February
Statistics of SpiritismThe newspaper La Solidarité, January 15th, 1869, analyzes the statistics of Spiritism that we published in our previous issue; it criticizes some figures, but we are pleased with its support for all the work that it appreciates in the following terms:
"We regret that we cannot reproduce, for lack of space, the much wise reflections that Mr. Allan Kardec adds to that statistic. We shall limit ourselves to noting with him that there are Spiritists in all levels of the social scale; that the vast majority of Spiritists are among the enlightened and not among the ignorant; that Spiritism has spread everywhere from the top to the bottom of the social ladder; that affliction and misfortune are the great recruiters of Spiritism, as a result of the consolations and hopes it gives to those who weep and sorrow; that Spiritism finds easier access among unbelievers in religious matters than among people who have a regular faith; finally, that after the fanatics, the most refractory to the Spiritist ideas are those whose thoughts are all focused on possessions and material pleasures, irrespective of their condition.”
It is a fact of paramount importance attested everywhere that "the vast majority of Spiritists are among the enlightened and not among the ignorant." In the presence of such material fact, what happens to the accusation of stupidity, ignorance, madness, ineptitude, so thoughtlessly thrown at Spiritists by malevolence?
Spreading from the top to the bottom of the ladder, Spiritism further proves that the privileged classes understand its moralizing influence upon the masses, since they strive to make it penetrate there. Indeed, the examples before us, although partial and still isolated, demonstrate in a peremptory way that the spirit of the proletariat would be quite different if it were imbued with the principles of the Spiritist doctrine.
The main objection of the La Soliarité, and it is very serious, concerns the number of Spiritists around the world. Here is what it says about that:
"The Spiritist Review is very wrong when it estimates that there are only six or seven million Spiritists in the whole world. It obviously forgets to count Asia. If by the term Spiritist we mean people who believe in life beyond the grave and in the relationship of the living with the souls of dead people, it is by hundreds of millions that they must be counted. Belief in spirits exists among all the followers of Buddhism, and it can be said that it is the bottom line of all religions of the Far East. It is especially general in China. The three ancient sects that for so long have divided the populations in the Middle Empire, believe in the manes, the Spirits, and profess their cult. We can even say that this is a common ground for them. There the worshippers of the Tao and Fo meet with the cultists of the philosopher Confucius.
The priests of the Lao-Tzu sect, and especially the Tao-Tse, or doctors of Reason, owe to the Spiritist practices a large part of their influence on the populations. These influencers question the Spirits and obtain written answers that have neither more nor less value than those of our mediums. These are advice and warnings regarded as being given to the living by the Spirit of a dead person; there are revelations of secrets known only to the interrogator, sometimes predictions that come true or not, but that are likely to strike the listeners and flatter their desires so much that they take care of realizing the oracle themselves.
Such correspondence is obtained by processes that do not differ much from those of our Spiritists, but that nevertheless must be more perfected if we consider the long experience of the operators who traditionally practice them. Here is how they were described to us by an eyewitness, Mr. D..., who lives in China for a long time and is familiar with the language of the country.
"A fishing pole, 50 to 60 centimeters long, is held at both ends by two people, one of whom is the medium and the other the interrogator. In the middle of this pole, a small stick of the same material is tied, much like a pencil for length and size. Below this small device there is a layer of sand, or a box containing millet. The stick traces characters by moving mechanically on this sand or on these seeds. As they are formed, these characters are read and reproduced immediately on paper by a scholar present at the meeting. The result is sentences and writings that are somewhat long, interesting, but always with a logical value.”
If the Tao-Tse is to be believed, these processes come to them from Lao-Tzu himself. Now if, according to history, Lao-Tzu lived in the sixth century BC, it is worth remembering that, according to the legend, he is like the Word of the Christians, prior to the beginning and contemporary to the great non-entity, as the doctors of Reason say.
We see that Spiritism goes back to a rather pretty antiquity. Doesn't that prove it to be true? No, no doubt, but, if it is enough for a belief to be ancient to be venerable, and to be strong by the number of its supporters to be respected, I do not know of any who has more titles of respect and veneration by my contemporaries.”
It goes without saying that we fully agree with this correction, and we are glad that it comes from a foreign source, because it proves that we have not sought to inflate the picture. Our readers will appreciate, as we do, the way in which this newspaper, commendable by its serious character, considers Spiritism; we see that it is a reasoned assessment on its part. We knew well that the Spiritist ideas are wide widespread among the peoples of the Far East, and if we did not take them into account, it is for the fact that, in our evaluation, we proposed to present, as we said, only the movement of modern Spiritism, reserving the right to later carry out a special study on the antecedence of these ideas. We sincerely thank the author of the article for getting ahead of us. Elsewhere he says: "We believe that this uncertainty (about the real number of Spiritists, especially in France) is first due to the absence of positive statements from the part of the followers; then to the floating state of beliefs. There are, and we could cite many examples of this in Paris, a host of people who believe in Spiritism and who do not boast about it.”
This is perfectly right; thus, we have spoken only of the de facto Spiritists; otherwise, as we have said, if we considered the Spiritists by intuition, in France alone we would count them in the millions; but we preferred to be below rather than above the truth, so as not to be accused of exaggeration. However, the increase must be very noticeable, so that some opponents have brought it to hyperbolic figures, such as the author of the pamphlet: the Budget of Spiritism, that undoubtedly saw the Spiritists with a magnifying glass, in 1863 estimating them in twenty million in France (Spiritist Review, June 1863).
Regarding the proportion of official scholars, in the category of level of education, the author says: "We would like to see with the naked eye those 4 per cent of official scholars: 40,000 in Europe; 24,000 in France alone; it is too many official scholars; 6 per cent of illiterates is hardly anything.”
The criticism would be well founded if, as the author supposes, it were 4 per cent of the approximate number of six hundred thousand Spiritists in France, that would be twenty-four thousand; it would be a lot, indeed, because it would be somewhat difficult to find such figure of official scholars in the entire population of France. On such a basis, the calculation would obviously be ridiculous, and the same could be said of the illiterate. The purpose of this assessment is therefore not to establish the actual number of official Spiritist scholars, but the relative proportion in which they are found, relatively to the various levels of education, among which they are minority. In other categories, we have limited ourselves to a simple classification, without a numerical percent evaluation. When we used the latter process, it was to make the proportion more evident.
To better define our thought, we will say that by official scholars we do not mean all those whose knowledge is evidenced by a diploma, but only those that occupy official positions, such as members of Academies, professors of Faculties, etc., who are thus more prominent, and whose names are authoritative in sciences for that matter; from such point of view, a doctor of medicine can be very enlightened, without being an official scholar.
The official position has a great influence on how certain things are viewed; as a proof of that we will mention the example of a distinguished doctor, who has been deceased for several years, and whom we knew personally. He was then a great supporter of magnetism, about which he had written, and this was what put us in contact with him. As his reputation grew, he successively acquired several official positions. As he rose, his passion for magnetism decreased; so much so that when he got to the top of the ladder, it fell below zero, for he openly renounced his old convictions. Considerations of the same kind may explain the rank of certain classes regarding Spiritism. The category of the afflicted, of people without worry, the happy of the world, the sensualists, provide the author of the article with the following thought:
"It's a shame that this is pure fantasy. No sensualists, that's understandable; Spiritism and materialism exclude one another. Sixty afflicted out of a hundred Spiritists, this is still understandable. It is for those who cry that the relationships with a better world are precious. But thirty out of a hundred people without worry, that is too much! If Spiritism worked such miracles, it would make many other conquests. It would do it especially among the happy of the world, who are also almost always the most worried and tormented.”
There is a manifest error here, for it would seem that such result is due to Spiritism, while it is Spiritism that draws from these categories more or less followers, according to the predispositions it encounters there. These figures simply mean that it finds the most adherents among the afflicted; a little less among people without worry; but even less among the happy of the world, and none among the sensualists.
First one must agree on the words. Materialism and sensualism are not synonymous and do not always go hand in hand; for we see people, spiritualists by profession and by duty, who are very sensual, while there are very moderate materialists in their way of life; materialism is often for them only an opinion that they have embraced for lack of finding a more rational one; therefore, when they recognize that Spiritism fills the void made in their consciousness by skepticism, they gladly accept it; sensualists, on the contrary, are the most refractory to that.
One rather bizarre thing is that Spiritism finds more resistance among pantheists in general, than among those who are frankly materialistic. This is probably for the fact that the pantheist has almost always made a system for himself; he has something, while the materialist has nothing, and that emptiness worries him.
By the happy of the world, we mean those who go as such to the eyes of the crowd, because they can profusely give themselves all the pleasures of life. It is true that they are often the most worried and tormented; but why is that? Worries caused by wealth and ambition. Besides these incessant concerns, the anxieties of loss or gain, the hassle of business for some, pleasures for others, they have too little time left to worry about the future.
Being able to have the peace of the soul only on the condition of renouncing to what is the object of their lusts, Spiritism touches them little, philosophically speaking. Except for the sorrows of the heart that spare no one, except the selfish, the torments of life are most often for them in the disappointments of vanity, of the desire to possess, to shine, to command. Thus, we can say that they torment themselves.
Calm, tranquility, on the contrary, are found especially in modest positions, when the well-being of life is ensured. There, there is little or no ambition; they are content with what they have, not tormenting themselves to become rich, by taking the random risks of agiotage or speculation. These are the ones we call without worry, relatively speaking; however small the elevation of their thoughts, they willingly take care of serious things; Spiritism offers them an attractive subject of meditation, and they accept it more easily than those to whom the whirlwind of the world drives a continuous fever.
These are the reasons for that classification, which is not, as we can see, as fanciful as the author of the article supposes. We thank him for giving us the opportunity to point out mistakes that others may have made because we were not explicit enough.
In our statistics, we have omitted two functions that are important by their nature, and because they have a fairly large number of sincere and dedicated followers; it is the mayors and justices of peace, who are in fifth place, with the bailiffs and police commissioners.
Another omission that has been criticized, and that we are being urged to remedy, is that of the Polish, in the category of peoples. It is perfectly founded because Spiritism has had many keen followers in that nation since the beginning. As a rank, Poland comes in fifth, between Russia and Germany. To complete the nomenclature, it would have been necessary to include other countries such as Holland, for example, which would come after England; Portugal, after Greece; the Danubio provinces where there are also Spiritists, but on which we do not have positive enough data to assign them a rank. As for Turkey, almost all the followers consist of French, Italians, and Greeks.
A more rational classification, and more accurate than that by territorial countries, would be by races or nationalities, that are not confined within circumscribed limits, and that carry, wherever they are spread, their greater or lesser ability to assimilate the Spiritist ideas. From this point of view, in the same country, there would often be several distinctions to be made.
The following communication was given in a group in Paris, concerning the rank of tailors among the industrial professions.
Paris, January 6th, 1869. Group Desliens, medium Mr. Leymarie
“You have created categories, dear teacher, at the head of which you have placed certain professions. Do you know what entices some people to become Spiritists, in our opinion? These are the thousand persecutions they endure in their professions. The first ones you are talking about must have order, economy, care, taste, be a little bit of an artist, and then still be patient, know how to wait, listen, smile, and greet with a certain elegance; but after all these small conventions, more serious than one thinks, one must still calculate, do their balance sheet by dues and receivables, and suffer, suffer continuously. In contact with men of all classes, commenting on complaints, confidences, deceptions, false faces, they learn a lot! By leading this multiple life, their intelligence broadens by comparison; their minds are strengthened by disappointment and suffering; and that is why some corporations understand and cheer all the progress; they love French theatre, beautiful architecture, drawing, philosophy; love freedom and all its consequences. Always ahead and on the lookout for what consoles and makes us hope, they give themselves to Spiritism, that to them it is a strength, a burning promise, a truth that exalt the sacrifice, and more than you believe, the number one rank lives on sacrifices.
Sonnet.”
[1] The newspaper La Solidarité appears twice a month. Price: 10 francs per year. Paris, Library of Social Sciences, rue des Saints-Pères, 13.
Power of Ridicule
Why in France rather than elsewhere? It is because there, more than elsewhere, the spirit, at the same time fine, caustic, and jovial, grasps the pleasant or ridiculous side of things at first sight; he seeks it by instinct, feels it, guesses it, sniffs it, so to speak; he discovers it where others would not see it, and highlights it with skill. But above all, the French spirit wants good taste, urbanity, even in mockery; he willingly laughs at a fine, delicate, particularly witty joke, while the bad taste caricatures, the heavy, crude, corrosive criticism, like the paw of the bear or the punch of the ignorant, disgusts him, because he has an instinctive repulsion for triviality.
It will perhaps be said that some modern events seem to belie these qualities. There is much to be said about the causes of this deviation, that is all too real, but which is only partial, and cannot prevail over the substance of the national character, as we will someday demonstrate. We will only say, in passing, that these successes that amaze people of good taste, are largely due to the very vivid curiosity also in the French character. But listen to the crowd at the end of some exhibitions; the judgment that dominates, even in the mouths of the people, can be summed up in these words: it is disgusting, and yet we went there, only to be able to say that we saw an eccentricity; they do not go back there, but until the crowd of curious people has paraded, the success is done, and that's all it is asked. The same is true about some so-called literary successes.
The aptitude of the French spirit in grasping the comic side of things, turns ridicule into a real force, greater in France than in other countries; but is it correct to say that it always kills?
It is necessary to distinguish what can be called the intrinsic ridicule, that is inherent in the thing itself, and the extrinsic ridicule, coming from outside, and poured onto something. The latter can probably be thrown at everything, but it only hurts the vulnerable; when it tackles things that have no hold, it slips without harming them. The most grotesque caricature of an irreproachable statue does not deprive it of its own merit, and does not diminish it in the general opinion, because everyone is able to appreciate it.
The power of ridicule is only real when it strikes with precision, bringing out with wit and finesse real defects: it is then that it kills; but when it is wrong, it kills nothing at all, or rather it kills itself. For the above adage to be completely true, one would have to say: "In France, ridicule always kills what is ridiculous." What is really true, good and beautiful is never ridiculous. If one ridicules a notoriously respectable personality, like Father Vianney, for example, one will inspire disgust, even to the skeptical, since it is true that what is respectable in itself is always respected by public opinion.
Since not everyone has neither the same taste nor the same way of seeing things, what is true, good, and beautiful to some, may not be true to others; who will be the judge? The collective being that is called everyone, and against whose decisions isolated opinions protest in vain. Some individuals may be momentarily led astray by ignorant, malicious, or unconscious criticism, but not the masses whose judgments always end up succeeding. If most guests at a banquet likes a dish, however much you may say that it is bad, you will not prevent them from eating it, or at least tasting it.
That explains why the ridicule poured out profusely onto Spiritism has not killed it. If it has not succumbed, it is not for lack of having been turned in all directions, transfigured, distorted, grotesquely ridiculed by its antagonists; and yet, after ten years of relentless aggression, it is stronger than ever; it is like the statue we talked about earlier.
In the end, what was sarcasm particularly about, regarding Spiritism? On what really lends the flank to criticism: abuses, eccentricities, exhibitions, exploitations, quackery in all its aspects, absurd practices, that are only the parody of what serious Spiritism has never defended, but that it has, on the contrary, always disavowed. Therefore, ridicule only struck and could only bite on what was ridiculous in the way some ill-informed people conceive of Spiritism. If it has not yet quite killed these abuses, it has thrown at them a mortal blow, and that was justice.
True Spiritism could then only benefit from being rid of the wound of its parasites, and it was its enemies who took care of it. As for the doctrine itself, it should be noted that it has almost always remained outside the debate; and yet it is the main part, the soul of the cause. Its opponents understood well that ridicule could not touch it; they felt that the thin blade of the witty mockery would slide over its shield, and that is why they attacked it with the club of the crude insult, and the punch of the brute, but also with little success.
From the very beginning, and to some individuals seeking intrigue, Spiritism seemed a fertile mine to be exploited by its novelty; a few, less affected by the purity of its morality than by the chances they saw in it, put themselves under the flag of its name in hopes of making it a means; they are the ones that can be called Spiritists of circumstance.
What would have happened to this doctrine if it had not used all its influence to thwart and discredit the maneuvers of exploitation? We would have seen charlatans swarming on all sides, making a sacrilegious alliance with what is most sacred: respect for the dead, with the alleged art of sorcerers, soothsayers, card-pullers, fortune tellers, replacing the Spirits through fraud, when they do not come. We would soon have seen manifestations taken to the stages, falsified by deception; Spiritist consulting offices publicly displayed, and resold, as employment agencies, according to the size of the clientele, as if the mediumistic faculty could be transmitted like a share in a company.
Through its silence, that would have been a tacit approval, the doctrine would have made itself solidary with those abuses, and we say more: it would have been complicit. Criticism would then be in a favorable condition because it could, rightly so, have attacked the doctrine, that by its tolerance, would have assumed the responsibility for the ridicule, and consequently, for the fair disapproval poured onto the abuses; it would have been perhaps more than a century before recovering from such a failure. One would have to fail to understand the character of Spiritism, let alone its true interests, to believe that such auxiliaries could be useful for its propagation, and be suitable to have it considered a holy and respectable thing.
By stigmatizing exploitation, as we have done, we are certain that we have spared the doctrine from a real danger, a danger greater than the ill-will of its avowed antagonists, because it would have resulted in its discredit; for that very reason, the Doctrine would have offered them a vulnerable side, while they stopped before the purity of its principles. We are aware that we have aroused the animosity of the exploiters against us, and that we were kept away from their supporters; but what does it matter to us? Our duty is to take the cause of the Doctrine into our own hands, and not their interests; and we will fulfill such a duty with perseverance and firmness to the end. The fight against the invasion of quackery, in a century like this, was not a small thing, especially a seconded quackery, often aroused by the most implacable enemies of Spiritism, for having failed by the arguments, they understood well that ridicule could be the most fatal thing against it; for that, the surest way to have it discredited before public opinion, was to have it exploited by charlatanism.
All sincere Spiritists understood the danger we pointed out, and supported us in our efforts, reacting on their side against the tendencies that threatened to develop. It is not a few facts of manifestations, assuming them real, given in spectacles as aperitif to the minority, that give Spiritism real proselytes, because, in such conditions, they allow suspicion. The skeptical themselves are the first to say that if the Spirits truly communicate, it cannot be to serve as companions or cronies to a price per session; that is why they laugh at it; they find it ridiculous that these scenes are mixed with respectable names, and they are absolutely right. For each person brought to Spiritism through such a channel, always assuming a real fact, there will be a hundred who will be diverted from it, not willing to hear more about it. The impression is quite different in circles where sincerity, good faith, and disinterestedness are unequivocal, and where the well-known good reputation of people demands respect. If they do not come out convinced from there, at least they do not take away the idea of deception. Spiritism therefore has nothing to gain, and could only lose by relying on exploitation, while it would be the exploiters who would benefit. Its future is not in an individual's belief in this or that fact of manifestation; it is entirely in the ascendancy that it will conquer through its morality; that is how it has succeeded, and that is how it will succeed over the maneuvers of its opponents. Its strength is in its moral character, and that is what cannot be taken away from it.
Spiritism is entering a solemn phase, but where it will still have to endure great struggles; it must therefore be strong by itself, and to be strong, it must be respectable. It is up to its devoted followers to make it so, first by personally preaching it through word and example, and then by disavowing, in the name of the Doctrine, anything that might harm the consideration that it must be given. That is how one will be able to challenge intrigue, mockery, and ridicule.
A Case of Madness Caused by the Fear of the Devil
One day, in one of his tours, he met a young, widowed woman, mother of several small children, that after the death of her beloved husband, got desperate, and seeing herself destitute, she completely lost her mind. Attracted by sympathy to that great pain, he sought the unfortunate woman to judge whether her condition was irreparable. The misery in which he found her redoubled his compassion; however, poor him, he could only give her consolations.
He said to one of our colleagues from the Parisian Society who knew him and went to see him: "I saw her several times; one day I told her, with a tone of persuasion, that the one she mourned was not irrevocably lost; that he was near her, although she could not see him, and that I could, if she wished, have her talk to him. At these words, her figure seemed to blossom; a ray of hope shone in her faded eyes. "Aren't you mistaken? she said, ah! if that could be true!
"Being a fairly good writing medium, during the session I obtained a short communication from her husband, that brought her a sweet satisfaction. I came to see her often, and each time her husband spoke with her through me; she questioned him, and he replied in such a way as to leave her no doubt about his presence, for he spoke to her of things that I did not know myself; he encouraged her, urged her resignation, and assured her that they would meet again one day.
Little by little, under the influence of that sweet emotion and those consoling thoughts, calm returned to her soul, her reason resurfaced again, and after a few months she was completely healed and able to engage in the work that was to feed her and her children.
That cure caused a great commotion among the peasants of the village. So everything was fine; I thanked God for allowing me to rescue the unfortunate woman from the consequences of her despair; I also thanked the good Spirits for their assistance, for everyone knew that the healing had been produced by Spiritism, and I rejoiced in that; but I was careful to tell them that there was nothing supernatural there, explaining to them, as much as I could, the principles of the sublime doctrine that gives so much consolation and has already made so many people happy.
That unexpected healing troubled the parish priest of the place; he visited the widow that he had completely abandoned since her illness. He learned from her how and by whom she had recovered her health and her children; that she was now certain that she was not separated from her husband; that the joy she felt, the confidence it gave her in the goodness of God, the faith with which she was animated, had been the main cause of her recovery.
Alas! All the good that I had struggled so much to doing was going to be destroyed. The parish priest brought the unfortunate widow to the sacristy; he began by casting doubt in her soul; he then made her believe that I was a servant of Satan, that I was operating only in his name, that she was now in his power; he did it so well that the poor woman, who needed the greatest care, weakened by so many emotions, fell back into a worse state than the first time. Today she only sees devils, demons, and hell everywhere; her madness is absolute, and she must be taken to a hospital for the mentally ill.”
What had caused the woman's first madness? Despair. What had her reason restored? The consolations of Spiritism. Who made her fall back into an incurable madness? Fanaticism, fear of the devil and hell. This event requires no comment. The clergy, as we see, is ill-advised to claim, as they have done in many writings and sermons, that Spiritism leads to madness, when the argument can be rightly returned to them. Official statistics are here, moreover, to prove that the exaltation of religious ideas takes a remarkable part in cases of madness. Before throwing the stone at someone, it would be wise to see if it can fall back on you.
Which impression should this fact make on the population of that village? It will certainly not be in favor of the cause that the parish priest supports, because the material result is evident. If he thinks of recruiting followers through the belief in the devil, he is very wrong, and it is sad to see that the Church makes the cornerstone of faith of such a belief. (See Genesis according to Spiritism, chapter XVII, 27).
A Spirit Who Believes to Be Dreaming
In a session of Mr. Desliens' group on December 22nd, he spontaneously came to communicate through one of the mediums, Mr. Leymarie, without anyone thinking of him. He had been dead for about eight days. Here is what he wrote:
“What a singular dream!... I feel driven by a whirlwind whose direction I do not understand... A few friends I thought were dead invited me for a walk, and here we are. Where are we going?... Here we are! What a strange joke! In a Spiritist group!... Ah! What a funny farce, seeing these good people conscientiously brought together!... I know one of these figures... Where did I see him? I don't know... (It was Mr. Desliens who was at the above-mentioned gathering). Perhaps at the house of that brave man Allan Kardec, who once wanted to prove to me that I had a soul, by making me feel immortality. But they uselessly appealed to the Spirits, the souls, everything failed; like in those over prepared dinners, all served dishes were wrong, very wrong. I was never suspicious, however, of the good faith of the high priest; I believe him to be an honest man, but a proud victim of the Spirits of the so-called erraticity. I heard you, ladies, and gentlemen, and I offer you my profound respects. You write, it seems to me, and your agile hands will, no doubt, transcribe the thought of the invisible!... innocent spectacle!... crazy dream that I have there! Here is one who writes what I say to myself... But you are not funny at all, nor are my friends, who have compassionate faces like yours. (The Spirits of those who had died before him, and that he believed to see in a dream).
Hey! It is surely a strange mania among this valiant French people! It has been at once precluded from education, from the law, the rights, the freedom to think, and that brave people dives into visions and dreams. The country of the Gaul daydreams and it is wonderful to see it acting!
Yet here they are in search of an insoluble problem, condemned by science, by thinkers, by workers!... they lack education... Ignorance is Loyola's law widely enforced... They have before them all the freedoms; they can do all sorts of abuse, destroy them, finally become their master, manly master, thrifty, serious, legal, and like children in their diapers, they need religion, a pope, a parish priest, the first communion, the baptism, the baby walker in everything and always. They need pacifiers, these big children, and the Spiritist or spiritualist groups give them some.
Ah! If there really was a grain of truth in your elucubrations, but there would be, for a materialist, matter for suicide!... Look! I lived long; I despised the flesh, I revolted it; I laughed at the duties of family, friendship. Passionate, I have used and abused all voluptuousness, and that with the conviction that I obeyed the attractions of matter, the only true law on your Earth, and that I will renew when I wake up, with the same fury, the same ardor, the same skills. From a friend, a neighbor, I will take his wife, his daughter, or his pupil, whatever, provided that being immersed in the delights of matter, I pay homage to this divinity, master of all human actions.
But if I were wrong?... if I let the truth pass?... if, really, there were other previous lives and successive existences after death?... if the Spirit were a vivacious, eternal, progressive personality, laughing at death, tempering itself in what we call trial?... then would there be a God of justice and goodness?... I would be a wretched... and the materialist school, guilty of a crime against the state, would have sought to decapitate the truth, the reason!... I would be, or rather we would be profound scoundrels, supposedly liberals!... Oh! then, if you were with the truth, I would shoot my own brain when I woke up, as truly as my name is …”
In the session of the Parisian Society, on January 8th, the same Spirit manifested again, not in writing, but through speech, using the body of Mr. Morin, in spontaneous somnambulism. He spoke for an hour, and it was a very curious scene, for the medium took his pose, his gestures, his voice, his language, to the point that those who had known him recognized him without difficulty. The conversation was carefully annotated and faithfully reproduced, but its extent does not allow us to publish it. Besides, it was only the development of his thesis; to all the objections and questions that were addressed to him, he pretended to explain everything by the state of dreaming, and naturally got lost in a maze of sophisms. He himself recalled the main episodes of the session to which he had alluded in his written communication, and said:
"I was quite right to say that everything had failed. Hold on, here's the proof. I asked this question: Is there a God? Well! all your so-called Spirits answered positively. You see that they were at the margin of truth, and that they don't know any more than you do.”
One question, however, embarrassed him greatly, so he constantly sought exits to evade it; it was this: The body by which you speak to us is not yours, for it is slim, and yours was fat. Where is your real body? It is not here, because you are not at home. When you dream you are in bed; so, go and see in your bed if your body is there, and tell us how it is that you can be here without your body?
Pushed to the limit by such repeated questions, he answered only with these words: "Strange effects of dreams," he finally said: "I see that you would like to wake me up; Leave me alone.” Since then, he still believes to be dreaming.
In another session, a Spirit gave the following communication about the phenomenon:
“This is a substitution of person, a disguise. The incarnate Spirit has freedom or falls into inaction. I say inaction, that is, contemplation of what is happening. He is in the position of a man who momentarily lends his home, and who attends the different scenes that are played there with the help of his furniture. If he wishes, he can enjoy his freedom, unless he is interested in remaining as a spectator.
It is not uncommon for a Spirit to act and speak with the body of another; you must understand the possibility of this phenomenon, while you know that the Spirit can withdraw with his perispirit somewhat far from his bodily envelope. When this happens without any Spirit taking the opportunity to occupy that place, there is catalepsy. When a Spirit desires to do so in order to act and for a moment take part in the incarnation, he unites his own perispirit to the sleeping body, awakens it by such contact and returns movement to the machine; but the movements, the voice are no longer the same, because the fluids of the perispirit no longer affect the nervous system in the same way as the real occupant.
That occupation can never be definitive; this would require the absolute disintegration of the first perispirit, that would necessarily lead to death. It cannot even be of long duration, because the new perispirit having not been united with this body since its formation, it has no roots there; not being modeled on this body, it is not suitable for the interplay of organs; the invading Spirit is not in a normal position; he is embarrassed in his movements, and that is why he leaves that borrowed outfit, for he no longer needs it.
As for the specific position of the Spirit in question, he did not come voluntarily into the body he used to speak; he was attracted there by the Spirit of Morin himself, who wanted to enjoy his embarrassment; the other, because he gave in to the secret desire of showing off once again as a skeptic and mocker, seizing the opportunity offered to him. The somewhat ridiculous role he played, so to speak despite himself, in uttering sophisms to explain his position, is a kind of humiliation whose bitterness he will feel when he wakes up, and that will be beneficial to him.”
Note. The awakening of this Spirit cannot fail to give rise to instructive observations. In his lifetime, as we have seen, he was a kind of sensualist-materialist; he would never have accepted Spiritism. Men in that category seek the consolations of life in the pleasures of matter; they are not of the Büchner school by study, but because that doctrine frees them from the constraint imposed by spirituality, according to them it must be in the truth. For them Spiritism is not a blessing, but an embarrassment; there is no evidence that can succeed over their obstinacy; they reject them, less out of conviction than out of fear that it is a truth.
Vision of Pergolesi
I heard about that tradition from the very mouth of an old peasant in the countryside of Naples, the land of arts and memories; he would have learned it from his ancestors, and in his worship to the illustrious master of whom he spoke, he was careful not to change anything in his report.
I will imitate him and faithfully tell what I heard from him.
"You know," he said to me, "the small town of Casoria, a few kilometers from Naples; it was there that in 1704 Pergolesi came to life.
"From the most tender age the artist of the future revealed himself. When his mother, as all our mothers do, hummed to him the rhymed legends of our country, to lull his “bambino” to sleep, or according to the naïve expression of our Neapolitan nannies, to summon the little angels of sleep (“angelini del sonno”) around the cradle, the child, it is said, instead of closing his eyes, he kept them wide open, fixed and shiny; his little hands waved and seemed to applaud; to the joyful cries that escaped from his panting chest, it was said that this barely hatched soul was already shivering at the first echoes of an art that was to one day captivate him completely.
At the age of eight, Naples admired him as a prodigy, and for more than twenty years the whole of Europe applauded his talent and his works. He made the musical art to take an immense step; he sowed, so to speak, the seeds of a new era that was soon to give birth to the masters such as Mozart, Mehul, Beethoven, Haydn, and others; glory, in a word, covered his forehead with the brightest halo.
And yet, one would say that a cloud of melancholy wandered around this front, making him lean towards Earth. From time to time, the deep gaze of the artist rose to the sky as if seeking something, a thought, an inspiration.
When questioned, he replied that a vague inspiration filled his soul, that deep within himself he heard like the uncertain echoes of a song of heaven, that carried him and raised him, but that he could not grasp, and that like the bird whose weak wings cannot carry away at will in space, he fell back to Earth, unable to follow that sweet inspiration.
His soul was gradually exhausted in that struggle; at the finest age of life, for he was then only thirty-two years old, Pergolesi seemed to have already been touched by the finger of death. His fertile genius seemed to have become sterile, his health fading away day by day; his friends searched for the cause in vain and he himself could not find it out.
It was in this strange and painful state that he spent the winter between 1735 and 1736.
You know with what piety we celebrate here, even today, and despite the weakening of the faith, the touching anniversaries of Christ's death; the week in which the Church reminds its children of him is truly a Holy Week for us. Thus, by referring to the time of faith when Pergolesi lived, you can imagine the fervor with which the people ran in crowds to the churches to meditate on the touching scenes of the bloody drama of the Calvary.
"Pergolesi followed the crowd on a Good Friday. As he approached the temple, it seemed to him that a long unknown calm took his soul over, and when he crossed the portal, he felt as if enveloped in a cloud that was both thick and bright. Soon he saw nothing else; a deep silence was made around him; then before his astonished eyes, and amid the cloud where until then he was carried away, he saw the pure and divine traces of a virgin entirely dressed in white taking shape; he saw her placing her ethereal fingers on the keys of an organ, and he heard like a distant concert of melodious voices that insensibly approached him. The song that those voices repeated enchanted him, but it was not strange to him; it seemed like the melody of which he often perceived vague echoes only; those voices were indeed the ones that had troubled his soul for many months, and now brought him an unparalleled happiness; yes, that song, those voices, they were indeed the dream he had pursued, the thought, the inspiration that he had so long searched for uselessly. But while his soul, carried away in ecstasy, drank in long slurps the simple and celestial harmonies of that angelic concert, his hand, as if moved by a mysterious force, agitated in space, and seemed to draw, without his knowledge, notes that translated the sounds that his ear heard.
Little by little the voices moved away, the vision disappeared, the cloud vanished and Pergolesi, opening his eyes, saw on the marble of the temple, written with his own hand, that song of sublime simplicity that was to immortalize him, the Stabat Mater, that since that day the entire Christian world repeats and admires. The artist got up, came out of the temple, calm, happy, and no longer worried and agitated. But, from that day, a new inspiration took hold of that artistic soul; he had heard the song of the angels, the concert of heaven; human voices and earthly concerts could no longer suffice for him. That ardent thirst, the impulse of a vast genius, had just exhausted the breath of life that remained in him, and so it was that at the age of thirty-three, in exaltation, in fever or rather in the supernatural love of his art, Pergolesi died.”
That is the story of my Neapolitan. It is, as I said, only a tradition; I do not defend its authenticity, and history may not confirm it in every way, but we cannot help it but feel delighted by this narrative.
Ernest Le Nordez.
Petit Moniteur, December 12th, 1868
Bibliography
History of the Camisards of Cevennes
By Eugène Bonnèmere[1]
The war undertaken under Louis XIV against the Camisards, or the Tremblers of Cevennes, is without a doubt, one of the saddest and most moving episodes in the history of France. Renewing the all-too-common atrocities in the wars of religion, from a purely military point of view it is perhaps less remarkable than by the innumerable cases of spontaneous sleepwalking, ecstasy, double sight, forecasts, and other similar phenomena that occurred throughout the course of that unfortunate crusade. These events, that were then believed to be supernatural, gave courage to the Calvinists, hunted in the mountains like wild beasts, at the same time as they made them be considered as possessed by the devil by some, and as enlightened by others; since these were among the causes that provoked and sustained the persecution, they play a primary and not an ancillary role; but how could historians appreciate them, when they lacked all the necessary elements to shed light onto their nature and reality? They could only distort them and present them from a false standpoint.
The new knowledge provided by magnetism and Spiritism alone could shed light on the question; however, since one cannot speak with truth of what one does not understand, or of what one has an interest in concealing, such knowledge was as necessary to do a complete and unprejudiced work on this subject, as geology and astronomy were to comment on the Genesis.
By demonstrating the true cause of those phenomena, and by proving that they are not outside the natural order, such knowledge has restored their true character. They also give the key to phenomena of the same kind that have occurred in many other circumstances and make it possible to distinguish between the possible from the legendary exaggeration.
Mr. Bonnemère, by combining the talent of the writer, and the knowledge of the historian, with a serious and practical study of Spiritism and magnetism, is in the best conditions to deal with the subject he has undertaken, with full knowledge of the facts and impartiality. The Spiritist idea has more than once been used in works of fantasy, but this is the first time that Spiritism appears nominally and as an element of control in a serious historical work; that is how it gradually takes its place in the world, and the forecasts of the Spirits are fulfilled.
Mr. Bonnemère's book will only come out between February 5th to 10th, but some proofs having been shown to us, from which we extract the following passages that we are happy to be able to reproduce in advance. However, we removed the indicative notes from the supporting documents. We must add that it differs from works on the same subject by new documents that had not yet been published in France, so that it can be considered the most complete.
It is therefore recommended to the attention of our readers by more than one reason, who will be able to judge it by the following fragments:
“The world has never seen anything like this war in the Cevennes. God, men, and demons were on the side; bodies and Spirits joined the struggle, and much differently from the Old Testament, the prophets guided warriors into battle who themselves seemed delighted beyond the ordinary conditions of life.
Skeptics and scorners find it easier to deny; defeated, science fears to compromise itself, looks away and refuses to issue opinion. But since there are no historical facts that are more indisputable than these, as there are none that have been attested by so many witnesses, the mockery, the reasons for not accepting them can no longer be admitted. It was before the serious English people that the statements were legally collected, in the most solemn forms, dictated by refugee Protestants, and they were published in London, in 1707, when the remambrance of all these things was still alive in all memories, and the denials could have crushed them under their number, if they were false.
We want to talk about the Sacred Theatre of the Cevennes, or the Report of the various wonders newly operated in that part of the Languedoc, from which we will make borrow long citations.
The strange phenomena reported there sought neither the shadow nor mystery to occur; they manifested before the intendants, before the generals, before the bishops, as well as before the ignorant and simple-minded. Whoever wanted to, could have witnessed, and studied them.
On September 25th, 1704, Villars wrote to Chamillard:
"I saw in that, things that I would never have believed, if they had not happened before my eyes: an entire city, of which all women, without exception, seemed possessed by the devil. They trembled and prophesied publicly in the streets. I arrested twenty of the wickedest, one of whom had the boldness to tremble and prophesy before me. I had her arrested for the example and confine the others into hospitals.”
Such procedures were required under Louis XIV, and to arrest a poor woman because an unknown force made her say things that did not suit her, before a marshal of France, could then be a way of acting that revolted no one, for it was so simple and natural and in the habits of the time. Today, we must have the courage to face the difficulty and seek less brutal and more convincing solutions.
We don't believe in the wonderful or in the miracles. We will therefore explain naturally, to the best of our ability, this serious historical problem, which has remained unsolved until now. We will do that with the help of the lights that magnetism and Spiritism make available to us today, without pretending to impose these beliefs on anyone.
It is unfortunate that we can only devote a few lines to what we understand would require a whole volume of developments. We will only say, to reassure the timid minds, that this does not offend Christian ideas in any way; as proof, we only need these two verses of the Gospel of St. Matthew:
“But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” (Matthew X, 19-20)
We leave it to the commentators to decide what is, in truth, that spirit of our Father which, at times, replaces us, speaks for us, and inspires us. Perhaps it could be said that every generation that disappears is the father and mother of the one who succeeds it, and that the best among those who seem to be no more, rising rapidly when freed from the shackles of the material body, come to borrow the organs of those of their sons whom they consider worthy to serve as their interpreters, and who will one day atone dearly for the misuse they have made of the precious faculties delegated to them.
Magnetism awakens, overexcites, and develops in some somnambulists the instinct that nature has given to all beings for their healing, and that our incomplete civilization has stifled in us, to have them replaced by the false glimmers of science.
The natural somnambulist puts his dream into action, that's all. He borrows nothing from others, can do nothing for them.
The fluidic somnambulist, on the contrary, the one in whom the contact of the fluid of the magnetizer causes a bizarre state, feels imperiously tormented by the desire to relieve his brothers. He sees the evil or comes to indicate the remedy.
The inspired somnambulist, who can eventually be fluidic at the same time, is the most richly gifted, and in him inspiration is maintained in the high spheres when spontaneously manifested. He one alone is a revealer; it is in him alone that progress resides, because only he is the echo, the docile instrument of a different and more advanced Spirit than his own.
The fluid is a magnet that attracts the beloved dead to those who remain. It emerges abundantly from the inspired ones, awakening the attention of the beings who left first, and who are sympathetic to them. The latter, for their part, purified and enlightened by a better life, judge better, and know better these primitive, honest, passive creatures, who can serve as intermediaries in the order of facts that they believe useful to be revealed to them.
In the previous century they were called ecstatic. Today they are mediums.
Spiritism is the correspondence of souls with one another. According to the followers of that belief, an invisible being puts himself in communication with another, enjoying a particular organization that makes him able to receive the thoughts of those who have lived, and to write them, either by an unconscious, mechanical impulse that drives the hand, or by direct transmission to the intelligence of the mediums.
If, for a moment, one wishes to give some credibility to these ideas, it will be easy to understand that the outraged souls of those martyrs whom the great king immolated every day, by the hundreds, came to watch over their loved ones, from whom they had been violently separated; that they supported them, guided them, consoled them in the midst of their harsh trials, inspired by their spirit; that they had announced to them in advance – something that happened many times – the perils that threatened them.
Only a small number was truly inspired. The fluidic release that came out of them, as from certain superior and privileged beings, acted on that deeply troubled crowd that surrounded them, but without being able to develop, in most of them, anything other than the coarse and largely fallible phenomena of hallucination. Inspired and hallucinated, all claimed to prophesy, but they made a host of mistakes among which one could no longer discern the truths that the Spirit truly whispered to the first ones. That mass of hallucinated reacted in turn on the inspired ones, casting trouble in the middle of their manifestations...
It was necessary, said Father Pluquet, extraordinary resources, prodigies, to sustain the faith of the disperse remnants of Protestantism. They broke out from all sides among the Reformed, during the first four years following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Voices so perfectly like the songs of the psalms, as the Protestants sing them, could not be taken for anything else, in the vicinity of places where there had once been temples, that they could not be mistaken for anything else. That melody was heavenly, and those angelic voices sang the psalms according to the version of Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze. Those voices were heard in the Béarn, in the Cevennes, in Vassy, etc. Fugitive ministers were escorted by that divine chant, and even the trumpet did not abandon them until after they had crossed the borders of the kingdom. Jurieu carefully collected the testimonies of these wonders and concluded that "God, having made mouths in the middle of the air, it was an indirect reproach that the Providence made to the Protestants of France, for having been silent too easily." He dared to predict that in 1689 Calvinism would be re-established in France... Jurieu said: “The Spirit of the Lord will be with you; he will speak through the mouths of children and women, instead of abandoning you.”
It was more than enough for persecuted Protestants to expect women and children to prophesy.
A man held at home, in a glasswork shop hidden at the top of the mountain of Peyrat, in Dauphiné, a real school of prophecy. He was an old gentleman named Du Serre, born in the village of Dieu-le-Fit. Here the origins are a little obscure. It is said that he was initiated in Geneva into the practices of a mysterious art of which a small number of people passed on the secret. Gathering at home some young boys and some young girls, whose sensitivity and nervous system he had undoubtedly observed, he first subjected them to strict fasting; he acted powerfully on their imagination, stretched out his hands towards them as if to impose on them the Spirit of God, breathed on their foreheads, and made them fall as inanimate before him, eyes closed, asleep, limbs stiffened by catalepsy, insensitive to pain, not seeing or hearing anything of what was happening around them, but seeming to listen to inner voices speaking in them, and seeing splendid spectacles whose wonders they told. In that bizarre state, they spoke, they wrote, and then, returning to their ordinary state, they remembered nothing they had done, what they had said, what they had written.
That is what Brueys says about those 'little sleeping prophets,' as he calls them. There we find the processes, well known today, of magnetism, and whoever wants to do so can reproduce the miracles of the old gentleman glassmaker in many ways...
In 1701 there was a new explosion of prophets. They rained from the sky, they sprouted from the earth, and from the mountains of the Lozère to the shores of the Mediterranean, they counted in the thousands. The Catholics had taken their children away from the Calvinists: God used the children to protest such prodigious iniquity. The government of the great king only knew violence. Those prophet-children were arrested in mass, at random; the smallest were ruthlessly whipped, the bigger ones had the soles of their feet burned. Nothing helped, and there were more than three hundred in the prisons of Uzès, when the Faculty of Montpellier was ordered to move to that city to examine their condition. After careful consideration, the enlightened Faculty declared them "taken by fanaticism."
Such beautiful solution of official science, that even today could not say much more on this issue, did not put an end to the overflowing wave of inspirations. Bâville then issued an ordinance (September 1701) to make parents responsible for the fanaticism of their children.
Soldiers were placed at the discretion of all those who had not been able to divert their children from such dangerous profession, and they were condemned to arbitrary sentences. So, everything followed the complaints and clamors of those unfortunate parents. Violence was carried so far that to eliminate it, there were several people who denounced their own children or handed them over to the intendants and magistrates, telling them: "Here they are, we discharge them, make them lose the wish of prophesying, if possible."
Vain efforts! The body was chained, tortured, but the Spirit remained free, and the prophets multiplied. In November, more than two hundred were removed from the Cévennes, "condemned to serve the king, some in his armies, others on the galleys" (Court de Gébelin). There were capital executions that did not spare even the women. A prophetess of Vivarais was hanged in Montpellier, because blood came out of her nose and eyes, which she called tears of blood, which she wept over the misfortunes of her co-religionists, over the crimes of Rome, and the papists...
A dull irritation, a long-contained stream of anger had long been rumbling in all chests, at the end of those twenty years of intolerable iniquities. The patience of the victims did not stifle the fury of the executioners. Finally, they thought of repelling force by force...
It was undoubtedly," said Brueys, "a very extraordinary and very new spectacle; we saw armed forces marching to fight small armies of prophets" (vol. I, p. 156).
A strange sight, indeed, because the most dangerous among those little prophets defended themselves with stones, refugees on inaccessible heights. But most of the time they weren't even trying to defend their own lives. When the troops advanced to attack them, they boldly marched against them, shouting loudly: “Tartara! Tartara! Back Satan!” They believed, it was said, that the word “tartara” should, like an exorcism, put their enemies on the run, that they themselves were invulnerable, or that they would be resurrected after three days if they were to succumb in the battle. Their illusions were not long-lasting on these various points, and soon they opposed the Catholics with more effective weapons.
In two encounters, on the mountain of Chailaret, and not far from Saint-Genieys, a few hundred were killed, a good number were taken, and the rest seemed to disperse. Bâville judged the prisoners, had some of them hanged, and sent the rest to the galleys; and since none of this seemed to discourage the Reformed, they continued to chase the assemblies of the desert, to mercilessly slaughter those who went there, without them thinking of posing a serious resistance to their executioners still. According to the testimony of a prophetess named Isabeau Charras, recorded in the Sacred Theater of the Cevennes, those unfortunate volunteer martyrs, forewarned by the revelations of the ecstatic, delivered themselves to the fate that awaited them; it reads:
“The man named Jean Héraut, from our neighborhood, and four or five of his children with him, had inspirations. The two youngest were seven years old, the other five and a half years old, when they received the gift; I saw them many times in their ecstasies. Another of our neighbors, named Marliant, also had two sons and three daughters in the same situation. The eldest was married. Being about eight months pregnant, she went to a congregation with her siblings, and had her seven-year-old son with her. She was massacred there with her said child, one of her brothers and one of her sisters. The brother that was not killed, was wounded, but he healed; the youngest of the sisters was unharmed, left for dead with the slain bodies. The other sister was brought back to her father's house, still alive, but she died of the wounds a few days later. I was not in the assembly, but I saw the spectacle of those dead and wounded. What is most notable is that all these martyrs had been warned by the Spirit of what was to happen to them. They had told their father as they took leave of him and asked for his blessing, the same evening they left the house to be in the assembly to be held the following night. When the father saw all those deplorable events, he did not succumb to his pain, but on the contrary, he said with pious resignation: "The Lord has given it, the Lord has taken it away; may the name of the Lord be blessed!" It was from the son-in-law's brother, the two injured children and the whole family that I learned that all this had been predicted.”
Eugène Bonnemère
[1] One volume, in-12, 3.5 francs, by mail 4 francs. Paris, Bookstores Décembre-Allonier.