Extracted from the
Journal le Voyageur de Commerce, November 22
nd, 1868.
[1]“
A few sincere pages about Spiritism, written by a man of good faith, could not be useless at this time, and it is perhaps time for justice and enlightenment to be done on a question that, although counting today on many followers in the intelligent world, it is nonetheless relegated to the realm of the absurd and the impossible by thoughtless minds, imprudent and little concerned with the denial that the future may give them. It would be curious today to question these so-called scientists who, from the height of their pride and their ignorance, until recently and with superb disdain, decreed the madness of these giant men who sought new applications for steam and electricity. Fortunately, death spared them those humiliations. To clearly state our situation, we will make a profession of faith to the reader in a few lines: Spiritist, Avatar, Paul d'Apremont undoubtedly prove to us the talent of Théophile Gautier, this poet that has always been attracted to the marvelous; these charming books are pure imagination and it would be a mistake to look for anything else in them; Mr. Home was a skillful conjurer; the Davenport brothers clumsy blackmailers. All those who wanted to make Spiritism a speculative business result, in our opinion, in the correctional police or the Justice Court and here is why: If Spiritism does not exist, they are impostors, liable to the penalty imposed by breach of trust; if it exists, on the contrary, it is on the condition of being a sacred thing par excellence, the most majestic manifestation of the divinity. If we admitted that man, passing over the tomb, could firmly enter the other life, correspond with the dead and thus have the only indisputable proof - because it would be material - of the immortality of the soul, wouldn’t that be a sacrilege to hand over to jugglers the right to profane the holiest of mysteries, and to violate, under the protection of the magistrates, the eternal secret of the tombs? Common sense, morality, the very security of citizens imperatively demands that these new thieves be driven from the temple, and that our theaters and our public places be closed to these false prophets who throw onto weak minds a horror that much often has been followed by madness. Having said that, let us move to the heart of the matter. Looking at the modern schools that make an uproar around certain fundamental principles and acquired certainties, it is easy to understand that the century of doubt and discouragement in which we live is seized with vertigo and blindness. Among all these dogmas, the one that has been the most agitated is, without a doubt, that of the immortality of the soul. In fact, everything is summarized there: it is the question par excellence, it is the whole man, it is his present, it is his future; it is the sanction of life, it is the hope of death to which all the great principles of the existence of God, of the soul, of the revealed religion are attached. This truth admitted, it is no longer life that should worry us, but the end of life; pleasures fade away giving way to duty; the body is nothing, the soul is everything; man disappears, and God alone blazes in his eternal immensity. Then, the great word of life, the only one, is death or rather our transformation. Being called upon to pass over Earth like ghosts, it is towards that horizon that opens on the other side that we must look; travelers for a few days, it is at the onset that it is appropriate to learn about the purpose of our pilgrimage, asking life for the secret of eternity, laying the groundwork for our path, and passengers of death to life, holding with a steady hand the thread that crosses the abyss. Pascal said: “The immortality of the soul is something that matters so much to us and that touches us so deeply, that we must have lost all feelings to be indifferent to knowing what it is. All our actions, all our thoughts must take such different routes, depending on whether there will be eternal goods to be hoped for or not, that it is impossible to take a step with sense and judgment if we are not driven by the sight of this plan that must be our first objective." In all times, man has had as a common heritage the notion of the immortality of the soul, and has sought to support this consoling idea on proofs; he believed to have he found it in the traditions and customs of different peoples, in the reports of historians, in the songs of poets; being prior to any priest, to any legislator, to any writer, not having emerged from any sect, from any school, and existing among barbarian peoples as among civilized nations, where would it have come from, if not from God who is the truth? Ah! those proofs created by the fear of nothingness are only hopes of a future built on an uncertain soil, on quicksand; and the deductions of the strictest logic will never reach the level of a mathematical demonstration. That material, indisputable proof, fair like a divine principle and as an addition at the same time, is entirely found in Spiritism and cannot be found elsewhere. By considering it from such elevated point of view, as an anchor of mercy, as the supreme life line, one can easily understand the number of adepts that this new entirely Catholic altar has grouped around its steps; because make no mistake, it is there and not elsewhere that we must seek the origin of the success that these new doctrines have given birth to, among men who shine at the forefront of sacred or profane eloquence, and whose names have a deserved notoriety in science and literature. What is Spiritism, then? Spiritism, in its broadest definition, is the faculty possessed by certain individuals to enter a relationship, by means of an intermediary or medium, which is only an instrument in their hands, with the Spirit of dead people who live in another world. This system, that is based, say the believers, on many testimonies, offers a singular seduction, less by its results than by its promises. In this order of ideas, the supernatural is no longer a limit, death is no longer a barrier, the body is no longer an obstacle to the soul, that gets rid of it after life, as it momentarily does in a dream, during life. In death the Spirit is free; if it is pure, it rises to spheres that are unknown to us; if impure, it wanders around Earth, puts itself in communication with man that betrays, deceives, and corrupts. The Spiritists do not believe in good Spirits; the clergy, according to the text of the Bible, also only believes in the bad ones, and finds them in this passage: "Take care, for the demon prowls around you and watches you like a lion seeking its prey, quœrens quem devoret.”[2] So, Spiritism is not a modern discovery. Jesus drove out demons from the bodies of the possessed, and Diodorus of Sicily speaks of ghosts; the lares[3] of the Romans, their familiar Spirits, what were they? But then why rejecting a system, out of bias and without examination, certainly dangerous from the point of view of human reason, but full of hopes and consolations? Wisely administered, brucine is one of our most powerful remedies; for the fact that it is a strong poison in the hands of the unskilled, is that a reason to ban it from the Codex? Mr. Baguenault de Puchesse, a philosopher and a Christian, from whose book I have borrowed a lot, because his ideas are mine, he says in his beautiful book of Immortality, about Spiritism: "Its practices inaugurate a complete system that includes the present and the future, that traces the destinies of man, opens the doors of the other life to him, and introduces him into the supernatural world. The soul survives the body, for it appears and shows itself after the dissolution of the elements that compose it. The spiritual principle emerges, persists and, by its actions, affirms its existence. Materialism is therefore condemned by the facts; life beyond the grave becomes a certain fact and as if palpable; the supernatural thus imposes itself on science and, by submitting to its examination, no longer allows to be rejected theoretically and to declared, in principle, impossible by science." The book that says so of Spiritism is dedicated to one of the lights of the Church, to one of the masters of the French Academy, one of the luminaries of contemporary literature, who replied:
“A beautiful book, on a great subject, published by the president of our Academy of the Holy Cross, will be an honor for you and for our entire Academy. You could hardly choose a more elevated or more important question to study at the present time ... Therefore, allow me, sir and very dear friend, to offer you, for the beautiful book that you dedicate to our Academy and for the good example that you give us all, my congratulations and all my thanks, with the homage of my religious and deep devotion.Felix, Bishop of Orleans.” Orleans, March 28th, 1864 – article signed by Robert de Salles.” The author obviously knows Spiritism only in an incomplete way, as demonstrated by certain passages of his article; however, he regards it as a very serious matter, and with a few exceptions, the Spiritists can only applaud all his thoughts. He is especially mistaken when he says that the Spiritists do not believe in good Spirits, and in the definition he gives as the broadest expression of Spiritism; it is, he says, the faculty possessed by certain individuals, to enter into relationship with the Spirit of dead persons.
Mediumship, or the faculty of communicating with the Spirits, does not constitute the basis of Spiritism, otherwise to be a Spiritist one would have to be a medium; this is only an accessory, a means of observation, and not the science that is entirely in the philosophical doctrine. Spiritism is no more dependent on mediums than astronomy is on a telescope; and the proof is that we can do Spiritism without a medium, as we did astronomy long before we had telescopes. The difference consists in the fact that, in the first case one does theoretical science, while mediumship is the instrument that makes it possible to base theory on experimentation. If Spiritism were circumscribed to the mediumistic faculty, its importance would be singularly lessened and, for many people, would be reduced to somewhat curious facts.
Reading this article, one wonders whether the author believes in Spiritism or not; for he poses it, in a way, only as a hypothesis, but as a hypothesis worthy of the most serious attention. If it is a truth, he says, it is a sacred thing par excellence, that should be treated only with respect, and whose exploitation cannot be withered and pursued with enough severity.
This is not the first time that this idea has been put forward, even by the opponents of Spiritism, and it should be noted that it is always the side by which the criticism believed to put the doctrine in default, by attacking the abuse of traffic to which it has given opportunity; it is because they feel that this would be its vulnerable side, and by which it could be accused of charlatanism; that is why malevolence persists in attaching it to charlatans, fortune tellers and other exploiters of the same kind, hoping by that to deceive and to remove the character of dignity and seriousness that make its strength.
The outcry against the Davenports, who thought they could put the Spirits in parade on trestles with impunity, has done an immense service; in their ignorance of the true character of Spiritism, the critics of the time believed they had struck it with the death blow, while they only discredited the abuses against which every sincere Spiritist has always protested.
Whatever the author's belief, and despite the errors contained in his article, we must be congratulated for seeing the question treated with the seriousness that subject demands. The press has rarely heard of it in such a serious sense, but there is a beginning to everything.
[1] Journal le Voyageur de Commerce is published every Sunday. - Offices: 3, Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Price: 22 francs per year; 12 francs for six months; 6.5 francs for three months. From the published article we are going to read, that is the expression of the author's thoughts, we do not prejudge his sympathies towards Spiritism, because we only know him by this number, that was kindly given to us.
[2] Latin for “seeking someone to devour”. (T.N.)
[3] Gods of the ancient Romans (Wikipedia, T.N.)
