“Since space, which is infinite, is filled with worlds similar to our own; since by multiplying the generations which have succeeded each other since the beginning of this world, by those which have teemed in the innumerable worlds inhabited as our own is, one would arrive at a total of souls so supernatural and impossible—the multiplication thereof being infinite—that God would infallibly lose his head—sound though it may be—and the Devil would be in the same case, thus producing a grievous disturbance; since the number of righteous souls is infinite, just as the number of wicked souls is infinite and space itself is infinite: therefore it would be necessary to have an infinite Paradise and an infinite Hell—facts which bring us to this: that Paradise would be everywhere and Hell everywhere—that is to say nowhere.
“Now Reason does not contradict the metempsychosic faith. The soul, passing from the snake to the pig, from the pig to the bird, from the bird to the dog, arrives at last at the monkey and then at Man. The soul always starts afresh when each new fault is committed, up till the moment when it achieves the fulfilment of terrestrial purification which permits it to pass on to a superior world. Thus it progresses unceasingly from beast to beast and from sphere to sphere, going from the most imperfect state to the most perfect, in order to arrive at last in the planet of supreme happiness whence a fresh fault will again precipitate it into the regions of supreme suffering to recommence its transmigrations.
“The circle, that universal and fatal sign, encloses then the vicissitudes of our existences just as it governs the evolution of worlds.”
VII
How One May Interpret a Couplet by Corneille in Two Ways
By the time the doctor had finished reading this strange document, he was rigid with stupefaction. Then without any bargaining he bought it for the sum of twelve pounds and fivepence halfpenny, allowing the bookseller to pass it off on him as a Hebrew manuscript recovered from the excavations at Pompeii.
The Doctor remained in his study for four days and nights, and by dint of patience and with the help of dictionaries, managed to decipher, more or less successfully, the German and Spanish periods of the manuscript: for though he knew Greek, Latin and a little Italian, he was almost entirely ignorant of German and Spanish. At length, fearing that he might have grossly misinterpreted the sense, he begged his friend, the Warden, who was deeply versed in these two languages, to correct the translation. This the latter did with pleasure; but it was three whole days before he could set himself seriously to the task, because every time he glanced through the doctor’s version he was overcome by a fit of laughter so prolonged and so violent that twice he almost had convulsions. When he was asked the reason of this extraordinary hilarity he replied:
“The reason? Well, there are three: firstly, the ridiculous face of my worthy colleague Heraclius: secondly, his equally ridiculous translation, which is as much like the text as a guitar is like a windmill: and lastly, the text itself, which is as queer a thing as one could possibly imagine.”
Oh, obstinate Warden! Nothing could convince him. The sun itself might have come in person to burn his beard and his hair and he would have taken it for a candle. As for Doctor Heraclius Gloss, it need hardly be said that he was radiant, enlightened, transformed. Like Pauline, he kept repeating every other moment:
“I see, I feel, I believe, I am disillusioned.” And each time the Warden interrupted him to observe that disillusioned could be written in two ways.2
“I see, I feel, I believe, I am among the deluded.”
VIII
How, Just as One Can Be More Royalist Than the King and More Devout Than the Pope, One Can Equally Be More of a Metempsychosist Than Pythagoras
Great as may be the joy of a shipwrecked man who has drifted for long days and nights lost on the ocean on a fragile raft, without mast or sail or compass and without hope, when he suddenly sights the shore which he has so long desired, such joy was as nothing compared with that which swept over Doctor Heraclius Gloss when, after being for so long tossed by the surge of the philosophies on the raft of uncertainty, he entered at length, triumphant and enlightened, the haven of metempsychosis.
The truth of this doctrine had struck him so forcibly that he embraced it at once even to its most extreme conclusions. Nothing in it was obscure to him, and in a few days, by means of meditation and calculations, he reached the point of being able to fix the exact date on which a man who died in such a year would reappear on earth. He knew approximately the time of all the transmigrations of a soul through the series of inferior beings, and according to the presumed total of good or evil accomplished in the last period of its life as a human being, he could tell the moment when this soul would enter into the body of a snake, a pig, a riding horse, an ox, a dog, an elephant or a monkey. The reappearances of a given soul in its superior form succeeded each other at regular intervals whatever might have been its previous sins. Thus the degree of punishment, always in proportion to the degree of
