul's divine ideas are natural, and are created by the contemplation of divine things. Before it was associated with the body, it existed in God; even now, though enveloped by the body, it may participate in that divine contemplation through the subjection of the passions, and through a contemplative life."

In the song of Amosis we read: “Lord thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations; before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world.”

The most learned among the Christian fathers, such as Origen, added to the doctrine of preëxistence, the doctrine of Brahminical reincarnation, contending that souls having sinned in their previous lives were condemned to reënter human bodies in this mortal life to expiate their former guilt.

Jerome (340 A. D.) said of the above dogma which prevailed in India and Egypt: “This impious and wicked doctrine was anciently diffused through Egypt and the East, and now prevails in the secret, as in vipers’ nests, among most, and pollutes the purity of those regions; and as by a hereditary disease glides in the few to pervade the many.”

Clemens of Alexandria, in his Eclogues, advocated the soul’s preëxistence, but stoutly denied the doctrine of re-incarnation—and re-reincarnation of human souls. He contended that the passage: “There was a man sent from God” meant that the soul of John the Baptist was older than his body, and was sent from his former state.

Clement of the second century, educated in the Platonic philosophy, and afterwards a disciple of Pantenus in Alexandria, said: “Do we not love God this first, that we exist, that we are said to be men? That descending from the regions of light, or sent by Him, we are held in these corporeal bodies.”

Pamphilas, who established a flourishing school in Cæsarea, who vindicated Origen in five books, and was martyred 309 A. D., was a strong advocate of the soul’s preëxistence.

“Does matter create the soul?” he asked. “The house resembles the idea that preceded it, and the entrance by a path from the mountains resembles the descent of souls from heaven to their lodgment in bodies.”

Synesius, a Neo-Platonic philosopher and disciple of Hypatia at Alexandria, wrote largely in favor of preëxistence. When the citizens of Ptolemais had invited him to the bishopric among them, he declined that dignity, in a letter to his brother on the subject, for this reason among others, that he cherished certain opinions which perhaps all would not approve, but which he could in no wise abjure, as after mature reflection they had struck their roots deep in his mind. First among these he mentioned the doctrine of preëxistence. “Assuredly I can never think it right to believe the soul an after-birth of the body.” Vestiges of this belief are openly discernible in his writings, as, for example, in the hymn of which the following is a paraphrase:

“Eternal Mind, thy seedling spark
Through this thin vase of clay,
Athwart the waves of chaos dark
Emits a timorous ray!

“Far forth from thee, thou central fire,
To earth’s sad bondage cast,
Let not the trembling spark expire—
Absorb thine own at last!”

The doctrine of the soul’s preëxistence was held by the Jews, both before and cotemporary with the Apostolic period. It was certainly held by the later Jews living after the times of the Babylonish captivity. Among their proofs they quote the passage from the Book of Wisdom:

“I was an ingenuous child, and received a good soul; nay more, being good, I came into a body undefiled.”

Writing of the Essenes, Josephus says: “For the opinion obtains among them (the Essenes) that bodies indeed are corruptible, and the matter of them not permanent; but that souls continue exempt from death forever; and that, emanating from the most subtle ether, they are enfolded in bodies, as prisons, to which they are drawn by some natural spell. But, when loosened from the bonds of the flesh, as if released from a long captivity, they rejoice, and are borne upward. . . . This company of disembodied souls is distributed in different orders. The law of some of them is to enter mortal bodies, and, after certain prescribed periods, be again set free. But those possessed of a diviner structure are absolved from all local bonds of earth.”

Leibnitz, the most profound philosopher of the seventeenth century, held the doctrine of preëxistence as one of his cardinal beliefs. And to-day, in the full blaze of scientific discovery, there are hosts of men famous for their knowledge of the sciences, and eminent in religious culture, who believe in a preëxistent state of conscious existence. Among these are Prof. Redfield, the author and distinguished physiognomist; Charles and Edward Beecher, lately departed to the higher life; G. Groom Napier and Sir Thompson of England.

Nearly the whole body of French Spiritualists, including such men as Figuer and Camille Flamarion, the astronomer, hold to the doctrine. The great Fourier taught it. The Spiritualists of the Orient, and, to a very large extent of Continental Europe, accept it.

Conscious communion with spirits, not proving immortality in the sense of endless existence, does prove a conscious existence after death. And then, those long inhabiting the better land of angelic blessedness, that is to say, ancient spirits almost uniformly teach preëxistence. I cannot this moment call to mind a case to the contrary. It is admitted that spirits of the spirit world differ upon this subject; and further, that the testimony of spirits is authoritative only so far as it corresponds with intuition and the highest reason. Still, the persistence of an idea and the potency of intelligent majorities necessarily influence convictions. And I am certain that the general tenor of the teachings of wise and highly intelligent spirits upon this subject favors a preëxistent state of being. Aaron Knight, two hundred years in spirit life, and whose identity I took the pains to establish when in England several years since, teaches, with the “brotherhood of ancient sages,” preëxistence in the most positive manner.

It is very clear to profound thinkers that once in existence as divine man, always in existence. The converse is equally true; once absolutely out of existence never in existence! This logical bulwark has never been successfully assailed.

In the phrase, once in existence, always in existence, I am referring to conscious, or rather to divine man, and not to sticks and stones, nor to growling animals and stinging insects. These are fragments—imperfect structures—unfinished temples. And no one gifted with intelligence speaks of a conscious rock—a divine wolf, or a righteous dog. These are not, and never were in existence as consciously rational and morally progressive beings. They have not the Spiritual Keystone. They are not religious; neither are they conscious of their subordinate consciousness! And certainly, no logician ever affirms of a part, what he does of a whole. A slice, slashed from a golden orange, thin, irregular, ill-shaped and seedless, is not equal to, nor should it be compared with the well-rounded orange. Animals, serpents, and noxious insects, are but parts, bearing the same relation to man that passing thoughts bear to ideas, or shadows to substances. Animals and insects were never in existence, as perfect structures, as divine entities; but rather as fleeting organisms serving temporary uses.

Divinity is eternal. An essential man is constituted according to Plato, of divine substance, form and germ; and further, with this prince of thinkers, essential forms, types and ideas, were the same. Types, or ideas, in fact, were subjective realities. Outworked they became partially visible. Still, the type preceded and succeeded the visible appearance. The material contents of form as in the oak or animal, are fleeting, changing; but the hidden essential form, which is the type, or idea is enduring and immortal.

Every argument against preëxistence, is so far as entitled to the name, an argument against the immortality of the soul, and a help to cold combative materialists. And materialism, in its last analysis amounts to this—a sprawling puppy and a royal souled sage—a beefsteak, a prayer-book, and a divine soul, are all the same originally—atoms —protoplastic atoms, adjusted and arranged for specific aims and ends by non-designed and non-intelligent molecular force. And so all conscious life—all noble aspirations for eternal unfoldment—begin and necessarily end in matter. A stream cannot rise above its fountain. Thank God and the good angels, Spiritualism, in connection with the rational doctrine of preëxistence, saves from the slough of despond.

If the sum total constituting J. M. Peebles were once absolutely out of existence, putting him into existence would be equivalent to creating something from nothing. I am a firm believer in the soul’s eternal preëxistence. The theory is the rational stronghold of the soul’s immortality. But preëxistence and reincarnation are by no means identical. They are not predicated on the same philosophical basis. And any writer who confounds these exhibits either his ignorance, or his pitiable impudence.

Of the doctrine of reincarnation I am not convinced— and yet, am open to investigation and arguments in its favor.

Only a few can clearly recall events and experiences occurring in a preëxistent state of being. Many did, however, in the more meditative past. And some in the present can do this; and their testimony upon the point is direct and positive. I have space to name but a few.

Judge Boardman, well known in Wisconsin for many years as a thoughtful, influential Spiritualist, repeatedly assured me that he could distinctly remember many things that transpired in his preëxistent life.

Judge Elliott, quite as much of a mathematician as jurist, used to interest his friends by similar direct statements.

Harold Harring, the Polish scholar, author and personal friend of Dr. Redfield, the New York physiognomist, often affirmed in the most positive manner, that he could remember many acts and events occurring in his preëxistent home in the heavens. Others testify to the same facts. Preëxistence is to them positive knowledge. Negative testimony upon this subject is of little account. That blind men do not see the sun is their misfortune—nothing more.

Theodore Parker said in Music Hall, Boston, in 1857: “We thank thee, oh, Father, for this atom of spirit, a particle from thine own flame of eternity which thou hast lodged in this clay.” (“Bible of the Ages,” p. 322.)

“A strain of gentle music,” says Charles Dickens— “or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odor of a flower, or even the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were in this life; which vanish like a breath; which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, seemed to have awakened.”

Poets in their more inspired moments often sing of preexistence:

“I have dreamed
Of sinless men and maids, mated in heaven
Ere yet their souls had sought for beauteous forms
To give them human sense and residence.”

—HOLLAND.

“And in the spheral chime they listening heard
The soul’s high destiny, which, being sunk
Into this fleeting life, through obscure paths
Must wander, fighting still a Godlike fight—
Victor, through death!”

—SCHELLING.

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Has had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar,
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home.”

—WORDSWORTH.

As a fitting close to this essay, I quote from Schiller’s “Mystery of Reminiscence,” which is a surpassing poem of the soul’s recognition:

“Were once our beings blent and intertwining
And for that glory still my heart is pining;
Knew we the light of some refulgent sun
When once our souls were one?

“Round us in waters of delight forever
Ravishingly flowed the heavenly nectar river;
We were the masters of the seat of things
And where truth in her ever living springs
Quivered our glancing wings.

“Weep for the godlike life we lost afar
That thou and I its scattered fragments are:
And still the unconquered yearning we retain,
Sigh to renew the long and vanished reign
And grow divine again.”

The foregoing was placed in W. J. Colville’s hands by Dr. J. M. Peebles March 6, 1906, during a delightful visit to Battle Creek in the course of which W. J. Colville expressed an earnest desire to embody in this volume some statement of conviction or confession of faith from one of the most highly venerated, widely traveled, richly educated and generous-hearted Spiritualists in the world. The career of Dr. J. M. Peebles is known and honored the wide world over. At the ripe age of eighty-five years we found this stalwart veteran hale, hearty, energetic and brimming over with good will and resolute determination to still further continue his work and travel in the interest of the great cause to which he has nobly devoted his unusually long and singularly useful life. Blessed by such advocates as the veteran “ Pilgrim,” the advocacy of Spiritualism is indeed secure.