The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1862

“Imagine my surprise when I recognized the theory of Fourier about the soul, the future life, the mission of the human being in this current life and the reincarnation of the souls in the Spiritist Doctrine from which I had no idea at all. It says:”

“The human being is attached to the planet. He lives his life and remains here even after death.”

“The human being lives two existences: the current life that Fourier compares to the sleep and the other life that he calls aromatic, the other life that is in a word the wakening. The soul travels alternately from one to the other and periodically returns to reincarnate in the present life.”

“In the present life the soul has no recollection of previous lives but recovers that in the aromatic life and sees all the preceding lives. The punishment in the aromatic life is the fear that the soul has of incarnating in the body of a miserable person. The reason being, says Fourier, the fact that many beggars that knock on the doors of castles asking for a charitable hand were their very owners in the past, adding: “If people were really convinced of the whole truthfulness of what I am exposing to the world they would work for everybody’s happiness.”

“You can see through this short excerpt, my dear friend, how much Spiritism is close to the doctrine of Fourier and that since I belong to a Phalanstery it would not be difficult to turn me into a follower of Spiritism.”

It is impossible to be more explicit about the chapter of reincarnation. It is not only a vague idea of successive existences in several worlds. It is in this world that people are reborn to depurate and atone.

We find everything there: the interchangeability between the spiritual life that he calls aromatic and the corporeal one; the momentary obliviousness about the previous lives during this life and the recollection of the past during the spiritual life and the atonement through the vicissitudes of life.

His picture of the miserable ones that come to beg at the doors of the castles that were theirs in preceding existences seems to be based on the teaching of the Spirits.

Why then those who violently attack the doctrine of reincarnation today said nothing when Fourier made it one of the keystones of his theory?

The reason being is that to them such a theory seemed to be confined to the Phalanstery whilst today it goes around the world in addition to other understandable reasons that we do not need to discuss.

As a matter of fact, he was not the only one to have the intuition of this law of nature. The germ of this idea is found in a number of modern writings. Mr. Louis Jourdan, editor of the Siècle, formulated that unequivocally in his remarkable little book entitled Prères de Ludovic, published for the first time in 1849 hence before the advent of Spiritism and it is well-known that the book is not about fiction but about conviction.

One can find in the book, among other things:

“For me, I confess, I believe, but I believe strongly, passionately as one used to believe in former times that each and every one of us is preparing their future transformation in the same way that our present existence is the result of previous ones.”

The book is thoroughly based on this principle.


Let us now face the issue from another point of view in order to answer a question that has been addressed to us several times about it.

Some people consider the doctrine of reincarnation contrary to the dogmas of the Church and consequently concluding that therefore it does not exist. What can one say?

The answer is very simple. Reincarnation is not a system that depends on people adopting it or not like one does to a political, economic or social system. If it does exist then it is in nature; it is a law inherent to humanity like eating, drinking and sleeping; it is an alternative of the life of the soul like the sleep and the vigil state are alternatives to the life of the body. If it is a law of nature, there is no favorable opinion that can make it prevail as there is no contrary opinion that can impede its existence.

Earth does not turn around the Sun because we believe that it does but because the planet obeys a law and the anathema that were cast against such a law did not preclude it from turning. The same happens to reincarnation. It is not the opinion of a few persons that will block them from being reborn if they have to be.

Having established that the reincarnation is a law of nature let us suppose that it cannot conciliate with a given dogma. We then need to know if reason is with the dogma or with the law. Who else but God is the creator of a natural law? In this case I say that it is not the law that opposes the dogma but it is the dogma that counters the law since any law of nature precedes the dogma and human beings reincarnated before the dogma was established.

If there was an absolute incompatibility between a dogma and a law of nature this would be a proof that the dogma comes from humans who did not know the law since God could not contradict Himself by undoing on one side what was done on the other. The act of sustaining such incompatibility is the same as processing the dogma. Does it mean that the dogma is false? No but that it is susceptible to interpretations as the Genesis was interpreted when people then realized that the six days of creation could not conciliate with the law of formation of the planet. Religion will benefit from this since there will be less unbelievers.

The open question is to know if the law of reincarnation is true or not. To the Spiritists there are thousands of proofs against one that is useless to repeat here. I will only say this that Spiritism demonstrates that the plurality of the existences is not only possible but also necessary and indispensable finding its proof in an innumerable multitude of moral, psychological and anthropological phenomena, letting alone the revelation from the Spirits.

Those phenomena are effects that have a cause. By seeking the cause, we find it in reincarnation brought to evidence by the observation of those phenomena like the presence of the Sun is brought to evidence by daylight although hidden by clouds. To demonstrate that this law is wrong or that it does not exist it would be necessary to explain better and through other means everything that is explained by that law and this is something that has not been done by anybody yet.

If someone had announced that it was possible to communicate with someone else fifty miles away before the discovery of the properties of electricity there would be plenty of scientists that would prove it to be physically impossible since they would not know other laws. It was then necessary to have the revelation of a new force. That is the case with reincarnation. It is a new law that sheds light upon a number of obscure issues and that will profoundly modify the beliefs when it is known.

Thus it is not the opinion of a few persons that demonstrate the existence of that law. It is the facts. If we invoke its testimony is to demonstrate that such law had been foreseen and suspected by others before the advent of Spiritism that instead of being its inventor just developed the law and deduced its consequences.