Preface

The title of this work clearly indicates its purpose. In it we have gathered all the elements suited to enlighten man about his destiny.

As in our other writings on the Spiritist Doctrine, we have introduced into it nothing that is the product of a preconceived system, or of a personal conception, which would have no authority whatsoever: everything in it is deduced from the observation and the agreement of facts.

The Spirits' Book contains the fundamental bases of Spiritism; it is the cornerstone of the edifice; all the principles of the doctrine are set forth in it, even those that are to constitute its crowning; 4 but it was necessary to give them developments, to deduce from them all the consequences and all the applications, as they unfolded through the complementary teaching of the Spirits and through new observations; 5 this is what we did in The Mediums' Book and in The Gospel According to Spiritism, from special points of view; this is what we are doing in this work from another point of view, and this is what we shall do successively in those that remain for us to publish, and that will come in their time.

New ideas bear fruit only when the soil is prepared to receive them. Now, by prepared soil one must not understand a few precocious intelligences, which would yield only isolated fruits, but a certain whole in the general predisposition, so that it may not only yield more abundant fruits, but that the idea, finding a greater number of points of support, may meet with less opposition, and be stronger to resist its antagonists.

The Gospel According to Spiritism was already a step forward; Heaven and Hell is one more step whose scope will be easily understood, because it touches certain questions to the quick; but it could not have come sooner.

If one considers the epoch in which Spiritism came, one will recognize without difficulty that it came at the opportune time, neither too early nor too late. Earlier, it would have aborted, because, sympathies not being numerous, it would have succumbed under the blows of its adversaries; later, it would have lost the favorable occasion to arise; ideas might have taken another course, from which it would have been difficult to divert them. It was necessary to allow the old ideas the time to wear themselves out and to prove their insufficiency, before presenting new ones.

Premature ideas abort because one is not ripe to understand them and because a change of position is not yet felt. Today it is evident to all that a great movement is manifesting itself in opinion; a formidable reaction is operating, in the progressive sense, against the stationary or retrograde spirit of routine; those who were satisfied the day before are the impatient ones of the day after.

Humanity is in the throes of labor; there is something in the air, an irresistible force that impels it forward; it is like a youth emerging from adolescence, who glimpses new horizons without defining them, and frees himself from the swaddling clothes of infancy.

Something better is seen, more solid nourishment for reason; but this better thing is still vague; it is sought; everyone is working at it, from the believer to the unbeliever, from the laborer to the scientist.

The Universe is a vast worksite; some demolish, others rebuild; each one carves a stone for the new edifice, of which only the great architect possesses the definitive plan, and whose economy [organization] will be understood only when its forms begin to take shape above the surface of the ground. This was the moment that the sovereign wisdom chose for the advent of Spiritism.

The Spirits who preside over the great regenerative movement act, then, with more wisdom and foresight than men would, because they embrace the general march of events, whereas we see only the limited circle of our horizon.

The times of renewal having arrived, in accordance with the divine designs, it was necessary that, amid the ruins of the old edifice and so as not to lose courage, man should glimpse the bases of the new order of things; it was necessary that the mariner should perceive the polar star, which is to guide him to port.

The wisdom of the Spirits, which showed itself in the emergence of Spiritism, revealed almost instantaneously throughout the whole Earth, at the most propitious epoch, is no less evident in the logical order and gradation of the successive complementary revelations.

It is not in anyone's power to constrain their will in this respect, because they do not measure their teachings according to the impatience of men. It is not enough for us to say: “We should like to have such a thing” for it to be given; and it suits us still less to say to God: “We judge that the moment has come for you to give us such a thing; we judge ourselves sufficiently advanced to receive it,” because that would be to say to Him: “We know better than you what ought to be done.”

To the impatient the Spirits reply: “Begin first by knowing well, understanding well and, above all, by practicing well what you know, so that God may judge you worthy of learning more; then, when the moment comes, we shall know how to act and we shall choose our instruments.”

The first part of this work, entitled Doctrine, contains the comparative examination of the various beliefs concerning heaven and hell, angels and demons, future punishments and rewards; 19 the dogma of eternal punishments is therein considered in a special manner and refuted by arguments drawn from the very laws of Nature, which demonstrate not only its illogical side, already pointed out hundreds of times, but its material impossibility. With eternal punishments fall, naturally, the consequences that one believed could be drawn from them.

The second part contains numerous examples in support of the theory, or, rather, which served to establish the theory. They draw their strength from the diversity of the times and places where they were obtained, since, if they emanated from a single source, they could be regarded as the product of one and the same influence. Moreover, they draw it from their agreement with what is daily obtained everywhere that one occupies oneself with spirit manifestations from a serious and philosophical point of view.

These examples could have been multiplied to infinity, for there is no Spiritist center that could not furnish them in remarkable contingent. To avoid tedious repetitions, we had to make a choice among the most instructive ones.

Each of these examples is a study in which every word has its scope for whoever meditates upon them with attention, because from each side there gushes a light upon the situation of the soul after death, and the passage, until then so obscure and so dreaded, from corporeal life to spiritual life.

It is the traveler's guide, before entering a new country. The life beyond the tomb is therein unfolded under all its aspects, like a vast panorama; each one will gather there new motives of hope and consolation, and new supports to strengthen faith in the future and in the justice of God.

In these examples, for the most part taken from contemporary facts, we have concealed the proper names, whenever we judged it useful, for reasons of propriety easy to appreciate. Those whom such examples may interest will easily recognize them. For the public, names more or less known and, at times, very obscure, would have added nothing to the instruction that can be drawn from them.

The same reasons that made us silence the names of the mediums in The Gospel According to Spiritism, made us refrain from naming them in this work, made for the future much more than for the present. They are still less concerned in it, since they could not attribute to themselves the merit of a thing in which their own spirit took no part.

Mediumship, moreover, is not subservient in a given individual; it is a fleeting faculty, subordinate to the will of the Spirits who wish to communicate, which one possesses today and which may be lacking the next day, which is never applicable to all Spirits without distinction, and, for that very reason, does not constitute a personal merit as would a talent acquired through work and through the efforts of intelligence.

Sincere mediums, those who understand the gravity of their mission, regard themselves as instruments that the will of God can paralyze at its pleasure, if they do not act according to its views; they are happy to possess a faculty that allows them to make themselves useful, but they take no vainglory in it. For the rest, we conform ourselves on this point to the counsels of our spiritual guides.

Providence willed that the new revelation should not be the privilege of anyone, but that it should have its interpreters throughout the whole Earth, in all families, in the great as in the small, according to this word of which the mediums of today are the fulfillment: “In the last days, said the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your young men shall have visions and your old men shall have dreams. In those days, I will pour out of my Spirit upon my menservants and upon my maidservants, and they shall prophesy.” (Acts, chapter II, v. 17, 18.)

But he also said: “There shall be false christs and false prophets.” (See The Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter XXI.)

Now, these last times have arrived; it is not at all the end of the material world, as was believed, but the end of the moral world, that is to say the era of regeneration.

[1] See in Bibliographical Notices, in the Spiritist Review of September 1865, the reproduction of a summary of this preface.