THEORY OF PRESCIENCE.

— How is knowledge of the future possible?

One understands the possibility of foreseeing events that must result from the present state; but not that of events which bear no relation to that state, nor, still less, that of events commonly attributed to chance.

Future things do not exist, it is said; they are still in nothingness; how, then, can one know that they will come to pass?

Yet the cases of fulfilled predictions are great in number, whence the conclusion is forced upon us that here a phenomenon occurs for whose explanation we lack the key, since there is no effect without a cause; 5 it is this cause that we shall try to discover, and it is again Spiritism, in itself the key to so many mysteries, that will furnish it to us, showing us, moreover, that the very fact of predictions does not occur in exclusion of natural laws.

Let us take, for comparison, an example from everyday things, one that will help us understand the principle we shall have to develop.

— Let us suppose a man placed at the summit of a high mountain, observing the vast expanse of the plain around him.

In this situation, the space of a league will be a small thing for him, who will easily take in, at a glance, all the features of the terrain, from one end to the other of the road lying before his eyes.

The traveler, who travels this road for the first time, knows that, by walking, he will reach its end: this constitutes a simple foresight of the consequence his march will have; 4 however, the features of the terrain, the ascents and descents, the watercourses he will have to cross, the woods he must traverse, the precipices into which he may fall, the hospitable houses where he may rest, the robbers who lie in wait to rob him, all this is independent of his person: it is for him the unknown, the future, because his sight does not extend beyond the small area surrounding him.

As to duration, he measures it by the time he spends in traversing the road; take away his points of reference and the duration disappears.

For the man who stands atop the mountain and who follows him with his gaze, all of that is present.

Let us suppose that this man descends from his point of observation and, going to meet the traveler, says to him: “at such a moment, you will encounter such a thing, you will be attacked and rescued,” he will be predicting the future, 8 but a future for the traveler, not for himself, the author of the foresight, since, for him, that future is present.

— If, now, we leave the realm of purely material things and enter, in thought, into the domain of spiritual life, we shall see the same phenomenon occur on a greater scale.

Dematerialized Spirits are like the man on the mountain; space and duration do not exist for them.

But the extent and penetration of their sight are proportioned to their purification and to the elevation they have attained in the spiritual hierarchy; 4 with respect to inferior Spirits, the former are like men furnished with powerful telescopes, beside others who have only their eyes.

In inferior Spirits, vision is circumscribed, not only because they can with difficulty move away from the globe to which they are bound, but also because the grossness of their perispirits veils distant things from them, just as a fog conceals them from the eyes of the body.

It is well understood, then, that, in conformity with the degree of his perfection, a Spirit may take in a period of a few years, of a few centuries, even of many thousands of years, since, what is a century in the face of the infinite?

Before him, events do not unfold successively, like the incidents of the road before the traveler: he sees simultaneously the beginning and the end of the period; 8 all the events which, in that period, constitute the future for the man of Earth are the present for him.

He could therefore come and tell us with certainty: Such a thing will happen at such a time, because he sees that thing as the man on the mountain sees what awaits the traveler in the course of the journey; 10 if he does not so proceed, it is because knowledge of the future could be harmful to man, knowledge that would shackle his free will, would paralyze him in the work he must carry out for the sake of his progress; 11 and to keep the good and the evil he will encounter unknown to him constitutes a trial for man.

If such a faculty, even restricted, can be counted among the attributes of the creature, in what degree of potency must it not exist in the Creator, who embraces the infinite?

For the Creator, time does not exist: the beginning and the end of worlds are present to him.

Within this immense panorama, what is the duration of the life of a man, of a generation, of a people?

— However, since man must contribute to the general progress, since certain events must result from his cooperation, it may be fitting that, in special cases, he should have a presentiment of these events, in order to prepare their course and to be ready to act when the occasion arrives; 2 this is why God sometimes permits a corner of the veil to be lifted; but always with a useful purpose, never for the satisfaction of vain curiosity.

Such a mission can, then, be conferred, not upon all Spirits, since there are many who know no more of the future than men do, but upon some Spirits advanced enough to fulfill it; 4 now, it is to be noted that revelations of this kind are always made spontaneously and never, or at least very rarely, in answer to a direct question.

— A like mission may also be entrusted to certain men, in this manner:

He to whom the charge is given to reveal a hidden thing receives, without his knowledge and through the inspiration of the Spirits who know it, its revelation and transmits it mechanically, without perceiving what he does.

It is known, moreover, that, both during sleep and in the waking state, in the ecstasies of second sight, the soul detaches itself and acquires, in a more or less high degree, the faculties of the free Spirit.

If it be an advanced Spirit, if above all it has received, like the prophets, a special mission for this purpose, it will enjoy, in the moments of the soul’s emancipation, the faculty of taking in, by itself, a more or less extensive period, and will see, as present, the events of that period.

It may then reveal them at that very instant, or retain remembrance of them upon awakening.

If the events must remain secret, he will forget them, or will retain only a vague intuition of what was revealed to him, enough to guide him instinctively.

— It is thus that on certain occasions this faculty develops providentially, in the imminence of dangers, in great calamities, in revolutions, 2 and it is thus also that the majority of persecuted sects acquire numerous seers; 3 it is again for this reason that great captains are seen to advance resolutely against the enemy, certain of victory; 4 that men of genius, such as, for example, Christopher Columbus, march toward a goal, announcing beforehand, so to speak, the moment at which they will reach it; 5 it is that they have seen that goal, which, for their Spirits, has ceased to be the unknown.

The gift of prediction, then, has nothing supernatural about it, any more than an immensity of other phenomena; 7 it is founded on the properties of the soul and on the law of the relations of the visible world with the invisible world, which Spiritism has come to make known.

The theory of prescience may not resolve in an absolute manner all the cases of revelation of the future that may present themselves, but one cannot fail to agree that it establishes the fundamental principle of it.

— Often, persons endowed with the faculty of foreseeing, whether in the state of ecstasy or in that of somnambulism, see events as though depicted in a picture.

This could also be explained by the photography of thought.

Thought traversing space, as sounds traverse the air, an event that is in the thought of the Spirits who work for it to come about, or in that of the men whose acts must provoke it, may form an image for the seer; 4 but since its realization may be hastened or delayed by a concurrence of circumstances, the latter sees the fact, without being able, however, to determine the moment at which it will occur.

It not infrequently happens that that thought is no more than a project, a desire, which does not materialize into reality, whence the frequent errors of fact and of date in foresights. (Chap. XIV, no. 13 and following.)

— In order to understand spiritual things, that is, to form of them an idea as clear as that which we form of a landscape we have before our eyes, we truly lack a sense, exactly as the man born blind lacks one that would enable him to understand the effects of light, of colors, and of sight, without contact.

It follows from this that only by an effort of the imagination and by means of comparisons with material things familiar to us do we manage to attain it.

Material things, however, can give us only very imperfect ideas of spiritual things, which is why these comparisons must not be taken literally, nor must one believe, for example, that the extent of the perceptive faculties of Spirits depends on their actual elevation, nor that they need to be atop a mountain or above the clouds to take in time and space.

Such a faculty is inherent in the state of spiritualization, or, if you prefer, of dematerialization; 5 this means that spiritualization produces an effect that can be compared, though very imperfectly, to that of the overall vision possessed by the man placed upon the mountain.

This comparison aimed simply to show that events still belonging, for some, to the future, are, for others, in the present and can thus be predicted, which does not imply that the effect is produced in the same way.

Therefore, to enjoy this perception, the Spirit does not need to transport itself to any point of space; one who is on Earth at our side can possess it in all its fullness, just as much as if it were a thousand leagues away, whereas we see nothing beyond our visual horizon.

Vision not operating in Spirits in the same way, nor with the same elements as in man, the visual horizon of the former is very different; 9 now, it is precisely this sense that we lack in order to conceive it; 10 the Spirit, beside the incarnate one, is like the seer beside the blind man.

— We must, besides, consider that this perception is not limited to what concerns extent; that it embraces the penetration of all things; 2 it is, we repeat, a faculty inherent in and proportioned to the state of dematerialization.

Incarnation deadens it, without, however, completely annulling it, because the soul does not remain shut up in the body as in a box.

The incarnate one possesses it, though always in a lesser degree than when it is completely detached; this is what confers upon certain men a power of penetration that others entirely lack; greater acuteness of moral vision; easier comprehension of extramaterial things.

The incarnate Spirit not only perceives, but also remembers what it saw in the state of free Spirit, and this remembrance is like a picture that takes shape in its mind.

In incarnation, it sees, but vaguely, as through a veil; in the state of liberty, it sees and conceives clearly.

The principle of vision is not exterior to it, it is within it; this is the reason why it does not need exterior light.

By the effect of moral development, the circle of ideas and of conception widens; 9 by the effect of the gradual dematerialization of the perispirit, the latter purifies itself of the gross elements that altered the delicacy of its perceptions, 10 which makes it easy to understand that the amplification of all the faculties accompanies the progress of the Spirit.

— The degree of the extent of the Spirit’s faculties is what, in incarnation, makes it more or less apt to conceive spiritual things.

This aptitude, however, is not a forced corollary of the development of intelligence; 3 common science does not give it, so much so that there are men of great learning as blind to spiritual things as others are to material things; 4 they are refractory to them, because they do not understand them, which means that they have not yet progressed in that direction, 5 whereas others, of common instruction and intelligence, learn them with the greatest ease, which proves that they already had a prior intuition of such things.

It is, for these, a retrospective remembrance of what they saw and knew, whether in erraticity or in their previous existences, as some have the intuition of the languages and the sciences of which they were already knowledgeable.

— As to the future of Spiritism, the Spirits, as is known, are unanimous in affirming its near triumph, in spite of the obstacles created for it; 2 this foresight is easy for them, first, because its propagation is their personal work: contributing to the movement, or directing it, they naturally know what they must do; 3 in the second place, it suffices for them to glimpse a period of short duration: they see, in that period, along the way, the powerful auxiliaries that God raises up for it and that will not be long in manifesting themselves.

Let Spiritists transport themselves, though without being disincarnate Spirits, only thirty years forward, into the midst of the generation that arises; thence let them consider what is happening today with Spiritism; let them follow its progressive march and they will see consumed in vain efforts those who believe themselves destined to overthrow it; they will see that such men little by little disappear from the scene and that, in parallel, the tree grows and extends its roots farther each day.

— Most of the time, the ordinary events of private life are the consequence of each one’s manner of acting: 2 this one, according to his capacities, his skill, his perseverance, prudence, and energy, will succeed in that in which another will see all his efforts thwarted, by the effect of his ineptitude, 3 so that it can be said that each one is the artisan of his own future, a future that is never subject to a blind fatality, independent of his personality.

Knowing the character of an individual, one can easily predict for him the lot that awaits him on the path he has taken.

— The events that involve general interests of Humanity have Providence to regulate them.

When a thing is in the designs of God, it is fulfilled in spite of everything, either by one means or by another.

Men contribute to its being carried out; none, however, is indispensable, for, otherwise, God himself would be at the mercy of his creatures.

If the one to whom the mission of carrying it out is entrusted fails, another will be charged with it.

There is no fatal mission; man always has the liberty to fulfill or not the one entrusted to him and which he voluntarily accepted; 6 if he does not do it, he loses the benefits that would result from it and assumes the responsibility for the delays that may result from his negligence or his ill will; 7 if he becomes an obstacle to its being fulfilled, it is in God’s power to remove him with a breath.

— The final result of an event may, therefore, be certain, because it lies in the designs of God; 2 since, however, almost always, the details and the manner of execution are subordinated to circumstances and to the free will of men, the paths and the means may be contingent.

It is within the possibilities of Spirits to forewarn us of the whole, if it is fitting that we be advised; but, to determine place and date, they would need to know beforehand the decision that this or that individual will make; 4 now, if that decision is not yet in his mind, it could, whatever it may turn out to be, hasten or delay the realization of the fact, modify the secondary means of action, although the same result always comes to be produced.

It is thus, for example, that, by the whole of circumstances, Spirits can foresee that a war is more or less near, that it is inevitable, without, however, being able to predict the day on which it will begin, nor the detailed incidents that may be modified by the will of men.

— For the determination of the time of future events, account must moreover be taken of a circumstance inherent in the very nature of Spirits.

Time, like space, can be evaluated only with the aid of points of reference that divide it into periods that can be counted.

On Earth, the natural division of time into days and years has to mark it the rising and setting of the Sun, as well as the duration of the movement of translation of the terrestrial planet.

The units of measure of time necessarily vary according to the worlds, since the astronomical periods are different; 5 thus, for example, on Jupiter, the days are equivalent to ten of the terrestrial hours and the years to more than twelve of our years.

There is, then, for each world, a different way of computing duration, according to the nature of the astral revolutions that take place in it; 7 there is already in this a difficulty for Spirits who do not know our world to determine dates with respect to us.

Besides, outside the worlds, such means of appreciation do not exist. For a Spirit, in space, there is no rising or setting of the Sun to mark the days, nor periodic revolution to mark the years; there is, for it, only infinite duration and space. (Chap. VI, no. 1 and following.)

Therefore, one that had never come to Earth would possess no knowledge of our calculations which, moreover, would be completely useless to it; still more: one that had never incarnated in any world would have no notion of the fractions of duration.

When a Spirit foreign to Earth comes here to manifest itself, it cannot assign dates to events, except by identifying itself with our customs; now, this is no doubt possible for it, but most of the time it discovers no usefulness in this identification.

— The Spirits, who form the invisible population of our globe, where they have already lived and where they continue to interfere in our life, are naturally identified with our habits, the remembrance of which they preserve in erraticity.

They can, consequently, with greater ease, determine dates for future events, provided they know them; but, besides the fact that this is not always permitted to them, they find themselves prevented by the reason that, whenever the circumstances of detail are subordinated to the free will and to the contingent decision of man, no precise date really exists, except after the event has occurred.

This is why detailed predictions cannot bear the stamp of certainty and must be received only as probable, even if they carry no flaw that would legitimately render them suspect.

For this very reason, the truly judicious Spirits never predict anything for determined times, limiting themselves to forewarning us of the course of things which it is fitting that we know.

To insist on obtaining precise information is to expose oneself to the mystifications of frivolous Spirits who predict whatever one wishes, without concerning themselves with the truth, amusing themselves with the terrors and the disappointments they cause.

— The form generally employed until now in predictions makes of them veritable enigmas, most of the time indecipherable.

This mysterious and cabalistic form, of which Nostradamus offers us the most complete type, gives them a certain prestige before the common people, who attribute the more value to them, the more incomprehensible they appear.

By their ambiguity, they lend themselves to very different interpretations, in such a way that, according to the meaning attributed to certain allegorical or conventional words, according to the manner in which the singularly complicated calculation of the dates is carried out, and with a little goodwill, almost anything one wishes is found in them.

Be that as it may, one cannot fail to agree that some present a serious character and confound by their veracity.

It is probable that the veiled form had, at a certain time, its reason for being and even its necessity.

Today, circumstances are different; the positivism of the century would fare ill with sibylline language.

Hence it comes that at present predictions no longer take on these singular forms; those that Spirits make have nothing mystical about them; they use the language of everyone, as they would have done when alive on Earth, because they have not ceased to belong to Humanity; they warn us of future things, personal or general, when necessary, in the measure of the perspicacity with which they are endowed, as counselors and friends would do.

Their foresights, then, are rather warnings, which take nothing away from free will, than predictions properly so called, which would imply an absolute fatality.

Moreover, they almost always give the grounds for the opinion they express, because they do not want man to annul his reason under a blind faith and they desire that the latter appreciate its exactness.

— Contemporary Humanity also counts its prophets; more than one writer, poet, man of letters, historian, or philosopher has traced, in his writings, the future march of events whose realization we are now witnessing.

This aptitude, no doubt, often arises from the rectitude of judgment, in deducing the logical consequences of the present; but, at other times, it also results from a special unconscious clairvoyance, or from an inspiration coming from outside.

What such men did when alive, they can, with stronger reason and greater exactness, do in the state of free Spirits, when they do not have spiritual vision obscured by matter.