THIS work, which at one time made a great sensation in France, is well deserving of perusal at present, when we have so much further experience of both clairvoyance and more direct spiritual phenomena. M. Cahagnet was a working man-a chair-turner, and on that account his production is the more meritorious; for he had not only the sagacity to perceive the truth of the phenomena of human magnetism, or mesmerism, but the boldness to avow his convictions, and the magnanimity to suffer ridicule and persecution for the sake of psychological science with a wonderful patience. His work is so well written that we should not have discovered the facts of his humble condition in life, and of his self-education, had he not told us of them. Of the peculiar character of the work, which is in three volumes, and of M. Cahagnet's peculiar views, we shall take notice as we proceed in our researches into his Secrets of a Future Life Revealed.

In the first place, let us say-for it is very honourable to a Frenchman-that all the spirits seen by Cahagnet's clairvoyantes deny re-incarnation. They say men are born only once, and die only once. This is repeated a score of times in these volumes. In one case, the spirit says, "Once is quite enough to pass through the thraldom of flesh."

The doctrine of every thought and every impression of human forms and acts becoming eternal is asserted. A clair

N.S.-III.

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voyante often sees pieces of furniture in rooms that are no longer there, but are found to have been at some time previously. A young lady is seen sitting in six chairs at once. It was found that this young lady, a living one, had recently sat in every one of them one after another. From this cause clairvoyantes have, he says, often been charged with inaccuracy. They also see things that not only have taken place, but which will take place, as in the spirit-world, past, present, and future are one. In this case one wonders how spirits know the time of any particular occurrence. A singular case of the impression of objects on the mind is given at p. 251 of vol. i. Madame Gorget, a clairvoyante, is put in rapport with Adele and sees and describes a chamber in which Adele, M. Cahagnet's regular medium, was ill twenty years before. She described the room exactly, the furniture, the colour and pattern of the bed curtains, the fire-place with old-fashioned dogs, the mother of Adele going about and paring her medicine in a white pot at the fire. She described the garden adjoining, and Adele furtively gathering fruit, looking round to see if any one descried her; a rabbit-cote in a corner, and all the exact flower-beds and other objects of the garden. M. Cahagnet will have it that all these images were existent realities somewhere in connection with Adele, but they are clearly enough the readings of the clairvoyante of these images in the memory of Adele. The only difficulty is in imagining why these scenes only out of Adele's life should present themselves unless she had herself been just then recalling them. If all the incidents of a life are photographed on or about a person, they must form a mass of images laid thick one over the other, and, as one might suppose, thus making a confusion. In some cases, the reading of the mind or memory is difficult to be traced, and persons are seen in places and circumstances, even in very distant countries, where no one at the time knew of their being.

In the case of apparitions appearing as they were dressed during their lifetimes, we are told that these dresses are all photographed upon them. How, then, does one suit present itself more than another? Why are not all the dresses of the person's life photographed one upon the other, producing confusion? That the spirit can present himself as seen in life, generally as seen recently before his death, is shown by almost every apparition, and they evidently so appear to identify themselves. The how they do it, seems to reside in a power which they possess of which we have no adequate idea.

Cahagnet makes Swedenborg appear and assert, contrary to his teaching during his earthly life, that "the spirit is a substance which demands space, spite of the belief of men who imagine that a spirit, because it can penetrate matter without difficulty,

occupies no space. He asserts that spirits occupy as much, or more space than when in the body. He adds, that if they occupied no space they would be nothing. As to there being no time in the spirit-world, and as to the assertion that a spirit can be in several places at the same time, or address several persons at the same time, he says they are all errors. If there were no time there could be no succession of events, and that all these errors arise from the rapid action of spirits being incalculable by our time. They can transfer themselves from place to place with such speed, and can communicate with other spirits in such rapid succession, that it seems to take place at once. A spirit can see the whole of his existence in a moment, as has been experienced repeatedly by drowning persons; and Sir Humphry Davy, under the effect of taking the nitric-oxyde gas, exclaimed, "The whole human organism is an assemblage of thoughts." "Whoever," says Cahagnet, "asserts that there is neither time nor space for a spirit, speaks in opposition to our reason, and yet speaks a great spiritual truth. I prefer the opinion of Swedenborg, as given by him on this subject; and on how spirits perceive matter, he refers us to Fichte's Destination of Man. The spirits generally asserted to Cahagnet's clairvoyantes that they only perceive matter when en rapport with persons in the body.

As to the common notion that spirits have no form, but are a sort of breath, he treats it as false and nonsensical. All spirits assert that they have the human form, and present a similar appearance to the bodies they inhabited.

Swedenborg, in one of the séances, declared that being but a man he had committed many errors, amongst which was that of saying the sun was a globe of pure fire-that, on the contrary, it is a mass of light proceeding from the divine central Sun of the Universe, namely, God. Some day, probably, Swedenborg will come again and correct this correction, if he ever made it : for though the sun, like everything else, proceeds from God, it is pretty certainly a physical body either with a fiery atmosphere, or one producing all the effects of fire-the present fashion is to say, by vibration of the ethereal fluid. The divine law is, of course, a spiritual sun, giving light to the spiritual universe.

It is the theory of all Cahagnet's spirits that all the souls in the universe were created by God at once, in the immensely past eternity. That they were all placed in worlds of perfect happiness, but yet not with all their faculties and affections called forth, and that they are sent down in succession into the earth, or worlds of material life, like it, to be tried, and to have all their powers, passions, and affections created and brought to their full maturity, and at the same time to be brought into discipline.

That they have some faint and dreamy reminiscences of their prior life, in fact, in accordance with the doctrine of Plato and of Wordsworth's Ode to Immortality

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath 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.

That, on regaining heaven, they awake to a full recognition of it, as the world from which they descended, and that the contrast of the sufferings on earth with the full beatitude of heaven constitutes the perfection of their bliss; for without this experience of evil they could never adequately estimate their good. That, in consequence of this, we find on reaching the spirit-world, that we have no father or mother, no sons or daughters, we are all brothers and sisters-our only parent being God.

For my part I prefer the old notion that we are first born into this world, and are born spiritually as well as physically of our parents. That thence arises all the delightful relationship of spirits as well as of men. We find in all communications with spirits that the relationships of life are the most precious and permanent of ties. All spirits draw, by a spiritual magnetism, together. Nations draw to nations, families to families. The near relatives are ever nigh, watching over their kindred in the body; they are always waiting to receive them at their departure out of it. This is because we are not merely the physical but also the spiritual children of our parents. We are not only part and parcel of their flesh and blood, bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh, but soul of their soul.

Cahagnet's spirits, through his clairvoyante Adele, always predicated that Christ was not God; He was not seen or worshipped in heaven as God. He even makes Swedenborg say, contrary to all his assertions on earth, that Christ is no more the son of God than we are all sons of God, and this in the face of the Scripture assertion that He is "the only begotten son of God, the express image of His person, and one with Him." He is seen in the heavens, he makes Swedenborg say, as a good man, and that is all" (Vol. II., p. 41). But when a Protestant minister, M. Bosneville, minister of Lisieux, and a Catholic priest, the Abbé A, asked the same questions of two different spirits, they replied that Christ was God in his spiritual portion, but not in his human portion. In fact, that he was God and man. That he was recognised as God in heaven, and proceeded, when on earth, from the Holy Spirit (Vol. II.,

p. 151 and p. 134). On another occasion, the boy Emile being the clairvoyante, a spirit tells him that he has never seen God, who is a spirit, but that He is represented in a picture in the heavens as a man hanging on a cross (Vol. I., p. 244). On another occasion a spirit is made to tell Emile, first, that Christ is God, then that He is not creator of heaven and earth; but only the son of God (Vol. II., p. 65).

Now, what are we to think of all this? Simply that Cahagnet is himself an infidel. He does not believe Christ to have been more than a good man, and he adds to the boy Emile's communication that Christ is only God of the Christians; the Mahomedans and Jews have each their own God (p. 69). That all religions are alike acceptable to God, and he makes spirits say that the prophets never prophecied of Christ, and that Christ never called himself the Son of Man!

The fact is therefore plain that Cahagnet's own strong opinions influenced the communications of his mediums; but when the preachers of orthodox tenets came into rapport with these mediums, for the time their influence predominated over Cahagnet's, and the mediums vaticinated in another style. These things shew the caution with which the communications of clairvoyantes should be received. Swedenborg is made to contradict nearly everything that he asserts as divine truths in his works; affirms the Bible to be a very good sort of a book, and that it contains some very good things and the like.

Passing from opinions, however, to facts, M. Cahagnet gives us a considerable number of curious ones. He has various Catholic priests amongst his correspondents, who are more reasonable than such men are now-a-days. The Abbé A (who does not, however, venture to give his name) is a warm supporter of Spiritualism. The Abbé Almignana not only approves it himself, but quotes the favourable opinions of the Abbé Duclos and the celebrated Father Lacordaire. For himself he says:-"I shall never cease, during the whole of my life, to thank God for having accorded to me a favour so great as that of having physically proved to me the immortality of the soul." The Father Lacordaire regards Spiritualism as a divine preparation to humble the pride of the Materialists; for it is certain, he says, that no argument used by the theologians to prove the immortality of the soul has been more effective than the apparition of Samuel. The Abbé Duclos, who so ably attacked the blasphemies of Voltaire, says: "Spirits good or bad, or the souls of men, cannot appear without the order or the permission of God."

From Voltaire himself, M. Cahagnet, draws remarkable sentiments for such a man. In the article on Man in the