Biography of Allan Kardec,

It is still under the grip of the profound sorrow caused us by the premature departure of the founder of the Spiritist Doctrine that we undertake a task, simple and easy for his wise and experienced hands, but whose weight and gravity would crush us were we not counting on the effective aid of the good Spirits and on the indulgence of our readers.

Who, among us, could, without being charged with presumption, flatter himself with possessing the spirit of method and organization with which all the master's works show themselves illuminated? Only his mighty intelligence could concentrate so many diverse materials, grind them down and transform them, in order then to scatter them, like beneficent dew, over the souls eager to know and to love.

Incisive, concise, profound, he knew how to please and to make himself understood in a language at once simple and elevated, as far removed from familiar style as from the obscurities of metaphysics.

Multiplying himself ceaselessly, he had until now been able to suffice for everything. Nevertheless, the daily broadening of his relations and the continual development of Spiritism made him feel the necessity of gathering around himself some intelligent assistants, and he was simultaneously preparing the new organization of the Doctrine and of its labors, when he left us, to go, in a better world, to receive the sanction of the mission he had carried out and to gather elements for a new work of devotion and sacrifice. He was alone!… We shall call ourselves legion, and however weak and inexperienced we may be, we nurture the intimate conviction that we shall keep ourselves equal to the situation if, setting out from the established principles of incontestable evidence, we devote ourselves to carrying out, as far as is possible for us and in accordance with the needs of the moment, the projects he intended to realize in the future.

So long as we keep ourselves in his footsteps and all those of good will unite, in a common effort for the progress and the intellectual and moral regeneration of Humanity, the Spirit of the great philosopher will be with us and will second us with his powerful influence. May it be granted him to supply our insufficiency and may we show ourselves worthy of his concurrence, dedicating ourselves to the work with the same abnegation and the same sincerity as he, though without so much science and intelligence. Upon his banner the master had inscribed these words: Work, solidarity, tolerance. Let us be, like him, indefatigable; let us be, in accord with his longings, tolerant and supportive, and let us not fear to follow his example, reconsidering, as many times as may be necessary, the principles still under dispute. Let us try to advance, with security and certainty rather than with rapidity, and our efforts will not be fruitless if, as we are persuaded, and as we shall be the first to set an example, each one takes care to fulfill his duty, setting aside all personal questions, in order to contribute to the general good. Under no more favorable auspices could we enter the new phase opening for Spiritism than by making known to our readers, in a rapid sketch, what was, throughout his whole life, the upright and honorable man, the intelligent and fecund scholar, whose memory will be transmitted to the centuries to come with the aureole of the benefactors of Humanity.

Born in Lyon, on October 3, 1804, of an old family that distinguished itself in the magistracy and in the law, Allan Kardec (Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail) did not follow those careers. From his earliest youth, he felt himself inclined to the study of the sciences and of philosophy.

Educated in the School of Pestalozzi, at Yverdun (Switzerland), he became one of the most eminent disciples of that celebrated professor and one of the zealous propagandists of his system of education, which exercised so great an influence on the reform of teaching in France and in Germany.

Endowed with notable intelligence and drawn toward teaching, by his character and by his special aptitudes, already at fourteen years of age he was teaching what he knew to those of his fellow students who had learned less than he. It was in that school that there blossomed in him the ideas which would later place him in the class of progressive men and of freethinkers.

Born under the Catholic religion, but educated in a Protestant country, the acts of intolerance which on that account he had to endure, with respect to that circumstance, early led him to conceive the idea of a religious reform, on which he worked in silence for long years with the aim of attaining the unification of beliefs. He lacked, however, the element indispensable to the solution of that great problem.

Spiritism came, in its time, to impress upon his labors a special direction.

Having concluded his studies, he returned to France. Knowing the German language thoroughly, he translated for Germany various works of education and of morals and, what is very characteristic, the works of Fénelon, which had seduced him in a particular manner.

He was a member of several learned societies, among others, of the Royal Academy of Arras, which, in the competition of 1831, awarded him a prize for a notable memoir on the following question: What is the system of studies most in harmony with the needs of the age?

From 1835 to 1840, he founded, in his house, on the rue de Sèvres, free courses of Chemistry, Physics, Comparative Anatomy, Astronomy, etc., an enterprise worthy of praise in all times, but, above all, in an age when only a very small number of intelligences dared to set out upon that path.

Always preoccupied with making systems of education attractive and interesting, he invented, at the same time, an ingenious method of teaching reckoning and a mnemonic table of the History of France, having as its object to fix in the memory the dates of the events of greatest importance and the discoveries that illuminated each reign.

Among his numerous works of education, we shall cite the following: Plan proposed for the improvement of public Instruction ; Practical and theoretical Course of Arithmetic, according to the method of Pestalozzi, for the use of teachers and of mothers of families ; Classical French Grammar ; Manual of examinations for certificates of competency; Rational solutions of questions and problems of Arithmetic and of Geometry ; Grammatical Catechism of the French language ; Program of the usual courses of Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Physiology, which he taught at the Polymathic Lyceum; Standard dictations for the examinations of the Municipality and of the Sorbonne, followed by Special dictations on orthographic difficulties , a work much appreciated at the time of its appearance and of which even recently new editions were being printed. Before Spiritism popularized for him the pseudonym of Allan Kardec, he had already distinguished himself, as one sees, by means of works of a very different nature, yet all having, as their object, to enlighten the masses and to bind them more closely to their respective families and countries.

“In about the year 1855, the question of the manifestations of the Spirits having been brought into focus, Allan Kardec gave himself over to persevering observations on that phenomenon, considering principally how to deduce from it the philosophical consequences. He glimpsed, from the outset, the principle of new natural laws: those which govern the relations between the visible world and the invisible world. He recognized, in the action of the latter, one of the forces of Nature, the knowledge of which would shed light upon an immensity of problems held to be insoluble, and he understood its scope, from the religious point of view. “His principal works on this matter are: The Spirits' Book, concerning the philosophical part, whose first edition appeared on April 18, 1857; The Mediums' Book, relating to the experimental and scientific part (January 1861); The Gospel According to Spiritism, concerning the moral part (April 1864); Heaven and Hell, or The justice of God according to Spiritism (August 1867); Genesis, the Miracles and the Predictions (January 1868); the Spiritist Review, a journal of psychological studies, a monthly periodical begun on January 1, 1858. He founded in Paris, on April 1, 1858, the first regularly constituted Spiritist Society, under the denomination of the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, whose exclusive end was the study of whatever might contribute to the progress of the new science. Allan Kardec defended himself, with entire foundation, from having written anything under the influence of preconceived or systematic ideas. A man of a cold and calm character, he observed the facts and from his observations deduced the laws that govern them. He was the first to present the theory relative to such facts and to form with them a body of doctrine, methodical and regular. “Demonstrating that the facts erroneously qualified as supernatural are subject to laws, he included them in the order of the phenomena of Nature, thus destroying the last refuge of the marvelous and one of the elements of superstition.

“During the first years in which spiritist phenomena were dealt with, these constituted an object of curiosity rather than of serious meditations. The Spirits' Book caused the subject to be considered under a very different aspect. The turning tables, which had been but a prelude, were abandoned, and people began to give attention to the doctrine, which embraces all the questions of interest to Humanity.

“The founding of Spiritism dates from the appearance of The Spirits' Book; until then, it had counted only on scattered elements, without coordination, and whose scope not everyone had been able to appreciate. From that moment, the doctrine engaged the attention of serious men and took on rapid development. In a few years, those ideas conquered numerous adherents in all social strata and in all countries. That unprecedented success arose no doubt from the sympathy which such ideas awakened, but it is also due, in great part, to the clarity with which they were expounded, which is one of the characteristics of the writings of Allan Kardec. “Avoiding the abstract formulas of Metaphysics, he knew how to make everyone read him without fatigue, an essential condition for the popularization of an idea. On all the controverted points, his argumentation, of close logic, offers few openings to refutation and predisposes to conviction. The material proofs which Spiritism presents of the existence of the soul and of the future life tend to destroy materialist and pantheist ideas. One of the most fecund principles of that doctrine, and which derives from the preceding one, is that of the plurality of existences, already glimpsed by a multitude of philosophers ancient and modern and, in these latter times, by Jean Reynaud, Charles Fourier, Eugène Sue and others. It had remained, however, in the state of hypothesis and of system, whereas Spiritism demonstrates its reality and proves that in that principle resides one of the essential attributes of Humanity. From it emanates the explanation of all the apparent anomalies of human life, of all the intellectual, moral and social inequalities, enabling man to know whence he comes, whither he goes, to what end he finds himself on Earth and why he suffers there. “Innate ideas are explained by the knowledge acquired in previous lives; the march of peoples and of Humanity, by the action of the men of past times who live again, after having progressed; sympathies and antipathies, by the nature of previous relations. These relations, which bind together the great human family of all epochs, give as a basis, to the great principles of fraternity, of equality, of liberty and of universal solidarity, the very laws of Nature and no longer a mere theory. “Instead of the postulate: Outside the Church there is no salvation, which feeds separation and animosity among the different religious sects and which has caused so much blood to flow, Spiritism has as its motto: Outside Charity there is no salvation, that is, equality among men before God, tolerance, liberty of conscience and mutual benevolence.

“Instead of blind faith, which annuls the liberty to think, it says: There is no unshakable faith save that which can look reason face to face, in all epochs of Humanity. To faith, a basis is necessary, and that basis is the perfect intelligence of that in which one is to believe. To believe, it does not suffice to see; one must, above all, understand. Blind faith is no longer for this century. It is precisely to the dogma of blind faith that is owed the fact that today the number of the incredulous is so great, because it wishes to impose itself and demands the abolition of one of the most precious faculties of man: reasoning and free will.” (The Gospel According to Spiritism.) An indefatigable worker, always the first to take up the work and the last to leave it, Allan Kardec succumbed, on March 31, 1869, when he was preparing for a change of premises, imposed by the considerable extent of his multiple occupations. Various works which he was almost on the point of finishing, or which awaited the opportunity to come to light, will demonstrate one day, still more, the extent and the power of his conceptions.

He died as he had lived: working. He suffered, for long years, from an ailment of the heart, which could only be combated by means of intellectual repose and small material activity. Consecrated, however, wholly to his work, he refused everything that might absorb so much as a single one of his moments, at the cost of his favorite occupations. There happened to him what happens with all souls of strong temper: the blade wore out the sheath.

His body grew numb and refused the services which the Spirit demanded of it, while the latter, ever more alive, more energetic, more fecund, kept always broadening the circle of its activity.

In that unequal struggle, matter could not resist eternally. It ended by being vanquished: the aneurysm burst and Allan Kardec fell stricken down. There was one man fewer on Earth; but a great name took its place among those who illustrated this century; a great Spirit had gone to retemper itself in the Infinite, where all those whom he had consoled and enlightened awaited his return with impatience!

“Death, he was saying not long ago, redoubles its blows in the illustrious ranks!… Whom will it now come to set free?”

He went, like so many others, to recover himself in Space, to seek new elements to restore his organism worn out by a life of incessant labors. He departed with those who shall be the beacons of the new generation, to return soon with them to continue and finish the work left in devoted hands.

The man is no longer here; the soul, however, will remain among us. He will be a sure protector, one more light, a tireless worker whom the phalanxes of Space have won. As on Earth, without wounding anyone whatsoever, he will cause each one to hear his timely counsels; he will temper the premature zeal of the ardent, will support the sincere and the disinterested and will stimulate the lukewarm. He now sees and knows all that he so recently foresaw! He is no longer subject to uncertainties, nor to faintings, and he will make us share in his conviction, making us touch the goal with our finger, pointing out to us the way, in that clear, precise language which made him aureoled in the literary annals. The man no longer exists, we repeat it. Nevertheless, Allan Kardec is immortal, and his memory, his works, his Spirit will always be with those who grasp strongly and vigorously the standard which he always knew how to make respected.

A mighty individuality constituted the work. He was the guide and the beacon of all.

On Earth, the work will replace the worker. The believers will not gather around Allan Kardec; they will gather around Spiritism, such as he structured it, and, with his counsels, his influence, we shall advance, with firm steps, toward the happy phases promised to regenerated Humanity.

(Spiritist Review, May 1869.)

[1] (See in the 2nd part: My first initiation into Spiritism. — Ed. Note)