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LIFE AND DESTINY
INTRODUCTION
In the evening of life, the thinker is struck with a sorrowful impression of the futility of human
existence. He perceives how the teachings dispensed by institutions of learning in general - churches, schools,
universities - enable you to acquire many of those matters which are of vast importance in the conduct of
terrestrial existence, and in the preparation for life Beyond. Those to whom is given the high mission of
enlightening and guiding the human soul, seem to ignore its nature and its real destiny. In the midst of
universities a complete incertitude reigns upon the solution of the most important problems ever presented to
man in his passage through earth. This incertitude exists in every thing, which touches upon the problem of
life, its aim, and its end.
We find the same impotence among the clergy. By their affirmations, denuded of all proofs, they have
little success in communicating to the souls in their charge a faith which responds to sane criticism or the
exigencies of reason. The inquiring soul, in fact, encounters in the universities and in the churches but
obscurity and contradiction on everything which touches the problems of its nature and its future. It is to this
condition of things that we must attribute in great part the evils of our times - the incoherence of ideas, the
disorders of conscience, the moral and social anarchy.
The education dispensed to the generations is complicated, but it does not light the path of life for
them, it does not gird them for the battle of existence. Classic education teaches the cultivation and the
ornamentation of the intellect; it does not teach how to act, how to love, how to perform duty. Still less does it
instruct how to form a conception of the destiny, which develops profound energies in us, and elevates our
every aim toward a lofty goal.
Nevertheless, this conception of life is indispensable to every being and to all society, for it is the
sustaining power and the supreme consolation in hours of trouble, the source of virile virtues and high
inspirations. Carl du Prel tells the following fact:
‘One of my friends, a professor in a university, had the sorrow of losing his daughter, which awoke
his interest in the problem of immortality. He turned to his colleagues, professors of philosophy,
hoping to find consolation. It was a bitter disappointment. He asked for bread and received a stone; he
asked for affirmation, and received a “perhaps.”’ Francis Sarcy, an accomplished professor in a large
university, wrote, ‘I am upon this earth. I know absolutely nothing regarding the how or why of my
existence. I know even less, how and where I will go when I leave earth.’ A more frank avowal of
ignorance on the all-important subject could not be uttered. After centuries of laborious study, the
philosophy of the schools is without light, without warmth, without life. 1
The minds of our children are tossed between diverse and contradictory systems: the positivism of
August Comte, the naturalism of Hegel, the materialism of Stuart Mill, and many more - all uncertain, all
without ideals, yet precise.
From these arises the precocious tendency toward destructive pessimism - malady of a decadent
society, a terrible menace for the future; to which is added the skepticism of our young men, who believe in
nothing but wealth and honor and material success.
Raoul Pictet, the eminent professor, speaks of this mental condition of the young, in the introduction
of his first work on psychic science. He speaks of the disastrous effect produced by material theories, and
concludes thus: ‘These poor young men declare that all which occurs in the world is the fatal and necessary
result of preceding conditions, and that human will can in no way intervene. They believe themselves the
playthings of fate, tied hand and foot to a relentless destiny. These young men cease to make any effort to
succeed at the first obstacle they encounter. They have no faith in themselves - they become their own living
tombs wherein they bury their hopes, their efforts, their desires.’ This applies, not only to a portion of our
1 A propos of the examinations in the universities, Mr. Ducas Doyen of the Faculty of Aix, wrote in the Journal of 3rd May 1912: ‘There seems to be
between the minds of the pupils and the things they study a sort of cloud - an opaqueness. It is particularly in philosophy that one feels this unfortunate
impression.’
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