Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1868

Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1868

January

Looking Back

The year 1867 had been announced as having to be particularly fruitful for Spiritism, and this forecast was fully realized. It has seen several books published, that without bearing its name, popularize its principles, and among which we will recall Mirette, by Mr. Sauvage; The novel of the future, by Mr. Bonnemère; God in nature, by Mr. Camille Flammarion; The Reason for Spiritism, by Judge Bonnamy is an event in the archives of the doctrine, because the flag is there, highly and courageously raised by a man whose name, rightly esteemed and considered, is an authority, at the same time that his work is a protest against the epithets with which criticism generally gratifies the followers of the idea. The Spiritists have all appreciated this book, as it deserves, and they have understood its significance. It is an authoritative response to certain attacks; thus, we think that they will consider it a duty to propagate it in the interest of the doctrine.



If the year only had these results, we should be congratulated; but it produced more effective ones. The number of officially known societies or groups has not noticeably increased, it is true; it has rather diminished, because of the intrigues stirred to undermine them, by introducing elements of dissolution; but, on the other hand, the number of private or family gatherings has increased dramatically.



It is also well-known to everyone, and by the admission of our adversaries, that the Spiritist ideas have gained considerable ground, as attested by the author of the work that we report below. They infiltrate through a multitude of openings; everything contributes to that; things that seemed most foreign to them, at first sight, are how these ideas come to light. This is because Spiritism touches on such many issues, that it is very difficult to tackle anything without seeing the emergence of a Spiritist thought, so much so that even in refractory circles, these ideas hatch in one form or another, like those colorful plants that grow through stones. And as in these circles Spiritism is generally rejected, out of a spirit of prevention, without knowing what it is saying, it is not surprising that, when the Spiritist thoughts appear there, they are not recognized, and then they are acclaimed because they find them good, without suspecting that it is Spiritism.



Contemporary literature, large or small, serious, or otherwise, sows these ideas in profusion; it is enameled with it, and all that is missing is the name. If one brought together all the Spiritist thoughts that run the world, one would constitute the complete Spiritism. This is a considerable fact, and one of the most characteristic of the year that has just passed. It proves that each of us possesses some elements of it, in the state of intuition, and that between its antagonists and itself, there is usually only a question of words. Those that repel it with full knowledge of cause are those that have an interest in fighting it.



But then, how to get to make it known, to overcome these prejudices? This is the work of time. It is necessary that the circumstances lead to that naturally, and one can count on the Spirits for that, who know how to bring them to birth at the appropriate time. These circumstances are particular or general. The former act on individuals and the others on the masses. The latter, by their repercussion, have the effect of mines that remove some fragments of the rock, with each explosion.



Let each Spiritist work on his own, without being discouraged by the little importance of the result obtained individually and think that, by accumulating grains of sand, we form a mountain.



Among the material facts that have been reported this year, the healings of Zouave Jacob hold the first rank; they had an impact that everyone knows; and although Spiritism only figured incidentally, general attention was, nonetheless, keenly drawn to one of the most serious phenomena that is directly connected. These facts, produced in common conditions, without a mystical apparatus, not by a single individual but by several, have by that very fact, lost the miraculous character that had been attributed to them up until now; they have returned, like so many others, to the domain of the natural phenomena. Among those that rejected them as miracles, many became less absolute in the denial of the fact, and admitted their possibility, as the result of a unknown law of nature; it was a first step on a path fruitful in consequences, and more than one skeptic was shaken. Admittedly, not everyone was convinced, but there was a lot of talk; this resulted in a great number of people having a deep impression that much more food for thought than one thinks; they are seeds that, if they do not yield an abundant harvest immediately, are not lost for the future.



Mr. Jacob remains drawn back in absolute terms; we do not know the reasons for his abstention and whether he should resume his sessions. If there is intermittence in his faculty, as often happens in similar cases, it would be a proof that it does not hold exclusively to his person, and that there is something, an independent will outside the individual.



But one will say, why such a suspension, if the production of these phenomena was an advantage to the doctrine? Things having been carried out with a wisdom that has not wavered so far, it must be assumed that those leading the movement have deemed the effect sufficient for the moment, and that it was useful to give some break to the effervescence; but the idea has been launched, and we can be sure that it will not remain a dead letter.



In short, as we can see, the year has been a good one for Spiritism; its phalanxes recruited serious men whose opinion is held for something, in a certain world. Our correspondence indicates, from almost everywhere, a general movement of opinion towards these ideas, and oddly enough in this positive century, those that gain most ground are the philosophical ideas, much more than the material facts of manifestation that many people still insist on rejecting. So, given the larger number, the best way to proselytize is to start with philosophy, and that is understandable. Being the fundamental ideas latent in most, it suffices to awaken them; we understand them because we have the seeds of them in ourselves, while the facts, to be accepted and understood, demand a study and observations that many do not want to bother to carry out.



Also, the quackery that seized the facts to exploit them for its profit, discredited them in the opinion of certain people, by giving space to criticism; this could not be the case with philosophy, that was not so easy to counterfeit, and that, moreover, is not an exploitable material.



Quackery, by its nature, is turbulent and intriguing, otherwise it would not be quackery. Critics, who generally do not care to go to the bottom of the well to seek the truth, have seen quackery all over, striving to give it the label of Spiritism; hence, a prevention that fades away against this word, as true Spiritism is better known, for there is no one who, having studied it seriously, confuses it with the grotesque Spiritism of fantasy, that lightheartedness or malice try to substitute. It is a reaction in this sense that has presented itself in recent times.



The principles that propagate more easily are those of the plurality of inhabited worlds and the plurality of existences, or reincarnation; the first can be considered as admitted without dispute by science and by unanimous assent, even in the materialist camp; the second is in the state of intuition in a multitude of individuals in whom it is an innate belief; it finds many sympathies, as a rational principle of philosophy, even outside Spiritism. It is an idea that smiles to many nonbelievers because they immediately find in it the solution of difficulties that had led them to doubt. Also, this belief tends to popularize more and more. But for anyone who thinks about it, these two principles have forced consequences that lead directly to Spiritism. We can, therefore, look at the progress of these ideas as a first step towards the doctrine since they are an integral part of it.



The press, that without knowing it, undoubtedly suffers the influence of the diffusion of the Spiritist ideas, because they even spread in its center, abstains in general, if not out of sympathy, at least out of prudence; it is already noticeable that speaking of the Davenports is not tasteful any more. One would even say that it avoids talking about questions of Spiritualism; if, from time to time, it launches a few spikes against its followers, they are like the last charges lost in a bouquet of fireworks; but there is no longer that rolling fire of invectives that used to hear, barely two years ago. Although it made almost as much noise as Mr. Jacob, regarding the Davenports, its language was quite different, and it should be noted that the name of Spiritism figured only very incidentally in the controversy.



In examining the situation, we must not only consider the great ostensible movements, but we must also, above all, consider the intimate state of opinion and the causes that may influence it. As we have said elsewhere, if we observe attentively what is happening in the world, we will recognize that a host of facts, apparently foreign to Spiritism, seem to come on purpose to clear its way. It is in all the circumstances that we must look for the real signs of progress. From this point of view, the situation is, therefore, as satisfactory as one can wish. Should we conclude that the opposition is disarmed, and that things will now go smoothly? Let us refrain from believing it and falling asleep in a deceptive security. The future of Spiritism is unquestionably assured, and one would have to be blind to doubt it; but its worst days have not passed; it has not yet received the baptism that blesses all the great ideas. The Spirits are unanimous in warning us against an inevitable but necessary struggle, in order to prove its invulnerability and its power; it will come out bigger and stronger; it is only then that it will conquer its place in the world, for those who will want to overthrow it will have prepared its triumph. May the sincere and devoted Spiritists strengthen themselves through union and merge into a holy communion of thoughts. Let us remember the parable of the ten virgins and let us be careful not to be caught off guard.



We take this opportunity to express our gratitude to our Spiritist brothers who, as in previous years, on the renewal of subscriptions to the Spiritist Review, give us new testimonies of their affectionate sympathy; we are happy with the pledges of their dedication to the sacred cause that we all defend, and that is that of humanity and progress. To those who tell us: courage! we say that we will never back down from any of the necessities of our position, however harsh they may be. May they count on us as we count on them, in finding in them, on the day of victory, the soldiers of the day before, and not the soldiers of the next day.

Spiritism before history and before the Church, its origin, its nature, its certainty, its dangers

By Abbot Poussin, Professor at the Nice Seminary

This work is a refutation of Spiritism from a religious point of view; it is, without a doubt, one of the most complete and best done that we know. It is written with moderation and decorum and is not soiled by the coarse epithets to which most of the controversialists of the same party have accustomed us; there, no furious declarations, no outrageous personalisms; it is the very principle that is being discussed. We may not agree with the author, find that the conclusions he draws from his premises are of questionable logic; say that after having demonstrated, for example, with the proofs in hand, that the sun shines at noon, he is wrong to conclude that it must be night, but we will not reproach him for the lack of civility in the form.



The first part of the work is devoted to the history of Spiritism, in antiquity and in the Middle Ages; this part is rich in documents drawn from sacred and secular authors, attesting to laborious research and serious study. It is a job that we intended to do one day, and we are happy that Father Poussin spared us this trouble.



In the second part, entitled: Doctrinal Part, the author, discussing the facts he has just cited, including current facts, concludes, from the infallibility of the Church and his own arguments, that all magnetic and Spiritist phenomena are the work of the devil. It is an opinion like any other, and respectable when it is sincere. Now, we believe in the sincerity of Mr. Poussin's convictions, although we do not have the honor of knowing him. What we can reproach him for is invoking only the opinion of known opponents of Spiritism, in favor of his thesis, as well as the doctrines and allegations that he disavows. One would seek in vain in this book any mention to the fundamental works, nor a direct refutation to the answers that were given to the contradictory allegations. In short, he does not discuss the doctrine properly called; he does not take their hand-to-hand arguments to crush them under the weight of a more rigorous logic.


We can, moreover, find it strange that, in order to combat Spiritism, Father Poussin leans on the opinion of men known by their materialistic ideas, such as Messrs. Littré and Figuier; he especially quoted the latter, who stood out more by his contradictions than by his logic. These gentlemen, by fighting the principle of Spiritism, by denying the cause of the psychic phenomena, consequently, denying the principle of spirituality; they therefore undermine the basis of religion for which they do not have great sympathy, as we know. By invoking their opinion, the choice is not a fortunate one; one could even say that it is clumsy, because it excites the faithful to read writings that are nothing orthodox. Seeing him draw from such sources, one might think that he did not judge the others sufficiently preponderant.



Father Poussin does not dispute any of the Spiritist phenomena; he virtually proves their existence by the authentic facts that he cites, and that he draws indifferently from sacred as well as from pagan history. By bringing them together, one cannot help it by recognize their analogy; Now, in good logic, from the similarity of effects one must conclude that the causes are similar. However, Mr. Poussin concludes that the same facts are miraculous and of divine source in some cases, and diabolic in others.



Men who profess the same beliefs as Mr. Figuier also have two opinions on these same facts: they deny them outright and attribute them to juggling; as for those that are proven, they endeavor to relate them only to the laws of matter. Ask them what they think of the miracles of Christ: they will tell you that they are legendary facts, tales made up for the sake of the cause, or the products of excited and delirious imaginations.



Spiritism, it is true, does not recognize a supernatural character in psychic phenomena; it explains them by the faculties and attributes of the soul, and since the soul is in nature, it considers them as natural effects, produced by virtue of special laws, hitherto unknown, and that Spiritism reveals. These phenomena, being accomplished before our eyes, under identical conditions, accompanied by the same circumstances, and through the intervention of individuals who have nothing exceptional, it concludes that there is the possibility of those that have happened in earlier times, and this by the same natural cause.



Spiritism is not addressed to people who are convinced of the existence of these phenomena, and who are perfectly free to see miracles in them, if that is their opinion, but to those who deny them, precisely because of the miraculous nature that they want to give them. By proving that these facts are supernatural only in appearance, it makes them accepted by those who rejected them. The Spiritists were overwhelmingly recruited from among the unbelievers, and yet today there is not a single one that denies the facts accomplished by Christ; now, which is better to believe in the existence of these facts, without the supernatural, or not to believe in them at all? Aren’t those who admit them, in any capacity, closer to you than those who reject them completely? As soon as the fact is admitted, it only remains to prove its miraculous source, that should be easier, if this source is real, than when the fact itself is contested.



Mr. Poussin, to fight Spiritism, relying on the authority of those that reject even the spiritual principle, would he be one of those who claim that absolute disbelief is preferable to the faith acquired by Spiritism?



We quote in full the preface to Mr. Poussin's book, that we will follow with some thoughts:



“Spiritism, it must be admitted, involves the whole of society as in an immense network, and through its prophets, its oracles, its books and its journalism, strives to undermine the Catholic Church. If he has done us the service of overturning the materialist theories of the eighteenth century, it gives us, in exchange, a new revelation, that undermines from the base the whole edifice of the Christian revelation. And yet, by a strange phenomenon, or better, because of ignorance and the fascination aroused by curiosity, how many Catholics play with Spiritism every day, without worrying about its dangers! It is quite true that the spirits are still divided on the essence and even on the reality of Spiritism, and it is probably because of these uncertainties, that the majority believes in being able to form their own conscience and to use Spiritism as a curious amusement. Nevertheless, deep in timorous and delicate souls, there is great anxiety. How many times have we not heard these never-ending questions: "tell us the truth: what is Spiritism? What is its origin? Do you believe in this genealogy that would like to link the phenomena of Spiritism to ancient magic? Do you admit the weird facts of magnetism and turntables? Do you believe in the intervention of Spirits and in the evocation of souls, in the role of angels or demons? Is it allowed to question the turntables, to consult the Spiritists?



What do theologians and bishops think about all these questions? ... Has the Roman Church made any decisions, etc., etc.? These questions, that still ring in our ears, inspired the thought of this book, that aims to answer them all, within the limits of our forces. Also, to be more sure and more convincing, we never affirm anything, without a serious authority, and do not decide anything that the bishops and Rome have not decided. Among those who have specially studied these subjects, some reject outright all the extraordinary facts that Spiritism attributes to itself. Others, while devoting a large part to hallucinations and charlatanism, recognize that it is impossible not to admit certain inexplicable and unexplained phenomena, as irreconcilable with the general teachings of the natural sciences, as disconcerting to human reason; however, they seek to interpret them, either by certain mysterious laws of physiology, or by the intervention of the great soul of nature, of which ours is only an emanation, etc.



Several Catholic writers, forced to admit the facts, finding the natural solution sometimes impossible and the absurd pantheist explanation, do not hesitate to recognize, in certain facts of Spiritism, the direct intervention of the devil. For these, Spiritism is only the continuation of this pagan magic that appears in all history, since the magicians of the Pharaoh, the pythoness of Endor, the oracles of Delphi, the prophecies of sibyls and diviners, to the diabolic possessions of the Gospel and to the extraordinary and observed phenomena of contemporary magnetism.


The Church has not pronounced on speculative discussions; it abandons the historical question of the origins of Spiritism and the psychological question of its mysterious agents, to the futile dispute of men. Serious theologians, bishops and private doctors have supported these latter opinions; officially, Rome neither approves nor criticizes them. But if the Church has kept cautiously silent on the theories, she has raised her voice in practical matters, and in the presence of uncertainties of reason, she signals dangers to conscience. A curious science and even innocent in itself can, because of frequent abuses, become a source of perils; Rome also condemned, as dangerous for morals, certain practices and certain abuses of magnetism, of which the Spiritists themselves do not conceal the serious inconveniences. What is more, some bishops have thought it their duty to prohibit their diocesans, and in any event, as superstitious and dangerous for morals and for the faith, not only the abuses of magnetism, but the use of interrogating the turning tables.



For us, in the speculative question, put in the presence of those who see the demon everywhere and those who see him nowhere, we wanted, by keeping our distance from the two pitfalls, to study the historical origins of Spiritism, to examine the certainty of the facts and to impartially discuss the psychological and pantheistic systems by which they want to interpret everything. Obviously, when we refute several of these systems, we do not pretend to impose our own thoughts on anyone, although the authorities on which we rely seem to us to be of the highest seriousness. Separating from free opinions all that is of faith, such as the existence of angels and demons, demonic possessions and obsessions of the Gospel, the legitimacy and power of exorcisms in the Church, etc., we leave to everyone the right, not to deny the voluntary trade between men and the devil, that would be rash, says Father Perronne, and would lead to historical pyrrhonism; but we recognize that every Catholic has the right to not see in Spiritism the intervention of the devil, if our arguments seem more specious than solid, and if reason and a more careful study of the facts prove the opposite.



As to the practical question, we do not recognize our right to absolve what Rome condemns; and if a few souls still hesitated, we would simply refer them to Roman decisions, to the episcopal prohibitions, and even to the theological decisions that we reproduce in their entirety.



The plan of this book is quite simple: the first part, or historical part, after providing the teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the tradition of all peoples, on the existence and the role of the Spirits, it initiates us in the most important facts of Spiritism or magic, from the origin of the world to the present day.



The second, or doctrinal part, exposes and discusses the various imagined systems to discover the true agent of Spiritism; after having specified, as best we can, the teaching of the Catholic theology, on the general intervention of the Spirits, and given free rein to free opinions on the mysterious agent of modern magic, we point out to the faithful the dangers of Spiritism to the faith, to manners and even to health or life.



May these pages, by showing the peril, complete the good that others have started! … Needless to add that, docile children of the Church, we condemn in advance everything that Rome could disapprove.”



Father Poussin recognizes two things: (1) that Spiritism involves, as in an immense network, the whole of society; (2) that it has rendered the Church the service of overturning the materialist theories of the eighteenth century. Let us see what consequences emerge from these two facts.



As we have said, the majority of followers of Spiritism are recruited among the unbelievers; indeed, ask the supporters what they believed in before being Spiritists; nine-tenth of them will answer that they believed in nothing, or at least that they doubted everything; to them, the existence of the soul was a hypothesis, desirable no doubt, but uncertain; the future life was a chimera; Christ was a myth or at most a philosopher; God, if he existed, had to be unjust, cruel and partial, reason why they liked so much to believe that he did not exist.



Today they believe, and their faith is unshakeable, because it is based on evidence and demonstration, and satisfies their reason; the future is no longer a hope, but a certainty, because they see the spiritual life manifesting itself before their eyes; they do not doubt it any more than they doubt the sunrise. It is true that they do not believe in demons, nor in the eternal flames of hell, but on the other hand they firmly believe in a supremely just, good and merciful God; they do not believe that evil comes from him, who is the source of all good, nor from demons, but from man's own imperfections; that if man reforms himself, evil will no longer exist; and that to conquer oneself is to conquer the demon; such is the faith of the Spiritists, and the proof of its power is that they strive to become better, to tame their evil inclinations, and to put into practice the maxims of Christ, seeing all men as brothers, without regard to races, castes, or sects, forgiving their enemies, paying back evil with good, following the example of the divine model.



Who should Spiritism have the easiest access to? It is not on those who had faith and for whom this faith was sufficient, who asked for nothing and needed nothing; but on those who lacked faith. Like Christ, it went to the sick and not to the healthy; to those who are hungry and not to those who are full; now, the sick are the ones who are tortured by the anguish of doubt and disbelief.



And what has Spiritism done to entice them? Has it used a lot of advertising? Has it gone preaching the doctrine in public places? Was it by violating the consciences? Not at all, for these means are those of weakness, and if it had used them, it would have shown that it doubted its moral power. Its invariable rule, according to the law of charity taught by Christ, is not to constrain anyone, to respect all convictions; it contented himself with stating its principles, developing in its writings the bases on which its beliefs are based, allowing to come those that wished so; if many have come, it is because it has suited many, and many have found in it what they had not found elsewhere. As it mainly recruited among the unbelievers, if it embraced the world in a few years, this proves that the unbelievers, and those who are not satisfied with what they are given, are numerous, because one is only attracted to something that is better than what one has. We have said it a hundred times: Do they want to fight Spiritism? May they give something better than it does.


You recognize, Mr. Abbot, that Spiritism has rendered the Church the service of overturning the materialist theories; it is a great result, no doubt, and of which it prides itself; but how did it get it? Precisely with the help of those means that you call diabolical, with the material proofs that it gives of the soul and of the future life; it is with the manifestations of the Spirits that it confused skepticism, and that it will triumph definitively. And you say that this service is the work of Satan? But then you shouldn't blame him so much, since he himself destroys the barrier that held back those he had dominated. Remember Christ's response to the Pharisees, who spoke the same language to him, accusing him of healing the sick and casting out demons through demons. Remember also the words of Mgr. Frayssinous, bishop of Hermopolis, on this subject, in his lectures on religion: “Certainly, a demon who would seek to destroy the reign of vice, in order to establish that of virtue, would be a strange demon, for he would destroy himself."



If this result obtained by Spiritism is the work of Satan, how is it that the Church gave him the credit for it and that she did not obtain it herself; that she let disbelief pervade society? It was not, however, the means of action that she lacked; doesn’t she have immense staff and material resources? The sermons, from the capitals to the smallest villages? The pressure it exerts on the consciences, by confession? The horror of the eternal punishments? The religious instruction that follows the child during the whole course of their education? The prestige of the worshiping ceremonies and their seniority? How is it that a doctrine that has barely emerged, that has no priests, no temples, no worship, no preaching; that has been fought to the limit by the Church, calumniated, persecuted as were the first Christians, has brought, in such a short time, to the faith and to the belief in immortality, such a great number of unbelievers? It was not very difficult, however, since most people only needed to read a few books to see their doubts vanish.



Draw from there all the consequences you like; but agree that if this is the work of the devil, he did what you yourselves could not do, and that he did your work.



What testifies against Spiritism, you will undoubtedly say, is that it does not use the same arguments to convince as you do, and that if it triumphs over incredulity, it does not completely lead to you.



But Spiritism does not pretend to side with you or with anyone else; it does its business, and as it sees fit. In good faith, do you believe that if incredulity were resistant to your arguments, Spiritism would have succeeded by using them? If one doctor does not cure a sick person with a remedy, will another doctor cure him with the same remedy?



Spiritism does not seek to bring unbelievers back into the absolute fold of Catholicism any more than into that of any other cult. By making them accept the bases common to all religions, it destroys the main obstacle, and makes them go halfway; it is up to each one to do the rest, as far as it is concerned; those that fail give clear evidence of helplessness.



From the moment when the Church recognizes the existence of all the facts of manifestation on which Spiritism is based; when she claim them for herself, as divine miracles; that there is between the facts that take place in the two camps a complete analogy regarding the effects, an analogy that Mr. Abbot Poussin demonstrates, with the latest evidence and supporting documents, by bringing them up, so that everything boils down to knowing whether it is God who acts on one side and the devil on the other; it is a question of person; now, when two people do exactly the same thing, we conclude that they are both equally powerful; Mr. Poussin's whole argument thus ends in demonstrating that the devil is as powerful as God.



It is one of two things, or the effects are identical, or they are not; if they are identical, it is because they come from the same cause, or from two equivalent causes; if they are not, show how they are different. Is it in the results? But then the comparison would be to the advantage of Spiritism since it brings back to God those who did not believe in him.



Be it, therefore, understood, by the formal decision of the competent authorities, that the Spirits who manifest themselves can only be demons. Admit, however, Mr. Abbot, that if these same Spirits, instead of contradicting the Church on a few points, would have been of her opinion in everything, if they had come to support all her temporal and spiritual pretensions, to approve, without restriction, everything what she says and everything she does, she wouldn't call them demons, but angelic Spirits.



Father Poussin wrote his book with a view, he said, to protect the faithful against the dangers that their faith can run through the study of Spiritism. It is showing little confidence in the solidity of the foundations on which this faith is seated, since it can be shaken so easily. Spiritism does not have the same fear. Everything that has been said and done against it has not made it lose an inch of ground, since it is gained every day, and yet talent has not been lacking in more than one of its opponents. The struggles that have been waged against it, far from weakening, have strengthened Spiritism; they have powerfully contributed to spreading it more quickly than it would otherwise have done; so that this network, that covered the whole society in a few years, is largely the work of its antagonists. Without any of the material means of action that leads to success in this world, it has only spread through the power of the idea. Since the arguments with which it was fought against did not take it down, it is for the fact that they apparently believed that the arguments of Spiritism were less convincing than theirs. Do you want to have the secret of their faith? Here it is: that before believing, they understand.



Spiritism does not fear the light; it calls it onto its doctrines, because it wants to be accepted freely and by reason. Far from fearing for the faith of the Spiritist, through the reading of works that combat it, Spiritism said to them: read everything; pros and cons and make an informed choice. That is why we draw their attention to the work of Father Poussin.[1]



Below we give some fragments taken from the first part, without comments.



1. - Certain Catholics, even pious ones, have singular ideas in matters of faith, inevitable result of the ambient skepticism that, unsuspectingly, dominates them and of which they are subject to the deleterious influence. Talk about God, about Jesus Christ, and they accept everything right away; but if you try to tell them about the devil, and especially about the diabolic intervention in human life, they won't hear you anymore. Like our contemporary rationalists, they would readily take the demon for a myth or a fantastic personification of the genius of evil, the ecstasies of the saints for phenomena of catalepsy, and the diabolical possessions, even those of the Gospel, if not for epilepsy, at least for parables. Saint Thomas, in his precise language, responds in two words to this dangerous skepticism: "If the ease of seeing the demon speak," he says, "stems from the ignorance of the laws of nature and of credulity, the general tendency to not see his action anywhere, proceeds from irreligion and skepticism.” To deny the devil is to deny Christianity and deny God.



2. - The belief in the existence of Spirits and their intervention in the domain of our life, even more, in Spiritism itself or the practice of evoking Spirits, souls, angels or demons, go back to the highest antiquity, and are as old as the world. Let us first question the existence and the role of the Spirits, in our holy books, in the oldest and most undisputed history books, at the same time that they are the divine code of our faith. The demon seducing in a sensible form Adam and Eve in Paradise; the cherubim guarding its entrance; the angels that visit Abraham and discuss with him the question of Sodom's salvation; the angels insulted in the filthy city, snatching Lot from the fire; the angel of Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Tobit; the demon who kills the seven husbands of Sarah; the one who tortures the soul and the body of Job; the angel exterminating the Egyptians under Moses, and the Israelites under David; the invisible hand that writes Balthazar's sentence; the angel who wounds Heliodors; Gabriel, the angel of Incarnation, that announces Saint John and Jesus Christ; what else is needed to show both the existence of the Spirits, and the belief in the intervention of these Spirits, good or bad, in the acts of human life? God made the Spirits his ambassadors, says the Psammite; they are the ministers of God, says Saint Paul; Saint Peter teaches us that demons are always prowling around us like roaring lions; Saint Paul, tempted by them, tells us that the air is full of them.



3. - Note here that pagan traditions are in perfect harmony with Jewish and Christian traditions. The world, according to Thales and Pythagoras, is filled with spiritual substances. All these authors divide them into good and bad spirits; Empedocles says that demons are punished for the faults they have committed; Plato speaks of a prince, of an evil nature, in charge of these Spirits driven out by the gods and fallen from the sky, says Plutarch. All souls, adds Porphyry, whose principle is the soul of the universe, govern the great countries located under the moon: they are the good demons (Spirits); and, let us be quite convinced, they act only in the interest of their citizens, either in the care that they take of the animals, or that they watch over the fruits of the earth, or that they preside over the rains, moderate winds, and the good weather. We must also classify in the category of good demons those who, according to Plato, are responsible for bringing the prayers of men to the gods, and who bring to men the warnings, exhortations, and the oracles of the gods.



4. - The Arabs call the leader of the demons Iba; the Chaldeans fill the air with it; finally Confucius teaches absolutely the same doctrine: "How sublime are the virtues of the Spirits!" he said; “we look at them and we do not see them; we listen to them and we do not hear them; united to the substance of things, they cannot separate themselves from them; they are the cause that all men in the whole universe purify themselves and put on festive clothes to offer sacrifices; they are spread like the waves of the ocean above us, to our left and to our right."



The cult of the Manitous, widespread among the savages of America, is only the cult of the Spirits.



5. - The Fathers of the Church, for their part, admirably interpreted the doctrine of the Scriptures on the existence and intervention of the Spirits: “There is nothing in the visible world that is not governed and arranged by invisible creature,” says Saint Gregory. “Each living being has an angel in this world who rules it,” adds Saint Augustine. “The angels,” says Saint Gregory of Nazianz, are the ministers of the will of God; they have naturally and by communication an extraordinary force; they roam all places and are found everywhere, as much by the promptness with which they exercise their ministry as by the lightness of their nature. Some are responsible for watching over some part of the universe that is marked by God, on whom they depend in all things; others have the custody of towns and churches; they help us in all that we do good.”



6. - With respect to the fundamental reason, God immediately governs the universe; but relative to execution, there are things that he governs through other intermediaries.



7. - As for the evocation of the Spirits, souls, angels or demons, and all the practices of magic, of which Spiritism is only one form, more or less covered of charlatanism, it is a practice as old as the belief in the Spirits themselves.



8. - Saint Cyprian thus explains the mysteries of pagan Spiritism: “Demons,” he said, “enter the statues and the simulacra that man adores; it is they who animate the fibers of the victims, who inspire the hearts of diviners with their breath and who give a voice to oracles.” But how can they heal? “Lœdunt primo,” says Tertullian, “postque loedere desinunt, and curasse creduntur.” They hurt first, and stopping to hurt, they go by healers.



In India, it is the Lamas and the Brahmas who, from the earliest times, have the monopoly of these same evocations that are still going on. “They communicated heaven with earth, man with divinity, just like our current mediums. The origin of this privilege seems to go back to the very Genesis of the Hindus and to belong to the priestly caste of these peoples. Leaving the brain of Brahma, the priestly caste must remain closer to the nature of this creator god and enter more easily into communication with him, than the warrior caste, born from his arms, and even more so, than the caste of Outcast, formed from the dust of his feet."



9. - But the most interesting and authentic fact in history is without a doubt the evocation of Samuel,[2] through the medium of the Pythoness of Endor, that Saul questions: “Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in his own town of Ramah. Saul had expelled the mediums and enchanters from the land. The Philistines assembled and came and set up camp at Shunem, while Saul gathered all Israel and set up camp at Gilboa. When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart. He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. 7 Saul then said to his attendants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her.” “There is one in Endor,” they said.

So, Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men went to the woman. “Consult a spirit for me,” he said, “and bring up for me the one I name.” But the woman said to him, “Surely you know what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and enchanters from the land. Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death?” Saul swore to her by the Lord, “As surely as the Lord lives, you will not be punished for this.” Then the woman asked, “Whom shall I bring up for you?” “Bring up Samuel,” he said. When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice and said to Saul, “Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!”

The king said to her, “Don’t be afraid. What do you see?” The woman said, “I see a ghostly figure[a] coming up out of the earth.” “What does he look like?” he asked. “An old man wearing a robe is coming up,” she said. Then Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” “I am in great distress,” Saul said. “The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has departed from me. He no longer answers me, either by prophets or by dreams. So, I have called on you to tell me what to do.” Samuel said, “Why do you consult me now that the Lord has departed from you and become your enemy? The Lord has done what he predicted through me. The Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hands and given it to one of your neighbors to David. Because you did not obey the Lord or carry out his fierce wrath against the Amalekites, the Lord has done this to you today. The Lord will deliver both Israel and you into the hands of the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The Lord will also give the army of Israel into the hands of the Philistines.” Immediately Saul fell full length on the ground, filled with fear because of Samuel’s words. His strength was gone, for he had eaten nothing all that day and all that night. When the woman came to Saul and saw that he was greatly shaken, she said, “Look, your servant has obeyed you. I took my life in my hands and did what you told me to do”



“For forty years I have made a profession of evoking the dead in the service of foreigners," said Philo after this story; but I have never seen such an apparition. The Ecclesiasticus undertook to prove to us that it is a question of a true apparition and not of a hallucination of Saul: “Samuel, after his death, spoke to the king, said the Holy Spirit, predicted the end of his life, and coming out of the earth, he raised his voice to prophesy the ruin of his nation, because of his ungodliness. "

[1] One volume, in-12; price 3 francs. At Sarlit, bookseller, 25, rue Saint-Sulpice, Paris.




[2] I Samuel, 28 (T.N.)

The Aïssaoua or the convulsant of the rue le Peletier

Among the curiosities attracted to Paris by the Exhibition, one of the strangest is undoubtedly that of the exercises performed by Arabs of the Aïssaoua tribe. The Illustrated World, October 19th, 1867, gives a report with several drawings of the various scenes that the author of the article witnessed in Algeria. He begins his story like this:



“The Aïssaoua form a very widespread religious sect in Africa and especially in Algeria. We do not know their objective; their foundation goes back, some say, to Aïssa, the Prophet's favorite slave; others claim that their brotherhood was founded by Aïssa, devout and enlightened marabout of the sixteenth century. Be that as it may, the Aïssaoua maintain that their virtuous founder gives them the privilege of being insensitive to suffering."



We borrowed from the Petit Journal, September 30th, 1867, the account of one of the sessions that a company of Aïssaoua gave in Paris, during the Exhibition, first on the Champ-de-Mars theater, and in last in the hall of the athletic arena on rue Le Peletier. The scene undoubtedly does not have the imposing and terrible character of those that take place in mosques, surrounded by the prestige of religious ceremonies; but, apart from a few nuances of detail, the facts are the same and the results identical, and this is the essential point. Besides, since these things took place in the heart of Paris, before the eyes of a large audience, the story cannot be suspected of exaggeration. It is Mr. Timothée Trimm who speaks:



“I admit that I saw things last night that left the Davenport brothers and the supposed miracles of magnetism very far behind. The prodigies take place in a small room, not yet classified in the hierarchy of shows. It takes place in the athletic arena on rue Le Peletier. This is probably why there is so little mention of the wizards I am talking about today.



It is obvious that we are dealing with enlightened ones, because here you have twenty-six Arabs who squat down, and to begin with, use iron castanets to accompany their songs.



The first one to come was a young Arab, from the Muslim company of ballet, holding a hot coal. I do not suspect that it could be a charcoal with artificial heat, prepared intentionally, for I felt its heat when it went passed in front of me, and it burned the floor when it escaped the holding hands. The man took that scorching hot coal; he put it in his mouth with horrible screams, and he kept it there.



It is obvious to me that these barbarian Aïssaoua are real Mohammedan convulsant. In the last century, there were the convulsant of Paris. The Aïssaoua of rue Le Peletier have certainly found this curious discovery of pleasure, voluptuousness, and ecstasy in bodily mortification.”



Théophile Gautier, with his inimitable style, depicted the dances of these Arab convulsant. Here is what he said about it in the Moniteur, on July 29th:



The first dance interlude was accompanied by three bass drums and three oboes playing in minor mode a song of nostalgic melancholy, supported by one of those implacable rhythms that end up taking hold of you and making you dizzy. One would say a lamenting soul, that fate forces to march with an always equal step towards an unknown end, but that one anticipates painful.



Soon a dancer rose with that overwhelmed air that oriental dancers have, like a dead woman awakened by a magical enchantment, and by imperceptible movements of her feet approached the forestage; one of her companions joined her, and they began gradually coming to life under a measured pressure, those twists of the hips, waves of the torso, those swings of the arms, waving silk handkerchiefs striped with gold and that languidly voluptuous pantomime that forms the basis of the oriental dancers. Raising the leg for a pirouette or a throw would be, in the eyes of these dancers, the height of indecency.



At the end, the whole troupe joined in, and we noticed, among the others, a dancer of fierce and barbaric beauty, dressed in white “haïks” and wearing a sort of “chachia” surrounded by cords. Her black eyebrows joined with “surmeh” at the root of the nose, her mouth red as a pepper in the middle of her pale face, giving her a terrible and charming look; but the main attraction of the evening was the session of the Aïssaoua or disciples of Aïssa, to whom the master bestowed the singular privilege of devouring with freedom everything that was presented to them.



Here, to make people understand the eccentricity of our Algerian convulsant, I prefer my simple and artless prose to the elegant and learned phraseology of the master. So here is what I saw:



An Arab arrives; he is given a piece of glass to eat! He takes it, puts it in his mouth, and eats it’s the whole thing! ... We hear his teeth crushing the glass for several minutes. Blood appears on the surface of his quivering lips… he swallows the piece of crushed glass, dancing and with genuflection, to the obligatory sound of drums.



To this one succeeds an Arab who carries in his hand branches of the Barbarian fig tree, the cactus with long thorns. Each roughness of the foliage is like a sharp point. The Arab eats this spicy foliage, as we would eat a salad of lettuce or chicory.



When the deadly foliage of the cactus had been absorbed, there came an Arab dancing with a spear in his hand. He leaned this spear on his right eye while saying sacred verses that our eye doctors should understand well… and he took his entire right eye out of the orbit! … All those present immediately uttered a cry of terror!


Then came a man who had his body tightened with a rope… twenty men were pulling; he struggles, he feels the rope piercing his flesh; he laughs and sings during that agony.



Then there is another fanatic that has a Turkish saber brough before him. I ran my fingers over its thin, razor sharp blade. The man undoes his belt, shows his bare belly, and lies down on the blade; it is pushed there, but the blade respects his skin; the Arab conquered the steel.



I quietly checked the Aïssaoua who eat fire, while placing their bare feet on a blazing inferno. I went to see the blaze behind the scenes, and I certify that it is fiery and made of flaming wood. I have also examined the mouths of those called the fire eaters. The teeth are burned, the gums are charred, the palate seems to have hardened. But it is indeed fire, all these embers that they swallow, with terrible contortions, seeking to acclimatize in hell…, that passes for a hot country.



What impressed me the most about this strange exhibition of the convulsant of the rue Le Peletier, was the snake-eater. Imagine a man opening a basket. Ten menacing-headed snakes hiss out. The Arab kneads the snakes, annoys them, makes them wrap around his naked torso. Then he chooses the biggest and the liveliest, and with his teeth bites it and punctures its tail. So, the reptile contorts in the anguish of pain. It presents its irritated head to the Arab who puts his tongue at the height of the stinger; and suddenly, with a bite of his teeth, he cuts off the head of the serpent and eats it. We hear the body of the reptile cracking under the teeth of the savage, who shows through his bloodstained lips the beheaded monster.



And during this time, the melancholy music of the drums continues its sacred rhythm. And the snake-eater will fall, lost and stunned, at the feet of the mystical singers. Until last week, they had only done this exercise with snakes from Algeria, that could have become domesticated during the trip; but Algerian snakes are running out, like all things. Yesterday was the debut of the Fontainebleau snakes; and the Algerian seemed full of distrust of our national reptiles.



Give it a pass to the devoured fire, supported at the ends… on the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands… but the glass crusher and the snake eater! … These are inexplicable phenomena.



We had seen them in the past in a dower near Blidah, says Mr. Théophile Gautier, and that nocturnal Sabbath has left us with chilling memories. The Aïssaoua, after being excited by the music, the vapor of perfumes and this swaying of a wild animal that shakes their immense hair like a mane, bit cactus leaves, chewed hot coals, licked hot shovels, swallowed crushed glass that could be heard cracking under their jaws, pierced their tongues and cheeks with needles, made their eyes jump out of their eyelids, walked on the edge of a Damascus steel blade; one of them, tied in the noose of a cord, pulled by seven or eight men, seemed cut in two; it did not prevent them, when the exercises ended, from coming to greet us in our lodge, the oriental way, and to receive their tip. There was no mark left from the terrible tortures to which they had just been subjected. May someone smarter than us explain the prodigy, for from our side we give up.



I agree with my illustrious colleague and revered superior, in the great art of writing, just as difficult as that of swallowing reptiles. I am not trying to explain these marvels; but it was my duty, as a chronicler, not to pass them over in silence.”



We ourselves attended a session of the Aïssaoua, and we can say that this story is not exaggerated; we saw all that is related there, and more, a man crossing his cheek and the neck with a sharp pin in the shape of a larding needle; having touched the instrument and examined the thing very closely, we convinced ourselves that there was no subterfuge, and that the iron really went through the flesh. But the odd thing is that the blood was not flowing, and the wound healed almost instantly. We saw another one holding hot pieces of coal in his mouth, the size of eggs, that he ignited with his breath as he wandered around the room, throwing sparks. It was such a real fire that several spectators lit their cigars there.



Therefore, it is not a question here of tricks of skill, of simulacra, or of juggling, but of positive facts; of a physiological phenomenon that confuses the most vulgar notions of science; however, strange as it may be, it can only have one natural cause. What is even stranger is that science seems to have paid no attention to it. How is it that scientists, who spend their lives in search of the laws of vitality, remain indifferent to the sight of such facts and do not seek their causes? One believes oneself to be exempt from any explanation by saying that “they are quite simply convulsant as there was in the last century; be it, we agree; but then explain what was happening with the convulsant people. Since the same phenomena occur today, before our eyes, in front of the public, that the first comer can see them and touch them, it was not thus a comedy; these poor convulsant, who have been laughed at so much, weren’t therefore jugglers and charlatans, as it has been claimed? The same effects being reproduced at will by disbelievers, in the name of Allah or Muhammad, so aren’t they miracles, as others have thought? They are enlightened, it is said; be it still; but then we would have to explain what it is to be enlightened. Illumination must not be as illusory a quality as it is supposed, since it would be capable of producing such singular material effects; in any case, that would be one more reason to study it carefully. Since these effects are neither miracles, nor conjuring tricks, it must be concluded that they are natural effects whose cause is unknown, but that is undoubtedly not untraceable. Who knows if Spiritism, that has already given us the key to so many misunderstood things, will not yet give us this key? This is what we will examine in a future article.

Varieties

Strange Violation of the Grave

Psychological Study


L'Observateur, d'Avesnes (April 20th, 1867) reports the following fact:



“Three weeks ago, a worker from Louvroil, named Magnan, aged twenty-three, had the misfortune of losing his wife, suffering from a breast disease. The deep sorrow he felt was soon heightened by the death of his child, who only survived his mother for a few days. Magnan spoke incessantly of his wife, not being able to believe that she had left him forever, and imagining that she would soon return; it was in vain that his friends tried to offer him some consolation, he rejected them all and shut himself up in his affliction.



Last Thursday, after many difficulties, his coworkers in the workshop decided to accompany a mutual friend to the railroad, a soldier on leave that was returning to his regiment. But as soon as they got to the station, Magnan slipped away and went alone into town, even more worried than usual. He took a few glasses of beer in a cabaret, that completely disoriented him, and it was in that state of mind that he returned home, about nine in the evening. Finding himself alone, the thought that his wife wasn’t there any more overexcited him again, and he felt an insurmountable desire to see her again. He then took an old hole digger and an ordinary shovel, went to the cemetery, and despite the darkness and the dreadful rain that was falling at that time, he immediately began removing the earth that covered his dear deceased.



It was only after several hours of superhuman work that he managed to remove the coffin from its grave. With his hands alone and breaking all his fingernails, he tore the cover off, then taking the body of his poor companion in his arms, he carried it home and laid it on his bed. It must have been about three in the morning by then. After lighting a good fire, he discovered the face of the dead woman, then almost joyfully, he ran to the neighbor who had buried her, to tell her that his wife had returned, as he had predicted.



Without giving any importance to Magnan's words, who, she said, had visions, she got up and accompanied him to his house in order to calm him down and make him sleep. We can imagine her surprise and her fear when she saw the exhumed body. The miserable worker spoke to the dead woman as if she could hear him and sought, with touching tenacity, an answer, giving his voice the sweetness and all the persuasion of which he was capable; such affection, beyond the grave, presented a heartbreaking spectacle.


However, the neighbor had the presence of mind to urge the poor hallucinated man to return his wife to her coffin, which he promised, when she saw the obstinate silence of the one he believed to have brought back to life; it was by faith on this promise that she returned home, more dead than alive.



But Magnan did not stop there and ran to wake up two neighbors who got up, like the burial woman, to try to calm the unfortunate man. Like her too, having passed the first moment of amazement, they urged him to return the dead woman to the cemetery, and this time the man, without hesitation, took his wife in his arms and returned the body to the coffin, from which he had taken her, replaced it to the pit and covered it with earth.



Magnan's wife had been buried for seventeen days; nevertheless, she was still in a perfect state of preservation, for the expression on her face was the same as when she was buried. When they questioned Magnan the next day, he seemed not to remember what he had done or what had happened a few hours earlier; he only said that he thought he saw his wife during the night. (Siècle, April 29th, 1867).

February

Instructions of the Spirits

Bibliography

“Summary of the Spiritist Doctrine

Here is a rather curious little book, written by a villager from Saint-Sauflieu. It is true that the author lived in Paris for a long time, and that it was in that city that he was able to get in touch with the apostles of Spiritism. Since we are interested in all the publications in our country, we wanted to get acquainted with this work. We were told that the work by Mr. Florent Loth was blacklisted in the neighboring municipalities of his village; this news piqued our curiosity, and we decided to read the Abrégé de la Doctrine Spirite. We love the forbidden fruit so much.

As for ourselves, who have no interest in blaming or in approving the work of the author, we will say frankly, to put ourselves at ease, that we do not believe in Spiritism, that we do not give any credit to the turning or talking tables, because our reason is unwilling to admit that material objects can be endowed with the slightest intelligence. We do not believe either in the gift of second sight, or to put it better, in the ability to see through thick walls, or to distinguish at great distances what is happening far away, that is, at several hundred leagues. Finally, to continue our preliminary confessions, we declare that we have no faith in the Spirits of the ghosts, and that man, somewhat inspired, does not have the power to evoke and specially to make the souls of the dead speak.

Having said that, to clear the field of anything that is not within our scope, we recognize that Mr. Florent Loth's book is not a bad book. The moral is pure, love of neighbor is recommended, tolerance for the beliefs of others is defended, and that explains the sale of this work.

But to say that convinced believers of the Spiritist doctrine will be formed, because of the reading of the work of our compatriot, with all its parts admitted, would be to sustain a fact that will not be realized. In what seems reasonable to us, and let's slap the word, to have common sense, in the best meaning of those terms, there are some excellent things there. Thus, certain abuses are rejected with clear, spotless, and precise reasons, and if the author tries to convince, it is always by gentleness and persuasion.

So, leaving aside all that relates to the material practices of Spiritism, practices in which we do not believe in any way, we will be able to derive from reading the book in question very good notions of morality, tolerance, and love for the neighbor. From these points of view, we fully approve of Mr. Florent Loth, and we do not understand the ban launched against his pamphlet.

So, leaving aside all that relates to the material practices of Spiritism, practices in which we do not believe in any way, we will be able to derive, by reading the book in question, very good notions of morality, tolerance, and love for the neighbor. From these points of view, we fully approve of Mr. Florent Loth, and we do not understand the ban launched against his pamphlet.

Will the Summary of the Spiritist Doctrine one day be defended by the congregation of the Index, whose headquarters are in Rome? This is an unresolved question, because this little book is not intended to cross our Picardy borders. If, however, this fact happened, Mr. Florent Loth would gain a notoriety he had never dreamed of for his book.

As for the physical experiences of Spiritism, we believe we should let Mr. Georges Sauton, one of our colleagues, speak here, who in La Liberté, on Wednesday, September 11th, 1867, said about a Spiritist session that had taken place in Paris, at the house of a doctor in medicine:

Doctor F… had amassed some fortune. He spends it by giving Spiritism sessions that cost him dearly in candles and mediums.

Yesterday evening, he invited the press to his monthly meeting. Those Spirits were to be questioned on the account of the Zouave Jacob and give their views on this interesting soldier. Mr. Babinet, from the Institute, - excuse me for so little! - had promised to honor the meeting with his presence; at least the host had hinted at that on the invitation letters.

Albert Brun, Victor Noir, and I went to the doctor's house. Not a word from Mr. Babinet.


Ten people around a table were spinning this piece of furniture, that turned around badly; thirty others, many of whom were decorative, looked on.

The Spirits, undoubtedly ill-disposed, had their ears pulled to speak. They scarcely deigned to imitate the cry of the saw, of the cooper and blacksmith's hammers striking the barrels or the anvil. They were asked to sing The Bearded Woman and I Have Good Tobacco, and they did not sing. They were ordered to make a pear jump in the air, and the pear did not jump.

We will add nothing to this small and witty story.

Let us end with an extract from the author's preface in which the moral part of his ideas is exposed:

Spiritism does not pretend to impose its belief; it is by persuasion alone that it hopes to arrive at its goal, that is the good of mankind. Freedom of conscience: thus, I firmly believe in the existence of the soul and its immortality; I believe in future sorrows and rewards; I believe in the manifestations of the Spirits, that is to say in the souls of those who have lived on this earth or in other worlds; I believe in it by virtue of the right that my neighbor has not to believe in it; but it is as easy for me to prove my affirmation to him, as it is impossible for him to prove his negation to me, for the negation of unbelievers is not a proof. The fact, they say, is against the known laws. Well! it is because it is based on an unknown law: we cannot know all the laws of nature, for God is great and he can do everything! ...

Malicious people spread the rumor that Spiritism was an obstacle to the progress of religion; these people, more ignorant than truly pious, not knowing the doctrine at all, can neither appreciate nor judge it.

We say, and moreover we prove, that the teaching of the Spirits is very Christian, that it is based on the immortality of the soul, the future penalties and the rewards, the justice of God and the morals of Christ.



The citation of this profession of faith by the author will be sufficient to make his point of view known. It is up to the reader to appreciate the work we are talking about.

In writing this report, we only wanted to note one fact, which is that in our province of Picardy, Spiritism had met a fervent and convinced defender.

We do not accept all the ideas of the author. We hope that, by virtue of his gentleness, he will not be angry at our honesty. As long as public peace is not disturbed by impious doctrines, as long as the social order is not shaken by subversive maxims, our fraternal tolerance will make us say what we say here of the book by Mr. Florent Loth: Peace to conscience! Respect for the beliefs of the neighbor!

Mr. A. Gabriel Rembault.”

Mr. Director,

I would be grateful if you would insert in your journal my response to Mr. Gabriel Rembault's criticism of my Summary of the Spiritist Doctrine, an article that appeared on December 29th.

I don't want to raise a controversy between Mr. Gabriel Rembault and I; I am not up to his talent as a writer, undeniable talent and that everyone recognizes in him; but allow me to demonstrate to him the reasons that made me write my book.

Before anything else, I must admit that Mr. Gabriel Rembault's criticism is courteous and polite; it emanates from a man who is convinced, but not irritated. Alas! I cannot say the same of other critics who anathematize the Spiritists with insults and disrespectful words! I do not understand this display of hatred and insults, those uncalled-for words of madmen and bastards that are thrown in our face and that only inspire a deep disgust in honest people. These intolerant men know, however, that, according to the principles of our modern society, all consciences are free and have the right to inviolable respect.

Forgive me for this digression, Mr. Director, as I forgive these deriders; I forgive them with all my heart, and I pray to God that he deigns to enlighten them on charity. They should better practice this virtue of the Gospel, towards their neighbor.

Coming back to my subject:

It is by study, meditation and specially by practice that I have acquired the proof of certain physical facts that have thus far been regarded as supernatural; it is by the universal fluid that we can explain the phenomena of magnetism. These phenomena can no longer be seriously contested today; it is thanks to the same fluid that the Spirit crosses the space, that it possesses the double sight, that it is endowed with ethereal perception, to which the opacity of bodies cannot be opposed. These phenomena are no more than momentary liberation of the Spirit. Incredulity, it is true, does not want to admit these phenomena, but authentic and numerous observations no longer allow them to be called into question.

Thus, all the wonders of which magnetism and Spiritism are accused are simply effects, whose cause lies in the laws of nature.

And since Mr. Gabriel Rembault quoted an article from the newspaper La Liberté, I in turn will allow myself to quote an extract from a brand-new book (Reason for Spiritism), the fruit of long studies by an honorable magistrate; he says on page 216:

Has God ever departed from the laws He instituted to bring His work to good ends? He who has foreseen everything, hasn’t he provided for everything? How could you pretend to claim that mediumship, the communication of Spirits, does not conform to the laws of nature of man? And if revelation is the necessary consequence of mediumship, why would you say that it is a derogation of the law of God, when it ostensibly falls within the views of Providence and of human economy?"

I stop after this quote; it is an argument in a direction opposed to the ideas of M. Gabriel Rembault, and that I submit to the appreciation of your readers.

In short, I agree with him when he says: “Peace to conscience! respect for the beliefs of the neighbor!”



"Receive, Mr. Director, my kind regards.

Florent Loth

Saint-Sauflieu, January 16th, 1868



It appears from the above account that the author of the article did not know the first word of the doctrine; he judged it, like so many others, on hearsay, without having taken the trouble to get to the bottom of the question, and to lift the cloak of ridicule with which a malicious critic, or more or less interested, took pleasure in adorning it. He acted like the monkey in the fable who rejected the nut, because he had only bitten the green shell. If he had known the first elements of it, he would not have supposed the Spiritists simple enough to believe in the intelligence of a table, any more than he himself believes in the intelligence of the pen that, in his hands, transmits the thoughts of his own mind; the Spiritists do not admit that material objects can be endowed with the least intelligence any more than he does; but like him, no doubt, they admit that these same objects can be instruments at the service of an intelligence. Mr. Lot's book did not convince him, but it showed him the seriousness and the moral tendencies of the doctrine, and that was enough to make him understand that the thing was good and deserved at least the respect due to the beliefs of the neighbor. He showed commendable impartiality by immediately inserting the correction addressed to him by the author.

What touched him were not the facts of the manifestations, of which, moreover, there isn’t much in this book, it was the liberal and anti-retrograde tendencies, the spirit of tolerance and conciliation of the doctrine; such is, in fact, the impression that it will produce on all those who take the trouble of studying it. Without accepting the experimental part that, for the Spiritists, is the material proof of the truth of their principles, they will see in it a powerful aid to the reform of the abuses against which they rise every day. Instead of fanatics of a new kind, they will see in all the Spiritists, whose number is constantly increasing, an army that fights for the same goal, with other weapons, it is true; but what do they care about the means, if the result is the same?


Their ignorance of the tendencies of Spiritism is such that they do not even know that it is a liberal doctrine, emancipating intelligence, enemy of blind faith, that proclaims freedom of conscience and free examination as an essential basis of any serious belief. They do not even know that it was the first to inscribed on its flag this immortal maxim: there is no salvation but through charity, principle of universal union and fraternity, the only one that can put an end to the antagonisms of peoples and beliefs; while they believe it to be childishly absorbed by a spinning table, they have no idea that the child has left the toy for the armor, that he has grown up and that he now embraces all the questions that concern the progress of humanity. All that is lacking in its impartial and in good faith adversaries is to get to know it, to judge it otherwise than they do. If they reflected on the speed of its propagation, that nothing could hinder, they would say to themselves that it cannot be the effect of a completely empty idea, and that if it contained only one truth, if this truth is capable of moving so many consciences, it deserves to be taken into consideration; that if it causes so much fear in certain people, it is because it is not considered there as a hopeless smoke.

The article reported above further notes an important fact, that is the ban launched against this little book, by the clergy of the countryside, served to propagate it, what could not be different, so powerful the attraction of the forbidden fruit is. The author of the article rightly thinks that, if he were condemned by the congregation of the Index that sits in Rome, he would acquire a notoriety that Mr. Lot should not have claimed. He ignores that the fundamental works of the doctrine had this privilege, and that it is through the wrath launched against the doctrine, in the name of this Index, that these books must have been sought in circles where they were unknown. People did this quite natural reflection: the louder they thunder, the more important the thing should be. They first read them out of curiosity, then, since they found good things in them, they accepted them. That is history.

March

Lavater's[1] unpublished correspondence with Empress Mary of Russia

The Spiritists are numerous in St. Petersburg, and they count on very enlightened serious men, who understand the purpose and the high humanitarian significance of the doctrine. One of them, whom we did not have the honor to know, kindly sent us a document even more precious for the history of Spiritism, since it was unknown, and that it touches on highest social echelons. Here is what our honorable correspondent said in his cover letter:

“The Imperial Library of Saint Petersburg published, in 1858, in a very small number of copies, a collection of unpublished letters by the famous physiognomist Lavater; these letters, hitherto unknown in Germany, were addressed to Empress Mary of Russia, wife of Paul I and grandmother of the reigning emperor. The reading of these letters struck me by the philosophical ideas, eminently Spiritists, that they contain, on the relations that exist between the visible world and the invisible world, the intuitive mediumship and the influence of the fluids that produce it.

Presuming that these letters, probably unknown in France, could interest the enlightened Spiritists of this country, by teaching them that their intimate convictions were shared by the eminent Swiss philosopher and two crowned heads, I take the liberty, sir, to send you enclosed the exact and almost literal translation of those letters, that you may find fit to include in your wise and so interesting monthly publication.

I take this opportunity, sir, to express to you the feelings of my deep and perfect esteem, shared by the sincere Spiritists of all countries, who know how to appreciate with dignity the eminent services that your steadfast zeal has rendered to the scientific development and to the propagation of the sublime and so consoling Spiritist doctrine. This third revelation will result in the regeneration, moral progress and the consolidation of faith in the poor humanity, unfortunately misguided, and that floats between skepticism and indifference in matters of religion and morals."- W. de F.

We are publishing the entire manuscript of M. de F. Its scope obliges us to make it the subject of three articles.




Preamble

At the Grand Ducal Castle of Pawlowsk, located twenty-four versts[2] from Petersburg, where Emperor Paul of Russia spent the happiest years of his life, and that later became the favorite residence of Empress Mary, her dignified widow, true benefactress of the suffering humanity, there is a selected library, founded by the imperial couple, in which, among many scientific and literary treasures, there is a packet of hand-written letters of Lavater, that remained unknown to the biographers of the famous physiognomist.

These letters are dated from Zurich, 1798. Sixteen years earlier, in Zurich and Schaffouse, Lavater had had the opportunity to get acquainted with the Count and the Countess of the North (it is by this title that the Grand-Duke of Russia and his wife were then traveling in Europe), and from 1796 to 1800, he sent to Russia, to the address of the Empress Marie, reflections on the physiognomy, attaching letters intended to depict the state of the soul after death.

In these letters, Lavater takes as his point of departure that a soul, having left her body, inspires her ideas in a person of her choice, fit for the light (lichtfæhig), and makes that person write letters addressed to a friend left behind on earth, to instruct him about the state in which she is found.

These unpublished letters from Lavater were discovered during a revision of the Grand Ducal Library by Dr. Minzloff, librarian of the Imperial Library of Petersburg and put in order by the latter. With the authorization of the current owner of Pawlowsk Castle, SAI the Grand Duke Constantine, and by the enlightened patronage of Baron de Korff, currently a member of the Council of the Empire, former chief director of this library that owes him its most notable improvements, they were published in 1858, in Petersburg, with the title: Johann-Kaspar Lavater's briefe, an die kaïserin Maria Feodorowna, gemahlin kaïser Paul I von Russland (Letters from Johann-Kaspar Lavater to the empress Marie Féodorowna, wife of the Emperor Paul I of Russia). This work was printed at the expense of the Imperial Library and offered as a tribute to the Senate of the University of Jena, on the 300th anniversary of its foundation.

These letters, six in total, are of the greatest interest, in that they positively prove that the Spiritist ideas, and especially those of the possibility of communication between the spiritual world and the material world, were germinating in Europe seventy years ago, and that not only was the famous physiognomist convinced of these reports, but that he himself was what, in Spiritism, one calls an intuitive medium, that is a man receiving the thoughts of the Spirits by intuition and transcribing their communications. The letters from a dead friend, that Lavater had attached to his own letters, are eminently Spiritists; they develop and clarify, in a manner as ingenious as witty, the fundamental ideas of Spiritism, and come to the support of all that this doctrine offers that is most rational, more profoundly philosophical, religious, and consoling for humanity.

The people who do not know Spiritism, will be able to suppose that these letters of a Spirit to his friend on earth, are only a poetic form that Lavater gives to his own spiritualist ideas; but those who are initiated into the truths of Spiritism, will find them in these communications, as they were and are still given by the Spirits, through different mediums intuitive, auditory, writers, speaking, ecstatic, etc. It is not natural to suppose that Lavater could himself have conceived and exposed with such great lucidity and precision, abstract and elevated ideas about the state of the soul after death, and their means of communication with embodied Spirits, that is, men. These ideas could only come from the discarnate Spirits themselves. There is no doubt that one of them, having retained feelings of affection for a friend who still lives on Earth, gave him, through the intermediary of an intuitive medium (perhaps Lavater himself was this friend), notions on this subject, to initiate him into the mysteries of the tomb, to the extent of what a Spirit is allowed to reveal to men, and what they are able to understand.

We give here the exact translation of Lavater's letters, written in German, as well as that of the communications from beyond the grave, that he addressed to the Empress Marie, according to the latter's desire to know the ideas of the German philosopher on the state of the soul after the death of the body.



First Letter

About the state of the soul after death

General Ideas

Most revered Mary of Russia!

Deign to grant me permission not to give you the title of majesty, that is due to you from the world, but that does not harmonize with the holiness of the subject about which you wished I spoke to you, and to be able to write to you frankly and with complete freedom.

You want to know some of my ideas on the state of the souls after death.

Despite the little that is given to the wisest and the most enlightened among us to know, since none of those who left for the unknown land has returned, the thoughtful man, the disciple of He who came down to us from heaven, is nevertheless able to say as much as we need to know to encourage us, to calm us down and to make us think.

For this time, I will restrict myself to explaining to you some of the most general ideas on this subject.

I think there must be a big difference between the state, the way of thinking and feeling of a soul separated from its material body, and the state it was in during its union with it. This difference must be at least as significant as that that exists between the condition of a newborn child and that of a child living in its mother's womb.

We are related to matter, and it is our senses and our organs that give our souls perceptions and understanding.

Based on the difference between the construction of the telescope, the microscope, and the glasses, that our eyes use to see, the objects we look at through them appear to us in a different form. Our senses are the telescopes, microscopes, and glasses, necessary for our present life, that is the material life.

I think that the visible world must disappear for the soul separated from its body, just as it escapes from it during the sleep. Or else the world, that the soul glimpsed at during its bodily existence, must appear to the dematerialized soul in an entirely different way.

If, for some time, the soul could remain without a body, the material world would not exist for it. But if it is provided with a spiritual body, immediately after having left its body, that I find very likely, that it would have withdrawn from her material body, the new body will necessarily give it a completely different perception of things. If, which can easily happen to impure souls, this body remained for some time imperfect and undeveloped, the whole universe would appear to the soul in a cloudy state, as seen through frosted glass.

But if the spiritual body, conductor, and intermediary of its new impressions, were or became more developed or better organized, the world of the soul would appear to it, according to the nature and the qualities of its new organs, as well as according to the degree of its harmony and perfection, more regular and more beautiful.

The organs are simplified, acquire harmony among themselves and are more appropriate to the nature, character, needs and strengths of the soul, depending on whether it is concentrated, enriched, and refined down here, pursuing a single goal, and acting in a specific direction. The soul itself perfects, by existing on earth, the qualities of the spiritual body, of the vehicle in which it will continue to exist after the death of its material body, and that will serve as its organ to conceive, feel, and act in its new existence. This new body, appropriate to its intimate nature, will make it pure, loving, vivacious and suitable for a thousand beautiful sensations, impressions, contemplations, actions, and pleasures.

All that we can, and all that we cannot yet say about the state of the soul after death, will always be based on this single permanent and general axiom: man reaps what he has sown.

It is difficult to find a principle that is simpler, clearer, more abundant, and more suitable to be applied to all possible cases.

There is a general law of nature, closely related, even identical, to the above-mentioned principle, concerning the state of the soul after death, an equivalent law in all worlds, in all possible states, in the material world and in the spiritual world, visible and invisible, knowingly:

“What looks alike tends to come together. All that is identical attracts each other, if there are no obstacles that oppose their union.”



The whole doctrine of the state of the soul after death is based on this simple principle; all that we ordinarily call: preliminary judgment, compensation, supreme happiness, disgrace, can be explained in this way: the society of those who, like you, have sowed good in themselves and beyond them; you will enjoy the friendship of those to whom you were like in their way of sowing good."

Each soul separated from its body, free from the chains of matter, appears to itself as it really is. All the illusions, all the seductions that prevented it from recognizing itself and seeing its strengths, weaknesses and faults will disappear. It will experience an overwhelming tendency to move towards souls that resemble it and to move away from those that are unlike it. Its own inner weight, as obeying the law of gravity, will draw it into bottomless abysses (at least that is how it will seem to it); or else, according to the degree of its purity, it will soar, like a spark carried by its lightness in the air, and will pass rapidly into the luminous, fluidic, and ethereal regions.

The soul gives itself a weight that is proper to itself, through its inner sense; its state of perfection pushes it forward, backward, or sideways; its own moral or religious character inspires it with certain particular tendencies. The good will rise to the good; the need it feels for good will draw it to them. The bad guy is necessarily pushed towards the bad guys. The steep fall of the rude, immoral and irreligious souls, to the souls that are like them, will be just as swift and inevitable as the fall from an anvil into an abyss, when nothing can stop it.

That's enough for now.

Zurich, 1. VIII. 1798

Joann-Kasper Lavater

JEAN-GASPAR LAVATER.

With God’s permission, continued every eight days



Second Letter

The needs experienced by the human spirit, during its exile in the material body, remain the same as soon as it leaves it. Its happiness will consist in the possibility of being able to satisfy its spiritual needs; its disgrace, in the impossibility of being able to satisfy its carnal appetites, in a less material world.

Unmet needs constitute disgrace; their satisfaction constitutes the supreme happiness.

I would like to tell every man: “Analyze the nature of your needs; give them their real name; ask yourself: are they admissible in a less material world? Can they find their satisfaction there?” And if they could truly be content with it, would they be of those whom an intellectual and immortal Spirit can honorably confess and desire its satisfaction, without feeling a deep shame in front of other similar intellectual and immortal beings?

The soul's need to satisfy the spiritual aspirations of other immortal souls; to provide them with the pure enjoyments of life, to inspire them with the assurance of the continuation of their existence after death, to cooperate thereby in the great plan of supreme wisdom and love; the progress acquired by this noble activity, so worthy of man, together with the selfless desire for good, give the human souls the aptitude, and hence the right to be received into the circles of more elevated Spirits, purer, more holy.

When we have, much venerated Empress, the intimate conviction that the most natural need, and yet very rare, that can arise in an immortal soul: that of God, the need to approach him more and more in all aspects, and to be like the invisible Father of all creatures, once became predominant in us, oh! then, we must not have the slightest fear concerning our future state, when death will have rid us of our body, this thick wall that hid God from us. This material body that separated us from God is brought down, and the veil that hid from us the sight of the most holy of holies is torn. The adorable Being whom we loved above all, with all his resplendent graces, will then have free entry into our soul hungry of him, then receiving him with joy and love.

As soon as the boundless love for God has gained the upper hand in our soul, as a result of the efforts that it will have made to approach Him and be like Him in its vivifying love for humanity, and by all the means that it had in its power, this soul, freed from its body, necessarily passing through many degrees to perfect itself ever more, it will ascend with astonishing ease and rapidity towards the object of its deepest veneration and of its boundless love, towards the inexhaustible source and the only one sufficient for the satisfaction of all its needs and aspirations.

No weak eye, sick or veiled, is in a condition look at the sun face to face; likewise no impure Spirit, still enveloped in the material fog with which an exclusively material life surrounded it, even at the moment of its separation from the body, would be able to endure the sight of the purest sun of Spirits, in its resplendent clarity, its symbol, its focus, from which emanate these streams of light that even penetrate finite beings with the feeling of their infinity.

Who better than you, madam, knows that the good are attracted only by the good! That only the elevated souls know how to enjoy the presence of other elite souls! Any man knowing life and men, one who often had to find himself in the company of these dishonest, effeminate flatterers, lacking in character, always eager to pick up and put forward the most insignificant word, the slightest allusion of those that they seek the favor, or else of these hypocrites, trying to penetrate shrewdly into the ideas of the others, to interpret them, then in a completely opposite direction, that one, I say, must know how much these vile souls and slaves suddenly embarrassed by a simple word spoken with firmness and dignity; how a single stern look confuses them, making them feel deeply that they are known and that they are judged at their true value! How painful it becomes for them to endure the presence of an honest man! No deceitful and hypocritical soul is happy by the contact of an honest and energetic soul that reads it. Each impure soul, having left its body, must according to its intimate nature, as if pushed by an occult and invincible power, flee the presence of every pure and luminous being, hiding as much as possible, the sight of its many imperfections that it is not in a condition to hide from herself or from others.

Even if it were not written: “No one, without being purified, will be able to see the Lord,” it would be perfectly in the order of things. An impure soul finds itself in an absolute impossibility of entering in any relationship whatsoever with a pure soul, nor feeling the slightest sympathy for that. A light fearing soul cannot, by that very fact, be attracted to the source of light. Clarity, deprived of all darkness, must burn it like a consuming fire.

And what are the souls, madam, that we call impure? I think that these are the ones in which the desire to purify oneself, to correct oneself, to perfect oneself, has never prevailed. I think they are those who have not submitted to the high principle of selflessness in all things; those who have chosen themselves as the unique center of all their desires and ideas; those who regard themselves as the goal of all around them, who only seek the means of satisfying their passions and their senses; finally, those overwhelmed by selfishness, pride, self-esteem and personal interest, who want to serve two masters who contradict one another, and do that simultaneously.

Such souls must find themselves, I believe, after their separation from their body, in the miserable state of a horrible contemplation of themselves; or, what amounts to the same thing, of the deep contempt that they feel for themselves, and to be drawn by an irresistible force towards the dreadful company of other egoistic souls, incessantly condemning themselves.

It is selfishness that produces the impurity of the soul and makes it suffer. It is fought in all human souls by something that is its contrary, something pure, divine: the moral feeling. Without this feeling, man is not capable of any moral pleasure, of any esteem, or of any contempt for himself, understanding neither heaven nor hell. This divine light makes all the darkness that he discovers in himself unbearable, and this is the reason why delicate souls, those who possess the moral sense, suffer more ruthlessly when selfishness takes hold of them and subjugates that feeling.

His purity, his ability to receive light, his happiness, his heaven, his God depend on the agreement and harmony that subsist in man, between himself and his inner law. His God appears to him like himself. To those who know how to love, God appears as the supreme love, in a thousand loving forms. His degree of happiness and his ability to make others happy are in proportion to the principle of love that rules in him. He who loves selflessly remains in constant harmony with the source of all love and all who draw love from it.

Let us try to keep love in all its purity within us, madam, and we will always be drawn by it towards the most loving souls. Let us cleanse ourselves more of the stains of selfishness every day, and then, whether we must leave this world today or tomorrow, returning our mortal envelope to earth, our soul will take off with lightning speed towards the model of all those who love, and will meet them with indescribable happiness.

None of us can know what will become of one’s soul after the death of one’s body, and yet I am fully convinced that purified love must necessarily give our Spirit, delivered from his body, boundless freedom, a hundredfold existence, a continual enjoyment of God, and unlimited power to bring happiness to all those who are fit to taste the supreme bliss.

Oh! How incomparable is the moral freedom of the Spirit stripped of its body! With what lightness the soul of the loving being, surrounded by a resplendent light, ascends! What infinite science, what power to communicate to others, becomes its prerogative! What light springs from itself! What life animates all the atoms that form it! Floods of pleasures rush from all sides to meet it to satisfy its purest and highest needs! Countless legions of loving beings reach out to it! Harmonious voices are heard in these numerous choirs radiant with joy, saying: “Spirit of our Spirit! Heart of our heart! Love drawn from the source of all love! Loving soul, you belong to us all, and we are all yours! Each of us is yours and you belong to each of us. God is love and God is ours. We are all filled with God, and love finds its bliss in the bliss of all."

I ardently wish, most revered Empress, that you, your noble and generous husband, the Emperor, both dedicated to good, and I with you, may we all never become strangers to love that is God and man at the same time; may it be granted to us to form ourselves for the pleasures of love through our actions, our prayers and our sufferings, bringing us closer to the one who allowed himself to be tied to the cross of the Golgotha.

Zurich, August 18th, 1798

Johann-Kaspar Lavater



We can already see in what order of ideas Lavater wrote to the Empress Mary, and to what extent he possessed the intuition of the principles of modern Spiritism. We will better assess it by the complement of this remarkable correspondence. While awaiting the reflections that we will attach to that, we believe to be right now to point out an important fact: that in order to maintain a correspondence on such a subject with the Empress, the latter had to share these ideas, and several circumstances do not allow us to doubt that it was the same with the Czar, her husband. It was by his request, or better by their request, that Lavater wrote, and the tone of his letters proves that he was addressing convinced people. As we can see, the Spiritist beliefs in the high spheres do not date from today. In fact, we can also see in the Spiritist Review, April 1866, the account of a tangible apparition of Peter the Great to this same Paul I.

Having Lavater's letters been read at the Parisian Society and a conversation taken place on this subject, Paul I undoubtedly attracted by the thought that was directed towards him on this occasion, spontaneously manifested himself and without evocation, to one of the mediums to whom he dictated the following communication:



Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, February 7th, 1868 – medium Mr. Leymarie

Power is a heavy thing, and the troubles it leaves painfully impress our souls! The setbacks are continual; one must conform to habits, to the old institutions, to prejudice, and God knows what resistance is needed to oppose all the appetites that reach the throne, like tumultuous waves. So, what a happiness when, leaving for a moment this robe of Nessus called royalty, we can shut ourselves off in a peaceful place, where we can rest in peace far from the noise and tumult of the ambitions!

My dear Marie liked calm. A solid, gentle, resigned, loving character, she would have rather forgotten greatness to devote herself completely to charity, to study the lofty philosophical questions that were the drivers of her faculties. Like her, I loved these intellectual recreations; they were a balm to my wounds as a sovereign, a new force to guide me in the maze of European politics.

Lavater, that great heart, that great Spirit, that predestined brother, initiated us in his sublime doctrine; his letters, that you have today, were awaited by us with great anxiety. All they contained was the mirage of our personal ideas; we read them, these dear letters, with childish joy, happy to lay down our crown, its gravity, its etiquette, to discuss the rights of the soul, its emancipation, and its divine course towards the Eternal.

All these questions, that are burning today, we accepted them seventy years ago; they were part of our life, of our rest. Many strange effects, apparitions, rumors, had strengthened our opinion on this subject. The Empress Marie saw and heard the Spirits; through them she had learned of events that happened at great distances. Prince Lopoukine, who died in Kiev, several hundred leagues away, had come to tell us of his death, the incidents that had preceded his departure, the expression of his last wishes; the Empress had written by dictation of the Spirit Lopoukine, and twenty days later the court heard all the details we already had. They were a resounding confirmation for us, and the proof that Lavater and we were initiated into the great truths.

Today we know the doctrine better from you, the doctrine whose basis you have broadened; we will come back to ask you for a few moments, and we thank you in advance, if you will listen to Mary of Russia and the one who had the privilege of having her as a companion.

Paul I

[1] Johann Kaspar Lavater, German physiognomist, philosopher, theologian, poet, and magnetism enthusiast, born in 1741 (Wikipedia, T.N.)


[2] Russian unit of distance equal to 0.6629 mile (1.067 kilometers) – Merriam-Webster dictionary (T.N.)

Bibliographic News

The thoughts of Zouave Jacob

Preceded by his prayer and how to heal those who suffer.[1]

Quotes are the best way to convey the spirit of a book. We first borrow from the editor's opinion and preface the following passages from the book just published by Mr. Jacob. The facts that justify its notoriety are much well known, making it unnecessary to recall them; we have, moreover, exposed them sufficiently in the Spiritist Review, October, and November 1866, after the Camp Châlons, and in the issues of October and November 1867.

“Henri Jacob, today a musician in the Zouave regiment of the imperial guard, was born on March 6th, 1828, in Saint-Martin-des-Champs (Saône-et-Loire). All his education consists of one year of class attendance at the municipal school; he therefore received no other education than that his father was able to give him; it doesn’t go beyond simple reading and writing, and yet it is he who, without the help of anyone, wrote this text that we are releasing for publication.

Jacob is not a professional writer; he is a man of religious aspirations, who decided to deliver this volume to publicity only on very urgent demands. For him, this work is his profession of faith in the Creator God; a prayer, a hymn, so to speak, that he addresses to the Almighty. It is written in a good spirit, without passion, and it does not allude to any cult or to any spirit of political party.

Jacob is a creature of some imagination, nothing else. The reader would be greatly mistaken by seeing in his feelings anything other than God and humanity; his whole ambition is to bring some relief to the latter.

In these pages we see a kind of heroism and greatness, reflected in the acts of philanthropy so wonderfully performed by Jacob, a firm believer, who knows he can do much, because God comes to his aid in his much difficult work, and that God alone will see it through.”


Mr. Jacob first gives an account, in simple terms and without emphasis, of a dream or vision that contributed to the elevation of his thoughts towards God, and to focus his thoughts in the future.

Then comes a profession of faith, in the form of an epistle, entitled: "To my brothers in Spiritism", and from which we extract the following passages:

“Before my initiation into the Spiritist science, I lived in darkness; my heart had never felt the sweetness of peace! My soul had never known joy; I lived attached to Earth with the torments it arouses in materialistic men, without thinking that there are better worlds, that God, the father of us all, created those who practice good here on Earth to enjoy ineffable happiness.

Through my initiation into the Spiritist doctrine, I have acquired the conviction that God, in his mercy, sends us good Spirits to advise us and encourage us in the practice of good, and has given us the power to communicate with them and with those who left this Earth and who are dear to our hearts. That conviction has enlightened my soul! I saw the light. Little by little I grew stronger in my conviction, and through that I reached the faculty of writing medium.

My conversations with the Spirits and their good advice filled me with a lively faith, confirming to me the truths of the Spiritist science, that strengthened my faith, and by faith the faculty of healing was given to me.

So, my dear friends, may a living faith always be in you, through the practice of the Spiritist maxims which are: the love of God, fraternity, and charity. Let us love one another, and we will all be able to relieve each other, and many will be able to heal, I am convinced.

So let us always be charitable and generous, and we will always be assisted by the good Spirits. All of you who are initiated into the Spiritist doctrine, teach it to those who are still in the darkness of matter; open their souls to the light and they will enjoy, in anticipation, the happiness that awaits those who practice good among us, in the superior worlds.

Be firm in your good resolutions; always live in a great purity of soul, and God will give you the power to heal your fellow men. Here is my prayer:

“My God, grant me the grace to allow the good and benevolent Spirits to come to assist me, intentionally and in fact, in the work of charity that I wish to accomplish by relieving the unfortunate ones that are suffering. It is in your name and in your praise, my God, that these blessings are spread on us."


Believe, have faith! And when you want to relieve a sick person, after your prayer, put your hand on your heart, and warmly ask God for the help you need, and I am convinced, the divine emanation will infiltrate you to relieve or cure your brother who is in pain. My first conscious cure was to get a cholera patient out of his bed of pain, by operating in this way; why would you want me to be more privileged than you, by God, who is wisdom and justice?

Through your letters, you ask me to correspond with you and to help you with my advice. I am going to share with you those that the Spirits have inspired in me, and answer your call, full of good will to be useful to your happiness. Mine would be great if I could cooperate with the success of the degree of perfection that I desire to see you achieve.”



There follows a series of 217 letters that constitute, strictly speaking, the body of the volume. These are communications obtained by Mr. Jacob, as a writing medium, in various groups or Spiritist meetings. These are excellent moral advice, in a somewhat correct style; encouragement to the practice of charity, fraternity, humility, gentleness, benevolence, devotion to the Spiritist doctrine, moral and material selflessness; exhortations to reform oneself. The severest moralist will find nothing to complain about, and it would be desirable that all mediums, healers, and others, and all Spiritists in general, put those wise advice into practice. One can only congratulate Mr. Jacob on the feelings he expresses, and by reading this book, it will not occur to anyone that it is the work of a charlatan; it is, therefore, a denial given to the accusations that the interested maliciousness has taken pleasure in throwing at him; to those who, in derision, presented him as a thaumaturge or miracle worker.

Although these numerous communications are all conceived in an excellent spirit, it regrettable that the uniformity of the subjects that they cover throws a little monotony on this reading. They do not contain any explanations or special instructions on the healing mediumship, that is only the accessory part of the book. The account of some authentic facts of cures, and of the circumstances that accompanied them, would have added to the interest and practical utility of this book.

In fact, here is how Mr. Jacob describes what takes place in the sessions in which the patients are gathered:

“At the time of the session, after having addressed my short but fervent prayer to God, I feel my fingers contract, and, touching the patient, I then recognize the force of the fluid in the wetness of their hands; sometimes they are inundated with perspiration; and the heat that gains the lower parts is also an additional indication of the almost instantaneous relief that they experience.

However, it is not at my own inspiration that the sick should see the illnesses that overwhelm them disappear, but rather at the will of God; I also see wandering around me, amidst a brilliant light, a great number of benevolent Spirits that seem to associate themselves with my painful mission. There is especially one that lets me see very clearly the halo that surrounds his venerable head. By his side there are two radiant persons, surrounded by innumerable Spirits. The first seems to guide and inspire me in my operations, if I may say so; finally, the room where I give my consultations is always filled with a bright light that I see continually reflected on the sick.

After the session I have no memory of what happened; that is why I urge those present to pay the greatest attention to the words I address to the sick who offer themselves to me to be examined and healed, if possible.”



The book ends with some advice on the hygienic regime that the patients he treats must follow.

[1] One volume. in-12 of 220 pages, price: 2.5 francs, at the publisher's, rue Bonaparte, 70.

Spiritism before reason

Spiritism before reason, by Valentin Tournier, former journalist. - Brochure in-18 of 72 pages. Price: 1 franc - Carcassone, at Lajoux and at Maillac, booksellers.

The author of this pamphlet proposed to give two public lectures on Spiritism; having been prevented by circumstances beyond his control, it is these two lectures that he is publishing today. Addressing the unconvinced public, he successively examines the following questions: Is Spiritism a serious matter? - Do Spiritist studies offer dangers? - Are these studies useful? - Are the phenomena possible? - Are they real? - Which authority is competent to know the facts?

We will come back to this interesting publication to which we will limit ourselves to pointing out today.

April

Lavater’s unpublished correspondence with Empress Mary of Russia

The end of the world in 1911

The end of the world in 1911, such is the title of a small brochure in-18, of 58 pages, widespread in Lyon with profusion, found in that city at Josserand bookseller, place Bellecour, # 3. To the considerations drawn from the agreement of the current state of things with the precursor signs announced in the Gospel, the author adds, according to another prophecy, a cabalistic calculation that determines the end of the world in the year 1911, not more and not less, that is to say in 43 years; it means that among the living today, more than one will witness this great catastrophe. Now, there it is not a question of a figure; it is the very real end, the annihilation of Earth, the scattering of its elements, and the complete destruction of all its inhabitants. It is regrettable that the way by which such event will take place is not indicated, but something must be left to the unforeseen.



It will be preceded by the reign of the Antichrist; according to these same calculations, that were not done by Arago, this character was born in 1855 and must live 55 years and a half; and since his death must mark the end of times, that brings us right to 1911, unless there was some miscalculation, as for 1840.



We remember, in fact, that the end of the world had also been predicted for the year 1840; it was believed to be so certain that it was preached in churches, and we saw it announced in certain catechisms in Paris, to the children of the first communion, and that did not fail to annoyingly impress some young brains. As the best way to save one's soul has always been to give money, to get rid of the goods of this world that are a cause of downfall, there were reliefs and donations provoked for that purpose. But the evil Spirit slips in everywhere in this century of reasoners, and leads to the worst thoughts; we have heard, with our own ears, catechism students making this reflection: “If the end of the world arrives next year, as they said and we were assured, that will be for the priests as well as for everybody else; then, what will the money they ask be used for? There are no more children, really, but naughty children.



Will it be the same for the year 1911? The pamphlet in question gives us a certain means of making sure of that, it is the portrait of the Antichrist, whose original will be easy to recognize; it is characteristic enough that one cannot be mistaken. It is drawn by a famous German prophet, Holzauzer, born in 1613, who wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse.



According to Holzauzer, the Apocalypse is nothing other than the entire history of the Catholic Church, from its birth to the end of the world, a history divided in seven epochs, represented, he says, by the seven Churches addressed by Saint John. Here are some of the most characteristic features of the Antichrist and the events that must precede his coming:





“We are now approaching the end of the fifth epoch. It is then that these appalling misfortunes announced in the Apocalypse will occur (chap. VIII). Plague, war, famine, earthquakes will cause countless victims. All peoples will rise against one another; war will be general in Europe; but the fire will break out first in Germany...



After these formidable wars that will shed blood over the whole world, Protestantism will disappear forever, and the empire of the Turks will collapse. It will be the beginning of the sixth age.



The peoples exhausted by these deadly battles, frightened by the horrible plagues that will mark the end of the fifth epoch, will return to the worship of the true God. Out victorious from the countless struggles that it will have sustained against heresies, indifference and general corruption, the religion of Christ will flourish again, more brilliant than ever. Never has the Catholic Church had such a dazzling triumph. Its ministers, models of all virtues, will travel the world to make people hear the word of God ...



But this triumph of religion will be short-lived. Abated but not destroyed, vice will gradually raise its head, and soon corruption making rapid progress, will again invade all classes of society, and will penetrate even into the sanctuary. It is then that we will see the abomination of desolation, announced by the prophet. The whole world will be nothing more than an immense sentinel of vices and crimes of all kinds. Thus, the sixth age will end.



Then the one that the prophets and the fathers of the church have designated as the antichrist will come to earth.



Poor and unknown, he will live a miserable life during his childhood and early youth. Raised by his father in the study of occult sciences, he will devote himself to that with fury, making rapid progress. Endowed with an unusual intelligence, an ardent and resolute mind, and an iron character, since the cradle he will show the most violent passions. Recognizing in this child the formidable qualities of the one who must one day support him so ardently in his struggle against mankind, Satan will tremble with joy, and will gradually transmit all his power to him.



All those who approach him will be amazed by his speeches and actions. They will regard him as a child predestined to great things, and they will say that the hand of the Lord was extended on him to protect and guide him...



Little by little, with Pheme[1] helping, and further magnifying the wonders attributed to the young leader, the number of his sectarians will quickly become very considerable...



Soon, seeing himself at the head of a true army, made up of men committed to death, he will no longer hesitate to take the title of king. For some time, he will take care of organizing his power, and of putting a little order among his new subjects, while neglecting nothing to increase their number. Having no surname, he will take the name of Christ, that the Jews will have already given him...



His ambition growing with his fortune, he will form, in his pride, the plan to conquer the whole earth, and to subject all peoples to his laws ...



In a few days, the Antichrist will assemble an immense army, and we will see this new Attila engulfing Europe in the waves of his barbarian hordes. The enemy armies, struck with terror at the sight of the many wonders he will perform, will allow themselves to be dispersed and annihilated, without even trying to fight. Three great kingdoms will be conquered without striking a blow. Their sovereigns will atone their refusal of submission in the cruelest tortures; and the defeated peoples will be mercilessly delivered to the whole fury of a frenzied soldiery. Terrified by learning of these barbarian revenge, the other nations will immediately submit. The whole Earth will then form one vast kingdom only, that the Antichrist will rule at will. He will rebuild, with incredible magnificence, the city of Jerusalem, and make it the seat of his empire ...



Carried away by his fatal destiny, he will do his best to destroy all religions, and especially the Catholic religion. On the remains of the old cult, he will rebuild the edifice of a new cult, of which he will be both the high priest and the idol. This new religion will have its defenders and priests everywhere. One of the most bitter and the most terrible, that Saint John designated in verses 11, 12, 13, of chapter XIII, by the beast with two horns, like those of the lamb, will be the great apostate. Holzauzer calls him so because he will be one of the first to renounce Christianity to furiously devote himself to the cult of the Antichrist.



At that time a holy pontiff named Peter will reign on the throne of Saint Peter. Struck with grief at the sight of these appalling misfortunes and foreseeing the terrible dangers that the faithful will face, he will send holy exhortations throughout the Christendom to protect everyone against the seductions of the Antichrist, whose perfidy he will clearly reveal. Furious at this open resistance and the immense influence of the Holy Father, the great apostate will enter Rome at the head of an army, and will kill with his own hands the last successor of Peter, on the very steps of the altar...



Churches will be invaded everywhere, sanctuaries violated, objects of worship desecrated. The holy books will be burned, the cross and all the symbols of our august religion trampled underfoot and dragged in the dust. The paintings and statues exhibited for the veneration of the faithful will be overturned; the cursed statue of the Antichrist will rise in their place. - And this statue will speak, said the prophet...



And educated and eloquent men will be seen preaching this idolatry of a new kind, and in brilliant and colorful language exalting the praises of him whose statue speaks and works miracles ...



To strike the eyes of the crowds and subjugate the masses, the Antichrist will perform amazing wonders. He will lift the mountains, walk on the waters, and rise in the air, shining with glory. It will cause several suns to appear at the same time or will plunge Earth into complete darkness. At his voice, lightning will fall from the sky, rivers will suspend their courses, walls will collapse. Becoming invisible at will, he will travel from one place to another with marvelous speed, and he will show himself in several places at once. Finally, as we said, he will animate his image and communicate to it part of his power. But all these wonders will be, for the most part, only optical illusions, and the result of a diabolical phantasmagoria; they will not be true miracles, because Satan, with all his power, could not change the laws of nature…”



Observation: If these are not miracles, in the strict sense of the word, we do not know what else can carry this name; and if they are, for the most part, optical illusions, these illusions deviate singularly from the laws of nature, and would themselves be miracles, for we have never seen lightning strikes and walls falling apart by optical effects. What emerges more clearly from this explanation is the difficulty in distinguishing true miracles from false ones, and of making, in the effects of this nature, the part of the saints and that of the devil.



“At the same time that he will strike all minds with astonishment and admiration, the Antichrist will display all the appearances of the most austere virtue, to win all hearts. While he will indulge in the most shameful debauchery, at the back of his palace, he will seem to make people believe in his temperance and his chastity. Lavishing gold and silver around him, he will do great good for the poor, and everywhere there will be nothing but concerts of praise for his beneficence and his charity. We will see him every day spending whole hours in prayer in his temple; in short, he will cover himself with the mantle of hypocrisy with such skill that even his most faithful servants will be convinced of his virtue and his holiness.



The Lord, however, will not leave His children vulnerable and helpless during these times of trial. Enoch and Elijah will return to earth to preach the word of God, support the courage of the faithful, and expose the deceptions of false prophets. For twelve hundred and sixty days, or three and a half years, they will travel the world, exhorting all men to do penance and return to the worship of Jesus Christ. They will oppose true miracles to the pretended wonders of the Antichrist and his apostles ... But after they will have completed their testimony, the beast that rises from the abyss (the Antichrist) will wage war against them, overcome them and kill them."





Observation: Reincarnation could not be more bluntly affirmed. Here it is not an appearance, an optical illusion, it is indeed reincarnation in flesh and blood, since the two prophets are dead.



“Then, the pride of the Antichrist will know no limits. Proud of the victory he has just won over the two prophets who braved his power with such impunity, for three and a half years, he will have a magnificent throne built on the Mount of Olives, and there, surrounded by a legion of transformed demons as angels of light, he will be worshiped by the immense multitude who will be gathered to enjoy his triumph.



But on the twenty-fifth day, the body of the two prophets, animated by the breath of God, will be resurrected, and they will ascend into heaven, shining with glory, at the sight of the terrified crowd. Blinded by anger and hatred, the Antichrist will announce that he is going to go up to heaven to seek his enemies there, and to throw them down to earth. Indeed, leaving on the wings of the surrounding demons, he will rise in the air; but at that moment the sky will open, and the Son of the Man will appear in a luminous cloud. The Antichrist will be cast down from heaven with his entourage of demons, Earth will open, and he will descend alive into hell...



Then the end of the world will be near. No longer will years or months pass, but few days, the last term given to men for penance. The most frightening wonders will follow one another relentlessly, until the whole world perishes in immense upheaval.



This is what Holzauzer announces, and this is only the explanation of what is contained in the Apocalypse; it is the doctrine of all the Fathers of the Church, contained in the Gospel and the Acts of the apostles."





Observation: So, that is how the world will end! It is not a man's dream; it is the doctrine of all the Fathers who are the light of the Church. Those of our readers who have only a vague idea of the Antichrist, will be grateful for the description given to them, with some details, according to the competent authorities. If there is only forty-three years ahead, it will not be long before we see this wonderful reign. By these signs, we will recognize the proximity of the fatal date.



What is strange in this story is the erasure of the power of God and of his Church, before that of the Antichrist. Indeed, after a triumph of short duration, the Church succumbs again not to rise afterwards; the faith of its ministers is not great enough to prevent corruption from entering the sanctuary. Isn’t this a naive admission of weakness and helplessness? These are things that one can think of, but that is awkward to shout from the rooftops.



It would have been astonishing if Spiritism had not found a place in this prediction; it is, in fact, indicated as one of the signs of times, and here is in what terms. It is no longer Holzauzer speaking, but it is the author of the brochure:



“But here these noises becoming clearer, these horrors that seem chimerical, take on consistency and are clearly formulated. The end of the world is approaching, we cry from all sides! In Europe, in Catholic countries, we recall old prophecies that all herald this great event for our time ...



It is the knocking Spirits that raise the alarm. Open The Spirits' Book by Allan Kardec, you will read on the first page, in the prolegomena, the following words: "The Spirits announce that the times marked by Providence for a universal manifestation have arrived, and that being the ministers of God, and the agents of his will, their mission is to educate and enlighten men, opening a new era for the regeneration of humanity."



­Observation: We do not see that to announce the regeneration of humanity is to announce its end; these two ideas contradict each other. Instead of sounding the alarm, the Spirits come to bring hope.

“And first the prophet Joel tells us: "In those days, magic will cover all the earth, and we will see even children at breasts doing extraordinary things and speaking like grown-ups."



Spiritism, that nineteenth century magic, has invaded the world. Only a few years ago, in America, England and France, surprising and unheard-of phenomena aroused general curiosity. Inert furniture, that came to life at the will of operators, gave way to the most fantastic evolutions, and answered, without hesitation, questions that were addressed to them. They sought what could be the intelligent cause of those intelligent effects. The tables answered, they are Spirits, the souls of men taken away by death, who come to communicate with the living. New phenomena were produced. There was a sound of blows struck in the furniture, in the walls of the dwellings; objects moving spontaneously were seen; voices and symphonies were heard; there were even appearances of people who have been dead for a long time. The wonders multiplied. You had to want to see; you had to see to be convinced.



Soon a new religion was organized. When questioned, the Spirits themselves wrote the code of their new doctrine. It was, it must be admitted, a philosophical system admirably well combined in all respects. Never has the most skillful sophist been able to disguise lies and paradox so well. Not being able, without revealing their origin and arousing suspicion, suddenly break with the ideas of God and of virtue, the Spirits begin by recognizing loudly the existence of this God, the necessity of this virtue; but they make so little difference between the fate of the righteous and that of the wicked, that one is necessarily led, by these beliefs, to satisfy all their passions, and to seek in death a refuge from misfortune. Crime and suicide are the two fatal consequences of these principles, that appear, at first glance, to be imbued with such a beautiful and pure morality.



To explain the anomaly of these communications from beyond the grave, the Spirits could not help announcing, as we have seen, that the times marked by Providence had come; but not wishing to speak of the end of the world, that did not enter their system at all, they added: "for the universal regeneration of humanity."





Observation: By a singular coincidence, on that very day, February 24th, when we received this brochure, addressed to us by one of our correspondents in Lyon, and at the time when we were reading these last paragraphs, we received a letter from the surroundings of Boulogne-sur-Mer, from which we extracted the following passages:



“It is from the bottom of an obscure valley in Boulonais that these few words reach you, reflections of a suffering existence; for Spiritism permeates everywhere, spreading light and consolation. Personally, what relief do I not owe it, as well as to you, sir, who are the provider of that!



Born from very poor parents, with eight children, of whom I am the eldest, alas! I have not yet earned my bread, although twenty-nine years old, by the weakness of my health. Add to this an innate propensity for pride, vanity, violence, etc., and judge what evils I had to endure in my miserable condition before Spiritism came to explain to me the enigma of my destiny. It was to the point that I had resolved to kill myself.





To that end, to calm my apprehensions and the reproaches of my conscience, I said to myself, in my Catholic faith: I will strike myself with a blow that, while being fatal, will not kill me instantaneously, and will allow me to have enough moments of life so that I have the possibility of confessing myself, of receiving communion and of manifesting my repentance; in short, to put myself in a position to ensure a happy life in the other world, while escaping the evils of this one.



My reasoning was very absurd, wasn't it, sir? And yet, wasn’t it consistent with the dogma that assures us that every sin, even every crime, is erased by the simple admission made to a priest who gives absolution?



Now, thanks to the knowledge of Spiritism, such ideas are forever banished from my thought; however, how many imperfections I still must strip away!”



Thus, Spiritism prevented an act, a crime that would have been committed, not in the absence of all faith, but by the very consequence of his Catholic faith, the person says. In this case, which was the most powerful to prevent the evil? Will this young man be disgraced for having followed the impulse of Spiritism, the work of the devil, according to the author of the pamphlet, and had he been saved, by committing suicide, but having received the absolution of a priest, before dying? May the author of the brochure answer this question with his hand on his conscience.



Having the fragments reported above been read at the Parisian Society, our former colleague, Jobard, spontaneously came to give the following communication on this subject, by a medium in spiritual somnambulism:



Parisian Society, February 28th, medium Mr. Morin



I was passing when the echo brought me the vibration of an immense burst of laughter. I listened and having recognized the sound of the laughter of the incarnate and the discarnate, I said to myself: The thing is undoubtedly interesting; let's go and see! … And I didn't think, gentlemen, that I would have the pleasure of coming to spend the evening with you. However, I am still happy about it, believe it, because I know all the sympathy you have kept for your former colleague.



I then approached, and the sounds of Earth came to me more distinct: The end of the world! they shout; the end of the world! … Hey! My God, I said to myself, if it is the end of the world, what will become of them? … The voice of your president and my friend’s voice reached me, I heard him reading a few passages to you, of a brochure announcing the end of the world as very imminent. The subject interested me; I listened attentively, and after having thought carefully, I come, like the author of the pamphlet, to say to you: Yes, gentlemen, the end of the world is near! … Oh! don't be afraid, ladies; for you have to be very close to it to touch it, and when you touch it, you will see it.



In the meantime, if you allow me, I will give you my assessment of this word, scarecrow of weak brains, and of weak minds; because, know it, if the apprehension of the end of the world terrifies the pusillanimous beings of your world, it also strikes with terror the inferior beings of erraticity. All those who are not dematerialized, that is, those that although Spirits, live more materially than spiritually, are frightened at the idea of the end of the world, because they understand, by this word, the destruction of matter. Do not be surprised then, that this idea touches certain spirits who would not know what would become of them, if Earth no longer existed; for Earth is still their world, their fulcrum.



I said to myself: Yes, the end of the world is near; it is there, I see it, I touch it… it is close to those who, unwittingly, are working to hasten its advent! … Yes, the end of the world is near; … but end of which world?



It will be the end of the world of superstition, despotism, abuses maintained by ignorance, malice, and hypocrisy; it will be the end of the selfish and proud world, of pauperism, of all that is vile and degrades man; in short of all the ignoble and greedy feelings that are the sad prerogative of your world.



This end of the world, this great catastrophe that all religions agree to foresee, is it what they mean? Shouldn’t we see in this, on the contrary, the fulfillment of the lofty destinies of humanity? If we think about everything that is going on around us, aren't these warning signs the signal for the beginning of another world, I mean another moral world, rather than that of the destruction of the material world?



Yes, gentlemen, a period of earthly purification is ending at this time; another is about to begin ... Everything is bringing the old world to an end, and those who strive to support it are working energetically, unwittingly, for its destruction. Yes, the end of the world is near for them; they have a presentiment of it and are frightened by it, believe it, more than of the end of the terrestrial world, because it is the end of their domination, of their preponderance, to which they hold more than to anything else; and it will not be God's vengeance towards them, for God does not avenge himself, but it will be the just reward for their deeds. The Spirits are, like you, the children of their works; if they are good, it is because they have worked to become so; if they are bad, it is not that they have worked to become so, it is because they have not worked to become good.



Friends, the end of the world is near, and I urge you to take note of this forecast; it is so close that we are already working to rebuild it. The wise foresight of the one from whom nothing escapes, wants everything to be built instead of everything being destroyed; and when the new edifice is crowned, when the ridge is covered, it is then that the old will crumble; it will fall on its own; so that between the old world and the new there will be no break in continuity.



That is how we must understand the end of the world, that already presages so many warning signs. And who will be the most powerful workers for this great transformation? It's you, madams; it is you, young ladies, with the help of the double lever of education and Spiritism. In the woman into whom Spiritism has sunk in, there is more than a woman, there is a spiritual worker; in this state, everything working for her, the woman still works much more than the man, in the edification of the monument; for when she knows all the resources of Spiritism, and knows how to use them, the greater part of the work will be done by her. By breastfeeding the body of her child, she will also be able to breastfeed her Spirit; and who is a better blacksmith than the son of a blacksmith, apprentice of his father? The child will thus suck, as he grows, the milk of spirituality, and when you have Spiritists, children of Spiritists and parents of Spiritists, won’t the end of the world, as we understand it, be accomplished? Are you then astonished, that spiritualism is the scarecrow to everything that pertains to the old world, and the ruthlessness with which they try to suffocate it in its cradle!



Jobard

[1] Greek mythology, goddess of fame (Wikipedia, T.N.)

May

Lavater's unpublished correspondence with Empress Mary of Russia

Spiritism everywhere

The Countess of Monte Cristo

With this title, La Petite Presse publishes a serial novel in which we find the following passages, extracts from chapters XXX and XXXI:



“My paradise, dear mother," said her dying daughter to the Countess of Monte Cristo, "it will be to stay near you, near you!" still alive in your thoughts, listening to you and answering you, chatting in a low voice with your souls.



When the flower smells in the garden, and you bring it to your lips, I will be in the flower, and I will receive the kiss!" I will also be the ray, the passing breath, the sounding murmur. The wind that will shake your hair will be my caress; the scent of flowering lilacs will rise towards your window, it will be my breath; the distant song that will make you cry, it be my voice! …



Mother do not blaspheme! No anger against God! Alas! perhaps these anger and blasphemy would separate us forever.



As long as you stay down here, I will make myself your companion in exile; but later, when resigned to the wishes of our Father who is in heaven, you in your turn will have closed your eyes so as not to reopen them, then I will in turn be at your bedside, awaiting for your freedom; and intoxicated with eternal joy, our two hearts, united forever, entwined for eternity, will fly the same flight towards a merciful sky. Do you understand this joy, mother? Never leave one another, always love each other, always! To form, so to speak, two distinct beings and a single being, at the same time: to be you and me at the same time? To love and know that one is loved, and that the measure of the love that one inspires is the same that one feels?



Here below, we do not know each other; I ignore you as you ignore me; our two bodies are an obstacle between our two Spirits; we only see ourselves confusedly through the veil of flesh. But up there, we'll clearly read each other's hearts. And knowing how much we love each other is true paradise, you see!



Alas! All these promises of a mystical and infinite happiness, far from calming the anxieties of Helena, only made them more intense, by making her measure the value of good that she was going to miss.



At intervals, however, at the breath of these inspired words, Helena’s soul almost flew to the serene heights where Pippione's hovered. Her tears stopped, her calm returned to her disturbed bosom; it seemed to her that invisible beings were floating in the room, whispering the words to Blanche, as she pronounced them.



The child had fallen asleep, and in her dream, she seemed to be conversing with someone you couldn't see, listening to voices that only she could hear, and responding to them.



Suddenly, an abrupt tremble shook her frail limbs, she opened her large eyes wide and called her mother, who was dreaming, leaning on the window.



She approached the bed, and Pippione grabbed her hand with an already damp hand from the last sweats.



“The time has come," she said. “This is the last night. They call me, I hear them! I would like to stay still, poor mother, but I cannot, their will is stronger than mine; they are up there waving to me.”



- Madness! exclaimed Helena! Vision! Dream! You, die today, tonight, in my arms! Is that possible?



“- No, not die," said Pippione; “be born! I come out of the dream instead of entering it; the nightmare is over, I wake up. Oh! if you only knew how beautiful it is, and what light shines here, beside which your sun is but a black spot!”



She let herself fall on the cushions, remained silent for a moment, then continued:



"- The moments that I have to spend with you are short. I want you all to be here to tell me what you call an eternal farewell, that is just a brief goodbye. Everybody, do you hear me well? You first, the good doctor, Ursula, and Cyprienne, and Joseph.”



This name was pronounced lower than the others, it was the last breath, the last human regret of Pippione. From that moment, she belonged entirely to heaven…



…………………..



"- It was my daughter!



“- It was! … Repeated Doctor Ozam, in an almost fatherly voice, drawing Helena to his chest. It was! … So it is no longer… What is left here? A little half-decomposed flesh, nerves that vibrate no more, blood that thickens, eyes without gaze, a speechless throat, ears that no longer hear, a little mud! Your daughter! This corpse in which fertile nature already makes inferior life germinate, that will disseminate its elements? - Your daughter, this mud that tomorrow will turn green in the weeds, will flower in roses, and will restore to the ground all the living forces that it has stolen from her? No, no - this is not your daughter! This is only the delicate and charming outfit that she had created to go through our life of hardships, a rag that she disdainfully abandoned, like a worn dress that one throws away! If you want to have a vivid memory of your daughter, poor lady, you must look elsewhere… and higher.



“So, you believe it too, doctor,” she asked, “in this other life? You were said to be a materialist.”



“The doctor smirked softly. "Maybe I am, but not the way you mean it."



“It is not in another life that I believe, but in eternal life, in the life that has not begun and that, therefore, will have no end. – In the beginning, each of the beings equal to the others, educates, so to speak, their soul, and improves their faculties and power, in proportion to their merits and actions. Immediate consequence of this argumentation: this more perfect soul also aggregates a more perfect envelope all around itself. A day arrives when then finally this envelope is no longer sufficient, and then, the soul breaks the body, as they say.



But does she break it to find another more in line with her needs and her new qualities? Where? Who knows? Perhaps in one of those superior worlds that shine on our heads, in a world where she will find a more perfect body, endowed with more sensitive organs, thereby even better and happier!

……………….



We ourselves, perfect beings, from the first day endowed with all the senses that put us in touch with external nature, how much effort do we not need! What latent labors are not necessary for the child to become a man, the ignorant and weak being, king of Earth! And endlessly, until death, the courageous and the good ones persevere in this arduous way of work; they expand their intelligence by the study, their heart by dedication. That is the mysterious work of the human chrysalis, the work by which it acquires the power and the right to break the envelope of the body and to rise with wings."



Observation: The author, who had up until now kept anonymous, is Mr. du Boys, a young dramatic writer; from certain almost textual expressions, we can obviously see that he was inspired by the Doctrine.

Metempsychosis

“Do you know the cause of the noises that reach us? said Mrs. Des Genêts. Is this some new scene of unleashed tigers that these gentlemen are preparing for us?



- Relax, dear friend, everything is safe: our living and our dead. Hear the lovely melody of the nightingale singing in this willow tree! Perhaps it is the soul of one of our martyrs that hovers around us, in this loving form. The dead have these privileges; and I readily persuade myself that they often come back to those they loved.



- Oh! if you were telling the truth! exclaimed Mrs. Des Genêts eagerly.



- I sincerely believe it, said the young Duchess. It is so good to believe in reassuring things! Besides, my father, who is very enlightened, as you are aware, assured me that this belief had been spread long ago by great philosophers. Lesage himself believes in it too.”





This passage is taken from a serial novel entitled: Le Cachot de la Tour des pins[1], by Paulin Capmal, published by La Liberté on November 4th, 1867. Here, the idea is not borrowed from the Spiritist doctrine, that has always taught and proved that the human soul cannot be reborn in an animal body, that does not prevent certain critics, who have not read the first word of Spiritism, from repeating that it professes the metempsychosis; but it is still the thought of the individual soul surviving the body, returning in a tangible form to those whom it has loved. If the idea is not Spiritist, it is at least spiritualistic, and it would still be better to believe in metempsychosis than to believe in the void. This belief, at least, is not hopeless like materialism; it has nothing immoral, on the contrary; it has led all the peoples who have professed it to treat animals with gentleness and benevolence. This exclamation: It is so good to believe in reassuring things, is the great secret of the success of Spiritism.

[1] The dungeon of the pine trees tower (T.N.)

Funeral of Mr. Marc Michel

The Temps, on March 27th, 1868, reads:



“Yesterday, at the funeral of Mr. Marc Michel, Mr. Jules Adenis said goodbye, in the name of the Society of Dramatic Authors, to the writer whom the joyous and light comedy has just lost.



I find this sentence in his speech:



It was Ferdinand Langlé who recently preceded the one we mourn today in the grave… And who knows? Who can tell? … just as we are following this mortal remains here, perhaps Langlé's soul came to receive Marc Michel's soul on the threshold of eternity.



It is certainly my fault, of my too lighthearted Spirit, but I confess that it is difficult for me to imagine, with the proper seriousness, the soul of the author of the Deaf, of the Bedfellow, of A leech, of the Gatekeepers' Strike, coming to receive, on the threshold of eternity, the soul of the author of Maman Sabouleux, of Mesdames de Montenfriche, of a Bengal Tiger and of the Champbaudet Station.

X. Feyrnet.”





The thought expressed by Mr. Jules Adenis is of the purest Spiritism. Let us suppose that the author of the article, Mr. Feyrnet, who has difficulty maintaining a suitable solemnity on hearing that the soul of Mr. Lauglé is perhaps present, and coming to receive the soul of Marc Michel, had spoken in turn, and expressed himself as follows: "Gentlemen, you have just heard that the soul of our friend Langlé is here, that it sees us and hears us!" He would just add that it can talk to us. Don't believe a word of it; Langlé's soul no longer exists; or it has melted into the immensity, that amounts to the same thing. Nothing is left of Marc Michel; it will be the same with you, when you die, as well as with your parents and with your friends. Hoping that they are waiting for you, that they will come to receive you when you leave life, that is madness, superstition, illuminism. The positive thing is this: When you're dead, it's all over. Which of the two speakers would have found the most sympathy among those present? Which would have dried the most tears, given the most courage and resignation to the afflicted? Wouldn't the unfortunate man, who no longer waits for relief in this world, be justified in saying to him: "If this is so, let's end life as soon as possible?” We must feel sorry for Mr. Feyrnet not be able to keep his seriousness at the idea that his father and his mother, if he has lost them, are still living, that they are watching at his bedside, and that he will see them again.

A dream

Extracted from Le Figaro, April 12th, 1868:



“However extraordinary the following account may seem, the author, by declaring to have received it from vice-president of the legislative body himself (Baron Jérôme David), gives these words an incontestable authority.



During his stay in Saint-Cyr, David witnessed a duel between two of his classmates, Lambert and Poirée. The latter was hurt by a sword and was taken to the infirmary to be treated, where his friend David went up to see him every day.



One morning, Poirée seemed singularly disturbed to him; he pressed him with questions and ended by wresting from him the confession that his emotion came from a simple nightmare.



I dreamed that we were at the edge of a river, I received a bullet in the forehead, above the eye, and you supported me in your arms; I was in a lot of pain and felt like I was dying; I recommended my wife and my children to you when I woke up.



My dear, you have a fever, replied David laughing; get well, you are in your bed, you are not married, and you do not have a bullet above your eye; it is quite a dream; do not torment yourself like this if you want to get well quickly.



- It is singular, Poirée whispered, I have never believed in dreams, I do not believe in them, and yet I am upset.



Ten years later, the French army landed in Crimea; the Saint-Cyrians had lost sight of each other. David, an orderly officer attached to Prince Napoleon's division, was ordered to go, and discover a passage up the Alma. To prevent the Russians from taking him prisoner, this recognition was supported by a company of hunters, taken from the nearest regiment. The Russians rained down a hail of bullets on the escort men, who returned fire in retaliation.



Within ten minutes one of our officers rolled to the ground, mortally wounded. Captain David jumped off his horse and ran to pick him up; he leaned his head on his left arm and, untangling the gourd hanging from his belt, he brought it to the lips of the wounded man. A gaping hole above the eye stained the face with blood; a soldier brought a little water and poured it on the head of the dying man, who was already moaning.





David looks with attention at the features he seems to recognize; a name is pronounced next to him; there is no more doubt, it's him, it's Poirée! He calls him, his eyes open, the dying man in turn recognizes Saint-Cyr's comrade ...



- David! you here? ... The dream ... my wife ...



These interrupted words were not finished as the head was already falling inert on David's arm. Poirée was dead, leaving his wife and children to the memory and friendship of David.



I would not dare to tell such a story if I had not heard it myself from the honorable vice-president of the legislative body.



Vox populi.”



Why does the narrator add these words: Vox populi? We could understand them like this: facts of such a nature are so frequent that they are attested by the voice of the people, that is, by a general permit.

Hunger in Algeria

The details given by the newspapers on the scourge that is currently decimating the Arab populations of Algeria are not exaggerated and are confirmed by every private correspondence. One of our subscribers from Setif, Mr. Dumas, was kind enough to send us a photograph showing the crowd of natives gathered in front of the house where they are distributing aid. The image, of a heartbreaking reality, is accompanied by the following printed instructions:



“After the successively calamitous years that our great colony has gone through, an even more terrible scourge has come down on it: famine.



The first harsh winter had hardly made itself felt when we saw the Arabs dying of hunger at our doors; they arrive in large groups, half-naked, exhausted bodies, weeping with hunger and cold, imploring public commiseration, disputing with the voracity of the dogs some debris thrown with the dirt on the public highway.



Although reduced to brutal extremes themselves, the inhabitants of Setif cannot contemplate such deep misery with an impassive eye. Immediately, and spontaneously, a charitable commission was organized under the chairmanship of Mr. Bizet, parish priest of Setif; a subscription was opened, each one gives his mite, and consequently daily help has been distributed in the presbytery, to two hundred and fifty native women or children.



In the last days of January, while an abundant and long-desired snowfall fell on our regions, we were able to do even better. A stove has been installed in a large room; there, the members of the commission distribute food twice a day, no longer to two hundred and fifty, but to five hundred native women or children; these unfortunate people finally find an asylum and a shelter there.



But unfortunately, the Europeans are obliged, and quite reluctantly, to limit their aid to women and children ... To alleviate all the miseries, it would take a good part of the wheat that the powerful Qaids hold in their silos; however, they hope to be able to continue their distributions until the middle of April."



If we did not open, in this circumstance, a special subscription at the offices of the Spiritist Review, it is because we knew that our brothers in belief were not the last ones to take their offering to the offices of their circumscription, opened for this purpose by the authorities. Donations sent to us for this purpose have been deposited there.



Captain Bourgès, stationed at Laghouat, writes the following on this subject:



“For several years, the plagues have followed one another in Algeria: earthquakes, invasion of locusts, cholera, drought, typhus, famine, deep misery have come in turn to reach the natives that, now atone their improvidence and fanaticism. Men and animals even starve and die silently. Starvation spreads in Morocco and Tunisia; I believe that Algeria is more affected, though. You would not believe how touching is to see these haggard and frail bodies everywhere, looking for their food, and fighting for it with stray dogs. In the morning, these living skeletons run around the camp and rush to the manure to extract the barley grains undigested by the horses, and on which they feed instantly. Others chew on bones to suck on the gelatin that may still be there or eat the rare grass that grows around the oasis. From the midst of this misery arises a hideous debauchery that reaches the bottom of the colony, and spreads in material bodies those corrosive wounds that must have been the leprosy of antiquity. My eyes close so as not to see so much shame, and my soul ascends to the Heavenly Father to pray for him to preserve the good from the impure contact, and to give weak men the strength not to be drawn into this unhealthy abyss.



Humanity is still a long way from the moral progress that some philosophers believe has already been accomplished. I see around me only Epicureans who do not want to hear about the Spirit; they do not want to get out of animality; their pride attributes to itself a noble origin, and yet their acts clearly say what they once were.



By seeing what is happening, one would really believe that the Arab race is called upon to disappear from Earth, for despite the charity that we exercise towards it and the help that is brought, it takes pleasure in its laziness, without any feeling of gratitude. This physical misery, resulting from moral wounds, still has its use. The selfish, obsessed, always elbowed by the miserable that follows him, ends up opening his hand, and his touched heart at last feels the sweet joys brought by charity. A feeling that will not be erased has just been born, and perhaps even that of gratitude will arise in the heart of the one that is assisted. A sympathetic bond is then formed; new help comes along to give life to the unfortunate man that was perishing, and from discouragement he moves on to hope. What appeared to be an evil gave birth to a good: one less selfish and one more courageous man.”


The Spirits were not mistaken when they announced that plagues of all kinds would ravage Earth. We know that Algeria is not the only country that has suffered. In the Spiritist Review of July 1867, we described the terrible disease that had been raging for a year in Mauritius; a recent letter says that the disease has been added to new misfortunes, and many other countries are now victims of disastrous events.



Should we accuse the Providence of all these miseries? No, but ignorance, carelessness, the result of ignorance, selfishness, pride, and the passions of men. God only wants the good; he did everything for the good; he gave men the means to be happy: it is up to them to apply them if they do not want to acquire experience at their own expense. It would be easy to demonstrate that all scourges could be averted, or at least mitigated to paralyze their effects; this is what we will do later in a special book. Men should only blame themselves for the evils they endure; Algeria offers us, at this time, a remarkable example: it is the Arab populations, lighthearted and improvident, brutalized by fanaticism, that suffer from famine, while the Europeans knew how to protect themselves from it; but there are other not less disastrous scourges, against which the latter have not yet been able to guard themselves.



The very violence of the evil will force men to seek the remedy, and when they have uselessly exhausted the palliatives, they will understand the need to attack the evil at its own root, by heroic means. This will be one of the results of the transformation that is taking place in humanity.



But it will be asked, what does the happiness of future generations matter to those who suffer now? They will have had the trouble and the others the benefit; they will have worked, borne the burden of all the miseries inseparable from ignorance, prepared the ways, and the others, because God will have given birth to them in better times, will reap. What does the healthier regime, under which we live, do to the victims of the atrocities of the Middle Ages? Can we call it justice?



It is a fact that, until this day, no philosophy, no religious doctrine had solved this serious question, of such a powerful interest, however, for humanity. Spiritism alone provides a rational solution through reincarnation, this key to so many problems that were believed to be insoluble. By the fact of the plurality of existences, the generations that succeed one another are composed of the same spiritual individualities that are reborn at different times, benefiting from the improvements that they themselves have prepared, from the experience that they have acquired in the past. It is not new men that are born; these are the same men who are reborn more advanced. Each generation working for the future works, in fact, for its own benefit. The Middle Ages were assuredly a very calamitous period; the men of that time, living again today, benefit from the progress made, and are happier, because they have better institutions; but who made these institutions better? The very ones who once had bad ones; those of today who will have to live again later, in an even more refined environment, will reap what they have sown; they will be more enlightened, and neither their sufferings nor their previous labors will have been wasted. What a courage, what a resignation wouldn’t this idea, inculcated in the Spirits, give to men! (See Genesis, chap. XVIII, items 34 and 35).

June

Spiritism Everywhere

Journal La Solidarité

Spiritism leads precisely to the goal that all men of progress propose; it is therefore impossible that, even without knowing each other, they do think in the same about certain points, and that, when they do get to know each other, they do not join hands to march together against their common enemies: the social prejudices, routine, fanaticism, intolerance, and ignorance.



La Solidarité is a journal whose editors take their title seriously; and what a vaster and more fruitful field for the moralist philosopher than this word that contains the whole program of the future of humanity! Thus, this periodical that has always been noted for the elevated reach of its views, if it does not have the popularity of light papers, it has acquired more solid credit among serious thinkers.[1]Although, to this day, it has not shown itself to be very sympathetic to our doctrines, we didn’t do less justice to the sincerity of its points of views and the undeniable talent of its writings. It is therefore with great satisfaction that today we see it doing justice to the principles of Spiritism. Its editors will also give us the credit for recognizing that we have taken no steps to bring them to us; their opinion, therefore, is not the result of any personal deference.



With the title Bulletin of the Philosophical and Religious Movement, the May 1st issue contains a remarkable article from which we extract the following passages:



“The mess is constantly increasing. Where will it stop? It is not only in politics that we no longer get along; it is no longer only in social economy, but it is also in morality and religion, so that the disorder extends to all spheres of human activity, that it has invaded the whole domain of consciousness, and that civilization itself is involved.



Not that the material order is in danger. Today there are too many acquired elements in society and too many interests to maintain for the material order to be seriously disturbed. But the material order proves nothing. It can persist for a long time when the very principle of social life is reached, and corruption slowly dissolves the organism. Order reigned in Rome under the Caesars, while Roman civilization was crumbling every day, not by the efforts of the barbarians, but by the weight of its own vices.





Will our society succeed in eliminating from its midst the morbid elements that threaten to become its seeds of dissolution and death? We hope so, but it requires the fulcrum of the eternal principles, the assistance of a truly positive science, and the prospect of a new ideal.



These are the conditions of social salvation because these are the means of a true rebirth for individuals. A society can only be the product of the social beings that constitute it, and as the result of their physical, intellectual, and moral state. If you want social transformation, make the new man first.[2]



Although the circle of readers of philosophical publications has grown a lot in recent years, how many people still ignore the existence of these journals, or neglect reading them! It is a mistake. Without them, it is impossible to realize the state of the souls. The organizations of contemporary philosophy have yet another reach: they prepare the questions that the events will soon raise, and that will be urgent to solve.



Certainly, there is great confusion in the philosophical press; it is a bit like the Tower of Babel: everyone speaks their own language and is much more concerned with covering the neighbor's voice than listening to their reasons. Each system aspires to be unique and excludes all others. But we must be careful not to take them literally in their exclusivity. And there is possibly no one of them that does not represent some legitimate point of view. They will all pass, for truth alone is eternal; but none of them, perhaps, will have been completely sterile; not one will have disappeared without adding something to the intellectual capital of humanity. Materialism, religious and philosophical positivism, “independentism” (forgive me for this barbarism, it is not mine), criticism, idealism, spiritualism, spiritism - because it is necessary to count on this newcomer that has more supporters than all the others together; and on the other hand, liberal Protestantism, liberal idealism, and even liberal Catholicism: such are the names of the main banners that, in various capacities and with unequal strengths, are represented in the philosophical arena. No doubt, there is no army here since there is no obedience to a leader, no hierarchy, no discipline, but these groups, today divided and independent, can be united by a common danger.



The philosophical movement that we are witnessing shortly precedes the great religious movement that is being prepared. Soon religious questions will fascinate people's minds, as social questions once did, and even more strongly.



That the order must be founded by a simple evolution of the Christian idea brought back to its primitive purity, as some think, or by a kind of fusion of beliefs on the wasteland of a Judeo-Christian deism, as hoped by other men of good will, or what seems to us much more probable, by the intervention of a larger and more comprehensible idea, that gives human life its true goal, the first need for the time we are in is freedom: freedom to think and publish one's thoughts, freedom of conscience and worship, freedom of propaganda and preaching! Of course, amid so many current systems, it is impossible not to see the opening of a phase of ardent, passionate, apparently disordered discussions, but this preparatory phase is necessary just as chaotic agitation is necessary for creation. Like lightning and bolts in the earth's atmosphere, the amalgamation of ideas stirs the moral atmosphere to purify it. Who can fear the storm, knowing that it must restore the disturbed balance and renew the sources of life?”



The same issue contains the following appreciation of our work about the Genesis. We only reproduced it because it is linked to the general interests of the Doctrine:



“There is something of capital importance happening in our time, and people pretend not to see it. There are, however, phenomena to be observed that are of interest to science, notably physics and human physiology; but, even when the phenomena of what is called Spiritism exist only in the imagination of its followers, the belief in Spiritism, so rapidly spread everywhere, is a considerable phenomenon and well worthy of occupying the meditations of the philosopher. It is difficult, even impossible to assess the number of people who believe in Spiritism, but we can say that this belief is general in the United States, and that it is spreading more and more in Europe. In France, there is a whole Spiritist literature. Paris has two or three journals that represent it. Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille each have their own. Mr. Allan Kardec is in France the most eminent representative of Spiritism. Fortunately to this belief it found a leader who knew how to keep it within the limits of rationalism. It would have been so easy, with all this mixture of real phenomena and purely ideal and subjective creations that constitutes the marvelousness of what is called Spiritism, to indulge in the attraction of the miracle, and the resurrection of old superstitions! Spiritism could have lent the enemies of reason a powerful support if it had turned to demonology, and there exists within the Catholic world a party that still makes all its efforts there. There is also a whole deplorable literature there, unhealthy, but fortunately without influence. Spiritism, on the contrary, in France as in the United States, resisted the spirit of the Middle Ages. The demon plays no part in it, and the miracle never comes to introduce its silly explanations. Apart from the hypothesis that forms the basis of Spiritism and that consists in believing that the Spirits of dead people talk to the living by means of certain processes of correspondence, very simple and accessible to everyone; apart from the hypothesis of this starting point, we were saying, we find ourselves in the presence of a general doctrine that is perfectly in keeping with the state of science in our time, and that perfectly meets the needs and modern aspirations. And what is remarkable is that the Spiritist doctrine is almost the same everywhere. If we study it only in France, we can believe that the works of Mr. Allan Kardec, which are like the encyclopedia of Spiritism, have a lot to do with it. But this parity of doctrine extends to other countries; for example, Davis' teachings in the United States do not differ essentially from those of Mr. Allan Kardec. It is true that, in the ideas emitted by Spiritism, one finds nothing that could not have been found by the human mind, given over to the sole resources of imagination and of positive science; but considering that the syntheses proposed by the Spiritist writers are scientific and rational, they deserve to be examined without prejudice, without bias, by philosophical criticism.



The new book by Mr. Allan Kardec addresses the issues that are the subject of our studies. We cannot present the report today. We will come back to this in a future issue, and we will say at the same time what we think of the so-called Spiritist phenomena, and the explanations that can be given to them in the current state of science."



Note: This same number contains a remarkable article by Mr. Raisant, entitled: My religious ideal, that the Spiritists would not disavow.

[1] La Solidarité, a monthly journal of 16 in-4 pages, published on the 1st of each month. Price: Paris, 5 francs per year; departments, 6 francs; foreigner, 7 francs. Price of an issue, 25 cents; by mail, 30 cents. - Office: rue des Saints-Pères, 13, at the Library of Social Sciences.




[2] We wrote in 1862: “Before making institutions for men, we must form men for institutions."(Spiritist Journey).

Conferences

In a series of conferences given last April by Mr. Chavée, at the Free Institute of Boulevard des Capucines, # 39, the speaker made, with as much talent as he did with real science, an analytical and philosophical study of the Indian Vedas and the laws of Manu, compared to the book of Job and the Psalms. This subject led him to considerations of great importance that directly touch on the fundamental principles of Spiritism. Here are some notes collected by a listener in these conferences; these are only thoughts seized on the fly, that necessarily misses out by being detached from the whole and deprived of their developments, but that suffice to show the order of ideas followed by the author:



“What is the point of throwing a veil over what is?" What is the use of not saying out loud what one is thinking in a whisper? One must have the courage to say it; as for me, I will have this courage.



In the Indian Vedas it says, “We have our peers up there”, and I agree with that.



“With the eyes of the flesh one cannot see everything."



“Man has an indefinite existence, and the progress of the soul is indefinite. Whatever the sum of her lights, she always must learn, for she has infinity in front of her, and although she cannot reach it, her goal will always be to get closer and closer to that."



“Individual man cannot exist without an organism that limits him within creation. If the soul exists after death, then it has a body, an organism that I call the superior organism, as opposed to the carnal body that is the inferior organism. During vigil these two organisms are, so to speak, confused; during sleep, somnambulism and ecstasy the soul makes use only of its ethereal body or the superior organism; she is freer in this state; her manifestations are more elevated, because she acts on this more perfect organism that offers her less resistance; she embraces a whole and relationships that are admired, something that cannot be done with her inferior organism that limits her clairvoyance and the field of her observations."



The soul is without extension; it is only extended by its ethereal body and circumscribed by the limits of this body that Saint Paul calls a luminous organism.



An organism, ethereal in its constituent elements, but invisible and reachable only by scientific induction, does not, in any way, contradict the known laws of physics and chemistry.



There are facts that experimentation can always reproduce, noting the existence, in man, of a superior internal organism that must succeed the usual opaque organism at the time of the destruction of the latter.



After death separates the soul from its carnal organism, it continues life in space, with its ethereal body, thus retaining its individuality. Among the men of whom we have spoken and who have died according to the flesh, there are certainly some here among us who participate, invisible, at our talks; they are by our side, and hover above our heads; they see us and hear us. Yes, they are there, I assure you.



The scale of beings is continuous; before being what we are, we have passed through all the steps of this ladder that are below us, and we will continue to climb those that are above. Before our brain was a reptile, it was a fish, and it was a fish before it was a mammal.



Materialists deny these truths; they are honest people; they are in good faith, but they are wrong! I challenge a materialist to come here to this podium and prove that he is right and that I am wrong. Come and prove materialism! No, they will not prove it; they will only put forward ideas based on a void; they will only oppose denials, while I am going to demonstrate by facts the truth of my thesis.



Are there pathological phenomena that prove the existence of the soul after death? Yes, there are, and I'll mention one. I see medical doctors here who claim that there aren’t. I will only answer this: If you haven't seen any, it's because you looked badly. Observe, seek, study, and you will find some as I have found myself.



It is to somnambulism and ecstasy that I am going to ask for the proofs that I have promised you. Somnambulism? I will be asked; but the Academy of Medicine has not yet recognized it. - What does that matter to me? I don't care about the Academy of Medicine, and I will do without it. - But Mr. Dubois, of Amiens, wrote a big book against this doctrine. - It doesn't matter to me either; these are opinions without proof, that disappear before the facts.



People will say to me still: "It is no longer in fashion to defend somnambulism. I will answer that I do not want to be fashionable, and that, if so, few men dare to profess truths that still attract ridicule, I am one of those whom ridicule cannot reach, and who willingly face it in good will, courageously saying what they believe to be the truth. If each of us acted like that, skepticism would soon lose all the ground that it has gained for some time and be replaced by faith; not the faith that is the daughter of revelation, but a more solid faith, the daughter of science, observation, and reason.”





The speaker cites numerous examples of somnambulism and ecstasy, that gave him proof, in some way material, of the existence of the soul, of its action isolated from the carnal body, of its individuality after death, and, finally, of his ethereal body, that is no other but the fluidic envelope or perispirit.



The existence of the perispirit, suspected by elites of intelligences since the highest antiquity, but ignored by the masses, demonstrated, and popularized in recent times by Spiritism, is a whole revolution in psychological ideas, and consequently in philosophy. Having this starting point admitted, we inevitably arrive, from deduction to deduction, to the individuality of the soul, to the plurality of existences, to indefinite progress, to the presence of Spirits among us, in a word, to all the consequences of Spiritism, up to the fact of the manifestations that can be explained in a very natural way.



On the other hand, we have demonstrated in time that by speaking of the principle of the plurality of existences, accepted today by several serious thinkers, even outside Spiritism, we arrive precisely at the same consequences.



If, therefore, men whose knowledge is authoritative, openly profess, verbally or by their writings, even without speaking of Spiritism, some of the doctrine of the perispirit, by any given name, others to the plurality of existences, it is professing Spiritism, since these are two roads that inevitably lead to it. If they drew these ideas from themselves and from their own observations, it only proves that those are part of nature and how irresistible their power is. Thus, perispirit and reincarnation are now two open doors for Spiritism, in the field of philosophy and popular beliefs.



Mr. Chavée's conferences are therefore true Spiritist lectures, minus the word; and in this last aspect, we will say that they are, for the moment, more beneficial to the doctrine than if they openly raised the flag. They popularize its fundamental ideas, without offending those who by ignorance of the matter, would have prejudices against the name. A clear proof of the sympathy that these ideas meet in public opinion is the enthusiastic reception given to the doctrines professed by Mr. Chavée, by the large public that flock to his conferences.



We are convinced that more than one writer, who makes fun of the Spiritists, applauds Mr. Chavée and his doctrines, finding it perfectly rational, without suspecting that they are nothing other than the purest Spiritism.



The journal La Solidarité, in the issue of May 1st, that we cited above, gives a report of these conferences, to which we draw the attention of our readers, in that it completes the information given above from other points of view.



Note: The abundance of material obliges us to hand over to the next issue the review of two very interesting feuilletons by Mr. Bonnemère, the author of the Novel of the future, published in the Siècle of April 24th and 25th, 1868, with the title Paris somnambulist; Spiritism is clearly defined there.

Bibliographic News

Religion and politics in modern society


by Frédéric Herrenschneider.[1]

Mr. Herrenschneider is a former Saint-Simonian, and it was there that he drew his keen love for progress. Since then, he has become a Spiritist, and yet we are far from sharing his point of view on all points, and from accepting all the solutions he gives. His work is a work of high philosophy where the Spiritist element holds an important place; we will only examine it from the point of view of the agreement and divergence of his ideas regarding Spiritism. Before moving into the examination of his theory, some preliminary considerations seem essential to us.



Three great doctrines divide the spirits, with the names of different religions and very distinct philosophies; they are materialism, spiritualism, and Spiritism; however, one can be a materialist and believe or not believe in the free will of man; in the second case, one is an atheist or a pantheist; in the first, one is inconsistent, and still takes the name of pantheist or that of naturalist, positivist, etc.



One is spiritualist from the moment that one is not a materialist, that is one admits a spiritual principle, distinct from matter, whatever the idea that one has of its nature and its destiny. Catholics, Greeks, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Deists are all spiritualists, despite the essential differences in dogma that divide them.



The Spiritists have a clearer and more precise idea of the soul; it is not a vague and abstract being, but a defined being that takes some concrete, limited, circumscribed form. Regardless of intelligence, that is its essence, it has special attributes and effects, which are the fundamental principles of their doctrine. They admit: the fluidic body or perispirit; the indefinite progress of the soul; reincarnation or plurality of existences, as a necessity for progress; the plurality of inhabited worlds; the presence in our midst of souls or Spirits who have lived on Earth and the continuation of their care for the living; the perpetuity of affections; the universal solidarity that links the living and the dead, the Spirits of all the worlds, and hence the efficacy of prayer; the possibility of communicating with the Spirits of those who are no more; in man, the spiritual or psychic sight, that is an effect of the soul.







They reject the dogma of eternal, irremediable penalties, as irreconcilable with the justice of God; but they admit that the soul, after death, suffers and endures the consequences of all the evil that she has done during life, all the good that she could have done and that she did not do. One’s sufferings are the natural consequence of one’s actions; they last as long as the perversity or moral inferiority of the Spirit lasts; they diminish as he improves and cease by repairing the evil; this repair takes place in successive bodily existences. The Spirit, always having his freedom of action, is thus the own maker of his happiness and his unhappiness, in this world and in the next. Man is fatally inclined neither to good nor to evil; he accomplishes both by his will and perfects himself by experience. As a consequence to that principle, the Spiritists admit neither the demons, predestined to evil, nor the special creation of angels, predestined to infinite happiness, without having had the trouble of deserving it; demons are still imperfect human Spirits, but who will improve over time; the angels are Spirits that arrived at perfection after having passed, like the others, through all the degrees of inferiority.



Spiritism admits, for each one, only the responsibility for his own acts; the original sin, according to that, is personal; it consists of the imperfections that everyone brings when is reborn, because one has not yet shed them in one’s previous existences, and of which one naturally suffers the consequences in the present life.



Neither does it admit, as a supreme final reward, the useless and blissful contemplation of the elected ones during eternity; but, on the contrary, an incessant activity, from the top to the bottom of the scale of beings, where each one has assignments in proportion to their degree of advancement.



Such is, in a very short summary, the basis of the Spiritist beliefs; one is a Spiritist from the moment that one enters this order of ideas, even when one does not admit all the points of the doctrine in their integrity or all their consequences. Although not a complete Spiritist, one is nonetheless a Spiritist, meaning that one is often a Spiritist without knowing it, sometimes without wishing to admit it to oneself, and that among the followers of the different religions, many are in fact Spiritists, even if not by name.



The common belief to spiritualists is to believe in a creator God, and to admit that the soul, after death, continues to exist, in the form of a pure Spirit, completely detached from all matter, and that she will be able, with or without the resurrection of her material body, to enjoy an eternal happy or unhappy existence.



Materialists believe, on the contrary, that force is inseparable from matter and cannot exist without it; consequently, God is for them only a gratuitous hypothesis, unless he is matter itself; the materialists deny, with all their force, the conception of an essentially spiritual soul and that of a personality surviving death.



Regarding the soul as the spiritualists accept it, their criticism is based on the fact that since force is inseparable from matter, a personal, active and powerful soul cannot exist as a geometric point in space, dimensionless of any kind, neither length, nor width, nor height. What force, what power, what action can such a soul have on the body during life; what progress can it achieve, and in what way does it keep its individuality if it is nothing; how could she be susceptible to happiness or unhappiness after death? They ask the spiritualists.



We must not hide it from ourselves, this argument is specious, but it is without value against the doctrine of the Spiritists; they admit the soul distinct from the body, like the spiritualists, with an eternal life and an indestructible personality, but they consider this soul as indissolubly united to matter; not the matter of the body itself, but another more ethereal, fluidic and incorruptible that they call perispirit, a fortunate word expressing well the thought that is the origin and the very basis of Spiritism.



If we summarize the three doctrines, we will say that, for materialists, the soul does not exist; or if it exists, it merges with matter without any distinct personality apart from present life, where this personality is even more apparent than real.



For the spiritualists, the soul exists in the state of Spirit, independent of God and of all matter.



For the Spiritists, the soul is distinct from God who created it, inseparable from a fluidic and incorruptible matter that we can call the perispirit.



This preliminary explanation will make it possible to understand that there are Spiritists without knowing it.



Indeed, from the moment when one is neither a materialist nor a spiritualist, one can only be a Spiritist, despite the disgust that some seem to feel for this qualification.



Here we are a far away from the fanciful appreciations of those who imagine that Spiritism rests only on the evocation of the Spirits; there are, however, some Spiritists who have never made a single evocation; others who have never seen it and do not even want to see it, their belief not needing this resource; and for relying only on reason and study, this belief is nonetheless complete and serious.



We even think that it is in its philosophical and moral form that Spiritism meets the most firm and convinced supporters; the communications are only means of conviction, of demonstration and above all of consolation; we should only resort to it with caution, and when we already know what we want to obtain.



It is not that the communications are the exclusive sharing of the Spirits; they often take place spontaneously and, sometimes even, in environments hostile to Spiritism, from which they are independent; they are, in fact, only the result of laws and natural actions that Spirits or men can use, one or the other, either independently or in agreement between them.



But just as it is wise to put instruments of physics, chemistry, and astronomy only in the hands of those who know how to use them, so it is advisable to initiate communications only when they can have a real utility, and not with the aim of satisfying a foolish curiosity.





Having said that, we can examine the remarkable work of Mr. Herrenschneider; it is the work of a deep thinker and a convinced, if not complete Spiritist, but we do not agree with all the conclusions he reaches.



Mr. Herrenschneider admits the existence of a Creator God, present in creation everywhere, penetrating all bodies with his fluidic substance and being in us as we are in him; this is the remarkable solution that Mr. Allan Kardec presented in his Genesis as a hypothesis.



But, according to the author, God filled all the space in the beginning; he would have created each being by withdrawing from the place that he conceded, allowing his free development under his unstoppable protection; this progressive development takes place, first of all, under the necessary effect of the laws of nature, and by the coercion of evil; then, when the Spirit has already progressed sufficiently, it can combine its own action with the fatal action of natural laws to activate its progress.



Throughout this phase of the existence of beings that begins by the molecule of the mineral, continues in the plant, develops in the animal, and is determined in man, the Spirit collects and preserves knowledge through its perispirit; it thus acquires a certain experience. The accomplished progress is very slow, and the slower it is, the more the incarnations are multiplied.



As we can see, the author adopts the scientific principles of the progress of beings, issued by Lamarck, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Darwin, with the difference that the moderating action of the animal forms and organs is no longer only the result of selection and vital competition, but it is also, and primarily, the effect of the intelligent action of the animal Spirit, incessantly modifying forms and matter that it takes on to achieve an appropriation more in accordance with the acquired experience.



It is in this order of ideas that we would like to have seen the author insisting on the beneficent and kind action of the superior beings, contributing to the advancement of the weakest, guiding, and protecting them by a feeling of sympathy and solidarity, the development of which is fortunately presented in the book of Genesis and in all the works of Mr. Allan Kardec.



Mr. Herrenschneider does not speak of the reciprocal action of beings on each other, except from the sad point of view of the bad action and the necessary progress that results from the evil in nature. About this point, he understood well that evil is only relative, and that it is one of the conditions of progress; this part of his work is well developed.



“Created,” he said, “in extreme weakness, in extreme laziness and having to be the means of our own end, we are obliged to arrive at perfection and power, happiness and freedom by our own efforts; our destiny is to be the children of our works in everything and everywhere, to create for us our unity, our personality, our originality as well as our happiness.”



“These, in my opinion, are the designs of God for us; but to succeed, the creator obviously cannot abandon us to ourselves, since being created in this tiny and molecular state, we are naturally plunged into a deep numbness; we would have even remained there in perpetuity, and we would never have taken a step forward if, in order to awaken us, to make our inert substance sensitive and to activate our force deprived of initiative, God had not subjected us to a system of coercion, that takes us from our origin, never leaves us, and forces us to deploy our efforts to satisfy the needs and the moral, intellectual and material instincts, to which he has made us slaves, as a result of the system of incarnation that he has arranged for this purpose."



Going further than the Stoics who claimed that pain did not exist and was only a word, we see that the Spiritists manage to pronounce this strange formula that evil itself is good, in the sense that it inevitably and necessarily leads to that.



On everything that precedes, we criticize the author for having forgotten that the closest solidarity binds all beings, and that the best of all are those who, having best understood this principle, constantly put it into action, so that all beings in nature contribute to the general goal and to the progress of one another: some without knowing it and motivated by their spiritual guides; others by understanding their duty to elevate and educate those around them, or who depend on them and by helping themselves with the support of the more advanced ones. Everyone understands today that parents owe their children a proper education, and that those who are happy, educated, and advanced must help the poor, the sufferers and the ignorant.



Consequently, we must understand the usefulness of prayer that puts us in relation with the Spirits that can guide us. Don’t we, sometimes, pray to those who live like us; who are our superiors or our equals, and can our life pass without this perpetual appeal that we make to the assistance of others? It is, therefore, not surprising that, hearing us, those who are no longer, are likewise sensitive to our prayers to the extent of what they can do, as in fact they would have done during their lifetime; sometimes we give to those who have not asked, but we give especially to those who ask; knock and it will be opened to you; pray, and if possible, you will be heard.



Do not think that everything is due to you and that you have to wait for the benefits without asking for them or deserving them; do not believe that everything happens inevitably and necessarily, but think, on the contrary, that you are in the midst of free and voluntary beings, as many as the sand of the sea, and that their action can join yours, at your request and following their sympathy that you have to know how to deserve.



Praying is a way of acting on others and on oneself, but this is not the time to develop this important subject; let us say only that prayer is only valid when it follows effort or work, and can do nothing without it, while work and generous efforts can very well substitute prayer; it is especially among the Spiritists that we admit this old saying: “To work is to pray.”



The most interesting part of Mr. Herrenschneider's book is that in which he does what one might call the psychology of the soul, conceived as such that the Spiritists understand it, and from this point of view his work is new and most curious.



The author clearly determines the phenomena that depend on the perispirit, and how he keeps at the disposal of the mind, the entire sum of his previous progress, while keeping track of the efforts and new progress attempted and realized by the being, at any given time.



According to these data, the nature of the soul or perispirit is to be considered as an acquired treasure, preserved in us, and containing all that concerns our being in the moral, intellectual, and practical order.



We will avoid using the terms adopted by the author who, to express that the soul can act, either by the effect of its acquired treasure or its intimate nature (perispirit), or by a new effort or voluntary action, uses the expression duality of the soul, although pointing out that the soul is one; this is an unfortunate expression that does not express the true thought of the author and that could be confusing to a careless mind.



Mr. Herrenschneider believes in the unity of the soul, like the Spiritists; like them, he admits the existence of the perispirit, which allows him to make a very fine critique of the psychology of the spiritualists, that he studies more specifically from the works of Mr. Cousin.



Starting from the same point as Socrates and Descartes: knowledge of oneself, the author establishes the primordial fact from which all our knowledge results, that is to say, the affirmation of ourselves made each time we use the words: I or me; the affirmation of the ego is therefore the true basis of psychology; now, there are several manifestations of this self that are presented to our observation, without one having any priority over the others and without their being reciprocally generated: I feel, - I know myself, - I am conscious of my individuality - I want to be satisfied. These last two facts of consciousness are self-evident and clear; they constitute the principle of unity of the being and that of our final cause or destiny, namely: to be happy.



In order to feel and to know oneself, it should be noted that one is perfectly aware of feeling without needing to make any effort; on the contrary, the perception of feeling is an act that results from an effort of the same order as attention; as soon as I stop trying, I no longer think or pay attention, and then I feel all the external things that make an impression on me, until one of them hits me hard enough that I examine it with my attention; so I can think or feel, be impressed or perceive, and judge my impression when I want to.



There are two different, heterogeneous psychological orders here, one of which is passive and is characterized by sensitivity and permanence: it is the feeling; and the other is active and is distinguished by the effort of attention, and by its intermittence: it is the voluntary thought.



It is from this observation that the author concludes on the existence of the perispirit, by a series of very interesting deductions, but too long to report here.



For Mr. Herrenschneider, the perispirit, or substance of the soul, is a simple, incorruptible, inert, extended, solid and sensitive matter; it is the potential principle that, by its subtlety, receives all impressions, assimilates them, preserves them, and is transformed, under this incessant action, to contain all our moral, intellectual, and practical nature.



The strength of the soul is of virtual, spiritual, active, voluntary, and reflective order; this is the principle of our activity. Wherever our perispirit is, our strength is also found. Our sensitivity, our sensations, our feelings, our memory, our imagination, our ideas, our common sense, our spontaneity, our moral nature, and our principles of honor, as well as dreams, passions, and madness itself, depend on the perispirit or the acquired treasure of our nature.



Attention, perception, reason, memory, fantasy, humor, thought, judgment, reflection, will, virtue, conscience, and vigilance, as well as somnambulism, elation, and monomania derive from our strength, as virtual qualities.



Considering that these qualities can be substituted by one another, without being mutually exclusive, and because the same organs must be used both by the perception and by the sensation that are equivalent, by the feeling as much as by reason, etc., it follows that each Spirit seldom uses both orders of its faculties with the same facility. From this observation, it follows for the author that the individuals who function more easily by virtue of the so-called potential faculties will have them more developed than the others, and will use them more willingly, and vice versa.



From this point of view and from an observation regarding the greater or lesser virtual power of certain clusters of individuals, generally grouped under the same race identification, the author concludes that there are Spirits that can be called French, English, Italian, Chinese or Black Spirits, etc.



Despite the explanatory difficulties that would result from such an idea, it must be admitted that the very careful studies made by Mr. Herrenschneider, on the different peoples, are very remarkable and in any case very interesting; but we would have liked the author to have indicated more clearly his thought that is obviously the following: Spirits are grouped in general according to their affinities; this is what causes Spirits of the same order and of the same degree of elevation to tend to incarnate on the same point of the globe, and from there results this national character, a phenomenon so singular in appearance. We will, therefore, say that there are no French or English Spirits, but that there are Spirits whose state, their habits, their traditions lead them to incarnate, some in France, others in England, like we see them during their life grouping themselves according to their sympathies, their moral value, and their characters. As for the individual progress, it always depends on the will, and not on the already acquired value of the perispirit that only serves, so to speak, as a starting point, intended to allow a new elevation of the Spirit, new conquests, and new progress.



We will leave aside the part of the book that deals with social order and the need for an imposed religion, because the author, still imbued with the principles of authority that he drew from Saint-Simonism, he departs too much, at this point, from the principles of absolute tolerance that Spiritism prides itself of professing. We think it is fair to teach, but we would be afraid of an imposed and necessary doctrine, because even if it were excellent for the present generation, it would inevitably become a hindrance for the following generations when they would have progressed.



Mr. Herrenschneider does not understand that morality can be independent of religion; in our opinion, the question is badly put, and each one discusses it precisely from the point of view where he is right. Independent moralists are right in saying that morality is independent of religious dogmas, in the sense that, without believing in any of the existing dogmas, many of the ancients were moral, and among the moderns there are many who have the right to boast about it. But what is true is that morality, and above all its practical application, is always dependent on our individual beliefs, whatever they may be; now, even if it is most philosophical, a belief constitutes the religion of the one who possesses it.



This is easily demonstrated by the daily facts of existence, and moralists, who claim to be independent, believe that one must respect oneself and respect others, by developing as much as possible, in oneself and in others, the elements of progress. Their morality will, therefore, depend on their belief; their actions will necessarily be affected, and this morality will be independent only of religions, beliefs, and dogmas in which they have no faith, that we find very fair and very rational, but also very elementary.



What we can say is that, in the present state of our society, there are moral principles that agree with all individual beliefs, whatever they may be, because individuals have modified their religious beliefs on certain points by virtue of scientific and moral progress, fortunately conquered by our ancestors.



We will end by saying that the author is, on many points, the disciple of Jean Reynaud. His book is the summary of studies and serious thoughts expressed clearly and powerfully; it is done with a care that must be praised, and this care goes even to the minutia in the material details of printing, that is of great importance for the clarity of such a serious book.



Despite the deep disagreement that separates us from Mr. Herrenschneider, both about his way of seeing to impose religion, as on his ideas regarding authority and family, that he has forgotten, as well as prayer, the benevolent solidarity of Spirits that he did not know how to appreciate, etc., ideas that Jean Reynaud himself had already disapproved of, it is impossible not to be touched by the merit of the book, and the value of the man who knew how to find strong thoughts, often right and always clearly expressed.



Spiritism is squarely affirmed there, at least in its fundamental principles, and considered in the elements of the philosophical science; there is this difference, however, in the point of departure, that the author arrives at the result by induction, while Spiritism, proceeding by experimentation, has based its theory on the observation of the facts. He is a very serious writer, that gives him the right of citizenship.

Emile Barrault, engineer.

[1] 1 vol. in-12; 600 pages. Price 5 francs; by mail, 5.75 francs. Dentu, Palais-Royal.

July

The Spiritist Party

The Spiritists did consider themselves to be a philosophical school, but it had never occurred to them to believe they were a party; low and behold, in one fine day, the Moniteur informed them of this news that surprised them somewhat. And who is it that gave them this qualification? Is it one of those inconsequential journalists that throw epithets at random, without understanding their significance? No, it is an official report prepared to the first body of the state, to the Senate. It is therefore not likely that, in a document of such a nature, this word was uttered thoughtlessly; it was not, undoubtedly, benevolence that dictated it, but it was said, and it was a hit, because the newspapers did not let it down; some, believing to find in it one more grievance against Spiritism, had nothing more urgent than to display in their columns the title The Spiritist Party.

Thus, this poor little school, so ridiculed, so much attacked, that they charitably proposed to send in crowds to Charenton;[1] about which, they said, one had only to breathe to make it disappear; that has been declared dead and buried forever twenty times; to whom there is not a fine hostile writer who has not flattered himself for having given it the death blow, while admitting, with amazement, that it is invading the world and all classes of society; that we wanted, at all costs, to make it a religion, by endowing it with temples and priests, large and small, that it has never seen, and here it is suddenly transformed into a party. By this qualification, Mr. Genteur, the speaker of the Senate, did not give it its true character, but he enhanced it; he gave it a rank, a place, and made it stand out; for the idea of a party implies that of a certain power; of an opinion important enough, active enough and widespread enough to play a role, and one to be accounted for.

Spiritism, by its nature and principles, is essentially peaceful; it is an idea that infiltrates quietly, and if it finds many adherents, it is because it pleases; he never did any advertisements or any exhibition; strengthened by the natural laws on which it leans, seeing itself growing without effort or shock, it goes out to meet no one; it does not violate any conscience; it says what it is and wait for others to come. All the noise that has been made around it is the work of its adversaries; it was attacked, it had to defend itself, but it always did so with calm, moderation and by reasoning alone; it never departed from the dignity that is characteristic of any cause that has the conscience of its moral force; it never used reprisals by paying back insults with insults, bad procedures with bad procedures. This is not, we will agree, the ordinary character of parties, restless by nature, fomenting agitation, and to which everything is justified to achieve their ends; but since it was given this name, it accepts it, certain that it will not dishonor it by any excess; for it would repudiate anyone who took advantage of it to cause the slightest trouble.

Spiritism followed its way without provoking any public demonstration, while taking advantage of the publicity given to it by its adversaries; the more their criticism was mocking, acerbic, virulent, the more it aroused the curiosity of those who did not know it, and who, to know what to expect on this so-called new eccentricity, simply went to find out from the source, that is to say in the special books; they studied it and found something quite different from what they had heard about it. It is a well-known fact that furious narratives, anathemas, and persecutions have powerfully aided in its propagation, because instead of deflecting it, they provoked its examination, even if only by the attraction of the forbidden fruit. The masses have their logic; they say to themselves that if something were nothing, one would not talk about it, and they measure its importance precisely by the violence of the attacks it endures and the terror that it causes to its antagonists.

Educated by experience, some ads media refrained from speaking either bad or good about it, even avoiding pronouncing its name, for fear of causing a stir, contenting themselves with occasionally throwing offensive remarks at it, and as if stealthily, when a circumstance inevitably made it evident. Some also remained silent, because the idea had penetrated their ranks, and with that perhaps conviction, if not at least hesitation.

The press, in general, was therefore silent about Spiritism, when a circumstance, that could not be the effect of chance, made it necessary to speak about it; and who caused the incident? Always the opponents of the idea that once again were mistaken by producing an effect quite contrary to what they expected. To give more impact to their attack, they carry it awkwardly, not on the grounds of a paper that has no official character, with a very limited number of readers, but by way of petitions, to the tribune of the Senate, where it is the subject of a discussion and from which the expression Spiritist party came out; well, thanks to newspapers of all colors, obliged to report on the debate, the existence of this party was instantly revealed to all of Europe and beyond.

It is true that a member of the illustrious assembly said that it was only fools that were Spiritists, to which the president replied that the fools could also form a party. No one is unaware that the Spiritists count in the millions today, and that high notabilities sympathize with their beliefs; one can therefore be astonished that such an uncourteous and so generalized epithet, came out of that chamber, addressing a notable part of the population, without the author having reflected about its reach.

In fact, the newspapers themselves are responsible for denying such qualification, certainly not out of benevolence, but what does it matter! The journal Liberty, among others, that apparently does not want us to have the freedom to be a Spiritist, as one is to be Jewish, Protestant, Saint-Simonian or free-thinker, published in its issue of June 13th, an article signed by Liévin, whose excerpt is given below:

“The government commissioner Genteur revealed to the Senate the existence of a party that we did not know, and as it seems, contributes like the others, within the limits of its forces, to shake the institutions of the empire. Its influence had already been felt last year, and the Spiritist party - this is the name given by Mr. Genteur - certainly thanks to the subtlety of the means at its disposal, had obtained from the Senate the referral to the government of the famous Saint-Etienne petition, that denounced, as we remember, not the materialist tendencies of the School of Medicine, but the philosophical tendencies of the municipality's library. We had hitherto attributed the honor of this success to the party of intolerance, and we regarded it as a consolation for its last failure; but it seems that we were mistaken, and that the petition of Saint-Etienne was only a maneuver of this Spiritist party, whose hidden power seems to want to be exercised more particularly to the detriment of libraries.

Monday, therefore, the Senate once again received a petition in which the Spiritist party, still raising its head, denounced the tendencies of the library of Oullins (Rhône). But this time the venerable assembly, warned by the revelations of Mr. Genteur, thwarted, by a unanimous decision, the calculations of the Spirists. Only Mr. Nisard was somehow taken by this ruse of war, and in good faith he extended his hand to those perfidious enemies. He lent them the support of a report in which he in turn pointed out the dangers of bad books. Fortunately, the mistake of the honorable senator was not shared, and the Spiritists, unmasked and confused, were brought back as they deserved."

Another journal, the Revue Politique Hebdomadaire, starts an article about the same subject on July 13th, like this:

“We didn’t know all of our perils yet. Weren’t the Legitimist Party, the Orleanist Party, the Republican Party, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and the Red Party enough, not to mention the Liberal Party that sums them all up, if we are to believe the Constitutional? Was it really under the second empire, whose claim is to dissolve all parties, that a new party was to be born, grow and threaten French society, the Spiritist party? Yes, the Spiritist party! It was Mr. Genteur, State Councilor, that discovered and denounced it in the middle of the Senate."

It is difficult to understand that a party that is composed of nothing but fools could cause the State to be in serious danger; to be afraid of it would be to make believe that one is afraid of fools. By throwing this cry of alarm in the face of the world, they prove that the Spiritist party is something. Not having been able to stifle it under ridicule, they try to present it as a danger to public tranquility; however, what will be the inevitable result of this new tactic? An examination that is the more serious and the more in-depth, the more the danger is exalted; they will want to know the doctrines of this party, its principles, its slogan, its affiliations. If the ridicule thrown at Spiritism, as a belief, has raised curiosity, it will be quite another thing when it is presented as a formidable party; everyone will be interested in knowing what it wants, where it leads to: that's all it asks for; acting in broad daylight, having no secret instructions beyond what is published for the use of everyone, it does not fear any investigation, on the contrary, certain to gain by being known, and that whoever scrutinizes it with impartiality, will see in its moral code a powerful guarantee of order and security. A party, since there is a party, that inscribes on its flag: there is no salvation except through charity, indicates its tendencies clearly enough, so that no one has reason to be frightened by it. Furthermore, the authority, whose vigilance is known, cannot ignore the principles of a doctrine that does not hide itself. They have no shortage of people to give an account of what is said and done in the Spiritist meetings, and the authority would know well how to call to order those who deviate from it.

It is amazing that men who profess liberalism, who demand for freedom, who want it absolute for their ideas, their writings, their meetings, who stigmatize all acts of intolerance, intend to proscribe it for Spiritism.

But see to what inconsistencies blindness leads! The debate, that took place in the Senate, was provoked by two petitions: one from last year against the library of Saint Etienne; the other of this year against the library of Oullins, signed by some inhabitants of these towns, who complained about the introduction of certain books in those libraries, among them Spiritist books.

Well! The author of the article in the La Liberté, who certainly examined the question a little lightly, imagines that the complaint emanates from the Spiritist party, and concludes that the latter received a knockout blow by the order pronounced against the petition of Oullins. Here we have then this very dangerous party easily defeated, and that petitions to have the exclusion of its own works! It would then be really the party of fools. Moreover, this strange mistake is not surprising, since the author declares, in the beginning, that he did not know this party, but that did not prevent him from declaring it capable of shaking the institutions of the empire.

The Spiritists, far from worrying about these incidents, should rejoice in them; this hostile manifestation could not have taken place in more favorable circumstances, and the doctrine will certainly receive a new and valuable impulse from it, as has been the case with all the outcry of which it has been the object. The more impact these attacks have, the more beneficial they are. A day will come when they will turn into open approvals.

The journal Le Siècle of June 18th also published an article on the Spiritist party. Everyone will notice there a spirit of moderation that contrasts with the two others that we have mentioned; we reproduce it in full:

“Who said there is nothing new under the sun? The skeptic, who spoke like that, had no idea that one day the imagination of a Councilor of State would discover the Spiritist party in the middle of the Senate. We already had a few parties in France, and God knows if the speakers fail to enumerate the dangers that this division of minds can create! There is the Legitimist Party, the Orleanist Party, the Republican Party, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Clerical Party, etc.

The list did not seem long enough to Mr. Genteur. He has just denounced to the vigilance of the venerable fathers of politics, who sit in the Luxembourg Palace, the existence of the Spiritist party. At this unexpected revelation, a shiver ran through the assembly. The defenders of the two morals, Mr. Nisard in the lead, shuddered.

Despite the zeal of its countless officials of the French empire, what is threatened by a new party? - In truth, it is to despair public order. How has this enemy, up until now invisible even to Mr. Genteur himself, been able to hide from all eyes? There is a mystery here that the Councilor of State, if he finds out, will help us understand. Officially informed people claim that the Spiritist party hid the army of its representatives, the knocking Spirits, behind the books, in the libraries of Saint-Etienne and Oullins.

So here we are back to the good old times with fishy stories, turning tables, and indiscreet pedestal tables!

Although Spiritism and its first apostle Mr. Delage, the gentlest of preachers, have not yet convinced many people, they have nevertheless succeeded in forming a party. At least that is being said in the Senate, and it is not us that will ever allow ourselves to suspect the accuracy of what is being said in such high places.

The occult influence of the newly signaled party was felt even in the last discussion of the Senate, where Mr. Désiré Nisard, first in rank, stood up for the reactionaries. Such a role fell right to the man who has been, since leaving the normal school, one of the most active agents of retrograde ideas.

After that, can we be surprised on hearing the honorable senator invoking arbitrariness to justify the restrictive measures taken, concerning the choice of books in the library of Oullins? “These popular establishments,” said Mr. Nisard, “are founded by associations; they are therefore subject to art. 291 of the Penal Code, and therefore at the discretion of the Minister of the Interior. He has used, he is using and will use this dictatorial power."

We leave it to the Spiritist party and to its Christopher Columbus, Mr. Councilor of State Genteur, the task of questioning the revealing Spirits, so that they may teach us what the Senate hopes to obtain by preventing citizens from freely organizing the popular libraries, as is done in England?”

Anatole de la Forge

[1] Hospital of the mentally ill (T.N.)

Spiritism Everywhere

Journal Le Siècle – Paris somnambulist

For some time now, Le Siècle has published with the title of Tout Paris, a number of very interesting series written by different authors; there was Paris artist, Paris gastronome, Paris litigator, etc. In its April 24th and 25th, 1868 series, it published Paris somnambulist, by Mr. Eugène Bonnemère, the author of the Novel of the future. It is an account at the same time scientific and true of the different varieties of somnambulism, in which it incidentally brings in Spiritism, with its own name, however with all the rhetorical precautions determined by the requirements of the newspaper, whose responsibility it did not want to take; this is what explains some reluctance. The lack of space does not allow us to quote as many statements as we would have liked, so that we will confine ourselves to the following passages:



“The highest form of somnambulism is unquestionably Spiritism, that aspires to pass to the state of science. It has an already rich literature, and the books of Mr. Allan Kardec are notably authoritative on the subject.”



“Spiritism is the correspondence of souls to one another. According to the followers of this belief, an invisible being communicates with another, called a medium, endowed with a particular organism that allows him to receive the thoughts of those who have once lived, and that write, either by a mechanical, unconscious impulse, written by hand, or by direct transmission to the intelligence of the mediums."



“No, there is no such a thing as death. It is the moment of rest after the journey is over and the task finished; then, it is the awakening for a new work, more useful and greater than the one that has just been accomplished."



“We leave, taking with us the memory of the knowledge acquired here; the world to which we will go gives us its own, and we will group them all in a bundle to form progress."



"It is through the succession of generations that humanity advances, each time walking one more step towards the light, because they arrive animated by souls, always natively pure after they have returned to God, and remain imbued with the progress they have acquired."



“As a result of conquests secured for good, the land we inhabit will deserve to climb the ladder of the worlds itself. A new cataclysm will come; certain plant essences, certain animal species, inferior or harmful, will disappear as others disappeared in the past, to make room for more perfect creations, and we in turn will become a world in which already tried beings will come to seek a greater development. It is up to us to hasten, by our efforts, the advent of this happier period. Our beloved dead come to help us in this difficult task."



“As we can see, these beliefs, serious or not, do not lack a certain magnificence. Materialism and atheism, that human sentiment rejects with all its heart, are only an inevitable reaction against ideas, hardly admissible by reason, about God, nature, and the destinies of souls. Spiritism, by broadening the question, revives a faith that is ready to be extinguished in the hearts."

Theater Cornelius – The rooster of Mycille

This winter counted on a very successful performance, at the Théâtre des Fantaisies-Parisiennes, of a charming operetta entitled: The Elixir of Cornelius, in which reincarnation is the very crux of the plot. Here is the account given by the Siècle on its issue of February 11th, 1868:

“This Cornelius is an alchemist who is particularly concerned with the transmigration of souls. Everything that is told on this subject he listens eagerly, as if it had happened. However, he has a daughter who did not wait for his permission to procure a suitor. No, but he refuses his consent. What to do then to get over his resistance? An idea: the lover tells him that his daughter, before being his daughter, a long time ago, was a gambler, runner of adventures and alleys. At the same time, he, the lover, was a charming young woman who was deceived by the adventurer of fortune. The roles are reversed, and he asks her to give him back his former honor.

“Ah! you tell me so much!”, answers the convinced old doctor. And this is how one more marriage is accomplished before the public, that is so often responsible for replacing the mayor.

The music is as cheerful as the subject that inspired it. Particularly noticed are the serenade, the verses of Cornelius, the burlesque duet, and the finale, written simply and easily.”

As we see, the substance of the story here rests not only on the principle of reincarnation, but also on the change of sex.

The dramatic subjects are exhausted, and the authors are often very embarrassed to leave the cliched paths; the idea of reincarnation will provide them with a profusion of new situations for all genres; having the road open, it is likely that all theaters will soon have their reincarnation play.

The French Theater had a play, at the end of May, in which the soul plays the main role; it is The Rooster of Mycille, by Messrs. Trianon and Eugène Nyon, with the following main subject:

Mycille is a young shoemaker from Athens; across from his stall, a young magistrate, archon[1] Eucrates, lives in a delightful marble house. The poor cobbler envies Eucrates, his wealth, his wife, the beautiful Chloe, his kitchen, his many slaves. The opulent archon, prematurely aged, crippled by gout, envies Mycille for his good looks, his health, the disinterested love shown to him by a pretty slave, Doris. Mycille has a rooster given to him by the young Doris, and that wakes the archon in the morning with its song.

The latter orders his slaves to beat the cobbler if he does not silence his rooster; the cobbler, in turn, wants to beat the rooster; but at that moment the animal is metamorphosed into a man: it is the philosopher Pythagoras whose soul had come to animate the body of the rooster, according to his doctrine of transmigration. He momentarily assumed his human form to enlighten Mycille on the foolishness of the envy that he carries to the position of Eucrates.

Unable to persuade him, he says: “I want to give you,” he said, “the means of enlightening you by your own experience. Pick up that feather you dropped from my rooster body; put it in the lock of the door of Eucrates; his door will immediately open; your soul will pass into the body of the archon, and conversely the soul of the archon will pass into your body. However, before doing anything, I urge you to think carefully. Then, Pythagoras disappears. Mycille thinks, but the thirst for gold wins, and prompted by various incidents, he makes up his mind, and the metamorphosis takes place. So, here we have the cobbler who has become the rich archon, but sick and gouty, and the archon who has become a cobbler. This transformation brings with it a host of comic complications, and consequently each one dissatisfied with their new position, they resume the one they had before.

The play, as we can see, is a new edition of the story of the cobbler and the financier, already exploited in so many forms. What characterizes it is that instead of the cobbler himself, body, and soul, who takes the place of the financier, it is the two souls that exchange their bodies. The idea is new, original, and the authors explored it with a lot of wit; but it is in no way borrowed from the Spiritist idea, as we had said; it is taken from a dialogue by Lucien: The song and the rooster. We only mention it to point out the error of those who confuse the principle of reincarnation with the transmigration of souls or metempsychosis.

Cornelius' play, on the contrary, is entirely within the Spiritist idea, although the alleged reincarnation of the young man and the young girl is only an invention on their part to achieve their ends, while the latter stays away from it completely. First of all, Spiritism has never admitted the idea of the human soul retrograding into animality, because it would be the negation of the law of progress; second, the soul does not leave the body until death, and when, after a certain time spent in erraticity, it begins a new existence again, it is by passing through the ordinary phases of life: birth, childhood, etc., and not by the effect of an instantaneous metamorphosis or substitution, only seen in fairy tales, and are not the gospel of Spiritism, whatever the critics may say, who do not know much about it.

However, although the data is false in its application, it is nonetheless founded on the principle of the individuality and independence of the soul; it is the soul distinct from the body, and the possibility of living again in another envelope put into action, an idea with which it is always useful to familiarize public opinion. The impression that remains from it is not lost for the future, and it is more valuable than the plays that stages the shamelessness of passions.

[1] A chief magistrate in ancient Athens (T.N.)

Alexandre Dumas – Monte-Cristo

“Listen, Valentin, have you ever felt for someone, one of those irresistible sympathies that when you see a person for the first time, you believe you have known him for a long time, and you wonder where and when you saw him? And unable to remember either the place or the time, you come to believe that it is in a world prior to ours, and that this sympathy is only a memory that awakens?” (Monte-Cristo, part 3, chapter XVIII, The Alfalfa Enclosure).



“You have never dared to rise with a flick of your wing into the higher spheres that God has populated with invisible and exceptional beings. - And do you admit, sir, that these spheres exist; that exceptional and invisible beings mingle with us? - Why not? Do you see the air you breathe, and without which you could not live? - So, we do not see these beings that you speak of. - you see them when God allows them to materialize…” (Monte-Cristo, part 3, chapter IX, Ideology).



And I, Monsieur (Villefort), I tell you that it is not so as you believe. Last night I slept a terrible sleep, because in a way I could see myself sleeping, as if my soul had already hovered above my body; my eyes, that I tried to open, closed unwillingly; and yet ... with my eyes closed, I saw, in the very place where you are, a white shape entering silently. (Monte-Cristo, part 4, chap. XIII, Madame Mairan).



One hour before he died, he said to me: Father, no man's faith can be stronger than mine, for I saw and heard a soul separate from her body. (François Picaut, continuation of Monte-Cristo).”



There is, in these thoughts, only one very small criticism to be made, it is the qualification of exceptional given to the invisible beings that surround us; there is nothing exceptional about these beings since they are the souls of men, and all men, without exception, must go through this state. Apart from that, wouldn't we say that these ideas were textually drawn from the Doctrine?

Bibliographic News

The soul, demonstration of its reality, deduced from the study of the effects of chloroform and curare on the animal organism, by Mr. Ramon de la Sagra, corresponding member of the Institut de France (Academy of moral and political sciences), Royal Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands, etc.[1]



We said, in an article above, that the researches of science, even with views of an exclusively material study, would lead to spiritualism, by the inability to explain certain effects using only the laws of matter; on the other hand, we have repeatedly said that in catalepsy, lethargy, anesthesia[2] by chloroform or other substances, natural somnambulism, ecstasy and certain pathological states, the soul is revealed by an independent action of the organism, and gives, by its isolation, the positive proof of its existence. We are not talking about magnetism, or artificial somnambulism, or double sight, or Spiritist manifestations that official science has not yet recognized, but phenomena with which it is able to experiment every day.



Science has searched the soul with the scalpel and the microscope in the brain and the nerve ganglia and has not found it; analysis of these substances only provided oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, from which science concluded that the soul was not distinct from matter. If science does not find it, the reason is quite simple: it has a preconceived, fixated idea of the soul; it believes the soul endowed with the properties of tangible matter; it is in such a form that science seeks it, and naturally it could not recognize it even when it had it in front of its eyes. From the fact that certain organs are the instruments of the manifestations of thought, that by destroying these organs, it stops the manifestation, science draws a not very philosophical consequence that it is the organs that think, absolutely like a person who would have cut the telegraph wire and interrupted the transmission of a dispatch, claiming to have destroyed the person who sent it.



The telegraph device offers us, by comparison, an exact picture of the functioning of the soul in the organism. Suppose that an individual receives a dispatch, and that, ignoring its origin, he engages in the following searches. He follows the transmitting wire to its starting point; he seeks his sender along the wire and does not find him; the wire leads him to Paris, to the office, to the device; he says: "It was from there that the dispatch left, I have no doubt; it is a materially demonstrated fact;" He explores the apparatus, dismantles it, moves it to look for its sender, and finding there only wood, copper, and a wheel, he says to himself: "Since the dispatch left from here, and I don't find anybody, it is this mechanism that conceived the dispatch; this is demonstrated to me not less materially." In the meantime, another individual, standing next to the device, begins to repeat the dispatch word for word, and says to him: "How can you suppose, you man of intelligence, that this mechanism composed of inert, destructible matter, could have conceived the thought of the dispatch that you received, and know the fact that this dispatch conveyed to you? If matter had the faculty of thinking, why shouldn't iron, stone, wood have ideas? If this faculty depends on the order and arrangement of the parts, why shouldn't man build thinking machines? Has it ever occurred to you to believe that these dolls that say: mommy, daddy, are aware of what they are doing? Have you not, on the contrary, admired the intelligence of the author of this ingenious mechanism?"



Here, the new speaker is the soul that conceives the thought; the apparatus is the brain where it is concentrated and formulated; electricity is the fluid directly impregnated with the thought and responsible for carrying it far away, as the air carries sound; the metallic wires are the nerve cords intended for the transmission of the fluid; the first individual is the scientist, in pursuit of the soul, who follows the nerve cords, seeks it in the brain, and not finding it there, concludes that it is the brain that thinks; he does not hear the voice that cries to him: “You persist in looking for me inside, while I am outside; look aside and you will see me; the nerves, the brain and the fluids do not think more than the metallic wire, the telegraph apparatus and the electricity; they are only the instruments of the manifestation of thought, ingeniously combined by the inventor of the human machine."



At all times, quite frequent spontaneous phenomena, such as catalepsy, lethargy, natural somnambulism, and ecstasy, have shown the soul acting outside the organism; but science has disdained them from that point of view. Now, here is a new discovery, anesthesia by chloroform, of indisputable utility in surgical operations, and of which, for that very reason, we are forced to study the effects, makes science witness to this phenomenon on a daily basis, by exposing, so to speak, the soul of the patient; it is the voice that cries: “Look outside, and not inside, and you will see me;” but there are people who have eyes and cannot see, ears and cannot hear.



Among the many facts of this kind, the following occurred in the practice of Mr. Velpeau:



“A lady that had shown no signs of pain while I was removing a large tumor from her, woke up smiling and said, I know it's over; let me come back altogether and I will explain this to you… I did not feel anything at all, she soon added, but this is how I knew I had been operated on. In my sleep, I had gone to visit a lady I knew, to talk to her about a poor child that we had to shelter. While we were chatting, this lady said to me: You think you are at my place right now, don't you? Well! my dear friend, you are completely wrong, for you are at home, in your bed, where the operation is being performed on you right now. Far from alarming me with that language, I naively answered her: Ah! if so, I ask your permission to extend my visit a little longer, so that it is all over when I get home. And that's how, by opening my eyes, even before I was fully awake, I was able to tell you that I had been operated on."



The use of chloroform offers thousands of examples just as conclusive as this one.



In communicating this fact and others analogous to the Academy of Sciences, on March 4th, 1850, Mr. Velpeau said: "What a fruitful source for psychology and physiology, that these acts that go so far as to separate the spirit from matter, or intelligence from the body! "



Mr. Velpeau therefore saw the soul function outside the organism; he was able to ascertain its existence through its independence; he heard the voice saying to him: I am outside and not inside; why then has he supported materialism? He has said, since he entered the spiritual world: "Pride of the scientist, who did not want to deny himself." However, he was not afraid to withdraw certain erroneous scientific opinions that he had publicly professed. In his Treatise on Operative Medicine, published in 1839, Volume I, page 32, he said: “Avoiding pain in operations is a chimera that cannot be continued today. Sharp instrument and pain, in operative medicine, are two words that do not present themselves one without the other, to the minds of patients, and whose association must necessarily be admitted.” The chloroform came to give him a denial on this point, as on the question of the soul. Why then did he accept one and not the other? Mystery of human weaknesses!



If, in his lessons, M. Velpeau had said to his students: "Gentlemen, you are told that you will not find the soul at the end of your scalpel, and they are right, because it is not there, and you would seek it there in vain as I did myself; but study the intelligent manifestations in the phenomena of anesthesia, and you will have incontestable proof of its existence; that is where I found it, and any bona fide observer will find it. In the presence of such facts, it is no longer possible to deny it, since we can ascertain its action independent of the organism, and we can isolate it, so to speak, at will.” By speaking like that, he would only have completed the thought that he had expressed before the Academy of Sciences. With such language, supported by the authority of his name, he would have made a revolution in the art of medicine. It is a glory that he repudiated, and that he bitterly regrets today, but that others will inherit.



Such is the thesis that has just been developed with remarkable talent by Mr. Ramon de la Sagra, in the work that is the subject of this article. The author describes, with method and clarity, from the point of view of pure science, with which he is familiar, all the phases of anesthesia by chloroform, ether, curare[3], and other agents, according to his own observations, and those of the most accredited authors, such as Velpeau, Gerdy, Bouisson, Flourens, Simonin, etc. The technical and scientific part occupies a large place, but that was necessary for a rigorous demonstration. It contains numerous facts from which we have drawn the reported above. We also borrowed the following conclusions:



"Since it is a fact perfectly established by the anesthetic phenomena, that the ether extinguishes the life of the nerves, that conduct the impressions of the senses, while leaving the intellectual faculties free, it also becomes incontestable that these faculties do not depend essentially on the senses of the nervous system. Now, as the organs of the senses, that provide impressions, act only through the nerves, it is certain that the latter being paralyzed, the whole organism of animal life, of the life of relation, remains annihilated, for these intellectual faculties that nevertheless work. It is therefore necessary to admit that their existence, or rather their reality, does not depend essentially on the organism, and that, consequently, they proceed from a different principle, independent of it, being able to function without it and in outside of it.



Here then is the reality of the soul, rigorously demonstrated, incontestably established, without any physiological observation being able to affect it. We can see like jets of light coming out of this conclusion that illuminate distant horizons, that we will not discuss, however, because this kind of study goes beyond the framework that we have established for ourselves.



The psychological point of view from which we have just presented the effects of anesthetic substances, in the animal body, and the consequences that we have deduced from them, in favor of the reality of the existence of the soul, must suggest the hope that a similar method, applied to the study of other analogous phenomena of life, might lead to the same result.



No inference would be more correct, for the physiological and psychological effects that show themselves during alcoholic intoxication, pathological delirium, natural and magnetic sleep, ecstasy and even madness, bear the greatest resemblance, in many points, with the effects of the anesthetic substances that we have just studied in this work. Such a concordance of various phenomena, proceeding from different causes, in favor of an identical conclusion, should not surprise us. It is only the consequence of what we have proved: the reality of the existence of an essence distinct from matter in the human organism, and to which are delegated the intellectual functions that matter alone could never fulfill. This would be the place to examine another issue, to make an incursion into the field of animal magnetism, that supports the permanence of sensory faculties outside the senses, that is of vision, of hearing. of taste, of smell, during the complete paralysis of the organs that, in the normal state, provide these impressions. But such doctrine, of which we neither want to dispute nor to support the truth, is not accepted by physiological science, being enough for us to eliminate it from our current research.”



This last paragraph proves that the author has done, for the demonstration of the soul, what Mr. Flammarion has done for that of God; that is to say, he insisted on placing himself on the very ground of experimental science, and that he wanted to draw only from the officially recognized facts the proof of his thesis. He promises us another book, that cannot fail to be of great interest, in which will be studied, from the same point of view, the various phenomena that he only mentions, having been limited to those of anesthesia by chloroform. This proof is certainly not necessary to strengthen the conviction of the Spiritists, nor of the spiritualists; but since after God, being the existence of the soul the fundamental basis of Spiritism, we must consider as eminently useful to the doctrine any work that tends to demonstrate its fundamental principles. Now, the demonstration of the action of the soul, apart from the organism, is a starting point that, like the plurality of existences and the perispirit, step by step and by logical deduction, leads to all the consequences of Spiritism.



Indeed, the example reported above is of pure Spiritism in the first place, that Mr. Velpeau hardly suspected when he published it, and if we had been able to quote them all, we would have seen that the anesthetic phenomena prove, not only the reality of the soul, but that of Spiritism. It is thus that everything contributes, as it has been announced, to clear the way for the new doctrine; we get there through a multitude of outcomes that converge towards a common center, and a crowd of people contribute with their share, some consciously, others unwillingly. The book by Mr. Ramon de la Sagra is one of those whose publication we are happy to applaud, because, although Spiritism is ignored in it, it can be considered like God in the nature, by Mr. Flammarion, and the Plurality of Existences, by Mr. Pezzani, like monographs of the fundamental principles of the Doctrine to which they give the authority of science.

[1] One vol. in-12, price 2.50 francs; by post 2.75 francs. At Germer-Baillière, libr., 17, rue de l'École-de-Médecine.


[2] Anesthesia, from the Greek suspension of sensitivity


[3] Curare is an eminently poisonous substance that the savages of the Orinoco remove from certain plants, and with which they moisten the tips of arrows that produce fatal wounds.

August

Materialism and the Law

Materialism, by displaying itself as it had never done in any other period, by posing as the supreme regulator of the moral destinies of humanity, has had the effect of frightening the masses, by the inevitable consequences of its doctrines for the social order; by this very fact, it provoked, in favor of spiritualist ideas, an energetic reaction that must prove that it is far from having sympathies as general as it supposes, and that it is strangely deluded if it hopes one day to impose its laws on the world.



Certainly, the spiritualistic beliefs of the past are insufficient for this century; they are not at the intellectual level of our generation; they are, on many points, in contradiction with the positive data of science; they leave in the mind a void that is incompatible with the need for the positive that dominates in modern society; besides, they make the big mistake of imposing themselves by blind faith and by proscribing free examination; it is certainly followed by the development of skepticism among the majority; it is quite evident that if men were nourished, from their childhood, only with ideas capable of being later confirmed by reason, there would be no nonbelievers. How many people brought back to belief by Spiritism have told us: If we had always been presented with God, the soul, and the future life in a rational way, we would have never doubted!



From the fact that a principle receives a bad or a false application, does it follow that it should be rejected? It is with spiritual things as with legislation and with all social institutions: they must be tailored to the times or pay the price of succumbing. But instead of presenting something better than old classical spiritualism, materialism preferred to do away with everything, sparing it from searching, and seemed more convenient to those bothered by the idea of God and the future. What would one think of a doctor who, finding that the diet of a patient is not substantial enough for his temperament, would prescribe him with eating nothing at all?



What one is astonished to find in most of the materialists of the modern school is the spirit of intolerance, pushed to its limits, they who constantly claim the right to freedom of conscience. Their very political comrades do not find favor with them, as soon as they profess spiritualism, as Mr. Jules Favre witnesses after his speech at the Academy (Le Figaro, May 8th, 1868); Mr. Camille Flammarion, outrageously ridiculed and denigrated, in another newspaper whose name we have forgotten, because he dared to prove God by science. According to the author of that diatribe, one can only be a wise man on the condition of not believing in God; Chateaubriand is then only a poor and senseless writer. If men of such unquestionable merit are treated with so little consideration, the Spiritists should not complain of being somewhat mocked about their beliefs.



There is at this moment, on the part of a certain party, an outcry against spiritualist ideas in general, in which Spiritism is naturally included. What it is looking for is not a better and more just God, it is the less troublesome God-matter, because there is nothing to be accountable for with him. No one disputes that party's right to have their own opinion, to discuss opposing opinions, but what we cannot concede to is the claim, amazing to say the least for men who pose as apostles of liberty, to prevent others from believing in their own way and discussing doctrines they do not share. Intolerance for intolerance, one is no better than the other.



One of the best protests we have read against materialist tendencies was published in the journal Le Droit, with the title: Materialism and the Law. The question is treated with remarkable depth and perfect logic from the double point of view of social order and jurisprudence. Since the cause of spiritualism is that of Spiritism, we applaud any energetic defense of the first, even though the second is ignored; that is why we believe that the readers of the Spiritist Review will be pleased with the reproduction of this article.




Extracted from the journal Le Droit, May 14th, 1868



“The present generation is going through an intellectual crisis of which there is nothing to worry about too much, but it would be imprudence to leave its outcome to chance. Ever since humanity has thought, men have believed in the soul, an immaterial principle, distinct from the organs that serve it; it was even made immortal. They believed in a Providence, creator and Lord of beings and things, in the good, just, in the freedom of the human arbiter, in a future life that, to be better than the world in which we are, does not need, as the poet says, but exist. Modern doctors, who are starting to get loud, have changed all that. Man is reduced by them to the dignity of the brute, and the brute reduced to a material aggregate. Matter and the properties of matter, such would be the only possible objects of human science; thought would only be a product of the organ that is its seat, and man, when the organic molecules that constitute the person disintegrate and return to the elements, would perish entirely.



If the materialist doctrines were ever to have their hour of triumph, the jurisconsult philosophers, it must be said to their credit, would be the first to be vanquished. What would their rules and their laws have to do in a world where the law of matter is the whole law? Human actions can only be automatic facts if man is all matter. But then where will freedom be? And if there is no such thing as freedom, where will the moral law be? How could any authority claim to control the fatal expansion of a force that is entirely physical, and necessarily legitimate if it is fatal? Materialism destroys the moral law, and with the moral law the right, the whole civil order, that is the conditions of existence of humanity. Such immediate, inevitable consequences are certainly worth considering. So. let's see how this old materialist doctrine reproduces itself, that we have only seen emerging in the worst days, until now.



There have almost always been materialists, theorists, or practical, either by deviation from common sense, or to justify low habits of life. The first reason for materialism is in the imperfection of human intelligence. Cicero said in very crude terms that there is no foolishness that has not found some philosopher to defend it: Nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum. Its second reason is in the evil inclinations of the human heart. Practical materialism, that is reduced to a few shameful maxims, has always appeared in times of moral or social decomposition, such as those of the Regency and the Directory. More often than not, when it has had higher aims, philosophical materialism has been a reaction against the exaggerated demands of ultra-spiritualist or religious doctrines. But, nowadays, it appears with a new character; it's called scientific. Natural history would be the whole science of man; nothing would exist that it does not have as its object, and since it does not have the spirit as its object, the spirit does not exist.



For whoever wants to think about it, materialism is indeed a peril, not of true science, but of incomplete and presumptuous science; it is a bad plant that grows on its soil. Where do the materialist tendencies come from, somewhat markedly of so many scientists? From their constant occupation studying and manipulating matter? Maybe a little bit. But they mainly come from their habits of mind, from the exclusive practice of their experimental method. The scientific method can be reduced to these terms: collect only facts, very cautiously induce the law of these facts, absolutely ban all research for causes. It is not surprising, after that, that short-sighted intelligences, weak in some sense, deformed, as we all become by the same and too continuous intellectual or physical work, ignore the existence of moral facts to which it is not appropriate the application of their logical instrument, and by an insensible transmission, pass from methodical ignorance to denial.



However, if this exclusively experimental method may be at fault, it is indeed in the study of man, to be double, spirit and matter, of which the organism itself can only be the product and the instrument of a hidden force, but essentially unique that animates it. One only wants to see in the human organism a material aggregate! Why split the man and want methodically to consider in him only one principle if there are two of them? Can we at least flatter ourselves in explaining all the phenomena of life in such a way? Physiological materialism, that prepares for philosophical materialism, but that does not necessarily lead to it, is helplessly struck at every step. Life, whatever one says, is movement, the movement of the soul informing the body; and the soul is thus the spring that moves and transports, by an unknown and unconscious action, the elements of the living bodies. By systematically reducing the study of physical man to the conditions of the study of inorganized bodies; by seeing in the living forces of each part of the organism only properties of matter; by locating these forces in each of these parts; by considering life only as a physical manifestation, a result, when it is perhaps a principle; by setting aside the unity of the principle of life as a hypothesis when it can be a reality, one certainly fall into physiological materialism, only to slide rapidly into philosophical materialism; but one concludes with an incomplete enumeration and examination of the facts; one thought to be going only on the basis of observation, setting aside the fundamental fact that dominates and determines all particular facts.



The materialism of the new school, therefore, is not a demonstrated result of the study; it is a preconceived opinion. The physiologist does not admit the mind; but how surprising is that? It is a cause, and he has set himself to study with a method that precisely precludes him from searching the causes. We do not want to submit the cause of spiritualism to a question of controversial physiology, and to which we could rightly be challenged. The intimate sense reveals to me the existence of the soul with a very different authority. When physiological materialism is as true as it is debatable, our spiritualist convictions would not remain less intact. Strengthened by the testimony of intimate sense, confirmed by the assent of a thousand successive generations on Earth, we would repeat the old adage: "Truth does not destroy truth," and we would wait until reconciliation takes place. But how much weight don’t feel off our shoulders when we see that, to deny the soul and give this statement, as a result of science, the scientist, by his own admission, methodically started from this idea that the soul does not exist!



We have read many books on physiology, generally quite badly written; what struck us is the constant flaw in the reasoning of the organic physiologist when he leaves his field to become a philosopher. We constantly see him taking an effect for a cause, a faculty for a substance, an attribute for a being, confusing existences, and forces, etc., and reason accordingly. One would think it was a challenge. Sometimes he crosses incredible distances without realizing the path he is taking. What exact and clear mind, for example, has ever been able to understand this so well-known thought of Cabanis and Broussais that "the brain produces, secretes thought?" On other occasions, the positive man, the man of science, the man of observation and of facts, will seriously tell us that the brain "stores ideas." A little more, and he will draw them. Is it metaphor or gibberish?



We will never ask natural science to take sides for or against the human soul; but why does it not resolve to ignore what is not the object of its investigations? By what right does it dare to swear that there is nothing afterwards, after having established a law for not seeing? What doesn’t it retain a little of this reservation that suits us all so well, especially those who pretend to only move forward with certainty? How come will the anatomist take it upon himself to declare that the soul does not exist, because he has not encountered it under his scalpel? Did he, at least, start by demonstrating rigorously, scientifically, by experiments and facts, according to the method he advocates, that his scalpel can reach anything, even an immaterial principle?



Whatever happens to all these questions, materialism claiming to be scientific, without being better for that, is spreading in broad daylight, and we must see what materialist law would be. Alas! The materialist social state would present us with a very sad and shameful spectacle. To begin with, it is certain that, if man only exists through his organism, this material and automatic mass that will henceforth be the whole man, provided with an encephalon to secrete ideas, will not be responsible for all the movements that it produces.[1] With that, the brain of another material mass must not dare to secrete ideas of justice or injustice; for these ideas of justice or injustice are applicable only to a free force, existing by itself, capable of wanting and of abstaining. One does not reason with the torrent or the avalanche.



So, freedom, that is the will to act or not to act, will not exist down here, and neither will right. In this state, all forces will have full and absolute power of expansion. Everything will be legitimate, lawful, permitted, let us say even ordered; because it is clear that any fact that is not the act of a free-will, that does not occur as a morally obligatory or morally forbidden act, is an obligatory fact, that may well come up against a contrary fact of the same character, but that like all physical facts, falls under the unavoidable influence of natural laws.



It is enough to expose such ideas to do it justice. It was Spinoza's system, that very resolutely posited the principle of the law of force. The strong, says Spinoza, are made to enslave the weak, just as the fish are to swim, and the larger to eat the smaller. In the materialist system, what we would call law cannot have a different principle. But what sensible man would dare to admit such a system, that would suffice on its own for the refutation of materialism, since it necessarily follows from that? However, do they want this principle of force to be in fact limited by itself? Nothing, or almost nothing, will be gained from this blatant denial of the principle. Let us admit, if you will, that the thinking substance (we continue to speak the language of the materialists) combines in individuals, to regulate this expansion of force; what will it lead to? At most to a set of rules that will be based on interest, and again, since there are no other laws than the laws of matter, this legislation will have no binding character; each one will be able to infringe it, if his thinking material advises him to do so, and if his strength allows it. Thus, in this singular doctrine, we would not even have a social state built on the plane of the sad society of Hobbes.



We are still speaking only of the first conditions of any social state. But, in all civil society, individual property is enshrined; we contract, we sell, we rent, we partner, etc. Marriage is the foundation of the family; a whole new order of relations is born from it. Through home education and public education, traditions are perpetuated. Thus, a national spirit is formed and civilization develops. Will our materialistic society have its civil law? Impossible to suppose it; for civil law has justice as its principle, and justice can only be a word, or a contradiction in a doctrine that only knows matter and the properties of matter. We thus inevitably conclude (unless we are wrong about it) that the civil status of materialist society is the state of bestiality.



We do not say too much by arguing that materialism is destructive, not of such morality, but of all morality, not of such civil status, but of any civil status, to any society. We must retreat with that beyond the regions of barbarism, beyond savagery. Should it be banned for that? God would not allow it. Having acknowledged its character, we would not, however, ask that its teaching be prohibited; we would defend it, if necessary, against any compression by force, provided that the teacher spoke only in his own name. Freedom is so dear to us (the readers of this newspaper know this); it carries such blessings; we have such a confidence in the public good sense that we could not conceive any concern to see any pulpit, any platform open to any idea.



But the question would no longer present itself in the same terms, if the teacher happened to speak in chair of State, paid by the budget. Rightly or wrongly, the State teaches; can he teach doctrines whose most immediate consequences are destructive to the state? Will it be at the discretion of any teacher to make the State endorse all the doctrines he can conceive? The question is not simple. State teachers are public officials; their teachings can only be an official teaching. The State guarantees what they say, and it is answerable to the youth and their families. If, for the great words of independence of the teachers, we challenged its control, we would be the oppressor of the State, by the most hypocritical of oppressions, because we would be blaming it for doctrines it disavows.



There is no doubt that the superior authority owes to its professors, often whitewashed by study, respect, consideration, and great confidence, as to its generals, its administrators, and its magistrates; but it does not owe them the sacrifice of the mandate it is still presumed to hold from the country. The professor is not more independent from the state than the general who would take command of an insurrection.

H. Thiercelin.”

[1] Like the liver is not responsible for the bile that it secrets

The Journal La Solidarité

The newspaper La Solidarité, of which we spoke in the Spiritist Review of June 1868, continues to deal with Spiritism, with the tone of serious discussion that characterizes this eminently philosophical paper.



With the title Psychological research on Spiritism, the July 1st issue contains an article from which we extract the following passages:



“There are very few newspapers that can claim to be independent. I mean a true independence, that makes it possible to treat a subject without concerns of party, Church, school, faculty, academia; better than that: without concern of the public, with its own audience of readers and subscribers, and only caring about seeking and telling the truth. La Solidarité has this very rare advantage of facing even churns - for it only lives on sacrifices - and for being placed too high up in the regions of thought to have to fear the arrows of ridicule. In dealing with Spiritism, we knew that we would satisfy no one, neither the believers, nor the unbelievers; nobody, except perhaps the people who have no bias in the issue. These know that they do not know. They are the wise ones, and they are few.”



The author then describes the material phenomenon of the turning tables, that he explains by human electricity, declaring that he sees nothing there that accuses a foreign intervention. That is what we said from the beginning. He keeps on:



“As long as we only have to explain the automatic movement of objects, we don't need to go beyond what is learned in the physical sciences. But the difficulty increases when it comes to phenomena of an intellectual nature.



The table, after having just danced, soon began to answer questions. Therefore, how can we doubt that there was intelligence there? The vague belief in Spirits had given rise to the movement of material objects because it is obvious that, without this a priori, they would never have dared to turn the tables. This belief, finding itself confirmed by appearances, was to lead to a further step. Given that the Spirit is the cause of the movement of the tables, one had to think of questioning it.



“The first intelligent manifestations,” says Mr. Allan Kardec, “took place by means of tables rising and kicking with one foot a fixed number of knocks, and thus answering yes or no, according to the convention, to a framed question. We then obtained more developed answers by the letters of the alphabet: the mobile object striking several hits, corresponding to the sequential number of each letter, they thus succeeded in forming words and sentences answering formulated questions. The correctness of the answers, and their correlation, aroused astonishment. The mysterious being who answered that, questioned about his nature, declared that he was a Spirit or Genius, gave himself a name and provided various information on his account."



This means of correspondence was long and inconvenient, as Mr. Allan Kardec quite rightly remarks. It was not long before it was replaced by the basket, then the planchette. Today, these means are generally abandoned, and believers rely on what the hand of the medium mechanically writes by the dictation of the Spirit.



It is difficult to know what the medium's share is in products somewhat inspired of his pen; it is not easy either to determine the degree of automatism of a basket or a planchette, when these objects are placed under living hands. But if the correspondence by the table is slow and inconvenient, it makes it possible to note the passivity of the instrument. For us, the intellectual communication by means of the table is as well established as that of the telegraphic correspondence. The fact is real. It is only a question of knowing if the correspondent from beyond the grave exists. Is there a Spirit, an invisible being with whom one corresponds, or are the operators the victims of an illusion and are they only in contact with themselves? That is the question.



We have attributed to the electricity emitted by the human machine the mechanical movements of the tables; we do not have to look elsewhere other than the human soul for the agent that gives these movements a character of intelligence. By imagining electricity as an elastic fluid of extreme subtlety, imposed between the molecules of the bodies, and surrounding them as in an atmosphere, we can very well understand that the soul, thanks to this envelope, makes its action on all parts of the body, without occupying a determined place there, and that the unity of the self is everywhere at the same time, where its atmosphere can reach. The action by contact then goes beyond the periphery of the body, and the ethereal or fluidic vibrations, by communicating from one atmosphere to another, can produce between the beings in relation, effects at a distance. There is a whole world to study here. The forces are influenced and are transformed there according to the dynamic laws known to us, but their effects vary with the rhythm of the molecular movements, and according to whether these movements are exerted by vibration, undulation, or oscillation. But whatever the case may be with these theories that are far from having attained the positivity necessary to take rank in science, nothing prevents us from viewing the human self as extending to the table the action of spontaneity, using it as an appendage to one’s nervous system to manifest voluntary movements.



What is most often misleading in these kinds of telegraphic correspondence is that the self of each of the assistants can no longer recognize oneself in the resultant of the collectivity. The subjective representation that is made in the mind of the medium by the aid of this kind of photography may not resemble any of the assistants, although most of them undoubtedly provided some feature; However, it is rare, if we observe carefully, that we no longer particularly find the image of one of the operators who was the passive instrument of the collective force. It is not an ultra-mundane Spirit speaking in the room, it is the spirit of the medium, but the spirit of the medium perhaps doubled by the spirit of such and such an assistant who often dominates him without them both knowing it, and exalted by forces that come to him, such as various electromagnetic currents, from the support given by the assistants.[1]



We have seen many times the personality of the medium betrayed by spelling mistakes, by historical or geographical errors that he usually made, and that could not be attributed to a Spirit truly distinct from his own person.



One of the most common things in phenomena of this nature is the revelation of secrets that the interrogator does not believe known to anyone; but he forgets that these secrets are known to the interrogator, and that the medium can read his mind. This requires a certain mental relationship; but this relation is established by a derivation of the nervous current that envelops every individual, much like one could deflect the electric spark by intercepting the telegraph line and substituting it for a new conducting wire. Such a faculty is much less rare than one might think. Communication of thought is a fact admitted by all those who have been concerned with magnetism, and it is easy for everyone to be convinced of the frequency and the reality of the phenomenon. We are forced to slip on these very imperfect explanations. They are not sufficient, we know, to invalidate the belief in Spirits among those who believe they have sensible evidence of their intervention.



We cannot confront them with evidence of the same nature. There is nothing irrational about belief in spiritual individualities, but we consider it entirely natural. Our deep conviction, as we know, is that the human self persists in its identity after death, and that it is recovered after its separation from the earthly organism, with all its previous acquisitions. That the human person is then clothed with an organism of an ethereal nature is what seems perfectly probable to us.



The perispirit of these gentlemen, therefore, does not repel us. What is it that separates us? Nothing fundamental. Nothing, except the insufficiency of their proofs. We do not believe that the Spiritist relationships between the dead and the living are attested by the movements of the tables, by correspondence, by dictations. We believe that physical phenomena can be explained physically, and that psychic phenomena are caused by the forces inherent to the soul of the operators. We speak of what we have seen and studied with great care. We do not know of anything so far among the inspirations of mediums that could not have been produced by a living brain, without the aid of any celestial force, and most of their productions are below the intellectual level of the environment in which we live.



In a future article, we will examine the philosophical and religious doctrines of Spiritism, and particularly those for which Mr. Allan Kardec presented the synthesis in his last book, entitled Genesis according to Spiritism.”



There would be undoubtedly a lot of things to answer on this article; however, we will not refute it, because it would be repeating what we have written many times on the same subject. We are happy to recognize, with the author, that the distance that still separates him from us is small: it is only the material fact of the direct relations between the visible world and the invisible world; and yet this little thing is a great deal in its consequences.



As a matter of fact, it should be noted that, if he does not admit these relationships, he does not deny them absolutely either; it is not even averse to his reason to conceive the possibility of it; indeed, this possibility follows quite naturally from what he admits. What he lacks, he says, is evidence from communications. Well! Sooner or later this proof will come to him; he will find them either in the careful observation of the circumstances that accompany certain mediumistic communications, or in the innumerable variety of spontaneous manifestations, that occurred before Spiritism, and still occur with people who do not know it or do not believe it, and consequently one cannot admit the influence of a preconceived idea among them. It would be necessary to ignore the first elements of Spiritism to believe that the fact of the manifestations occurs only among the followers.



In the meantime, and even though his conviction should end there, it would be desirable that all materialists were at this point; we must therefore congratulate ourselves on counting on him among the righteous men, at least sympathetic to the general idea, and to see a commendable journal, by its serious character and its independence, fighting with us the absolute skepticism in matters of spirituality, as well as the abuse that has been carried out to the spiritual principle. We walk to the same goal by different routes but converging towards a common point and approaching more and more through the ideas; a few dissents on questions of detail should not prevent us from reaching out to each other.



In this time of effervescence and aspiration towards a better state of things, each one brings his stone to the building of the new world; each works on his own, with his own means; Spiritism brings its contingent that is not yet complete; but as it is not exclusive, it does not reject any support; it accepts the good that can serve the great cause of humanity, from wherever it comes, even from its adversaries.



As we said at the beginning, we will not undertake to refute the theory set out in La Solidarité on the source of intelligent manifestations; we will only say a few words about it.



This theory, as we can see, is only one of the first systems hatched at the origin of Spiritism, when experience had not yet clarified the question; however, it is well known that this opinion is today reduced to a few rare individuals. If it were right, why would it not have prevailed? How could that be that millions of Spiritists who have been experimenting for fifteen years, all over the world and in all languages, who are recruited for the most part from the enlightened class, who have in their ranks men of knowledge and of incontestable value, such as doctors, engineers, magistrates, etc., noted the reality of the demonstrations, if it did not exist? Can we reasonably admit that all have deluded themselves? That there were not among them men endowed with sufficient good sense and perspicacity to recognize the true cause? This theory, as we have said, is not new, and it has not gone unnoticed among the Spiritists; on the contrary, it has been seriously thought of and explored by them, and it is precisely because it has been found contradicted by the facts, powerless to explain them all, that it has been abandoned.



It is a serious mistake to believe that the Spiritists came with the preconceived idea of the intervention of the Spirits in the manifestations; if it was so with some, the truth is that the majority did not come to belief until after having passed through doubt or skepticism.



It is also a mistake to believe that, without the a priori belief in Spirits, we would never have dared to turn the tables. The phenomenon of turning and talking tables was known in Tertullian time, and in China from ancient time. In Tartary and Siberia, flying tables[2] were known. In some provinces of Spain, sieves held in suspension by the tips of scissors are used. Do those who interrogate believe that it is Spirits who are answering? Not at all. Ask them what it is, they know nothing about it: it is the table, the sieve endowed with an unknown power; they question these movements like those of the divinatory wand, without going beyond the material fact.



Modern Spiritist phenomena did not begin with turning tables, but with spontaneous knocks struck on walls and furniture; these noises caused astonishment, surprise; there was something unusual about their beating pattern, an intentional character, a persistence that seemed to call attention to a specific point, like when someone knocks to call attention. The first movements of tables or other objects were also spontaneous, as they are still today in certain individuals who have no knowledge of Spiritism. It is the same here with most natural phenomena that occur daily, and nevertheless go unnoticed, or whose cause remains unknown, until the time when serious and more enlightened observers pay their attention, study, and explore them.



Thus, of two contrary theories, born at the same time, one grows with time as a result of experience, becomes generalized, while the other dies out; in favor of which is there a presumption of truth and survival? We are not giving this as proof, but as a fact that deserves consideration.



Mr. Fauvety relies on that he has found nothing in mediumistic communications that is beyond the reach of the human brain; this is again an old objection a hundred times refuted by the Spiritist doctrine itself. Has Spiritism ever said that the Spirits are beings outside of humanity? On the contrary, it comes to destroy the prejudice that makes them exceptional beings, angels or demons, intermediaries between man and the divinity, species of semi-gods.



It is based on this principle that the Spirits are none other than men stripped from their material envelope, that the visible world flows incessantly into the invisible world through death, and the latter into the corporeal world through births.



Since the Spirits belong to mankind, why would anyone want them to have superhuman language? We know that some of them do not know more, and often much less than certain men, since they learn with the latter; those who were incapable of making masterpieces during their lifetime, will not do more like Spirits; the Spirit of an ignorant will not speak like a scholar, and the Spirit of a scholar, who is only a human being, will not speak like a god.



It is therefore not in the eccentricity of their ideas and their thoughts, in the exceptional superiority of their style, that we must seek proof of the spiritual origin of the communications, but in the circumstances that attest, in a multitude of cases, that the thought cannot come from an incarnate, even if it is most trivial.


From these facts emerges the proof of the existence of the invisible world in the middle of which we live, and for that the Spirits of the lowest level prove it just as well as the most elevated ones. Now, the existence of the invisible world in our midst, an integral part of earthly humanity, the spillway of discarnate souls, and source of the incarnate, is a fundamental, immense fact; it is a whole revolution in beliefs; it is the key to man's past and future, that all philosophies have sought in vain, just as scientists have uselessly sought the key to astronomical mysteries, before knowing the law of gravitation. Let them follow the chain of the forced consequences of this single fact: the existence of the invisible world around us, and they will arrive at a complete, inevitable transformation of ideas, with the destruction of prejudices and the abuses that result from it, and consequently, a modification of social relationships.


Spiritism leads to that. Its doctrine is the development, the deduction of the consequences of the main fact, whose existence it has just revealed; these consequences are innumerable, because, step by step, they affect all branches of the social order, physical as well as moral. This is understood by all those who have taken the trouble of studying it seriously, and what they will understand even better later, but not those who, having only seen the surface, imagine that it is entirely in a rotating table or in puerile questions about the identity of Spirits.



For further development on some of the questions dealt with in this article, we refer to the first chapter of Genesis: Character of the Spiritist revelation.[3]

[1] See, for the response to several propositions contained in this article, The Book of Mediums, chapter IV, Systems. Introduction of The Spirits’ Book. - What is Spiritism? chapter. I, Small conference.

[2] Spiritist Review, October 1859


[3] Published in a separate brochure; price 15 cents; by mail, 20 cents.

Retrospective Spiritism

Mediumship in a glass of water in 1706

At the Duke of Orleans’ place.



We can understand, with the general title of retrospective Spiritism, the thoughts, doctrines, beliefs and all the spiritualist facts prior to modern Spiritism, that is until 1850, period in which the observations and studies on these kinds of phenomena began. It was not until 1857 that these observations were coordinated into a body of methodical and philosophical doctrine. This division seems useful to us in the history of Spiritism.



The event below is reported in the Memoirs of Duke Saint-Simon:[1]



“I also remember something that he (the Duke of Orleans) told me in the Marly room, on the verge of his departure to Italy, whose singularity, verified by the event, does not allow me to omit it. He was curious about all kinds of arts and sciences, and with infinite wit, he had had in all his life the weakness so common at the court of the children of Henry II, that Catherine de Medici had, among other evils, brought from Italy. He told me many times that he had sought to see the devil, as much as he could, without success, and to see extraordinary things, and to know the future. Ms. de Sery had a little girl with her, eight or nine years old, who had been born there and never left, and who had the ignorance and simplicity of the age and education. Among other rascals involved with hidden curiosities, of which the Duke of Orleans had seen many in his life, he was introduced to one that claimed to show, in a glass filled with water, all that one would want to know. He asked someone young and innocent to look there, and the little girl was found fit for that. So, they had fun wishing to know what was happening even at distant places, and the little girl saw and described what she saw. The man whispered something over the glass filled with water, and they were immediately successful in seeing something there.



The deceptions often experienced by the Duke of Orleans led him to a test that could reassure him. He whispered to one of his servants to immediately go to Madame de Nancré's, to carefully examine who was there, what they were doing, the position and the furniture of the room, and the situation of everything that was going on there, and without wasting any time or speaking to anyone, to come and whisper it to him. The task was carried out in a jiffy, and nobody realized what had just happened, and the little girl still in the room. As soon as the Duke of Orleans was informed, he asked the little girl to look at who was with Madame de Nancré and what was going on there. She immediately told them, word for word, all that the man sent by the Duke of Orleans had seen. The description of the face, the looks, the clothes, the people who were there, their position in the room, the people who played at two different tables, those looking over or chatting, sitting, or standing, the arrangement of the furniture, in a word, everything. The Duke of Orleans immediately asked Nancré to go there, and he reported having found everything as the little girl had said, and as the valet who had first been there had reported to the ear of the Duke of Orleans.



He hardly spoke to me about these things because I took the liberty of shaming him. I took the liberty of teasing him about this story and told him what I thought I could dissuade him from believing in these sorceries, especially at a time when he should have his mind occupied with so many great things. "That is not all," he said to me, "and I have only told you about it to get to the rest;” He then told me that, encouraged by the accuracy of what the little girl had seen in Madame de Nancré's room, he wanted to see something more important, and what would happen with the death of the king, but without specifying the date that could not be seen in this glass. He then asked the little girl, who had never heard of Versailles, nor seen anyone from the court, but himself. She looked and explained to him at length everything she saw. She correctly described the king's bedroom at Versailles, and the furnishings that were in fact there at his death. She depicted him perfectly in his bed, and a well-behaved small child that was standing near the bed or in the room, held by Madame de Ventadour, after what she cried because she had seen her at the home of Ms. de Sery.



She introduced them to Madam de Maintenon, the singular figure of Fayon, Madam Duchesse d'Orléans, Madam Duchesse and Princess of Conti; she cried out to Mr. Duke of Orleans; in short, she let them know what she saw in terms of princes, lords, servants, and valets. When she finished describing everything, the Duke of Orleans was surprised that she had not introduced them to Monseigneur, to the Duke of Bourgogne, the Monseigneur Duke of Berry, and asked her if she did not see this or that figure. She firmly said no and repeated the ones she saw. This is what the Duke of Orleans could not understand and was greatly surprised with, in vain asking me for the reason. The event explained it. It was then in 1706. All four were then full of life and health, and all four had died before the king. It was the same with the Prince, the Duke, and the Prince of Conti, whom she did not see, while she saw the children of the last two, Mr. du Maine, his sons, and the Count of Toulouse. But until the occurrence, it remained in the dark. Having the curiosity ended, the Duke of Orleans wanted to know what would become of him. So, it was no longer in the glass of water. The man who was there offered to show him, as if painted on the wall of the room, provided he was not afraid to see himself there; and after a quarter of an hour of a few reactions, the face of the Duke of Orleans suddenly appeared before them all, dressed as he was then and in his natural size, on the wall like in a painting, with a crown on his head. It was neither from France, nor Spain, nor England, nor Imperial; the Duke of Orleans, who looked at it with his eyes wide open, could never guess it, for he had never seen one like that; it only had four circles, and nothing at the top. The crown covered his head.



From the preceding obscurity and from this one, I took the opportunity to show him the vanity of these kinds of curiosities, the just deceptions of the devil, that God allows to punish the curiosities that he forbids, the nothingness and darkness that result from it, instead of the light and satisfaction that one seeks in it. He was certainly a long way then from being regent of the kingdom and from imagining it. It was perhaps what that singular crown announced to him. All this had happened in Paris, with his mistress, in the presence of his closest acquaintances, the day before he had told me about it, and I found it so extraordinary that I gave him a place here, not to approve, but to register it."

The credibility of the Duke of Saint-Simon is all the less suspect since he was opposed to these kinds of ideas; there can therefore be no doubt that he faithfully reported the story of the Duke of Orleans. As for the fact itself, it is not probable that the duke invented it for nothing. The phenomena that occur nowadays prove their possibility; what then passed for something wonderful is now a very natural fact. Besides, one cannot certainly blame them on the imagination of the child, who was unknown to the individuals, and could not serve as his accomplice. The words spoken on the glass of water undoubtedly had no other purpose than to give the phenomenon a mysterious and cabalistic appearance, according to the beliefs of the time; but they could very well exert an unconscious magnetic action, and that with even more reason, for that man appeared endowed with an energetic will. As for the fact of the painting that he made appear on the wall, until now one cannot give any explanation for that. Moreover, the prior magnetization of the water does not appear to be essential.



A few years ago, one of our correspondents from Spain told us the following fact that had happened before his eyes, fifteen years ago, at a time and in a region where Spiritism was unknown, and when it pushed skepticism to its limits. Some in his family heard of the ability that some people have to see in a jug filled with water, and they did not give any more importance to this than to popular beliefs. Yet, they wanted to try out of curiosity. A young girl, after a moment of concentration, saw a relative of his, making an accurate portrait; she saw him on a mountain, a few leagues away, where he could not supposedly be, then descend into a gorge, return, and doing various trips up and down. When the individual returned and was told where he came from and what he had done, he was very surprised, because he had not communicated his intention to anyone. Imagination here is completely out of question, since none of the assistants could act on the mind of the young girl through their thoughts.



The influence of imagination is the great objection that is opposed to this kind of phenomenon, as to all those of mediumship in general, hence one cannot be careful enough when collecting the cases in which it is demonstrated that this influence cannot take place. The following fact is a not less conclusive example.



Another of our subscribers from Palermo, Sicily, was recently in Paris; in his absence, his daughter, who has never been to Paris, received the issue of the Spiritist Review, in which the glass of water is considered; she wanted to try to see her father. She did not see him, but she saw several streets that from the description she gave to him, he easily recognized as the streets of Paix, Castiglione and Rivoli. Now, these streets were precisely those through which he had passed on the very day on which the experiment had been carried out. Thus, that young lady does not see her father, whom she knows, whom she wishes to see, on whom her thoughts are concentrated, while she sees the path he has traveled, and that she did not know. What reason can be given to this oddity? The Spirits told us that things happened in such way to give unmistakable proof that the imagination had nothing to do with that. We will complete, through the following reflections, what we said on the same subject, in the June issue.



The glass with or without water, as well as the bottle, obviously play the role of hypnotic agents in this phenomenon; the concentration of sight and thought on one point causes a greater or lesser detachment of the soul, and consequently, the development of the psychic sight. (See the Spiritist Review, January 1860, Details about hypnotism).

This kind of mediumship can give rise to special modes of manifestation, to new perceptions; it is one more means of ascertaining the existence and independence of the soul, and for that reason, a very interesting subject of study; but as we have said, it would be a mistake to believe that this is a better way than any other of knowing everything that one wishes, because there are things that must be hidden from us or that can only be revealed at a certain time. When the moment to know them is right, one learns by one of the thousand means at the disposal of the Spirits, whether one is a Spiritist or not; but one glass of water is not more effective than another. From the fact that the Spirits have used it to give valuable advice for health, it does not follow that it is an infallible method of healing all illnesses, even those that must not be cured. If a cure by the Spirits is possible, they give their advice by any means, and by any medium suitable for this kind of communication. The effectiveness is in the prescription, not in the mode by which it is given.



The glass of water is not a guarantee against the interference of evil Spirits either; experience has already shown that evil Spirits use this means like any other, to mislead and abuse credulity. How could one oppose them a more powerful obstacle! We have said it time and time again, and we cannot repeat it too often: There is no mediumship that is immune to evil Spirits, and there is no physical process for removing them. The best, the only protection is in oneself; it is by one’s own purification that one keeps them away, like one is protected against harmful insects by the cleanliness of the body.

[1] Refer to the issue of June 1868 of the Spiritist Review

Reincarnation in Japan -
Saint Francis Xavier and the Japanese Bonze

The following report is taken from the story of Saint François-Xavier by Father Bouhours. It is a theological discussion between a Japanese monk named Tucarondono, and Saint Francis-Xavier, then a missionary in Japan.



“- I don't know if you know me, or to put it better, if you recognize me," Tucarondono said to François-Xavier.



- I do not remember having ever seen you, the latter replies.



The bonze then burst in laughter and turned to other bonzes, his colleagues whom he had brought with him:



- I clearly see," he said to them, "that I will have no difficulty in defeating a man that has dealt with me more than a hundred times, and pretends to have never seen me.” Then, looking at Xavier with a smile of contempt: “Don’t you have anything left,” he continued, “of the goods that you sold me at the port of Frénasoma?”



“In reality,” replied Xavier, with an always serene and modest face, “I have never been a merchant in my life, and I have never seen Frénasoma.”



- “Ah! what a lack of memory and what a stupidity!” resumed the monk, looking astonished, and continuing his bursts of laughter:



- “What! Is it possible that you forgot that?”



- “Refresh my memory,” replied the father gently, “you who have more wit and memory than I do.”



- “I don't mind,” said the monk, proud of the praise Xavier had thrown at him. “It is now just fifteen hundred years that you and I, who were merchants, traded in Frénasoma, and that I bought a hundred pieces of silk from you, very cheaply. Do you remember it now?



The saint assessed where the bonze's speech was going and asked him honestly how old he was.



" - I'm fifty-two years old," said Tucarondono.



“- How can it be,'' Xavier went on, “that you were a merchant fifteen centuries ago, if you have only been in the world for half a century, and how did we deal in those days, you and I, in Frénasoma, if most of the other bonzes teach that Japan was only a desert, fifteen hundred years ago?”



"- Listen to me,” said the bonze; “you will hear the oracles, and you will agree that we have more knowledge of past things than you have of present things.”



“- You must therefore know that the world has never had a beginning, and that souls, strictly speaking, do not die. The soul emerges from the body in which she was enclosed; she seeks another one, fresh and vigorous, where we are reborn sometimes with the noblest sex, sometimes with the imperfect sex, according to the various constellations of the sky and the different aspects of the moon. These changes of birth cause our fortunes to change too. For it is the reward of those who have lived holy, to have the fresh memory of all lives that one has had in past centuries, and to represent oneself entirely as one has been for ages, in the form of prince, merchant, man of letters, warrior and other figures. On the contrary, someone like you that knows so little about his own affairs, who does not know what he has been and what he has done over the course of countless centuries, shows that his crimes have made him worthy of death so many times that he has lost the memory of the lives he changed.”



Observation: We cannot suppose that François-Xavier invented this story, that was not to his advantage, nor can we suspect the good faith of his historian, Father Bouhours. On the other hand, it is not less certain that it was a trap set for the missionary by the bonze, since we know that the memory of previous existences is an exceptional case, and that, in any case, it does not ever has such precise details; but what emerges from this fact is that the doctrine of reincarnation existed in Japan at that time, in identical conditions to those that are taught today by the Spirits, except for the intervention of the constellations and the moon. Another no less remarkable similarity is the idea that the accuracy of memory is a sign of superiority; the Spirits tell us, in fact, that in worlds more elevated than Earth, where the body is less material and the soul is in a normal state of freedom, the memory of the past is a faculty common to everyone; there one remembers their former lives, like we remember the first years of our childhood. It is obvious that the Japanese are not at this degree of dematerialization that does not exist on Earth, but this fact proves that they have its intuition.

September

Bibliography

The fantastic regiment, by Victor Dazur[1]

We borrow the following passages from the review that Le Siècle gave of this work in its June 22nd, 1868, issue:



“It is a kind of philosophical novel, where most of the questions that currently fascinate the minds are treated in an original and dramatic form; spiritualism and materialism, the immortality of the soul and the nothingness, free will and fatalism, responsibility and irresponsibility, eternal punishments and atonement, then war, universal peace, permanent armies, etc.



All these questions are not discussed with much method and depth, but they are all discussed with a certain erudition, with evident good faith, with almost always cheerfulness, often with wit, and sometimes with eloquence.



In short, the book is from a liberal man, friend of progress, perfectibility and spiritualism, friend of peace, although obviously in the military.



Here is, therefore, how the author speaks of himself:

• The author, who in this book gave himself the name of François Pamphile, had the great honor of being a corporal in the French army, when he had a strange dream that forms the outline of the work that you will read, if you have nothing better to do. Later, our soldier wrote down his dream, and then amused himself by embellishing it when he had time. "

The Fantastic Regiment, by Victor Dazur, is therefore a dream like Paris in America, by Mr. Laboulaye, but it is a dream that transports you to a completely imaginary world.



Corporal François Pamphile returns to his barracks, after taking part in the festivities at a public celebration in Paris with a few comrades. Saturated with the noise, music, open air shows, illuminations, fireworks, with a full stomach and a clear conscience, having had no quarrel with anyone, having struck no civilian with his saber, he fell in a deep sleep. After some time that he cannot precise, it seems to him that his bed is removed, as if it were suspended in a basket from a balloon.



He opens his eyes and sees himself in space; a moving panorama extends below him; he sees Paris disappear, then the countryside, then Earth. It seems to him like making one of the space journeys of our collaborator Flammarion, of which he declares to be an assiduous reader, and from whom he enthusiastically praises the beautiful spiritualist book entitled Plurality of the Inhabited Worlds.



Suddenly he misses air; he suffocates; but he then enters another atmosphere; his breathing resumes; he sees another globe that his astronomical studies allow him to recognize as the planet Mars. He feels drawn to this planet whose globe is growing rapidly in his eyes. He trembles, thinking that he could be crushed thee, by falling according to the laws of gravity; he fears a terrible shock; but no! There he is stretched out on a thick lawn, by the feet of marvelous trees filled with not less marvelous birds.



He thinks he is in a new world, having gone from the rank of corporal to the rank of first man. He calls an Eve. It is the song of King Dagobert that answers him.



The astonishment of the good corporal redoubled when he saw that the singer was a tall fellow, wearing the uniform of a sergeant-major of the French line infantry.



- Who are you? Asked the sergeant, looking as surprised as he does.



- Major, answers François Pamphile, I am a corporal; I come from planet Earth that I involuntarily left last night; and I would like you to be so kind as to tell me the name of the planet where I fell.



- This planet is Soraï-Kanor, of course!



- Soraï-Kanor? … I assumed it was planet Mars. It seems that I was wrong.



- You are not mistaken. It is only that our planet, that the earthlings call Mars, is called Soraï-Kanor by our astronomers.



The corporal is surprised that the sergeant knows the name given by the inhabitants of Earth to his planet. But the sergeant tells him that he only left Earth after his earthly death, and that he was king of France there.



To this unexpected response, the corporal takes his hat off, that is, takes off the cotton cap he has on his head.



The king, sergeant-major, told him not to do him so much honor, since he was no more than a simple sub-officer. His name on Earth was Francis I; on Mars, he belongs to the Fantastic Regiment, a regiment made up of most of the rulers who have ruled the globe. The colonel is Alexander the Great; Lieutenant-Colonel Julius Caesar (who did not reign, strictly speaking), and Major Pericles (who reigned even less). The regiment has three battalions, and each battalion eight companies. The commander of the first battalion is Senusret and the adjutant-major Attila; the commander of the second battalion, Charlemagne, and the adjutant-major Charles V; the commander of the third battalion, Anibal; and Adjutant Mithridates.



Each company is made up of the sovereigns of the same nation. The French company is the first of the second battalion and has for captain Louis XIV, proving, by the way, that favor dominates on Mars as on Earth; for Francis I, who is only a sergeant-major, was assuredly a greater captain than Louis XIV, and he also had seniority on his side.



The cantinières[2] of the fantastic regiment are Semiramis, Cleopatra, Elisabeth, and Catherine II. Just as all the officers and soldiers of the regiment are former sovereigns or men who have exercised sovereignty, all the canteens and canteen servers are former sovereigns. The only musicians are former composers: Beethoven, Mozart, Gluck, Puccini, Haydn, Bellini. The regiment has only adopted the French uniform since the reign of Napoleon I, whose campaigns have excited Alexander the Great. Since then, the regiment has followed all the variations of our military costume, which is saying a lot. It is also since the reign of Napoleon I that the French language has been adopted as the regulatory language of the regiment. However, it was not under the Empire that the French language shone the most. Moreover, the winner of Austerlitz is not among the soldiers of the fantastic regiment. He is not on Mars; perhaps he is in a superior world, perhaps in an inferior world: Francis I ignores it.



Other sovereigns have never figured in the fantastic regiment; others left it after several centuries of service; a few still, after several thousand centuries. The regiment never changes garrison, and never makes war. It is a kind of penitentiary regiment where the sovereigns, male and female, are placed only to atone for the crimes they have committed during their reigns.



That is good, but the musicians Beethoven, Mozart, and the others, what crimes did they commit to be retained in this expiatory regiment? This is what the author neglects to tell us.



The usual torture of soldiers and cantinières of the regiment is the torture of Tantalus. The warriors who enjoyed blood and carnage on Earth, have kept their bellicose instincts, constantly awaken by the sound of the bugle, overexcited by the exercises and combat simulations, without it ever being possible for them to be satisfied, for the divine power that allows war on Earth, forbids it on Mars.



The luxurious suffer a similar torment. Everyone, men, and women, retain the beauty they enjoyed at the best time of their life, but they are subject to a physiological cause that condemns them to absolute chastity.



Another punishment, that saddens them even more, is the torture of memories. An extraordinarily lucid memory reminds them of the acts of their earthly life. A continual occupation alone manages to distract them; but the discipline is rigorous; all the time they are condemned to the police precinct, to prison or to the room of memories. In the police room and in prison, they are still allowed some distractions, but in the memory room they are not allowed any. There they find themselves locked up amid all the instruments of punishment and torture employed in their reigns; all the sufferings and all the murders ordered by the kings are fresco painted on the walls.



When Louis XI is locked up in the room of memories, he is put in an iron cage in use during his ruling and placed in front of the scaffold of Nemours, whose blood drips on the heads of his children. Philippe le Bel is lying on a stake from where he sees the torture of the Templars. Ferdinand the Catholic is tied to an easel, his head turned towards an auto-da-fé.



Our corporal hears Nero complaining in these following terms to his comrade Caligula:



- Three quarters of the time, I am punished with a detention or with the police room. If I complain against a punishment, it gets worse. When I'm not in the police room, I'm with the punishment squad, and when I'm not with the punishment squad, I'm cleaning the barracks. Finally, I am overwhelmed with annoyances of all kinds, not to mention my other sufferings. This has been going on for many centuries. When will it end? "



But your fantastic regiment is hell, said the good Pamphile to Francis I.



- No, he replies, because the penalties are not eternal. The Great Unknown, who is supreme justice, does not pronounce eternal condemnation, since finite faults, however great they may be, cannot merit infinite penalties. Our planet and certain others are not hells, but purgatories where men, in one or more successive existences, pay the moral debts that they have contracted in a previous existence.



By chatting that way sometimes with the sergeant-major Francis I, sometimes with the simple infantryman Charles V, sometimes with his colleague Corporal Charles VII, Corporal Pamphile receives instructions and revelations that interests humanity at the highest degree. Finally, in an audience granted to him by Colonel Alexander the Great, in the circle of officers, the former conqueror presented him with a project for a universal international congress, assigning it to him to propose to Earth, to establish peace concord and brotherhood forever in our globe.



- Colonel, exclaimed enthusiastically Pamphile, your project is so logical, it seems to me so indispensable and the idea so natural, that it seems to me that as soon as it is known on Earth, everyone over there will say: How is it that one did not think earlier of establishing a universal congress?



“Despite the good corporal's hope, we doubt that the various governments of our planet will hasten to welcome Alexander's project; but the peace congress, that will be held in Berne next September, cannot fail to take it into consideration. We recommend it especially to the rapporteur responsible for studying what could be the constitution of the United States of Europe.

E.D. of Biéville.”




If Mr. Victor Dazur (this name is undoubtedly a pseudonym) was inspired by the Plurality of the inhabited worlds by Mr. Flammarion, of which he declares to be an assiduous reader, he has also gleaned widely in the Spiritist books. Except for the framework he used, his philosophical theory of future penalties, of the plurality of existences, of the state of Spirits free from the body, of moral responsibility, etc., is obviously drawn from the doctrine of Spiritism, of which he reproduces not only the idea, but often even the form.



The following passages leave no doubt on this point:



“You are dreaming, my friend, I thought; you are dreaming! All these rulers from Earth who are starting a new existence on planet Mars, this genius with a diaphanous body and azure wings, all that smells like Spiritism… And yet, when you are awake, you do not believe in this invention. Then, addressing myself to Francis I, I said to him:



- Major, a strange idea occurs to me; this idea makes me suppose that all that I see and all that I hear since I arrived here is only the effect of a dream. Tell me, please, your opinion. Do you think, like me, that I am dreaming?



- Of course not! You are not dreaming, said Francis I, with an indignant air, as if I had made a very stupid question. No, you're not dreaming! If you were dreaming, a crowd of chimeras without tail or head would parade before your mind. The events that you would witness would have no reasonable relation to each other.



But that's not all, Major. What still makes me believe that I am dreaming is that I have felt myself, and I did not find a body ... I still feel myself now, and I cannot find it. However, I feel alive, and I see myself with arms and legs. It goes without saying that these arms and legs being impalpable, these are just fantastic appearances. I could well explain these appearances, but for that it would be necessary for me, me who does not believe in Spiritism, to admit certain Spiritist theory, that true or false, in any case, is rather ingenious.



This theory claims that the Spirit of a body is surrounded by a perispirit, that is, a semi-material envelope, that can take the form of this body and become visible in some cases. Once the perispirit is admitted, the same theory claims that an individual can sometimes be seen in two places at the same time, even very distant from each other, the sleeping body in one place, and the appearance of the body, that is, the perispirit, acting somewhere else. If this assertion were true, I would find myself putting into practice the theory I just spoke of. You could see my body sleeping in Paris right now while you see my perispirit as if it were my body. But I would not believe such an extraordinary thing unless it was proven. It would still be adopting Spiritism to admit this meeting of rulers assembled here as real, so they claim, to atone the misdeeds they have committed while on Earth.



- If you want, said Francis I, do not believe what you have in front of you. Suppose for a moment that instead of being on this planet, you are in the ideal domain of reason, and tell me if you believe that men who do evil, regardless of their position in society, can be exempt from purgatory after their earthly death.



- Major, I don't know what to answer. - But I do know what you think. You think purgatory exists anywhere, but only for the people at the highest levels of the social ladder. And what leads you to think so is that the faults of people in high places in the world are much more apparent than those of ordinary individuals. But you will immediately modify this idea by thinking that, for the Supreme Being, there are no hidden faults. Indeed, the Great Unknown constantly sees simple individuals on Earth who do relatively as much harm in their small sphere of action as certain tyrants marked by history have done in their States. The private individuals of whom I speak, instead of exercising their tyranny in a kingdom, they exercise it in their family and in their environment, making women, children, and subordinates suffer without mercy. These tyrants have only one concern, that is to enjoy life by escaping the law of the country they inhabit. Now, I ask you, do you believe that these evil people, who sometimes go by virtuous in the eyes of anyone who does not know their life, do you believe, I say, that these evil beings are immediately transported into a place of enjoyment?

- No, I don't think so.

- Don’t you agree that they contracted a certain moral debt by doing evil?

- Yes, Major, I admit it.

- Well then, you should not be surprised that certain planets are real purgatories where men, in one or more existences, pay the debts that they contracted in a previous existence.

But, Major, don't the sufferings that every man experience during his life sufficiently pay for the harm he can do, from the age of reason until death?

- That could only apply to a very small number of individuals; for often the evil that a man does reflects on a certain number of his fellows, that multiplies the sum of the personal evil by as much, and almost always makes the debt so great that this man cannot pay it during its short existence. Now, when we have not been able to pay our debts in one life, we must necessarily pay them in another; for in the matter of criminal debts, the Great Unknown has arranged things in such a way that bankruptcy is not possible. That being admitted, you will also admit that it is impossible that monsters like Nero, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Borgia and so many others, whose crimes cannot be enumerated, could have paid such debts by the few pains that they have suffered in their life. Now, it is one of two things: these men, at their death, have fallen into nothingness, or else they have started a new existence; if we admit that they fell into nothingness, we quite naturally admit that they must have gone into an enormous bankruptcy. You will agree that the idea of such bankruptcy disgusts one’s mind, while if we admit that they have each started a new existence, the mind is satisfied in thinking that these new lives can only be existences of atonement or, to put it better, of purification.[3]

- Major, isn't that easier to admit the eternal disgrace for the monsters you speak of?

- I agree that it is simpler, but not more logical. Logic, that must be the soul of justice, refuses to admit eternal disgrace, because finite faults cannot deserve infinite penalties.”

There follows one of the most striking and logical dissertations that we have read against hell and the eternal punishments, on the justice of the proportionality of penalties, and about the doctrine of work, but its extent does not allow us to reproduce.



- Major, said Corporal Pamphile, I will point out to you that the negation of eternal hell, as well as the proportionality of penalties, is the very foundation of the doctrine of the Spirits; however, as I have already told you, I do not believe in Spiritism.

- Then… believe in eternal hell if that makes you happy.”



Among the rulers that Corporal Pamphile finds in Mars, there are some who lived during the time of the flood, the kings of Assyria, at the time of the Babel Tower, the Pharaohs at the time of the passage of the Red Sea by the Hebrews, etc., and each one gives explanations about those events that, for the most part, have the merit, if not of material proof, at least that of logic.



In short, the framework chosen by the author to express his ideas is good, even his very denial of Spiritism that ultimately leads to an indirect affirmation. We will say, like Le Siècle, that in an apparently light form, all the questions are treated with a certain erudition there, with evident good faith, almost always with joy, often with wit, and sometimes with eloquence. We will add that, not knowing the author, if this issue falls in his hand, we want him to find here the expression of our sincere congratulations, because he has written an interesting and very useful book.

[1] A large volume, 1n-12, price 3.5 francs; by mail 4 francs. This book was published in Lyon and does not carry the name of any editor; it only says that it can be found in every bookstore in Paris. We got it at the Librarie Internationale, Boulevard Montmartre, 15.






[2] A French name for women attached to military regiments as sutlers or canteen keepers (Wikipedia, T.N.)


[3] If the effect of the injustice or evil that a man does against another man stops at the individual, the need for reparation will be individual; but if, on the contrary, this evil affects a hundred individuals, its debt will be a hundredfold, for it will be one hundred reparations to accomplish. The more victims he has made, directly or indirectly, the more individuals there will be who will hold him accountable for his conduct. Thus, the responsibility and the number of reparations increases with the extent of the authority with which one is invested, so that one is responsible before individuals whom one has never known, but who have nonetheless suffered the consequences of our actions.




Conference on the soul, by Alexandre Chaseray[1]


Modern works in which the principle of the plurality of existences is incidentally affirmed are innumerable; but the one we are speaking of seems to us one of those where it is treated in the most complete manner; the author also endeavors to demonstrate that the idea grows and is imposed more and more every day on enlightened minds. In the fragments that we report below, the notes are by the author.



“The transmigration of souls,” says Chaseray, “is both an ancient and a newer philosophical idea. Metempsychosis forms the basis of the religion of the Indians, a religion well before Judaism, and Pythagoras may have taken this belief from the Brahmans, if it is true that he had been in India; but it is more likely that he brought it back from Egypt, where he stayed for a long time. Civilization reigned on the banks of the Nile, several thousand years before the birth of Moses, and according to Herodotus, the Egyptian priests were the first to announce that the soul is immortal and that it passes successively into all species of animals, before entering a human body.



The Greeks, on their part, never completely abandoned the idea of metempsychosis. Those of them who did not fully accept the doctrine of Pythagoras, vaguely believed with Plato that the immortal soul had existed somewhere, before manifesting itself in a human form, or believed in the river Lethe and the rebirth of man in humanity. Among the first Christians, many neophytes intended to retain what seemed good to them from their ancient dogmas; the Manicheans, for example, had retained the two principles of good and evil and the migration of souls; it is thus that the heresiarchs multiplied, and the Fathers and the Councils had so much to do to bring back the spirits to a uniform faith. Victorious, the Apostolic Church banished metempsychosis from its empire, then replaced by the dogma of the irrevocable judgment and the division of humans between the elected and the disgraced. Purgatory was introduced later, as a corrective for an overly inflexible decision.



Just as I did not consider the spiritualism of St. Thomas much of a progress, of which we see no trace in the holy books, I also do not judge either happy or in conformity with the ancient doctrine of original sin, that establishes such a close solidarity between all generations of men, the dogmatic assertion that the existence of each of us is rootless in the past and ends in an eternal heaven or hell. This is, in my opinion, a philosophical heresy against which the modern mind reacts with force.





“We are coming back to the transmigration of souls from all sides. But one generally conceives a broader metempsychosis these days than that which one attributed the belief to the ancients. Having the spirit of induction crossed the limits of Earth and recognized in the suns and the planets habitable worlds, it no longer limited the destinies of man to the terrestrial globe. Instead of seeing the soul ceaselessly traversing the circle of plants, animals, and the human species, or constantly being reborn in humanity, we could imagine it taking off towards the infinite worlds.[2]



I have difficulty in the choice of quotations to show that faith has a series of existences, some preceding, others posterior to present life, and that it grows more and more every day, imposing on the enlightened spirits.



Let's start with Jean Reynaud. This philosopher insists on the natural connection presented by the two ideas of pre-existence and future life.



If we examine, he says, all men who have passed through Earth, since the era of enlightened religions began there, we will see that the vast majority have lived in the somewhat established consciousness of an existence prolonged by invisible ways, within as well as beyond the limits of this life. There is, in fact, a kind of symmetry so logical that it must have seduced the imaginations at first sight; the past balances the future there, and the present is only the pivot between what is no more and what is not yet. Platonism awakened this light previously stirred by Pythagoras and used it to enlighten the most beautiful souls that honored ancient times.[3]



This assessment by Jean Reynaud is fully confirmed by the following note from Lagrange, the elegant translator of Lucretius’ poem:



Of all philosophers that lived before Christianity, none supported the immortality of the soul without first establishing its preexistence; one of these dogmas was regarded as the natural consequence of the other. It was believed that the soul must always exist, because it had always existed; and people were convinced, on the contrary, that by granting that it had been engendered with the body, one was no longer entitled to deny that it should die with the body. - Our soul, says Plato, existed somewhere before being in this form of men; that is why I do not doubt that it is immortal.





Old Druidism, continues the author of Terre et Ciel, speaks to my heart. This same soil that we inhabit today carried a people of heroes before us, all of whom were accustomed to seeing themselves as having experienced the universe for a long time before their current incarnation, thus basing the hope of their immortality on the conviction of their pre-existence.



One of our best historians also gives great praise to the main teaching of the Druids; Henri Martin is of the opinion that our fathers, the Gaul, represented "the firmest, the clearest notion of immortality that ever existed" in the ancient world.[4]



Eugene Sue, on his part, said of the Druidic faith:



According to this sublime belief, the immortal man, spirit, and matter, coming from below, going above, transited through this Earth, remained there temporarily, as he had remained and was to remain in these other spheres that shine innumerable, amid the abysses of space.[5]



Already in the seventeenth century, Cyrano de Bergerac said, like the Gallic priests:



We die more than once; and, as we are only parts of this universe, we change shape to come back to life elsewhere; this is not bad, since it is a way to perfect one's being and to arrive at an infinite amount of knowledge.



Several of our contemporaries, not appearing to be inspired by the Druids though, also announce that the destiny of the soul is to travel from world to world. We read, for example, in the Profession of Faith of the nineteenth century, by Eugène Pelletan:



By the irresistible logic of the idea, I believe I can affirm that mortal life will have the infinite space as a place of pilgrimage… Man will therefore always go from sun to sun, always rising, as in Jacob's ladder, the hierarchy of existence; always passing, according to his merit and according to his progress, from man to angel, from angel to archangel.



And in Religious Renovation, by Mr. Patrice Larroque, former rector at the Academy:



One can conjecture that most of the other globes that move in space carry, like Earth, organized and animated beings, and that these globes will be the successive theaters of our future lives.



Lamennais expresses the idea of rebirth in an equally precise although more restricted way:



Possible progress, he says, for the individual in his present organic form, once accomplished, he returns this worn-out organism to the elementary mass, and he clothes another more perfect one.[6]



Let us also point out the following excerpt from the speech given by Mr. Guéroult, of the National Opinion, at the tomb of Father Enfantin:



No one was more religious than Enfantin; no one has lived, as much as he did, in the presence of eternal life, of which this life that escapes us at every moment is only one of the innumerable stages.



One of our most famous novelists suggests that he believes in the passage of inferior beings into superior species, namely, animals into humanity. George Sand says:



“Who will explain these affinities between man and certain secondary beings in creation. They are just as real as the antipathies and the insurmountable terrors that certain harmless animals inspire in us… It is perhaps that all kinds, each one specially assigned to each breed of animals, are found in man. The physiognomists have noted physical resemblances; who can deny the moral similarities? Aren’t foxes, wolves, lions, eagles, beetles, flies among us? Human rudeness is often low and fierce like the appetite of a swine…"



George Sand is more explicit, regarding the migration of souls, in the following lines of the same book:[7]



If we must not aspire to the beatitude of the pure spirits of the land of chimeras, if we must always, beyond this life, foresee work, duty, trials, and a limited organization in our faculties, before infinity, at least we are allowed by reason, commanded by the heart, to count on a series of progressive existences because of our good desires ... We can look at this Earth as a place of passage and count on a sweeter awakening in the cradle that awaits us elsewhere. From worlds to worlds, we can, by freeing ourselves from the animality that fights our spiritualism down here, make us fit to put on a purer body, more appropriate to the needs of the soul, less fought against and less hampered by illnesses of human life, as we experience here.



Let us also quote a novelist, Balzac. The novelists of this order, as well as the first-class poets, tackle the highest questions, and know how to sow profound messages in their writings, in a pleasant and light form. Thus, in Les Misérables, Victor Hugo drops from his pen this vague question: "Where do we come from? Is it true that we didn't do anything until we were born?” It is only by thinking, and without taking the stand of supporting a philosophical thesis, that the author of the Human Comedy speaks of successive existences. So, I can only grasp this thought by browsing several of his novels.



Here, for example, are a few lines from the Lily of the valley:

Man is made up of matter and spirit; animality comes to end in him, and the angel begins in him. Hence the struggle that we all experience between a future destiny that we have a presentiment of and the memories of our external instincts, from which we are not entirely detached: a bodily love and a divine love.



And I find in Seraphita, this mystical novel in which Balzac exposes, with such powerful interest and charm, the religious doctrine of the Swede Swedenborg:

The acquired qualities that develop slowly in us are invisible bonds that bind each of our existences to another.



Finally, in Les Comédiens, without knowing it, Madame Fontaine, the sibyl, asks Gazonal:

- What flower do you like best?

- The Rose.

- What is your favorite color?

- Blue.

- Which animal do you prefer?

- Horse. Why these questions? he asks in turn.

- Man is attached to all forms by his previous states, she said sententiously; that is where his instincts come from, and his instincts dominate his destiny. "



Michelet shows his sympathy for the same ideas, when he calls the dog a candidate for humanity, and when he says, speaking of birds:

What are they? Sketched souls, souls still specialized in such functions of existence, candidates for the more general and more vastly harmonic life into which the human soul has arrived.[8]



Pierre Leroux does not believe that man has passed through the inferior species of animals and plants. According to him, individuals are perpetuated within the species and man is reborn indefinitely in humanity. Solidarity between all members of the human family is then evident; the good that a man does to his fellows turns to his own advantage, since does not separate from them at death, soon coming back to mingle with them. By supporting the perpetuity of a being within the species, Pierre Leroux departs from the authors I have just cited and does not meet many supporters;[9] but he is nonetheless an ardent defender of the general idea and of the extreme importance that links present-day life to a series of existences.



Having said that the child coming into the world is not, as Locke's school claimed, a clean slate; and that it is an insult to the Divinity to suppose that it draws new creatures from nothing, that it embellishes at random with its gifts or strikes at random with its anger, Pierre Leroux concludes with these words:



Thus, out of necessity, we must admit either the indeterminate system of metempsychosis, or the determined system of rebirth in humanity that I support.[10]



I am far from absolutely rejecting the system of rebirth in humanity; but humanity had a beginning, posterior even to that of most of the animal and vegetable species that cover our globe; humanity will have an end; and since the soul does not perish, the permanent being, the self, must sink its roots elsewhere than in humanity, and find its future development elsewhere than in humanity, a transitory form."



The numerous quotations made by the author, that are far from being complete, prove how general the idea of the plurality of existences is, and that before long it will have passed into the state of acquired truth. On other points, he deviates completely from the Spiritist Doctrine; we are far from sharing his opinion on all the questions he deals with in his book, especially regarding the divinity to which he attributes a secondary role, and the intimate nature of the soul whose spirituality he contests. His system is a kind of pantheism that rubs shoulders with Spiritism and seems to be a middle term for some people who want neither atheism, nor nothingness, or dogmatic spiritualism. However incomplete it may be, it is nonetheless a remarkable advance in the materialist ideas from which it is much more distant than ours. Except for a few very controversial points, the work contains very deep and very correct views with which Spiritism can only be associated.