Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1869

Appreciation by the Paris newspaper

(See Spiritist Review, March 1869)



We read the following in the Paris newspaper, March 7^th, 1869, about Spiritism:

"We remember the noise made a few years ago in the world about the phenomenon of turning tables. Every family had to have its animated pedestal table, and every group had its familiar Spirits; meetings were scheduled to have the little table turning, as we meet today for a dancing party. A moment of public curiosity (revived by the clergy when scaring the souls, frightened by the abominable specter of Satan), knew no more limits, and the tables cracked, tapped, danced, from the basement to the attic, with the most meritorious obedience.

"Little by little the fever subdued, there was silence, other amusements became fashionable, who knows? The living tables, no doubt.

"But as they walked away, the crowd left some stubborn people motionless, still riveted to those singular manifestations. Unnoticeably a kind of mysterious bond stretched from one to the other. The isolated ones from the day before were counted on the day after; soon, a vast association made a single family of these scattered groups, marching under the motto of a common belief, seeking the truth through Spiritism.

"It seems that at this hour the army has enough seasoned soldiers to be honored with the combat; and Mr. Chevillard, after presenting the DEFINITIVE solution to the Spiritist problem, did not hesitate to move on with his subject in a new lecture: The Illusions of Spiritism.

Mr. Desjardin, on the other hand, after talking about innovators in medicine, threatens to attack the Spiritist theories soon. The believers will undoubtedly respond that the Spirits cannot find a better opportunity to assert themselves. It is therefore an awakening, a struggle that takes place.

The Spiritists count on a larger number today in Europe than it is supposed. They are counted in the millions, not to mention those who believe and do not boast about it. The army recruits new followers every day. What is the surprise? Isn’t there a growing number of those who cry and ask in the communications of a better world, the hope in the future?

It seems that the discussion on this subject must be serious. It is interesting to take some notes from the first day.

Mr. Chevillard is generous; he does not deny the facts; - he affirms the good faith of the mediums with whom he has been put in contact; he has no embarrassment in declaring that he himself has produced the phenomena of which he speaks. The Spiritists, I bet, have never been at such a feast, and they will not fail to take advantage of such concessions - if they can oppose Mr. Chevillard with anything other than the sincerity of their conviction.

It is not up to us to answer, but simply to extract from that set of facts the few magnetic laws that form the speaker's theory. "The vibrations of the table,” he says, “are produced by the voluntary internal thought of the medium, aided by the desire of credulous assistants, always numerous.” That is how the nervous or vital fluid is formally indicated, with which Mr. Chevillard establishes the definitive solution of the Spiritist problem. "Every Spiritist fact," he adds further, "is a succession of movements produced on an inanimate object by an unconscious magnetism."

Finally, summarizing his entire system in an abstract formula, he affirms that "the idea of mechanical voluntary action is transmitted, through the nervous fluid, from the brain to the inanimate object that performs the action, as an organ bound by the fluid to the wanting being, whether the connection is by contact or at a distance; but the being does not have the perception of his act, because he does not perform it by a muscular effort.”

These three examples are sufficient to indicate a theory, which in fact we do not have to discuss, and to which we may have to return later; but, remembering a lesson from M. E. Caro at the Sorbonne, we would naturally reproach Mr. Chevillard for the very title of his lecture. Has he first asked himself whether, in these questions that escape control, the mathematical proof, that can only be judged by deductions - the search for the first causes is not incompatible with the formulas of science?

Spiritism gives too much space to the freedom of reasoning to be able to fall under science properly said. The facts that are observed, wonderful no doubt, but always identical, escape every control, and conviction can only arise from the multiplicity of observations.

The cause, whatever the initiated say, remains a mystery to the man that cold-bloodedly weighs these strange phenomena, and the believers are reduced to making vows that, sooner or later, a fortuitous circumstance will tear this veil that hides the great problems of life from our eyes, and show us the radiant unknown god.

Pagès de Noyez.”

***

We gave our assessment of the reach of Mr. Chevillard's lectures in our previous issue, and it would be superfluous to refute a theory that, as we have said, is nothing new, no matter what the author thinks. That he has his system on the cause of the manifestations is his own right; that he believes it right, it is quite natural; but that he has the pretension to give to himself the definitive solution to the problem, that means that he alone is given the last word of the secrets of nature, and that after him there is nothing more to see, nor anything to discover. Who is the scientist who has ever pronounced the ultimate thing in science? There are things that we can think, but that it is not always clever to say it out loud. Besides, we have not seen any Spiritist concerned with the alleged discovery by Mr. Chevillard; all of them, on the contrary, wish that he continues to apply it to its last limits, without omitting any of the phenomena that could be opposed to that; above all, we would like to see him definitively solving these two questions:

What happens to the Spirits of men after death?

Under what law can these same Spirits, who stirred matter during the life of the body, no longer agitate it after death and manifest themselves to the living?

If Mr. Chevillard admits that the Spirit is distinct from matter, and that this Spirit survives the body, he must admit that the body is the instrument of the Spirit in the various acts of life; that it obeys the will of the Spirit. Since he admits that, through the transmission of electric fluid, tables, pencils, and other objects become appendages of the body and thus obey the thought of the incarnate Spirit, why then, by an analogous electric current, couldn’t they obey the thought of a disembodied Spirit?

Among those who admit the reality of the phenomena, four hypotheses have been put forward on their cause, namely: 1 - The exclusive action of the nervous, electrical, magnetic or any other fluid; 2 - The reflection of the thought of mediums and assistants, in the intelligent manifestations; 3 - The intervention of demons; 4 - The continuity of relations between human Spirits, freed from matter, and the corporeal world.

These four propositions have been, since the origin of Spiritism, advocated and discussed in all forms, in many writings, by men of indisputable worth. There was therefore no shortage of light from the discussion. How come, from those various systems, that of the Spirits has met the most sympathies; that it alone prevailed, and is now the only one admitted by most observers, in all countries of the world; that all the arguments of its opponents, after more than fifteen years, could not surpass it, if they are the expression of the truth?

This is still an interesting question to be resolved.