The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1862

Allan Kardec

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That is how history is made – the millions of Mr. Allan Kardec

We were informed that in a large business town, where Spiritism counts on many followers and where it is mostly present among the working class, a cleric became the propagator of certain rumors that some charitable souls were quick to amplify and pass on. According to those claims we are worth millions; in our home everything shines and we rest our feet on the most beautiful d’Aubusson carpets. They met us when we were poor in Lyon but today we have a four-horse carriage and we live in Paris enjoying the status of a Prince. All that fortune would come from England since the time when we got involved with Spiritism, and our agents in the provinces are highly paid. We sold the manuscripts of our works at a high price and still receive royalties for the publication, which does not prevent us from selling them at crazy prices, etc.

Here is the response we made to the person who sent us these details:


"My dear Sir, I laughed a lot about the millions that Abbe V ... so generously gratifies me with; all the better that I was far from suspecting all that good fortune. The report given to the Parisian Society before receiving your letter, published above, unfortunately reduces such an illusion to a much lesser golden reality. As a matter of fact, that is not the only inaccuracy in that amazing story. To begin with I have never lived in Lyon so I do not see how someone could have gotten to know me poor over there; as for my four-horse carriage I am sorry to say that it is reduced to the nags of a cab that I only take five or six times a year for economy. It is true that before the railways I made several trips by stagecoach. It is certainly a misunderstanding. But I forget that at that time I was not involved with Spiritism yet and it is to Spiritism that, according to the vicar, I owe my immense fortune. So where have they found all that story if not in the arsenal of slander? It would be all more plausible if taken into account the nature of the population where these rumors propagate.

We should agree that one must be running very short of good reasons to be reduced to such ridiculous expedients to discredit Spiritism. The vicar does not realize that it all goes right against his very objective because if Spiritism had enriched us at this point it would be the same to admit that it is immensely spread and, if it is spread, it is because people like it. Hence what he wanted to use against the person works to the benefit of the doctrine.

So try to make believe that a doctrine capable of providing millions in a few years to its promoter is utopia, a shallow idea! Such a result would be a true miracle because it is unprecedented that a philosophical theory has ever been a source of fortune. Generally, as with the inventions, one consumes the little that is available, and that is more or less my case. If you knew how much this work does cost me. I have vowed and sacrificed taking all my waking, resting time and health to do so. But my principal is to keep it to myself. It takes much personal discipline not to shout about it from the rooftops. To be impartial the Church’s vicar should have made compared what financial resources the convents subtract from the Church’s faithful. Spiritism, in turn, measures its impact on the good it does and the number of people in suffering that it consoles and not the money that it accumulates.


With a princely status it goes without saying that an elegant table is needed. What would Mr. Vicar say if he saw my most sumptuous meal, the one with which I receive my friends? He would find them very meager when compared to the elaborate meals of certain dignitaries of the Church who would reject them as the most austere fasting. Since he ignores it, I will tell him to spare the comparison that Spiritism is not, and cannot be, a means of enrichment; that Spiritism repudiates any speculation that might involve its name; that it teaches to give little importance to material means and to be happy with the necessary and do not seek superfluous happiness that is not the path to heavens; that if everyone were Spiritists there would not be envy, jealousy and mutual exploitation; there would be no slander or calumny against the neighbor since Spiritism teaches this maxim from Jesus: “Do to others what you would have others do to you.” It is to practice that maxim that I do not spell out the full name of Mr. Vicar… Spiritism also teaches that the wealth is a deposit that one will have to report and that the rich will be judged in accordance to the application given to the fortune. If I had only the one thing attributed to me and if I owed that mainly to Spiritism, I would betray my principles if I used that attribution to the satisfaction of pride and enjoyment of worldly pleasures. Instead I use it to serve the cause that I have embraced.

But what would skeptics say about your works? Haven’t you sold the manuscripts dearly? Just a moment! This is an invasion of privacy and I do not give anybody the right to interfere. I will always honor my business, no matter the price of what sacrifices and what privations. I do not owe anything to anyone, while many owe me, otherwise I would have more than twice as much what I have now hence instead of climbing the ladder of fortune I have descended.

So let us make it clear that I do not have to disclose my business to anyone. However, just to give a little satisfaction to some curious people that have nothing better to do than to meddle in what does not concern them, I will say that if I had sold my manuscripts I would have simply exercised the right of every worker to sell the product of their labor. But I have not sold a single one. Some I have even purely and simply given away in the interest of the cause and those are sold as they wish and without the return of a single penny to me. Only manuscripts of well-known books are sold at higher prices whose profits are guaranteed in anticipation but there aren’t complacent enough publishers who would pay dearly for books of hypothetical returns. In such cases they do not even want to take the risk of printing. From that point of view a book of philosophical nature has a hundred times less value that certain novels signed by certain names.

To give you an idea of my great profits I tell you that the first edition of The Spirits’ Book that I took the risk and costs of publication, since there was no interested editor, after having paid the bills and sold out the edition, having some volumes sold and others donated, it yielded about five hundred francs that can be demonstrated by documentation. I do not know of any kind of carriage that can be bought by that price.

Given my limited resources and still not having the millions attributed to myself and before the difficulties to face the costs of all my publications, and especially the attention required by sales, I temporarily transferred the publication rights with a copyright calculated as a few cents per unit sold. I did this so that I became totally foreign to distribution details and the transactions that the intermediaries can carry out with the batches sent by the publishers to their representatives. As such, I deny any knowledge of these transactions and being obliged, as far as I am concerned, to render accounts to the publishers, at a stipulated value, of all books withdrawn, sold or considered lost.

As for the proceeds from the sales of my books, I do not have to report or say how I use them. I certainly have every right to dispose of that as I please. However nobody knows if that product has a specific destination that cannot be diverted. This will be known later because if someone has an interest in writing my bibliography then the facts above will have to be accounted for and truth completely restored. That is why I will leave behind detailed accounting records of all my businesses and relationships, especially with respect to Spiritism, in order to spare future storytellers the blunders in which they often fall on the basis of hearsay of unscrupulous people interested in altering the truth, to whom I leave the pleasure of gossiping at will so that their ill- faith becomes evident later.

I would not be personally concerned in the least if from now on my name were not intimately linked to the history of Spiritism. Regarding my contracts, I naturally possess the most authentic documents that one can have. I was able to follow the doctrine in all of its phases of development, observe all the events and foresee the consequences. For everyone who studies this movement, the latest evidence is that Spiritism will mark a phase of humanity; it is then necessary that later on people may know the vicissitudes it had to endure, the obstacles it encountered, the enemies that tried to annihilate it and the weapons that were used to fight it. It is also important to know how Spiritism triumphed and who were those that through their enthusiasm, dedication and sacrifice have effectively contributed to its propagation. There will be persons whose names and deeds deserve to be reported for the acknowledgement of posterity. I have taken upon myself the duty of registering in my own archives. This story, understandably, cannot appear anytime soon; Spiritism has just been born and the most interesting phases of its establishment have not been fulfilled yet. It might as well be, however, that among the Saul of today’s Spiritism there would later be the St. Paul. Hopefully we will not have to register Judas.

Such are, my dear Sir, my thoughts suggested by the strange rumors that came to me; if I have refuted them I did not do it for the Spiritists of your city who know well where they stand on my behalf and were able to judge when I visited with you; they can tell if they detected in me personally the tastes and manners of a great lord. So I do that on behalf of those who do not know me and that could be misled by this way more lighthearted way of making history. If Abbe V ... just wants to tell the truth I am ready to verbally provide him with all necessary explanations for his enlightenment.

All yours,

Allan Kardec


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